Real Estate

I love good terrain. Especially when I don't actually have to paint it. EM4's inn and farm have my particular affection in that regard, and the terrain I have for Frostgrave is entirely GF9 out-of-the-box. That said, last summer's ship project was great fun, and I fancied experimenting with something similar this year.

Much as I love ships, I can't really justify building my own tramp steamer (at least, not yet...), but a random stroll on eBay brought this to my attention:

The 'Falcon Castle' from Simba

It's a grey plastic play castle that scale pretty much perfectly for 28mm figures, as can be seen here, with Fireforge figures from my Frostgrave gangs hanging around on top of and next to one of the towers (you can just see a crossbowman poking his nose out).

I've seen the Simba castle used here and there for various projects, and pounced when I saw it for a tenner. 

Right now, I don't really have much of a plan for it, other than (inevitably) a repaint. Annoyingly, the walls are very thin, so I'll need to build a new inner wall for each one. Still, if that's the worst challenge I face from this project, so much the better!

I'm sure it'll be serving alongside my GF9 terrain for games of Frostgrave, but it would also fit with some of my more generic fantasy figures. The question is whether or not I customize it to be more closely associated with a particular one of my armies. I've got some undead that would be the primary contenders - I've always kind of fancied building my own little Nockmaar... Now, where can I lay my hands on a 28mm Bavmorda to lead the army...?

Back With A Vengeance

As always, I get very unproductive over the summer and winter months (painting-wise, anyway), and rather lax about logging my hobby activities (which, in retrospect, was my main hope in starting this blog!), but the Spring is here, and I'm full of the joys.

That said, I've not been completely inactive...

I've been playing (and editing!) a bit of Frostgrave, with some demo games for the Osprey office:

It was good to get some actual gameplay in, and most fun was the fact that we actually managed to teach the rules to two complete wargaming novices (admittedly, one is a D&D player, however) and play a full game to conclusion in just a little over an hour.

Both gangs were my kitbashed creations - the 'Blues' and the 'Browns', while Maugor got his first run-out as a rather under-dressed Snow Troll. He mauled some henchmen then died and had his treasure stolen. C'est la vie.

Treasure features quite heavily in Frostgrave and I was more than a little jealous of the treasure tokens the author, Joe, had produced and determined to produce my own.

Joe's were beautiful little elements - treasure chests, piles of scrolls and the incredible little illuminated manuscript seen here (not that my photo does it justice - that's a sketch of a dragon in the bottom right corner), so I had my work cut out for me to find items of similar quality!

Fortunately, I'm a hoarder, and managed to find some really quite fun bits and pieces from a number of GW sprues - Empire Flagellants and Wizards, Skaven, Bretonnians etc. - and the Ark of the Covenant from a Wargods of Aegyptus pack.

Once again, these, like so many projects, sat half-finished on my desk for a really long time. What's most annoying is that it only took me about 2 hours to paint them all up once the basecoat had dried! In game, I'll probably only need 3 or 4 of these, but it's always good to have spares.

I didn't attempt a manuscript-style treatment on the open book - my freehand is pretty ropey. I'm particularly fond of the little triptych in the centre, though I kind of wish I'd painted the candles as candles and not just as gold...

Having read through the 80 spells in more detail, and having seen the bestiary section, I came to the conclusion that any warband I run in Frostgrave will probably have to muck around with demon summoning at some point or another. They're just cool.

This beefy thing represents the top end of demon possibilities - a Major Demon. In the game, demons are defined as any creature from another plane of existence, but I went with a pretty classic D&D-style Hezrou. Like most of my larger models, it's a repainted plastic pre-paint, this time from Paizo's Pathfinder range. There are two other classes of demon - Imps and Minor demons - and I've got options for them lined up too. The human figure is included to give a sense of just how big the model is - he makes the chunky Maugor look positively svelte!

And Now For Something Completely Different

So, while this blog is supposed to be about my forays into various adventures with miniatures, I am shamelessly going to add this little post about another forthcoming project... my first book!

I submitted the manuscript for Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons From the Age of Steam months and months ago, but last week the initial advances were delivered to the office. Suffice to say I'm over the moon, and spent much of the weekend looking back through it and praying that I didn't spot any spelling errors!

Published by Osprey, and due out in November, Steampunk Soldiers is a look at a range of Steampunk (or Victorian Science Fiction, if you prefer) troop types and equipment. It's broadly in the style of a Men-at-Arms or Elite series book (but hardback and 150-something pages!), and presents illustrations alongside a caption describing the unit's kit, history etc. Below, I've included a shot (apologies for the poor lighting) of one of my favourite pieces, a Tirailleur Sénégalais from the French chapter, to give an idea of the layout and look of the content.

I co-wrote this with Joe McCullough (The Renaissance Troll), already the author of a number of books, and we tended to split the responsibility for various nations, based on personal interest and concepts. All the Great Powers are included in the book to some degree, but there is also a section looking at some of the Minor Powers that bring their own unique contributions to the table (one of my favourite pieces in the whole book, and the subject of one of the few inter-author disagreements, is a Chinese one...).

Much as I love the book (and it is a very nice book), I think the best part of the whole process was the research! I took some time off work to really break the back of the project, digging into unit histories, prototype weaponry, and watching classic movies (Zulu, The Man Who Would Be King etc.) for inspiration. Good times.

The book is available to pre-order on Amazon already (.co.uk here and .com here) for anyone wanting to explore the arms and armour of an alternate bygone age.

A Little Bit of Frostgrave

I'm always hard at work. Allegedly. So this afternoon's 'work' saw me and the author, Joe, playing a game of Frostgrave, Osprey's forthcoming (2015) fantasy skirmish game.

I'm biased, clearly, but even so it's a cracking game. Initiative each turn is determined by a die roll, but activation alternates within each turn: the Wizard with initiative (and up to 3 henchmen within 3") acts first, then the opposing Wizard (and, again, up to 3 henchmen), next, the Apprentices (and up to 3 henchmen) in order of initiative, and finally any henchmen not already used. This keeps play fast and furious, and no-one goes for long without having the chance to do something. Each activation is move (or reload for crossbows) and another action (shoot, attack, move again, cast a spell etc.).

So, here are a few pics from our first game. I was using my vaguely Mongol-themed gang, and going up against Joe's splendidly named 'Mareek of the Monkey God'.

We're playing on the delightfully ergonomic spare desk in the Osprey Games office (affectionately known by a number of names: 'Isengard', 'The Games Dungeon' etc.), using the pre-painted Gothic terrain from Gale Force 9. On an aside, I can't rate this stuff high enough - it looks great, and is solid as anything.

The scenario was pretty basic, but indicative of the kind of games that Frostgrave offers - not only were there 6 treasure tokens scattered around the board (green plastic meeples as my dedicated tokens are still awaiting paint), and a central well from which a Wizard can drink to get a boost to his abilities in a campaign (which would be great fun to play through - the game and its myriad options are very pro-campaign). Guarding the well were 4 zombies which activate after all the players' gangs and either dash straight for an enemy within 10" and LOS or move randomly according to a scatter die roll.

As you'd expect, both gangs rushed toward the treasure, with my Wizard picking off the zombie guards and reaching the well with 3 treasure tokens slowing down the less important members of my gang. Joe's more elite, but fewer in number, troops advanced more cautiously, and ran into my waiting forces, looking to do some damage, then clean up what treasure remained.

On the right flank, our Apprentices butted heads, with a raised zombie under my control tying up Joe's advancing troops quite effectively until reinforcements could arrive, but at the cost of my Apprentice being poisoned by a spell and reduced to 1 action per turn!

Around the well the rest of the gangs clashed, with some dramatic moments, climaxing with one of my crossbowmen leaping over the well, landing, and picking off Joe's Wizard with a critical hit (straight 20... double damage!).

With his Wizard, a man-at-arms, and a thug knocked out of the game, Joe eventually decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and withdrew, leaving my gang in control of 5 treasure pieces (at the death, one of his thugs grabbed an isolated token) and with a Wizard MVP who had taken out 2 zombies and drunk from the well. Clearly, a clever author letting his editor win!

All Aboard!

It's been two months since my last blog post, and in that time Summer, work and general distraction has kept me away from doing pretty much any painting. My orcs aren't basecoated, let alone fully built, and the Corsairs of Umbar still haven't made an appearance.

Still, this week, with a few days' holiday taken just 'cos, I revisited a project that had been on the back burner for a while – The Usurper, pride of the Umbar fleet.

Over a couple of days, I got the thing from basecoat to finished (feeling appropriately guilty for leaving it so long). Like all my painting, it's a really simple affair – dark brown all over, with the deck drybrushed in khaki and details picked out, and then a wash all over. A bit basic, but it does the job, and suits the feel of a hard-used pirate vessel. The poop deck rails did get a bit of colour – red – in order to visually tie in with my Umbar forces and just to give it a bit of a lift.

All told, not displeased at all, and a pretty successful first real modelling project. The sail came out a little more dark than I expected, but not enough that I want to go back and repaint it!

The 'planking' on the base Playmobil ship's hull is far too wide to really suit, and I thought that it would really annoy me once the ship was painted. Happily, however, it turns out that it looks alright (the minimal highlights actually work in its favour there).

Hands down my favourite element, though, is the scratch-built ladder. Given how vague I am with scaling for most of the vessel (the hold door being a prime example), I'm a little surprised I bothered to build it, but I do really enjoy the end result. The ship's wheel looks good, but I do wish that I'd stuck to my guns and built a rail around it – right now it looks very exposed, and I think that drawing some more attention to the quarterdeck wouldn't have been a bad idea.

Still, I could fuss over it ad nauseum, so will leave it as is for now. Pirates, be they historical or Tolkienesque now have a ship of their own. Of course, what they don't have is a home port, but that's a project for another day...