Old Dog Learns New (Terrain) Tricks - A Minor Detour

Remember when I said I'd be getting more of those excellent textured rollers from Green Stuff World?

They got here last week! Yay! Together with the round cutters I ordered earlier, I have sorted my pre-industrial urban figure basing needs.

Naturally, I couldn't resist a road test at the earliest opportunity, so I rolled out some DAS and gave them a shot. I can definitely say they do what it says on the tin.

That's a Warbases 40mm MDF base at the left, and the results of the test are to the right. Clockwise from the top left, Cobblestone, Small Cobblestone, the Brick roller (as used on my ruined tower piece from the last post), and Flagstone. No buyer's remorse here!

Of course, that now means that I have to get back to work on my Frostgrave warband, which had kind of stalled at the 'wizards plus two other guys' stage when last we looked...

So six more figures and I'll have a functioning warband. Only taken nearly four years...

What's up next then? Stay tuned!

Ev

AHPC Prep - Saga Milites Christi

G'day Peeps!

Yep, it's that time again! As the days lengthen and the weather warms up my mind always turns to the upcoming Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. This will be my seventh go around and my enthusiasm and excitement is every bit as much as ever it has been.

This year I have decided to focus on a few projects in their entirety e.g. start, work through and finish and entire faction or army for a game system within the Challenge window. I've done this before and it was an extremely satisfying experience I must say.

On the card this year is a double-purpose Crusades army - a 12 point Milites Christi warband for SAGA Crescent & Cross and at the same time a decent sized start on a Later Crusader force for To the Strongest!

All the cutting, swearing and gluing is finished now. Apart from some nice command and character figs currently on their way from 1st Corps this is everything...

The vast bulk of it are the wonderful Fireforge Games Templar and Sergeants boxes. Lovely sculpts with loads of options and the price per fig is brilliant. I also pinched a bunch of bow arms from my leftover Perry Miniatures stuff tp make some archers, and also some Mordheim odds and sods for extra interest. All three vendors are pretty much exactly the same scale and mix perfectly.

In total the force will be:

• Warlord and hangers on
• Bishop and hangers on
• A couple of spare commanders for To the Strongest!
• 2 x mounted Knights (2 x 4 figs)
• 2 x foot Knights (2 x 4 figs)
• 2 x mounted Sergeants (2 x 8 figs)
• 2 x foot Sergeants with hand weapons (2 x 8 figs)
• 2 x foot Sergeants with crossbows (2 x 8 figs)
• 1 x foot Sergeants with bows (1 x 8 figs)

This works out to around 500pts in Challenge terms so that's a really solid block of points towards my total in one go. Eventually I will add some Turcopoles, a camp and some other bits for To the Strongest! but this will do for now.

I'll use Warbases trays for both ease of movement in SAGA and as unit trays for To the Strongest!

Next up is undercoating and basing to complete the prep...

Cheers,
Millsy

Atteint! Fast-play Jousting Rules

Recently Kapatin Kobold a.k.a Alan Saunders posted a free set of fast-play jousting rules entitled Atteint! on his blog. Alan encouraged others gamers to give them a go and provide some feedback so that exactly what we did last night!

Four of us got together and matched off once each against all the other players. A match consists of three passes with the aim to hit or if possible unhorse your opponent. Here are our four protagonists, plucked from our Warhammer Fantasy armies:

Sir Bacon of Sandwich matched against Sir Croc of Dundee and...

... Sir Redback of Dunnyseat matched against Sir Groovy of Ghoulies.

Alan's rules have a nice elegance about them and seem very well balanced, giving a good Hollywood feel without sacrificing playability. They certainly play fast once you know what you are doing and we finished in under two hours.

As you progress towards your opponent you attempt to increase your three stats of Balance, Aim and Force, focusing on your preferred stat but trying to put enough increase into the other two to ensure that you a) strike your opponent and b) break your lance or even unhorse them when you do hit.

Sir Bacon of Sandwich (my guy) won the field on the day, unhorsing his opponent in all three matches, although we has himself unceremoniously dumped on his ass in the third match too!

Yep, that's a bacon-flavoured triple snake-eyes. Woot!

In summary Atteint! are a great little set, perfect for beer and pretzels gaming on a wet Friday night. Overall there is very little wrong with the rules that we could see. They could possibly do with a little re-work to make them a little clearer in intent in places I guess e.g. can you increase a stat multiple times in a turn?

Here's a few other suggestions for you Alan...

• With no customisation of your knight each protagonist feels a bit samey-samey. Perhaps adding a half-dozen low-impact "characteristics" that each player can choose one of to give each knight a little variety?
• Consider limiting the number of Favours as at one point we had 3 or 4 backed up. We did assume unused ones carried over from pass to pass (but not match to match).
• One thing we thought would be a cool tweak is to add +1 to Force if your knight moves 2 spaces on the turn they meet.

Thanks for these Alan, we had a blast and will definitely play them again!

Cheers,
Millsy

3rd Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge finale

The 3rd Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge over on Curt's wonderful blog has just finished up. Now that all my final entries have been published it means I can load them up here as well.

Overall I finished 13th on the points table out of 47. Not bad at all but that's not really what it was all about for me. I was just keen to be involved, share some great work and push myself to get some stuff completed. Here's the outstand miniatures that haven't appeared on the blog so far:

First up is 13 x Eureka Miniatures Prussians in 28mm from their Franco-Prussian War range. I’ve had these undercoated for so long I can’t put a date on when I bought them or why, which is both laughable and a sad indictment of the depths of my addiction.

Next up are three random 28mm miniatures from the lead pile which have been orphaned from their projects. I always seem to end up with a couple of these where painter’s block kicks in and they get put aside to await inspiration. The two clerics are Gripping Beast dark ages figs and the other chap is I think an Essex high medieval fig.

Following on we have some 10mm War of the Spanish Succession French cavalry. These are all Pendraken miniatures, painted up to represent the first and second cavalry lines of the Marquis du Bourg's Corps at Blenheim. All up there are 60 miniatures grouped into units of 12 and based in threes so they are riding nice and tight, boot to boot.

The first line consists of the regiments de Royal (4 squadrons), de La Ferronnaye (2 squadrons), de Levy (2 squadrons), de Prince Charles de Lorraine (2 squadrons) and de Choiseul (2 squadrons). The second line consists of the regiments d'Anlezy (2 squadrons), de Livry (2 squadrons), de Heudincourt (2 squadrons) and de Dauphin Etranger (2 squadrons). Every different unit has a flag even though most a just two squadrons. I figure they would all need rallying points and it looks great to what the hell.

Next there are a pile of 15mm Russian artillery from Flames of War - 79 crew and command plus 12 guns to be precise. These are all Battlefront miniatures. I was looking for something quick to bump me over the 1,000 point mark and I’ve managed to churn them out in roughly 12 hours for the lot. That works out to roughly one gun base plus one command base an hour. There is a bit of detail work to do like adding a map but that can wait til after the comp. I seem to have ended up with extra command but that’s fine – far better than being short which is what often happens with these guys.

 

And finally, this is my entry fee for the challenge, Ronin #7. I wanted to do some storytelling and also go a bit beyond my usual boundaries (it’s a challenge after all). I won't retype the whole longwinded enrty, just provde a link to the original blog post. There are plenty more pics over on Curt's blog along with the background, etc. I think it's some of the best work I've ever produced but you be the judge.

So that's it. I'm pretty burnt out but have had a total blast. Curt has worked his proverbials off posting close to 400 separate entries at 20 minutes each - do that math, that's an awesome committment by any standard and he deserves bucket loads of praise and thanks.

Cheers,
Millsy
 

New Year, Back on Track...

Crikey. It's been the best part of two months and I've been sorely sidetracked by other projects, mainly an entire Flames of War DAK army and a pile of pulp 28mm figs.

Anyways, things are back on track. Here's a pic of the completed camp for my Burgundians. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out - almost a mini diorama so to speak. I'm planning a similar effort for my Carthaginians...

Cheers,

Millsy

Burgundian Ordonnance Complete!

I've finally finished my Burgundians. Two A4 sheets of flags seemed a bit over the top when I was cutting them up but they all got used bar one single infantry flag. I've not done an actual count but you can see it adds up to quite a lot of glitz.

In total the list works out to a solid 800pts but can stretch to 1000pts by using everything.

Please excuse the quality of the images. I'm a fairly average photographer anyways and the light is very poor today with the rain.

Pics one and two show three BGs of knights, pic three is command, pic four is mixed pike and bow BGs (an organisation perculiar to Burgundian Ordonnance) and pic five is more pike / heavy foot.

Cheers,
Millsy

Millsy's Burgundian Ordonnance

I wasn't intending to post my Burgundian Ordonnance here until they were entirely complete, however they are taking a little longer than hoped and holding up the Carthaginians.

Therefore, in the interest of keeping the posts coming, here's my 800 point Burgundian Ordonnance list (numbers are bases, each line is a Battle Group). Hopefully painting will be complete by week's end and I can post some pics...

Command
1 x C-in-C [Field Commander] - 50pts
1 x Troop Commander - 35pts
1 x Troop Commander - 35pts
1 x Allied Commander - 25pts

Core Troops
4 x Ordonnance Men-at-Arms [Knights, Heavily Armoured, Average, Drilled] - 84pts
4 x Ordonnance Men-at-Arms [Knights, Heavily Armoured, Average, Drilled] - 84pts
4 x Ordonnance Men-at-Arms [Knights, Heavily Armoured, Average, Drilled] - 84pts
6 x Mixed Pike Longbow [Heavy/Medium Foot, Protected, Average, Drilled] - 48pts
6 x Mixed Pike/Longbow [Heavy/Medium Foot, Protected, Average, Drilled] - 48pts
6 x Mixed Pike/Longbow [Heavy/Medium Foot, Protected, Average, Drilled] - 48pts
4 x Ordonnance Crossbowmen [Medium Foot, Protected, Average, Drilled] - 28pts
6 x Ordonnance Handgunners [Light Foot, Uprotected, Average, Drilled] - 24pts

Optional Troops
4 x Italian Mounted Crossbowmen [Light Horse, Uprotected, Average, Drilled] - 28pts
8 x Yorkist Allied Billmen [Heavy Foot, Armoured, Superior, Drilled] - 104pts
8 x Yorkist Allied Retinue Longbowmen [Medium Foot, Protected, Average, Drilled] - 72pts

Total: 797pts

As I hinted, pics to come soon once I've finished painting the last few figs...

Cheers,
Millsy