New Characters for My Dragon Slayer Scenario

I'm still working on my Dragon Slayer scenario for Dragon Rampant. The rules are now firm and work really well but I wanted a few more characters for a dungeon setting so I've been working towards that end. In the main I already have several figures that I can use in a dungeon. In reality it all comes down to the base. They will look better with a stony base and I already have plenty based for Frostgrave.

The chief figure I need is a paladin on foot. I found this heroic looking chap from Reaper Miniatures. He's pretty dynamic, large and suitably heroic.

I also wanted a dedicated sorceress for the basic scenario. This one is also from Reaper but is a Black Bones figure. I like her dragon headed staff. I think it fits well with the scenario but I'm not keen on the gauntlet she's wearing. I didn't notice it when I bought the figure and I had to go online and look at painted versions of the miniature in order to work out what was what. In the end she came out looking nice (even if she does look a bit like a superhero).

And I also did this old fella. Again he is from Reaper and the original figure has an owl sitting on his shoulder. I didn't want the owl so I cut it off. I've been wanting a Gandalf type figure and this one really fit the bill. He's unimposing and he came out looking pretty nice. In the scenario he can always stand in for the magic user. The character identities are not set in stone.

That's it. Just a quick update. I'm taking some more photo's of the scenario in the dungeon setting this afternoon. I've had interest in getting the scenario published and these photo's will be directed towards that end.

So long for now.

Dragon Slayer

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm planning a game of Dragon Rampant for my clubs' open day in August. The idea behind this is to use the rules to create a mighty dragon and a classic D&D party to fight him. By using the various unit templates I've made a dragon that is the equivalent to a 36 point warband. likewise the party of "Adventurers" is also equal to a 36 point warband.

Each character is a Single Model Unit represented by a unit profile. The Knight is, obviously, an Elite Rider, The Dwarf is Heavy Foot, whilst the Barbarian is Bellecose Foot. Both the elf and sorceress are based on missile templates. The sorceress is a limited spell caster (Wizardling) so her shooting is played as if it is a "Magic Missile." The hobbit is a Light Foot unit with my own special rule Limited Invisibility. All of the characters have their own special abilities. For example: Azgrim Ironbeard has Dwarf Forged Armour (Mystical Armour in the rulebook).

Below: The party of brave adventurers: Lanolix Greenfeather, Grogan the Barbarian, Sir Garavel the Paladin, Bongo Stinkfoot, Vanya the Sorceress and Azgrim Ironbeard. Are they really brave or just unsuspecting Dragon fodder?

The idea for the dragon seemed sound and I sat down with the Dragon Rampant rulebook to sort it all out. The Dragon ~ Anglanchor the Great, is made up of 6 "Body Areas": his head, 2 front claws, 2 rear claws and his tail. His head is a Greater Warbeast, his front claws are Elite Foot units, his rear legs are Heavy Foot and his tail is also Elite Foot. He also has a breath weapon and a few other little tricks. Each of his Body Areas has the chance to activate during his turn so he is capable of dealing out multiple attacks and smiting his enemies.

It took a while to determine what was what and I spent the better part of last week putting it all together, chopping and changing things here and there. I eventually got things to where I thought they should work and got together with some friends to play test it.

Initially the first game was a devastating win to the dragon and I thought: "Oh dear." I thought I had dramatically over powered him. Another game and I remembered that was forgetting to use the characters' special abilities, magical weapons, etc... (That's right: everyone else wanted to be the dragon and I got stuck with the adventurers.) The problem was that I was concentrating so much on trying to work it all out and get the game up and running that forgot those little details for the characters. To much to think about!

Okay! Now that I settled into it and started using the characters abilities the game was much more even. They managed to get a hard fought win, even though some of them went to meet their maker from getting to close to Anglanchor the Great's iron claws.

All in all what I came up with worked out exactly as I had hoped. The only thing I'm going to change is to reduce the armour of the dragons' rear legs. The Heavy Infantry profile has the special ability Wall of Spears. I removed this because it made no sense. So to compensate, I increased the armour by +1. This change drastically over balanced these body areas: 12 Strength points with 4 armour. For me that didn't work. So Rear legs ~ Armour 3. That's the only change.

These pics are not from any of the games. I set them up just give an idea of how the game looks on the table. I already had a 3' x 3' double sided board that I made during the lockdown. It's nice and sturdy and looks great. I made four corner hills using some left over high density foam and moulding plaster that I had in the garage. It has to look good for the open day, after all.

One thing I found out is that each character has their own role. Some should not be in the front line. Both the elf archer and the sorceress I put into the front line initially and they both suffered. I moved the sorceress to the back and got the elf to make a dash to the cover of the woods on the flanks. They both performed a lot better. The little hobbit is fun. He is hard to hit but isn't very good on the attack. On the other hand his unit profile enables him dish out a bit of damage when he's on the defensive.

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So I'll be doing more play testing over the next couple of months to cement the rules into my head. It was a really fun game and took about 45 minutes from the first dice roll to the last. That's perfect for an open day participation game. I figure I should be able to play at least 4 games throughout the day and still have time to visit the traders.

By the way, the name of the scenario is Dragon Slayer. I hope to get the scenario published but if that doesn't pan out I'll put them up here and on facebook.

Anglanchor the Great ~ King of the Fire Drakes

I bought a new dragon. I have a game planned for my clubs' Open Day in a couple of months. I started early because I had a good idea that is pretty easy to pull of, and while I'm on a bit of a fantasy jag, I thought I'd start now instead of waiting until the last minute.

This dragon is huge. I needed a big dragon and I found this one online. It is yet another Reaper Bones model called Viridius. The idea for the game is simple: Using the Dragon Rampant rules the dragon will be a 36 point warband. Each part of the dragon will be considered a separate "unit," (for instance each front leg will be a unit of Elite Foot with the relevant stats for that type of unit). Facing the dragon will be a party of six characters: A knight, dwarf, elf, hobbit, barbarian and a mage. Each character will be a Single Model Unit in line with the DR rules with combined points adding up to a 36 point warband.

That's why I needed such an impressive and dangerous looking dragon.

I have renamed him:  Anglanchor the Great ~ King of the Fire Drakes.

To give you an idea of just how huge this model is, here it is with my other dragons. These models are all quite impressive in their own right but they are dwarfed by this mighty beast.

One thing that makes my prep for this game easy is that I have a good collection of fantasy figures and I didn't think I'd need any more. But I was wrong. Looking through my figures I realised I didn't have a good fantasy knight/paladin figure. I have lots of historical knights but none are worthy of fighting such a mighty foe. So I started looking online for one. I found some nice figures but I wasn't prepared to pay the exorbitant postage demanded (I'm in Melbourne, Australia). I was telling my friend and opponent Mike of this problem. He went away and came back with a box of old GW Bretonian Grail knights and let me take my pick.

Thus was born Sir Gavarel, Paladin of the Chrystal Court (his name is likely to change!). I remade his lance with a brass rod, the horse plumes are Perry Wars of the Roses and the helmet plume is from Eureka. Not a great photo. The light glare is ruining most of the shading detail.

So that's my big new dragon for my small project. He isn't based but I plan to magnetise him so that I can fit him onto either a grass base or a dungeon/cavern base. That way I can alter the setting for the game. I already have a double-sided 3' x 3' board with grass on one side and stone on the other and I'm making some extra terrain for it. I'm considering adding some objectives to the game such as, saving a princess or getting an item of treasure. I'll have to think about that.

The Wyrm Gormagundr

In my post from a couple of weeks back I put my army of orcs and their allies on parade to see what I had for a creative photo opportunity. The army itself is a pretty decent size but there was something missing: A nice big centrepiece monster. So to fix that problem I went hunting and found just the thing to fill that gap.

The Wyrm Gormagundr ~ A mighty fire-drake, lured from his lair with promises of treasure, to march into battle against all that is good and wholesome. A ferocious beast with an insatiable lust for gold, fine gems and creating chaos.

I decided to make a crawling dragon for the sake of doing something a bit different and to better tie in with the general Tolkien-esque mythology from the Silmarillion where the dragons are not yet winged. The dragon I used was this one from Reaper Black Bones:

I filled in the large holes on his back where the wings would be mounted and sculpted some large scales to accentuate his armoured hide. This wasn't my first choice of dragon but it was the best one I could get to do the job.

All in all he came out quite nice. I was considering doing more on the base but decided against it. I was going to add a charred tree and some burnt land but I figured that this sort of detail is just the sort of thing that could break with use on the wargames table. So I left it off and opted for a simple approach.

And to give some scale to the model here he is with some mountain orcs. He stands about 3" high and is about 6" to 7" long. Big enough to let his enemies know that he's a dangerous opponent.

And, as The Velvet Fog sang:

"When you're smiling,

When you're smiling,

The whole world smiles with you..."

That's it for now, folks!

The Return of "Not The Riders of Rohan"

I finally got around to painting my second box of Gripping Beast Goth cavalry as my Norther Riders (not those fine chaps from Rohan). This is pretty much just a bunch of photo's. If you want to read what I previously had to say about these figures you can read it here: My First Rider Post.

I've posed them in various groupings. Apart from the obvious bonus of having twice as many figures I now have the option of fielding them in several alternative units. Above: One large formed unit of 24 figures or (below) four smaller units of 6 figures

Below they make up three loose units of 8 figures each.

The last alternative is one large loose unit of 24 figures, although I think this might make them a bit unwieldly.

And that's them. I would get another box but the lack of poses really gets to me. That arm-up-in-the-air pose really started annoying me whilst making this lot. And it seems that all of the Gripping Beast cavalry boxes have these same three poses with the only difference being slightly different armour and different heads.

Centauri

A short diversion from what I've been doing recently. These guys have been sitting on the paint bench, undercoated and half painted, for quite a long while. They keep looking at me and making me feel guilty so I finally made the effort to finish them.

To be honest, I didn't actually do all of these in the past few days: Only the ten in the photo's below.

These figures are from Eureka Miniatures and even though they're pretty basic they do have a certain charm. They have a very 1980's feel about them. They fit very very well with Eureka's satyr/faun figures with many of the faun torsos being repurposed to make these figures.

The Centaur King is a conversion that I did for Eureka on the original "leader" figure. The green thing on his head is a crown of oak leaves (or laurel). I designed it based on the crown of Phillip II of Macedonia (Alexander's father). So I could have painted it gold. I was going to do that but changed my mind at the last minute and opted for green.

Below is the original little band that I did a few years back. You'll note the original leader figure (I actually replaced the spear with one of my own design on this one too which prompted the conversion I did for Eureka). You'll also notice the round bases. I'm not sure what to do about these at this stage: Keep them or rebase onto matching oval bases? Lets see what happens.

This is a little group of Sagittarii. I think I'll up their number to 12 in the near future.

So this is my little force of Centauri as they stand at the moment. I will add a few more to their numbers sometime soon. I have 16 spears which is an odd number when trying to create units for most modern rules. I think 24 would work out better. Another half dozen archers would also round off this little warband.

These figures are really easy to paint and that aspect made me feel even more guilty every time I sat down and saw them looking at me. I just kept putting them off over and over again and they just kept getting in the way of other things. But now it's all done and my army of the forest/faerie folk has grown a little bit stronger.

P.S. I also have a bag full of satyr/faun figures to add to the three dozen that I already have.

Goblin Scorpii

Goblins + Giant Scorpions = Scorpii. Well that's what I'm going to call them!

I bought one of these Reaper Bones Giant Scorpions in 2020 and I didn't make it because the legs were a real pain in the arse to put together. I revisited the figure a couple of months ago and it came out looking pretty good (See here.) So I bought a few more a couple of weeks back with the idea of adding some riders.

Initially I was going to add some Oathmark Revenants as riders but they didn't work out. But I had some Wargames Atlantic goblins sitting around. These figures come with saddles that are supposed to fit on the WA giant spiders. Now I can't deal with the WA spiders because they look a bit too realistic when painted and I'm a hopeless arachnophobe. So, with a little bit of greenstuff the saddles proved to be a great fit for these big critters.

I really like the result and my only complaint is that I only got three scorpions. So my new mission is to get another three of them and build a unit of six. If I can't find three I can get away with two because I can always add a saddle to the first one that I painted if I need to.

I do have a few of the WizKids giant scorpions which I bought because I couldn't get my hands on these Reaper ones. The WizKids models look really great but I couldn't quite get the saddle to fit properly. Maybe I can have another try to see what I can do (maybe the Oathmark Revenants will fit on them!).

So that's some of what I've been doing this week. I've also finished another unit of bill and bow for my Wars of the Roses Lancaster army. I was hoping to finish at least two units this week but I got slowed down with painting these guys. I think the effort was worth it.

Deadhead Reinforcements

I've added a few reinforcements to my army of the dead. These don't swell the ranks of the dead very much but they do increase their numbers a bit and also add a couple of new monsters.

I added another unit of a dozen Oathmark Revenants. These are great figures and this is my second box of 30 figures, both of which will make up 5 units of 12 figures - A nice core of solid infantry for my undead hoards.

I have no idea at all where this figure comes from. I picked it up from a friend who was selling off some stuff at my club. It was a pre-painted figure on a clear base and is made of soft plastic. I cleaned it up a bit to get rid of mould lines and gave it a quick paint job. Nothing spectacular.

He adds a nice dimension to my deadheads. I don't really have many larger models in the hoard (but I do have a dragon!) so he will definitely add to the army both visually and as a semi-big hitter.

I don't really know how giant scorpions fit into an army of the dead but they seem to appear in a few movies where the dead are doing their thing. This is a Reaper Bones model. I bought this about 12 to 18 months back and found it really hard to assemble. Only recently did I think of a way to put it together and mount it effectively.

It's a great looking figure and I gave it a very basic paint job. But it came out very effective and I'm really happy with it. As I'm typing this it makes me think: I have a few left over Oathmark Goblin Wolf Riders. I might play around with them to see if I can seat them onto this figure. If I can I might have to get a few more of these and do a bit of modelling.

And that's it for now. I've started doing some Goth cavalry which I'm going to paint up as pseudo Riders of Rohan (or something similar).