My Latest Wargaming Article

On Friday morning, the latest copy of Miniature Wargames (issue #520 - August 2026) dropped through the letterbox and onto my doormat. Back in May I submitted an article for consideration of publication to the magazine based on a scenario that I wrote after a chance meeting with John Treadaway the editor of the magazine at a wargames show last year.

During this meeting we discussed all things Weirdstone of Brisingamen and, as a result of our conversation, he asked me to write an article for the magazine. I jumped at the chance. It took me a while to get around to writing it due to various other real-life projects that needed completing first, but it has now finally seen the light of day in the latest issue of the magazine...

Miniature Wargames #520 - August 2026

I mentioned the game/scenario in passing in a previous post. The game played was my first for Dragon Rampant Second Edition and it was a cobbled together affair figures wise. I had enough miniatures to make up both armies but I had to proxy quite a few. I had enough warlocks, mara, and svartalfar for the "baddies" and the leaders, heavy infantry and most of the skirmishers for the "goodies". However, despite the non-canonical figures it worked splendidly and the game made for a great narrative.

It is the scenario idea and after action report that made it into the magazine along with some pictures of my figures that were scenario appropriate.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing the article and John enjoyed reading it well enough that I have been asked to write something set in the same universe but for a different game system. I will be working on it over the next couple of months.

Stay tuned for the next Weirdstone article, as well as a possible article for another magazine set in the times of The Anarchy.

Dragon Rampant : my first game

Over the last few days I was able to set up and play a game of Dragon Rampant Second Edition. This game was a play test for, hopefully, a forthcoming magazine article. I will not put too much detail into this post, other than to say I ran it and enjoyed playing the game.

I haven't put videos up on the blog yet, so here are a couple of very shaky run throughs (taken from my phone) of each army as a test of how this all works - I will take more time and care next time I try to shoot videos for the blog.

The "Goodies"

The "Baddies"

And, here is an overhead or two of the game before play started....

There are a lot of proxied miniatures in each unit, but I was able to cobble together enough to at least get the game played. That said, fun is the main criterion with all my gaming, so who cares if the figures are not what they are supposed to represent? It was the mechanics of the game that I was testing, and then the story behind the game that are the main points here.

My take aways from this are that the game played well, with a few surprises due to some dice roll effects. At least it told a story that can be put into some light prose for the article.

More details in the forthcoming magazine article hopefully.

Skeleton Warband

A quick update on some more of the work I have been doing over the last couple of days on the undead warband I am slowly bringing together. I have now managed to complete a grand total of 20 skeleton/undead warrior types from the lead pile. I also have some other undead (4 foot and 4 mounted wights) painted by someone else that I may amend to fit in with my vision. Here's what I have achieved so far in their pre-wash/varnish glory (most have been seen before, so bear with me in my indulgence)...

First up is the command group. A set of three very old Citadel or Ral Partha (not sure which) pre-slotta figures...

Then we have a bunch of (five) undead riders that I completed yesterday. I am not happy with the results of the verdigris; I still need a little more practice to get it right. It sometimes works but mostly it doesn't. I blame my dodgy eyes as I cannot focus on the figures themselves, so have to guess where the brush is going and hope for the best. I then try to amend any mistakes afterwards if I am able...

Finally here is the bulk of the foot troops; a dozen skeleton warriors with an assortment of weapons...

Unfortunately, these miniatures are very fragile, and, ironically, I have already broken one of the arms off whilst putting it away into a protective foam carry case. I will need to repair it, and hope that the gloss varnish coat, when applied, also creates a stronger bind for the arm.

To complete this warband, I am looking at rounding out the numbers to create units for Dragon Rampant. I already know that I want to get a big horde of 30-40 zombies, 6 Otherworld Armoured Skeletons (same as the foot ones above but with armour), some missile armed skeletons, a champion of sorts, and some kind of giant construct. I am not sure on the points/unit values yet, but I will calculate that nearer the time. Then I have to decide who to put them up against. The quickest win will most likely be one of my Lord of the Rings armies - probably Rohan.

Gondor Repaints III

Apologies for the long hiatus between posts. I have not been well recently and I am still not fully recovered. Hopefully, I will be seeing the doctor again soon to see what is happening; I don't think it is anything serious but it is affecting my daily life, in that I do not want to do a lot at the moment except relax and/or sleep.

That said, this weekend saw me pick up the energy to get my paints and brushes out again to finish off a few of my son's figures that have been stuck on the painting table for several months. I managed to complete the basing for a couple of elf repaints...

And also the final few colours on another half-dozen or so Gondorian soldiers (the broken ones featured in the last post) and a Black Numenorian (a 2nd Age warrior of Numenor)...

This year I am hoping to get a lot more of my own Lord of the Rings miniatures painted in order to do larger battles with my youngest son. We have played several Battle Companies sized games over the last year, but we both feel the need to go larger on occasion. I think I will go for a new system for this, and Dragon Rampant is back in the frame.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Fomorians, Ushabti and Wolfen

My Other Fantasy Army Factions (Prepped and/or Undercoated)

There are not so many figures in each of these factions, so I will run through what I have prepped and undercoated so far for each of the three armies; Fomorians, Ushabti, Wolfen.

As mentioned previously these will appear as allies to the other LotR factions when used in my own universe battles. I like the idea of some strangeness appearing on the tabletop upon occasion to spice things up a bit.

Metal:

29 Fomorian warriors
2 Ushabti
14 Wolfen warriors

It would be nice to spring these forces onto an unsuspecting opponent and see their reaction. Without knowing points values and so on, the opponent would be likely very wary of attacking these warriors and monsters, which to me seems so much more realistic than the opponent seeing them and saying: "Oh yeah, they are worth twenty points, my three warriors can take one of those down easily".

I like the idea of the unknown on the tabletop - it makes for a more fun game. Obviously I would not set a very unbalanced/overpowered force against an opponent as that would not be fair; just inject an element of doubt and surprise.