miniatures – Page 3 – Lair of the Lagomorph

The Silver Bayonet – Vampires in the Chapel

After last week’s fun with The Silver Bayonet I was keen to continue with more of the solo missons in the book. The second mission has the unit come across a ruined chapel and investigate it. Unfortunately for them, zombies have overrun it, and some more powerful undead are lurking about!

I was covered for the zombie miniatures, but needed some vampires that looked a bit less overtly warhammer-y, so I decided to paint up a couple of the less over the top miniatures out of the Crimson Court Warhammer Underworlds warband. I based them on square bases as I think I’m most likely to use them for Warhammer Old World going forwards.

I kept the colours very muted on these, with black cloth and the bronze dulled down. These models were really nice to paint, with nice crisp details but not too much going on. I love painting glass vials too so glad to see some on both these models, clearly they like carrying a top up with them!

I also needed a bit more terrain for the scenario, namely a set of tombstones and a ruined chapel. The tombstones are really nice resin models from Tabletop World except the one with a skull and crossbones which is from the old Warhammer Skeleton sprue. I painted these pretty quickly, with a grey undercoat, brown wash, some grey and cream drybrushes. All topped off with some nice mossy greens using some enamel washes.

Finally, the ruined chapel. This is a nice modular ruined church STL set by Vae Victis Miniatures, which I printed at 50% size to make into a reasonable size for a chapel. The scenario calls for a 6″ x 6″ footprint for the chapel which the pieces you see above fit nicely into.

I had a bit of fun painting this, starting with a grey undercoat, then spotting on varied colours of oil paint. I then used some thinner to spread the oil paint around and create some nice variation. You can see what I mean in the photo below.

I left the wet pieces dry overnight, then wiped off the oil from the raised areas. I then left that all rest for a few days, and once fully dry, did a few drybrushes to pick out the raised areas. Was all quite fast apart from the drying! With the terrain and the antagonists ready, I set the board up for the mission and got started!

As I mentioned at the start, the premise behind the mission is that my unit is looking for a ruined chapel to investigate it, and at the mission’s start has just arrived at said chapel, but finds it swarming with undead. The unit needs to battle through revenants and investigate the clue tokens in the chapel and move anything they find off the table.

The board is setup with the chapel at the center, a clue in each corner, a rough circle of grave stones around the chapel, with a zombie (these are called revenants in the game, but I keep forgetting!) at each grave stone. I was allowed to place my models within 2″ of any board edge, split up in as many groups as I liked. I remembered from the first game how useful it was to have backup so I decided to keep my full unit together, sacrificing searching power for increased survival chances. If you can’t remember the characters in the unit feel free to check out my earlier post. I also go into a bit of detail on how the rules work in that post so I would recommend reading it first if you’re interested in that.

Turn 1

Turn one starts very poorly, with MacPherson charging the closest zombie, hitting it with his claymore and dealing some damage, but the zombie’s return blow critically injures him and takes him out of the game. Lieutenant MacRae charges that same zombie and finishes it off with a blow from his sword.

*MacPherson is taken out by the zombie’s blows, Lieutenant MacRae rushes in to avenge him!*

Crowe fires his rifle at the next zombie, only dealing a small amount of damage as they are not particularly bothered by ranged attacks. MacInnes then finishes off that same zombie with a strike from his massive axe. All the while the zombies are coming closer.

The Major fires his rifle at the next closest zombie, injuring it. Fenner then fires his musket at that same zombie, misses, charges it with his bayonet and takes it out (after I used a skill re-roll). Pryor sprints towards the chapel doorway.

*A mysterious form walks onto the battlefield…*

At the end of the turn a vampire arrives, and another zombie springs up from a random gravestone.

*The state of things at the end of turn 1.*

Turn 2

Fenner moves into the chapel, finding something of interest in the closest corner: a bag of silver shot! Crowe heads for another promising area of the chapel and scrounges up a silver knife. Both men feel a little bit more equipped for the horrors that await them outside of the chapel walls. Meanwhile, MacInnes continues his zombie hunt, charging the next closest and scoring a solid hit. The zombie’s strike back misses completely. The zombie then attacks MacInnes, but misses again, giving MacInnes the opportunity to finish it off with his own strike back. The rest of the zombies shamble forwards. In the far corner, the vampire approaches the Major and the men surrounding him.

*The unit prepares a silver-filled volley for the approaching monstrosity.*

The major spots the shape coming towards him, loads silver shot into his rifle and backs away, closer to the chapel entrance. The Lieutenant and Pryor both line up next to the Major, ready to greet the new arrival with a well-timed volley. Another zombie claws its way out of a shallow grave…

*The state of things at the end of turn 2.*

Turn 3

Fenner loads one of his newfound silver bullets into his musket and sights through a crack in the chapel wall. Crowe keeps on searching the chapel and finds a small icon which gives me an extra power die in my fate pool (i.e. an extra re-roll!). To give the members of the team searching the chapel some more time, MacInnes fires his pistol at the zombies, misses, then rushes out towards them, drawing them away.

*MacInnes draws the zombies away from the chapel.*

The vampire moves closer to the Major and his two sidekicks. All three open fire, but only the Lieutenant hits with his pistol. The Lieutenant is not equipped with silver shot, but his great faith means his attacks are blessed, which allows him to injure the Vampire. Bolstered by his success, the Lieutenant charges in, but locks eyes with the Vampire and its hypnotic powers freeze him in place.

*Lieutenant MacRae might have bitten off more than he can chew…*

With a groan, another zombie emerges from the soft ground.

*The state of things at the end of turn 3.*

Turn 4

Fenner now has a clear shot on the vampire and takes it, but misses. He rushes out the the chapel, time to sound the retreat! Crowe takes the time to investigate the last corner of the chapel and finds a strange candelabra. He packs away the relic and makes ready to leave the chapel. The Major quickly reloads his rifle and shoots at the vampire but misses.

On the far side of the chapel, McInnes is caught by one of the zombies he’s been baiting and suffers a nasty hit. He backs away to stay out of reach of the second zombie, but in so doing exposes Crowe who is attacked in turn. The zombie misses, and Crowe sticks his bayonet into the Zombie almost taking it out. MacInnes moves away from the zombies and reloads his pistol.

The Vampire attacks the hypnotised Lieutenant and scores a nasty hit, which causes the Lieutenant to have to take a terror test which he fails spectacularly and is paralysed with fear as a result.

Lieutenant MacRae fights off his fear and the hypnotic powers of the vampire to strike at it. After the judicial use of a re-roll, his sword finds its target and the silver of his blade finishes off the vampire.

Fearing the arrival of another vampire, Pryor reloads his rifle and moves away from the chapel. Another zombie erupts out of the ground.

*The state of things at the end of turn 4.*

Turns 5 and 6

With the vampire slain and the chapel thoroughly searched it’s time to leave the area before the unit gets overwhelmed. MacInnes leaves the board first, with the rest of the unit moving towards their closest board edge and reloading their blackpowder weapons. At the end of turn 5 another vampire arrives right next to where MacInnes left the board (close call!).

Turn 6 sees the unit unloading a volley into the newly arrived vampire, and this time did not miss, killing it before moving off the board.

*If they’d missed at least they’d have a nice cloud of smoke to cover their escape!*

This mission felt a lot more tense than the first one, I came really close to losing more than just MacPherson, and I spent a lot of time retreating from fights. Last time, musketry was quite powerful, whereas in this mission the zombies were resistant to it, and the vampires completely immune if the musket wasn’t loaded with silver. MacPherson survived his injuries, but now has the shakes permanently, making his aim with his pistol much less good. Luckily for me he’s more of a close combat character!

Overall the mission was tremendous fun, and I’ll happily play through the rest of the solo missions in the book. Painting a few models and some terrain and getting to use them in a game immediately was very rewarding.

I tried to improve my battle report style with changes to how I wrote the action up and with the extra annotations on the top down photos. Keen to get any feedback on how you feel this reads compared to last week or if you have any idea how to improve it!

The Silver Bayonet – British Unit

The Silver Bayonet

I wasn’t expecting to be working on this this week, but when inspiration strikes, seize it! I’ve been looking at running Rangers of Shadowdeep for my usual roleplaying games group, and while reading the books and doing some research I remembered one of Joseph McCullough’s other games that interested me while back: The Silver Bayonet. The Silver Bayonet is a skirmish game pitting Napoleonic era units against each other as well as against monsters brought about by the horrors of the constant wars of the era. This renewed interest in the game coincided with my reading of a book on the founding of “New France” (Canada/Quebec), so I was primed for some musket-based action. The game is really easy to pick up so I quickly threw together a unit roster (which can be up to 8 models), and started kitbashing!

I bought a bunch of different Napoleonic sprues a while back to use for Chosen Men so I had plenty of models to turn into a Silver Bayonet unit. As you can see above I ended up with 7 models rather than the max 8, so a slightly elite unit composed of my officer, a junior officer, two highlanders, two riflemen, and an infantryman. This eclectic mix is pretty standard for these units, which are made of soldiers (and others!) that have survived encounters with the supernatural rather than any particular regimental affiliations. The officer and the riflemen are based on the Wargames Atlantic Riflemen kit, the highlanders and junior officer on the Victrix highlanders kit, and the infantryman is from a Perry Miniatures kit. I decided early on I wanted to minimise the amount of shakos in the models, I see these units as being on the road a lot and being in full battle-dress for these skirmish fights doesn’t seem very appropriate (plus I could see losing your hat very easily when running away from a Werewolf!).

First let’s look at the officers:

My unit leader is Major Horatio Bellgrave, a 95th rifles officer reassigned to lead a Silver Bayonet unit and with a long history of hunting monsters. I selected the Supernatural Veteran attribute for him, which lets him pack extra supplies, which I used to cover all the super natural bases giving him silver shot, cold iron shot, and a salt bag for those pesky demons! Alongside that he has the quick reload attribute which lets him shoot every turn with a penalty rather than having to spend a turn reloading between shots. Modelling wise he’s mostly from the WA kit, with a head from a Warhammer Empire kit (with a ludicrous set of feathers!) and a bag from some other Warhammer kit to represent all the projectiles he’s hoarding!

The junior officer is Lieutenant Iain MacRae, from the Black Watch. I wanted a more traditional officer in the unit, as a counterpart to the probably slightly mad monster hunting Major. I selected the great faith attribute for the Lieutenant, and gave him a silver sword. The model is straight from the Victrix kit, barring the pouch and the crucifix which are from a Warhammer Empire kit (the crucifix is a cut down dagger). He has his official headgear on as it matters a lot to Iain to be properly uniformed, even when fighting the supernatural.

Next up the red coats! From left to right:

Private Ruairidh MacInnes, a highlander of the Black Watch, wielding a huge silver Lochaber Axe. The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice he’s wearing red epaulettes, which are not correct for a private! This is a modelling constraints, as I used the officer banner arms to create the axe. I rationalised this by painting them red like French Imperial Guard epaulettes, clearly MacInnes bested a guard and took them as a trophy! For the rest of the model the head of the axe is from a Perry Agincourt set, while the head is again from a Warhammer Empire kit (some great grizzled heads in these Warhammer sets!).

Private Jack Fenner of the Buffs. As mentioned above, this one is from a Perry kit, with these great reloading arms. The bandaged head is from Warlord WW2 British paratroopers, and his dinner is from the Bretonnian Men-at-arms kit. I picked the Buffs for the regiment from a family connection, one of my Great-grandfathers on my English side was in the Buffs in North Africa and Italy during WW2. On top of his musket he’s equipped with a salt bag to pepper unholy creatures with.

Private Callum MacPherson, also a highlander of the Black Watch, with a classic claymore and bagpipes combo. We have once again a Warhammer Empire head, albeit an older one, and the sword is from the Warhammer Empire Knights kit. The body and pipes are from the Victrix set. I’m treating the pipes as a holy item in the game, clearly bagpipes have some effect on monsters!

Last but not least we have the pair of riflemen:

Private Isaac Crowe, follows in the steps of his major and on his way to becoming a great monster hunter. The model is almost wholly from the WA riflemen kit, the only exception the small chest hung under his backpack, from the Bretonnian Men-at-arms kit. Clearly some precious loot! He’s carrying cold-iron shot.

Rifleman Benedict Pryor, more junior (hasn’t lost his hat yet!), more proper, and likely feels closer to MacRae than to his Major. Also almost entirely from the riflemen kit, he just has a small pouch with a bird in it from the same Men-at-arms kit (slightly hard to see in the photos). He’s carrying silver shot.

There you have it! These were very fun to put together, and very quick to paint, I finished them in a couple of sessions. It scratched the Napoleonic itch nicely, with a bit of research on the uniforms, and my first ever attempt at painting tartan.

At the risk of making this post very long, Silver Bayonet also comes with a set of solo gaming rules, and I couldn’t resist trying the unit out so here’s a quick skirmish report for the first solo mission in the game: Wolf Hunt.

The premise behind the mission is my unit is looking for traces of another unit which has not reported in a while. While tracking them, my unit finds signs of a scuffle and starts looking around for clues as to what might have happened. The search is interrupted by wolf howls…

The game is played on a small board compared to what I’m used to (2.5×2.5ft), so I marked off the area with some spare wood I had lying around (the marked off area is closer to 3x3ft but I did what I could with what I had!). The unit starts in the middle of the board and 8 wolves evenly spaced out 2 per edge. The clues I need to investigate are marked by the triangular tokens, there are 6 all up. My goal is to find a clue as to what happened to the missing unit(and recover their orders if possible to avoid them falling into enemy hands) and get off the board, the game ending when I have no models on the board. At the end of each turn I have to roll on a table that indicates what happens (usually more wolves arrive!). Unlimited turns with wolves arriving every turn means I need to get a move on investigating those clues! Behind each of the clues is something that will help or hinder the unit, as determined by a small number of playing cards shuffled into a clue deck. As a model investigates a clue, a card is drawn from the deck and a table consulted for what the model found.

The game uses 2 D10 for all its rolls, one blue (skill), one red (power). The dice are rolled together and added up to see if an action is successful. The colours are used to indicate damage in the case of attack rolls, with more skillful weapons using the roll of the blue dice for damage and more brutal weapons using the red die. This is a really simple mechanic, but quite engaging especially when combined with the fate dice described below. As an example, assume MacInness attacks a wolf with his axe (uses power die for damage), he rolls 2d10 (7 Blue, 6 Red), adds them up (13), and compares to a wolf’s defense (12). He equaled or beat the defense, so he deals the damage, which is 6 as per the power die (+1 for the weapon being heavy!). A wolf has 8 wounds, so we mark off 7 of those and the wolf gets to strike back!

In solo missions, players get two fate dice, one of each colour which allow for one re-roll per dice type. This can be quite important as a re-roll may not only allow a model to hit, but also to deal more damage!

Turn 1

The turns are split into a first player phase (P1), where I can act with half my models, then a monster phase (MP), followed by a second player phase (P2) where I can act with the rest of my unit.

P1
- MacInnes moves towards the closest wolf and fires his pistol, killing it instantly (lucky!)
- Fenner fires his musket at another killing it (after I used a fate die to re-roll the 1 on the skill die!)
- Crowe fires his rifle at another and kills it too (3 shots – 3 kills so far! that has to be a record)
- Pryor fires his rifle, hits but only deals 4 damage.
MP
- The wolves all close in on the unit, all moving towards the closest member they can see.
- One of the wolves is revealed to be a werewolf!
P2
- Major Bellgrave fires a silver bullet at the werewolf, scoring a solid hit (7 damage)
- Lieutenant MacRae bravely charges the werewolf and skewers it with his silver sword!
- MacPherson charges the wolf closest to him, hits it for 6, the wolf bites back but misses.
End of round, two more wolves arrive.

*MacRae’s foolhardy but extremely effective charge!*

*State of the board at the end of turn 1. (Sorry for the blurry photo, still don’t have a sensible way to take board photos!)*

Turn 2

P1
- MacPherson attacks the same wolf, misses. The wolf does not miss back however and hits hom for a massive 10 damage! Luckily highlanders have 11 health unlike most of my other troops so he clings on, but things are looking dicey!
- MacInnes comes to his rescue and swings his axe at the wolf, killing it.
- Lieutenant McRae pulls his sword out of the werewolf and continues his rampage, killing a wolf with a pistol shot, then moving to the clue closest to him.
- Fenner moves onto his closest clue and investigates. Unfortunately, I draw the ace of spaces from the clue deck which means what drew Fenner’s attention was a lurking werewolf! Right before the monster phase too…
MP
- The werewolf swings its massive claws at Fenner … and rolls snake eyes! Critical failure. Normally this would cause the model to lose its weapons, but luckily for the werewolf those claws are well attached. Fenner keeps his head together and bayonets the werewolf, unfortunately his bayonet is made of regular old steel and only deals two damage to the werewolf.
- The remainder of the wolves close in further.
P2
- Major Bellgrave uses his quick reload ability and fires at the werewolf, hits after I burn my power dice fate re-roll (no more re-rolls now!) and deals 6 damage with a silver bullet.
- Pryor reloads his rifle and charges a wolf with his bayonet, but misses. The wolf bites back and inflicts 4 damage.
- Crowe also reloads and charges the same wolf, he is luckier though and finishes the wolf off.
End of round, one more wolf arrives.

Turn 3

P1
- Major Bellgrave quick reloads again and fires a silver bullet into the werewolf, killing it.
- MacPherson investigates the clue next to him, discovers an ornate silver ramrod, which gives me an extra Skill die in my fate pool.
- Crowe fires his rifle into the closest wolf, and scores a critical, killing the wolf instantly!
- MacInnes investigates another clue and finds a bag of silver shot, meaning he can shoot effectively at werewolves if any others arrive!
MP
- The wolves close in.
P2
- Fenner reloads his musket.
- Lieutenant MacRae investigates the clue he moved to last turn, and finds a silver knife (clearly whoever left all this stuff was prepared for werewolves!). He then charges the closest wolf, and deals 6 damage with his sword . The wolf bites back and deals 4.
- Pryor investigates another clue and finds a silver medallion, giving me an extra power die in my fate pool (back up to one of each!).
End of round, one wolf arrives.

Turn 4

P1
- Fenner fires his musket at the wolf Lieutenant MacRae attacked but misses
- MacRae then charges back into the wolf, rolls horrendously on both dice and I decide to re-roll both with my freshly obtained re-rolls. The new rolls are excellent and the wolf is killed.
- MacInnes moves closer to MacPherson and reloads his pistol (with his new silver shot!).
- Major Bellgrave quick reloads and fires at the closest wolf, but misses. He moves towards the board edge, time to think about finishing this skirmish!
MP
- The wolves close in.
P2
- MacPherson decides to leave the board, his wounds are rather bad.
- Pryor fires at the wolf close to him, misses, charges in with his bayonet and scores a hit for 5 damage. The wolf misses when trying to bite back.
- Crowe charges in too, and bayonets the last wounds off the wolf.
End of round two more wolves arrive

Turn 5

P1
- Crowe investigates the last clue, finds the missing unit’s orders! I need to get these off the table if possible.
- Lieutenant MacRae reloads his pistol and moves right to the edge of the board. He;s looking to draw the wolves there towards him, away from Crowe, to give him a better chance to get away with the orders.
- MacInnes fires his pistol at the closest wolf, misses, and moves towards the closest board edge.
MP
- The wolves close in.
P2
- Major Bellgrave quick reloads, fires at the same wolf, misses, then moves closer to the board edge.
- Fenner reloads his musket and moves towards the board edge.
- Pryor also reloads and moves towards a board edge.

Turns 6 & 7

Those two turns are rather uneventful, the unit simply retreats off the board and fires at any wolves getting too close.

Wrap-up

The unit achieved all the objectives and got maximum experience out of the scenario, not bad!

The game was very fun, I’ve never really tried playing a solo wargame before. The rules were very straightforward, and the scenario interesting and engaging to play. I think I got very lucky in the early rounds killing so many wolves in one hit, this would have been much harder with a few more wolves running around. There are 3 more solo scenarios in the the rulebook and I will be definitely playing through them. I’m not sure the top down photos are particularly great for these small skirmish battle reports, it’s a bit hard to follow what’s going on I think. I may try some other way of recording the action for future ones, open to suggestions if anyone has some!

Snotling Pump Wagons

Warhammer: The Old World

After last post‘s detour into card gaming, back this time with some more usual fare for this blog, models! I’m still pottering away at my Orcs and Goblins army and just finished these two extremely fun models: Snotling Pump Wagons!

For the non-initiated, Snotlings are what Orcs and Goblins call their even smaller cousins, which are even tinier goblins (The models are quite small as you might imagine!). Pump wagons are weird contraptions that are built, crewed, and powered by Snotlings, and as a result barely hang together but can surprisingly effective in the game … if they reach their target.

These models are actually the Blood Bowl Pump Wagons, which I much prefer to the proper Warhammer ones. Even though they’re plastic, they’re surprisingly fiddly to put together (to the extent that I think it’s on purpose to ensure they end up as rickety as if they’d been built by Snotlings!). They come as part of the Snotling Blood Bowl team which is packed full of characterful Snotling models, which meant I could cram them full of different sculpts.

While the models are the same model twice I tried to add some variety to them, mainly through the addition of different Snotlings as I mentioned, but also with some painting differences. The kit is also relatively flexible and lets you add pieces in a few different ways which is nice.

These were a lot of fun to paint as you might imagine. I had all the Snotlings separate for painting to make things a bit easier for myself, and gluing them to the pump wagon once everything was painted was very satisfying.

I’ve just embarked on a “small” side project which has my son very interested in miniature-related gaming so expect to see some (all?) of that next post!

The Galleon’s Graveyard: Dreadfleet Terrain

Board Games

I’ve been busy building and painting a big unit for my Orcs and Goblins Old World army and needed a change of pace (read: a smaller project!). I had a look around my hobby room and my eyes stopped on my Dreadfleet box. I’ve used the game as a palette cleanser in the past (Back in April 2022!), and it delivered once again. At the pace I’m painting it I should expect to be able to play a game in 2040 or thereabouts.

Rather than paint more ships, this time I decided to tackle the terrain pieces in the box. These are nicely varied and hold a ton of detail given the scale they’re representing. They also had the advantage of being mostly rocks and therefore were nice and quick to paint, which fit my purposes perfectly.

Painting them was quite relaxing, and apart from painting the water, they were really straightforward. The water was an issue for two reasons: 1) unlike the ships which have separate bases, this terrain has the water attached and mixed into all that detail I was talking about before, and 2) I never wrote down how I painted the water the first time around!

Considering “the first time around” was close to two years ago I was preparing myself for some hard trial and error. However I got extremely lucky there, and as I was painting remembered how I’d done it, as well as picking the right paint to use on the first try. I am preparing for the next long break between painting this set this time, and writing things down! So here goes:

Rocks:
1. VGA Dark Fleshtone [Airbrush] – All over
2. VGA Beasty Brown [Airbrush] – In generous patches
3. VGA Cold Grey [Airbrush] – Smaller patches, picked out some rocks entirely
4. VMC Stone Grey [Drybrush] – All over
5. MIG Panel Line Wash Deep Brown [Wash] – All over
6. AK Slimy Grime Dark [Stipple] – On the base of the rocks to add green algae
Wood:
1. VMC English Uniform [Basecoat]
2. VMC Stone Grey [Drybrush] – All over
3. MIG Panel Line Wash Deep Brown [Wash] – All over
4. AK Slimy Grime Dark [Stipple] – On the base to add green algae
Sails:
- VGC Black [Basecoat]
- VMC Dark Sea Blue [Highlight]
Bones:
- VGC Bonewhite [Basecoat]
- MIG Panel Line Wash Deep Brown [Wash] – All over
- VGC Bonewhite [Highlight]
- AK Slimy Grime Dark [Stipple] – On the base to add green algae
Castle Walls:
1. VGC Black [Basecoat]
2. 50/50 AP Kraken Skin / VMC Dark Sea Blue [Line Highlight]
Castle Roof:
- VMC Dark Sea Blue [Basecoat]
- 70/30 AP Kraken Skin / VMC Dark Sea Blue [Line Highlight]
Lava:
- PA Titanium White [Underpaint – Brush] – Painted the lava areas in pure white
- VMA White [Underpaint – Airbrush] – Painted next to the lava areas to create a glow
- VGA Moon Yellow [Airbrush] – Center of the lava areas
- VGA Orange Fire [Airbrush] – Outer areas
- VGA Gory Red [Highlight] – Picked out the raised areas to make “cold” lava crust
- VMC Black [Highlight] – Picked out raised areas within the red
Water:
1. Light Grey [Basecoat] – This was a mix to match the undercoat I used on the rest of the models in the set, a just off-white straying into grey.
2. GW Contrast Akhelian Green [Contrast]
3. VMC Light Sea Grey [Highlight]
4. GW Contrast Akhelian Green [Contrast] – Slightly watered down
5. VMC Light Sea Grey with a dash of GW Contrast Akhelian Green [Highlight]

Manufacturer codes: VGA – Vallejo Game Air, VMA – Vallejo Model Air, VMC – Vallejo Model Color, VGC – Vallejo Game Color, PA – ProAcryl, GW – Citadel/Games Workshop, AP – Army Painter, MIG – Ammo Mig, AK – AK Interactive

Here’s some detail shots of the terrain pieces. They’re all named in the rulebook so I’ve reproduced those in the captions.

Castle Island
Castle Island

Corpseface Cliff
Corpseface Cliff

Shipwrecks

Volcano Island
Volcano Island

Leviathan Island and Skull Island
Leviathan Island

Finally here’s a shot of the terrain with the ships I painted earlier. Really gives you an idea of the fantastical scale the game’s ships are!

It was nice to have a small project to tackle, gave me a sense of having accomplished something after a few months of working away at a bigger project without results I can show! What is true is that the pandemic days are truly over, I have to get used to hobby productivity levels that are much reduced when compared to the enforced downtime we had in the early 2020s. One thing I promised myself when I started this blog is that painting is meant to be my fun time, and should never feel like a chore. That means posting to the blog is secondary to that, and even if I feel it’s been too long between posts (which I’ve felt all of last year and this year), life and fun comes first, and I’m not going to make myself paint just to post something.

Japanese January

Uncategorized

I’ve been in contact for a few months with John over at Just Needs Varnish!, over which time we decided to tackle some of our respective Japanese backlog. He had some turn of the 19th century Japanese forces in need of painting, and I’d been sitting on a collection of unpainted Sengoku era miniatures for a couple of years.

I decided to kick off my Sengoku collection with some spear Ashigaru. The models are from Perry Miniatures and come in boxes of 6 metal miniatures so what you see in the photo above is two boxes of spearmen and a lieutenant from the ashigaru command box also by Perry.

The resulting odd block of 13 models works well for my current target rules system for playing this era: a repurposing of the MESBG ruleset. It’s one of my favourite skirmish systems and I think lends itself very well to historical gaming. The game system is very flexible and makes it easy to represent mixed units as the models are individually placed and moved. In MESBG you pick armies by assembling warbands lead by character models, with 12 models lead by a minor “hero” being pretty standard for the game. This means this group of 13 above makes for a nice warband.

If you’re familiar with the period you might have recognised the mon (emblem) of Clan Hōjō, with it’s three triangles (representing fish scales if I understand rightly!). I decided to go with this clan as I visited some the region they ruled over during my first visit to Japan back in 2015 and really liked it, it’s one of my fondest memories from that trip. In fact the foggy forest photo I’ve been using as a backdrop to my miniature photos for quite a while now was taken there! So the backdrop is very appropriate for these models.

Painting-wise these were relatively simple, with the black and blue scheme heavily reliant on Vallejo’s Dark Sea Blue. I used it both for the cloth areas and the highlights on the black, just mixing in different levels of pale greys in for highlights to differentiate them. For the skin I followed the recipes in my previous Samurai post.

I was planning on tackling some buildings I 3D printed early in the month but simply ran out of time, so they will appear on the blog at a later date when I get around to them!

John got some great results out of our themed painting month, painting some very nice cavalry and some matching infantry that you can see pictured above. Overall this was a fun exercise, and got me to paint some models which I had no immediate plans to tackle which is always a nice plus! So thanks John for the motivation, and I recommend you all go check out the models John painted (and generally follow his blog, lots of great stuff on there).

River Trolls

Warhammer: The Old World

With some leave over the Christmas break I’ve had a bit more time to paint (and game!) and have managed to get through a unit that I’d applied a basecoat to back in September-ish: River Trolls!

I’ve had these models for quite a while. I originally bought them to make Chaos Trolls back in the early 2010s and instead left them unbuilt for 10 years. It’s therefore nice to have them done for this latest project.

The models themselves are quite fun to paint as they have a decent amount of detail, much of which is quite characterful (including the infamous troll vomit!).

For units that are relatively unique in armies (i.e. that I won’t have to paint again) I like to experiment a bit with my painting. In this case I played around with oil washes in a slightly different way than I usually do. Normally I dilute my oils heavily with thinner, apply, blast with the hairdryer for a minute and get wiping the raised areas away with a sponge. I’ve had issues in the past with oil washes looking but not actually being dry by the time I varnish the models and found a few months later that the model has gone a bit tacky. Luckily this is easy to fix with a fresh coat of varnish. Here instead I went for a heavier wash (less diluted) and let it sit for a day or so before touching it. I was a bit worried that would limit my ability to wipe off the excess wash, but those fears were unfounded, and in fact I found it easier to get nice gradients with the wash in this way. To make sure the wash was dry before continuing, I left the models for another day or so, monitoring the areas where the wash had pooled the most. It’s a time consuming process but the results are worth it. Luckily for me I had something else to paint while I was waiting, which I will show later!

I wanted a cold green for these models to match their “riverness”, so I went for a basecoat of Vallejo Game Color (VGC) Heavy Blackgreen, and progressively mixed in more and more Vallejo Model Color (VMC) Pastel Green. The red fins are VMC Mahogany Brown, highlighted with a mix of the same brown and VGC Dead Flesh. The hair/fur is a mix of VMC Dark Sea Grey and VMC Black, highlighted with a mix of VMC Dark Sea Grey and VMC Pastel Green. The teeth/nails were a basecoat of VMC English Uniform, highighted with VGC Dead Flesh. The leather was VMC Chocolate brown, highlighted with a mix of the same and VGC Dead Flesh. All of these received the oil wash discussed above, which was a mix of Abteilung 502 Midnight Blue and Brown Wash oil paints.

Overall I’m very happy with these, nice addition to my Orcs and Goblins army.

As I said in the opening lines, I got some gaming in too this break, with a campaign game for our Border Princes campaign. The campaign was on a bit of a hiatus after the back end of the year got very busy for most of us (including a few weeks where 3 of us were out of the country!). The next match due was my Dwarfs against the Lizardmen, battling over a major crossroads. The game was a lot of fun and as a result I completely forgot to take photos! The outcome was our first draw of the campaign so far, which results in both armies retreating from the area. Here’s the campaign map at the end of Turn 6.

We’re currently planning our moves for the next turn, so hopefully I should have some updates soon.

One thing that happened during the game is I tried out the new engineer rules from the Dwarfs Arcane Journal. These allow you to take a Sapper Engineer, which allows all kinds of things such as entrenching your artillery, and booby trapping the battlefield. I equipped said engineer with a handgun inscribed with some of the new ranged weapon runes also found in the book. He then proceeded to cause more damage single-handedly than most of the other units I had in the game! I decided that meant he deserved a proper model and set about to making one as there is no Sapper Engineer model in the range.

I used an old metal dwarf handgunner (one of the first models I ever bought!) which has a really cool dragon head muzzle on his handgun. This looked appropriate as a runic handgun, and I also liked the practical attire he was wearing. One thing that was missing was anything that screamed “sapper”. The distinguishing mark for a sapper in the Napoleonic era (at least for the French army) was the carrying of a great big axe, but a dwarf carrying an axe just blends in so I went for a spade instead.

I wanted to accentuate the digging aspect so I tried to make it look like he’s taking potshots while digging a trench. Hopefully that comes through!

Goblin Archers

Warhammer: The Old World

I’ve been chipping away at this small unit of archers for my Orcs and Goblins over the past few weeks. I have not been in any particular rush and it’s been quite nice painting at a sedate pace. I have a tendency to want to get things done fast, but with work quite busy lately it’s been good to do the fun things in life in a more relaxed fashion!

These are new casts of old models like much of the rest of the newly (re)released Orcs and Goblins models for Warhammer The Old World. These are pretty old sculpts now and were current when I started the hobby in the early 2000s. I’m absolutely the demographic for this nostalgia fueled set of releases!

I tried to make them look generally cohesive but in a haphazard manner, picking out their clothes in different colours. For my own future reference (I have plenty more of these to paint!) these are: Vallejo Model Color (VMC) German Fieldgrey WWII (also used for the fletching), VMC US Field Drab, VMC Black, and VMC German Camo Medium Brown (also used for the furs). The rest of the colours used are the same as for the rest of the army as detailed in my Orc Warboss post.

One nice discovery painting these was a new method (new for me at least!) for placing pigment powders on the bases in a much less messy way. So far I’ve been applying them dry, which tends to get them everywhere, and fix them using airbrushed varnish (at low pressure but still very messy). For these I experimented with mixing them with acrylic thinner before applying them in patches to the bases. I then dipped my brush in water and blended the patches into the uncovered section to get an uneven look. This method was much cleaner than dry application and was a lot easier to control. I’d recommend trying it out if you’re using dry pigments on your bases!

Really Tiny Space Marines

Legions Imperialis

Back after what must have been the biggest break this blog has seen! I’ve been traveling for work and as such have had pretty much no time to paint in October between the trip itself and preparation for said trip. I’m back at home now, and started something I’ve been eyeing off for a while now: Legions Imperialis – the revamp of the old Epic 40,000 game system.

As I mentioned above, I’ve been thinking of getting started in Legions Imperialis since it launched – something about the scale of the battles really appeals to me (For the same reason, I’ve also been eyeing off Warlord’s epic scale offerings). What prompted actually diving in was a couple of happy occurrences: I was lucky enough to stumble on someone selling all of the books second hand for a steal, and my local game store had a sale a few weeks later during which I picked up the Battle Group box for the marines.

While I was travelling I re-read Legion, which might well be my favourite Horus Heresy novel, and (re-)enjoyed it so much that I decided these marines should be painted as Alpha Legion.

When I popped open the box I finally realised how tiny these models actually are. Looking at pictures online isn’t quite the same as holding the models in your own hands and as you can see from the comparison shot with the 28mm marine above, this is quite a departure from what I’m used to painting!

I often see Horus Heresy era Alpha Legion painted in a metallic blue/green colour. I decided to stray closer to blue here, with the markings in a minty green. The painting (by necessity!) is really simple. I started with a black undercoat and airbrushed some Ammo Mig Warhead Metallic Blue all over the models. The exhaust covers on the rhino and the boltguns on the marines were then picked out in Vallejo Model Color Black, and the bare metal details were painted in Scale 75 Black Metal. The markings were painted in Army Painter Kraken Skin. The models then got an all over wash of Ammo Mig Deep Brown Panel Line Wash, which was wiped off the raised areas to keep things clean.

The models come with these nice textured bases that I wanted to use rather than cover up, so I decided to go for an overgrown ruins look. I basecoated the surface with Vallejo Game Color Heavy Bluegrey, followed by the same panel liner as the models. I then applied a wash of heavily diluted AK Muddy Ground texture paint (a tip I picked up from the Cult of Paint youtube channel) all over the base. This adds a bit of texture and a nice gradient brown to the base while not hiding the texture modelled into the base. I then glued on a few bits of foam turf from Woodland Scenics, and applied some light washes of AK Slimy Grime Dark and Slimy Grime Light to add some green colour in patches. I’m satisfied with the outcome, it looks in scale to me, keen to hear what others think.

Overall these were fun and quick to paint, I think the metallic paint does a lot of work here, and makes the models pop despite their size. Unlike pretty much all my other models I did not varnish these as I didn’t want to lose the shine contrast between the marines and the base. I have a whole lot more of these to paint now, but I’m happy with the scheme so can safely proceed from here!

Night Goblins

Warhammer: The Old World

After a few posts promising a unit of goblins as the next addition to my Orcs and Goblins army (and a few posts apologising for failing to deliver!) I’ve finally finished this large unit of Night Goblins!

With a cool 42 models in it it is one of the largest units I’ve ever painted, and took me quite a while to get through. With its rather sizeable footprint it was a bit awkward to photograph too, a lot like a large terrain piece.

I ended up batch painting the unit row by row (i.e. seven models at a time), except the shields and the basing which were done for the whole unit at once. Each row was relatively quick to do, but together this added up to a lot of work (Basing took me a whole evening!).

The banner was quite fun to paint, although I went in to it without a good idea of what to put on it. I decided a mushroom would be a good option given the Night Goblin moon was already represented at the top of the banner pole. I painted on a mushroom and then wasn’t sure where to go from there. I ended up taking a photo of the banner and doodling on the photo on my iPad to test out designs to add to my mushroom and I settled on what you see below. It was great to be able to experiment with designs without painting over and over again so I’ll do that again, a good lesson learned.

You might have noticed the shaman holding the green-headed staff on the right of the unit. This is one of the army’s characters, in fact the only wizard I have planned in there at the moment. This is a classic model that I picked up on eBay alongside the netters you see in the unit.

The night goblin models are the newly re-released plastics that were the standard kit back in 6th edition. There is a more modern night goblin box which is from the 7th edition era which is now marketed as an Age of Sigmar set. I really like the older plastics and I’d been looking for a second hand box when GW announced they were re-realeasing them. That made me and my wallet very happy, those second hand prices were getting sky high.

This new set came with a transfer sheet with a couple of designs for the shields. I loved the moon design on those transfers so that was an easy pick. I’ve never applied this many transfers in a single sitting!

I’m glad to see the end of this one, I’ve been painting it on and off for what must be a couple of months now (inter-spaced with a few other small projects such as the Fanatics I did a while back, which will be launched from this unit), and it took some determination (and a fair few hours) to get them finished this week. I love the look of these models as a massed unit and am chuffed with how they came out. I’m going to paint up a smaller scale project next I think!

Giant!

Warhammer: The Old World

It’s been a little while between updates, but I’ve been slowly chipping away at the miniature I’ll be showing today over the past month. Slowly because it’s getting chilly here down under and my hobby table is in a cold part of the house (and therefore is being visited much less often than usual!) and slowly because I’ve been really enjoying the process on this model!

The model as you probably realised from the post title is a giant! This is the plastic Warhammer giant from the mid 2000s, which is still current in the range. I got mine during 8th edition for my Ogre army, and like many other models from that era it has sat mostly unpainted since then. I rebased that army for Age of Sigmar so this model was transplanted onto an oval base, before being cut off that and put back on a square base for the return to classic Warhammer.

As I mentioned above, I thoroughly enjoyed myself painting this model and I went probably above and beyond what I would usually do for an army model, although I always do tend to try to spice up centerpiece models!

I really wanted to make it look like his pants were made from banners he’d collected over the years, so I painted them in a patchwork of colours, and applied transfers from all kinds of sheets I’d collected over the years to add some interesting patterns to the patches. From memory there are transfers from the Bretonnian, Eldar, Imperial Knights, and Space Wolf ranges on his pants.

Another detail I enjoyed painting because of the scale of the model was the nails, I tried to go for a dirty nail look with some muck caught under there. This might be a bit hard to see in the photos though, I think the best example is in that top photo on the hand that is holding the hapless man.

I spent a bit of time on his face, I don’t get to paint large scale heads very often given my usual subjects, so this was a fun new thing for me to do. I tried to go for the classic pale/red/blue zones on the face which I think worked out nicely, but I’m keen to see how you find it.

Overall I had a great time painting this giant, but it’s time to move on to smaller models again! I have the largest unit in the army lined up next, a big unit of night goblins which will likely keep me busy for quite a while so the next post may also be a bit further away than usual!