Dragon!

This one took a while, but I think the journey has been worthwhile. Below are a few pictures of an old magazine cover plastic dragon figure that I thought would come in useful one day as a gaming miniature. The magazine was a Hachette partworks called Beasts and Beings, if I recall correctly, dated from around 2008. I think I bought the first two issues, but all the subsequent figures were no good for my gaming purposes. The magazines have since been consigned to the recycling bin as they were not that great to be honest; kids would have loved them though.

The model was initially (rather inexpertly) painted red, with translucent red wings. The egg was white. Unfortunately I could not find a picture on the web of the dragon in its original colour scheme, although if I really tried I probably could, but I cannot be bothered to spend too much time in tracking one down. Anyway, I didn't want to stick to the standard red dragon scheme, so decided to go down the green dragon route purely based on the Lord of the Rings ditty about The Green Dragon Inn (sung by Merry and Pippin in the aftermath of one of the battles in Rohan if I remember rightly) which happened to be going round my head at the time. Anyway, first up is the undercoated version...

And, the dragon in a carousel-style series of pictures to show her off from all angles...

Although the painting has been completed, I still need to varnish her to protect her from rough handling and the elements. When I eventually get around to buying some gloss paint on varnish, and some matt spray varnish for the skeletons, I will also use them for her.

She is mounted on an old CD to give you a sense of her size. The basing is a mixture of almost everything I have; GW texture basing, sand, small pieces of gravel, flock, grass tufts, flower tufts (white and purple) and some tree scatter flock. I was hoping to get a small treasure hoard on there, but I think her egg is enough treasure for anyone to plunder. If I feel the inclination, I may add some treaure at a later date. At least as she is, she will be ideally suited to wilderness encounter scenarios.

So, what will I be able to use her for? I was hoping that I could use a small dragon in games of Frostgrave or any other fantasy style solo/co-op game, as well as in Dragon Rampant as a war beast of some kind, and Lord of the Rings as a cave drake or something similar. Hopefully I can find all sorts of uses for her going forward. At the moment she is sitting on my bookshelves looking lovely, and I am day dreaming over scenarios to include her in.

Next week will hopefully see me carry on with prepping more Otherworld skeletons, putting some more paint onto the undead riders and starting on my son's Gondor warband. Lots to do to keep me busy.

Repainted Elves

Following on from yesterday's post about the completed elf archers, today I managed to finish off the last of the elf swordsmen. Here's the warband in its entirety...

The ones I completed today were the broken ones that had to be patched up with whatever spares I could find. Two turned out OK, I think, but I am not keen on the other two. Anyway, here they are; I like the ones to the left and right of the picture, but not so keen on the middle two...

This completes the painting that I have been asked to do by my son on these elves. Here is a picture of all of the elf archers that I have completed...

And, here are the sword/glaive wielding dudes...

 And, finally, those that my son will be painting himself...

The sword wielding elf will need to be fixed up with another blade and then littlun can get on with painting them all. I will hopefully be popping to my local GW store in the next week or two to pick up some extra paints, brushes and so on so he can get to work on these. Again, these will be used for Battle Companies and the possibility of games of Dragon Rampant if they ally with another faction. So far, for the evil side, my son has the 30 orcs that I have already painted for him, one of my old troll miniatures, quite a few Easterlings and a handful each of goblins and uruk-hai. And for the good side, he has 17 painted elves, around 30 Gondorians, and maybe 25 or so Rohan warriors on foot. Hopefully we can put together two opposing forces from these to duke it out on the tabletop.

Next up for me to work on for him are his Gondor warriors of Minas Tirith. There are thirty figures from the ebay purchases, of which two are Numenorians (that will be used as sergeants/captains for Battle Companies) and five that are broken in some way (including one of those Numenorians). I will try to get some before pictures set up and then get to work on these next week if I can.

I have also been working on those undead riders again; just a little bit more paint work and trying to figure out a colour scheme for them. I am not sure whether to theme them around a certain colour and whether that colour should look faded as if it had just come out of a crypt or grave. I also sorted out that dragon from a few months ago and began to finish her off too. Hopefully there will be some pictures of the dragon very soon.

Elf Repaints IV

Today saw me bring the total number of elf archers up to nine completed miniatures. I managed to complete five more elf archers for my son, so his Lord of the Rings elf warband is almost there now. Hopefully I will complete my part of the re-paints tomorrow. He still has his metal command that I undercoated for him a week or so back, and a couple of plastics that need a bit of TLC that he said he would like to paint himself.

Here are the lastest elves in all their painted glory...

Again, these were just a tidy up and make do kind of job - nothing special; no highlights, shading, washes or anything like that. They are more than good enough for the tabletop, even if I didn't quite get the colours on as well as I would have liked this time (age is beginning to ge the better of me now as my hands are not as steady as they used to be, and my eyesight is rapidly deteriorating). There are a few places where my ordinarily neat lines are a little wobbly, but this cannot be seen from the distance of my eyes to the tabletop.

I have four more elf swordsmen to go, which I am hoping to complete tomorrow, before moving onto his Gondor troops. He doesn't want the standard film colours on them either, so I need to pick up one or two new pots of paint to achieve this for him. He is braver than me going non-canon, but I really like his ideas. When I get around to painting my Lord of the Rings figures, I think I will look at doing a little of the same.

Over the last couple of days, I have also been putting a little bit of paint onto the skeleton undead cavalry, as well as starting to build the Otherworld skeletons I bought recently - these will be assembled differently to the six I already have, to bring the total number of variants to twelve. When I put in my next order (end of the month), I will be getting their armoured equivalents. I will then need to look into getting some zombies - I am not keen on the plastic ones on offer at the moment, so will need to find suitable miniatures in metal. Does anyone out there have any recommendations for decent zombie miniatures that are compatible with the Otherworld stuff? Heresy have some good undead, so they may get an order from me when I get around to the other types of undead. This project will be expensive, but I can build the faction slowly, and paint those that I have bought before I purchase the next batch. I am looking at around 20-30 figures again to round out the low level undead, before moving onto the upper echelons like ghouls, ghasts, wights, wraiths, banshees, vampires, liches etc. At this rate, I may be able to begin running some low level dungeon crawls; something I have never been able to do in the past with the figures that I own. I mainly concentrated on the adventurers and used counters etc. for the baddies. Hopefully I can run some games where all the beings encountered can be represented with a miniature.

Defend the Ruins

After we had finished our rule-driven battle companies battle, littlun carried on playing with his newly painted figures. In his mind's eye he had seen an heroic last stand by his elves against a small warband of orcs. Like the previous Gondor vs. orcs encounter, there were no rules involved, just a child's imagination and ability to tell a great, heroic tale.

The elves, cut off from support, take refuge in a ruined farmhouse...

The attacking orc force has them trapped and try to force their way in through the door supported by a couple of archers...

Whilst the other half of the band, with their leader, go around to the rear where access appears to be easier...

Unfortunately for the orcs, the elves have both accesses covered and are willing to sell their lives dearly...

After he had finished playing, the elves had three survivors and the orcs were either wiped out or had run away.

Battle Companies : Elves vs. Orcs

The kids were over this weekend, so my youngest lad got to see his newly daubed elf figures. He liked them a lot and couldn't wait to get to use them in anger. He swiftly set up the table and two battle companies, one orc and one elf, so we could go head to head.

Looking at the two units on the table he was a little over-awed; the orcs numbered nine, whilst the elves numbered only five. He thought that he would be in for a thrashing considering the numbers. I placated him by telling him that his elves were far superior warriors, and that his propensity to throw a multitude of sixes per game would help his cause.

The elf force...

The orc force...

The sun had just risen above the small hills surrounding the abandoned farm of Sunnydale. The shadows were long but cast deeper by the presence of an encroaching orc warband. Graznuk sniffed the air. "Elves." he spat. "Forward. Let's show those pretty boys a thing or two about knife work."

The orc commander split his forces with the archers peeling off to the right flank with a supporting shield armed warrior and the rest of the heavy hitters heading off to the left. The elves did the same, envisioning that the lone elf archer would be able to keep the heads down of the three approaching orcs. As soon as the orcs came into view, the elf let loose a shaft and an orc armed with a sword and shield dropped to the dirt with an arrow embedded in his throat (1 orc, 0 elves).

Graznuk noticed the loss of one of his warriors out of the corner of his eye and urged his troops to surge forward to engage the hated enemy. No sooner had combat been joined than another orc fell to the swiftly moving glaives of the elves. Undeterred by his losses so far, Graznuk pushed on and personally felled one of the elves in front of him. This seemed to be going easy for him, so he dispatched two of his axe warriors to help bring down the pesky elf archer, with orders to return to this fray once that easy task was accomplished (2 orcs, 1 elf).

The leader of the elves saw the danger that orc warband chief would cause if left to run riot, so felled him with one swift blow of his glaive (Graznuk failed his Fate roll). Unfortunately, this left him exposed to the remaining orcs and he almost suffered the same demise (made his Fate roll) (3 orcs, 1 elf).

The orcs remaining in the melee rallied around their second and all attacked a solitary elf who had been forced away from the fight. In what seemed a foregone conclusion, the elf ducked and dived his way out of being hacked to pieces by the heavy axes and spears of the orcs (they needed 3+ to hit but all rolled a 2!). Unfortunately, just after the elf warrior has retreated, the elf leader could not avoid being surrounded and was hacked down where he stood (3 orcs, 2 elves).

Meanwhile, on the other flank, the solitary elf archer managed to keep two axe wielding orcs and two archers at bay, but failed to cause any wounds. The attacking orcs, like their brethren on the other flank, could only keep pushing the elf back, despite winning combat after combat (kept rolling snake eyes or just ones and twos). Just as the orcs closed in on the elf archer, in what they thought would be a successful pincer movement, he managed to find a little space for himself and felled an orc archer that was pursuing him with a true shot shaft (4 orcs, 2 elves).

An orc war horn sounded off in the distance and the fight was warily abandoned. The orcs ran directly to answer their master's call, but the elves, saddened by their losses, gathered the bodies of their brethren for burial whilst they burnt the corpses of the orc dead.

This battle was a tightly run show. Although littlun didn't roll his normal unusually high number of sixes, I was unable to roll much more than a two on several critical occasions (two sets of snake-eyes, a 1 & a 2, a double-two, and three dice less than 3) to compensate for that. Any of these rolls being successful would have turned the tide of the battle firmly in favour of the orcs, and they would have forced a morale check on the elves. As a result, this battle was declared a draw.

We were going to try to begin playing a proper Battle Companies campaign this week, but we got involved in the game too quickly to think about it until afterwards. I am thinking of running the lad's elves as a battle company as they journey from Forlindon to Rivendell to deliver an important message to Elrond from Cirdan. He said he saw his elves as Lindon elves, hence the non-canon paint jobs on these figures. Hopefully we can start this campaign in a couple of weeks' time when he is next over, and we have a little more time to prepare and play due to the half-term school holidays.

We are hoping to get to our local GW in the half-term to pick him up his own paint brush so he can paint the elf command he bought, and thus help to reduce his own backlog. However, he said that he wants me to paint his Gondor troops after I complete his elves, so my painting list grows ever longer.

As an aside, I received those Otherworld skeletons through the post yesterday, but only saw the soggy package on the door step this morning (it has been raining heavily here for a day or two now). I will get them prepped tomorrow if I can, and then see about getting the paints out for them during the week.

Elf Repaints III

I managed to get the brushes out again today and completed three more Lord of the Ring elves. I also put a bit more paint onto several others, but these are not quite finished yet (hopefully next week). This brings the total of completed elves to eight; four armed with bows and today's repaints that are armed with swords/glaives.

This bunch, again, includes one of the test pieces I did a few weeks back to see what they would look like. The one with the blue-handled glaive looks like he has a badly deformed hand, but this was done by the previous owner - obviously some kind of repair. It looks OK from a distance though, so should not detract from our playing enjoyment.

Like with the orcs, there were several broken figures - about six or seven of the glaive-armed warriors. I was able to find the appropriate pieces for one or two of them, but four, so far, have had to be bodged. One or two look good, but the other two not so. At least it gives them a little variety to stop them all looking identical.

As mentioned above, I am hoping to get the rest of these sorted sometime next week. My son will want to paint the last four (the two command, an archer, and the last glaive warrior that needs repairing), but not sure when we will get time for that. Maybe the next time he pops over?

I am still awaiting a delivery from Otherworld Miniatures for another couple of packs of skeletons to go with the ones I already have. If they come through soon, I will try to get them onto the paint station next week in readiness for another Frostgrave game. I haven't played any Frostgrave for several weeks now, and I want to get back to Balthazar's and Dave's adventures on their way to Felstad. I am hoping there will be three or four more encounters by the time they get there, and then I will play some of the scenarios in the rule book and supplement. As these will be played solo, I will need to see if any adjustments need to be made to the encounters. Perhaps I can find some ideas if I trawl the web? That said, I am also contemplating getting the Rangers of Shadow Deep rulebook for me and the lad to play. Maybe I will see how compatible the rules are and adjust some of them to fit into the Frostgrave universe and vice versa? I am really getting into the mood to play some RPG/dungeon style adventures on the tabletop.

Elf Repaints II

The second task for my son's figures is to repaint the elves. I started on these a couple of weeks back but it has taken a little while to get any finished (other than the sample paint jobs from a previous post) as I have been working on some of my own miniatures at the same time (see the preceding post on the skeletons).

After completing the two sample paint jobs for my son to choose from, and amend if necessary, I was able to push on and finish a further three archers to bring the completed total to four.

There are still five more archers and eight swordsmen left for me to complete, but these should be done within the next week or so. There is also the command pack, a solitary archer and a final broken elf to repair that he wants to paint himself, which would bring the whole elf force so far to twenty one figures. My son has decided on the red cloak/white skirts as opposed to the white cloak/red skirts scheme, and as he did not like the blue hafts of the swords or bow staves, I have painted the latest ones with a more brown/wooden colour.

He will get to see them close up tomorrow as he will be over mine this weekend, but he has seen them in photos and likes them so far (phew!). Hopefully, we can get a little more gaming done over the next couple of days, as well as discussing our future plans for figures to paint and collect. He would like to build an elf army so I will have to begin scouring eBay for some cheap plastic figures for his collection, and will most likely also try get him some of the leaders and heroes in metal to match with the captain and banner bearer he has already bought himself.

Tomorrow will hopefully see me complete a few more of the elves - it all depends upon time and light (the weather has been very overcast with lots of rain these last few days, and it is due to continue for a few days more yet). Completing them will allow me to get on with painting some of my own miniatures next whilst he makes up his mind which of his old figures he wants me to do next.

Painted Skeletons

The blog has been a little quiet over the last couple of weeks. This is not because of a waning interest, but because nothing has been available to be published. A lot has been going on in the background, and there are a fair number of miniatures approaching the completed (or nearly completed) stage.

Today saw me finish the painting and most of the basing on the first six Otherworld Skeleton warriors. They still need to be varnished for protection. These have been painted to represent an ancient (Bronze Age equivalent) barrow or tomb that has been naively opened by a band of adventurers and the denizens set to guard the treasures contained within have risen from their slumbers...

And here they are all lined up...

These figures are some of the best skeleton warriors (in my opinion anyway) I have seen but they are a little fiddly to put together and are thus quite fragile, so extra care will need to be taken when in use on the tabletop. As mentioned previously, I am aiming to amass a force of around 30 skeletons (I will probably do something similar for an undead horde: zombies, ghouls, ghasts, wraiths and so on), which should be more than enough to play Frostgrave and any fantasy RPGs I will play in the future, and may also be enough for a small force under the command of a necromancer or a lich for tabletop battle games like Lord of the Rings (I will need to work out stats for them) or Dragon Rampant.

I am not sure how to finish the basing. The basing material has overlapped the edges of the bases a little in some places, so that has prompted me to paint the base edges. But, what colour? I don't want them too bright so that the bases then won't blend into the tabletop a little better, but not too dull so that the miniatures get toned down and become a little washed out as there is not a lot of colour on these skeletons to start with.

Over the weekend, I bit the bullet and ordered up two more packs of these skeletons. I do not have a lot of spare cash at the moment due to yet another bout of unemployment (two redundancies in the space of three years is rather demoralising), but I am hoping a £20 per month budget should cover most of what I require going forwards to make up not only this skeleton horde but also fill any other gaps in my collection to allow me to begin playing more games.

I have also had a very interesting email conversation with my long-time gaming buddy Colin. We had a bit of a chat about skeletons and undead in general, and how they are not represented properly on the tabletop in both RPGs and battle games. I may put together what we discussed into another one of my ideas style posts.