A Review of 2020 and another great game of Mutant 1984

On 31/12/202031/12/2020 By The OneIn 15mm, 18th Century Rules, 2mm, 6mm, Chain of Command rules, Charity Project, Infamy! Infamy!, Sweden WW213 Comments

Gosh, how do you review 2020? It was a bloody miserable year from many aspects and I think better analysts will summarise the world events like COVID-19, Brexit, American Elections and whether historical wargaming is dying. This review is more personal…

Well given all the time I have had working from home rather than getting into an office my blog activity has been really poor – this is only the 24th blogpost this year, that is about half the number of blog posts I normally do. However I do a lot of mini-blogging on Twitter and sometimes wish that I could link the two in some way. The blog posts feel more permanent and perhaps more like an achievement and gives time for a little bit more thought and wider information compare to doing tweets – I do not know.

Anyway thanks to everyone who follows this blog, the facebook group (not sure what to do with it) and/or my twitter account. All your encouragement has been really helpful this year, keep it up!

In terms of the hobby it has been a fantastic year and a few highlights for me have been playing in Jeremy Short’s Runequest campaign with some great people, attended the virtual Grogmeet that was an absolute blast and again catching up with new and old friends, hosted my own RPG on Roll20 for the Gang running a 28 year old scenario I wrote for the first Dalcon in 1992 (The Dweller in Darkness). Mike Hobbs set up a virtual paint club that I have really enjoyed and again met new and old friends for some casual chat. Thanks to all of you!

The Little One and the Others

The Little One is always up for a Game and playing with him is not something new I have discovered during lock-down but we had a blast playing a lot of games including Chain of Command, What a Tanker, Twilight of The Sun King, Men who Would be Kings, Dragon Rampant and many others. We have even got the rest of the family involved in some RPG and board game fun which I have to say is an achievement, Cheers mate!

What a Tanker in Dalarna 1943 with the Little One

Painting for Charity

I also had this idea that now seems like a no brainer about paining an army together as a community projects and try to make some money for charity. Well what a total blast that was and in 2021 we will take it further. This project actually makes me really proud and I take my Tricorne, of is it floppy hat off to all the painters who participated.

Here are some links about the project, including painting guides, etc.

Overview

Painting Guide – Horse

Painting Guide – Artillery

Painting Guide – Dragoon

Painting Guide – Infantry

Various updates here, here and here.

Overview the armies

Below a few pictures when we fought a Battle using these two amazing armies, with the help of the Twilight of the Sun King rules.

The high level plan for the project moving forward is

Doing a booklet with the armies
I would like the Army to fight a Battle at a Proper wargames show
Raising monies to Combat stress by doing a Raffle to win the army

More about this in 2021, again thanks to all who participated and encouraged.

Gods Own Scale Podcast

Sean Clarke re-launched the Gods Own Scale following some, I hope positive pressure, from Peter Berry and I. Sean has a relaxed style and brings out the best in the interviews he carries out, his passion shines through and the his list of guest have been varied and some new voices not previously heard, I especially enjoyed the episodes on Irregular Miniatures and Heroics and Ros.

I was invited together with Daniel Hodgson, Alex Sotheran to the Christmas special. It was a long show and I hope it came across like a few hobbyists having a good talk in the pub, because that is how it felt.

https://godsownscale6mm.podbean.com/e/episode-25-the-christmas-show/

Well done Sean!

#Grogmerp

After a long and relentless campaign of trying to get Dirk at Grognard Towers to do an episode on MERP he did TWO episodes and he even brought Legend Liz Danforth to the party – what an absolute delight. Dirk also asked me to do a “First, Last and Everything”, you can listen to it in the link below.

Episode 36 (Part 2) Middle Earth Role-Playing (MERP) (with Liz Danforth)

Dalarna 1943

The project got some attention from the Dala Radio and it was fun to talk about the project and I wrote about that here. I have also made some suppression markers and jump off points here as well as some river assault boats, here. This is a great project and I will try to start playtesting some scenarios for a Swedish Half-Pint sized campaign in 2021. You can find the latest Swedish Platoon lists here.

Other Stuff

I also did some strange base forces for Infamy! Infamy!, more here. This is expanding the Mutant 1984 world in an early era.

I did some cool 2mm bases and that I will use to try out Mark Backhouse’s upcoming rule set “Strength and Honour”. More here. This will be my early 2021 focus.

So for 2021 it will be more of the same, I wish you from the bottom of my heart a fantastic 2021!

A bonus

But before I go, we had a fantastic game last night and I am too tired for a write-up and there are other things to do, so a few pictures from the Twitter Feed – Another Mutant 1984 diversion using a variant of “The Men who would be Kings” rules, with some freaky events.

Infamy! Infamy! Mutant 1984 basic forces done

On 12/09/2020 By The OneIn Infamy! Infamy!, Mutant 1984, Painting, Uncategorized5 Comments

In a recent blog I set out my idea on how I would use the excellent Too Fat Lardies rules in the Post-Apocalyptic era following the Pyri-Commonwealth Monster Hunters in their role of protecting the civilised parts of world against the marauding wild gangs and monsters in the forbidden zones. You can read more about it in an old blog here.

“Some of you may recall the Pyri-Commonwealth Monster Hunters I have been doing for my warped Mutant 1984 project (based on the first version/incarantion of the Swedish RPG, now known as Mutant Year Zero). Well my take on Infamy!, Infamy! will be to expand my Monster Hunters and detail their exploits in the early days of the Pyri-Commonwealth when they fought for the Emperor against feudal warlords, wild beasts and marauding mutant warbands in the forbidden zones – trying to re-build a lost civilisation.”

I have been working extensively on this project since that orginal post when I had two units of Pyri-Commonwealth Soldiers.

Pyri-Commonwealth Force

Based on the Early Imperial Roman Legion Force in the Infamy! Infamy! Rulebook.

I am fielding this with 4 Groups of Monster Hunters (Legionaries) and 1 group of Auxiliary Archers. Will add some Auxiliary options in the next phase.

4 Monster Hunter Groups and One Group of Auxiliary Archers – a Musician and two Leaders (need to add another one) – sabot bases from Warbases.

Here some pictures of the individal units.

First Group of Monster Hunters – using Warlord Roman Legionary Sprues with some heads from Sally 4th’s critter range

Second Group of Monster Hunters – using Warlord Roman Legionary Sprues with a head from Sally 4th’s critter range. The female head from the kit box, not sure where it comes from.

Third Group of Monster Hunters – using Warlord Roman Legionary Sprues with a head from Sally 4th’s critter range. Bare heads from the kit box, I think the old man’s head is from the Oathmark Dwarves set.

Fourth Group of Monster Hunters – using Warlord Roman Legionary Sprues with heads from Sally 4th’s critter range. Blue head from the Kit box from a rebel saboteur model (Imperial Assault)

Auxiliary Archers from Warlord (Eastern Archers) with two heads from Sally 4th’s critter range.

The Management team, will nee another Junior Leader, note the Imperial Eagle of the Pyri- Commonwealth (YES, I forgot the Static Grass!)

The Laug Gang

This is a Marauding gang causing all kind of problems in the area, the are based on the Gaul list.=, with 2 Groups of Cavalry, one group of Elite Warriors, two groups of warriors and one group of tribal slingers.

In doing the cavalry groups I used Oathmark Wolfriders and then use all kind of things from the different sprues and the kit box. Basically buy some loose sprues and just mix it up (there are some WW2 helmets and more modern hat thrown in there for good measures, as well as the occassional animal head and additional limb). The same approach was used for the other Groups and they are a mixture of basic bodies, arms and heads. I wanted to create a non-uniform look apart for the elite warriors that I painted with a base Jade colour.

The Management team are some old models from a different era, with some touch ups!

Next I will be working on some additional units and support options. Having fun!

/Omnium optimi! Hope that was of some interest!

Going 2mm tall and working on my Infamy! Infamy! Mutant 1984 Laug Warband

On 23/08/202023/08/2020 By The OneIn 2mm, Homunculus Est, Infamy! Infamy!, Mutant 19846 Comments

Another weekend coming to an end, but some hobby time was found.

Homunculus Est

Mark Backhaus, who you may know as the General of the Denswe Army of the Charity Project I am running (or perhaps as the chap who turns out all those interesting articles in Wargames Soldiers and Strategy) asked if I wanted to do some playtesting of upcoming ancient rules Homunculus Est using my collection of Punic war 6mm stuff. Of course I was! I will play test it with the Little One.

The rule set aims to be a fast resolution Ancient battle wargame, playing very big battles on smallish tables. It is specially designed to be played in smaller scales creating a spectacle of big formations battling each other. Mark has done some amazing bases showing massed formations in 2mm and although I do have miniatures to try out the rules in 6mm I thought I could have a go at making a few big 2mm bases.

I ordered a starter pack of 2mm Romans from Irregular Miniatures (link here) to have a see how it would be to work with the scale. I had a done a try as few years ago and I did not like it, it felt like there were just small blobs shaped in some kind of manner to look like something but too small to get into some detail, compared to the 6mm and above I was used to.

However I have been blown away of some of the works done by some of my friends recently like Mike Hobbs, Vlad Seabrook-Smith, Sidney Roundwood and Mark himself.

The trick is just the same as I found in my large 6mm battles where I try to create a spectacle reminiscent of the old battle paintings that fascinated me as a youngster (here are few examples). It is really about focusing on being artistic to reach something looking realistic. A massed line of 28mm miniatures will look realistic but you need a bloody big line to really give the realistic look of a “big” battle.

Anyway some pictures and some narrative how my little test base went.

These are the basic Legionnaire bases that arrived – the Hoplites in the back are actually 6mm from Rapier Miniatures. They are very small remember.

I set about arranging the bases on a 120mm by 60mm base roughly representing a late Roman Legion, with some cavalry protecting the flanks, two rows of Cohorts (10 in totals), a line of skirmisher and at the back some reinforcements/reserves. I covered the base in PVA before putting the bases down then I covered it some some birdcage sand and let it dry.

I primed it with grey undercoat because I had run out of black and then drybrushed the ground with Green Ochre, a light Terracota and some Green. Then I used some diluted black paint and painted the miniatures.

I then painted a little bit of red where we assume the shield would be and some silver where the helmets would, alittle bit of white, flesh and gold (brass) here and there. Focusing on looking it from a distance, leaving the black and not overdoing the colours, if you zoom in it does not look realistic but take a step back and it does (well kind of).

From the side, I added some green turf scatter on top.

On the whole I am really happy with this and will get some more to do the bases for playtesting Mark’s rules using 2mm big bases, my notes are:

I will be using 100mm by 50mm bases (slightly smaller than the one used for this project)
I will use an early Imperial Roman formation for Legions
I will use another base coat and will spray the base with Matt Brown before I start painting it and make the bases look a little bit greener, more like my normal 6mm bases.
I will also need to make some warbands etc.
It will be fun and they paint up very quickly, possibly a little bit longer doing warbands assuming differing shields and clothes, etc.

Infamy! Infamy! Mutant 1984

I wrote last time about my take on Infamy! Infamy! setting it in my childhood haven of Mutant 1984 (more here). I did do my first unit of some cavalry in my Laug Warband, loosely based on the Gauls in the rules.

These are the Red Riding Wolf Riders and were made using a combination of Oathmark Wolf riders, some ancients plastic sets and some WW2 plastic sprues and some animal heads from Sally 4th.

The Laugs attack through the Dead Forest and the Pyri Commonwealth Monster hunters get ready to push them back. Some of them even carry Shields of their fallen comrades.

As usually done with the Laptop in the background with some random pictures from the net – this one found under the search “wasteland”.

I still think that Hunter Chief Bosse Byracka (the Dog) is really cool.

So a little bit of a mixture of scales this weekend

/ Hope that was of some interest! Have a good week.

“Infamy! Infamy! Mutant 1984 and some other stuff”

On 18/08/202019/08/2020 By The OneIn Infamy! Infamy!, Mutant 198415 Comments

I realised that most of the recent blog postings have been about what has turned into a most excellent project – the 6mm charity fun (see here for example). There has however been a lot of other goings on with the little free time I am enjoying at the moment.

The Little One and I have done some testing of Two Fat Lardies latest rule set “Infamy!, Infamy!” (link here) and it is really good and inspiring – I especially like the difference in how the units fight. Yet again a quality product. It is basically covering late Republican Romans and early Romans and their fighting against the barbarians. I have used some of my 6mm ancients bases but really fancied doing something a little bit different and perhaps unexpected.

Some of you may recall the Pyri-Commonwealth Monster Hunters I have been doing for my warped Mutant 1984 project (based on the first version/incarantion of the Swedish RPG, now known as Mutant Year Zero). Well my take on Infamy!, Infamy! will be to expand my Monster Hunters and detail their exploits in the early days of the Pyri-Commonwealth when they fought for the Emperor against feudal warlords, wild beasts and marauding mutant warbands in the forbidden zones – trying to re-build a lost civilisation.

On the other hand I have used the same setting for playing Sharp Practice but at later stage of development, more here.

Never mind, back to the orginal thread…..

The Pyri-Commonwealth in 108. (Blue) However My Infamy! Infamy! Campaign will take place around the early years of the reign of Palpadine 1-22. This was a time of a lot of fighting against feudal lords and marauding mutants.

Palpadine 1-22 – the founder of the Pyri-Commonwealth. When he was born an old woman prophesied that he would become a great ruler. His father, Duke Magnus, gave the child the name Palpadine, taken from a book in ancient history he had read. The book was called The Return of the Jedi. Palpadine was a tough politician and had no qualms in merging his empire. The combination of a strong powerbase i the House of Halbarad and an exceptional ability to handle people (he was a mental mutant with the empathy ability) made it easy for him to convince and gain supporters. He gained influence by making people dependent on him in different ways, e.g. money, drugs or mercenaries. Slowly his power grew and influence grew and finally his position was so strong that he could unify the area known today as the Pyri Commonwealth (Picture and text from the Mutant Expansion – Efter Ragnarok – Kampanjfas from 1987).

Some background to Mutant 1984 here.

Basically following a deadly and incurable epidemic caused by samples from a mission to Mars the human civilization collapses. The survivors build enclaves and start experimentation on humans and animals, in effect creating mutants, to see how they will survive outside the enclaves. However conflicts arises between the enclaves and it leads to a nuclear war sealing the fate of the world.
Fast forward a few hundred years and the from the ashes new civilizations start to emerge with mutated humans and animals, some “pure” humans and even some mutants with mental powers. There are remnants of the old worlds scattered all around, and some androids/robots from the old days are still around. In addition there are certain areas where the effect of radiation has left some strange effects on the flora and fauna and these areas are called “Forbidden Zones”.
The game is set in Scandinavia, but not as we know it today, and the general level of new technology is equivalent to that of the 19th Century, give or take. There are steam engines, muskets and some emerging rifle like weapons, heliogram for communication, etc. Some of the old technology has survived but is rare.
From a Blog entry some years ago, link here for more.

So, basically I have a few of the Monster Hunters already done. They will basically be the equivalent of the early Imperial Romans – drilled fighters.

The first units are already done but more of these are on the way. The Captain dons the characteristical moustache of the Emperor Palpadine (He is actually a model of the Swedish King Gustav Vasa).

I have also ordered a fair few sprues of differernt ancient and fantasy plastics that I will make into mutant warbands – mixing, swapping and adding the occasional animal head . Similar to the blue men we used for our Christmas Great White Hunter fun that were based on a set of native americans from warlond. I think it will be perfect.

I have also made a few other units that perhaps not necessarily will form part of the Infamy! Infamy! stuff, but as enhancers for the overall project, first the Anti-Monster Unit. I recently came across a picture of some Roman Re-enactors with a MG-34 machine Gun. I thought it looked funny and decided to get a similar feel for the Monster Units, but instead of a MG using an Anti-tank gun. So I got his nice piece from Warlord Miniatures and slightly modified things!

However old tech is not always reliable…

“Sven-Guran, it should be heading here any minute, be alert, tell me if you see anything coming through the birch forest. Yes Sir, oooohhh shit, it is a FENRIS tree….”

…coming towards us.” “Fire, Fiiiiiirrrrreee!, why are you not firing idiot!” “It is jammed Sir, it is Jammed!”

Out of forest some Knights appear and wild fight commences…

….blows from swords, lances and tentacles….

The Fenris tree weakens and the Monster have achieved yet another Victory.

Another of those funny monsters from the old Mutant 1984 book is the Land Shark that is tunnelling through the earth and throwing itself up on unsuspecting travellers. How does it do that?, no clue but I did not worry about it when I was twelve and I do not really care now either.

The entry in the Mutant rulebook from 1984. “Land sharks are mutated sharks that has developed an ability (power) to glide through sand and loose earth. It is about 10 meter long. It mostly attacks its victims from beneath. They are dark blue with black fins and breathe air” The stats in the game are like in the Basic Rpg or D&D, from 3 to 18 for a human. STO is SIZ, INT is INT, SMI is DEX and MST is POW. Their bite is stingy!

I got this set, they are from Path finder Miniatures.

Absolutely ridiculous, but real fun in my books.

Some time ago I got the miniatures from the Aftermath Kickstarter by https://puttymonkey.com/ – the range is based on some of the art from the Aftermath Rpg from back in the day. Really fun to paint the characters from that iconic cover. They fit straight into the Mutant 1984 madness.