Skeledins - My first 15mm sculpts

The results of my first efforts in full figure sculpting - Skeledins!

About 18mm to the eyes... (they're big'uns).

They ended up a bit stumpy and I'm not entirely pleased with any of it, but I'll hazard a guess that there's nothing like them on the market right now. It is my goal with these sculpts to bring proper towering, evil knights to 15mm fantasy. Maybe I'll submit them for SHM, but I'm not sure at this point.

Song of Blades and Heroes Demo Night

Some shots from my Song of Blades and Heroes demo at a local game night.

The game itself went pretty well. I had a mother and her two children playing; the Brass Dwarves sat out the game (which is just as well considering that they are the ones I've got most personal ownership over). The game's objective was to steal treasure tokens from my 295 point White Dragon and possibly kill him. The dragon went largely unmolested during the game as these inexperienced players weren't able to set up a good combination attack to wound him. The mother and daughter both picked up the game pretty well and were able to tie the game; both the Greenskins and Romans did pretty well, probably due to being fairly balanced warbands. The Undead did not fair so well, largely due to their player forgetting to activate high quality models first (one turn he started with a zombie, rolling all three dice). I may have to run this game again, but I'd really like to get some serious (and adult) players who don't mind running a campaign game.

This night's efforts... figures for Song of Blades and Heroes

I'm running a game demo for Song of Blades and Heroes tomorrow, and I spent tonight painting up some Heroquest and metal figures for it. I'm rather unhappy with the mummy, but the Chaos Warriors, Sorceror, Dwarf Sorceror, and Chaos Dwarf Bazooka turned out pretty well.

I'm running a fairly simple scenario: four warbands try to steal treasure from a GM-controlled dragon; whoever gets the most of the board wins. Brass Dwarves, Undead, Romans, and an Ogre-lead greenskin warband will be competing against my scary white dragon. I've still got to get warband rosters and two more reference templates printed out before I head to the gaming hall.

RRtK Brass Dwarves vs. Romans - Post Battle

Perhaps in the future I'll start writing proper battle reports for these, but since I was trying out a new style of rules solo, I didn't think what I'd done would be very interesting to most.

Having played one game, here are a few observations/comments/foolishness on my part:

• Terror Troops does not seem to be an adequate rule to account for the infantry-mowing capabilities of a steam tank. In the future I will stat it out as Shock Cavalry.
• I had two infantry units come up with the "Giving Ground" result, and ultimately decided that the best way to resolve it would be to give each a hit and leave them in melee.
• As far as I can tell a element that has received it's Rep in hits or worse will automatically rout the next time it is forced to take a test, which is cool.
• The steam tank and Equites spent a few rounds pounding on each other, with the Equites giving better than it got, but having forced the tank to retire a way's back allowed it to use its small calibre guns to good effect, ultimately destroying the weaker Equites unit.
• This is the last time that I'll move my mounted CinC into range for a flank charge from an elite pike unit. I would have been better served by wheeling my cannon so that I could fire at the slow-moving pike formation.
• The Dwarves may well have too many crossbows (which is mostly Irregular's fault for the pack composition, and also my choice to include 2 strips, rather than three on a base); their center was composed almost entirely of them, and were successful in shooting my Legionnaires to bitz before they even reached charge range.

In the future I will be tweaking lists, adding more figures (the Romans definitely need some skirmishers of some sort), adding mercenaries, etc... but overall I found it a fun and interesting way to spend a couple of hours.

A Line in the Sand

The Roman Battle line prepares to face the Imperial Brass Dwarf army.

Coming tomorrow:

The first wargaming I've done in months as well as my very first game of Rally Round the King!

The Imperial Brass Dwarves commanded by Lord Radam Zaal

vs.

The 13th Roman Legion commanded by Maximus Decimus Gallus

High Elves for Rally Round the King

What follows is my High Elf army, the contents of 15mm.co.uk's High Elf army for HotT. Color schemes are based on the 5th edition Warhammer Battle Book with a few Eldar transfers to jazz up their shields. All are based on stock plastic bases with some sand and PVA glue.

High Elf Spears:
The core of any High Elven army, too bad I only have 4 stands. Also, try as I might I could not get a good picture of them.

Silver Helms:
High Elf Heavy Cavalry; they're actually a pretty good match for the Silver Helms in the Battle Book. Too bad AA doesn't make a warhorse with heavy barding. Also of note, AA horses are huge.

High Elf Outriders:
These are my stand-in for the bow and spear-armed Ellyrian Reavers; unfortunately the spear-armed horsemen were in another pack. Regardless, they fulfill the role of mounted skirmishers.

High Elf Mage:
He's a pretty weird-looking guy, what with the wings and all, but will represent my Magic User stand. Besides, what's an elf army without powerful spellcasters?

High Elf General on Griffon:
This conversion ended up being a lot more difficult than the picture on the 15mm.co.uk website led me to believe. After much chopping off of pieces of the general's saddle I finally gave up and shoved a glob of green stuff between her legs and called it good. I'm not sure how she'll be statted, but she makes for a nice army centerpiece.

Rally Round The King

For those not on the Two Hour Wargames mailing list (you should be), Ed has stated that he should be releasing "Rally Round The King", an updated version of the old Warrior Heroes element-based fantasy ruleset, which were in turn based on an older set of ancients rules. The ruleset's big draws for me is that once the armies are on the table, they pretty much run themselves via the Reaction System, and that there is an extensive solo campaign system that takes into account diplomacy and economic issues during the game. Having read much of the old Warrior Kings rulebook, I can tell that this new book is likely to be a godsend for solo gamers like myself that are looking to run fantasy mass battles.

For more information, please check out the Two Hour Wargames Yahoo Group and watch this space for a potential Rally Round The King fantasy campaign (if my purchases at Fall-in go well).

P.S. I also recommend that any interested parties take a gander at Talomir Tales, an extensive campaign in progress using the old Warrior Heroes and Warrior Heroes:Armies and Adventurers (skirmish/mass skirmish THW system).

Look, I've graduated...

No more LiveJournal posts to an unappreciative audience for me.

My objective in this blog is to chronicle the trials and tribulations of my various miniature wargaming projects, and hopefully motivate me to take more photographs. If at all possible I'd like to include WIP shots of all my various figures.

As of this week, I've accomplished nothing in the realm of miniature wargaming, though I did receive a copy of Future War Commander for my birthday, and I am looking forward to showing it to my local group this weekend.

Speaking of which, on the docket for this weekend is the remainder of our homebrew "Battle for the Masses" 28mm Fantasy mass battle game. Things are looking grim for the "goodies" as my steamtank will surely break their elite Dwarf unit if the "baddies" win initiative. I hope to post a battle report of sorts next time.