Kings of War - Mantic Wraiths

I recently painted a wraith for an undead warband for Vanguard and I liked the paint scheme so much I decided to do some more.  I have a set of two 500 point armies for teaching Kings of War, though it was built back in the days of first edition and was based on the Morgoth's Revenge boxed set.  To work in 2nd Edition it needs a bit of re jigging (an ongoing process that really deserves a box of it's own), and one change was the troop of wraiths.  Troops are now 10 minis rather than either 10 or 5, and the boxed set only had five of them.  When I finally tracked them down I was surprised to find that of the five I had only painted one!

Looking at what I had already painted a while ago I realized I wouldn't reliably be able to match the paint scheme (and I prefered the new wraith) so I moved the earlier wraith to the Vanguard warband, and painted up five new ones to go with the latest paint job.  If you're interested, the one I painted for Vanguard is the one on the left with the two handed sword.  Coincidentally the same pose as the older one that is now part of the Vanguard warband.

Six Mantic Wraiths

I'm happy to use just six wraiths to represent a troop of ten; the unit footprint is correct, and I've added some additional interest with a couple of gravestones.  The small one at the front (which marks the unit's centre point) is from the Mantic skeleton sprue; the larger one at the back is from the Renedra gravestones set, an excellent source of stuff for Undead bases.  I'm not too happy with the veining I tried on the marble, it looks more like biro graffiti, at least it's at the back of the unit and one day I'll go over it again and make it look more natural.

The wraiths were pretty easy to paint.  A white undercoat followed by VGC Bonewhite for the bones, followed by VGC Bright Bronze for the metal armour and similar.  Anything iron I painted in VGC Chainmail.  The metal was given a wash of black ink and the bones and iron a wash of AP Strongtone, then the robes were repainted white.  Once all this was done, the robes and armour were given a wash of VGC Green Ink, with touches of Dark Green ink in the deeper folds.  This ink nicely dulls the bronze and gives a feel of age.  As this is a bit of a special unit, at least in a small army, I added a few extra highlights to the bone and some of the weapons.  I'm really pleased with the effect, they almost glow.

The unit is based on a Warbases movement tray.  I've had these a while and I think I had them custom made (Warbases are excellent at that).  I got them originally for my elves, a long neglected project, and they have eight rather than ten holes that fit the circular base on the bottom of a Mantic mini.  The holes are offset as well, giving a rather irregular look.  I just filled in a couple of the holes since there were only six wraiths.

Once again I have used Luke's APS' basing scatter; this is the Arid Grasslands mix, as opposed to the Patchy Plains I used on the handgunners, which I think looks good for undead.  I haven't added any tufts (yet), but might try a few of the drier looking ones.

I've also been playing around with a new photo booth/light box thingy (a nice birthday pressie) and with editing the photos a bit.  I hope you can see an improvement.  I'm even going through some past photos on here and either replacing them or at least editing them to give (hopefully) better results.  So it might be worth revisiting past favourites (or not).  Please let me know if you think things have improved.

Various Vanguard Minis

I'm finding it difficult to settle on one project at the moment, can you tell?  At least I am tending to finish minis or units and the five box system is helping keep me on track.  Or on five tracks rather.

Anyway, I've been doing Vanguard things recently as well.  I suppose I could think of my handgunners as potential recruits for a Kingdoms of Men Vanguard force, but I have others on the go as well.  Way back when the game was beta tested I collected three of the four sample warbands.  I finished my goblins ages ago, and have been adding some of the KoW goblin metal heros to it; they are are part way through base coating now.
I also put together undead and dwarves, though until recently I hadn't got much beyond the basecoat stage of those.  A few weeks ago I dug out the dwarves to show a friend how to play, and more recently T'Other One (he of the awesome undead) came round and I ran him through a small game.
I have found that for a first game its easier to go for half size warbands.  There's a lot less going on, so the new concepts, such as Fatigue and Forced Fatigue seem more straight-forward.

As I suspected, T'Other One prefered to use undead, but alas, didn't have any ready singly based.  So I got a quick job done to get the undead sample warband table ready.

The game itself was fun, though the undead fared badly (partly due to me erroneously advising T'other One on the best tactics for undead.  Oops, sorry).  I suspect I'll see some of his undead shambling towards me in the near future.
I liked using the dwarves.  As a player who usually chooses orcs, goblins etc, it was nice to have troops that can take a bit of punishment.  While the dwarves took a lot of wounds between them, none of them fell.

I have since put some more work in on some of the Undead, and the dwarves need a bit of extra work too (I'm particularly unhappy with the yellow).  Here are the finished Undead, just a few more to go now, and I need to decide on what to use as a second necromancer for a full sized warband.

Skeletons and Revenants.  All Mantic models, and, I think, really nice.  

I need a shield design for the Revenants at least.  I'm tempted by a red rose in answer to T'Other One's white rose undead, but I can't quite bring myself to do that.

Wraith and Zombies.  Again mantic models.

Actually, this isn't the wraith we used in the above game.  I'll explain more about that in another post.  

Once again I look at my scenery and think it could do with improvement.  I have had some thoughts in that direction (as soon as a box becomes free) so I should be scenery building (and consolidating what I already have) in the near future.

Kingdoms of Men Reinforcements - Part five, Varnishing and Finishing

With the wash is dry I varnished the Handgunners to protect them.  I've owned minis for long enough to appreciate the value of a good coat of varnish; it doesn't prevent paint wearing off completely, but it minimises it.
Last time I mentioned that I might add some extra details, but I decided against it for now.  I can always add detail later, even after varnishing.
As I suggested I was a little disappointed with the finish after washing, particularly the yellow.  My son, knowing what a chore I had found putting on the highlights cheekily suggested I re-highlight.  I may even do this in the future, but not now.

The varnish I use is gloss yacht varnish, pretty robust stuff that should protect the paint from most things.  I brushed this on, rather than dipping, though I did drop one of the rear rank into the varnish.  After some work he seems OK, and very little different to the rest, so maybe in future?

Once the varnish is dry, and it takes a couple of days to be sure, especially in cool weather (what happened to that warm February?), I used Rowney Matt to dull down the shine.

At this point I decided to try something a little different for base texture.  Normally I would paint the bases Burnt Umber and then apply sand and PVA, plus another coat of thinned PVA to fix it, then paint the whole lot in Burnt Umber again, followed by a couple of drybrushes, then apply flock and tufts.
But I saw Luke of Luke's APS using a new (to me) product of his, Base Ready scatter.  You can see him using it here (and check out his channel, he has some great ideas).

It took a while to actually get some of this, and the Handgunners sat for a few weeks waiting patiently.  Eventually it arrived, along with the recommended glue (some sort of rubber solution glue?).  It's easy to apply and looks good.  However, I didn't have enough long tufts to finish off the regiment (short tufts tend to get lost in and among the rest of the base texture).  My Chillcon haul sorted that, so finally, here they are.

I really like the effect the base ready scatter gives, but it's very different from the rest of my bases, so I might use this for the Kingdoms of Men from now on, and eventually and gradually rebase the existing models.

There are a couple of points though.  The glue seems very good, but I suspect there will be some shedding.  I might give them a sealing coat of thinned PVA.  Also some of the grit is rich in iron (its the bits that give the darker shades).  Fine, but it tends to stick to the magnets on the bases.  I suppose that sorts out the problem of any loose scatter; it sticks to the bottom of the base.

So that's another regiment for the Kingdoms of Men.  I'll most likely use them as two troops in the game, but I knew if I only painted ten, it would take me ages to get round to doing the rest (and I've at least as many to do again).  I haven't included any command models, I tend not to with missile troops, but I might convert something as a leader, in which case, he can replace one of the front rank and that gives me a spare handgunner for the next regiment. 

I have several more units planned for the Kingdoms, all drawn from my unpainted Empire minis.  But they will have to wait for now, as I might get some scenery sorted first.

Chillcon Haul

Yesterday it was Chillcon, one of my favourite wargames shows.  I'll admit I don't cope well with crowds, so the bigger shows, like Vapnartak, are not for me.

Anyway, what was the show like, and what did I get to add to my MABLE*?

The show was great, it was clearly busy, but not too crowded as the space available was ample.
I went with a list, both for myself and for Merlin.  Alas, I couldn't find anything from his list, and my list was only partially filled.

Thud and Blunder, since Merlin got this I was determined to track it down.  It uses essentially the same engine as In her Majesty's Name and Blood Eagle, but is far more geared to a traditional fantasy game (there are pages of spells for instance, and there are sample characters to make up an adventuring party).  I hope this will give me the opportunity to play games with pretty much any fantasy minis I have.  I certainly have no real complaints with the Blood Eagle games I played a while ago, though I suspect on a much larger scale the granularity of the game might slow it down somewhat.

I theory, I shouldn't need to paint anything up for this as I have stuff for Vanguard, plus loads of D&D minis of various sorts.  I'm sure I will do a dedicated warband though.

Dwarven MDF cut terrain from Lasercut Architect. I've seen these two dwarven buildings on the internet before, in real life they were good enough for me to buy.  There is a third, slightly larger, building and a bridge in the same style.  If cottage 1 (on the left) looks slightly familiar, it is based loosely on a card model of a dwarven brewery that was available in a scenario pack many years ago.  I liked the original and always planned to build one of my own.  Now I don't have to.  The designer was interested to hear that there could be a market for similar buildings in 15mm.  

I have a terrain project planned for the near future, so these will come in useful.

Oathsworn under their 'Sensible Shoes' label.  I've not noticed these before, but they are nice minis for RPG characters (and a few monsters).  My new D&D campaign features Dragonborn as an important PC/NPC race, so I was pleased to add to my currently small collection.  

Tieflings this time.  My son likes these, so I picked up what we could find.

I needed some good sized tufts to finish of some bases (then I can show the handgunners).  I can pick up Army painter stuff quite easily in my FLGS, but these were a little more out of the ordinary.

Mantic were selling packs of the Star Saga scenery at a very reasonable price, so I got a pack to use as extra stuff for Deadzone.  I understand that interactive scenery will be a thing in DZ soon.

There were many impressive display games; Mantic's Vanguard was particularly appealing, but for sheer nostalgia this was awesome. 

This is Dark Ops' 3D Heroquest board.  I'm sure this boardgame (released in the 1980s, don't you feel old now?) is responsible for more people joining the hobby than pretty much anything else.

What didn't I get?  Well I wanted some bases from Warbases, but I didn't think to order them in advance.  I'll put in a postal order.  I was also after a few odd minis; a plastic GW archer to complete my kingdoms of Men archer regiment, and some old school minis for another mini project i have coming up.  

It didn't matter though, I'm more than happy with what I got, and when it comes down to adding to the lead pile, there are only two new minis for me (plus a bit of terrain admittedly).

*Miniatures Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy

Blog Blitzing

I'm just back from a lovely short break to discover I am another year older.  It was too short a break to bother taking any hobby stuff; I did take a notebook for ideas for the new D&D campaign, but didn't manage much more than a handful of place names.  I did, however, indulge in what I call 'Blog Blitzing'.  This involves choosing a hopefully interesting hobby blog, going right back to the first post, and reading all the entries (and often the comments too).

I find it fascinating to do, you can see the writer's style developing over the years and the posts, and I've always managed to pick up something useful.

In the past I've blitzed Chris Palmer's All bones About It which gave me inspiration for painting my Reaper Bones, and his companion blog, One More Gaming Project. which encouraged me to try and start a Frostgrave campaign.  Aki's Too Much Lead got me thinking tactically about how I play wargames, and Gunbird's 20mm And Then Some taught me the five box system (and he has produced some excellent terrain pieces).

This time it was Orlygg's Realm Of Chaos 80s.
While I don't think I'll ever be an Oldhammer player, I marvel at some of the paint jobs on there, and I certainly agree with him regarding the quality of some of Games Workshop's earlier work.  In fact I'd go so far as to say that some of the even earlier, pre slotta based stuff was as good if not better.  I suspect we are both looking back at the hobby to the time when we first became hooked so to us it is a 'golden age'.
His pieces looking at the history of GW are fascinating, and reminded me that at least one exGW luminary was once a member of the same gaming club as myself.

I am in the midst of a grand clear out at the moment, and I have a bit of Oldhammer stuff still left.  I am going to paint up a few of my favourites, but I think a lot of it probably deserves to go to the people who will get the most from it.

Now what to keep?

Temptation - When to Resist and When to Give In

"I can resist everything except temptation" - Oscar Wilde

Recently a new member of my Facebook group, New (Model) Army 2019 posted some lovely pictures of his 10mm fantasy, which led to discussion of rules and got me thinking about dragging out my old Warmaster rulebook, or trying Battle of the Five Armies (which I owned, but never tried).

Eventually I decided against it (for now); I ran through a checklist which I am using whenever I am tempted by a new system or set of minis.

Given that I suspect most of us are subject to temptation with all the lovely new shiny minis and rule sets that seem to keep springing up, I thought I'd share it in case it's of any use to anyone else.
After all, we none of us have unlimited hobby time, and I suspect most of us have been in the position of buying a new game and preparing for it only for it to only get played once or twice, or even not at all.  There's a cognitive load involved with learning new rules, and I sometimes wonder if it's worth it, especially as I get older.

So I came up with this checklist that I try to go through.  Where possible I do some research, reading online reviews etc and see how many of these I can answer.

In no particular order;

Does it sound fun?

Will I get other people to play it?

Do I already have minis for it?

Do I already have terrain for it?

Reading reviews does it seem like a relatively simple system?

Is there some sort of tie in with other games?

Is it adaptable to different settings?

Are games relatively fast or would they take all day?

Do I already have something that I enjoy playing that does the same thing or similar?

OK, so its not a rigorously scientific system, but it gives me some basis on which to justify my decision.

I used this when I heard that Thud and Blunder was coming out.  This is a skirmish system from The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare.  I have enjoyed their Blood Eagle game, and I have In Her Majesty's Name, which looks fun (someday I'll drag out my Empire of the Dead minis to try with IHMN). 

However, as I am playing Vanguard, I did wonder if it was worth getting a new system that looks like it does many of the same things.  This list helped me decide.

On a side note, and something else that has had me thinking, was an idea I heard about on a documentary on Hornby.  Apparently, plastic kit modellers (Hornby owns Airfix, in case you didn't know) refer to SABLE, or Stock Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy.  Maybe gamers have their own version, MABLE?

How do you decide if you want to start a new game?  Do you try to think it through or is it more of an impulse thing?  Comments below please.

Oh, and I will be looking for Thud and Blunder at Chillcon.  I liked Blood Eagle enough to give it a go, and I already have loads of suitable minis, in fact, I hope I can use my Vanguard warbands.  Warmaster/Battle of the Five Armies, on the other hand, didn't get enough positives, mostly due to the lack of minis and terrain, so that idea has been (reluctantly) put away for now.

Kings of War League of Rhordia, Repairs and Additions

When I did my round up of last year, I mentioned that my League Army , begun in November 2017, had suffered an accident.  I knocked the box from my loft, and the minis were all jumbled and some clearly damaged.  I found it too depressing to investigate further, so they went away into storage.
Last week I was discussing with Merlin what we should play for our annual Easter game and 15mm KoW came up, so I finally plucked up courage to dig them out again and have a look.

Oops!

Well, there's clearly some work needs doing, but nothing is completely destroyed.  Banners seem to have come off badly, but since I want to redo the heraldry, I suppose I should think of that as an opportunity.  I might also replace the now rather wonky lances on the knights, and some of the spears are the worse for wear paintwise.

That's better!

In the process of sorting stuff out I found a bag of unpainted Essex crossbows which must date back to when I was originally collecting these for Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  I thought they would make an ideal project for while the varnish on the Kingdoms of Men handgunners was drying. I think I have decided that Circle box, which currently contains 15mm Greeks, could stretch a bit to include some 15mm for the League, I might even move the ancients into storage on the grounds that they haven't been touched since I started the box system.

After working through twenty handgunners in 28mm, twenty crossbowmen in 15mm seemed easy.  Again I worked through them doing each pose together.  This time they were stuck to large lollipop sticks, as I did with my Greeks last year.

Ten of the crossbows awaiting varnishing and basing.  I'll do a load at once as I plan on painting some more 15mm over the coming weeks.  They are brighter in real life, the yellow especially is brighter than the 28mm handgunners as I made a couple of changes to my technique.

I have decided that my version of the League of Rhordia will have mostly two colour uniforms (rather like the old Warhammer Empire).  Each of the five cities will have two colour combinations, and will share it's colours with the cities on either side of it.  I will also, where possible, choose slightly different styles of minis for the different cities.  For example, Eowulf, the principal city in the League, has blue and red as its colours.  It is the most advanced technologically and socially, so the minis are mostly late Renaissance.  Another city has red and yellow for its colours (yup, if I ever decide to do this in 28mm, I'll be using my new handguners), then yellow and green.  I painted a troop of halberdiers in yellow and green when I began sorting out my League army; these new crossbows will go with them.  They are less advanced, so I'll draw their minis mostly from Medieval or Early Renaissance ranges.  When I get round to banners, they will feature a five pointed star, possibly inside a pentagon, with each point in the two colours of one of the cities.  Each regiment will have some sort of heraldic symbol in the centre of the star, and I might find a way to emphasise the city's colours as well.

A delve into the unpainted lead pile suggests that some more halflings will be next though, whilst not the Dogs of War regiment, dogs will certainly be involved.

Kingdoms of Men Reinforcements - Part four, Washing

Last time the Handgunners had been highlighted and I decided to test one of them with Army Painter Strongtone wash.  Well the test model came out OK; not as bright as I would have liked, especially on the yellows, but the red looked good.

Washed mini on the left

Rear view of the same two minis

I had to decide if I should go ahead with the wash or try some other method of shading (perhaps a more targeted wash?) or even accept them as they were.  Remember, the idea is to get a regiment on the table quickly and for them to look good from a short distance; not produce a finely detailed mini such as I might do for RPG characters.

I the end I thought the wash improved enough of the model, especially the flesh and the red clothing, to go ahead.

The full regiment of twenty

Once the wash is fully dry I might add a few little touches (or not), then it's on to varnishing.  Given the current unseasonally warm weather, the drying shouldn't take too long.