More from the seven kingdoms

     I think it is fair to say that I have been drawn into this project in a way that I haven't been drawn into one for a while. Here are the next three units for my house Baratheon, Lion's Rampant, come Saga, army. This is a project I have basically been thinking about almost non-stop since I started it, so I am desperate to get it finished and on the table as quickly as I can.

    The foot men at arms are Crusader Miniatures foot knights, they come in packs of eight and, although, you only need six for a unit in Lion's Rampant, I will get the other two painted up so that I can use these guys as Hurscarls in Saga games. The two with white cloaks are both still Crusader Miniatures, the one at the front is my army's leader and is from the same pack, just with the addition of a Gripping Beast plastic Saxon cloak that fitted almost perfectly, and the other is from a separate pack of a banner knight on foot and mounted, so if I decide to do some mounted knights I can put a banner in that unit too. We have a rule in games of this sort of period at my club, if there isn't a banner in your leader's unit, he can't be much of a leader. . .

     This is going to be the first of two crossbowmen units, the other is sitting on my desk after having just been under coated. The lack of shields really shows up how little yellow I have decided to put into the uniform, since I went into this project trying not to make my army look to garish I think its a good thing, but they do feel like they are missing out slightly.

      Lastly, we have my last (planned) unit of foot serjeants. Again I am really pleased with how these have gone together, with the shields really finishing them off. There is a real risk you'll be reading in this blog at some point in the future that I have bought another box of Fireforge's foot serjeants as this has been an absolutely gorgeous kit to paint, and I am now looking at a third unit of foot serjeants or maybe a unit of fierce foot . . .

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Lion's Rampant

       It all began with a simple email from a club mate. I've played a couple of games of this fairly new set of rules and I really think you will like it, do you fancy using your Saga army to give it a go? How can that be answered with anything but ok?
       I think that's the exact moment it went wrong. Before I knew it I had played my first game and gone straight home and ordered a box of Fireforge foot serjeants, a single pack of Crusader Miniatures foot knights and a copy of Lion's Rampant, and I was ready to go.

     I picked a yellow livery with a white stag as my symbol, as a nod to House Baratheon from Game of Thrones. I thought I had better give myself a second chance at a game of throne army, as the more I look at my House Lannister force the more I don't like it at all.

     While packing to move I found half a box of GW bretonnian archers and during the wait for my new models to arrive I decided to dig that box out and use them to test out my colour scheme, but they have since been ungraded to full army members, fulfilling the role of Bidower as I am really quite pleased with them.

       The first unit of foot serjeants. The stags on their shields are transfers from another GW bretonnian kit, this time the knights box, although I have had to buy a few more sheets from ebay.

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Zomruray?

      As the title, sort of, eludes to I have been painting zombies for my Open Combat game. In my vain attempt to keep to my resolution of painting more than I buy (I am failing miserably at the moment) the half painted unit of zombies that have been sitting on my desk since the start of January had to be finished, as they were a big part of why I am so very behind my target. The reason they had been on my desk for so long was because I had forgotten how terrible the GW zombie kit really is, I went into this part of the project full of nostalgia about this kit and it had blinded me to the stupidly sized hands and terrible shoulder joins that a few years on really annoy me.

      But, the end result isn't too bad in my opinion. These guys, and the next 10 I have to do, are going to be pure horde material. Their stats will be so bad that the human party really shouldn't struggle to take them on one at a time, but I want their strength to be in bogging their opponents down until the skeletons can get in.

     The figure at the front is still a bit of a mystery to me. It is a Otherworld miniatures figure, that has been given a left over skeleton sword to give him a chance in combat. I will give him half decent stats as he looks like he deserves it, but I still don't really know what, or who he is, on context to why he is part of this horde, other than the fact he is obviously undead. . .

     Lastly, for this post, I have completed my first batch of gravestones to add more scenery to the board when I put the game on properly. I have just over this amount of grave stones left to go, so I think it should bulk up quite nicely. I have mounted them on plasti-card bases in groups to stop keep the scenery a bit tidy, I have seen games put on with every stone on it's own base and it just gets a bit unwieldy to play on.

      I have also got a few bits saved up for their own, out of sequence post in a couple of weeks time, plus an exciting new project that will get it's own run of posts fairly soon. So I have a lot to keep me going.

Thanks for reading.

A party takes shape

     Here we are, normal service can start to resume. The move went well and my man-cave has started to be unpacked, all the models that has been in storage for the last 9 months are being dug out and my drive to get back on with some proper hobby has returned.

     So, back to my Open Combat adventuring party, and it has 3 new members; Another tank (who was in reality a warrior priest but as ours never really did much magic he can fulfil that vital second tank slot), another ranger and a dog. The dog was me going off piece a little bit, I bought the model for my necromunda warband and it just never made it onto my painting table, so it got re-purposed to something that it fitted better into anyway. Both the ranger and tank are from the Otherworld Miniatures range again, they just fitted what I wanted to achieve perfectly, and while the tank's figure is supposed to be a half-orc, I think he represents the actual guy better looking like that, than he would fully human . . .

      So my party now stands at 5 full members and a dog. These guys cover the group that I wanted them to represent, but if I want to take it to club to play with I think I will still add a few more members to give all the players something to do and give me a bit of redundancy in terms of figure breakage etc.

Thanks for reading. Next time, hopefully, more undead. . .

Whats that coming over the hill?*

*Should probably read "Whats that going through the forest?" but the reference to the Automatic's song would have been lost . . .

      I picked this figure up at the weekend from Wayland Game's sale section in the back of the shop. I have no idea who the manufacturer is, what game it is intended for or why it was even produced, but any half useful model, that is this good a sculpt, especially for the princely sum of £1, has to be picked up. It's just a pity the rest of the rack were really obscure sci-fi models that I have no idea how I would use, and my lead pile looks bad enough as it is.
      The picture on the blister pack shows this model with green fur, another thing that makes me wonder if it was supposed to be something really specific, but hey, I liked this model for what it should be, a proper fantasy werewolf.

      This guy just screams combat machine, something my Open Combat undead warband were always going to struggle with. I don't think I am ever going to start him on the board in club games, but what he can do is, if the human adventurers are having too easy a game, it will be his job to come on and ruin their day. I want this guy to be able to go toe to toe with the full on tanks, and at the very least give them a run for their money.

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Divine advice

     Hot on the heels of the more militant members of the Open Combat warband is their healer, again based really loosely on another member of my old LARP group. He is a Heresy Miniatures model that I have given a hand transplant to. In the game he is armed with fists (which really don't do all that much) and a bow (which instead of wounding, actually heals its target). The bow on his stat sheet represents his ability to heal, rather than being a really weird option I have given him. 

     Next up is the Necromancer. Again he is a Heresy Miniatures model, this time he had a head transplant to make him look a bit less like the cultist model he is supposed to be. He has been given a much more pallid skin tone as I can't help but feel necromancers are unlikely to be getting much in the way of sun . . . He has also been given a bow, which this time represents his ability to raise the dead (he shoots at an imaginary undead troop and if he wounds it, it actually gets raised within 2" of him) and has a hand weapon just to give him a bit of staying power in combat. I actually want this guy to survive in combat, while the healer shouldn't last more than a turn or two if he is daft enough to get caught.

    Lastly I have two new bits of scenery that tie into this game. A undertakers props pack designed for the game Malifaux and a whole graveyard piece from the old days of GW. The undertakers props are single bit resin pieces and are a really nicely sculpted and cast, I really can't complain about these bits at all. The GW piece is more of the hard foam that Ziterdes uses, while, this particular one was bought, as cheaply as I could manage, from ebay and had been partially repainted, so it has taken a few hours to try and tidy it up a bit. My next terrain purchase is going to have to be the Rendra grave stones set to do the bulk of the graveyard, but the big GW bit makes a spectacular centre piece.

The warband finally sight their quarry

     I can't really explain the last photo, I was just enjoying myself by that point.

Thanks for reading.

Open Combat Play Test

     This year I am planning on making this blog a bit more concise and bit less random, I am aware that unless you are following the theme list on the right hand side of the post, my blog can be a bit difficult to follow at times. Saying all that though it won't be all that concise for at least a few more posts as I finish off the remnants of last years projects, and here is a brand new project!

     Open Combat is a new set of rules by Second Thunder. The rules allow you to make a warband sized force of anything to play against anything else, you fill out the stat line and give the model weapons and abilities, all inside a system that is painfully simple and balanced. In this case I am using it to make a club night game that will basically be D&D light. I am building a collection of human warriors, loosely based on my old LARP group, that each player control one of, and a random assortment of fantasy undead as a GM 'bad guy' side.

     So far I have painted up;

The first two adventurers, a ranger type and a full on tank. Both are from Otherworld miniatures.

The first ten skeletons. GW models but I think some of the best plastic skeletons on the market.

     As this is going to be a game I am going to run down at my club, I want to make sure I know the rules inside out, so I have been playing a few testing games on a small scale and I thought a mini battle report would suit this game and really show off what it can do. I am going to do some kind of assassination and/or capture an object mission, but as my necromancer is yet to be finished I am running my test games as full on slog fests to see how many skeletons my two guys can eat their way through, or as just capture an object objective. This game was all about capturing a bottle that was sitting on a shelf next to my painting table.

The objective

      Open combat is designed for a 2' by 2' board but as I am just testing I am playing on a much smaller area. I limited the initial amount of skeletons to stop by warband getting bogged down too quickly, but I rolled a d3 each turn to bring on more skeletons.

The tank does exactly what he is designed to do, charges straight into combat and smashes the first skeleton he meets, while the ranger also charged his closest target but only manages to push it back.

The skeletons then charge the only target they could get to which was the tank and deal a wound.

While the tank heroically holds back the growing skeleton tide the ranger takes the opportunity to run around the outside of the combat and uses his second action to grab the bottle. 

After surviving another round of combat, the tank pushes the skeleton in contact with him back and turns and runs following the ranger who had already made a break for it with the bottle.

      I love this set of rules, I don't think I can express it any differently. This is one of the few games where the reference sheet at the back really is all I would hand out to my players, the rest of the rules are mostly specific stuff that they probably won't ever come across, but it doesn't lose anything by being that simple. I have more figures in the post to bulk out both sides as my club game will be on a much bigger scale, and a big bit of scenery that I plan to use as the objective point coming as well, so this game should get a lot more coverage on this blog. Plus there are all the other weird, modelling projects that I have started that I might, now, finally have a use for.

Thanks for reading.