Terrain Time

I'm continuing on my mission to finish off things that I left sitting around prior to my sabbatical. This time I decided to complete some terrain pieces. I have plenty more to do but taking things one small project at a time will see me get through the backlog pretty quickly.

First up is some 6mm buildings to go with my 10mm Marlburian troops. I decided to go for the smaller scale because I prefer the smaller footprint of the town tiles. They don't look too weird next to the 10mm battalions. All the buildings are from Total War Miniatures and I still have more to paint up.

This is a small village tile based, I think, on one of the hamlets around the Waterloo or Ligny battlefields. The buildings are resin and the tile is made of latex.

This is Papelotte Farm from the 100 Days range. It's a nice little self contained model. It sits in the palm of my hand pretty comfortably. I also have Le Hay Sainte and I'll paint that one up soon.

This one is Ligny Chateaux from the 100 Days range. This came in 3 parts and looks fantastic. Its footprint will make it a nice fortified village to be fought over (hopefully many times).

Attack of the 50' Woman!! 

Just for scale, here they are with a 28mm figure.

I also finished this small forest. These are 3d printed spooky trees. I got them as a set from Temu. From memory I got them from a dealer in Queensland. They look great and I think I might get another set. They are mounted on some mdf blast-crater-marker templates that I found. The shapes are nice an irregular so they work well. If I get more trees I might have to try and find some more of these templates.

The canopy was made with some cheapo artificial moss that I got from Amazon. It came as a 100 gram pack which was vacuum packed and quite small. However, once I opened it it started to expand and due to the very light weight of the material I ended up up with quite a quantity and I ended up using less than half of the pack. Even better... I ordered in in the morning and it arrived around dinner time.

And here they are with some of my forest dwellers, all ready to defend their new woodland abode.

Thanks for reading and I'll post some more as soon as I can.

Cheers.

I'm Alive! I'm Alive!

Or Maybe...

I've had a long sabbatical away from wargaming (about 18 months at a guess). I completely lost my mojo and retreated into music. As a result I wrote, rehearsed and recorded an album of original songs, to which I'm currently putting the finishing touches. It will will be out in a few weeks. If you want you can listen to a single right here: Atom Bomb by The Voodoo Dudes.

Anyway, enough of my carry on... I'm back at the modelling workbench and gearing up to get myself back to the wargaming table. I initially started with a continuation of my 10mm War of Spanish Succession but soon reverted to a project that I left sitting around when I stopped dead! And that project was basing my Army of The Dead for Midgard. This was a project that totally baffled me when I started so many months ago. However, looking at it with fresh eyes made the whole project fall into place.

These figures are a collection of anything that fits the theme. There's a whole bunch of cheap Warhammer skellington things, Oathmark revenants, Mantic figures made from that horrible plastic stuff that they use, el-cheapo Wizkids D&D figures, Reaper Miniatures, and other bits.

This army is large enough that it can be reasonably be considered to be called an army. On the wing are the Ghost Riders (but they're not in the sky). I'm pretty certain that these are from the Mantic, Kings of War range. For what they are they're pretty good but they don't have tails and that make them look odd. I need to rebase the commander on a round/oval base.

These ghostly skeleton guys are GW. I got a couple of cheap sprues of them at a swap-meet along with the rider and other matching figures. A few years back GW released a magazine that came with a sprue of these critters for $5.00. So I bought a whole bunch of them. I still have a couple of sprues waiting to be made.

More from Mantic - The army has a lovely swarm of graveyard rats to act as a skirmish screen. I'm not sure if I'll give them a pseudo shooting attack or just make them fast and worthless just for the purpose of swamping the enemy to cause manoeuvrability problems.

For big hitters I have a giant skellington which came in the same swap-meet bundle mentioned above. It's a cheap toy but it painted up okay and works with the army. The Bone Dragon is a Reaper Bones figure. Looks good and intimidating.

The figures at the front are Reaper Bones. I think they are wights or maybe Death Knights(?)... I can't recall. As it is these are my Not-Ringwraiths. They came in two 3-packs. The figure at the centre, I made into a leader/general by adding a big sword and mounting it taller. The others will be heroes or lesser command figures. The ghosts behind where the next release by GW and came with another magazine. I think they're supposed to be banshees, but I'm just calling them ghosts. Very nice figures.

Oathmark Revenants are great undead figures. I have another box waiting to be made up. The two bases of archers at the front were made by kitbashing with bows and bits from the plastic Wargames Atlantic Goblin set. I want to make at least two more bases of these. I only made 12 so each base has an axe weilder as a stand in for the time being.

The army has a flying contingent made up of gargoyles. These too are Mantic. Nice figures with a lot of character. Three bases of these creatures swooping down should be enough to intimidate most enemies. In the photo below is another aspect of the flying corps (pun intended). A bat swarm. I'm pretty certain that these are Reaper bones. Sort of a flying version of the rat swarms.

Undead knights. I don't know where came from. If you know please tell me in the comments because I'd like to get more. Great looking figures.

Two of my commanders. The skeleton knight is a great figure and is large and intimidating enough to make a great general. He came in the swap-meet deal. The figure next to him (below) is a resin figure that I found at another swap-meet. I don't know where this figure comes from. It looks good though.

A mood shot. This is how the whole army should appear. Dark and frightening...

Their opponents will just have to use their imaginations in order to scare themselves.

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And that's it for my first post-sabbatical blog post. I hope to start posting a regularly again. I think I need to play a couple of games and then do a battle report sometime in the near future. 

Thanks for reading.

And Now... A Walk In The Black Forest!

Cue the music...

It has taken me a while to get back to my rebasing project and this time it's The Army of Forest Folk. The reason for taking so long is not that this was a difficult task but the fact that I've lost a huge amount of enthusiasm for wargaming. I no longer have a club that I like to attend and, as a result, I have no real need to create vast armies. Having said that I will start playing solo games as soon as the weather cools down and the heat in my upstairs hobby room becomes tolerable.

This is an unusual army and it's made up of figures from all over which I'll detail as we go. The army is very colourful and looks spectacular in the flesh. It has a lot of light troops in the form of fauns and centaurs. But it also has a tough core of Tree-Folk and some other big hitting creatures. I don't know how effective it will be in battle but they look impressive.

Okay... Starting on the left in the centaur cavalry. This wing is made up of light skirmisher riders and heavy rider cavalry. Although, as heavy cavalry they lack armour, I thought that being half horse, centaurs would have a better, natural, agility than riders and this could account for their prowess as "mounted" warriors. I added a unicorn as a champion/hero but I think I'll change that and try to find a better option.

The centaurs are from Eureka Miniatures. I modified a few of these sculpts for Eureka a few years back in order to expand the range. I can't remember which ones except for the king with the laurel crown. The unicorn is a Reaper Bones figure. I have two bases of mounted skirmish archers and three bases of heavy riders lead by the centaur king.

Here's the first of the big hitters - A mountain troll. He's big and if you look at the photo above you see how he towers over the centaurs.  I like this figure. He looks tough and grumpy.

I'm a bit confused as to the generalship of this army. I've included a troll as the army commander here, but I think this will change and he'll become a champion or maybe another big-hitter troll. Same with Luna the Moon Ogress. I was going to use her as the army's spell caster but I think I found a better option after I finished taking the pics. I have another army that I think she would be better suited to. The troll is from Reaper Bones and the ogress is another from Eureka Miniatures.

The Treefolk ~ These make up the heavy infantry core of the army. They are made up of GW Dryads, and Treekin from Mantic's, Kings of War range. Both sets of figures are fantastic. The dryads are one GW's best kits as far as I'm concerned. I saw a painting tutorial on youtube on how to paint the dryads to resemble Japanese cherry blossoms. I liked it; so that's what I did. The dryads will be heavy warriors with some traits to toughen them up. The treekin will be an elite type of unit so I want them to be very tough.

And then there's this guy, Greennuts the Ent. I sculpted this figure years ago when I had my own miniature business. I sold a few of him around the world but this is the original. He's made of several parts and towers over every other model on the table. I made another of these about 20 years back and I'll add a pic below if I can find one. The Treekin are spectacular models. I should get another set of them.

Here's another of my favourite models: The Jabberwock! It's another Reaper Bones figure and I think it looks fantastic. This was a difficult figure to do and it required special treatment (click here to see what was needed to put this figure together). Okay... now that I've said all that, I might remove this figure from this army. I think it fits well but I now have a better idea of where it will fit in even better.

The right wing is made up of fauns (satyrs). These units are all light infantry. The archers are obviously skirmish troops but the spearmen are going to be light infantry with good melee capability. There are six bases of each and they're produced by Eureka Miniatures. Once again I modified a few of these figures for Eureka several years back to help expand the range. 

This figure below is a Reaper miniature and, after taking these pics and having a rethink I believe that this figure would make a better general than the troll. I think what I'll do is; I'll make up a sabot base with a standard bearer and a musician and insert him onto the base like I did with my Elf King. He just looks so much more commanding than the troll. The troll can replace the Jabberwock

Three champions: The Faun commander, A beast headed warrior and the would-be new king/general, (And yes that is what you think it is on the faun commander ~ Be careful or he'll have your eye out!).

Two views: Right to left and left to right.

A top down view to show how the army fits on to a 6x4 table. They make quite a footprint although there are a lot of light troops and not many heavy warriors. The idea is to make the tree folk very tough and hope that the lighter flanks are capable of harassing, slowing and reducing the enemy by evading and attacking on their own terms. I don't know if this will work.

After taking the photos I remembered this figure and thought: "Oh yes. She's supposed to be the spell caster." So she might end up replacing Luna a Moon Ogress. Or maybe not.

As promised above: here are some pics of the original treeman I sculpted about 20 odd years back for my Warhammer Wood Elves. I sold the army and have regretted it ever since. I never played Warhammer but I use to like creating WH armies and painting the figures. I built several of them and sold them all. (Wish I hadn't)