Overdue Minis!

My productivity when it comes to figures swings massively. I'm generally always up for kitbashing, as I find it by far the most entertaining, rewarding, and therapeutic part of the hobby. Painting? Not so much. I'm not a great painter, and while I like my style for the tabletop, it never seems to do justice to (what I reckon) are good conversions!

Anyway, here are a couple of overdue minis that I painted recently...

A really simple conversion, this is a Frostgrave cultist body with Frostgrave soldier head and arms. I simply cut away the two-handed axe originally being held, and replaced it with a length of brass rod that I happened to find knocking around the bottom of my tool box. Twenty seconds of drilling, and voila! One monk for D&D or Frostgrave adventuring.

Annoyingly, while I went for a ridiculously simple paint-job, the spray varnish I used gave it all a light white misting. I fixed a lot of it, but it's still spoiled the figure for me a little. Still, this actually represents the first model I've made using the official Frostgrave plastics - something long overdue!

Next up is a more involved conversion, and one I'm really pleased with...

I'm a big fan of Tre Manor's Red Box miniatures, especially the Aenglish - I love how each figure is a character, regardless of whether they're a knight or a foot soldier, and each one looks properly equipped for a campaign or an adventure, with bedrolls, backpacks, spare equipment etc. This chap, then, is my homage to that. He started off as a vague concept for a D&D cleric, and kind of evolved from there.

I knew I wanted the pseudo-Medieval look of the Red Box stuff, and had settled upon a mace (natch) and shield combo early on. First stop was the Bretonnian Men-at-Arms box, which has served me so well in the past. I wanted slightly more clerical legs, though, so nabbed some of the trench-coated legs from the Cadian command sprue. Removing the legs from the torso, and filing down the top of the Cadian legs, I ended up with something that seemed proportionate, and then went to town with polystyrene cement, filling the gap and covering it over with baggage (Flagellant hammer, Frostgrave backpack as a belt-tied knapsack, and my favourite trick - a de-headed Fireforge helmet). His head is a Frostgrave cultist with the pointy hood filed down to something a little less dramatic (I almost used the same head as for the monk above, but I loved the haughtiness of this guy's expression).

I painted the guy up to match the knight I did a while back - coming from the same range, the costumes complement each other nicely, and I'm definitely putting the pair up in my 'favourite kitbashes' list, so it makes sense. They can be a dishonoured Knight of the Vale and his squire, and will also be gracing my Frostgrave warband.

Unfortunately, the knapsack turned out very brown. I mean, I painted it brown, but post-varnish it blends into the robes a lot more than I would have liked. It's not a huge bugbear, but I was so happy with the model that the paint-job does annoy me a little... Ho hum.

I enjoyed this pair so much I've recently completed a third member of their little crew, and will be painting him in due course. Chap No.3 was produced while waiting for the glue to dry on the opening shots in a project I've been meaning to get around to for a while...

UK Games Expo Haul

UK Games Expo at the NEC last weekend (3-5 June) was a great show, and everyone on the Osprey stand put in a shift and a half! As a buying show, though, it was relatively quiet for me - I had no big plans or objectives, and so limited myself to cool little impulse buys.

First up, for a forthcoming project, this little doozy from Cosy Dice, who were right opposite our stand (talk about fortuitous!). A really nice dice bag from a couple of lovely people. I heartily recommend the company, especially if you have a custom job in mind.

This Kraken bag can be found here.

The best thing I found at the show, however, was something that had slipped under my radar - the anthropomorphic animal models from Oathsworn Miniatures. I found them on the Friday (I think - time stopped meaning much after the first couple of hours!), and picked up the rulebook for their game, Burrows & Badgers. It's essentially Redwall: The Wargame, and is great stuff! Badger mercenaries, dormouse sneak thieves, drunken weasels, fox crimelords... I read over the setting and the rules and fell in love with it.

Of course, having a nice range of models helps, and I went back on the Saturday to pick up a couple of choice figures... then sent a mate over on the Sunday to grab one more! They're adorable figures, and I'm looking to nab a load more once these are painted. Clearly, I need a badger to support the pug, weasel, and fox I have at the moment. And an otter. And probably a wildcat. And there's a brilliant bat necromancer...

Finally, and not miniatures-related in any way, is this t-shirt featuring the greatest Pokemon of all time: Gengar. Picked up from the very nice people at www.gametee.co.uk (and coming with a free art print of the image too!). I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for more of their stuff.

The Good, The Bad and The Steampunk

A bit back (see here), I spoke about my first published work, Steampunk Soldiers: Uniforms & Weapons From the Age of Steam. It was pretty well-received, and a sequel was green-lit! Fast-forward a year or two, and the sequel, is now available (from all good bookshops and the Osprey website).

The sequel delves more deeply into America. It covers the Sioux and Apache wars, the lingering cold war between North and South, Canada's border skirmishes with the Union and Russian Alaska, and the Mexican-Confederate confrontation. Naturally, a look is also given to the non-military side of things - gunslingers, bounty hunters, and cowpokes.

This volume was a real labour of love, and I hope that enthusiasm shines through. Mark Stacey has done a bang-up job on the artwork as usual, and even thrown in a few familiar faces (I suspect he loves old Westerns as much as I do!).

Who knows - if this sequel goes well, we might see another...

Anyhow, here are a few of my favourite spreads (click to embiggen) from the book to whet your appetites, along with a little "director's commentary". Enjoy!

We had a Pinkerton in the first volume, but while that one represented the Presidential bodyguard, this one represents another aspect of the Agency (and its historical peers) - strikebreaking. John Sayles' Matewan is one of my favourite films, and inspired me to read more about the early American labour union movements. So, when I started out with the planning for this volume, I knew I wanted to pick up some elements from this rich history, and thus this rather seedy, past-his-prime gun thug was born. His face reminds me of a cross between Jonathan Pryce and Titus Welliver, which pleases me no end!

I can only thank my co-author, Joe, for putting up with me. Having agreed from the start that we were not going to muck around with geography (apart from the division of North and South), I almost immediately threw that out the window (sorry, Kansas City... pages 14-15), and then smashed the window with this one, establishing an independent nation right in the middle of the US. While he didn't complain too much at the time, I do think this artwork went a long way towards seeing me properly forgiven for it...

One thing we decided from the outset is that while hephaestium gave us license to introduce all kinds of bizarre technology, we wanted to keep it grounded in something resembling reality - less is more. So, while every artwork shows off some anachronistic element, there is a range from the outright unbelievable (pages 60-61, for example...) to the more subtle, such as this one here. A classic bandito, armed with a prototype flamethrower weapon alongside a more reliable (seriously - look at the holes burned through his sombrero - that flamethrower is a double-edged sword!) sawn-off shotgun.

Not all of the plates depict individual soldiers, mind you - there's a fair few that show off vehicles and equipment too. This is one of my favourites, and is really my steampunk homage to The War Wagon and the remake of 3:10 to Yuma - two westerns that I can happily watch over and over again. With art plates, the authors usually supply reference material from which the artist can work. For this one, Mark received a bundle of pretty random images - steam engines, trains, pillboxes, weaponry, period fonts, corporate logos, costumes, film stills... - and turned them into this beauty. Mark always does a good job of telling a story with his art - often even with a single figure (see the Pinkerton clutching his hip flask just as tightly as his shotgun), and the tone here is perfect - the motor idling while the drivers argue about directions and the gun crew take the opportunity to escape the searing heat of driving around in a metal box!

Reinforcement

Having played a few games of Frostgrave now, I had enough resources to start thinking about making my warband a bit more robust.

At present, it's very Thug-heavy, which is great for grabbing treasure and ganging up on people, but less ideal for actually winning a one-on-one fight (I think I've been a little too lucky so far...). I'm also having second thoughts about my Ranger – I love the model I'm using, and the versatility of a pretty good fighter and archer is desirable, but... he just doesn't seem to succeed at much. Ever. It's not that he's bad at what he does, just that he seems to have the most abominable luck. Poor guy.

The Ranger. Do something useful, dammit!

So, reluctantly, I started looking for alternatives, and figured that I may as well splash out on a Knight. Knights are the powerhouses of the Frostgrave mercenaries, with good combat ability and solid armour. They're not immortal (as Joe's warband has demonstrated!), but they are tough, and can provide a distraction from what the rest of my warband is getting up to.

As most of my 'good ideas' start, I had a rummage in my bitz box, and dug out a half-finished model I'd been mucking around with for a D&D-style paladin. At that stage, it was a torso, legs and one arm. The legs came from a Bretonnian man-at-arms, and the torso (with an attached left arm) from a Bretonnian knight.

The Grey Knight

At this point, I realised that I didn't have any matching right arms, so a delay was incurred while I waited for some additional bitz to arrive. Originally looking for a classic 'sword & board' fighter, all the right arms I ordered gave me a choice of waving an over-large sword in the air, or holding one out from the body. Neither was very palatable, so a spot of slicing and drilling provided me with a spear. Not a classic knight, but not without precedent. The pose's 'adventuring' vibe was emphasised with a piece of slate on the base.

The rest was simple – bits of Bretonnian and Empire baggage to give him the look of a more seasoned traveller, and a Fireforge helmet (technically, a Fireforge head with the head part carved out) to hang from the belt. Unexpectedly, the Fireforge helmet appeared to scale almost perfectly with the GW head I had chosen. A shield from the Frostgrave plastics rounded out his equipment, and a hood carved down from one on the GW Empire wizards sprue polished off the cold-weather feel.

Painting was quick as usual, with a palette designed to suit both my warbands in case this mercenary proves fickle in his loyalties. I did dicker over whether to do more with his shield – an insignia or something – but, in the end, I preferred the simplicity of the plain shield, fitting far more with my take on the character as a disgraced knight-turned mercenary leader.

Sir Name-Pending

Thursday, Bloody Thursday

So, it's a Thursday. Thursday, for some reason, we tend to go a little off-reservation, and much hilarity ensues. Today, Joe and I had a game of Frostgrave, with the intent of putting together a battle report to answer some of the questions about the system and the gameplay.

Joe's report can be found on his blog, and sums up the hijinks. We only played a basic scenario - two warbands meet, have a conflict of interest, and get down to fightin' - and it went just four turns, but it was the first game we had with actual copies of the rulebook to hand (which somehow made everything better).

While my warband has taken to the field before, this is the first time in which they fought with the full campaign rules in effect. Joe's listed the results of his post-game checks, and I thought I'd do the same.

Road House!

Like 1989's Road House, beer and the Boxer Rebellion, I LOVE random tables. Love, love, love 'em! And Frostgrave is a dream come true in that regard.

First things first, I rolled to see if the Thug that Joe's Knight pounded into the ground would be able to recover. I rolled a 19, and he was in fine fettle. The luck of the dice had continued from the scenario into the campaign elements! In fairness, the game isn't that lethal when it comes to models surviving a scenario - they can go down hard and fast during a game, but they have a pretty decent chance of sticking around.

Next, I calculated the infamous Lo Shen's experience gains. While only the Wizard gains experience, the effects can be felt throughout the warband. Lo Shen had a pretty active game, taking an enemy soldier out of action and casting several spells - he earned a total of 280 experience points, taking me up to level 2 with 80 points left over (so only 20 needed next game to hit level 3). This is a pretty swift - but not implausible - advance for a wizard, especially when his warband carries the field pretty dramatically. Each level gained allows you to improve a stat, improve a spell, or learn a new spell. I held off spending these levels until I saw what I'd looted during the battle...

Treasure is a feast for the lover of random tables. While captured treasure tokens grant 50 experience points, each one also permits a roll on the Treasure Table. Having captured 4 treasure tokens, I rolled results of:

• 20 gold crowns and a grimoire.
• 40 gold crowns and a magic weapon/armour.
• 80 gold crowns and a grimoire.
• d20 x 20 gold crowns.

Each of these results led to another roll (yay!). The two grimoires yielded the Banish and Draining Word spells, the magic weapon turned out to be a staff that deals +2 damage, and a 15 on the money haul netted me 300gc. All told, I came out with a perfect weapon for Lo Shen, one perfect new spell (Banish) that I spent a level to learn, and a ton of cash.

As Draining Word is a Sigilist spell, it is opposed to Lo Shen's Summoner school, and thus would be really hard to cast (+6 difficulty), so I left it in my vault for now, and spent my second level on reducing the difficulty of casting Bone Dart. I did toy with improving Summon Demon to increase my chances of bringing a Major Demon into play (the Imp I summoned was probably the MVP, killing a War Hound and Joe's Apprentice, but I think he got really lucky...), but with the tons of cash I managed to scrounge, I had other options...

While I have yet to spend the 440gc I nabbed, I'm definitely going to acquire a base in the ruins and will probably equip it with a Summoning Circle while I have the cash going spare, in order to improve my demon summoning options. The temptation to replace some of my weaker minions with tougher soldiers is tempting, but I think improving my Wizard is the sensible move at this stage.

All in all, I'm keen to go back into the ruins. The nice thing is that Joe, my most likely opponent, isn't horribly set back by his defeat this game - like Lo Shen, his Wizard has improved and acquired some useful bits and pieces, so the next clash will be a whole new challenge!

The victors! Lo Shen (front row, centre) stands with his triumphant warband behind their loot. The injured Thug takes a well-earned rest, and the man-of-the-match Imp (bottom left) prepares to be banished back to the nether realms.