I haven’t painted much over the last few weeks as it’s been a bit of a busy time, with some travelling (more on that later!) but I managed to chip away some more at some Empire models.
After learning to sculpt beards for last post’s Valten, I tried my hand at it again on these swordsmen. I wanted to represent some state troops from Middenland, one of the northern provinces of the Empire which is presumably filled with gruff bearded men. The Storm of Chaos campaign is mostly set around Middenheim which is the capital of Middenland. These models will then be fighting on their home ground.
The uniform of Middenland is just blue, but the book I have on Empire uniforms suggests multicoloured feathers, and I extended that to the shields. They might be a bit more colourful than the average representation of Middlenlanders but they work for me.
These models are “rescues”, in a previous life they belonged to a friend that had built them as halberdiers, but all of the halberds had broken over the years. I inherited them a little while back and have since then stripped them of paint and rebuilt them as swordsmen from spare arms I had.
I find that I can get most if not all the paint off when stripping plastics, but there is always some residue which adds a bit of texture to the models. As a result I wouldn’t use these as display models but they’re ok for armies!
You can see what I mean in the unpainted photo above, the light grey plastic is the new parts I glued on, while the dark grey/black areas are the stripped models. You can also see my attempts at sculpting!
I mentioned travel above, I ducked over to Sydney for a few days to see a concert at the Opera house (a metal band would you believe!). I took the opportunity to visit some museums and the art gallery there and wanted to share this humungous painting of some Napoleonic cavalry by Édouard Detaille.
The painting is something like 4.5x5m and dominates the room. You can get a better view of the painting itself on the gallery’s website (https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/4560/), but hopefully my photo gives you a sense of scale! The whole gallery was very inspirational, plenty of ideas to pinch for hobby projects!
I’ve had a productive week, getting a fair bit built and painted. I’m still inspired by the idea of playing out a big game set in Warhammer’s Storm of Chaos campaign, specifically the battle that occurs as part of the relief of Middenheim by a combined army of Empire, High Elves, and Dwarfs. It sounds like a great excuse to break out our collective collections and play a very large game for most of a day (using the Midgard rules).
For those not in the know, Middenheim is a big city built on a mountain in the Empire, and is the target of a very large Chaos invasion led by Archaon, the biggest baddest Chaos champion. Middenheim is pretty much impregnable because of its natural defenses so the Chaos forces settle down for a long siege. Meanwhile Karl Franz, the emperor (of the empire!) gathers an army to relieve the city, with troops from many provinces of the empire. Along the way he’s joined by a Dwarf army and a High Elf army who both recognise the threat posed by the Chaos invasion. Alongside Karl Franz is Valten, who as a young man single-handedly wiped out a beastman attack on his village and has since been hailed/raised as Sigmar (the chief god of the empire) returned. There’s a whole interesting sub-story a to whether that is the case or not, but regardless the powers that be seem to buy into the story (or at least realise that if the people believe it it doesn’t make much of a difference). As a result, Karl Franz gives Valten the warhammer (the one on the cover of all the books), Ghal Maraz, and when the elves and dwarfs join up with Karl’s army, they also gift equipment to Valten, the dwarfs give him a suit of armour (that was orginally meant for Sigmar himself) and the elves a mighty steed (sired by the horse of Tyrion, the greatest high elf hero).
The reason I’m telling you all this is that I built and painted a custom model for Valten, and tried to capture the story in that model. Valten had a model at the time of release of the campaign book (~2004) and I think was re-released as a Finecast model during that later era. I was scouring ebay for the model and despairing slightly at the prices (and postage, UK or US to Australia is veeery expensive these days). After some deliberation I decided to just convert my own out of a model I’ve had my eye on for quite a while: the Cities of Sigmar Cavalier-Marshal.
The character of Valten is a bit of a tragic, maybe reluctant hero in my mind, the cavalier model really has a weary look to it that I think really fits Valten so it seemed like a great base for the model.
I removed as much iconography off the horse as I could and added lots of spare high elf bits I had big around to sell the horse as a gift from the elves. I kept the armour on the rider as is, the cities of sigmar range armours have a very angular look to them which I think is good for a dwarven made suit of armour.
For the head I liked the expression on the Cavalier model, but Valten has long hair and a long beard, while the Cavalier is clean shaven and short haired. So I decided to do something I do rarely, which is to sculpt! It was a bit daunting to build up this centrepiece model and to try my hand at something new right on its face, but I found this very handy tutorial by Valbjorn on YouTube and at least I knew I was going in with a plan. The result is ok I think, a bit rough in some places (not helped by the age of my green stuff) but it does the job!
For the painting stage I stuck to blues, whites, and gold as a scheme. This is how the original model was painted and helps with the whole Elven influence on the horse.
The cavalier model comes with a very cool scenic base meant to fit on an oval base. I decided to go for a 60mm round base instead so had to fill out some of the extra space. I cut up some chaos bits and blended everything in using a mix of acrylic paste and sand.
Overall I’m very happy with the model, was fun to get kit bashing and even do a bit of sculpting. It’s been a while since I painted a bigger character model and that’s enjoyable too. Getting to spend some more time on some of the details I would usually keep simpler for regular army models makes for a nice change.
Valten is not all that I finished this week, I also painted up the first batch of some Flagellants for that same empire army.
Four of these are originally Mordheim models, some of the first models I ever bought in fact, as part of the Witch Hunter warband for the game. They’ve seen a lot of mistreatment throughout the years, and all had some breakage over that time, so I fixed them up with some plastic parts. The other four are from the current (still 10+ years old I think), plastic flagellants kit. I have another 8 to paint up of these, for a future update.
There you go, busy week but I’m happy with what I got done!
I noticed last post that I was starting to mention aspects of Midgard Heroic Battles that I’d never really explained and felt that a review post for the game might be in order. Clearly if you’ve seen my other posts you’ll know this review will be a positive one, but I think it provides some useful information about the game for players that might be interested in picking it up.
What is Midgard Heroic Battles?
Midgard Heroic Battles (Midgard from now on!) is a set of rules for playing out battles in any setting that can be described as having the following characteristics:
Battles are fought mostly by ranked up regiments of close order fighters wielding spears/swords/axes/etc, supported by cavalry and skirmishers (and sometimes monsters/elephants!)
Shooting is helpful but not the primary way to win a battle.
Most importantly, leaders lead from the front. They are found where the melee is thickest, performing mighty deeds (or dying mighty deaths!) that will be sung of by the bards for aeons to come.
This covers quite the range of historical eras (roughly antiquity all the way to sometime in the Middle Ages when leaders decided to focus on strategy over feats of arms), but also covers a swathe of fantastical settings (Tolkien’s Middle Earth being a prime example).
In addition to this broad applicability setting-wise, Midgard also is a scale agnostic system that handles whatever your collection can throw at it. I achieves this through its adaptive measurement system (the spear throw) and flexible list building.
The spear throw
The spear throw (ST) is the basic unit of measure of the game. Pretty much everything in the game is measured in multiples of STs, for example units are always 1ST wide, cavalry move 2ST per move, short bows can fire arrows 3ST away etc. A ST does not have a fixed length; how long a ST is depends on the scale of the miniatures you use. For 28mm miniatures, the suggested ST is 12cm long (which lets you fit 8-10 miniatures on your 1ST wide base), while for smaller miniatures (say 15mm or less) the suggestion is to use an 8cm ST. This is a purely subjective choice, driven primarily by how you like your units to look on the tabletop. Want wider units? Use a larger ST.
By using this abstract measure, the rules do something quite clever, which is to provide ranges for all kinds of things in the game while never committing to a fixed measure. No need to do some on the fly measurement conversions (“this bow shoots 20 inches at 28mm, we’re playing at 15mm so it should shoot 10.71 inches!”), just get/make a measuring stick of your chosen ST and you can measure everything you need for the scale you’re playing at.
Left is an 8cm spear throw base and measuring stick, right is a 12cm spear throw base and measuring stick. These very stylish measuring sticks are STLs that can be purchased from the TooFatLardies site.
Here is the first hint of what the game is trying (and therefore not trying) for: this is a game that is not aiming to be particularly suitable for random pickup games at a club or say for playing tournaments. It is important that both sides in a game use the same ST length. Unlike in a Warhammer-style ruleset which mandates all aspects of the game and therefore provides a common standard for all gamers to align to, Midgard requires pre-agreement on the ST the game will be played at. Considering the ST affects the bases of all the units on both sides, that is not an inconsiderable hobby hurdle to overcome if one gamer has based their army on 8cm bases and the other on 12cm.
The List-building
Midgard provides a set of generic profiles (such as Heavy Infantry, Skirmishers, Light Cavalry, etc.) which can be modified by changing their equipment (e.g. adding or removing armour), and the addition of traits which modify the behaviour of the units (e.g. impetuous can force the unit to charge).
Much like STs this list building is a cooperative activity and not done in a vacuum. The maximum armour for most units is 4, which might represent a mail and a shield for a dark ages game, or full plate armour in a later medieval game. What’s important here is that relative to each other, both sides in a game are consistent. This again indicates tournament play is not the point of Midgard, it would be hard to coordinate a room full of players to achieve this.
What you get as a result is an extremely flexible list building system that is capable of representing all kinds of troops, whether historical or fantastical. I’ve been able to create fun and evocative profiles for my Middle-Earth miniatures, my Warhammer miniatures, and my emerging Punic Wars collection so far.
The author provides a number of lists in the back of the rulebook, as well as many more on his website https://mogsymakes.net/resources-for-midgard-heroic-battles/ alongside some great list builders that make putting armies together a breeze.
As a result of the above, Midgard feels more like a framework for creating games than a simple self-contained game. While it is possible to just get the models required to field some of the armies in the back of the book and play a game as is, the real power of the game in my opinion is to provide an easy way to get your collection on the table and playing fun games with it.
Midgard Gameplay
“This flexibility is nice, but once I have chosen my ST and made my army lists, what’s the actual game like?”
If you have War of the Ring trays around, they are perfect for Midgard.
The answer is Midgard is a very fun rank and flank ruleset, that is fast to play, easy to pick up, but hard to master. In its pages you’ll find rules for the usual array of restricted ranked unit movement rules (a staple of the genre), shooting and combat. All of these are quite streamlined compared to what I’m used to from Warhammer and other such systems. Generally all combat/shooting die rolls require you to get a 5 or above (no complex comparison tables here), and modifiers halve the size of your dice pool rather than modify the target number. This makes for some rather quick combat resolution, and keeps the game going.
The only other die roll to remember is the command die roll, which is used for situations where a unit may not do what it is told (e.g. holding still instead of pursuing a fleeing unit), similar to leadership tests in Warhammer. Just as combat rolls, this is a set number and never changes (again speeding things up!).
Heroes matter greatly in the game, leading your troops and assisting them by using a resource called mighty deeds. Heroes get these according to their level and can spend said deeds on making units re-roll failed command tests, get extra attacks, cast spells, and most shamefully to keep themselves safe.
Framing all these rules is the reputation system. This pool of tokens represents the morale of the army, and grows with the acts of bravery of heroes and shrinks when losing units or when heroes bring dishonour upon themselves. If your reputation is at or below zero at the end of the turn, your army breaks and you lose the game.
The main advantage of the reputation system is that it lets you use your coolest cups for their true purpose: gaming.
This resource drives the behaviour of the players in a really fun way: as their reputation drops, players have no choice but to dive in and try to regain the upper hand through desperate actions with their heroes. This is magnified when an army’s reputation drops to zero during a turn, as they have until the end of the turn to get it back above zero, which makes for some extremely fun (and cinematic!) moments where heroes lead wild charges in the forlorn hope of reinvigorating their side.
Who Is Midgard For?
As highlighted above, Midgard is not a tournament game, and is probably not particularly well suited to a pickup game scenario against unknown opponents at a club or other. What Midgard excels at is creating fun narrative games where the two sides and a scenario are created specifically for those games. This is really good for convention games where the game is set up and the players join in, and I’ve found it excellent for games with my game group, where I’ve set up a scenario for two forces and invited my friends over to play it out.
I’m not sure I would have known what to do with Midgard 10 or so years ago, as I was very much in the playing tournaments and pickup games paradigm, with armies specifically created for an edition of a game, ready to play against anyone with an army for the matching system. In some ways that’s an easier way to go as there is no need to coordinate anything for a game (beyond a time and a place), everyone is following the same set of rules and can just show up with their legal army. If that’s how you want to do most of your gaming then Midgard might not be for you.
The games look great too!
I have much less time for gaming these days and find that what I really want to do when I do is to get a group of friends together and play a big fun game. Midgard helps me do that in quite a few ways. First, it’s easy to play – I know that friends that aren’t regular wargamers will have an easy time picking it up (recently one of said non-wargaming friends corrected me on the rules multiple times during a game!). This really broadens the pool of players, and I’d recommend Midgard for teaching new players a wargame. Second, while building lists sounds like a lot of work, I think building lists for Midgard is much faster and easier than building lists for Warhammer – even with the need to keep both sides somewhat consistent. Third, the game is fast to play. The rules stay out of the way of the action, and games with hundreds of models can take as little as a few hours to play through. Finally, the game lets me use my whole miniatures collection. While I have some armies that are legal armies in other systems, I have some that are too small or out of date and haven’t seen play in many years. Midgard with its flexible list building system has had me scrounging through my cases (which has been a great trip down memory lane), thinking up scenarios for all kinds of settings.
If the above sounds like a good time then I heartily recommend you check out Midgard. It’s likely to be the most played game by far in my group this year, and I look forward to finding out what else we can do with it.
I’ve been talking a decent amount about Midgard Heroic Battles over the last few posts, and that’s unlikely to change as I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the game. Part of what’s made it fun for me has been the flexibility and general simplicity of the ruleset. It’s meant that for the last few weeks, units that I haven’t put on the battlefield for years have been taking part in some really fun games.
While most games we’ve played so far have been Lord of the Rings themed, we’ve been wondering if the rules would work well for games in the Warhammer setting. While we enjoy the new Warhammer the Old World rules, they’re quite complex and don’t necessarily make for a beginner friendly game. We have a few friends in our gaming group that are not wargamers (board games and roleplaying games are their usual fare), and haven’t really been interested in playing Warhammer before. They have however been enjoying the games of Midgard we’ve been playing, and have been happy to play more, which is great news for me!
This week I had a few of those friends over and we played a big game involving four armies: a loose alliance of Skaven and Undead against Dwarves and Bretonnians. Two of the players were wargaming novices, one is relatively new, and one is an enfranchised wargamer. I was running the game as a games master. Despite the lack of experience of most of the players, and the relatively large size of the game, we comfortably got through the game in an evening which is a testament to the rules.
The scenario I set up was as follows: the Skaven and Undead armies needed to hold onto a warpstone meteor while the Dwarf/Bretonnian alliance needed to get them clear of it. To spice things up some, I placed four isolated trees on the board (i.e. not on the forest bases), and after turn one revealed them to actually be treemen who were generally opposed to the idea of big battles being fought in their forests and went after whatever unit was closest. Despite this extra chaos the game was extremely close and ended with both sides within a single reputation point of each other (reputation tracks your force morale, if it’s at or below 0 at the end of the turn, you lose the game). The Skaven/Undead forces won the day, but it really could have gone either way.
Overall, the game was a success I’d say, all the players enjoyed themselves, the game was fun, and it generally felt like playing Warhammer without the big rules overhead. What was missing however was some of that Warhammer atmosphere that is generated by things such as wizards miscasting and Skaven wargear blowing up. Midgard as a low-fantasy/historical wargame does not really cater for this out of the box, but it is easy enough to add some house rules to capture this, and I’ll be doing that going forwards.
After this successful foray into playing Warhammer with Midgard, I’ve been excited about the possibilities. As I said in the opener, Midgard is a very flexible game system, and looks to be able to cater for some of the more esoteric things that can be found in the Warhammer setting and are not catered for in the normal Warhammer rules. With that in mind I’ve been reading through the late 80s/early 90s Realm of Chaos books which are probably about as esoteric as Warhammer gets (I’m sure I’ll be shown something more esoteric in the comments!), and having a great time imagining what that could look like in a game of Midgard.
Needless to say some of this energy was redirected towards miniature painting, and in this case towards this Chaos Sorcerer that I found in a case while scrounging for Chaos models for my Midgard/Realm of Chaos plans.
This is a really cool model that was released for Games Day 2010, and that I bought back then. It’s therefore been undercoated in a case for 15 years, and I was well past time I got some paint on him!
I had some fun with the skin (especially the parts with the extra limbs!). I’ve been trying to work on painting darker skin tones and I’d picked up some of the Duncan Rhodes/Two Thin Coats paints made for this purpose (Druid Flesh and Bard Skin). I really like how they worked, although I did feel they needed a touch of extra warmth so I glazed some Citadel Contrast Wyldwood over the top which did the trick.
The model has a lot of nice little details on it which were great fun to paint, the small hand holding the key to the book being my favourite.
I’m sure we’ll see this Sorcerer lead a Midgard contingent at some stage!
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.
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!
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!
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!
Ready to go!
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.
Initial setup.
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.
Lieutenant MacRae triumphant.
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!
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!
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!
Lair of the Lagomorph 