miniatures – Page 2 – Lair of the Lagomorph

Making Bases for Midgard Heroic Battles

I’ve been really enjoying Midgard Heroic Battles as you might have been able to tell from my last few posts. While I’ve been working on my Epic scale Punic War armies specifically for the game, I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity it has given me to break out some older models I’ve had painted for a long time that have not hit the gaming table in almost just as long. So far these models have mostly been Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth models, as they fit nicely in the War of the Ring movement trays that work quite well for Midgard. I’ve been wanting to use the rules to play with Warhammer models and historical models however, and those do not (generally) work with the War of the Ring trays.

The opportunity to remedy this problem came in an unusual form, when a large frame containing a cool fantasy map came off the wall and smashed itself on the ground. The frame itself was wrecked, and so was the glass, but the MDF backing on it was mostly OK (the map also survived unscathed!). This meant I had a mostly nice sheet of 60x90cm 3mm MDF on my hands, and realised it would be a good solution to my Midgard basing issue.

Midgard requires a common frontage for all units, but is pretty flexible on depth for models of greater size. This frontage is recommended to be 12cm for 28mm scale miniatures (you can change this, one of the really cool things that makes the game scale agnostic – for example my Punic Wars models are on 8cm bases), and the default depth is half the frontage. Most infantry units should fit on 12x6cm bases, while units with larger footprints should increase the depth (e.g. calvalry might be on 12x10cm, large monsters on 12x12cm etc.).

The good news for me is that 60 is nicely divisible by 12 and 90 by six, so I was able to plot a 12x6cm grid on my frame backing. I of course wasn’t able to fully utilise the board, as the hardware is anchored there (not that strongly clearly, you can see bottom left the spot where the other loop broke off leading to my frame mishap in the first place!). I used the marked bases with hardware on them to extend the 6cm depth of some bases to 10cm. In other areas you can see where I turned four 12×6 bases into three 12×8, and where I combined 2 12×6 bases into one 12×12 base. This gave me a nice spread off sizes, and more bases (I hope) than I could ever use!

I usually use a jigsaw for MDF, but these needed to be pretty straight cuts and I didn’t think I could manage them freehand with the jigsaw. I went back and forth considering a few other methods for cutting these, but I ended up settling on using a long metal ruler and a box cutter. I read online that you can cut through 3mm MDF most of the way with the cutter, then snap the board along the cut, much like you would with plasticard. That worked pretty well, giving mostly clean edges apart from the snapped section. That was easy enough to trim away though so in general I think this is a pretty good method. Note that MDF dust is nasty stuff so wear a mask whenever cutting or sanding it – have a look at Guru Pig’s thoughtful comment below for more detail. Left-to-right above you can see the stacks of 12-10-8-6cm deep bases.

I glued sand on the bases and painted them with a series of dry brushes of successively lighter brown tones (raw umber, yellow ochre, yellow ochre with a touch of white), followed by some light flocking with green and dry static grass around the rims where model bases would most likely not sit. Painting that many was a bit tedious I have to say, but the results are hopefully worth it! Let’s take a look at them in action.

In the photo above we have on the left the 12x8cm base – good for larger infantry such as these dryads, on the right the 12x6cm regular infantry tray, which comfortably fits eight 25mm square based infantry.

Left is the 12x12cm tray, big enough to fit this Verminlord, and right is the 12x10cm tray, good for cavalry models.

I painted and flocked the trays so they wouldn’t look too out of place on either of the mats I use for gaming the most, i.e. the green field and the desert you see in the photo above.

The Lord of the Rings miniatures also work fine on these, the cavalry bases with four models look better than the two you get on the War of the Rings bases.

Overall, these bases are pretty plain, and I think for armies that I build specifically for Midgard I’d like to use the opportunity to make proper scenic bases. These however have the advantage of being very flexible and letting me field a lot of existing armies in fun games of Midgard. I’m very much looking forward to that.

Carthaginian Infantry

Hail Caesar, Midgard Heroic Battles

The Epic scale painting continues, this time with my first blocks of ranked infantry: Carthaginian infantry.

As with all my models for this project, these are Warlord’s Epic Scale Punic Wars range for their Hail Caesar game. As I mentioned in the last few posts however I’m not basing these on Warlord’s bases, which are 60x20mm but on my own 3D printed bases which are 80x40mm and are more suited to the Midgard game.

As a result of the larger bases I decided to stick down 3 strips per base rather than the two that fit on the Warlord bases. I quite like the look of the 3 strips together, and therefore am happy with the decision. I also quite like the look of the separation I get between blocks even when the bases are touching as the bases are wider than the strips. This will be accentuated for the Romans when I get to them as they are modelled to fit 3 ranks on the Warlord bases (so roughly the same footprint of 2 strips of the more normally ranked infantry).

Painting-wise there were a few things I had to do differently to the skirmishing troops. First of all, these are not single models, but a full strip of 10 overlapping models, which presents advantages (definitely faster than painting 10 individual models!), and adds some tricky-ness for basing as the basing material is added after the strips are glued down and I had to veeery carefully get basing paste between the strips (a roughly 5mm gap) after gluing them down.

The skin was painted exactly as per the Numidians from the past post, that is with AK Tan Earth. The shields are a mix of AK Ivory, Vallejo Game Heavy Goldbrown and Vallejo Game Heavy Violet. The bronze is Scale75 Necrogold, and the silver Scale75 Black Metal, both my go to colours for those. As for the other models I went for an all over wash of Army Painter Soft Tone followed by a highlight of the basecoat colour.

Overall I really like the ranked look you get from these models, especially with the overlapping shields. These were slightly more tedious to paint than the skirmishers, but again I painted 60 models in the time I painted 20 skirmishers so I suppose I can’t complain.

Here they are amongst the other bases I painted so far. I really like the distinction between skirmishers and ranked infantry you get at this scale. I’ve made a small dent in the Carthaginian Division set now, with roughly a third of the units painted (the rest is mostly a lot of Gauls and Iberians!).

In other news, I just got a notification that today marks five years since my first post which is quite something. I don’t think at the time I had any idea I’d go this long, so thanks a lot to all of you for reading the blog, it does keep me motivated to see comments and views on my posts! Here’s to 5+ more!

Numidian Allies

Hail Caesar, Midgard Heroic Battles

Back with a small update this week; two more bases for my Punic Wars project. As the title indicates these are Numidians, a base of cavalry and a base of javelin skirmishers.

Much like the slingers last week, these were fun and fast to paint. I went for the classic cowhide shields on these, although I have no idea how historical it may be. I’ve always loved the look!

Painting-wise, the strategy was much as it was for the first unit last week (i.e. basecoat, wash, highlight with basecoat), but with some different colours. The white cloth and white fur is AK Ivory, the skin is AK Tan Earth, the wooden areas (spears/shields) are basecoated in Vallejo English Uniform, and highlighted with 50/50 English Uniform and Vallejo German Camo Beige WW2.

The horses and the spots on the shield used contrast paints. As I undercoated my models with a leather brown, I put the contrasts directly on that rather than the more usually recommended white/cream colour. I quite like the look of contrast paints over browns, I think they look more natural than over whites. The reddish-brown horses are done using Gore-Grunta Fur Contrast, the brown horses using Wildwood Contrast and the black horses as well as the manes/tails of all the others using Black Templar Contrast. I think that gives a pretty good result at this scale, and I’ll happily do the rest of the horses I have to paint for this project (which is quite a few horses) this way.

Both of these sets of models are from the Carthaginian Division set of the Hail Caesar Epic Battles range. I have two more Numidian bases, this time archers from the Allied Division set so these aren’t the last Numidians you’ll see for this project.

So far I’ve only done loosely ordered troops so I might try my hand at some close order troops next. We’ll see where inspiration strikes!

Back to the Punic Wars!

Hail Caesar, Midgard Heroic Battles

My historical wargaming kick is still going strong (I’ll get back to you Fantasy gaming I promise!), and I’ve put some birthday vouchers to good use, picking up some models I’ve been eyeing off since they were released last year: Warlord Games’ Punic War “epic scale” range.

I you’ve been keeping an eye on this blog for a while you might remember my foray into Republican Romans back in 2021. This was in 28mm scale, which is home for me scale wise (well that and the associated 25, and 32mm scales), but while I enjoyed painting the models I was always troubled by the fact that to get some of the formations in the historical record (e.g. the famed Triplex Acies for the romans, with its triple row of supporting infantry blocks) I would need a lot of space on the game board (not to mention crazy amounts of miniatures!). That took the wind out of my sails for this project and the models have sat unprogressed for a long time. When I saw the Warlord announcement last year I knew this was the way forward, a smaller scale letting me have the number of units to play games with some semblance of the historical formations. This doesn’t solve my unused miniatures problem for my 28mm romans however, and the plan there is to repurpose them for smaller scale games in the Caesarean invasion of Gaul which is something else I’d like to wargame.

Another tricky aspect of the era was finding rules that captured the kind of gaming that I’d like to do for the period. That was resolved when I discovered Midgard last month, the game is fun and simple to play and has some great rules to reward the in depth formations the Roman’s adopted. In fact the author has published some army lists for the Punic wars specifically, making using Midgard for the period very easy.

Armed with some rules and a model range I plunged in and picked up the Roman/Carthaginian/Allied division boxes (and most importantly the elephant set) from Warlord, which gave me more than enough models to play a large game of Midgard.

The models come with bases for Hail Caesar, which aren’t quite right for Midgard where units are more standalone. So I decided to make my own bases, larger than the Hail Caesar bases, and put more models on each. The bases are of an 8cm frontage, 4cm deep for infantry and 5.5cm deep for cavalry. I modelled these and 3d printed them. If you’re interested in the files I put them up on Cults3D as a free download.

That’s enough context, onto the models! The models are Warlord’s epic scale which seems to be around 14mm so half size from what I’m used to. The detail is really quite good given the size and the models took washes really well which is very helpful. I painted this base of gallic slingers as a test unit to try out a few things: what washes work well at the scale, and what basing scheme I was going to go with. Wash wise, I was worried that my usual go-to Agrax Earthade might be a bit much (too dark/strong) for the scale so I looked for something lighter. I settled on Army Painter’s Soft Tone wash, which I think worked really nicely.

The process I used is as follows: I airbrushed some leather brown all over the models to get a nice brown base to work with, which would work for any leather items (belts, shoes, slings), and let me focus on painting cloth, shields and skin. I then basecoated these areas in nice bright colours (probably inspired by my reading and re-reading of Asterix comics as a kid!), basecoated the skin in AK Beige Red, and gave the models an all over wash of Soft Tone. Once that was dry I gave the skin areas a second wash of Citadel Reikland Fleshshade (somewhat diluted) to get some red into the skin. I then used the basecoat colours to highlight the models back up. The hair was then painted, basecoating it with an off-white, and using GW contrasts for colour (Aggaroth Dunes for the blonde hair, and Gore Grunta Fur for the reddish hair). Nice and quick!

For the basing I wanted to aim for a generic Mediterranean look, which could work for Summery Italy as well as the North African coast. To that end I used and AK texture paint called Sandy Desert, and while it was wet sprinkled on a couple of Woodland Scenics foams and some old GW sand mix I had lying around. The base rim is Vallejo Russian Uniform WW2. Overall I’m happy with the look, it’s probably a bit too deserty for Italy if I’m being honest, but hopefully close enough that suspending disbelief is easy enough!

Cold Forests

Bolt Action, Chain of Command, Terrain

In what is the final post of my holiday-driven burst of activity we have quite a few trees!

As I’ve mentioned a few times in the last few posts, I’m planning on running a game of Chain of Command for some friends in the coming weeks, and the setting is the Eastern Front, sometime in winter 1944. Having no winter terrain was going to make that a bit difficult, so I decided to paint up a few pieces to populate the table. The main thing I wanted was to have some nice pine forests, so I set about finding some suitable trees.

The trees you see above were cheap ones from Amazon which came in big batches with some variety in sizes which was quite nice. 60 of them cost me just below $60 (Australian dollars that is!) which seemed like a nice rate. They are a basic shaped and flocked bottlebrush style pine trees, nothing fancy but they do the trick. The flock was not glued on great but I knew I was going to spray them with varnish to get some snow on there too so was not too worried. The “trunks” of the trees were bare wire twists so I needed to make some holders for them, to make the trees more realistic and allow them to be removed for gaming and storage purposes.

I made a very rough trunk shape in tinkercad and 3D printed the 60 I needed. I then glued them down in a semi-random pattern to some MDF bases I cut out of the back of an old bookshelf (never throw anything away!), and was ready for basing.

I wanted a forest floor look but wanted to stay away from a leafy look as befits a pine forest. As a result while I went my usual route of blending up some leaf litter as I did for these citadel woods and for my endor table I stayed away from soft leaves (european style!) and went for dried eucalyptus leaves which are much harder and blend down to a powder. That mixed with small twigs gave a nice finish that I think does a decent job of impersonating dropped branches and bark at the scale.

To finish the look I added some green foam from woodland scenics to represent small vegetation on the forest floor. I tried adding some dark and some dry static grass to look like dropped needles, but I don’t think they’re very visible. To top it off I sprinkled some snow flock over the trees and bases (over wet hairspray), then sealed the lot with some spray varnish.

Keeping the trees removable is quite practical for gaming purposes, especially for those game systems that treat forests slightly abstractly as an area of terrain rather than individual trees.

The trees make up most of the terrain I needed ready for this game as you can see from the layout I set up above. You get a sneak preview of the remainder of the terrain which is the large house in the left corner and the two small bunkers to the right.

You also get to see my attempts at repurposing my old Citadel grass mat, which has sat unused for years since I’ve move on to printed neoprene battlemats. It seemed a waste to not use it, so I decided to see if I could convert it for this cold setting. I hit it with patches of brown and white and then “frosted” it with a light pass of white spray paint to get that frozen grass look.

I wanted the table to have a frosty morning with some light snow look rather than a full on snow storm, hence the light use of snow flock on the forests and the light dusting of white on the mat. I’m hoping to communicate the cold through the mat and the tree stands only, allowing me to place terrain pieces I painted for my other settings over it and having them not look out of place. For example I’m planning on using the cobblestone road I painted for my Normandy games in this game as you can see above.

I hope you like the look of these, and I’ll be likely back onto my slower pace of posts as I head back to work next week!

Winter Germans

Bolt Action, Chain of Command

I’ve had some leave this week and have put it to good use by painting lots of models! I’ve now finished painting my Volksgrenadier platoon for Chain of Command (you saw the first section last post), as well as some extra firepower in the form of a Panther tank.

The platoon is made up of a command section, two assault sections (armed with STG44 assault rifles), and an LMG section (split into two LMG teams).

*The command section, with an officer and four riflemen. I also painted up a medic model I had in cold weather gear, he’s not part of the command section but can be selected as a support in game.*

*The second assault section. You might have seen the first one last post.*

*The LMG section. In game this operates as two teams, one for each LMG.*

I described the painting method for the infantry last post so I won’t repeat it here. The process is very quick, and this was a good test for it. I batch painted all three new sections (and the medic) at once (21 models all up), painting each colour on each model in a row. I got them to the wash stage in a few hours on Sunday, and did all the highlights on Monday. Not a bad rate I think! They’re certainly not my finest work, but they look effective on the table which is always the primary purpose for army models.

Onto the tank! This is a Warlord Games/Italeri plastic kit, and as with all the ones of these I have put together over the years it is a relatively simple build, if a bit light on detail (for example the tools on the side are basically flat). These are meant to be gaming pieces over display models however, and they paint up nicely.

I decided to go for a winter scheme on the tank, and tried my hand at a white wash look. To achieve this I painted the normal late war German camo pattern (yellow base with dark red/brown and dark green patterns – you can see it under the somewhat transparent white), then followed that up with a coat of hairspray on which I lightly airbrushed some white.

If you’re not familiar with the old hairspray method you may be wondering what that’s all about. Effectively, the hairspray allows for some great chipping patterns by providing a water soluble layer under the coat of paint in need of chipping (the white paint in my case). This paint can then be rubbed away by using a wet brush (ideally with somewhat stiff bristles, a drybrush is great for this). The water disolves the hairspray under the paint, which causes the paint to drop off in nice patterns. The tank needs a good coat of varnish after that so that the unstable layer gets locked away an no more paint rubs off.

I then finished the model with the usual oil washes, with a mix of browns and dark grey colours. I also added spots of rust (also using oils) which I streaked downwards, mostly from the spare tracks. I then finished the tracks using pigments. This is a new thing for me, I usually douse tracks in mud but in this case I figured if the ground is frozen there would not be any mud around!

I now have all the models I need for a game of Chain of Command I’m planning on running for some friends soon. What’s missing now (and you may have noticed from the photos!) is some appropriate cold weather terrain. Next up on the painting table will be said terrain, I have most of what I need now, it’s just a matter of painting it.

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!

Normandy Reinforcements

Bolt Action, Chain of Command

I’ve had a rather unplanned dip back into WW2 wargaming these last few weeks, and it’s resulted in quite a bit of model painting and building. This all started when I read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, one of those books I’d always meant to read, which sets half of its action in the WW2 years. This made me look into the new edition of Bolt Action which had been released since I last dipped my toes in the period, and also look into the other much talked about game for the era which is Chain of Command. Turns out Chain of Command had also just released its second edition, and having seen the game played on youtube in the past I was sufficiently interested to pick up a PDF of the rules from the publisher and start reading.

After reading the rules, I decided I really liked the look of Chain of Command (CoC) and I wanted to play it. Now CoC bases its armies on historical formations rather than the more Warhammer-like unit customisation Bolt Action offers. In Bolt Action, squads/sections have a minimum size, and extra models and special weapons are purchased to fill them out. The job of the list builder is to build a army that is functional and fits into the points limit. This often means under strength sections, as extra models get shaved off to upgrade another section to get an extra LMG etc. In CoC the platoon you select is as per historical records and there is little to no customisation available, so sections are full-strength, special weapons are as per historical kit out etc. This meant my Bolt Action armies were not quite playable in CoC and required a few more models to be painted to get there.

I started working on getting two of my armies up to scratch: my 2ème DB (i.e. my Free French Armoured Division), which needed (and still needs I’m not quite done!) quite a few more models to bring it up to a full strength Armoured Infantry Platoon, and my late war Germans who only needed a handful of models to make them into a Panzergrenadier platoon. I’m planning on making my North Africa forces CoC compliant but that requires a fair bit more work as they’re much smaller for now.

First up, my Free French needed a lot more officers (very important in CoC), so I picked up the Warlord Games US Army Platoon Commanders set which has the four models you see above, cast in their “Warlord Resin”. The models were all one piece and quite easy to clean up. The detail on them was quite nice and they were easy to paint (in my usual slightly speedy manner employed for historical models).

I also added a Browning .30cal team, also from Warlord (this one a metal set), and I also painted the remaining crew member of the Perry Miniatures mortar team I painted as part of my first batch of models for the army all the way back in 2022! Bolt Action tends to default to 3 crew for a lot of weapons (presumably for game balance), while CoC sticks to historical numbers, so the mortar should have 5 crew all up – which means I still need to make another crew at some stage!

I still need a few more models to get the army game ready, namely some regular infantry as well as a second Browning team. I’ll work on them soon so I can play a game!

As mentioned above I also painted a few more Germans to make that army ready to play, which meant painting two more MG42 gunners. I also painted up a medic model I had, this one not required by the game but is an available support option and I liked the model!

Finally, CoC is a pretty token intensive game, and I’ve been in a token-making mood recently (I made a whole batch of custom tokens for Netrunner recently and that kicked off something in me!) so I started making tokens for the game. Most of those aren’t ready to show so I’ll leave them for another post, but what I do have ready is what are called Patrol Markers and Jump-off Points in the game. These are used for a pre-game mini-game that determines the starting positions of both armies.

The patrol markers tend to be bigger (I went for 60mm diameter) and the jump-off points smaller (I went for 30mm). The patrol markers need to be able to be marked as locked so I made them double-sided with a locked side and an unlocked side. The translations are all mine so hopefully they’re right (I’m confident about the French one at least!).

These are made by 3D printing simple discs and (2D!) printing the designs on some self-adhesive photo paper. I made the designs in Affinity Designer (an Adobe Illustrator alternative that I heartily recommend). The only parts I didn’t make are the map of France (SVG from https://simplemaps.com/svg/country/fr) and the Airborne (From Wikimedia commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Airborne_Units.svg). I made a set for all of my armies as I was enjoying myself quite a bit making these. Left to to right, top to bottom: Soviets (I don’t have any of these but my regular opponent does!), 8th Army, Afrika Korps, Germany, 2ème DB, British Airborne.

I look forward to giving the game a go, it looks like a really nice way to play the period. I’ve organised to have my interested in WW2 friends to come over for a game in the next month or so, so I’ll be doing some preparations for that until then. I’ll most likely be playing a practice game by myself beforehand to get across the rules properly so might turn that into a battle report for the blog.

The Silver Bayonet – The Troll Hunts

The Silver Bayonet

My foray through the Silver Bayonet solo campaign continues and in this mission my hapless British unit tries to have a good night’s sleep after their close call in the ruined chapel. As all good horror fans know however, sleeping in the woods is asking for trouble and trouble indeed finds the sleepers!

This mission is played on a 2’x2′ table, and rather than marking off an area of my 6’x4′ mat as I’ve done for the last two games, I decided to break out a panel from my Citadel realm of battle board which doesn’t see much use these days (neoprene mats are just so convenient!).

The scenario setup has two randomly selected sentries standing guard while the rest of the unit is asleep around a campfire. There are four clue markers set up close to the outside of the table, two of which have goblins close to them with a further two goblins appearing at two randomly selected table corners. The sleeping figures need to roll each turn to see if they wake, or if a monster attacks them they automatically wake. Either way once a figure wakes it gains fatigue tokens which negatively affect its defense and melee ability for the turn.

Goblins are very tricky to deal with in the game, they have very high defense, they make mechanical devices fail when close, they are hypnotic meaning voluntarily attacking them is tough, and they have damage reduction (negated by cold iron). They are repulsed by holy symbols, which give them penalties to hit, so MacPherson’s bagpipes should help keep them at bay to some extent!

I didn’t have a campfire model on hand, so some twigs from the garden and some orange wool from Bolt Action vehicle damage markers did the trick!

Turn 1

The sentries burst into action, with Pryor moving towards the closest clue and investigating it – finding a gold ring which allows me to add a skill or power die to my fate pool (I choose power). MacPherson tries to shoot the closest goblins but finds his pistol won’t fire. Clearly the creatures have some power over mechanical devices! He attacks instead and scores a solid hit. The goblin misses on its attack back, clearly disturbed by the bagpipes. The Major stirs but fails to wake. The goblins near MacPherson swamp him but his pipes affect them and they both miss. On the other hand he rolls amazingly and hits both with his attacks back, killing one.

The rest of the goblins close in on the sleeping forms which all fail to wake! At the end of the turn another goblin enters the table.

Turn 2

MacPherson and Pryor are still the only two awake at the start of the turn. MacPherson continues his rampage, disposing of the second goblin. Pryor sprints towards a second clue. The major keeps slumbering. The goblins next to the camp reach Lieutenant MacRae and Crowe and attack them, waking them. Very luckily for me (given both men are fatigued) the only goblin attack that hits only deals small amounts of damage. Even more lucky, MacRae hits his opponent back and Crowe hits one of the two goblins attacking him. The other goblins close in on the camp fire, and my sleeping figures all fail to wake. MacRae attacks on his turn, misses and the goblin strikes nastily, prompting me to burn a fate die to reduce the damage. Another goblin arrives onto the table, things are looking pretty grim.

Turn 3

MacPherson runs to the rescue of the Lieutenant and Crowe, charging the closest goblin. His attack misses, but so does his opponent’s strike back. Crowe is one of the only models in posession of cold iron shot so I really need him to be able to fire which he cannot do if he’s close to them due to their disruptive aura. For that reason he moves back and takes a shot but misses. The Lieutenant then dives in the gap and takes on Crowe’s attackers. He misses and so does the goblin.

The goblin on MacPherson attacks, misses (those bagpipes!) and MacPherson misses right back. MacRae is in for a bloodier fight: the first goblin attacks, hits him for low damage, and MacRae’s strike back kills the goblin (after I spend my skill die re-roll). The second goblin hits him, dealing 10 damage, which would take MacRae out! I spend my second power die to reduce the damage – this keeps MacRae in the game. MacRae scores a solid hit back. The third goblin also hits MacRae and this time it’s too much for the brave Lieutenant and he collapses. The last goblin charges the Major, waking him by scoring a solid hit. The Major tries to strike back but misses, still bleary-eyed.

Pryor investigates the clue he was moving towards last turn and finds some nice dry wood which he lights up, never know when something will need to be set on fire! Fenner finally wakes up and moves to investigate the clue to the north. He finds a bag of iron nails that he promptly loads into his musket. The Major moves away from his attacker and fires his rifle at it, hitting and heavily wounding the goblin. MacInnes sleeps on.

A large troll walks onto the eastern edge of the table.

Turn 4

At this stage, the Lieutenant is down, a troll is approaching, and the goblins have been cleared from the North-West corner of the board. Time to clear out!

MacPherson sprints away from the goblins. Crowe walks away and reload his rifle with some cold iron shot. The Major does a quick reload and fires at the closest goblin but misses. He then also moves away. Most goblins are now out of range of attacking anyone so they just follow the unit members. One goblin is in range of MacInness and rushes him, waking him up with a close miss. MacInnes reads the room and moves back rather than attacking back. The troll approaches the campfire, picks up a rock and throws it but misses.

Fenner moves back and fires his iron nails at the closest goblin but misses. McInnes legs it away from the goblin, fires his pistol and also misses. Crowe moves back and reloads.

Another goblin enters from the North East corner.

Turn 5-6

These turns are rather uneventful, the unit moves back and finally off the board, taking pot shots at goblins and the troll but no more real damage is done.

After the game I rolled on the injury table for Lieutenant MacRae and he picked up a permanent injury for his troubles, with a nasty leg wound that reduces his move by one.

*The troll and the goblins enjoying their well-earned camp fire*

This mission felt like the hardest by far, the goblins are really tough! I didn’t even brave tangling with the Troll, that felt like a good way of losing half my unit. This game is quite interesting, I achieved most of the objectives (investigating 3 clues, killing 3 goblins, getting 6 unit members off the table), but it still felt like losing as I unceremoniously scampered off the table. It’s a great bit of atmosphere through mechanics I think.

There’s one more solo mission left in the main rulebook which I’ll run through soon I think. As I mentioned last post I’ve been enjoying this game enough that I’m preparing a new unit for the Egypt supplement, so will continue solo missions in a different setting after that.

Desert Ruins

Bolt Action, Terrain, The Silver Bayonet, Warhammer: The Old World

My 3D printer has been very busy these last two weeks, producing enough scatter terrain to cover a densely packed 3’x3′ area, or a more loosely covered 6’x4′ board. The theme: desert ruins, more specifically Egypt-like ruins.

The primary motivation for this effort has been the Silver Bayonet, I picked up the Egypt supplement a few weeks back and one of the North Star units for the game, and needed a nice set of terrain to play some of the missions. The good news is that I have a fair few other games that require desert terrain, such as Bolt Action for my North African forces, and Warhammer of course for my Tomb Kings.

The models I printed were from two sets: the ruined walls are by The Lost Adventures Co., and the Egyptian statues/columns etc are by Txarli Factory. I printed the walls at 65% scale to make them a nice size for my historical miniatures, allowing them to peek over the lower sections of wall.

I undercoated all the pieces with an old can of Citadel Roughcoat which is a spraycan-based texture paint (and long out of production, I’d love to find a good replacement). This had the dual effect of hiding the print lines on the models, and adding some nice grit for that sandstone look.

Painting-wise these were pretty straightforward. I sprayed Vallejo Primer German Dark Yellow all over, followed by a top down spray of Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand through the airbrush. I then drybrushed Vallejo Model Colour Dark Sand, followed by another drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite. At this stage I popped the pieces onto my desert mat and realised they looked out of place as the mat has quite a bit of red to it. To remedy this, I added patches of Vallejo Skin Wash Ink using the airbrush, followed by another drybrush of Vallejo Game Color Bonewhite. I would probably have skipped the first Bonewhite drybrush if I’d known I’d be doing another, but sometimes you find things out and need to go again!

I’m really pleased with how these came out, the roughcoat really did a nice job of making the 3D prints more stonelike. The reddish tones also really tie the pieces to the game mat. Here’s a few more closeups showing off the different pieces:

A nice quick update after the longer last few posts. I do enjoy panting terrain as a nice break from more involved models. I’m currently painting up my Egypt campaign unit for Silver Bayonet (guess what nation!), and looking forward to playing some game with this new terrain. The Egypt 3D model set also comes with a sphinx and a pyramid so if I feel like filling out a bigger table I have what I need!