Category: Figures

A belated start to my Lion Rampant force

August kind of got away from me hobby-wise, with a lack of opportunities to get anything done. One thing that was delayed was making a start on my Lion Rampant force, for which I’d bought the first figures but had barely managed to open the box.

I’ve got a multi-player Lion Rampant game weekend in November, in celebration of Goat Major recently joining the ranks of the seriously ancient. I’m looking forward to this event and would feel a bit guilty if I didn’t bring any figures of my own along so, like others, I’ve committed to turn up with whatever I can get done in time. It’s actually serving as a useful preliminary deadline for Ayton 2017 (we like to plan ahead!), which will be LR-focused and should see a very interesting collection of retinues turn up for a weekend mini-campaign.

My force, with pretty much anything from 1000-1500AD to choose from, is going to be based on the Normans in Italy in the late 11th Century. This suits me for a number of reasons;

  • I’ve always liked Normans, and was painting them in 15mm (TTG figures) over 30 years ago
  • I’d rather paint them than anything more ‘High Medieval’ with all the heraldry, etc
  • I can extend things imagi-nation-wise to cover the earliest Medetians, which I see as being Norman adventurers who decided to grab a nice bit of sunny coastline
  • By adding some Saracen allies I can re-use those figures as natives for my colonial Sharp Practice project
  • Nothing much else really appealed as it’s not a period I’ve ever really considered doing at this scale

After a lot of looking around on the web, I settled on the plastic figures from Conquest Games as the core of my force – certainly for the mounted element. There’s plenty of variety in the box, and enough for 15 figures. I need 6 for a unit of ‘mounted men-at-arms’ (Knights to you and me) and 6 more for a unit of mounted serjeants. I’ll divide them on the basis of how much armour they’re wearing and work out some colour schemes for them.

For now, I need to plough through the inevitable grind of preparing and sticking them together. The lances will generally be replaced with brass ones and I’ll add a banner or two.

First go:

 

My leader with some of his bodyguard unit of Knights:

I’ll come up with a name for him and some more background fluff in due course.
9 more to go, but I might get one painted soon just to see how they’ll look.

Some Fantasy Dabbling

It’s been a bit quiet on the Medetian front of late, caused by the usual excuses of a busy time at work and lots of other commitments. Still, I’ve managed a few bits of effort here and there – mostly around something new (which of course I need like a hole in the head..)

For quite a while now I’ve been thinking about trying to find a way of playing some fantasy games, based on a party of adventurers and some linked dungeon-crawls – you know the sort of thing. There are lots of games out there for this type of thing, including boardgames and board/figure cross-over games, etc. I hadn’t done a lot of research and was even thinking of designing something myself (and was a bit put off by the idea of having to obtain lots of floorplans or 3D dungeon scenery), so nothing was really happening with this idea. Then along came Frostgrave, which looks very nicely done, and likely to be spot on for me.

I have a reasonable head-start with stuff for this, including winter/snow terrain boards (although I appreciate that you can ignore this element of the background and set your games in any type of setting), buildings (although more on that later) – and lots of old figures from D&D and Rolemaster days.

I had a bit of nostalgic fun looking through these veteran figures from the ’80s and selected the most suitable for use with Frostgrave. They’d need re-painting but doing them one at a time should be quite good fun, so I’ve re-undercoated and re-based some. Where they were slotta based, I’ve done some fudging to get them onto 2p coins. I haven’t decided on the basing style yet, in terms of surface texture and painting, so for now I’m just giving them a smoothing coat of plaster to make things match.

Initially I’m working on two parties (referred to as Warbands in the game), one ‘good’ and one ‘evil’ in style. This is just for fun really, and to differentiate between the figures in a reasonably logical way. I’ve also got quite a few suitable monsters and other nasties that might be encountered, so should be able to get some early games in (when my pre-ordered rulebook arrives) without too much work.

The first few done:

 

Good old traditional adventurer types will fit into the henchmen categories, and a wizard with a pointy hat and staff will always be useful:

A Wizard and Apprentice team:

GW Empire Militia kit bashing. Lots of potential in these figures, from the 12 I had on sprues I’ve managed to make (in Frostgrave terms) 6 Thugs, 2 Infantrymen, 1 Archer, 1 Crossbowman, 1 Tracker and a Thief:

Of which two have been painted so far:

More old figure candidates for a possible repaint (not that I’m really likely to need more, but hey):

Some treasure markers to paint (Fenris Games):

Ideas on scenery next..

 

Loose Ends

Before getting back to my 6mm FPW stuff, I painted a few 28mm figures on returning from the Ayton weekend. Normally I’d be burnt out after hitting the big deadline, but apparently not this year!

Nothing special, just a few more bits and pieces ahead of further Sharp Practice games I want to play this summer. They were painted in 1s and 2s and weren’t too onerous. I’ll probably pick off a few more lead-pile stragglers over time just to keep my interest levels up while I concentrate on other projects.

The Medetian marines finally get their Big Men – 2 officers, from the Gringos Maximilian-Mexican range (great beard on the senior guy!):

 

Then there were a couple more Fleurian line infantry that I didn’t need for Ayton but who will round out my 3rd group of 10 for Sharp Practice, plus some further Fleurian light troops. These include a couple of big men (an officer and a sergeant) and a couple of extra soldiers to go with the mountain gun to make the crew up to the normal group of 5.

 

More FPW In Progress

Following the 4 player game we had in March, I’ve been intending to get some final additions done for my 6mm French and German forces. These will round things off nicely, and complete the 2 full corps per side that the megalomaniac in me has insisted I must have!

This involves adding a 6th French division, some Bavarian infantry, guns and cavalry, and a few Baden units. Everything continues to be from Heroics and Ros. The French infantry was picked up at Salute, where it was good to see the company represented with a sales stand.

The basing and prepping for the black spray undercoat is always the time-consuming bit, after which the painting seems relatively quick and easy. Most of the work is done now, and I can hopefully start posting some pictures of finished units once I get going properly on the painting.

I’ve also being doing some planning for my planned Austrian 1859 army (which will also consist of 2 corps – eventually). I’ve tried some ‘Mark 2’ basing, which involves magnetic sabots for the unit sub-bases for ease of handling, and if I decide it’s worth it I’ll do the whole army like that when the time comes.

Fleurian Standard Bearer

If I hadn’t creased the flag so thoroughly it would be possible to read the wording that says this is the flag of the 1st Line Regiment. It’s in there somewhere!

As with other flags I’ve done recently this is a clip-art based print-out that I’ve painted and highlighted up. This guy will join the rest of the regiment in time to go into action at the weekend. He’ll probably be leading the retreat!

 

 

Introducing His Imperious Eminence

Just finished, the mighty Lippup Fatti II, the Bey of Bizcay:

 

This is my irregular force commander for when the army marches forth in far flung places like Byzarbia and Phetraea. The figures are from The Assault Group’s Ottoman range and I bought them 3 years ago to take to a previous game, but didn’t get them painted in time. I’ve just managed it this time around, and I’ve added the flag I did last week.

That’s everything done for Ayton now, and off to war we go. I’ll report back after the big event!

Irregular Cavalry Commander

Although I went to Salute last weekend, and enjoyed it a lot, I haven’t posted about it specifically because other bloggers do it very well and very thoroughly and I don’t really do show reports (and because I only took about 3 pics).

Post-Salute the day improved even further with beers, pub lunch, beers and an excellent curry. A good day all-round. I did buy a very few figures (8 actually) at the show and although it wasn’t originally my intention, I decided to finish one to take to Ayton. This is the commander from the Rif War range by Gringo 40s. I saw it on their website and thought it was ideal as a cavalry leader for the big game at Ayton, and as a Big Man for Sharp Practice in the future.

 

 

Nearly ready for Ayton 2015!

Only a few figures still to finish (6 cavalry, a general, a gun and a flag to be precise), and I’ll be done.

Just for once I’d really like to complete everything before the day of departure, but I can’t guarantee it. At least whatever happens I won’t be doing one of my usual 2 depressing last-minute tasks; painting bloody hussars or desperately waiting for the basing to dry! All the latter is done and the last (simple, native) cavalry are being painted in situ for this very reason.

I’ve just finished a flag for my irregular general Lippup Fatti. It’s a clip-art compilation comprising a scimitar, a crescent and an elephant, printed out on paper and coloured in/around. It’ll do, and should look better once the figures are painted..

 

 

The pre-weekend campaign has been very entertaining so far and I think it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of confusion, suspicion and back-stabbing going on, which I suspect was Iain’s plan all along. The setting is an 1880s Sudan-esque colonial country called Phetraea, where various imperialist imagi-nations are involved in preparing for a huge rebellion to sweep over them. Medetia is there of course, as are factions from about 8 other interesting and varied countries. There are a couple of new faces this year, which is excellent and they’ll be very welcome.

My force will be reasonably balanced, but fairly modest. Intended mainly for the post-Napoleonic period, my figures are generally too early for this late 19th century setting, but it’s not the sort of gaming event where this really matters. I expect to encounter everything from elephants and zulus, to picklehaubs, sombreros and armed nuns. There’s even a Friday evening pre-game (which better not go on too long into the drinking zone!) where each player takes the field with a character for some competitive wild boar hunting.

It’s going to be fun all-round and I’m really looking forward to it. Roll on the Bank Holiday weekend.
Salute too beforehand of course!

Naval Battalion Finished

The Marines are now done, so here’s the entire Naval Battalion mustered and ready for action on distant shores.

This unit will be deploying to the deserts of Phetraea at the Ayton weekend in May, and after that (should there be any survivors!) will be used in Sharp Practice games involving coastal landing parties and river actions. I have a couple of Big Men to add later; a Marine officer and an NCO.