Troll and Ogre, Runequest style

In a previous blogpost, I identified some very old Runequest miniatures in my collection.

They finally got painted.

From left to right: Dark Troll with large Axe, Ogre with Flail, Runner with Bow.

Undead Samurai

A couple of quickly painted Undead Samurai ...

I have these figures probably since the late 80s. They are Citadel Miniatures, and according to solegends.com and Collecting Citadel Miniatures, first appeared in the C18 range in June 1985. There are two other figures here (1st and 3rd from the right), that did not belong to this range.

According to the original names from the C18 range: Bo, Tu, Ne, Jin, Ig, Bek, Yo, ?, Jin, ?

Original catalogue image (June 1985 Flyer):

CWJ added to the index

All 5 issues of the Classic Wargamer's Journal have been added to the magazine index.

Filling up holes in movement trays

Movement trays are very handy in a lot of games. But care has to be taken that the visual look of the game does not suffer. I hate it when half-empty or dirty or ugly movement trays are being used.

For our last game, I quickly made some standard bases with small scenic features which can be used to "fill up the holes". As you can see below, I used some rocks, a small tree, some skulls, a rat, etc.

Place them between your figures in a movement tray, and the visual appeal suddenly goes up by a factor of 10!

As an added bonus, you can give your army some additional flavour: use skulls and graves for an undead army, rats for a skaven army, or general scenery items or wounded figures for any historical army.

Skaven warlord

Another figure I recently finished.

Since Skaven were my original WFB3rd army, back in the 80s, I still have a fond sport for the ratmen. This particular commander was a figure once sold by GW as part of a Lustria campaign setting, and marketed as "Skaven Plaguelord Nurglitch"

Waldvolk

Last CRISIS I bought some Waldvolk from Imaginative Miniatures, the Raven Sorcerer and some Stag warriors. I painted them (not too detailed, my gaming standard :-)) last weekend.

I painted the Stag Warriors in a rather dark brown. I feel this reflects the dark Northern-European mythological feel better. I added some plastic shields to the two miniatures on the right.

The Raven Sorcerer was painted mostly in black and grey. I took the liberty of giving him a red/orangish beak and feet (unlike a real raven), otherwise the figure would be too dark.

WH40K Dreadnoughts and Eldar War Robot

I finished some WH40K, Rogue-Trader-era, Dreadnoughts for our ongoing scifi skirmish campaign.

These are 2 Space Marine dreadnoughts, and an Eldar War Robot (not an Eldar Dreadnought as I also originally thought).

And here are the original ads as they appeared in WHite Dwars during the late 80s (from www.solegends.com):

Some links updated for Great Northern War posts

A few years ago we switched our blog from Wordpress to Blogger. In the process, some links pointing to pdf documents were corrupted, and now and then, some errors still pop up.

I restored links to pdf documents that describe some of our Great Northern War scenarios, in the following blogposts:

• Russians repulse Swedes at Holowczyn!
• The battle of Holowczyn: scenario
• Battle of Ingenstansby

And if you're interested in the GNW, you should check out these posts, lots of eye candy!

1st playtest of Dragon Rampant

Yesterday we played a first game of Dragon Rampant. Since the gaming engine is almost identical to Lion Rampant, we also used our modded version of the rules, playing on a hexgrid.

We used a scenario from the book, in which one side has to transport a magical artefact to the other side of the gaming table. We used roughly 50 points for each side, so almost double of the what is recommended in Dragon Rampant, in which the standard is set at 24 points. Since the gaming engine is activation-based, taking a unit as the atomic element, this didn't cause too much troubles.

The two forces were Skaven and Undead from my extensive Oldhammer collection.

A few things I might consider changing for future games:

1. In our hexified rules, it is stipulated that a full hex should be maintaind between units. This is the equivalent of the 3" proximity rules between units in the original Rampant rules. For the medieval games, this worked quite well, since 6 or 12 25mm models overflow the hex significantly, and hence, providing a buffer zone between units (a single hex), helped the game.
   However, since Dragon Rampant works with Strength Points per unit (and which are not necessarily equal to the number of figures), this problem is less pronounced. Hence, units can be made to fit a hex rather nicely, and there is no need to keep a visual buffer between units. So perhaps the 1 hex distance between units can be lifted, and a tighter density of units on the table is possible. This in turn would make it easier to play bigger battles.
2. Talking about bigger battles, as a player you naturally want more coherent behavious between units. I.e. you want units to move together rather than all individually. So I think we need to introduce some type of group order. E.g. all adjacent units can be given the same order (move, attack, ...), but using the least favourable activation role of any unit in the goup. A further penalty might be introduced (a -1 or even -2?) to balance the fact that it otherwise would be too easy to move a large number of units in a single turn.

Preliminary picture:

Chain of Command prep I: catalogue the collection

I've been threatening to organise a Chain of Command game for a while now and am finally getting around to doing something about it.

The game will be set during Operation Market Garden, north of the Rhine, with 1st Airborne defending the Oosterbeek perimeter from encroaching Germans. First step in the game preparation is taking stock of my collection and seeing whether I can build a viable Chain of Command force out of them.

I just did that with my British paras. I sorted them out according to types to see where I had a surplus or a deficit. This is the result:

Basic infantry

Of these, I need two types - your bog standard riflemen and Sten (or 'liberated' German SMG) armed soldiers:

The Sten types

The riflemen (some Stens to be transplanted from the multiple bases in front)

So it seems I have about twice as many riflemen as Sten types, which is a ratio that is skewed too much towards the Stens. So it seems I will need to paint some more rifle types. Luckily these figures (20mm Britannia and FAA) paint up rather quickly.

Support

For support I'm covered pretty well, having several Bren, Vickers MMG and PIAT teams as well as some 3" and 2" mortar teams and a FOO unit. Here's the faces to go with the names:

Front to back: Bren, Vickers, PIAT, mortars. FOO is hiding among the Vickers teams.

Leader types

Of these I also have more than enough. Various figures which can serve as both junior and senior leaders:

Leader types, with some transport in the background

In addition I have quite a few jeeps, a supply point and other bits'n'bobs which can serve as jump off points for this force.

So - on to painting some more riflemen!