A Kindness From a Friend I've Yet to Meet

A small parcel arrived in the post late last week, sent entirely out of kindness by one of those beloved wargamer friends that we haven’t yet met.  

In this case, the friend is Dai, one of the regular readers of this blog,  Dai is a fellow blogger, who does interesting and lovely projects in WW2, among other stuff.   We’ve exchanged emails and messages for years and encouraged one another in our lives’ ups and downs, but I’ve never met him, and I earnestly hope to do so if I can make it to California some day.

Dai knows that I am fond of Tolkien and have quite a few of the GW figures for my LOTR gaming, with an especial fondness for the Rohirrim, so he sent me these figures from his stash, thinking I could make better use of them then he can

Well, I hope he’s right.  These are lovely figures, and while I can break the GW horses off their bases just by looking at them the wrong way, they have great potential for painting and I can’t wait to get at them.

Thank you Dai!   You are too kind, and a fine example of what young Conrad Kinch likes to call “The Freemasonry of the Hobby”.

Speaking of Rohirim, recently I got one of those “You may like these …” from Kickstarte, and my eye was caught by a project called Riders of the Plains,  a set of STL files for figures that looked suspiciously like these, only slightly different.   I suppose a lawyer might have said they were just generic Gothic dark ages cavalry, but what appears to have killed the project was that the creators called themselves The Hobbit Hole.  That was too much for Warner Bros, which now apparently owns the Tolkien IP universe, and they killed the project faster than a Nazgul can screech something fell in it’s fell voice.    Had the project called itself something else, like “Small Cute Things Living Below Ground”,  they might have gotten away with it.  Anyway, my backing evaporated along with the project, but at least I have these fellows (and, to be honest, many more like them) to paint.

Cheers and blessings to your brushes,

MP+

Friday Fantasy: Thistle and Rose Barbarian Raider Cavalry

These four rough and smelly riders are finished and mustered into the ranks of the wild Dunlending hillmen opposing the Kingdom of Rohan for my Lord of the Rings gaming.   These are 28mm sculpts from the Vendel catalogue that was taken over a few years ago by Thistle and Rose miniatures.  I have quite a few of their hillmen foot counterparts, which I’ve collected to use as allies of my Isengard orc and Uruk army in the service of Saruman, so it’s nice to have a small mounted capability for my Dunlendings.

 These are very basic sculpts, with minimal detail, but they have their own old schoo charm, rather similar to Minifigs in style.    The horses supplied are likewise very basic, without a ton of detail.   Because they’re such simple minis, I painted them much more quickly and basically then I usually do for, say, Seven Years War figures.   I had to drill out the hands to fit the spears supplied with the minis.

 

I don’t imagine that the Dunlendings would have mustered many horsemen.   As I imagine it, they’ve been pushed into the hills  and lower mountains over the centuries by the Rohirrim, fighting a guerrilla war against Rohan’s border forts and garrisons, and retreating where the Horse Lords’ cavalry can’t reach them.  They would likely have a small number of sturdy, smaller horses suited to the rough country and useful for raiding the occasional village.  As you can see by the one shield, they have received some arms and pay from Isengard, who find the Dunlendings useful for keeping Rohan off guard.

One of the sets of rules I want to use for this sort of fighting is the Dux rules by Too Fat Lardies, and in the Dux the Raiders supplement there is some provision for small bands of raider cavalry, so these chaps will do nicely.  Those sheep a few posts back are now in a lot more danger!

 

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

May Sheep Safely Graze? Some Table Livestock

A bit of a backlog of finished figures to show off this week.  I’ll start with these 28mm eight sheep from Wargamer Foundry.  They’re Foundry’s code GPR066 Flock of Sheep.  They’ll be useful as tabletop scatter, objective markers for Dark Ages /LOTR gaming (“what about them sheep?  They look tasty!”), and so forth.

 I’ve painted them as per the sheep from the box art of Yorkshire Tea, which is the household staple here.   Fairly quick and dirty, but they’re not baaaaaaad.  (You knew there would be a sheep pun here, didn’t you?). 

Someone on Twitter said that they were just Warhammer Fantasy Battles Beastmen in disguise, which I thought was quite clever!

Nothing more to say about these guys, so I’ll just flock off.

Cheers and thanks for looking,

MP+

Not 

#Fantasy Friday: Reaper Centaur Archer

 

 

 

I haven’t had many fantasy figures in the painting queue of late, but I recently finished a one-ff, a Reaper miniature of a centaur which will go to reinforce my army of the Elven Woodland Realm.  This army has a large number of female figures (including a dryad) so this figure is highly suitable.   

I will be doing some F2F Dragon Rampant gaming this weekend, so may get the itch to paint a few more of the centaurs in my lead pile and perhaps build this into a small unit.

I used Citadel contrast Green for her bodice, and tried a few attempts to develop the shading on the horse part, perhaps only partially successfully.

 

An interesting figure to paint.

Blessings to your brushes!  

MP+

#FantasyFriday: Oathmark / North Star Goblin Wolf Riders

Ready to storm out of the mountains and pillage the vales of Men, here is a unit of fifteen horrible 28mm goblin wolf-riders to add to my Middle Earth collection.   I’m not rally sure how a bunch of nasty ferocious wolves would consent to being hidden around by an even more horrible pack of smelly loutish goblins, nor for that matter do I understand how the goblins can ride them without saddles, harness, reigns, etc.  Maybe that’s the tradeoff.

Shooty types.   I like how the North Star Oathmark kits come with a wide variety of weapons and gear, and assemble easily.  Likewise the wolves are simple two part models and go together without too obvious joining lines.   They painted up well enough with some simple drybrushing.

Stabby types with their Sacred Skull of Whatsit Standard.  

Chopper types.

Quite pleased with them overall - generic enough for simple fantasy points battle, but atmospheric enough to be in the empty of either the White Hand or the Lidless Eye.   Maybe there’s an Osprey book, “Mordor’s Minor Allies”, to be written.   They should give the Rohirim cause for concern.

Thanks for looking.  Blessings to your brushes!

MP+

 

Nasty Nazgul, or, Mordor's Mounted Minions

Missed the Fantasy Friday deadline, but here are two dangerous Nazgul types for my LOTR collection to terrify both the legions of Mordor and their foes.   Both are Games Workshop figures.  The one on the left is the King of the Nazgul when GW used to make metal figures.    On the right is a plastic alternative rider for the Fell Beast that came in the Pelennor Fields boxed set I mentioned here recently.   I decided to keep him, and found a caparisoned medieval horse in the lead mountain that promised to work well when painted black.

 

\Painting black is an art form that greatly intimidates me.  I started with a Citadel Chaos Black spray undercoat, then highlighted in Vallejo German Gray, then added Folkart craft store indigo highlights, and finally some dry brushing as I finished the bases to suggest dust and dirt on the fabric.   I think they’re reasonably spooky and unpleasant and should add some biting power to the hordes of Mordor.

I really think I should start work on that mounted Gandalf figure i have tucked away - I think he’ll be needed!

Cheers and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Friday Fantasy: GW Ringwraith on Fell Beast (or, Meanwhile, in Mordor)

As a rule I disapprove of super-monstrous units on the wargaming table.  My WW2 collection only has one 15mm and 1 20mm early-model Tiger tank, and you will search my collection in vain for a Maus, JSII, or King Tiger.   I confess I look askance at people who are all too ready to put such figures, or a French army consisting of just the Imperial Guard, on the table.  It’s just not right.   If you can’t eke out a win with PzIIIs, T34s or line infantry, then you aren’t really trying.   OK, I’ve confessed my prejudice, feel free to disagree.

However, if one is going to do the Lord of the Rings in a large way, then there are certain epic fights where you want a Nazgul lord on a horrid flappy mount, because if nothing else, you want to motivate your orc hordes to throw themselves onto the bright spears and swords of their noble foes.    When I found a Battle of the Pelennor Fields box set in my local games store at 50% off because, said the owner, no one wants this stuff anymore, I jumped at the opportunity, because it included a number of large models in plastic, including this guy.

I didn’t put a massive amount of work into the painting.  I started with an undercoat of Vallejo German Grey primer and then drybrushed with several lighter shades of grey craft store paint.  I picked out the veins in the wings with a medium grey.   The Ringwraith was black with successive shades of grey highlights on the folds of the robe, while his armour was Citadel Warplock Bronze, then a wash of Nuln Oil, then a dry brush of gunmetal.  I put the most work into the ringwraith’s sword.

 

I think most of my effort went into the detail on the base, to be honest.

This figure will mostly sit in my display cabinet, but if it ever makes it onto to the table, it would only be for a very large scale battle.   If using Dragon Rampant (my friend James and I really haven’t found a better set of rules for big fantasy battles), I would give him the Goader ability to make the two closest units move automatically, as well as make Good units within a certain radius (at least a foot, I would think) check for Fear unless an equivalent hero like Gandalf was on the table.   

Thanks for looking and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Fantasy Friday: Landsknecht Otter

I painted this 28mm Oathsworn figure at the request of my son, who is an RPG guy and is into Burrows and Badgers.  It was a heck of a lot of fun to paint, beautiful sculpt.   Very tempted to order some for my self, but I really don't need another gaming/painting interest!

If you follow me on Twitter (@marshalluigi), you’ll know that I have a pretty good GIF game that often features cute otters.   This fellow is definitely not cute or cuddly.  I texted these photos to John in BC and he wrote back “Full of bravado, full of himself”.

Thanks for looking.   I have a figure lined up for next week’s Fantasy Friday but it’s certainly not as cute.

Cheers and blessings to your brushes.  A happy bank holiday to my UK and Irish readers.

MP+

Meanwhile in Rohan 9: The Muster of the Shieldwomen

Good evening friends:

As readers of this blog will know, the world of JRR Tolkien is an abiding gaming interest of mine, and the Rohirrim are by far my favourite army of that mythology.   Some years back I purchased several sets of Dark Ages women warriors from Bad Squiddo Games, thinking they would do nicely to augment my Rohan figures (who are, not surprisingly, all male).  It makes sense that in the existential threat that a raid on a village or fortress would pose, there would be women who would take up arms and even know how to use them (the subplot with Eowyn in LOTR and the novelty of her bearing arms betrays Tolkien as being a product of his generation, I think).

Anyway, Annie at Bad Squiddo does a nice range of female warriors that seemed suitable and I am using this pandemic time to finish old lots of figures from the lead mountain, so here are the ten I purchased some years back.

 

These two figures are lovely sculpts from Alan Marsh.  The banner is from a set of Saxon flags from Little Big Men Studios.

 

The remainder of these figures no longer appear on the Bad Squiddo website.  They are sculpts by Phil Hynes, who doesn’t appear to work for Annie any more - at least, his name doesn’t appear on her site.  The shields are done freehand, a lot of inspiration from my friend James, and I’m happy with these two in particular, even if the eyes on the one on the right are lopsided!

Anyway they are good sculpts, some better than others in terms of quality.   I enjoyed the fact that they aren’t all young supple warriors - these two are grannies that are just not having any Uruk-Hai crap, and as I creep towards my sixties, I’m ok with that.

 

 

There are tons of new Dark Ages sculpts in Annie’s shop that would be suitable for Rohirrim (including riders!) since my last visit there, as well as lots of interesting scatter terrain, so I am sure I shall be a returning customer.

Thanks for looking, and blessings to your brushes!

MP+

Raid On The Elven Woodland Realm: A Dragon Rampant Report

Not feeling up to some more complicated historical rules, much as I enjoy them on occasion, I wanted to get my fantasy collection on the table and give some new figures an outing.   Thus, the Wizard La Main Blanche rallied his unspeakable hordes and marched on the Elven Woodland Realm to pillage its magical mushrooms, or some such.   Orc army of about 60 its in Dragon Rampant terms, with an Elite Spellcaster and a heavily armoured troll (Great Warbeast).

In the centre, the Lady of the Wood, also an Elite Spellcaster, places herself along with her best foot: heavy archers, heavy foot, and elite foot.  

On her right, she places one of three units of Wood Nymph scouts and the Dryad Queen (Great Warbeast Cunning).  On her left, two more units of Nymph scouts and the Lord of the Bears (also Great Warbeast Cunning).  To reflect the home field advantage, I made the woods impassable to any Evil units except those with the Ranger ability.

With only one leader one per side, I played the Initiative rules fairly strictly, so a lot of false starts, but in one good turn the entire army of the Wizard lurched forward.  On the Wizard’s left the Troll got off to a fast start and might have closed with and bashed the Elven Heavy Archers but for a missed initiative roll.   That gave the archers time to pepper him at close range and the Bear Lord closed to deliver some serious Bear Bashes/

Having smashed the Troll, the Bear Lord then decided that he wanted to pick his teeth with some orc swords.  With some favourable initiative rolls, he basically ran the table in the centre, smashing the orc foot unit by unit as they slowly made its way forward.

Elven nymph scouts on the flanks made life miserable for the advancing orc foot with their missile fire.

The Wizard’s wolf riders (Heavy Riders Missile) attempt to put pressure on the elf centre,  but the Dryad Queen has other ideas once the riders get within range of her Wild Charge.

As the Wizard’s right flank crumbles, the Nymphs begin to lap around the flank, and with the Wizard’s army now below 50% and the Elven Host barely scratched, I decided to call it a game.

The star of the game.  This lovely resin model from Thistle and Rose miniatures really fits into the overall theme of my Elven army and did extremely well on its first outing. He will definitely get a pot of honey after the battle.

 

 

While I could have tried to remember the Oathmark rules, Dragon and Rampant was a perfect way to while away a snowy afternoon.  These remain my go-to rules for cheerful fantasy gaming.   

With the Wizard and his surviving host still at large, I am sure that the Elven Realm still faces greater threats.

Blessings to your die rolls!

MP+

 

Meanwhile, in Mordor

Hello friends!

My new (since June) post-retirement church job has kept me happily busy, along with finding safe day-trips to do with Joy during a stay-at-home summer.   I was able to use part of the last few months to finish this lot of orcs for my Lord of the Rings collection.  What a horrible lot!

This batch includes a GW orc captain from the lad pile, as well as eight Thistle and Rose (formerly Vendel) orcs, painted in Mordor livery.  I love that they are well wearing the same baggy trousers and puttees, it gives them a bit of a regular army look, the 3/92nd North Mordor Foot, maybe.  If you want to see Thisle and Rose figures well painted, visit Rabbit Man’s blog.

“Roiht, you ‘orrible lot, what do you do when you sees an Elf Lord?  You stick him, see!  No, don’t bleeding tickle him, STICK HIM!"

This ‘orrible lot also includes a box of Oathmark goblins that I purchased May 2019.   I built some as archers:

Spear chaps without shields.  Sorry the photos are rather dark.

Shields and hand weapons.  Tried for a general red and black theme to the shields, with some Mordor Eye livery, some more tribal.

Shields and shabby sticks.

Regimental photo before marching off to Gondor.

In general I found the Oathmark plastic figures to be easy to assemble, with a pleasing variety of weapons and gear.  While the Oathmark universe, from what I’ve seen of the rule books, is standalone fantasy, the figures fit well with my existing LOTR collection and have a Tolkienesque feel to them.  I haven’t done the math to see if they are cheaper than GW plastics, but they add a variety of poses to the Perry orc sculpts, so I may order a few more boxes over time, though the old Vendel figures, happily back in production through Thistle and Rose, are appealing..  I currently have a box of Oathmark wolf riders half-assembled to tackle next.

Blessings to your brushes!  

MP+ 

 

 

Meanwhile in Rohan 8

This post will be much less interesting than the last one, as there are 100% no scantily dressed figures.   I got a bit of flack for posting the elf maiden photos on the Wargaming in Middle Earth Facebook page and rapidly deleted the post.  I never thought I was creepy, but apparently some did, so lesson learned.

So to today’s duller content.   Here are 12 Walkers of Rohan, bog-standard Rohirrim foot fighters, fresh off the Games Workshop sprue.

No mods of any sort.  The only concession to originality was to give a few of them grey cloaks vice the usual green cloaks.  I also made some attempt to change up the colours on the shields by using some blues and reds for variety.

Archers.  Can’t have enough of these chaps, especially for a siege game.  I have plans.

Fellow in the foreground is a bit of an oldster.  My white hair is almost as long as his in these lockdown days.

The most creative thing in this post is this Gripping Beast lead figure, of Alfred the Great, repurposed as a Lord of Rohan.  The shield transfer is from Little Big Men Studios.  

 

 Blessings to you brushes!

MP+

Meanwhile - In the Elven Woodland Realms 4

Good morning from my part of Canada, where the spring has finally come in the latter part of May and we actually turning on the air conditioning yesterday!

Not sure these figures are dressed for AC.  Come to think of it, they’re not really dressed at all!   I’m a little embarrassed, being a vicar and all, about these figures, but I loved the aesthetic of the old War-games Foundry Realms of Faerie line and some years ago I jumped at the chance to buy the figures.    I’ve been intimidated about painting them, because flesh tones are hard to do right, but I’m reasonably happy with the way they’ve turned out.

These fierce young ladies join an existing cohort of finished figures to make a fairly distinctive war band for Dragon Rampant.  I’ve always enjoyed the comments of other gamers when their comrades appear on the table, so I expect these figures will raise some eyebrows.

 I modified the banner bearer to add a Games Workshop Uruk Hai head as a Middle Earth tie in.  Perhaps these figures are part of Galadriel’s secret service commando unit.  Professor Tolkien would doubtless frown in disapproval, but there you go.

 She’s a strong lass to hold all that up.

 Blessings to your brushes!

MP+