Elves for Fantastic Battles

 Between work and everything else, I have run out of a steam and not done much hobby stuff recently, so I have not managed to carry on Broneslav's adventures and may have to consider not trying to map everything myself. Still, a little progress om game-related things has happened and I hope to have more time in the near future. Mind you, that's adult life, isn't it? "I'll have time for the thing I want to do next week, once I just get these fifty urgent tasks out of the way." Repeat ad nauseam.

I've been wanting to do something with the 6mm figures from our Talomir Tales campaign for a while now, but have not really been sure what. You can see the National Elf Service as it was on the Talomir Tales blog. Originally I planned to rebase them all to 60mm frontage bases from 40mm and make up fantasy equivalents of historical armies for Impetus. In tandem with this, I have carried on collecting rules sets, because, you know, you can never have too many fantasy wargame rules sets. One of those sets is Fantastic Battles, which I have not tried yet, but which reads well and offers a lot of flexibility, so I have high hopes.

Enough Elves to give an Orc a bad day

So with all these thoughts in my brain, I decided to rebase the Elves first onto 30mm x 30mm bases. Fantastic Battles states 40mm x 40 mm bases, but all my 6mm ancient and medieval armies are on 60mm x 30mm bases, so this would mean I could shove two bases together to make an opponent for a historical army using other rules. With a bit of fudging, I could also use the historical armies with Fantastic Battles, although I'll be restricted to companies with an even number of bases, unless I paint up some smaller bases to use to make change, which need not be too onerous a task.

The Elven infantry with archers in front and spears behind. The general is mounted in the centre and flanked by a druid and the famed bard Elvish, with two heroes on the outer flanks.

I could have left the Elves as they were on their 40mm frontage bases, but rebasing builds in compatibility with other parts of my collection, and I do find the 30mm/60mm base more aesthetically pleasing for no rational reason that I can think of. Also, if I ever play someone else, whose army follows the official basing, I can always use a sabot base for my own troops, so no worries there either. One thing I did consider was rebasing to 1" square bases, because Fantastic Battles uses base widths as the main measurement. As such, it would have been more convenient for game play and require a much smaller table, but it could lead to issues with larger fantastic monsters and war machines not fitting on the standard base.

A full company of Elven knights

In addition to rebasing the existing figures, I painted up the Elven knights who had languished in the Pile of Possibility (aka the Pile of Shame) for far too long. I also found some more spearelves in that pile and quickly slapped paint on them too. I like how the whole army looks. Once I have rebased the goblins, I can set up a game and test the rules properly.

In the spirit of using what I already have, the Elves are supported by a detachment of Centaur light cavalry

It's a simple army with just the core elements and can easily be expanded in the future. When I am back in the UK at Christmas, I shall dig out the Goblins and see if I can get them rebased. Who knows? I might even manage to set up and play a game.