Dark Age Irish II

As promised, here are the next two six-man units of Dark Age Irish warriors. The box set gives a lot of variety that can be built into the warriors you need for your force. There are ten wolfhounds, and thirty warrior bodies which can be made up with a variety of weapon types and shields. As I had already built six javelinmen, I decided to create two further units of lightly armed troops.

First up are the swordsmen...

The shields seem overly large but, then again, if you are going into battle with no other protection, then a large shield would be most welcome; especially if you wind up in the front rank of a shield wall.

The swordsmen allow for close quarter combat to be fought, whereas the javelinmen are more support troops, along with the next batch of six who are a motley bunch of skirmishers with a variety of weapons (axes, slings and shillelaghs)...

These troops didn't go together as well as the other figures. Three of them seem to be posed nicely but the other three, especially the two with the axes, just seem out of kilter. Maybe I should have put a little more thought into the posing before sticking them together?

As mentioned in a previous post I am trying to standardise my basing and so on, so I asked my son how he would like his troops based. My son has requested 25mm flat round bases for his warriors - this system fits in nicely with my newly formed base sizing schema. I will build these up with wall filler as per my Rangers' bases and then undercoat them all in grey primer when the weather improves (six inches (15cms) of snow fell yesterday, with sub-zero temperatures not budging meaning that it remained where it fell).

Dark Age Irish

Swiftly following on from yesterday's post, here is what I have been working on this weekend for my son - a few items from the sprues in the Wargames Atlantic Dark Age Irish plastic box set.

Irish javelinmen...

My son said that he didn't really want any javelin armed troops, but as he left it with me last weekend to do what I could for him, I decided to put together a half-dozen lightly armed infantry. I sent him the photos yesterday afternoon and he loved what he saw, so it looks like I made a good decision after all. He has given me orders on how he wants his command to look, but I said that we would look into creating those troops when he comes over to mine next - he still has two sprues at his disposal to create his command group and to add to any of the units I am currently making for him - I have suggested he either gets each unit to eight warriors to enable play in Saga or to twelve to allow for Dragon Rampant and a host of other games. He also sent me pictures of a few metal figures he wanted to use as elites and commanders, so maybe he won't want to use this box set as anything but basic troop types?

Whilst completing the above chaps, I also made up the rest of the wolfhounds in the box. One observation with these - it would have been nice to have the two halves of each dog fit together with the two halves of the other dog, thus giving a few more variants...

Whilst writing this post, I am also working on the next two units of Irish warriors. Hopefully I can get those up onto the blog tomorrow?

Glueing and Prepping

Long time, no post. I have been busy doing lots of stuff other than gaming recently - real life has a habit of taking over sometimes. Luckily, I have been able to dip my toes into my hobby from time-to-time, but not really had much I can comment on for the blog. I have read a few rulebooks and supplements that I received as gifts for Christmas, kept on with my 2000AD and Judge Dredd comics reading, and started re-watching Game of Thrones on the DVDs I have. I have not seen series 8 yet (I must be the only fan not to have done), so I am re-watching them all over again to prep for the final series. I have managed to avoid spoilers thus far. I have heard it is very disappointing, but I have my own ideas for an ending, so I may not find it so.

Anyway, over the last couple of days we have had some very nice weather in the UK. The brighter days have meant that I can actually kind of see reasonably smallish details again. So, in order to get stuff done whilst the light holds, I broke out the most recently purchased miniatures (from the last few months for my son's but up to a few years ago for mine) that have been staring at me from their vantage points on the book shelves.

Alongside his interest in The Lord of the Rings, my youngest son has begun to show an interest in historical gaming; or, more accurately, he likes the miniatures and, as he now gets some pocket money, he decided to buy some. He has recently picked up a box of plastic Dark Age Irish warriors from Wargames Atlantic, some Welsh Archers from Gripping Beast, and a few Roman slave-type minis from Footsore, due to one of their likenesses to Grumio out of  the TV series Plebs.

My figures are from a mixture of manufacturers (Hasslefree, Otherworld and Northstar) that I went to to create some fantasy wabands for RPGs and Rangers of Shadowdeep, and the Nickstarter set of ten pairs of wizards for Frostgrave. The wizards are several years old now, but the Rangers and other fantasy miniatures are maybe only a year or so old. I have kind of set myself a limitation now due to the huge backlog of unassembled and unpainted figures that I have, where I can only buy new figures when I have finished painting my latest additions to the lead and plastic mountains. I am almost there with painting those Otherworld skeletons from a few posts back (if the light holds, I will get them finished in the next week or two), and I have now broken out my other latest purchases in order to get them completed too. Once these are completed, I may treat myself to a few more of the figures to make up the last of the adversaries for some of the games I wish to play.

Anyway, enough chat, and onto the lead (well pewter as it is nowadays). First up are my son's Welsh Archers. As mentioned above, they are from Gripping Beast. There are four poses and he got three of each pose. They are tidy little figures, and will make great standard warriors for any games we play with them...

I still need to glue their bows on (unfortunately we only seemed to get 10 bows instead of 12 - the bag they came in had split). They are shown alongside the Footsore Roman slave figures for a size comparison. My son wanted these mounted on Saga-style bases which came with the Welsh miniatures (I also had some spares in my bits box he could use for the Romans). Here are the Roman figures alongside a pair of plastic wolfhounds he got with the plastic Irish warriors set...

Next up are some of his new Lord of the Rings miniatures. Most of his figures for LotR are second hand from eBay. These are from a few packs he recently bought for himself, that he liked the look of...

The Bilbo miniature is metal, and the Elf warriors and Thranduil models are resin. The Elf warriors all need their shields glued on, and Thranduil needs his sword arm glued on. These are lovely miniatures but do not scale in at all with the historical figures above; the LotR figures are a fair bit smaller and finer (more anatomically accurate), and the quality of the sculpting is much better. That said, sometimes quantity is a quality in itself, and that is where the historical figures come into their own - good value for money for decent enough figures - armies can be built much more cheaply.

Next up are the last of my son's figures from this batch and the first of mine. They are Noldur's D&D figures bought from our local comic and gaming store a few months ago. Here we have a griffin and an umberhulk...

The griffin will be glued to a base the same as the umberhulk to fit in with more of my son's fantasy miniatures (all of his Lord of the Rings figures are on GW style round bases of various sizes). These figures are really nicely made and not too pricey for their size. For some reason my umberhulk came without one of its antennae - it was not in the box, so I could not have glued it back on even if I had found it. I am not too fussed actually, as it gives it a bit of character.

Next up are my Rangers and RPG characters...

They are from a variety of manufacturers and I have stuck them all onto 30mm lipped round bases. I am going to begin to standardise my basing if I can from now on, so they all fit in with my Lord of the Rings figures - 20mm for hobbits and other small creatures, 25mm for standard humans, elves, orcs etc., 30mm for heroes and medium-sized creatures like wolves, 40mm for mounted figures and medium-large monsters, 50mm for large monsters, trolls and giants, and larger bases for dragons etc.

The back row consists of Hasslefree figures, the second-rear row are from Otherworld, and the two front rows are Northstar's official Rangers of Shadowdeep figures. I have yet to glue on some of their arms and weapons - hopefully at some point this week I can accomplish that?

Finally, here are the first of the Frostgrave wizards that I bought a long time ago. Again, they are glued onto 30mm lipped bases to match in with the Rangers and adventurers above. Each school of magic is represented by a pair of wizards...

From left to right, these are; a Chronomancer and apprentice, an Elementalist and apprentice, an Enchanter and apprentice, an Illusionist and apprentice, and a Necromancer and apprentice. I have yet to decide which is the master and which the apprentice - that decision will most likely come once they have been painted, or not. I still have five more pairs to prep and glue, but the light has run out for today. I am working overtime all day tomorrow (another Bank Holiday in the UK), so will not get any modelling done then - hopefully there will be some good days through the coming week that will allow me to complete these.

In addition to the figures above, I have an eleventh pair of wizards (not sure what school they belong to until I look them up again) and some treasure tokens/markers for Frostgrave. There is also a box set of 20 plastic Frostgrave Soldiers and a sprue of 5 Frostgrave Barbarians which need assembling. Hopefully the next post will see all of these glued up at least.

I am really hoping to get some tabletop gaming going again very soon; either solo or with my youngest son. I have my eye on a few new rulesets too - Sellswords and Spellslingers (for solo gaming) and the latest version of Runequest; a game I played extensively back in the day. I no longer own these rules (I have owned three different editions in the past) and the new rulebooks look lavish, so I am very tempted.

So, there is plenty for me to be getting on with for now. Once the above miniatures have been fully prepped, they will need undercoating and then painting. Also, once the long summer days roll in, I may take another look at my LotR miniatures - I have over 800 to complete, although many are almost there.