Skeletons

Today I was able to spend a little time prepping some very old (1985 according to the base tabs) Games Workshop mounted skeletons. This is a small force of five mounted skeleton warriors armed with an array of weapons on a varied set of undead horses.

Unfortunately, the ravages of time, and possibly some miscasting, had led to a few of the legs on the horses becoming damaged or to go missing. I glued and bent them into the best shapes possible and mounted them on 40mm round bases, one of which I managed to screw up, but I will fill the gap when it comes to basing the miniature. I will need to find the mounted skeletons some suitable shields too as the plastic ones that came with them are long lost; I will also need to remove a bit from the tabs on their arms that would have housed their original push-on shields. I will try to find some more of the same shields I used on the foot skeleton warriors.

I also dug out some old painted models that I had completed (iirc, the first two were originally painted by my friend Colin, but I have tidied them up a little to more match my own style) when I was on a roll back around the early 2010s. These will form a kind of command group for the skeleton warriors on foot, or maybe a variety of lich and/or undead lords/champions for Frostgrave or fantasy RPGs.

These will be added to the six Otherworld skeletons I have begun to paint over the last couple of days.

I am hoping to get a small undead force together from these and probably a small order from Otherworld to make up their numbers when I have some spare cash. Here's the undead band so far...

If I can get another half-a-dozen of the unarmoured variety of skeleton warrior and the six armoured versions of the same, that will give me a force of 3 command, 12 unarmoured, 6 armoured and 5 mounted skeletons. I can't imagine I will need more than a couple of dozen or so skeletons for the gaming I intend to run, but if I do, I will go down the plastic route, as it will work out a lot cheaper per miniature. There are several manufacturers out there from which I could build a significant force if I should want to put my mind to it.

What with the figures I have been painting for my son, and now these ones I am currently working on for myself, I will need to sort out some kind of storage. All of my old storage has been utilised by my Lord of the Rings figures, so I would need to buy another storage box or two for the latest figures I am painting. The Really Useful boxes that have been used to store the unpainted ones would not be conducive to keeping the paint jobs in tip-top condition, so foam lined boxes will be a necessity. I will look at these too when I am a little more flush.

Elf Repaints

Now that the orcs have been completed, I had a chat with my youngest to see what he wanted to do next. I initially thought he would plump for Gondor as that is the army I have been playing against him with, but he decided he wanted to start an elf Battle Company or two. To strengthen his decision, unbeknownst to me, he had already popped into his local Games Workshop to order a pack of Elf Command out of his pocket money.

When he mentioned he had got them, I asked him how he would like his elves painted. He suggested white cloaks etc. and silver armour. I was not too sure on this combination, so mentioned that they may need another colour to make them seem less "cold". He came to the decision that a red would warm them up sufficiently.

So, today, I knocked up a couple of test paint jobs to see how they would look...

Unfortunately, the white and silver just did not go, so I used a bronze colour for the armour. I have sent him the pictures above to make up his mind which way he wants to go. Again, these will only be block painted over the previously existing paint jobs - these figures were bought from eBay, and came pre-painted by the previous owner. I really like the blue bowstaff and weapon handle but he is not too keen. I will see what he thinks when he sees them in the flesh on Friday next week.

I also managed to get a little painting and undercoating done on those skeletons and that dragon I mentioned a few posts back. Hopefully, I may get some of these completed very soon.

Repainted Orcs

It took me a while, but these have now all been completed to the standard that I wanted to get them to. Hopefully my son will be happy with them and that he will then let me know what he wants done next.

So, without further ado, here are the last four orcs to be painted. These were the ones that needed to be mended with weapons that were non-LotR. I think that they have turned out OK and the weapons seem to match in nicely. I especially like the way that the bow looks...

For completeness sake, here is a picture of the entire warband, including their adopted troll...

I also took a few pictures of each "section" of the warband. Starting off with the spear-armed orcs...

The more elite orcs with two-handed weaponry and those with shields...

And finally, the support section that always seems to do well when my son is rolling his never ending stream of sixes...

Last night I began to re-read the Dragon Rampant rules in preparation for gaming with these figures. It looks like I will need units of six or twelve for the orcs and maybe reduced sized units for some leaders or special critters like the trolls? I will continue to familiarise myself with the rules and chat to his nibs when he is over next weekend to see what else he wants in his evil force. I will also ask him how he wants his Gondor and Rohan army to pan out too, so I can grab the paints in a couple of weeks and get those ones sorted for him too.

Orc Repaints IV

Just a short post today as it is just another blog of more of the same.

This afternoon saw me pick up my brushes again in order to complete a few more of my son's orc warriors. These were glued up ready to go last Friday, but I have only just got around to painting and basing them over the last couple of days.

Again, they are a very basic touch-up and tidy of what was there before when bought from eBay. First up are four orcs armed with an assortment of weaponry...

Four orcs with spears...

And a group shot of all of them together...

I am hoping to start on a few more tomorrow (the last four still need completing) if time permits, and then I will begin to look into sorting them in readiness for playing them in Dragon Rampant. I am hoping that these orcs can form the core of an evil army, and that my son has enough "goodies" to create a similar sized army to go up against them. I will need to read up on the rules and maybe trawl the net to see if anyone else has created Lord of the Rings specific units that match how the troops are statted for either the books or films.

Battle Companies: Orcs vs Gondor

Yesterday my youngest decided he wanted to play with his newly painted orcs to see how well they would do on the battlefield. I pulled out my trusty old Battle Companies manual and put together a Battle Company for each of us.

He picked a standard Mordor force (3x Orc with shield, 2x Orc with spear, 2x Orc with 2-handed weapon and 2x Orc with bow) and I had a standard Minas Tirith force (2x warrior with shield, 2x warrior with spear and shield, 2x warrior with bow). As usual, we only used Fate (we still have to learn Might and Will stats properly) for the leaders of each warband.

I let him set up the table how he wanted it and away we went...

The orcs...

Minas Tirith...

Gondor started with priority, so the sword and spear armed troops advanced towards the centre of the board to try to gain some advantage around the farm house. The archers peeled off to the right wing to engage the orc archers and flank the main body of warriors. The orcs huddled together trying to find cover on their way towards engaging the men-at-arms.

A little more manoeuvering and the Gondorian archers had the orc archers in their sights. An exchange of arrows saw little in the way of danger to either side, but the warriors that clashed in the centre of the farmstead exchanged blows and a Gondorian swordsman and spearman fell in quick succession to the savage blows of orc scimitars.

 

 

The orc archers had by now got their bearings on the Gondorian archers and stuck one of them with a well aimed arrow. In the centre of the village, the Gondorians, now surrounded, saw more death as their leader bit the dust (failed Fate roll). A further flurry of combat saw the last remaining, extremely outnumbered Gondorian spearman not only win the combat but also dispatch the orc leader - things had become quite blurry by this time...

 

 

On the flank, the last remaining Gondorian archer fell to the well-placed orc shafts and the now hopelessly outnumbered and totally surrounded final Gondorian man-at-arms was cut down by the remaining members of the orc warband.

 

This game was a total disaster for Gondor. Five rounds and completely wiped off the board. I have never seen so many fives and sixes rolled in a game! The lad had a little dice rolling ritual that seemed to work for him (but not me when I foolishly tried it) - left hand up in the air with fingers crossed and right hand mumbled into saying the result required.

Also, if these newly painted figures had been mine they would have suffered from newly painted figure defeat syndrome. Not for my son - the new paint jobs positively made them shine. Sour grapes, moi? Surely not!

Moving swiftly on. We have played quite a few games of straight fights now, and we ar efairly familiar with the basic rules, so I think it may be time to set up a campaign. I had a chat with my son and outlined how Battle Companies actually works for a campaign style game. He is up for it. So, next time he is over, we will sort out a new Battle Company each, name them and read up on the other stats (Might, Will and so on) we have not covered yet.

Mended Orcs

Well, I managed to get to Games Workshop yesterday to purchase the plastic glue I needed and a handful of new paints that I will require going forward. I had a good conversation with the sales person in there; he was very chatty and helped me a fair bit in making my paint choices - I knew what colours I wanted but only in "old money" (the previous release of Citadel paints), but he had a conversion chart that told him which paints in the new ranges were closest to those in the old ranges.

I also asked him about the potential return to the Old World for Warhammer. Unfortunately, he did not have a lot to tell me except that it may be around two years away and that the specifics are still being thrashed out at head office, and that the workers at the shops are not in the know just yet. One slip he did make was that the universe may be set a few hundred years prior to the original Old World setting; so, none of the well-known big heroes are around (unless they are elves, dwarves or undead) and new heroes must be forged.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the orcs. I sorted out the broken figures and looked through my bits box for any weapons or items that may have come from the figures originally. I managed to find a few but still needed some bits to complete the rest...

Here they are glued up with the broken off pieces re-attached to, hopefully, their previous owners. I had to trim a few bits here and there, as well as file some joining places down to the bare plastic but not a bad half-an-hour's work...

The spear, axe and bow armed orcs managed to get the correct orcish weaponry back, but the two orcs armed with hand weapons at the front of the photo had to be fudged a little. The left one in the picture above had a spear blade added whilst the one that usually carries a war-pick had to have a Gondor sword instead.

This left five figures without existing pieces that could be matched. For these I turned to my historical plastic miniatures bits box...

In turn, these got a Norman banner, a Dane-axe, a Dane-axe, and a Medieval bow. The last miniature lost his arm to one of the spear armed orcs above, so will now just be used in future to cannibalise for spare parts.

As you can see, before I did the repairs for these figures I gave them all the new standard basing of inked sand and green base rim. I have decided to do this scheme for all of my son's orcs and associated baddies. When they are completed in the painting queue, they will also get some green flock to show that they are completed. 

In the end, my son has 30 orc warriors, one of which can be a banner bearer. I will look at how these can be added to to create a Dragon Rampant force as mentioned previously.

Frostgrave: The Red King

A quick break from re-paints with a product review. Last night, and a part of this afternoon, I managed to read through a Frostgrave supplement I bought a few months back when it was first released.

This is the first supplement for the new Second Edition of Frostgrave. I bought the new rules when they were released and have actually done something with them this time (see the posts on the Adventures of Balthazar Blimp), rather than just reading them through, putting them on the shelf for later use, and then forgetting about them as either something new comes along or real life gets in the way.

With the release of The Red King rulebook supplement, there is a price rise to £20.00, but the page count has remained the same at 96 pages plus the card cover. I am currently between jobs (yet again!) and, as a consequence, the gaming budget is very limited, so I looked around for a cheaper way of buying it. Amazon was the retailer this time, and I got it for a few quid off. I don't usually like to buy wargames stuff from Amazon, preferring local gaming shops or independent online retailers, but this time I have had to due to my current circumstances.

In this supplement we see a new campaign game that could see the gaming world of Frostgrave brought to its knees with an incursion of demonic beings.

Introduction - The Introduction gives a brief overview of what can be found between the covers of this supplement

The Invasion - This chapter sets out some campaign specific rules and details of the cracks that occur in reality. There are also some extra rules on warbands that have to continue fighting with the loss of their home base

The Red King: Act One - Three scenarios are presented here to get the campaign off to a start. They are all presented in the usual format of; a brief introduction to the secnario, the set up, special rules, and finally the treasure and experience section

The Red King: Act Two - Three more scenarios set in the campaign

The Red King: Act Three - Six more scenarios to complete the campaign

The Red King: Epilogue - A summary of what would be the likely outcome if the warbands fail at stopping the Red King

Treasure- A couple of new tables featuring new treasures and artifacts found in Felstad during the time of the Red King

Bestiary - The final part of the book is a listing of all the new monsters encountered within the Red King campaign: Blood-Marked Berserkers, Burning Man, Foulhorn, Herald of the Red King, Hrut, Key-Master of the Red King, Mindshrike, and Nullman

Again we have a very full supplement. It is nice that the game is still getting lots of support in its second edition - this will hopefully encourage me, and others, to keep going with planning and building items for Frostgrave. I want to carry on gaming with my test warband to learn and get used to the rules, and then build a new warband using newly painted miniatures to run through the various supplements in order to build a kind of narrative for the heroes. I am also hoping to begin building some scenery for this game too, which can double-up for use in Middle-earth. Like the previous games, I will most likely play these solo, or maybe refereeing my youngest son if he fancies a turn.

Broken Orcs

As promised last time, this post details the remainder of the eBay bought second hand Lord of the Rings orcs. A quick count gives 13 more that can be added to the already completed 18 orcs. To make up enough to create a Dragon Rampant force, I may need to add my son's Uruk-Hai and maybe an old troll or two to make the army table worthy though.

First up are all the orcs with melee weapons that have been broken either in use, or possibly they were just bought like it. I have a bits box with lots of broken off weaponry, so once I get some plastic glue (at long last, the shops are open again, but my local GW does not open until today), I will be able to get started on these...

This bunch were the ones I painted and rebased yesterday...

Finally, here are a couple of archers and an orc spearman without an arm! I will probably do some surgery on him as he has a good quality (i.e. unbroken) weapon - probably an orc from the top picture will supply that arm and then there may be some scope for a head swap or two from that butchered miniature...

Hopefully, there will be some more progress on these after Thursday, once I have managed to grab some plastic glue at my local GW - I do not have time to get there today unfortunately. I will document what means I went to to complete them all, i.e. what parts I used to make the weapons worthy of use again.

Orc Repaints III

I had some spare time today, so I thought I would pick up my brushes again and see what I could do with my youngest son's The Lord of the Rings orcs that are staring at me accusingly from the book shelves where they have been stored after our last couple of gaming sessions.

I have only got them to the same standard as the previous orcs, i.e. just blocked in to cover the previous paint jobs where they have strayed over the lines, and to make them look a little cleaner and fresher, as well as tie them in with the rest to make them all look like part of a coherent unit.

 Here are three more orcs armed with two handed weapons...

Here are another three with spears...

And, this is the same six in a small warband...

These finished figures bring the total to 18 in the warband now. There are still another dozen or so to be sorted out and added to these (more on that in the next post).

I was talking to my son the other day and he mentioned he wanted to try bigger battles, so I mentioned Dragon Rampant to him. I will have a re-read of the rules and see how many miniatures are required to make up two opposing armies, but we should be able to at least get an army from his orcs and associated uruk-hai and some of my old trolls, as well as a combined force of Gondor and Rohan to face them down. This will be my homework for the next few weeks.

Troll Hunt

Well, the chocolate eggs have all been scoffed, so another treasure hunt of sorts had to be arranged. Littlun wanted to play a tabletop game after several runs through of the boardgame Game of Life. I wasn't prepped to run a game, so suggested he just grabbed his to-be-painted Gondor warband and I would arrange a foe for him to attack. I decided upon a troll hunt as that would provide a different kind of challenge for him. I dug out one of my very old trolls (I don't have any official LotR miniatures painted to play that role yet) - and battle was joined.

This was to be an eight turn game, with the Gondor player winning by killing the troll and the troll player winning merely by surviving the eight turns. We both played as the troll; me first so he could see how to kind of play it in readiness for when he took his turn as the troll.

In the first game, I played the hill-troll that was to be hunted down as it was stealing too much livestock and killing too many farmers and their families. A small warband of Gondor troops (leader, 3 archers, 2 swordsmen and 4 spearmen) was despatched to carry out the task.

The troll was positioned approximately in the centre of the board and the Gondor troops would arrive from three different directions to trap him in the village (as shown in the first image above - the small band approaching from the "top" of the board have been cut for some unknown reason).

As soon as the troll saw the advancing men, he stooped down and picked up a convenient rock and launched it straight at the leader of the patrol, hitting him square between the eyes (he failed his Fate roll too).

Seeing the hated man-thing drop to the floor, the troll pushed his advantage and charged the Gondorians, felling another swordsman in short order. The remaining two spearmen circled round to join their comrades in making for a larger attacking force.

After a couple of lost combats, the troll began to give ground to the Gondorian troops (who all seemed to keep passing their Courage tests to charge the brute). The archers were able to sneak in the occasional shot, which usually missed, but after the first hit from an arrow, the wounds began to mount up on the outnumbered troll.

 

 

The battle lasted five turns with victory going to the men of Gondor. I did play the troll in a simplistic/reactive way, and I think things would have gone differently if I had put some thought into his tactics - maybe next time?

Anyway, this buoyed my son into wanting to switch sides and play the troll.

This time, he played the troll a bit safer than I did by trying to avoid my archers. However, my first turn saw a very flukey shot that caused a wound on the troll (two in the way rolls, the shot and then the wound roll were all successful). The troll responded by throwing a rock and killing a Gondorian swordsman. He moved the troll away from line of sight of the archers, so I had to redeploy them and simultaneously use my sword and shield bearing troops to herd the troll towards the farmhouse where I would hopefully be able to block him in. Unfortunately, the tables turned and the troll trapped another of my archers who had crossed the fence in order to get the drop on the troll coming round the corner. Six out of six attack rolls were successful in turning my archer into strawberry jam. Luckily, this slowed the troll enough so that my patrol could hem him in and cause him a second wound - from another archer who had just managed to get line of sight when there was a pause in the combat.

The troll then won the subsequent combat and was able to leg it round the corner of the farmhouse with the Gondorian patrol in hot pursuit, only to hop over the fence and be shot right away by the archer who was well-placed to do so!

These were a couple of fast-paced, fun games that both of us enjoyed. They both only lasted 5 out of the allotted 8 turns, and we both lost 2 warriors of Gondor in achieving our objectives. So, a draw all round.

I think the sides were evenly matched, and if the troll were played with a bit more nous then it might prove a little more tricky for the Men of the West to defeat him. The men need the troll to come to them so that they do not ned to roll for Courage, and the troll needs to pick the men off in small groups. They were both interesting games though, and I think we both learned a few tactical limitations and advantages for both style of play.