More Defenders of the Three Shires

 Regulars from the Dancing Wolf

Finished off the militia unit with the Dancing Wolf banner. Which is the name of their local pub! So there are the repainted units. 

The whole army so far with both old and new elements. Despite Clive the Wyvern's early exit at the last battle. He is now firmly ensconced in the Halfling army. 

Just when I think I am finished. I find something else to add. I saw these dogs from Bad Squiddo at Salute and immediately thought of shepherd dogs. So these handlers will have to be converted. I also thinking about adding a small baggage train because they are halflings after all. 

Rob 

Random Christmas Project

 Six of the Best

Whilst browsing the internet, I came across this painting challenge on The Totally Random “6 Paints” Hobby Challenge | Heresy & Heroes (heresyandheroes.com)

Basically, the challenge is to paint one random figure with six random paints over Christmas. Now I am just coming to the end of a couple small projects and thought this would be a fun challenge to do over Christmas. 

1. The Figure

The Figure with trusty random number generators. 

So I dipped into figures and stuff box and came out with a Necron Immortal which a friend gave me as part of one those how to play WH40K magazines. I have painted many WH40K figures in the nineties but never a Necron as they didn't exist in the 1st edition rules. 

Now according to the Games Workshop website he should look something like the one below. But given my paint selection this one probably will not!

2. The Paints

Now I randomly selected two new paints on a trip to Hobby Craft today by start/stopping the timer on my phone and choosing the paint which corresponds to the number equal to the hundredth's of second score on the timer.

This gave me a grey from Revel and Deck Tan (Not even sure what Deck Tan is?) from Tamiya. 

Next up was the one metallic colour (maximum of one allowed) which rolled up Shinning Gold on the dice from my current selection of paints. Ironically, I also got this one from an earlier starter WH40K magazine.

A maximum of one shade is also allowed which rolled up Reikland Fleshshade. 

Leaving me with a Humbrol bright red and an old Citadel Enchanted blue from the 'normal' colours in my collection.  Now the enchanted blue is getting a bit dry and may have to replaced by a similar modern colour.  But I will see how I get on first. 

Now white and black can be used to lighten/darker these six colours but cannot be used on their own. I think you will a agree, definitely a random six paints. 

3. The Rules

The 6 Colours Random Mini Hobby Challenge Rules:

1. Select the mini at random. Use whatever method you wish to make the choice random and not yours or anyone else’s.
2. Ensure it is a single mini. If your chosen method produces a result that is too expensive, something you have painted before, or you really hate the mini, you can use a single mulligan to change to a different randomly selected mini.
3. Use any method to randomly select 6 paints. Exclude technical and contrast paints from the challenge, and there is a hard limit of one metallic paint and/or one shade/wash paint.
4. You are allowed to take a black and a white paint, but you may not use these on their own or unmixed on the mini – they must always be combined with at least one other colour.
5. You can mix your paints however you like with each other and/or with black and white.
6. You may pre-base your mini, but you can only use your six random paints and black and white paints to paint the base. 
7. There’s no official time limit, but try to complete your mini within 2 weeks (just so you never forget which paints you used!)

4. The Challenge

Now I have started to think about paint schemes. Now the obvious choice would be to go for a gold based colour scheme but the point of the challenge is to try different things. So I might go for a red/blue colour scheme making him look more Bladerunner than dark millennium. 

That's it for now on this one, I will start painting over Christmas. Trying to keep to the 2 week target when I start. 

Rob 

First Salute Buy Finished

 Tomb of Balin

The problem with going to a show like Salute is coming away with a load of new (& shiny) stuff which can push itself to the front of the painting queue. I am trying to feed in it slowly so that I can finish some of the projects I already started. 

However this choice was quick and easy one to get started, a small Sarcophagus from Blotz, MDF Terrain and Accessories. Which as soon as I saw it,  thought of the tomb of Balin.  Now I have played various  games  set in Balin's tomb but didn't have the key feature! At £3 this did seem a must have purchase, although not one my pre-Salute shopping list. But that is the beauty of going to shows is you get to see stuff that you don't expect. 

The rise in the number and quality of MDF terrain in the last couple of years has been a pleasant surprise and I did pick up a number of good looking MDF kits. 

There is one dwarf in Moria who still lives!

As expected this didn't take long to make and paint. Just a standard grey undercoat followed by various washes (Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade and Colia Greenshade) and bit of light grey dry brushing. 

A fun little to start reducing my Salute hoard.

Rob 

Chaos Beastmen Attack Village

 A.K.A. The Wheel of Time - Episode One

Just watched the first episode of the new Wheel of Time TV series by Amazon. Without giving away too many spoilers there is an attack on a village by group of Trollocs (I can only assume they were going for an amalgamation of Troll and Orc but ended up with something far worse! or maybe the writer was just taking the piss). However, I haven't read the books so I don't know what the official description of Trolloc  in the books is but in the TV series they are real dead-ringers for Chaos beastmen from Warhammer. 

I did try and find a picture of them from the show but couldn't so you will just have to watch it if you want to see what i am talking about.

Definitely NOT Trollocs!

Now I am not entirely sold on this series but if you want to see what chaos beastmen would look like attacking an isolated village then this is a pretty good place to start. Plus, the magic attacks were good as well. 

Rob 

Fantasy Warriors - The Post Lockdown Version

 I Played a Game!

I finally managed to get a game in and it was a game of Fantasy Warriors. It was really an opportunity to get all of my lockdown painting a table, have a catch up with some friends  and roll some dice. 

We didn't worry too much about working out a balanced games as I wanted to get all of my lockdown painted figures on a table at once. So we had Fae and Halflings  (Derek & I) vs. Undead and Chaos (Steve & Jason). I had to write up some army lists for the Fae and the Chaos armies as they are not featured in Fantasy Warriors. 

When we used to regularly play Fantasy Warriors we had started writing updates and potential rules changes for a v2.0 (As were all part of the Grenadier display team back in he 90s).  The main change on the day was using 2D6 instead of 1D6 for the amended  reaction tables. Using a single D6 means that any score is equally likely (1-6!) but using the total of 2D6 means that numbers around the middle (6-8) are much more likely than a 2 or 12. Meaning an extreme roll is possible on 2D6, however, most of the time a result inline with expectation occurs. So if you are doing well it is unlikely your guys are going to do something stupid. Also by keeping the modifiers from the rule book remain the same, they have a smaller influence on the overall outcome.

Whilst I remembered all of the figures , I did forget the counters (Fantasy Warrior's uses counters to indicate orders, reactions and ammo etc.) so we had to use our limited drawing skills.

Fantasy Warriors has a number of fun features which affect the course of the entire game. One of those is the time dial. The Fantasy Warriors uses of time of day in the game. The day is divided into 12 periods, six day and six night periods. The time of the battle can affect your force's morale and and shooting. It will probably be no surprise to find that armies like goblins and undead favour night whereas my halflings favour day.  So as a sign of things to come we managed to roll the first turn of night for the start of the battle. 

Whilst looking for a picture of a time dial, I did come across a website where someone had made on Katie the Wargamer: September 2015

One Up & One Down

The spectral wolves of the Wilde Hunt crashed into Grateful Dead skeletons on the far flank. This turned out to  be the most balanced fight of the game. The first units to engage and still battling it out  at the end. Blue Maeve the Fae hero did help out in the first couple of turns but she was called by her queen to help defeat the Nurgle Battleleader Fester in the centre of the battlefield.

They Got Crushed

At the other end of the scale was the halfling rangers against the troll chieftain and his two heavies. Not surprisingly it didn't end well for the halflings.  The halflings were suffering from bloodlust (the Fantasy Warriors version of frenzy). But it didn't help them.

The Battle

The Chaos right flank

Facing the Chaos were the Halflings including Clive the Wyvern

The Fae right flank ready to advance

Both sides advance

The Forest Spirits face off against the troll warband

Unlike other wargames, large creatures/heroes do not have multiple wounds. Instead they have a saving throw and once you fail the saving throw the creature or hero is removed. This means there is always jeopardy putting these large creatures into battle as they can die on the first turn. Unfortunately for me I couldn't make a saving throw for the entire game and so my large creatures and heroes died! I don't think I have ever managed to roll so many double ones in an entire game. 

We decided that we would randomise some of the units for this game and the chaos cultists at the front turned out to be elite. I think this example and the one above give you a good idea of the luck I had on this game. 

In the end the halflings were crushed and the Fae couldn't get their best units into combat quickly enough. So the day belonged the Chaos and Undead horde. However, we all managed a good fun game and a return to rolling some dice.

Rob 

Salute in a Day

 A Day Out in London

Most of my Salute Hoard 

A friend and I managed to get to Salute yesterday for the first time in about four years. And a great time as had by all. Obviously there were some differences  from normal years but they were not all bad - Salute 2022 is now less than 6 months away!  Salute is normally the same weekend as the London marathon, so there are normally lots of fit types wandering about getting registered however  this year as it was in November, the other main event at the Excel centre was ' Destination Star Trek' so there were many people dressed in Star Trek costumes and a randomly, a couple of people from  the film Aliens.  Sadly I wasn't able to get any photographs but some were extremely well done. 

The event looked well attended and was spread out over a much bigger area, so we were able to wander around without bumping into people.  Most of the traders listed on the map were present but there did seem to be a couple of last minute cancelations. However we found more than enough traders and games to keep us entertained for the whole day. 

My biggest gripe of the day was that in the conference hall, the lights had been turned down so it was dim and a bit straining on the eyes after a few hours. I have no idea why as the all the sections outside the conference hall were well lit. 

Managed to get some bargains and show specials including good selection of paints for £1 and the set of fine detail brushes for a fiver. I particularly impressed by a number of companies doing laser cut MDF scenery for good prices which seems to have expanded greatly in the couple of years that we have missed Salute. I picked a Rohan style watch tower for £7.50 from Blotz which I thought was a  cracking price. Plus stocked up on MDF laser cut movement trays and bases. 

Salute 2020 - Battle of Britain

Spitfire & Hurricane Displays

The theme this year was Battle of Britain anniversary (1940-2020) and there were full size replicas of a Spitfire and Hurricane in the display hall.  The Salute mini is sculpted just for the show and there is a short article on its design and commissioning in the Salute magazine. In keeping with the theme it is a  1940's  school boy holding a model plane. As usual it well sculpted but I just can't see me painting it as doesn't fit in with any collection I have.

The Salute 2020 Mini from the magazine

Random Oldhammer

On a random Oldhammer note, I picked a very attractive A5 flyer advertising a display of John Blanche's work at Foundry Miniatures. Its a long way up from the south coast, so it is extremely unlikely that I will be attending but Flyer alone is work displaying. 

The Pictures

A few of the pictures that I took on the day. 

Oakbound's Excellent Trolls -
Which I got and are now waiting for Christmas!
I only just noticed the gruesome remains on some of the troll's bases

Oakbound Elves

Oakbound - Pixie Riders

Fenris Games - New Kickstarter

More Fenris Games

Northumbrian Tin Solder

Northumbrian Tin Solder

Rob

Thistlewood - The Kings Champion

The Imperial Guard Take Shape

The King's  champion is the commander of the Imperial Guard. I had six Grenadier knights (from the nineties)  already painted  and recently ended up with an extra one. I still need another three and I think I will get them from Fornlorn Hope to match in. I have decided to keep the original base colours as they are contemporary with the miniatures. 

I wanted him to stand out and so he could be used as a hero in other future games. So I painted him using a bronze colour scheme rather than the classic steel colour scheme. This was done using a Citadel Warplock Bronze base coat followed by a light brown wash. Then dry brushed the highlight mix of 50/50 of Warplock bronze / Hashut Copper. With these fully armoured miniatures it is fairly quick to get a finished figures painted to a reasonable standard. 

The Warhammer Stats  for Imperial Guard reflects the different approach  the Warhammer 1st edition takes with not creating unstoppable killing machines that occur in later editions. These elite knights only have a toughness B and strength 2. In the 1st edition toughness was marked with a letter not a number but it is broadly similar 2nd edition numbers by replacing the letter  with a number in increasing order A=1, B=2 etc. So with most miniatures with higher weapon skill and lower strength/toughness it will be interesting see how this plays out on the table. 

Imperial Knight Stats

Rob

Halfling Ranger Captain - Finished

 Captain of the Three Shires Rangers

Mk. 2 photos which seem to have come out better

I have finally finished the ranger captain. Who will be be my entry to the Golden Gobbo competition. There are already some really great entries. So go take a look at Oldhammer Forum • View topic - Golden Gobbo 2021 RULES AND SUBMISSION

Rangers of the Three Shires

The Rangers tackle marauding goblins

He completes the small unit of Shire rangers. 

Rob 

Halfling Ranger Captain - WIP

 A Golden Gobbo Entry

Just a quick post, on my current work in progress. A halfling captain for my Shire Rangers.  I have finished the small unit of five Rangers for the halfling army (pictures to follow) but I wanted a suitable leader for this unit and I also need to complete my entry for the Golden Gobbo competition over on the Oldhammer forum Oldhammer Forum • Index page . Due by the end of the month. 

I have added a few bits of extra equipment to the basic figure including a backpack from an old Combat Zone ganger. I also had to sculpt on some green stuff straps for the backpack. The idea is that the Rangers have to live of the land so would carry more equipment than the usual halfling militia. 

A slight adjustment after reading the rules and realising he needs to be on plastic base and not a homemade one! So I used a 20mm Spare marine one so that it is the same size/height as the rest of the army. 

A couple of homemade arrows for the base. 

Rob