All Based and Ready to Go (NQSYW and 54mm Fantasy)

 It has taken a few days since my return from visiting my father to finish up what I had painted, and I also had three more of the NQSYW figures which needed basing.

That brings a Charge! company up to full strength, so I will need to find a way to get it on the table this Saturday.

I also finished the one witch.

Next up on the painting table will be a few more 54mm fantasy figures.  I’m trying not to look too far ahead, so I won’t predict what might be after that.

Fantastic Battles — A Review

 This winter has been a quiet season for my wargaming hobby, but I am hoping that spring inspires me to some fresh activity.

I thought I would get back in the game with a review of Fantastic Battles by Nic Wright. Fantastic Battles (copyright 2020) is a generic fantasy mass battle game.  It is available as a PDF from Wargame Vault for about $11, and as a POD hardcopy from Amazon for about $20.

In considering whether I am going to purchase a new set of rules the basing conventions are the first thing that concerns me. I have vowed to avoid rebasing my miniatures collections at all costs, so I became interested in Fantastic Battles when I learned (from discussions on the Lead Adventure Forum) that it was intended for troops based on squares with a small number of individually based characters to act as commanders.  60mm bases are recommended for 25mm figures, and 40mm for smaller figures. Conveniently, this is how most of my 25mm fantasy collection is based, so it would have seemed like looking a gift horse in the mouth to reject the opportunity to purchase and try these rules.  I should note here that there are also some minor suggested rules changes to account for the use of troops on rectangular bases.

6mm Fantastic Battles with rectangular bases

The actual rules are about 40 pages long, including the lists of spells and unit attributes (“traits”) described below.  There are also four pages devoted to a short campaign system (to be played on a node-and-link map of areas and communications routes), a selection of twelve fantasy armies with points precalculated for suggested units types which cover the usual fantasy trops (humans, halflins, dwarves, elves, goblins, ratmen, lizard men, and undead) plus a set of twelve mostly historical army lists in six matched pairs ranging from Greeks and Trojans to Conquistadors and Aztecs. The book concludes with a two page quick reference sheet.

The rules describe themselves as “setting agnostic”, which is to say that there is no specific background given, and the army construction rules should allow you the flexibility or build whatever sort of fantasy army you like.  Each “company” (a single one of the square bases mentioned previously) is built from a basic type (elite, formed, irregular, fantastic beast, dragon, artillery, or vehicle) customized by adding some of the forty traits to it.  An army can have one overall defining trait (say “Drilled”  for Romans or Gondorians) and each unit can have up to three additional traits. For example, a company of knights might be an elite company with “mounted” and “furious charge”. Each company has five basic statistic: resolution (number of hits it can sustain), move (in base widths or “BWs”), melee (number of dice thrown in combat), shooting (number of dice thrown at short and long range), and defense (target number for an enemy’s attack rolls), plus a base point cost for purchase. The various traits will alter those numbers.  Mounted, for example, increases resolution, move, and melee, as well as increasing the cost.  There are negative traits as well. “Militia”, for example, reduces melee (and cost). Each company’s final statistics and cost are the sum of the base type values plus all of the selected trait values. Costs range from about 25 for an irregular company of goblin warriors to 50 or more for a company of elite knights.

The rules recommend playing with an army cost of about 750 points, and some points will need to be allocated to the command characters.  These come in four basic types, warlord, magician, captain, and rogue. They cost between 25 points for a captain or rogue and 75 points for a combined warlord/magician. So, a 750 point army might consist of three or four characters and perhaps 15 companies (with an average cost of 40).  The game recommends playing a battle this size on a table 30 BW by 20 BW.  For 60mm bases that would work out to be 4x6 feet.  For 40mm bases, a dining room table is probably sufficient.

Before the battle each player organizes his companies into units of one to four identical companies.  These units will be permanent for the duration of the battle. Units of more than one company may adopt one of three formations, line, column, and tortoise, and may change between them as needed during the game. These units pool the resolution points of all the component companies, so that a unit of four companies of irregular goblins at 3 resolution points each would have a total resolution of 12, and will be removed entirely when it takes 12 hits, with no intermediate removals of companies.  So you can organize your army into bulky units with good staying power, or smaller flexible units which are more brittle.

Each turn during the game will consist of three phases: shooting, actions (i.e. maneuvers), and melee. In the shooting phase, all companies with a shooting ability and within range of an enemy may shoot.  Shooting and melee both use the same dice system; a number of dice per shooting company is rolled, and any that equal or exceed the target’s defense value reduce the unit’s resolution.  Markers of some sort, or a roster system, will be needed to track hits during a game. At the end of the shooting phase any units which have taken more hits than their resolution rating are removed, so units always have a chance to shoot back before elimination.

In the “actions” phase, each player has a number of tokens in a cup (or cards in a deck). These are drawn one at a time.  The first draw for each player will activate all of their “impetuous” units, which is defined as those beyond the command radius of a character.  Impetuous units roll a six-sided die, and have a 50% chance of moving as the player wishes; otherwise they will be compelled to retreat, charge, or hold. After the impetuous units are dealt with, each draw will allow the player to activate one character and the units within their command radius. Units may perform various maneuvers; characters have additional possibilities such as spell casting or rallying troops. Enemy units about to be contacted by a unit of the active player may (depending on traits) be able to perform a response, such as evasion or countercharge.

Romans flanking the elves; note cards for initiative and dials to mark hits

When all tokens have been drawn and all actions completed, there is a melee phase.  All units in contact roll melee dice against the defender’s target number as with shooting.  Bonus dice are available for the usual sorts of situations, such as charging and flanking.  Successes reduce the target’s resolution, and, like shooting, destroyed units are removed at the end of the melee phase and therefore still fight back.

The mechanics are fairly simple and straighforward. Players with any background in wargames with miniatures should be able to oick them up quickly. Based on our trial games so far, players should be able to finish a 750 point recommended size game in under two hours, even allowing some time to look up a few rules as you go. The electronic version of the rules also includes an Excel spreadsheet which will calculate unit costs and allow you to print a basic army list.  I would recommend that you add a short description of the effect of any trait in your army with special rules (i.e., that involves more than a simple modification of the five statistics).  That would have saved us most of the lookup time in our trial games.

Despite my having purchased these rules to use with my 25mm collection, we have been playing the trial games so far with 6mm figures from Irregular (mostly) on 40mm WRG bases of varying depths, using the suggest rectangular base modifications.

Overall, the games we have played have been fun. I would recommend these rules if you need a rank-and-flank set of mass fantasy battle rules which provide a good two-player experience in a game lasting less than two hours and playable on a 4x6 table (in 25mm; your dining room table in smaller scales). We have not tried a multi-player game. I don’t expect that I will be using this for a six to eight player convention game to fill a four hour time slot. I note that my opponent thought our first game was enough fun that he immediately ordered a 6mm elf army from Baccus and has been painting it…

Gaming Weekend and Some Painting

I have had a couple of busy weeks since I last posted anything.  I flew out to visit my brother for a few days the week before last, and we did quite a bit of gaming.  We ended up playing six games of Dragon Rampant, trying all of the scenarios in the rulebook, and also found time for a couple of games of Burrows and Badgers.

 I was flying on Southwest.  They have been adding more Boeing 737-800s to their fleet.  If you wonder why I would pay attention to a detail like that, the 800s have a new configuration of the overhead luggage racks, one that tilts your bag at a 45 degree angle in flight.  My magnetic storage box configuration calculated to fit in the overhead rack is not guaranteed to hold the troops steady if the attendant slams the bin shut at an angle. For this trip I decided I would be safe and limit my troops to a package of 2 4-liter Really Useful Boxes, which will fit under the seat. I could do this because I knew that my brother had plenty of terrain, so I didn’t need to bring any.  One box had the Burrows and Badgers collection, and the other had the selection of vintage fantasy figures shown above.  Without using too many reduced or single model units, I was able to deploy three different warbands over the weekend, without too much overlap.  I figured later that I could have done an opposing pair as well, but my brother has plenty of his own figures he wanted to see on the table.  As it worked out, I was glad that I did this. While the trip out to Indianapolis was on a 737-700 with the older style overhead bins, the trip back was on an 800.  For the future I would like to play around with fitting scenery into a 4-liter box, so that I could safely fly with one troop box and one scenery box and have a pickup game for a convention, or even a multi-player skirmish.

We played the Dragon Rampant games on his 4x6 Alpha Gaming Table, using a lot of Monster Fight Club scenery.

Here my Broadsword Miniatures rangers (ca. 1980) defend a Monster Fight Club rocky hill…

Here a pair of old Adina giants (not very big ones!) attack my brother’s early Ral Partha sea elves…

And some anthropomorphic animals scuffle amid the ruins in Burrows and Badgers…

It was a good visit overall, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to do it again sometime relatively soon.

Since the last update, I have picked up the brush again after unintentionally taking a couple of months off. As I previously noted, I started down the path of building a 1/72 medieval skirmish on a budget as a challenge. (It’s also compatible with the existing 1/72 fantasy figures, so doesn’t need to stand completely on its own).  My sons and I got together for a painting day this weekend, and I made some additional progress on the budget project:

Painting with a limited color selection and some cheap Chinese brushes has turned out to be a bit of a challenge, so I will have more to say about that in some future post.  In the meantime, I am compromising a bit; for budget purposes, you could mount these figures on pennies and use sand and paint for basing, but I am going to base mine on composite Litko wood/flexisteel bases so that I can use my magnetic boxes for transport.  More to follow on that …

6mm Games and a New 1/72 Challenge

 In the previous post I was painting some 6mm characters and commanders with the intention of using them in a game of Fantastic Battles by Nic Wright. I had mentioned back in March that my sons and I had tried them for a Renaissance game with Leonardo machines, and that the rules were not what I was looking for to run a multi-player convention game.  I wanted to give them another try, and my friend Chris Palmer agreed to be my guinea pig, er, opponent.  As I noted, I am interested in squeezing more gaming out of small spaces at the moment, so I wanted to use the 6mm troops.  I took my box of 6s and a Cigar Box Battles general purpose mat to Chris’s house and we played on his dining room table.  We used armies of orcs (basically impetuous barbarians) and Romans (doughty and drilled).  Allowing for some first time rules look up, we got through a battle in about two hours. As anticipated, this worked better in a more standard fantasy context, and as a two player game looking for that 1-2 hour game.  I look forward to playing it again, and will hold a formal review until we get at least one more game in.  As for an informal review, Chris ordered a starter army of 6mm elves from Baccus Miniatures after the game, so I think that it is safe to say that he was favorably impressed.

View from the Roman right flank as the battle opened

Another view, from behind the Roman center

This past week business took me to Colorado.  Since I knew that the first leg was going to be over three hours in the air, I decided that I would take the tray table game with me and try it out as intended.  Apart from the fact that the Roman legionary infantry did not make it back into the travel box after the fight against the orcs and I was compelled to improvise a bit on the order of battle, I am happy to say that it worked splendidly. The children’s play organizer did a good job of keeping dice and damage tokens confined.  I played two games, with each side (Romans and Sassanid Persians) having one win.  (I should go put the infantry back in the travel box before I forget about it again … ) It was nice to have something to distract myself from the fact that I was packed in a thin-walled metal tube hurtling through the sky six miles above the ground for a little while.

Now, on to the challenge.  Most of the miniatures content on YouTube is Games Workshop related, so I’m always interested when something shows up that isn’t.  There was a video posted on the Tabletop Minions channel last week (Friday, 7 July 2023) in which Uncle Atom presented a route to get into the hobby from scratch with a budget of $100.  The HAWKs presented a similar challenge back in 2003, although our $100 budget then specifically excluded the tools and painting supplies that were necessary to build the projects.  According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the $100 November 2003 budget translates into $165 in June 2023.  Add that to the excluded paint, glue, and tools, and it looks like we were pretty generous in our conditions back in ‘03.

Uncle Atom’s budget includes paint, brushes, and tools.  After considering the matter for a while, I went shopping.  Here’s what I came up with:

I decided to follow Uncle Atom’s advice and start at the Dollar Tree.  For $5.50, I came home with a craft knife, some glue, and a package of cheap brushes that I won’t care about when they get messed up.

For rules, I decided that I would use Nordic Weasel’s Knyghte, Pyke and Sworde, which is available at Wargames Vault for $9.99. KPS is a skirmish game using only standard six sided dice, with forces of up to 20-30 figures per side, but still usable at smaller levels.  So, as troops get painted, the games can begin before all the figures are finished.  Uncle Atom allowed that d6s were probably available for scrounging, so we’ll count them as free although I could have bought a package of them a the Dollar Tree for $1.25.

For figures, I decided that this was a good excuse to paint a set of 1/72 scale figures I’d been wanting to do anyway.  For $25 (including shipping!) on eBay, I was able to find a box of the Italeri Medieval Tournament.  This set was originally pointed out to me over on Benno’s Figures Forum when someone posted pictures of the civilians from the set they had painted.

This set includes some tournament knights and specators, plus a viewing stand and the barrier for jousting.

In addition, it comes with one set of the Italeri Hundred Years War English.

It also comes with one set of their opponents, the Hundred Years War French.

The box contains a total of 55 foot figures and 20 horsemen, which should be plenty for a reasonable KPS game.

In order to paint these figures, I would need some primer.  I already have a can, but I priced Krylon Fusion matte black at $6.98.  I’ve used this successfully on 1/72 plastics before.

Uncle Atom used an Army Painter starter set with 10 colors and a brush for $30, but in looking around on Amazon I found a pack of 16 Vallejo “Medieval Colors” for $28.74.   It includes a black and a white for mixing and an assortment of metallic colors, but is a little short on browns, so I’ll have to see what I can do with mixing.  At least most of the horses are caparisoned, so the lack of horse variety will be less apparent.       

To finish the miniatures, a large (60ml) bottle of Vallejo satin varnish cost $7.96.

I ordered a set of three small brushes from some unknown supplier on Amazon for $6.59. I am dubious about their durability and ability to hold a point, but we shall see.  I intend to use the cheaper Dollar Tree brushes as much as possible to save wear and tear on the little brushes.

I priced felt for a ground cloth from Joann Fabrics.  They’ll sell you a yard of 72” width felt for $7.99.  I haven’t gotten over to the local Joann to see what they have in stock yet. That would give me a 3’ by 4’ battlefield with some left over for other possible uses in a potential Phase 2.

So, there we have the plan. The grand total for all of that is $98.75, leaving a surplus of $1.25, enough to buy one thing at the Dollar Tree if necessary.

I am going to count a few things as free which might be reasonably found around a house.  I will need some sand for base texturing.  If I wanted the easiest and cheapest circular bases I could find, I would mount the troops on pennies.  Since I intend to use these troops after I paint them, I will mount them on steel washers which will engage with my magnetic transport boxes, but the pennies would actually work as well for most people.  I will use some white glue.  I will also mount the troops on large craft sticks for painting as I usually do since I have a huge box of them, although strips of corregated cardboard could easily be salvaged and would work as well.

The scenery situation is a bit dire, with nothing but the contents of the box and a ground cloth.  I’ll also count as free some buildings from the  Dave Graffam Models free sample selection. Those are still some way off in the future.  

Given the scenery situation, if I actually get this completed, my Phase 2 challenge will be to enhance the game with a $50 scenery budget.  That will still be under the $165 current value of the 2003 challenge. 

By the way, I might note that my 2003 challenge entry was a 54mm medieval project, using figures that are now out of production.  While I’ve added a few things to the original set, it remains one of my top 6 most played projects since I started keeping records in 1999, so I count it as a solid success. 

 

Playing Around With 6mm

 In the current age of the world, my nice gaming table has a 3’x5’ playing surface.  While we have had some fun games using 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War figures on it, it has occurred to me (more than once) that it might make sense to use some smaller figures, at least some of the time.  Since I had the troops out for the FP3X3PW digression, my thoughts turned to 6mm fantasy.

My 6mm fantasy/ancients collection is based for De Bellis Antiquitatis and Hordes of the Things.  Across all the DBA/HotT armies, I’ve got about 200 bases of troops.  That turns out to be enough to field two armies each with two ranks of stands from table edge to table edge, which ought to be (more than!) enough to give this a try.  The only question is “What rules should I use?”…

One of the candidates is Fantastic Battles by Nic Wright. It does anticipate that you will have some individually based heroes, wizards and rogues to lead your armies, and some other candidate rules probably do as well. Since I recently got some fantasy reinforcements from Irregular, I thought it might be fun to paint up a few individuals.  

So, yesterday’s project was a group of four wizards, an ogre, and a large demon (tap to enlarge):

I have some knights and such to use as leaders and heroes, so I’ll give them a try next. I apparently still have the brush control to do this, but it would be nicer to be able to brace my arms at a higher level and not hunch over the painting desk.

May Painting (mostly Mythical Earth)

 I have been painting this month, for the first time in a few months.  I have also been trying to clean some of the unfinished (and unstarted) projects out of my basement, so I have been doing some thinking about what I am actually most interested in working on and playing.

I have mentioned before that my start in the fantasy miniatures end of the hobby with Minifigs Mythical Earth figures, which are (arguably) the earliest fantasy range cast.  In addition to a few handfuls I have left from the early 1970s, I have been accumulating them diligently since I ran across a small batch for sale at Cold Wars in 2015.  As of today, I have about 280 painted, and another 500 unpainted, including a batch of 40 hobbits which arrived a few weeks ago from England.  Anyway, there are enough to play some games already, something I should schedule in the not-too-distant future.  As I consider what I want to do in fantasy, it’s pretty clear that I want to indulge this nostalgia project, and finally have the armies (and games) that I visualized as a kid back in 1975.  I posted some pictures of this month’s first project to the Lead Adventure Forum, and someone sent me a link to Rick Priestly’s blog Notitia Metallicum, where, coincidentally, he is also working on a Minifigs Mythical Earth project.

ME33 Ithilien Spearmen and ME34 Ithilien Archers

View from the other side

My first selection this month was Faramir’s Ithilien Rangers.  There are only six official Gondorians in the range, and the Ithilien archer is the only one armed with a bow.  As my brother will tell you, I like my wargames armies to be able to reach out and touch you (as AT&T used to say) before they get stuck into hand-to-hand combat, so it seemed like a good time to paint these.  Like the Wood Elves I did a few years ago, I did them in a semi-random assortment of browns and greens.  Having their faces hidden behind masks, they were relatively simple to paint. I still have a unit of Citadel Guards, another unit of spearmen, and a unit of Gondorian knights on foot to go, plus some extra figures not neatly divided into twelves. 

I am going to try to alternate the Free Peoples with the forces of Sauron and Saruman, so I chose to build a unit of “man orcs” next.  While these are presumably intended to represent Saruman’s troops, I have no qualms about using them as larger orcs in the service of Mordor, or as Bolg’s bodyguards and similar in the Battle of the Five Armies.  There are three poses of these figures, varying mostly (entirely?) by the weapons with which they are armed.  I picked a packet of a dozen spear-armed orcs from my painting reserve, and then added one axe-armed orc to serve as an officer.  While I have dozens of the spears and swords, I have only a handful of the axes, so I’m mixing them in as officers.  While I am pretty sure that all three poses are currently available in the Minifigs current production revival, I don’t intend to order any more orcs unless I finish all of the ones that I have and find that I still need more.

The man-orcs are not the most detailed and attractive figures out there, and I have painted a few already in this project, so I knew that like most fantasy/ancients/medieval figures, what you see is mostly the shield when you look at them on the table.  They do have large generally flat shields, so I decided that I would concentrate my painting effort on the shields.  As every Tolkien fan knows, the main iconography associated with Saruman is the white hand, and the main iconography associated with Mordor is the red eye.  While I have seven units’ worth of these figures, and will eventually do a unit with white hands and a unit with red eyes, I thought it best to avoid both of those to start with, so that these troops will comfortably fit into any of the three possible armies I might deploy.  Since I had thirteen figures pulled out and cleaned up, I painted one as a quick test of the shield design, and based him individually.

I didn’t really think that I could reproduce that design faithfully 13 times, so I decided to embrace that, and make each one of them an individual variant on the “gaping maw” theme. The spears are quite long (and will present a bending hazard in play) so added a flag to the command stand.  Don’t think too hard about the wind conditions that would cause it to display like that…

I am thinking that it is time to add some mounted troops to the mix, and I have had a dozen Rohirrim primed and ready to paint for quite a while, so, in keeping with my plan to alternate, I think that will be what I try to do next.  I have also pulled out a batch of ME28 Southron mounted swordsmen, several of whom will become lancers as they need weapons replaced.

While it’s not quite the end of the month, it looks like I am probably not getting another game played, so I’ll be at three.  The first of those was some Saga, and I needed a couple of figures to replace proxies used for a Norman warband.  In addition to the Tolkien work, I did also get these two finished up:

My sons and I are planning to meet for another games day next weekend, so I am hoping there will be a few more games in June than there were in May …

Reflections on 2022

 My brother and I had a chance to play a couple of games during our family Christmas visit.  We had agreed that the game this year would be Dragon Rampant, and that the theme would be “No Ral Partha”.  I certainly have nothing against Ral Partha, but we have been playing a lot of Ral Partha Chaos Wars in a demo game context, and we usually feel obliged to stick to Ral Partha figures when we do. We thought it would be nice to allow some of the other figures a chance to shine on the table.

My 1977 Minifig NS spearmen fend off my brother’s Archive wolfriders

1974 vintage Minfig ME Gondorian spearmen face some Adina hobgoblins

As you can see, we were restricted to a small space

We had intended to set up on a larger table at the local games store, but they have not yet re-opened their gaming tables post pandemic, so we made do with a space of about 4’ by 3’ at our parents’ house.  It was good to see all the very vintage figures on the table.  We had each brought two warbands, and, apparently inspired by the same thought, each had a warband of orcs and a warband of humans.  It was a bad day for orcs all around; my humans defeated his orcs, and my orcs were defeated by his humans.

While there are a few days left in the year, and while I do have a Five Leagues from the Borderlands solo skirmish game pending, it is likely that this will have been the final game for the year. (In my counting, I generally count multiple sessions of a single rules set played back to back as a single log entry.) If so, it was number 40 for the year. While short of the 52 games that are my notional goal each year, it is still a respectable total, and one that I am pretty happy with. Similarly, I might get another miniature or two painted, but if I don’t, I finished about 173 figures of 1/72 scale or larger this year, plus a handful of 6mm ancients which can’t be counted in the same way as larger figures.  It’s a few more than I completed in 2021, but it is a number which should prompt me to a bit of caution when it comes to taking on new projects.  

There was a thread on the Lead Adventure Forum recently, and someone was musing about whether the new projects that we are all prone to take on would ever see the table, and, if so, how many times.  I realized that I had some actual data on that.  Being a very Old School gamer, my logs are hand written, and contained in a series of notebooks.  I dug them all out, and was interested to note that I have been doing this for longer that I remembered, with the first year logged being 1999.  So I have 24 years of data (less the balance of December after the 5th when I did the counting) covering 805 games.  With an average of 33+ games per year, this year’s 40 is solidly above average.

Attempting to answer the question of which of my collections of figures had been on the table more frequently, I might be off by a few games here or there.  The results were tallied by hand, and the data was spread across about 15 different notebooks.  Sometimes it’s hard to decide whether a 25mm fantasy game played in 2003, say, had any of my own figures in it.  These counts are divided by the miniatures, and most of them represent the same collection being used with multiple sets of rules.

As you can see, the 25mm fantasy collection takes the top prize with about 96 appearances on the table, followed by the Not Quite Seven Years War collection with 74 appearances.  By the time you get down to a tie for 6th place by 25mm Dark Ages and 40mm Renaissance at about 21 games each, one might note that those projects have been on the table less than once a year on the average, and with a frequency less than a quarter of that of first place. I should note that both of those projects have been in a playable state since before 1999, when the records start.  Two of the most frequently played projects, 1/72 scale fantasy/medieval/ancients and 54mm medieval, are younger than the records, both having been started around 2003.  I was also interested to note that the French and Indian War project is still solidly in 4th place, despite not having been on the table since 2016.  There were a lot of F&IW games early on in the records.

When you put all those numbers together, I think that I am coming to the conclusion that it would make sense to try to concentrate on doing more with the top projects.  I would like to work on one side project which isn’t yet playable, with the main candidates being 54mm medieval/fantasy flats and 40mm 19th century/Franco-Prussian War from Schneider and other vintage German molds.  This is where this year’s painting numbers are a caution flag; even a simple One Hour Wargames pair of armies would amount to 10 units of 2 stands each per side (well, not the artillery), with 4-6 figures per unit, or something like 88 foot, 16 horse, and 4 guns with crew total, which would represent somewhat more than two thirds of the total I painted last year.  That’s not unthinkable, but would be a major commitment.  I suppose it’s time to paint a few of them and see what I really think about working with them.

Last Stand of 2021

As I mentioned before, I took a couple of hobby projects with me at Christmas, but ended up working on the maps rather than painting any miniatures.  December had already been a good month for miniatures, in the grand scheme of things.  However, after recovering from the trip, I wanted to get something done before the end of the year.  My desk was clean, so I decided I would use the travel paint kit to keep my choices down to a reasonable level, and inspire some creativity by accepting limitations.  I had one Strelets (006, Henry V’s Army) axeman in my travel miniatures box with a few colors on him, so I started off on the morning of the 31st by finishing him up.  After painting the last sorceress, I did a bit of quick ear surgery to turn a Caesar elf into a human, and that figure was also primed and ready to go, so finished up quickly.  

Hordes of the Things (and Dragon Rampant) are both very open-ended about what a stand might consist of.  I’ve done a couple of stands with two foot figures on them, and they look just a little thin to my eye, so I decided I would go for a third figure.  The archer is also from the Strelets set 006.  I had to stick him to a painting handle, prime him, let the primer dry, then paint.  In between I took a nap and played some online board games.  Before supper, all three figures got a layer of brush on varnish.  I pushed the basing a bit, handling things while still wet where I would ordinarily let things dry between steps.  

Nevertheless, what with staying up late to welcome the New Year and all, I was able to allow enough time for everything to dry and to put on the final spray varnish coat before I went to bed.  So, it went into my painting log as a 2021 accomplishment. So, there you have it, another Hordes Magician stand, bringing me to a total of 164 things (figures, buildings, and other scenery pieces) finished for the year.  This is the fourth year in a row with between 150 and 200 figures painted.  What that says about future projects is for another day…
 

A Myzantine Empire Campaign Map

 As mentioned recently, I have been considering the question of why some things are easier to find the inspiration to paint than others, and wondered if having the background map defined would help with inspiration.  While my recent painting has been for the (already well-defined) Middle Earth project, I noted that I had three larger 25mm fantasy armies, “fantasy Byzantines” (The Myzantine Empire, with a nod to Jack Scruby), “Easterners” (currently a mix of Ral Partha Moors and old Ral Partha Hyborian Age Turanians), and Orcs. So, I decided to take a stab at creating a map for them.  I started one once before, on a larger sheet of watercolor paper, but it got out of hand and remains stalled and stowed away somewhere. This time, I tried to keep it smaller and to the point.

As with my Northlands campaign map, I used techniques from Jared Blando’s How to Draw Fantasy Maps, simplified to match my limited artistic skills (and to speed things up), starting with pencil work on cold press watercolor paper, and inking as I went.

Earlier this summer, I was experimenting wtih watercolor pencils.  I liked the way they worked,so that’s what I used on this.  I roughed in the colors.

After a good night’s rest, I got out a #1 natural sable brush and worked my way from the upper right corner to the lower left corner with water, smoothing out the colors. Behind left handed, that kept my brush hand mostly away from the wet part of the page.

I haven’t entirely decided on campaign mechanics, so I left the map without a grid or area overlay.  I can add that electronically after scanning for use, or draw something in on a photocopy.  There is room at the edge of the map for not-Varangians to appear at the mouth of the River of the Plains, for horse (or lizard) nomads to appear north of the ruins of Marlantia, and for Westerners to appear up the Traders’ Road.  The Easterners are poised beyond the Easterner’s Gate, and three orc polities are spread across the western edge.  The overall situation is inspired by the Byzantine position in the late 11th century, just before the arrival of the 1st Crusade.

We’ll see whether that sparks any painting.

As far as January plans go, I just finished listening to and reading Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Lantern Bearers, so I am thinking it would be nice to paint some stands of figures to go with my Dux Bellorum project. Ross has been painting some French Revolutionary figures, and I wouldn’t mind getting back to adding some of those, too.  So, perhaps I will be pouring a New Year’s libation to Clio, Muse of History, rather than Calliope, Muse of Epic (fantasy), but I’ll be appropriately grateful if either of them deigns to grant some inspiration…

More Mythical Earth

 I’m afraid that I have always been a little ambivalent about the Christmas season.  I approve of the feasting and the getting together with families, but I’ve felt for years like the commercialization has gotten way, way out of hand.  Additionally, the expectations placed on people can become overwhelming.  One of the reasons I haven’t sung in a choir in a while was that music preparations got to the point where I wasn’t enjoying what was left of my time with my family.  Anyway, that Grinch-y preamble is just to explain why I suddenly had time on my hands this past weekend to do more painting, while my wife was singing, and I had cancelled other planned events due to a somewhat stronger than expect vaccine booster reaction…

After finishing the spearmen and miscellaneous goblins, I gave myself permission to play a bit, by finishing off a small group of vintage Minifig NS (Norman/Saxon) range figures originally produced in 1976.  They apparently weren’t in production all that long before being overtaken by the DA (Dark Ages) range within a year or two.

There was an ad for them in The Dragon #3 in the fall of 1976.

Given the look of the Mythical Earth figures, I would expect NS figures with round shields to make reasonable dismounted Rohirrim, rustic Gondorians, Laketown men, Sharkey’s thugs, Dunlendings, or even Easterners of various sorts.

I finished up three, an NS9, NS25, and NS12, from left to right.

With that accomplished, I turned back to the dozen true orc archers, originally primed in January of 2020. I decided after I was done that “Past Rob” should probably have filed the mold lines on the tops of the figures’ heads a little more carefully, but past experience would indicate that it won’t really show much when a whole batlefield is laid out.

With that, I am left with a single primed unit ready to paint, a mixed group of Rohirrim lancers and archers.  I have to give some consideration to the question of what to set up next; getting a warband of Gondorians on the field (albeit with mounted Rohirrim support, perhaps) is the highest priority, so it probably won’t be man-orcs or wolf riders…

Market Day at the Watchtower Inn (Solo battle report)

It was market day at the Watchtower Inn, in the Darmish borderlands near Wardenskeep.  

 However, unwelcome visitors were about to arrive.  Uccsai of Varkrek was leading a band of foragers far out beyond the fringes of the main Orcish army.  Attracted by the distant sounds of the market, and the smells of good cooking, he led his warriors toward a bridge.

The humans were watchful, though, in this uneasy border region, and from the top an an old tower visible across the river, a horn call sounded.  Not abandoned after all … Uccsai ordered the troop to forget about the bridge; the river looked shallow enough for safe crossing if they were quick about it.  His warriors were not.  Exhausted from the days’ march, they were slow in reaching the ford, and quickly fell in a line, as a few eager yopungsters, anxious to prove themselves, pressed ahead, while the rest lagged.

Meanwhile, at the Inn, the market goers quickly gathered inside the thick stone walls and prepared to defend themselves.  Happily for them a Darmish officer, Lieutenant Zanther, and his bodyguard of four soldiers was present today, looking to buy supplies.  He quickly took charge, sending the lightly equipped men of the local militia out to the hilltop to see what was happening.

One of the local militiamen reached the ford just as the first orc, one of the eager youngsters, was splashing across.

Life is hard in the borderlands, and the local warrior was able to hold his own against the orc.  As more orcs waded the stream, a couple of Zanther’s soldiers arrived.  Two orcs quickly fell, but a shudder of fear ran through the humans, for they could see that a troll was eyeing them from the far bank of the stream.

Hungry and tired, but still possessed of the ferocious tenacity of life that was the mark of their kind, the troll waded across the stream, to be met by three humans.  The troll fought hard, but the combined efforts of the humans were too much for it.  A ragged cheer rose from the human soldiers as they slew the troll.

Uccsai looked across the stream in dismay as the troll fell.  He suspected that the day was lost, but raised his mace of command to urge his straggling warriors to one final effort.  At that moment, a human militiaman took careful aim, and, as though from nowhere, an arrow pierced Uccsai’s throat, and his last command remained unspoken.  The surviving orcs fled the field, seeking only to return to the safety of the main army.

As the soldiers and local militia returned to the Inn, the grateful people came out to greet them with gifts of food and drink.

Gamemaster’s notes: My intention yesterday morning was simply to unload the Portable Fantasy game box, iron the groundcloth, and then pack everything away neatly, since the box was in a bit of disarray after the DBA extravaganza the other week.  However, there have been a couple of threads on various gaming fora this past week about scenery (and whether it should be a collaborative effort between players) and use of scenery in role playing games, so I decided that it wouldn’t take much longer to actually lay out a battlefield before sorting and storing.  With the previous Dragon Rampant game having produced a draw, I am considering this skirmish to be a tie-breaker, indicative of the overall situation in the province during this strategic turn in the campaign. I don’t ordinarily expect that man-to-man skirmishes will be reflected in the strategic map situation, but this one is an exception.

After that, I ended putting out some of the non-combatants for a couple of pictures, and then decided that I might as well use a couple of the prepared war band lists (for A Song of Blades and Heroes) that are in the box to stage a quick solo game.

My general experience with A Song of Blades and Heroes is that the point values given are a bit optimistic for troops with a quality of 4, as most of my orcs were.  I was surprised the last time I played with the rules to see an orc warband win.  This time was less surprising.  The orcs were having trouble activating, and ended up scattered and unsupported, and the humans just mowed right through them.  No human figure was killed during the game.  I haven’t played enough of this in recent years; it’s possible that there are tactics which would compensate, but I haven’t generally found them yet.  As with that game in march, the unpredictable shifts of initiative make this a pretty fair solo game out of the box.

Speaking of boxes, I did get everything cleaned up and neatly packed away in the travel boxes afterwards, so I’m ready with a pick-up game for the next convention or club night where one is needed.  I didn’t get as far as the next project, though, which was to unload the 1/72 group base figures and sort them into a couple of Dragon Rampant warbands, so that I can add one 6-liter box to the stack and be able to do a pick-up Dragon Rampant game as well.  Eventually, I’d like to have a selection of pre-printed and laminated warband sheets in the travel box, for improved readiness.