ERM Dwarves

• ERM Dwarves

ERM Dwarves — archers, a cleric, and two elements of blade.

I’ve done a number of posts on dwarves, but it’s been a long time since I’ve painted any. Finally, here are some of the East Riding Miniatures (ERM) dwarves that I got last year. As I said in the previous post, they actually scale quite nicely with some of the Splintered Light (SL) dwarves. As I found with other ERM figures, they don’t always look that promising in raw metal, but paint up very well. They are particularly good for using washes on.

The elements of blade, one is a command element.

Another angle.

From the rear.

Again.

These figures are from FT51, FT53, FT61 and FT62. On two of the shields I used a VVV transfer for hoplites of a boar’s head. It wasn’t very distinct. I think basic dark age patterns would be better. I will look to mix some of the figures I have from FT53 with my SL figures. I’ll do the same with the figures from FT61 and FT62 (as well as FT60), but only those that are armoured. I don’t see much use for unarmoured dwarves.

A SoBH cleric and some Shooters.

Another angle.

These are figures from FT52, FT56 and FT60. I like the cleric, and will probably use another of them in a HoTT Cleric element.

I’m not sure when I’ll get back to finishing a HoTT dwarf army; there are so many other projects at different stages, that it might be a while. Then again, it may jump to the head of the queue!

• Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Years back, when I placed my first SL order, I found a pair of figures in it that I hadn’t ordered. I didn’t realize that these were a bonus if your order was large enough. The figures are in the Archer Collection. Anyway, when I based the skeletons and zombies I had two bases left and put their ‘Northern Warrior and Thief Companion’ on them. They proved quick to paint, and were finished along with the dwarves. They’re a clear reference to the Fritz Leiber series of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser that I spent a bit of time rereading last year. I’m sure they’ll find their way into some SoBH warband at some stage.

From the side.

• South Welsh Allies

Welsh Cavalry.

For DBA 3.0 the Northern Welsh army (III/19c) have the option of a South Welsh ally. As they would otherwise have ten 3Pk, this seems very necessary. For this ally they must have a 3Cv element as the leader of these allies. I started painting these figures quite a while ago and am pleased that this is one of the many projects I have begun that is now finished.

I can’t help but feel that two 3Cv in one Welsh army, though useful, is too many, but unless the South Welsh army came with the option of a foot general, those are the rules. I’m sure it will be used as part of any Dark Age Celtic HoTT army that may one day see the light of day.

Another angle.

From the rear.

These are Feudal Casting figures, originally Irish or Picts. I’ve given them Essex shields and shortened the spears of some. I’ve got a lot more experienced at this, as I remember the first element I did years ago was a real trial!

• Painting progress

Otherwise, I’ve got the four elements of 4Pk a little closer to completion; they’re very close actually, and the four elements of Norman 3Kn are also pretty close. I’ve also added some more paint to a number of Tabletop Fantasy adventurers that I got last year. They’re also not far off from being finished. It’ll be good to get some more old projects finished before starting on any new ones!

Pokeno Invitational

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. A few weeks back I had my first gaming of the year, a chance to catch up with Joel and John and to see Keith for the first time in a good long time. Keith has already posted about the day, which was really enjoyable. I lost most of my games and at the time complained of poor dice, but on reflection it was really poor planning — plans that depend on good PIP dice aren’t really plans, but endeavours in blind luck! Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun and it was good to see armies out on the table that haven’t been used in a while. My Comnenan Byzantines were used twice, as were my Normans (as Early Crusaders). My Polybian Romans and Late Carthaginians were also used (oddly we had three games going simultaneously first with the Romans on one side each and then the Carthaginians). Pyrrhus’ army, Prefeudal Scots and Saxons completed the turnout.

After that day, John and I continued at my house with a game of Song of Blades and Heroes. It was a chance to use the Gnolls and some terrain. The fight at a bridge resulted in the Gnolls losing decisively against some Normans. The bridge was a bottle neck that probably favoured the superior firepower of the Normans, though the Gnolls did get to achieve a few consolation kills.

The gaming renewed my enthusiasm for painting, and I’ve got my four blocks of Successor 4Pk closer to completion, but other projects still manage to finish before them!

Skeletons

When I looked at the figures I had for Song of Blades and Heroes (SoBH), I decided that my ghosts and wraiths would be lonely without some low quality undead to make up some warbands. Furthermore, I figure skeletons and zombies won’t take too much trouble to paint. Therefore, I based the two warbands I’d got from Splintered Light and set to work on the skeletons. I got these done very quickly, and I’m pleased with the result. I’ve used GW Bleached Bone with my usual wash and then a drybrush of white for highlights. The other colours were designed to be drab, so the cloth was a grey mixed with my linen colour (a mixture of bleached bone and the GW khaki colour — now renamed to Karak Stone).

The new skeleton warband.

Three archers.

From the back.

The mounted skeletons.

The other side.

Unarmoured skeletons.

From the rear.

Armoured skeletons.

From the rear.

The wash brings out the detail well, though indentations for temples sometimes can look like eye sockets. The kite shields of a couple are of a later period than the Dark Age setting I favour, but skeletons are probably lacking in any fashion sense.

The zombies should come next, and then I may get back to the ratmen that I started before Christmas. I have quite a few sundry figures for SoBH in various stages of completion. I also have figures for DBA that are getting worked on now and then; in particular, I have four stands of mounted Norman knights that are well on the way. I cut out the spaghetti lances and gave them Xyston spears. The clever part of this was leaving the last 3mm of spear on each one’s foot. It made the whole process much easier and you can’t see the join.

Finally, I will post pictures of dwarves at some stage. I got an order of Splintered Light ones, and they are of the right scale for my humans. Before I look to sell the Copplestone, Grenadier, Blood Dawn and Black Raven dwarves, I will post some pictures for purpose of scaling. I’m also in the process of painting some East Riding Miniatures dwarves, though they seem to be languishing in the queue to be completed!

Dwarves again

I’m still trying to get dwarves for my HotT armies. I have Chariot dwarves, and I like some of them, but as I said earlier, some are more suited to Snow White. One virtue of the Chariot dwarves is that they scale with my Chariot, Feudal Castings and Essex humans. I now have bought figures from Peter Pig, Copplestone, East Riding Miniatures (ERM) and Grenadier (Mirliton) to use; none of them are ideal. Partly it is that the Chariot figures have very short legs; the Peter Pig figures might mix, though they are somewhat renaissance in their dress, particularly with the puffy pants. The ERM figures are the right height, but too bulky to mix, whereas the superb looking Copplestone and Grenadier figures are bigger than the humans of my armies. This is a shame, as the Grenadier figures especially I’d really like to use. Here’s a picture to illustrate scale that might be useful.

From left to right: Copplestone, Chariot [human], Grenadier, Essex [human], ERM, Peter Pig, Chariot, Chariot [halfling]

So what will I do next? I think I’ll paint a few ERM figures and see how they look on their own (I’d hoped to mix them with the Chariot figures). I’ll also paint my Peter Pig catapult and see how they look. I may then buy a few Peter Pig figures to mix with the Chariot ones, though if I like how the ERM paint up, I may go with them; either way the ERM and Chariot figures wouldn’t work on the same base. Longer term I reckon I’ll be looking to sell the Copplestone and Grenadier figures.

 

Gnolls, wraiths and ghosts.

I’ve finally finished a number of figures. These are mostly Splintered Light ones. I’ve got quite a few of them recently; I really like them and can really recommend Dave McBride as someone to shop from.

The first of these figures are some giant boars. They may be beasts in HoTT, possibly with a Dwarven army that is still taking shape. The figures look nice, but the bristles are not quite deeply enough incised to get the contrast that my use of washes and drybrushing needs.

Giant boars.

Another angle.

The next is a Hippogriff rider that I started around the time that I was painting Normans for SoBH. It never quite got finished. It’s an old Ral Partha figure. There’s also a pair of Chariot centaurs that I started at some stage and only got finished today.

A hippogriff rider and two centaurs.

Another angle.

Then there are three Khurasan Norman knights that were in the same boat. They will round out that Norman warband.

Mounted knights for SoBH.

Another angle.

From the rear.

And then the new stuff! I painted some Splintered Light Wraiths and Ghosts last month, but didn’t get around to flocking them. They were flocked today, along with the Gnolls that I have just finished. These were experiments in using washes and drybrushing on very light and dark colours. I went for a light blue for the ghosts and an very dark blue for the wraiths. I was pleased with those colours, though I’m less pleased with how the flesh of the wraiths came out.

Wraiths.

From the rear.

The HoTT wraiths are based as sneakers and the HoTT ghosts as lurkers. The SoBH figures will be joined by skeletons, zombies, ghouls and werewolves at some stage.

Ghosts.

From the rear.

Finally, the first of a number of SoBH warbands that are fantastic value from Splintered Light. These are their hyena men, or gnolls. I didn’t put a lot of effort into painting them, but went for a technique I’ve used for horses of undercoating half in black first. I was worried that the faces, manes and tails would look terrible, but once I added a wash and some dry brushing, they look acceptable. I went for very drab equipment — blank shields, plain kilts; they are supposed to look pretty primitive. They also have some hyenadons as support animals.

A Gnoll warband for SoBH.

The Hyenadons.

Gnoll spearmen.

Gnolls with handarms.

Gnoll archers.

No trouble spared on varying the colours!

War chieftain and shaman.

Shaman is carrying a head.

I have a ratmen warband that I’ve started, and which is a lot of fun; then in addition to the undead I mentioned, I have lizardmen and troglodytes. I’m keen to do a small warband of rangers using some of the Splintered Light Robin Hood series; I have the figures, it depends a bit on the order I paint them!

Warbands for SBH

• Ogres

I’ve prepped quite a few monster figures for SBH, but only these two ogres from Magister Militum’s Blood Dawn range (formerly Reaper, I think) are finished. I had a bit of trouble with wash on their faces.

By bending their arms I varied the poses of this figure.

Another angle.

• Magicians

Most of my magic users are based for SBH, though I have plenty more waiting for paint! The Tabletop figure is quite neat; it’s fairly big compared with my other figures, but comes with a backpack and frypan, as do the other figures from that range.

A Chariot elf, a Tabletop druid and two ERM wizards.

• Normans

I have quite a few Feudal European figures now for SBH. They have also been useful as test runs on an Essex Norman army for DBA.

Knights, all but the two on the right are Essex; the one with his foot on the rock is Two Dragons.

Norman archers and crossbowmen.

Spearmen.

• Halflings

I’ve done a few of the halflings from Chariot’s range. Again they are a good way to see how they will look when I paint more as auxiliaries for a HotT Dwarven army.

Halfling archers and swordsmen.

A comparison with some Chariot dwarves.

A comparison with two Essex Normans and a Chariot elf (ranger).

• Elves

Before I went to Australia I based up my elves for SBH. I added a magician and a sneaker to the band; here a few of them.

An Elven band with a friendly bear. To make a band of such high value character work the bear is made cheaper with the abilities of stubborn and protect (he’s the wizard’s companion).

Dwarves

One of my recent purchases were some Copplstone Casting dwarves. They have proven too big to mix either with my 15mm humans (at least not as dwarves!) nor with my dwarves. I’m now in search of more dwarves to complement my Chariot ones. I like the Chariot dwarves, it’s just that some of them are wearing Noddy hats and belong with Snow White. I want mine with chainmail and helmets. I like the Grenadier dwarves that Mirliton sell, but I think they are too big (I researched this on TMP here).

I now think that I will try some of the East Riding Miniatures dwarves. I got some samples from ERM a few years back and they painted up really nicely.

ERM figures from the character pack FT40, a vampire, two wizards and a barbarian.

I painted these years ago when I first started painting again.

This post here has me fairly confident that the ERM dwarves are small enough to scale with the Chariot ones. Here are some pictures of 15mm dwarves I have bought.

Left to right: three Irregular (halfling and two dwarves), two Chariot, one Eureka and one Copplestone.

Left to right: Feudal Casting human, Copplestone dwarf, Tabletop human, Copplestone dwarf, Chariot dwarves.

The Copplestone figures are lovely, but too big to go with my ‘true 15mm’ humans and dwarves.

On the Painting table

When I last wrote, I said the next project would be to paint seven 4Pk for my successor armies. Well, they’re over half done, but others have jumped the cue.

• Rebasing

The biggest project has been to rebase all my old armies. I had started this before I went to Adelaide, and a lot of my HoTT elements were all but done, just waiting for the flock. The impetus to restart this project was a desire to see how knights and spears compared under DBA 3.0. This got me redoing my first two armies, the Normans and Anglo-Danish. I also flocked the HoTT elements while I was at it.

Next, I rebased the Welsh, Irish and Vikings. This has taken quite a while, and is now almost completed. I’ve innovated by using No More Gaps to hide the bases. It adds more time to the job, but is worth it.

In the process of rebasing I got enthused with my Dark Age armies and the potential to use them for HoTT. I’ve now got the Scots Isles and Highland army complete again (it was demobbed for SBH figures. This started with the plan to create a Thegn general for the Prefeudal Scots so that they could have a 4Wb general with rear rank support and flanked by pike, something that’s likely to tear holes in most lines of foot. When I learned that the Scots Isles and Highland army is going to have a lot more choice in DBA 3.0, I decided to paint up the four elements of 4Bd I needed to get this back on the table. I’ve also painted a few more archers in mail to make their 3Bw more imposing. I also repainted the 5Hd.

So that’s some of what’s been jumping the cue for painting. I’ve also done a few HoTT elements, some Prefeudal Scots and Irish Lurkers — skirmishers on a 40×30 base along with a dog each. Finally I did a Cleric element — three medieval monks. Magicians and Heroes will follow.

• Song of Blades and Heroes

I’ve also been painting a few figures for SBH, actually quite a few. I’ve now finished thirty foot, and three mounted knights and a Hippogriff rider are close to being done. Most of these are Essex early medieval figures, dismounted Norman knights and Norman spearmen and archers. This adds some useful variety to my SBH range, but also is a way of getting started on painting some of these figures for an Essex Norman army. The rest are six halflings, two mailed Highland archers and a Druid from the Tabletop range. I’ve got more figures from Tabletop’s fantasy range. They’re a little larger than most of my figures and are very much ‘adventurers’, as they all have backpacks and other equipment. The wizards won’t quite look right in HoTT, but will be useful for SBH.

A halfling crossing the new bridge over the new stream with some of the assorted terrain additions doted around.

The other big activity for SBH is making terrain. I made a river (or a stream) using No More Gaps on a T-shirt. I rounded this out with a small bridge and then added a few tokens for treasure — chests, barrels, etc. I’ve done a tent and a small hut. And I’ve also made some hedges using Scotch Brite on iceblock sticks. The next stage for SBH is really dungeon tiles when I get a chance.

Another angle.

He hasn’t seen the two dragons, though!

Really just seeing if the timer makes a difference with the camera. I think it does.

 

 

• Plans

Those seven elements of pike should be finished next. Then I suspect I’ll be working on HoTT stuff: heroes, wizards, but also a dwarf and an elf army. More fantasy SBH figures may get done as well. I’ve started putting together a 3Cv for my Welsh; the North Welsh can have a South Welsh ally, who has to include the general element. I find this a bit odd — Welsh with two 3Cv seems too much. I might also work on the Normans, but I reckon the elves and dwarves will be more attractive.

DBA in Auckland

Auckland City Guard

Last Sunday I caught up with Joel and John at the Auckland City Guard for some DBA. We used DBA 2.2. In the first game I got my Syracusans out against Joel’s new Carthaginians. It was a close game, but Joel pipped me 4-3. The second game we combined armies for a Big Battle DBA game: John and I led Gauls against Joel’s Marian Romans with Spanish allies. As defenders we deployed first. Our choice of open terrain in the centre with massed cavalry didn’t work. Our die-rolling was pretty shocking too – a humiliating defeat. The massed effect looked great, though, and attracted notice. I hope to get to that club regularly this year.

Painting

Those games inspired me to get my paints out again. I’ve got four camps that are nearly done out to finish, and seven stands of Successor  pike.

DBA 3.0

On Thursday Joel came over for a couple of games of DBA 3.0. He’s played that version a lot recently. I’ve not looked at it in ages. We tried my Seleucids (ll/19d) against his Marians for the Kn-Bd dynamics. It was close, as I lost my right wing to his cavalry. My general destroyed some legionaries, but I clinched the game by flanking his foot general with my imitation legionaries. The general had pursued beyond the support of a unit on his flank.

I enjoyed the pursuing blades and pikes, though I wonder about blades against knights.

The second game was my Prefeudal Scots against Joel’s Vikings. This was fun as the Scots now have Fast Pike. It was a game I lost on the flanks, as my light horse failed to sack the camp. However, I’m inspired to paint a Wb general for this army pike-supported double-ranked Wb could be very nasty,  though a LH and a Ps for the wings is a bit light!

I liked the fast pike designation for the Scots. I’m keen to rebase my Welsh now. The 1066 period has become interesting again. Overall, I liked the way DBA 3.0 played.

SBH

While searching out the figures for my Wb general, I got out some Normans for a SBH warband. These are Essex foot and Khurasan mounted. The painting table is getting crowded!

P.S. my 200th post!

Belated battle reports

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I went to Cancon at the start of the year, but never got around to posting. I took Mithridatics (II/48) and Comnenans (IV/1a). I ended the competition in the middle, winning my early games and then falling back in the second half. I generally fielded the blade option for the Mithridatics.

I didn’t get to play much DBA otherwise. When Steve visited at the end of June we played a few games, but after that I’ve not played anything until last Friday when I visited Melbourne to catch up with Steve and take part in Tormentus with the Monday Knights at the Auburn Bowls Club.

This was a fun tournament of four games. You only had the same 12 elements for the whole tournament and the terrain was set. I decided to take the Mithridatics with their blade option. I won two and lost two. The one element we couldn’t meet easily was the knight, and I lost to an army with seven of them; I did get the first kill and I might have had a chance if I’d not tried to go after his bow with some blade, breaking up my line. The last game was against some Vietnamese; as luck would have it my opponent ended up with a swampy river and a wood in front of him. Again, I might have won if I’d kept my forces together and gone into the swamp with my blade, auxilia and psiloi. Instead, I sent the light troops around the flank. We got to three each and short of time when I went into the swamp with some overlaps, but really a bit of a forlorn hope. I lost.

There were a lot of awards; more than there were participants; I got one for having travelled the furthest and one for the best looking army. I was somewhat surprised by the second, but most of the armies were put together from bigger ones, while mine was made for DBA. However, it is a hodge-podge of manufacturers and in need of repair; the commander’s standard has broken as has the dagger of the sacrificing priestess.

That weekend Steve and I had a couple more games, two of Song of Blades and Heroes. I’m keen to play this more; when I get settled after I finish in Adelaide, my first priority would be making some decent terrain for skirmishing in 15mm. Steve had some houses and good hills, trees and a river that really made a difference. I’m thinking of using the campaign setting of the World of Greyhawk for a simple campaign set in the devastated Duchy of Tenh. It’s a setting that seems suited to a campaign and I already have the figures for it, particularly goblins, dwarves and elves.