A lot on at the moment with work and the fact that No. 2 daughter is heading off to University soon. However I have been progressing a lot with smaller stuff, doing 30 minutes here and there and taking a little bit or extra time on a few models I have been intending to do for some time. It is impressive though how it all kind of adds up doing a little bit here and there – I might be able to tackle this lead (and other materials) mountain before my 154th birthday. Talking about the lead mountain, I did take a hike on it and found some old Doctor Who miniatures I had bought at some point in 2019, and as happens it provoked me to buy a few more (funny how that always works, one down, two more bought, like one step forward, two step back).
Being a hard core fun of the series and remembering fondly watching the fourth Doctor a few years after their original airings on some early satellite channels back in Sweden. I was working weekend distributing leaflets and selling a Sunday broadsheet newspaper (Dagens Nyheter) to one of the poshest areas in my hometown – guaranteed sales and plenty of tip. I was 12 and it was a great Sunday earner for a fair few years. Doctor Who use to air early in the morning and I used to set the clock early to wake up, collect my leaflets and the newspapers and then watch the Doctor Who whilst having my breakfast then off to earn some monies to buy RPGs, adventure books and comics – amazing times.
Doctor Who – Pyramids of Mars
This is one of my all time favourite Doctor Who adventure, evocative, scary and bloody brilliant. Here are few shots from the adventure.
I did the Mummies, Suketh on his throne, two of his servants, Namin and Marcus Scarman. I already have the Doctor somewhere. I also painted Leela, standing in for Sarah Jane, who was originally in the adventure. All models are from Black Tree design – I really like these.
Marcus Scarman – the ArchaeologistIbrahim Namin – the mysterious EgyptianSuketh with his ServantsMummies, here in a fight with Leela (I painted three of them, one has probably gone to ground)
I intend to use these playing some scenarios using the Doctor Who miniatures games (I think it was produce in 2010). It was available free for a while and I managed to get hold of the game and a fair few Scenarios.
I believe the system is very similar to the current 7TV ruleset by Crooked Dice. There are scenarios for a number of different Doctors, I have ordered miniatures for Black Tree for the following scenarios. These are also scary and atmospheric.
These were the codes I got from Black Tree, but will have to get some additional fillers from other ranges, like the Tong Cultists, a Range Rover for the Unit soldiers, etc.
DW462 – 4th Doctor in Sherlock Holmes Hat
DW311 – The Master
DW702 – Brigadier
DW322 – Capt Mike Yates
DW323 – Sgt Benton
DW1003 – Unit Patrol (7)
DW314 – Bok
DW327 – Azal the Daemon
DW413 – Weng Chiang
DW414 – Mr Sinn
DW418 – Lih, Sen Chang
And I did do the miniatures I would need for the Warriors of the Deep last year, but I do think I ever wrote a blog about it, well another time – this is my second favourite Doctor Who episode (and there is no Tom Baker in sight!).
So loads of Whovian fun lined up with some of the finest episodes.
I have been running a little bit of an occasional series on Twitter (@Roll_a_one) giving some more or less profound advice with regards to the 6mm aspect of the hobby from my perspective, you can find these under the #6mm tips and were done in 2019 and 2020. I also asked the Hive Mind for some advice recently and I have used these two sources to write a little bit of a rambling post about some of the insights I have learned from painting 6mm miniatures over the last 15 years or so. They are my own views and your Glorantha may vary! I am passionate about the scale and try to share the love I feel for it as much as possible.
Thinking about 6mm
If you have never tried painting 6mm why not find a manufacturer and order a small pack and see if it works for you – you might be pleasantly surprised. The models shown below are Bison Riders from Rapier Miniatures, Sci-fi models from Brigade Models, 8th Army infantry from Adler and some SYW Mounted Grenadiers (used as Russians in my GNW games).
Approach to Painting
I think this summary from Joe about his first experience of painting 6mm is extremely useful for how I think 6mm is best tackled, of course some people are spending a lot of time on detail and there is no problem with that. I tend to do too large projects to be able to spend a lot of time on each little miniatures. Paint an army that looks good from when you stand up or sit back looking at it on the wargames table. The second tweet shows that every now and then you will achieve something that looks really good in detail even if you did not plan it.
Painting your Miniatures
I did a few painting guides last year, showing “my” method with regards to how I tend to paint, but there are various ways of doing it. Below is a link to an old blog that gives links to the 4 guides I did. Use a good brush with a good point, try to get used using a Size 1 or even 2 for the majority of the painting. A 10/0 is just a waste of time in my opinion, wears out quickly and holds no paint – dip paint dip paint, instead of dip paint along! I use grey with black wash, some prefer black (perhaps drybrushed white), brown or white undercoat. I struggle with white as it is less forgiving than darker undercoats, but with some washed people can achieve some excellent results. As for the colours go a little bit brighter as this will look better from a distance, play with contrasts if you can, it works better than highlights if you do it right.
The first one relates to washing your miniatures or not (this is washing them as part of the painting process, not before your start working on them, which I heard you should but I never do). Some people paint their miniatures nicely and perhaps even do a few highlights and do not bother with a wash. I tend to block paint my miniatures as good as I can, then add Winsor and Newton Nutbrown Ink on top, make sure it does not pool too much and sometimes I add some highlights once it has dried. I find this method being the most efficient balance between a lot of work on detail and limited detail as the wash tends to do a good job and I just love the shine of the Nut. I never varnish my 6mm stuff – perhaps I should?
Detail when it matters
Some detail can really pay off and look ok even from a distance, for my Gallic warriors below I just carefully added some blue ink – upfront it does not look very well but from a distance you could image that those are some kind of tattoos. The second tweet show the power of using highlights on bare skin making a hell of difference to the final result. The final tweet is showing how powerful some nicely detailed shields can be. The last one about painting Tartan in 6mm, well actually it is not Tartan at all – the brain will fill in what is difficult to paint.
Basing is not everything but pretty close
Some of my Punic Wars Collection
Make sure your basing is consistent and think about how it interfaces with your board/mat, well at least the one you are most likely to use. It is more powerful if the base blends into the playing surface and the army is aligned. All my 6mm stuff is more or less aligned, this includes the terrain – it all comes together.
Light and Sight
This is really important if you are not able to see properly your painting will suffer. First priority get a good daylight lamp, mine cost about £120 but I do spend a lot of time under it. Second if you are not able to see properly get some magnifying glasses to support you doing the work – I just use my normal glasses and it works fine at the moment.
Some Bonus Tips
Anyway, I do hope that was of some interest, please provide some tips and advice of your own in the comments.
I was flashed a Republican Roman army by Ebay the other day, it looked well painted and there were a lot of miniatures for the £65 asked for including postage, with a mixture of Baccus and Rapier models. Doing a quick calculation I found the metal value was about £62 if the models would have been bought from Baccus and Rapier, the models were really well painted.
Well for the cost of bare metal and the models already base painted I thought it might be quicker to remove the figures from the bases, add some details and rebase them in my own style and base style – I have based all my ancients on 50 by 20mm bases (based on some Command and Colors stuff I have done). Before you do this it could be worth asking the seller how they based the figures – if they based the modes with sand and pva, it is relatively easy to do this (even if they superglued the models first), if a form of filler were used it is still ok but messier and finally if a superglue was used for both attaching the figures and to bind the sand – I would probably give it a pass. These were glued on then based with PVA and Sand – piece of cake.
The Army as delivered, nothing wrong with it!
Here is the steps I took.
Let it all soak in some water
After this I scraped off all the grass, sand and pva (I used a hobby knife, see below).
It creates an interesting mess
Then I removed the miniatures with the following tools
All lining up nicely
Then I added details to the shields, you will spot a few I forgot
Then I rebased them in my own style.
And here mixing them up with the other part of the collection
A mixture of the new and the old,
This is why I do 6mm!
These are old, but who does not like some Elephants?
In total it took me a few sessions, about 9 hours to rebase all the miniatures (including doing the shields and a few more highlights) – I would not have been able to paint the bare lead and base up nowhere near this amount, so it was well worth it and fun. With addition of detail and uniform details it is difficult to see any difference between the models I have painted from scratch and the ones I have rebased.
It is messy and I suppose if the basing has been done with superglue and sand it may be tricky to deal with, but otherwise perfectly ok. I managed to increased the size of my Romans significantly to match my Carthagians very quickly.
In other news…
In other news I have enjoyed painting another excellent model I got from Fenris Games – it is called the Dweller in the Ruins and can be bought here in the UK and from Barbaric Splendor, here, in the US. It did not take long and it is an absolute master sculpt – I think a more skilled painter than I could do something really remarkable with the model, but I am more than happy with this result.
I entered Fenris Games #Paintalloween in September last year. This is an annual thing that Ian runs with a few categories painting Fenris Games stuff, with the winners of each getting a £50 to spend on his products. I entered with my Death Dealer that in essence was a black painted model with some grey and Silver detailing, and some generous helpings of red and mainly yellow wash, I wanted to create the effect of a demonic knight riding on his supernatural stead through this lava landscape with the reflections from the lava on the horse. It was, like a lot of my stuff, a little bit of a trial and error and in the end it kind of worked from a distance, so take a step back and have another look at the picture below. The model is depicting the Death Dealer and is based on the famous 1973 paiting by Frazetta with the same name – more here. You make also recall it from the cover of the excellent album by Molly Hatchet in 1978.
I was lucky and landed a £50 gift card that I put to good use and bought a few things (with a little bit of a top up, they have a lot of really beautiful stuff) – by the way here is the link to the Shop. Go and have a look at what they have – there is so much to explore.
The key miniature I got was a model of the the Cthulhu monster Atlach-Nacha, described by Clark Ashton Smith in his Bood, The Seven Geases in 1934
“The dark form ran toward him with incredible swiftness. When it came near he saw that there was a kind of face on the squat ebon body, low down amid the several-jointed legs. The face peered up with a weird expression of doubt and inquiry; and terror crawled through the veins of the bold huntsman as he met the small, crafty eyes that were circled about with hair“
The model is big, the heads you can see on the head are in 28mm scale. And needs to be assembles, which is easy with some green stuff (or putty) and some super glue. I end to get all together, like here, then wait a while and go over it with a scalpel and file afterwards.I applied some contrast colour (yes I bought a fair few bottles that I have not utilised a lot, but they are brilliant for doing this kind of work on bigger models and quick.
Then I just filled in the details gave it a few washes and became really happy with the results, it is a fantastic model. I would love to see what a more accomplished painter would do with it.
With the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook as a background.
In other news, I recently found a sprue I must have got for free in a magazine with six Landsknechts, that I thought I could something fun with for the Mutant 1984 project.
I believe they were from this set (from Warlord Games)
So in usual style we need to do some headswaps with the fantastic critter heads from Sally 4th (link here) – there is fair amount of different heads for all your headswapping needs!
Assembled and ready for the splash!
This will be a an elite body guard unit to one of the big trading house – the rainbow team.
Star Grave and 5 Parsecs from Home
There is a Nick Starter currently running for the new Frost Grave variant in Space – Star Grave, there is about 2 week left when I am issuing this blog.
For me I just needed to see these two pictures (the first from the Mercenary Set and the Second from the Crew set) and I am in at least buying the figures, because these are perfect for the Mutant 1984 project. (look at those heads). You can check out the Nick Starter here. I just got all the plastic models without the rulebook which still comes with the bonus items.
In addition you should really check out another pre-order set and this is the new edition of Five Parsecs from Home that you can pre-order now (with immediate downloadable PDF copy) for delivery in May this year, same time as Star Grave. Well you will need the same miniatures for both so why not get both sets. I have bought the Five Parsecs book and will only get the Star Grave miniatures (You can check out his game and pre-order the book here).
I have played the earlier edition of FPFH and really enjoyed it. I have got the Little One reasonably interested so we may take this for a spin at some point in the future.
Anyway, always a good Mutant 1984 angle to be found.
In the Swedish gaming magazine Sinkadus no 11 (1988) a new potential player character option was presented for the Mutant Post-apocalyptic RPG, the Neo Man (Note: technically for the Mutant 2 iteration from 1986 – the one that added the characteristics of Perception and Education, introduced a segment based combat system, similar to Runequest’s strike ranks but continuous, introduced hit locations and a much more sophisticated skill system), the Neo Men.
The Neo Men were originally the product of biologically manipulating humans to become bigger and stronger to become an asset of the military as a criminal punishment, during the 21st century. The manipulation also affected their personalities and intelligence significantly in a detrimental sense. Following the catastrophe a lot of them survived the harsh reality and due to their resilience and created societies.
Extract from the Article on Neo Men – Sinkadus no 11 (1988).
The Neo Men, through natural selection, tends to be a little bit smarter than orginally but still much lower than the other types (2D6+2 compared to 2D6+6 for mutants and 2D6+8 for mutans) , but their societies has long ago been eroded due to the rise of the human and mutant societies. They tend to form part of the under class when they live in “normal” society. In a way they could be seen as the equivalent of the Neanderthals in our world and perhaps as Orcs in other worlds (but perhaps more timid).
During lock-down I bought a set of Cowboy Orcs (why not!) and I thought this could represent a gang of Neo Men, perhaps of the smarter type! I also wanted to make their skin pink and reddish, a little bit like muscles on one of those educational posters (because it used to scare the s**t of me when I was little). This is a little bit different than the more greyish looks proposed in the original article.
I bought them on ebay from Miniature Men, seller is called miniaturemen07. I might have bought a few more… but that is for another time.
Anyway, here they are…. (they were originally seven, but I seem to have lost one).
They are nice and bulky compared to normal sized 28mm, but then the Siz of a Neo Man is 2D6+20 compared to the normal 2D6+6!.
One of the first actions of the Great Northern War was the move by Danmark into Holstein-Gottorp, that was an ally and also bound dynastically to Sweden. Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp was the Queen Consort of Sweden, she was married to Charles X of Sweden from 1654 to 1660, then from his death 1660 served as Regent from to 1672, when her son Charles XI (of Scanian War fame) was an adult and again during the short time from Charles XI’s death to the time Charles XII assumed power at the age of 15. Later on she would be representing the Swedish Kingdom at home in Stockholm during Charles XII campaigns during the Great Northern War.
Hedwig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp, the de facto first lady of the Swedish Royal Court for 61 years, from 1654 her death in 1715. You can read more about her here.
The Danes laid Siege to the town of Tönning in 1700 but it was lifted following the deployment of the Swedish Army in front of Copenhagen that resulted in the Travendal Peace treaty in August 1700. Later in the war the town of Tönning would be besieged again but with a different outcome, but that is another (hi)story.
Tönning
During this time an International Force was sent to Holstein-Gottorp to aid the Duchy consisting of elements of the Schleswig-Holstein Gottorp Army with some Swedish Mercenary regiments, United Provinces (Dutch), the Hanoverians (Duchy of Luneburg-Celle and Duchy of Hanover-Calenburg) and a small Swedish Army under the Command of General Gyllenstierna.
It is this force I would like to do for my 6mm Great Northern War Collection, although no action really happened I would like to do a “what if” of a major field battle as this offers an interesting mix of units, commanders and also the possibility of potential support from the Saxons to the Danish side. I did a similar what-if with goof friend Nick Dorrell for the Battle of Horka 1708 at Joy of Six in 2018 (see more here).
So what are the details of this force? Well, Nick has done a tremendous job in presenting this information, see more here which is reproduced in a summary form below (with some additional information from my own notes and research). I will need to do some further research on the actual composition of the Danish force that invaded later.
Bases Needed for the Project
Basically I would need to do the following for this project:
Schleswig-Holstein Gottorp(9 infantry bases, 1 horse base, 3 dragoon bases)
Available Commanders – The Duke of Schleswig-Holstein Gottorp (Monarch)
9 infantry battalions – The Ducal Life Guard Regiment (2 btns), Christian-August (1 btn), Bautzen (1 btn) and Von Barner (Hecules, 1 btn), and then the Swedish Mercenary regiments: Wismar Garrison (1 btn), Stade Garrison (1 btn) and Wismar Governor (2 btns)
1 hourse regiment (not counting the small trabant unit) – Von Osten (1 base)
Available Commanders – Anthoni Gunther, Prinze of von Holstein-Beck and Colonel Daniel van Dopf
4 Infantry battalions – Holstein-Beck’s Foot, Weller’s Foot, Keppel’s Foot and Capol’s Swiss Foot, each being represented by one 60 by 30mm base of infantry (as there were somewhere between 500 and 700 strong each). The Holstein-Beck Foot will be modelled with pikes based on Nick’s comments. I found the full names of the Colonels for 3 of these – Anthoni Gunther, Prinze of von Holstein-Beck, Hercule de Capol and Johan Rabo von Keppel.
3 Horse Regiments – Albermarle’s Carabiniers (Arnold Joust, Baron van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albermarle), Ostfriesland’s (Colonel Fredric Ulrich, Graaf von Oost- Friesland) and Aughrim’s Horse (Colonel Frederik Christian von Reede – Baron Aughrim). I normal model every 2 squadrons per base, in this case there were 3 squadrons for Albermarle and 1 squadon for the others. I will simplify this to three bases of each – it is a compromise I can live with.
1 Dragoon Regiments, – Colonel Daniel Wolf van Dopf’s Dragoons were also part of the force and these will be represented by 2 bases.
Duchy of Luneburg-Celle (7 infantry bases, 2 horse bases, 4 bases of Dragoons)
Available Commanders: Duke George William (Monarch) and General-Feldzeugmeister Marquis de Boisdavid
7 infantry battalions – Oberst La Motte (2 btns), Generalmajor de Luc (2 btns) and the rest with 1 battalion each for Generalleutnant Graf Detlef von Rantzau, Oberst Mally de Charles and Generalmajor Barthold Hartwig von Bernstorffs.
2 horse regiments (1 base each) – General-Feldzeugmeister Marquis de Boisdavid and Brigadier de la Croix de Frechapple.
2 Dragoon regiments (2 bases each) – Oberst von Villers and Reichsgraf Friedrich Johann von Bothmer
Duchy of Hanover-Calenburg (5 infantry bases, 7 horse bases)
Available Commanders: Duke Georg Ludwig (Monarch) and Generalleutnant von Sommerfeld
5 infantry battalions – Garde zu Fuß (Generalleutnant von Sommerfeld, 2 bases), Generalmajor St. Pol des Estanges, Generalmajor d’Herbeville and Oberst von Schlegel.#
4 horse regiments (2 base each except for Garde du Corps with 1 base) – Oberst Ernst Bogislaw von Podewils, Generalmajor von Voigt, Generalmajor Graf de Noyelles and Generalleutnant Christian Ludwig von Wyhe (Garde du Corps).
Sweden (12 infantry bases, 9 bases of “Galloping Horse”)
Available Commander – General Nils Carlsson Gyllenstierna and (TBD – need to review which Senior commanders would have been with these regiments during this time).
12 infantry battalions (or 10) – Skaraborgs (2 btns), Södermanlands (2 btns) , Kronobergs (2 btns) , Östgöta (2 btns) and Riksänkedrottningens Life regiment in Pommern (2 btns) and maybe Jönköpings (2 btn).
Horse and Dragoon (3 bases Galloping Horse each) – Pommerska Horse, Bremiska Horse and Bremiska Dragoons.
As for painting guides, I have consulted the following materials (and will improvise where I do not know):
Schleswig-Holstein Gottorp – link here / and “Der Deutsche Staaten I” by Claus-Peter Golberg
The Dutch – “Dutch Army of William III” C.A Sapherson
Duchy of Luneburg-Celle – “Der Deutsche Staaten II” by Claus-Peter Golberg
Duchy of Hanover-Calenburg – “Der Deutsche Staaten II” by Claus-Peter Golberg
Sweden – “The Great Northern War 1700-1721 – Colours and Uniforms” by Höglund & Sallnäs
A little bit of Progress
Good news is that I did two sessions this week painting about half the cavalry I need. I may be able to re-use some of the Swedish units from other projects. You may note that these are the older version of the WSS range from Baccus, but to be honest I think they paint up really good (I have to admit to having a little bit of a lead mountain so this atual project will not require any additional expense).
If you are interested in this or know more about the smaller states I am more than interested to hear more through the comments.
/ Hope that was of some interest, will keep you updated on progress.
One of my favourite looking tanks is the Swedish m/42 tank, a domestic tank that was finalised in 1943 and plausable to take some kind of place in a 1943 what-if invasion of Sweden. It did initially have a lot of issues as was not very reliable and I found an interesting article here. I did have one of these in 15mm before but got another two from Shapeways some time ago – I was waiting for an alternative source but I think these are great even if they take you back about £19 each.
An armoured Truck – Pbil m/31
The second one is a Paul Edwards special (who runs the excellent Sabotag3d company – https://www.sabotag3d.com/). I showed Paul a picture of one and of them and off he went and designed one for me and printed out a fair few, and I have had them lying around for about a year – it was time to put some paint on them. More about this vehicle here.
First one done, note the upgraded 1942 version had a 20mm cannon. Countryside touring in Dalarna 1943.I made Six because I had Six…and a few MC riders as escortAnd a few Swedish Engineering Types
That was all, see you in Dalarna in 1943!
Sorry one more thing, there is a new Podcast that is worth giving a listen and a follow. You may already be familiar with the excellent Yarkshire Gamer blog, Ken has decided to share not just his smooth voice but his passion in Audio, focusing in the grand spectacle stuff, big gaming.
I bought a 3D printer at the end of last year but it stood doing nothing for some time. Work was crazy leading up the Christmas break and during the break I got otherwise engaged. However I recently got it all up and running and how much fun I have had with it.
So far I have printed 1/3000 ships and 1/100 tanks and a lot of 2mm city buildings and walls (but more about that some other time).
Denmark Strait
The first thing I printed was the ships for the Battle of Denmark Strait 1941, where famously HMS Hood was sank by Bismarck.
HMS Hood, Bismarck, HMS Prince of Wales and Prinz Eugen
These 3d files can be bought from Ghukek’s Miniatures,
I painted them in grey, gave them a black wash highlighted some of he detail with the same grey and painted the deck details with a light brown. I gave the decks a light wash of brown.
For the basing and wanted to get a quick results and painted the base in blue then outlined the bow wave in light blue and some streaks around the boat, then when dry some of the Atlantic blue from Vallejo (it is a modelling paste, link here). Let dry and carefully add some white to enforce waves and wake, and here and there. Really happy how they came out.
We will try these out in battle shortly, I will write about it then. The Little One is reading up on the Naval Thunder Rules.
The second project was some Finnish Tanks, the Sturmi, or StuG to most of the world. I got the file for free at thingyverse, link here https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2609688/apps – It is not a perfect model but good enough.
The wait for the print, it takes about 4 hours to print the tanksThe prints with the supports as they come out of the printers. I ended up printing a company worth of these
Really happy how they came out.
/ Hope that was of some interest, I will write about my experiences of using the printer and reflections later.
One of the scenarios I am envisaging for the “What if”German Invasion of Sweden 1943 project I am working on is a river crossing over the Dalecarlian River (Dalälven) – as it is such a central feature of the county.
Dalälven / Dalecarlia River
The high level plans for the two Campaigns I am working on.
I did some rubber boats earlier that you can find in the link ( German Infantry Platoon(s) for the What-if attack of Sweden in 1943 , this link also contains a high-level painting guide I used for the German in this this campaign) but wanted to support this with some boats with engines.
German Rubber boats from Skytrex Miniatures 15mm scale
The German army used the Leichtes Sturmboot 39 that were small high-powered assuault boats with by an 30 HP “Powered oar” outboard motor, they were used for river and small waterway assaults, crossings and to push pontoon boats. They were mainly used by Engineering typically to form a bridge head to build a pontoon bridge. Below is a small video showing them in use from Youtube.
I made a few improvised boats that I wrote about in an earlier blog for my Continuation War Finns.
Anyway the new ones are based on the actual boats and 3d printed. You can buy the files from 3D wargaming here. You can print out two versions one is an uncovered version (open boat, as can be seen in the video above) I believe the covered versions were used by the Marine. Well in my 1943 campaign they came from some marine units in Norway just before the invasion. I also have some uncovered ones that I will use to “redo” the Finnish ones I showed above. I asked Paul Edwards at Sabotag3d (https://www.sabotag3d.com/) to print them out in 1/100 or 15mm scale.
Picture from the 3D website, these are I suspect 28mm versions
As for the crew I used some Germans from the lead mountain – yes mine is substantial. For the “drivers” I used pointing NCO or artillery models and for the others a selection of different infantry types. As the models are close together pay attention to helmet size as they tend to vary between manufacturers and can look strange next to each other. I cut most of the bases off and also the feet or parts of the legs to make some interesting positions. In reality the were probably less obvious targets when crossing in them but I think you agree that it looks nice and dramatic in the pictures below.
I added a base to them and painted the boats in a dark and light grey, most pictures indicate this type of camouflage pattern being used. I tried to create some effect of water and some foam by painting the bases dark blue, the drybrushed with a medium blue before adding some vallejo Atlantic water effet, finally I paintes some white to represent the foam. Here are the finalised pieces, I am really happy with them.
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 rangeSecond 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.
The Laug force
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.
First Group of Cavalry Second Group of CavalryGroup of SlingersFirst Group of WarriorsSecond Group of WarriorsThe Elite Warriors!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!
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