A Busy Few Weeks!

Bolt Action, Chain of Command, Middle-Earth SBG, Midgard Heroic Battles, The Silver Bayonet

As the title suggested, I’ve been busy the last couple of weeks, with some painting and some gaming to discuss in this latest post.

The Gaming!

I have a regular games night with some friends which is usually spent playing role-playing games or board games. The last few of these we had to change the program as a couple of us couldn’t make it, and we decided to get some wargaming in.

For the first one of these I introduced the group to Silver Bayonet and we played through the fourth solo mission of the main rulebook with my British warband.

The scenario had the unit attempt to leave the wilderness after its encounters there in the past few missions, but finding their way home cut off by some bandits (role played by the French Imperial Guard unit I painted a few years back). I didn’t take very many photos as I was too busy running the game unfortunately, so no battle report for this mission. Playing the game was very last minute so I had to improvise some of the terrain as you can see in the photo above, with the river being represented by some shiny blue cloth, and the bridge is a section of a ruined church I used for WW2 games!

The game went very well, the two players were running the unit together while I was telling them the rules and taking the monster actions. They were much more aggressive than I usually play, but it paid off and they cleared the mission relatively easily. Both of them really enjoyed the game so that’s always a plus!

On the second week we decided to try out a new (to us!) ruleset for fantasy/historical battles: Midgard. Midgard is a game by James Morris (check out his blog, it’s very cool https://mogsymakes.net/blog/) which came out last year and covers quite a lot of ground. At its core, it’s a system for covering historical (and fantastical) battles where the heroic actions of army leaders can carry the day. This is suitable for covering periods all the way from antiquity to mid to late middle ages when commanders started running battles from a bit further back than the front lines. Midgard also caters for more mythological/fantastical battles, with rule for monsters and magic thrown in. I’ll be talking a lot more about Midgard in the future as it ticks a lot of boxes for me.

We decided to play the game with some Lord of the Rings armies, and I dusted off two of mine: my Cirith Ungol force, led by Shagrat and Gorbag to rival orc captains, and an amalgamation of Elves led by Legolas and Gildor Inglorion.

If you’re familiar with Games Workshop’s efforts in the Lord of the Rings space, you might recognise the trays they produced for the War of the Ring mass battle version of the game. As Midgard also uses trays they seemed like a great starting point. Midgard however requires all the unit base sizes to have the same frontage so I 3D designed and printed some adapters for the cavalry trays (which are narrower than the infantry trays) and for the monsters (who never had trays in the first place). As I did these adapters the day of the game I needed to go fast and decided to make them simple and to include a little joke – the elven script reads “One tray to adapt them all“.

The game was great fun even for a learning game, and everyone was very impressed with the rules. They are easy to pick up and the system puts pressure on heroes to go out and perform heroic acts in a way that leads to some excellent moments. I look forward to playing much more of the game.

The Painting

My painting table has had some form of WW2 models on it for quite a while now, as the build up of forces to get ready to play games of Chain of Command continues.

First up some British Paratroopers, with a Bren gunner and a 2-inch mortar team to bring my 6th Airborne up to strength.

Secondly we have the first unit of a new army (don’t I already have too many WW2 projects on the go? Yes, probably).

The models are from Warlord Games’ German Infantry (Winter) set, that I’ve built up as Volksgrenadiers for use in late war games on the Eastern Front or the Ardennes. I have a full platoon of these to paint for a game I’m planning soon, so this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Painting-wise, these were quite straightforward as the greatcoats really simplify the models. I started with an all over airbrush of Fieldgrey, then got painting in the details. The process is my usual easy army painting one, with basecoat, wash, then highlight back up with the basecoat colour. The exception is the skin which uses a second highlight colour.

The colours are as follows:

  • Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade and highlighted with basecolour
    • Coats/uniforms – VMC German Fieldgrey WWII
    • Wood/leather – VMC Flat Brown
    • Waterbottle/blankets – VMC German Camo Medium Brown
    • Bags/Pouches – VMC German Camo Beige WWII
    • Helmets/Gas Mask Boxes – VMC German Camo Dark Green
    • Panzerfausts – Vallejo Surface Primer German Dark Yellow
    • Cloth Helmet Cover – VGC Heavy Bluegrey
  • Washed with Citadel Agrax Earthshade – no highlights
    • Guns – VGA Gunmetal
    • Other metallic objects – S75 Black Metal
    • Webbing – VMC Black
    • Boots bottom – VMC Dark Rust
    • Boots top – VMC German Camo Medium Brown
  • Skin
    • Basecoat – Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh
    • Wash – Citadel Reikland Fleshshade
    • Highlight 1 – Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh
    • Highlight 2 – 50/50 Pro Acryl Shadow Flesh/AK Beige Red
    • Pick out the nose – Citadel Carroburg Crimson
  • Bases
    • Texture paint – AK Muddy Ground
    • Flock – some mix of foams and static grass I made ages ago
    • Snow flock – Citadel Snow
    • Rim – S75 Ardennes Green (Seemed appropriate!)

This scheme is very quick, I just lay down the basecoats (including the skin), then wash the whole model (Agrax for everything apart from the skin, Reikland Fleshade for the skin – doesn’t matter if they bleed a bit into each other), then highlight.

I’m happy with the way they look, the basing works well for me as I didn’t want to go full snow but rather light snow/frost. I’m also happy with the speed at which I can paint them, these were done in an afternoon/evening with some distractions.

Anyhow this was a rather long post, but I hope it was enjoyable!

13 thoughts on “A Busy Few Weeks!”

  2. I haven’t heard of Midgard but your description of it sounds very intriguing! Its also a great way to put your LOTR collection to use as well. The latest WWII troops like great as well. As usual, you’re doing a great job painting in volume which is something I’m not great at 🙂

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    1. Thanks Jeff! I was wondering given your love of Middle-Earth gaming, did you ever play War of the ring?

      I’ve really settled down into a method for army painting, this whole basecoat, wash, highlight with the basecoat method is very quick and (I think) effective. You can also tone it up (by adding more highlights) and down (by being lazy and leaving some elements just washed). I’ve found that picking a few elements to paint at a higher level (often the skin) makes the models look much more polished than they actually are while saving a lot of time.

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      1. Unsurprisingly, I never got enough models painted to play at that level. I have a Goblin Town Army which is everything that came in the Hobbit Starter Box but that was the most for any force I amassed. I was more interesting in playing Scouring of the Shire but ran out of steam on the hobby side before I could manage it. At that time, I only painted MESBG and nothing else so I might have just burned myself out on it.

        This is all hearsay but I seem to remember an MESBG podcast whose name escapes me say that the War of the Ring was not the best way to play the game. They felt like the rules were imperfect. I don’t know whether you’d have to buy a lot of extra models to play War of the Ring or not but if that is the case, that would give me pause. I actually think Midgard might be trying to fill that niche/demand as I’m sure there are people who want to play Helm’s Deep with a closer approximation of the forces, for example. I can definitely see the appeal, especially if you’ve got the terrain or feel capable of making the necessary stuff to play larger battles.

        Your army painting strategy makes a ton of sense to me. When I’ve painted “squads” in Hellboy (generally 3-5 miniatures at a time, I usually adopt a very similar method. I don’t enjoy doing it all that much but it does get nice results, pretty quickly. If I could follow that method of painting better, I reckon I could play a higher model count game like MESBG (which is kind medium-sized but more minis than Fallout requires) or The Old World much more successfully than I can with my typical, focus on one model at a time method. Its funny that we’re talking about this because I was just contemplating that maybe I’m just not a good multi-tasker and that is why I don’t like painting that way. I know you and another blogger I follow are very good at it and make it look easy which is always impressive to me!

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      2. Yeah War of the Ring never seemed to really take off for that reason. No one had the collection to support it, you usually had to go buy extra models to play it at which stage I think people were more keen to keep playing the base game. I think the rules were ok, if a bit abstract (and some very broken combos existed which is never good).

        I could never paint an army model by model, although I’ve seen others do it and the results are there! I always batch paint armies and that’s quick but you don’t get to think about one model holistically, you think about colours and where they go on the unit etc. I think that leads to some less good painting overall but on the game table the difference is hard to see.

        The difference does show up in close up photos and sometimes I do cringe a bit at how my models look under lights close up. I’ve learned to live with it and enjoy nicer painting from those that spend the time like yourself 🙂

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      3. Some of the factions in Middle Earth don’t lend themselves well to massive armies and you might have to expand your forces significantly depending on what you’ve collected. Rangers don’t translate well in an army game but could maybe be splashed into Gondor or something like that. I think it wasn’t a bad idea but probably not all that well-executed. GW also did what they often do which is create a game or supplement and then move onto the next thing only to leave the prior release to die essentially.

        Truthfully, I think that the main appeal of armies is seeing the unified color schemes and everything ranked up. In The Old World, some of those minis aren’t going to be that visible anyway. You might paint the most amazing face ever but if that guy is in the back, nobody will ever see it. I think having an easily repeatable scheme and painting techniques is what wins the day in army painting. With that said, you can always put extra time into a character/army leader, if you want too 🙂

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  4. Dear content creator-I am a retired storyteller living in Ireland surrounded by beehive huts I love the beehive model you have made and would like your permission to use it in a story I would like to share with some locals here on the Dingle peninsular.

    I would be happy to send you a copy of the story and where I wish to include the photo if you give me an email to reply to.

    kind regards

    Des

    ps I am currently making a full size version of a beehive hut to live in and hopefully for under a thousand euro.

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  5. Pingback: Playing Warhammer with Midgard Heroic Battles – Lair of the Lagomorph

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