Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad

We all know the oft quoted maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy and this is the case with my August plan for the remaining five months of the year. However all was not lost and whilst I had planned to finish the Athenians, some more Orcs and the Zulus by the end of October, I'm happy that the Athenians are finished and that I have two more Orc regiments finished (and 36 wolves painted awaiting riders). Ok, no Zulus but as Meat Loaf says two out of three ain't bad...

So the question is whether to stick with the plan and move onto the Persians next month and ACW the month after or push everything back? Given November is a strange month for me, with a week off and a week working in Paris, I think trying to deal with the fussy Persians would be setting myself up to fail so I have decided that November will be Zulu Month, as painting them should be fairly straight forward, and I'll leave December as the planned ACW Month. The Persians will be pushed back into 2013.

I also want to finish the wolf riders in November as they are well progressed so I will probably concentrate on them for the rest of this week before clearing the decks to concentrate on the Zulus.

Athenian Cavalry - An Army Finished!

At last an army finished!* :-)

I have just completed the last of the planned Athenian army for the Peloponnesian War project, sixteen Athenian cavalry from Foundry. I actually only wanted twelve, but they came as a job lot on eBay so I painted them all up in case the extra four found themselves needed at some stage in the future.

As with all previous Athenian posts, the figures were white undercoated, block painted and then dipped with Army Painter Soft Tone. I'm not 100% convinced the dip technique is appreciable quicker than my black undercoat technique, these certainly seem to take longer than the orcs but that might be because they are a much more stop and start approach waiting for the dip to dry, be matt varnished etc.

* Of course no army is every really finished and I am sure that there are many potential additions that could come along, but this was (by and large) the army I originally planned, therefore it is finished.

Just need to paint up the Spartans now...

Athenian painted running total: 

125/125 infantry
16/16 cavalry

In The Jungle...

October was supposed to be Zulu month under the August Plan but not an "uSuthu" has been murmured in Blease Towers so I will be revisiting the plan for November and December after some more ruminating...

In the meantime whilst trying to finish off the Athenian cavalry (almost done now) I took the opportunity to put the finishing touches to some jungle terrain I had been working on and off on for some time now.

Construction is really simple. A variety of tropical fish foliage pieces were hot glue gunned to some old CD-R's, the base area then sanded, painted and flocked (well two have, I noticed when taking the photos I have forgotten to do six of the eight!).

Originally I had in mind using them in some 28mm Darkest Africa and Warhammer Lustria games but realised they they are so non-scale specific that they could also be used for 15mm Tusk type games as well as 54mm Burma Firefight games.

Not My Fault!

It's not my fault! No, honest it's not! No, it's Boggler's, ALL his fault, yep, the blame is 100% his - entirely...

So there I was not even considering Normandy Firefight and not maybe, one day, considering some 54mm skirmishes set maybe in Italy or Burma, not in the slightest. Then was does Boggler do? The comments on yesterday's post with: "I have acquired all the requisite bits. The thing that puts me off is the terrain?"

Good point I think and go to bed. Then it starts niggling away...

On the school run I'm pondering whether 1/35th terrain like the Tamiya brick walls would work with 28mm as well as 54mm figures then having tea I had the 'eurkea' moment! Jungle terrain is generally non-scale specific, eBay and Burma here I come...

So now, thanks to Boggler and his conundrum(!) I now have bought some Airfix Multipose Japanese and British infantry (and some Afrika Korp, not sure why but 12 figures for £10 seemed good value when I watched the bidding war for the set one up explode on the list hitting £17 for just 6 in an old box!) and am spending too much time Googling photos of the 1944 Burma campaign - Thanks Boggler!!! ;-)

Normandy Firefight

A little while back I picked up a copy of Normandy Firefight, Warwick Kinrade's "detailed skirmish combat rules from WWII" from North Star. Like most wargamers I buy far more rules than I will ever play but the fact that these rules were designed for extremely small scale skirmishes of up to around five figures a side and used 1/35th miniatures, my interest was piqued.

The rules are very interesting using a two second action move, detailed wound location and recording of ammunition expenditure. This might sound a bit too much but I was extremely impressed how Warwick combined the to-hit, hit location and damaged caused in one D100 roll (and I love percentile dice). Overall the mechanisms seem quite elegant and simple for such a detailed game.

I do have some reservations such as the lack of an overwatch rule to allow opponents to shoot at miniatures running from behind one piece of hard cover to another (eg. from house to house) but I think that I'd really need to play the game before critiquing further.

Will I?

At this stage probably not. The concept intrigues me, I used to love sticking Airfix Multipose and Tamiya figures together (and there are some in the attic IIRC) but at the moment I don't want to slip into a new scale. The game can be played with 28mm miniature or even 20mm ones but I guess much of the fun is using the larger scale models.

Even with one part of my brain saying no, the creative part is pondering 54mm infantry combat in Italy or Burma!

Maybe a project for 2014? :-)

Red Orc Regiment

At last some painted miniatures! :-)

This is a regiment of old Grenadier UK Orcs sculpted by Nick Lund. I've always liked Nick's style, much more Tolkienesque than Kev Adams.

As I will be using both Adams and Lund Orcs (as well as some old FTO Perry ones) I decided to paint these up with a different skin colour, opting for a red-brown as a nod towards the Red Goblins of yore...

Painting was some rough heavy drybrushing and layering over a black undercoat with some Devlan Mud washes on anything that looked too bright. They are dirty and grubby, but to my mind that is what Orcs should look like.

Hopefully I can get on with the thirty Goblin wolf riders I've had sat around for a couple of decades next! :-)

Paint Comparison Chart

I've just used the final dregs from my last pot of the old GW Bestial Brown on the bases of my Orcs. With the continuing GW price rises and my love of Vajello I was wondering whether Vajello did a compatible colour that I could buy - they do, Beasty Brown!

How do I know? By using this Paint Comparison Chart on the Dakka Dakka forum which should be very useful (unless you use Foundry paints!).

Back To The Painting Bench...

I've just finished painting some Grenadier Orcs. This is the first time in a couple of weeks that I've managed to get some painting done due to the incessant demands of the 'Real World' and a stinking cold that still occasionally flares up (cough, cough, cough). Once dry I just need to sand, paint and flock the bases and they will be done (as will the Athenian cavalry who also just need basing).

Now October is supposed to be Zulu month but this will now probably be later in the month when I have a bit of holiday booked in (I'm planning a bit of a conveyor belt approach). In the meantime I will continue with the Orcs & Goblins as and when I can grab a few minutes here and there...

Whilst I haven't been doing much painting I have unfortunately been doing far too much spending...

First off I got hooked into the Judge Dredd Kickstarter. This wasn't a great surprise as I love Judge Dredd and have been meaning to get around to some serious Mega-City gaming for a long time now (I bought some of the Citadel figures decades back but that went nowhere...).

This will actually kill two birds with one stone as most of my 28mm SF 'Lead Mountain' will probably be easy enough to use in the Dredd background with minimal effort (after all a ganger is a ganger whether official or not).

So expect lots of 2000AD miniature loveliness in 2013AD! :-)

Judge Dredd was going to be my last Kickstarter for the year but Eli (I See Lead People) Arndt has launched his own game company in the form of Loud Ninja Games and launched a Kickstarter for 15mm Space Raptors (c'mon how great is that?). Seriously, apart from supporting Eli with his cool idea, I have had for a number of years a hankering to play a few games based on Harry Turledove's World War series, based around an alien invasion during WW2. As the lizards in the books are around four foot tall, I'm hoping the 15mm raptors will work well enough with my 20mm WW2 collection.

Before DreadBall...

Whilst there are some similarities between Blood Bowl and DreadBall, not helped by the cover for DreadBall - which bears a certain similarity to the Blood Bowl computer game... :-) there are more similarities with another, now OOP, game...

Before DreadBall there was another SF "American Football" style game around, Hasbro's Battle Ball. I picked up a copy when on holiday in Florida around a decade back and Saul and I played a few games, though I must confess it was not the most challenging of games. Sadly Hasbro (as is their wont, killed the game off rather than expanded it with new teams and advanced rules). There are some interesting fan produced advanced rules in this thread on the game here.

Having seen the DreadBall basic rules it clearly jumps up and down on Battle Ball and buries it deep, but it might be worth hunting Battle Ball down for the figures alone as they clearly will make useful DreadBall alternatives.

My Kickstarter Addiction?

Apparently idle hands are the devil's playthings and I think this must be the case with me. I haven't had much opportunity to hit the painting table and get on with the Blood Moon Orcs due to a mixture of real life work and a bad case of Manthrax causing me to cough and sneeze over everything in sight. However it hasn't stopped me adding to "Lead Mountain" after being seduced by Mantic's Kickstarter project for DreadBall.

DreadBall is a SF football type game and I must confess that the original plans for the game were to my mind pretty uninspiring with teams of humans, orcs, dwarves and rat-men. It smacked of being an SF rip off of Bloodbowl and Mantic do seem to be acquiring a bit of a reputation of being producing cheap GW-lite products rather than being particularly innovative themselves (their SF wargame Warpath is especially guilty of this background wise with its own versions of Orks, Squats and Hrud).

However (game designer) Jake Thornton's blog proved interesting reading, the game mechanics (see YouTube video above) and play were sufficiently different from Bloodbowl and his ideas for the future beyond the initial game release quite inspiring...

So I decided to take the plunge, the game would provide some fun over the Xmas period and I do like Jake's other Mantic game Dwarf King's Hold.

Then the addiction took hold...

As more money was pledged towards the project Mantic put up options for Seasons 2 and 3 with some new teams that are much more interesting than those in the initial Season 1 game, as well as some cool MVP's. There are things with lots of tentacles, robots, giant robots, teleporting dinosaur aliens (now that would be good in Warpath), damn, there was some good stuff being planned. Indeed out of the next eight teams only the SF Ape team didn't float my boat and they're still better than Space Dwarves.

Oh well, in for a penny and all that. The credit card has taken a bit of a hit but not as bad as I thought as the process is in US Dollars and the exchange rate a lot better than I mentally converted.

Coupled with the Reaper Bones Kickstarter I can see I need to recognise that this could be an expensive, if good value, element to my hobby and I should not be seduced into buying into every new shiny project that comes up.

That said the Judge Dredd Kickstarter looks interesting and there are some good deals there...

Red Dawn Rising...

Those of you of a certain generation may recall a slightly cheesy but quite fun film from 1984 called Red Dawn. It dealt with a Soviet invasion of the US and followed the story of a bunch of teenagers, called the 'Wolverines' after their school football team, who fought back against the invaders. Whilst not Oscar wining material it is a lot better than it has any reason to be...


Fast forward nearly thirty years and a remake (or revision) of the original is to be released in America this November. This version of the film has apparently been sat around since 2010 but with MGM in financial difficulty it was shelved until a deal was struck with an independent film company to release it.

Since initial filming the film's "bad guys" have been re-badged. Initially the invaders were the Chinese, but following adverse reaction in China and considering the potential loss of earnings from the Chinese box office, the Chinese were converted into North Koreans in post-production through some minimal re-shoots and CGI. Quite how realistic this makes the film is up to debate but I guess realism was never top of the filmaker's agenda.

Whatever, if it is half as good as the first it should still be worth watching for some light entertainment...

Happy Hobbit Day!

Following on from yesterday's 75th Anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit (did you have your second breakfast at 11am?), today is International Hobbit Day chosen as it is both Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday. A good excuse to have another second breakfast and watch the new trailer for the first of the fothcoming Hobbit films...


Wargames wise I am half way through painting a regiment of Red Orcs and have based/rebased and undercoated some 36 old Citadel Gobin Wolfriders. Hopefully I'll get these painted by the end of Orc Month.

Shiver Me Timbers Ye Damme Landlubbers!!!

Yep, it's the 10th International Talk Like A Pirate Day - so add an arrr to everything you say today and make someone smile (and if the lubber don't smile, the plank for he...).

Dance on a dead man's chest whilst swigging your grogge mateys...

Pax Bochemannica

Anyone who knows my wargaming pedigree will know of my love of historo-fantasy games. This goes back many decades when I read an excellent article in (IIRC) Games Review Monthly entitled Warhammer in the Age of Reason. This hypothesised an extension of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle timeline into the time of Marlborough. The idea of Goblins sporting muskets and tricorns seemed wonderful. Since then I have been involved with Flintloque (fantasy Napoleonic) and Panzerfäuste (fantasy WW2) and have been seduced by Akula's fantasy WW1.

Now we have Pax Bochemannica, fantasy Ancients...

Pax Bochemannica is a new skirmish game from Maveryc, which will be released late 2012/early 2013. Figure scupltor and rules writer Dave Toone (who also runs the excellent Miniature Design Studio - ancients gamers check them out) sent me some master castings and a playtest copy of the rules.

The miniatures are Orc Roman infantry (in Lorica segmentata) and Halfling Germanic tribesman. Unfortunately Dave didn't have any of the separate weapons or (Orc) shields so I have pinched some plastic axes and shields from the spares box for the Halflings. I wasn't too sure why some of the Halflings had braces so I decide to cover these with Green Stuff fur and tunics...

As you can see the sculpting is very good and characterful, very reminiscent of old Flintloque figures scuplted by Mike Owen. Whilst the figures are said to be 28mm, they are noticeable larger than existing 28mm fantasy or historical ancients which means that accessories and scenery compatibility may be an issue (no more than it was with Flintloque, the Roman Orcs being near enough the same height as Flintloque's Napoleonic Orcs). To my mind this is a shame as the Halflings cannot readily also be used in say Warhammer as they are larger than GW's Dwarves, let alone their Halflings.

Maveryc Halfling next to Greandier Orc...

The playtest rules are a really good ancients skirmish set and a lot of fun, my only gripe (which I have fed back to Dave) is the lack of magic. Historo-fantasy games are a strange beast that need to remember they are a mix of both genres not just funny creatures in historical uniforms playing historical battles (what is the point of that?).

Overall this looks like an interesting fun project, I'm not sure how engaged I will be with it (after all I have said I am not starting anything new!) but it should appeal to the Flintloque crowd and gamers with a (slightly twisted) sense of humour.

(Orc Month) Fantasy Forge Orcs

Twenty years before Games Workshop managed to upset a large percentage of their customer base with a switch from metal to resin for miniatures production, Scottish company Fantasy Forge (best known for SF wargame Kryomek) were producing miniatures in the medium, including Orcs and Barbarians, with excellent results.

To kick off September is Orc Month I have dug out a box of the Fantasy Forge Orcs to form the basis of the Red Skull regiment. The box contained twelve Orcs in two basic poses but with head variations, sculpted by Kev Adams and quite finely detailed (with very little in the way of the pin hole issues that seem to bedevil GW's Finecast). Of course twelve figures is not really enough for a unit, but being Kev Adams sculpts, I managed to rescue four old Heartbreaker Orcs from Lead Mountain which Kev had also sculpted and fit in perfectly.

ps. I haven't forgotten the Athenian cavalry, they have been painted and dipped and now just need the bases finishing off...

America's Fighting Dinosaur

America's Fighting Dinosaur is a Kickstarter faux-documentary film project. Just watch the video and tell me you don't want to see it...

The Ruin of Britain

West Wind Productions are celebrating their 10th birthday at present and are offering a whopping great 30% discount on their Arthurian, Berlin or Bust WW2 and Samurai lines - well they are until tomorrow night (the discount code is BIRTHDAY if you are interested).

This seemed to be too good an offer to ignore so I dug out the box of Old Glory Arthurians Mike Baumann sent me a few years back to see what I had and what I needed to purchase to make these models into usable armies for Dux Bellorum. The box contained 30 Romano-British infantry, 30 Irish infantry and 35 Saxons.

Rules author Dan Mersey's blog gives some sample armies for the game and following these I worked out that I needed a total of 42 Romano-British miniatures, 49 Irish and 48 Saxons to raise these armies, so having the back broken on these already and with West Wind offering 30% off it seemed a bit of a no brainer really to order what was needed to finish the unpainted armies off (SWMBO didn't appear to be agreeing but I managed to distract her with the Jewellery Channel on the TV). I did have a mini-worry about figure compatibility but IIRC West Wind's Andy Cooper used to work for Old Glory so I am hoping this won't be a major problem.

The pack compositions posed a bit of a problem leaving me odd figures short for some bases but as the number of figures on a base is not vital I have some ideas to get around this. The only "still needed" miniatures that West Wind did not have are some Irish Ordinary Riders and I need to seek out three miniatures for this.

The only problem now is not to go off project and start playing about with them when they arrive. They are a 2013 project and will stay that way!!

Hobhounds and Hobgoblin Master

Whilst painting the Greeks I took the opportunity to finish off and old (1984 IIRC) Citadel Hobhounds and Hobgoblin Master set that was sat on the workbench. This set will join the Goblinoid army along with a regiment of Hobgoblins also bought in the mid-eighties.

 I have based the set on a DIY sabot base so the hobhounds can be removed and launched at the enemy in the game. I added foil reins to the handler which are not attached to the hounds, not 100% sure about them but they look better with than without IMHO.

 I've done a lot of the block painting on the Athenian cavalry but not finished it so I'll probably have to extend Athenian Month into the weekend...

(Athenian Month) Veteran Hoplites

Finished the Veteran Hoplite unit for my Athenian army, a smaller eighteen man phalanx made up from Immortal plastics. To reflect their veteran status, the front rank all wear a bronze cuirass, though this is purely aesthetic, the unit as a whole is equipped with light armour.

I did consider painting them up with uniform shields or tunics but in the end decided just to have them all sport blue and/or white plumes on their helmets. Their Spartan enemies will be uniform enough I suspect.

This just leaves the cavalry to do...

Athenian painted running total:

125/125 infantry
0/16 cavalry

(Athenian Month) Hoplites and Peltasts

Hurray, panited figures! The return to the themed month idea has been rewarded with the completion of two more units for the Peloponnesian War project's Athenian army; a third Hoplite phalanx and a unit of Peltast light infantry.

The Peltasts are from Foundry, picked up off eBay during the period Immortal went AWOL prior to their purchase by Warlord. The crescent Peltast shields are actually Wargames Factory from the Amazon box and the transfers for them from Veni Vidi Vici. Whilst I was a tad annoyed at the time, the neater/richer look of the Foundry light troops seems to suit the idea I have in my mind of the Athenian populace being a tad more urbane (and possibly affluent) than the slave helots that the Spartans will have (using the Immortal metals).

The third Hoplite phalanx is, like the first two, Immortal plastics. As with the other two I have gone for a slightly grungier look than the normal wargames shiny white. I cannot accept that troops on campaign on the Plain of Attica would not look grubby and dusty, nor white armour stay "Daz White", after a couple of days. The shield transfers are from the box set.

This just leaves one unit of Veteran Hoplites to complete (they just need the bases painting) and the sixteen Heavy Cavalry I have (which are just about to be undercoated), so, touch wood, the Athenian army should be finished this month.

Athenian painted running total:

109/125 infantry
0/16 cavalry

Reaper Bones Kickstarter

You may have seen that a number of games companies are using Kickstarter to raise funds for future projects, a process similar to that which a number of bands have done to cover the costs of recording new albums or touring (Marillion come to mind here).

Reaper Miniatures are one of the latest, looking for $30,000 to fun a more rapid expansion of their plastic fantasy Bones line. To date they have received pledges of $2,816,765!

The project only has a few hours to run and there are various levels of pledging bring various levels of reward. I haven't bothered with pledging on Kickstarter before, but as I like Reaper's models and what I've seen of their Bones line I decided support the project and after some consideration opted for the $100 Vampire level which currently buys 225 miniatures.

I'm not sure what I'll do with all of them but it is too good an offer not to take up. If you are interested in checking the offers out (and note the whole thing only has a few hours left so don't tarry), more details can be found here.

Update: in the end the Kickstarter pledges reached $3,415,448. I must confess to getting a tad carried away. Even as the $100 level was increased to 240 miniatures, I decided that some of the options were too good to pass up on, especially some of the larger dragons and creatures (and come on, an eight inch tall Cthulhu for just $10, that would be insane to pass up on!)

Exam Day of Doom?!

Well today was the day of doom for many 16 year olds in the UK, one Saul Blease included, as the GCSE (O-level in old money) exam results were released. Fortunately Saul exceeded the entry requirements for Sixth Form so he won't be asking me "do I want fries with that" at McDonald's next week.*

The press and politicians all seem to pontificate about how the exams have been dumbed down over the years but this is (pardon my French), bollocks. Saul has worked bloody hard at his subjects over the last two years and has been rewarded with good passes in those he has no aptitude for (ie. hates), and got the grades he wanted in those subjects he does like (though we are all, Saul included, baffled how he got three distinctions in ICT!).

His forte is music and the science, math, history study is all a means to an end to be able to study what he wants musically (and become a rock god) and I thought I would share with you one of his GCSE Music compositions for which he was awarded an A*.



* if you know someone who did not get what they wanted, give them a hug and support and let them know that there are opportunities out there and to keep working at it. Don't give up!

A Slight (Soviet) Diversion...

Yes, I know August is Athenian Month and I have been busy beavering away on hoplites and peltasts (honest) but whilst the hoplite shields were drying my eyes alighted on a 1/72nd Altaya pre-painted T72 that I had picked up for the Whirarwistan project last year. Unfortunately the pre-paint was pretty horrendous and I put the tank to one side to re-paint.

The pre-paint scheme was sand and black and looked awful so yesterday I overpainted the black with some Vallejo Russian Uniform green and then washed the whole model with GW Devlan Mud wash. I must say I am really pleased with then end result. Anyway enough distractions, back to the Greeks...

Empire: A Roman Spectacular

The Blease Clan set off across the water today to the the annual re-enactment event at Roman Legion Museum at Caerleon in South Wales. The two main attractions were Ars Dimicandi, an Italian group of "experimental archaeologists" who test archaeological theory on gladiators by hitting each other. Their gladiatorial combat re-enactment was well done and proved popular with the crowd.

More photos of Ars Diminicandi in action can be found here.

The Ermine Street Guard need no introduction and they are celebrating their 40th anniversary as the 2nd Augustus Legion by parading at Caerleon where the Legion was historically based.

They demonstrated Roman military equipment, training for both foot and cavalry, legion formations and Roman artillery which was really impressive with shot hurtling out of the arena into the fields beyond!

Great day out, the Guard are fantastic and more photos of them can be found here.

Dux In A Row...

No doubt you are all aware that Osprey have started releasing wargames rules in the Osprey MAA book format, one off stand alone titles covering various periods, kicking off with A World Aflame (for the Inter War period) and Dux Bellorum (for Arthurian Dark Ages). As a rules addict and because Amazon had a 30% off offer on I picked them up.

Dux Bellorum has grabbed my attention more than I suspected it would and I'm lining it up to be an early 2013 project. The reason for this is that the game doesn't require loads of miniatures (forty or fifty a side would seem ok), if I used sabot bases I could also use the miniatures for other games such as Brtyenwalda and the rules themselves seem like they could be quite fun. I like the way that Leadership Points can be bought at the expense of troops and the fact that measurement is by base widths (so how you base your units is up to you - I am pondering using the GW LOTR sabot ones).

This could also sneak in under the "no more new projects" rules as I have a few packs of old Foundry Arthurians somewhere and some Old Glory figures given to me a while back. I had planned to use them as fantasy humans alongside with the plastic GW Rohirrim but they could do double duty as fantasy and historical.

On more immediate projects I have gotten back on the horse today and put some paint on some more Athenians so hopefully some new painted stuff soon...