Dice Tower

Due to a lack of time and, indeed, inclination, my hobby time has shrunk over the last six months. Although I am more than happy to have been in solid work now for nearly two years, it is taking its toll  on both my health and the time I used to have available for hobby related stuff.

My health has been a little up and down recently, with several long-term running related injuries compounding each other and resulting in an MRI scan being required on my right knee. A lot of rest and lower intensity training since November 2021 has led to most of the injuries healing but I am still under the physio to sort the last bits and bobs out (and these will take a long time apparently as I am not getting any younger). Add to this a great deal of work stress, and stress from other illnesses (which I won't go into at the moment), what time I could have available to game with is usually spent procrastinating.

That said, I have been doing a little bit of hobby related stuff over the last six months, in that I have bought a few items to add to my growing pile of projects. Most of my purchases/Christmas gifts were rule/sourcebooks of one sort or another, along with a few figures and paints. I bought my youngest son, who has an uncanny ability to score a six almost every time he rolls a die, a Dice Tower for Christmas, in the hope that his relentless sea of sixes would be somehow curtailed.

It is a lovely, if expensive, piece of kit that makes absolutely no difference to my dice rolling ability, which is and always has been really poor. But, my son's incessant runs of rolling sixes has been slightly curtailed in that he only rolls a six every second or third dice roll now instead of every other one! I call that a success :-)

Over the last weekend we had a really good chat about what we wanted to do gaming-wise this year. We both agreed that lots of figures had to be painted and scenery built so that we can play slightly larger games than the skirmish sized ones we currently play. So, we agreed that we need a proper gaming mat, plenty more trees and bushes etc., and to paint enough figures to make a couple of armies to play a larger scale game like Dragon Rampant or something similar. We think a campaign would be a good way to go too.

We got to chatting about re-purposing my large collection of Lord of the Rings figures to fit into my own gaming universe. There would be a few major factions, and a couple of minor ones who can ally with the larger armies when/if necessary.

Humans 1 (major faction)

Heavy Infantry/Cavalry (Gondor), Light/medium Infantry/Cavalry (Rohan), constant allies (Wolfen)

Humans 2 (major faction)

Heavy Infantry/Cavalry (Easterlings), Light Infantry/Cavalry (Haradrim), summoned allies (Ushabti)

Orcs (major faction)

Heavy Infantry (Uruk Hai), Light Infantry (Mordor Orcs), Heavy Cavalry (Warg Riders), Light Cavalry (Fell Wolfriders), constant allies (Moria goblins and trolls)

Humans 3 (minor faction)

My son wants to build a "Celtic" army that includes his Welsh and Irish (as well as a few Saxon figures)

Dwarves (minor faction)

Hobbits (minor faction)

Fomorians (minor faction)

As to how this pans out over the coming months, who knows? If my lethargy doesn't kick in too much, then hopefully we can get some of this achieved and get to play some larger scaled battles by the end of the year.

Tame the Beast

On Sunday, my youngest son and I decided to get our old Lord of the Rings figures out and play a Battle Companies scenario of Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. From the older Battle Companies supplement, we randomly rolled Tame the Beast, which we have played before, but this time the outcome was totally different.

The small Gondorian warband, under the control of Damril, approached a small village from the east. They had heard rumors of a great beast that was attacking farmers and stealing their livestock, and wanted to be rid of the monster before it could do any more harm.

Ushnar, the orc brute approaching from the west, had also heard the same thing, but he was of a different mind. He was hoping to gain from the chaos caused by the beast, but also wanted the glory of slaying it.

Damril and his faithful band of Gondorian warriors...

Ushnar's warband...

The orcs were spotted by the troll and it charged them with a roar of wild glee. The orcs were in line of sight and nearest to the troll, so they were charged as per the rules.

Whilst the orcs were busy trying to fight their way out of the troll's attack, Damril ordered his men forward.

After several rounds of combat (no less than 20 dice were rolled by the orcs without a single 6!), the orcs were forced to give way and slowly retreated as their losses began to mount.

Damril kept his men at a distance whilst hoping that the orcs would whittle down the troll's strength so that they could then move in for the kill.

In the meantime, the Gondorian archers made mincemeat of their bow wielding counterparts...

Until only one orc skirmisher was left and the rest of the orc rabble turned tail and fled...

This didn't work out too well for the Gondorians as they now felt the full brunt of an angry troll that had been attacked (but not injured) and was looking for another chance of vengeance.

The Gondorians fought bravely but slowly lost ground, and soldiers, to the enraged troll.

The orcs' courage had failed them, and all turned tail and fled the village except for one lone archer.

He too fled the scene moments later, leaving just a handful of Gondor's finest to face down the troll.

They too thought that running away was the better part of valour, so the field was left to the triumphant troll.

The game ended a draw as neither side was able to down the troll.

We both enjoyed the game although we made a couple of minor mistakes with the rules as we hadn't played for a while.

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?

Rangers of Shadowdeep

After another long hiatus, with not very much happening hobby-wise, I thought I would put up the few things that I have been working on for my son's Dark Age army and my Rangers of Shadowdeep collection.

Today, I will talk about my Rangers collection. I had already cleaned them up and glued them to their bases last time I spoke about them back in April, but they have moved on a tad since then. I decided to photograph them where they are currently in the painting process so I can keep a journal of how slow I have been in getting them to the table in a fit state to game with.

Here are the first five Rangers as they stand today...

As you can see, the hollows in the lipped bases have been built up a little with wall filler to make a ground surface upon which the Rangers now appear to stand, and then they have been given a matt grey undercoat (courtesy of Halfords - a local UK car parts company). I may begin to use this spray undercoat more in the future as it server two major purposes for me: firstly, it is a lot cheaper than Games Workshop's spray cans and thus saves me some cash (which is always a good thing), and secondly, unlike with black undercoat, I can actually still make out the detail on the miniatures in order to paint them.

Here is the second set of five Rangers...

These ones seem to be a little more dynamic than the first set of five, so added together with the first five, there is a good range of activity going on. I can already see the specialist skills many of them have that they can take to the Shadowdeep.

I know this is going to be a slow burn project, but the idea is that I will kind of follow the story set out in the rulebook and scenarios. These ten Rangers are an elite force known as The Grey Cloaks (yeah, original I know - there are other units and teams which I may flesh out at a later date). Each Ranger has a small band of loyal, specialist companions from whom they can guarantee support when they go adventuring into the Shadowdeep, plus the city has its militia and standing army from which to draw extra volunteers (I will need to think of a paint scheme for the militia's and army units' uniforms, as well as a brand of miniatures from whom I will purchase said figures).

Real life (mostly work and illness) has got in the way of gaming quite a bit this year, and therefore my output both painting/hobbying and playing wise has diminished considerably; as a knock-on, my blogging has suffered too. I am hoping to rectify this situation next year by attempting to put aside a few hours each week, on a regular basis, to get something done. I have so many ideas and unfinished projects that I really do need to crack on with some of them.

Next post will feature some of my youngest son's latest army - he is collecting a Dark Ages "Celtic" army. I have already shown you the Welsh archers in a previous post, but this weekend saw me working on his Irish warriors - a Wargames Atlantic plastic box set that will form the backbone of his army.