Forces of Nature strike back

With the thawing of Frostgrave, spring starts to return to the city surroundings and with it come the forces of nature. These druids use the power of life to try and restore balance to the city ruins and find news of their elders who were in the city prior to the fall.

These models are part of the Dungeon Saga campaign. The smaller model is the regular version of Groot Kapoka, a dryad shapeshifter who comes with one of the expansion sets (I forget which one). The larger figure is a Legendary, resin version of the character to use when he has levelled up a bit. Unfortunately one of the issues with DS is the odd scaling of the plastic characters that makes them really small compared to the monsters. The resin versions are larger and fit well with other fantasy ranges.

She sells sellswords..

Sounds like the start of a tongue twister....

Anyhoo. Today saw the release of the next digital only Frostgrave expansion, Sellsword. This 12 page expansion allows warbands to hire a new character type, the Captain. The Captain chooses his own equipment, gains experience and has some special abilities to use, adding a bit more variation to things. You just need to be careful when giving him magical items as he won't give them back, even if he leaves!

When recruited, he gets to pick from a range of special (one use per game) tricks, each granting bonuses to an action. Some of these occur before dice rolls, others afterwards. The author had some concerns about how people would take this as it is not the traditional skills that some people will be expecting, but I think they should work well. My favourite one so far is Leadership. This allows you to activate three additional soldiers instead of one when you use the Group Activation skill. That should allow for some serious beatdown, or a surprise surge towards an objective. New tricks can be learned by spending xp instead of gaining health or will, and you can use any number of tricks in one go.

Besides all the rules for the Sellsword, we also get three new missions, one new item (Book of Null), one new Bestiary item (Nullmen) and a new Wizard sheet that includes a space to track the captain.

It says in the intro section that this is entirely optional and should be discussed with your group first, but as Joseph discussed in his blog on Monday, this looks like something that will become core to everyone's experience as it adds some real interesting dynamics. All in all, pretty good for £3.

Epic... fail!

One of my aims for this year is to build up a small Old West project. With the kind present of some Black Scorpion models in the Secret Santa this year, the project had it's starting point, but the subject of one of the side-challenges this year gave me an interesting idea...

What could be more of an epic fail than a western gunfight with no survivors?

These six are all from Great Escape Games. Now I just need to find matching standing figures for them all, otherwise they are purely terrain or markers.

Wizards

While I was planning the vikings form the last update, I realised that (other than the warlord base) they would be perfect to add to the options for Frostgrave, so I went in search of some wizards that fitted the same theme. Red Box Games came to the rescue with two really nice figures. I may have to find some use for their other figures if they have the same level of detail as these two.

Although they are from two different factions, they seem to fit together nicely now they are painted up.

And here they are with all of the vikings, ready to raid Frostgrave (minus the Warlord, who isn't useful here)

They will also all work really nicely for Dungeon Saga as Vikings are one of the factions listed in Mantic's mass battle game set in the same universe. I need to have a think and come up with some stats for those.

While on the Dungeon Saga theme, these are the three demonic hounds.

Kingdom Death Beta scenarios

After playing 2 lantern years of Kingdom Death, I've not really had a chance to carry on recently as the lightbox had to come out for the painting challenge. Once things are settled again in March/April time I must set it back up again and carry on trying to survive in the darkness. I was tempted to add the KD bits to the challenge, but I want to spend some time on them and work out how to do OSL when the world is *only* lit by the lanterns being carried.

One of the joys this year is that we're in the process of building a sewing room in the garden for my wife. Once that is done we're having a full reshuffle of the house, decorating everything as we go... the last room on the list is converting one of the bedrooms into my office/gaming room where i can leave the lightbox *and* Kingdom Death out all the time. 

I found out this morning that a beta version of all the one shot scenarios for the kickstarter characters were released sometime over Christmas (get them here). There are some really interesting looking options in here, especially the ones that grant you more people as your prize for winning!

Lock up the church.. the Vikings are loose!

In the 2014 Secret Santa, some kind soul sent me a pile of Black Tree Design vikings so I could start a Saga force. Thank you so much, whoever you are! The models are really nicely done and scale well with the Gripping Beast plastics. I still find it weird that the GB metals are not the same size as their plastics...

This can be fielded as 4 points of vikings, if necessary, but I'd like to add another set of warriors (these are in the painting queue) and some levy.

The other thing to note is that unlike most of my models, I decided to actually put decorative basing on these guys as I really didn't want to spend weeks filing off the metal bases. The reason for the snow will become apparent later.

The warlord stand is three Gripping Beast plastics. You can't have your warlord going around unprotected now can you? The first bodyguard likes geometric, pacman style shapes for his design. The second bodyguard is obviously on some sort of mushrooms with the abstract design on his...

The main Heathguard unit is a mere 4 strong, but they look like the toughest of the tough. Worthy warriors to attend the Warlord.

We then have two more groups of Hearthguard that will go together into one larger group. They are here in multiple angles to show off their fancy shields. this group was bulked out with two plastic Gripping Beast models so that all of them, except Mad Karl and Slightly-less-mad Jorik, have chainmail. I think you can guess who Karl is...

These are accompanied by a group of 8 warriors. One of them is a bit camera shy as he wanted to show off his shield instead

I decided to use colour to signify the different groups. They might be family groups... they may just have a very picky boss who likes colour co-ordination... I'm not quite sure. When all 23 figures stand together, it makes a very satisfying sight

WW2 Heer infantry

These have been sat in the box of undercoated figures for the last two years, so it is a relief to have finally got them done. Each year I've been meaning to push them up to the top of the painting queue for the Analogue challenge, but each year I have something else to work on. Last saturday I was waiting for the varnish to dry on the vikings and was looking for something else to try and do for Tuesday's challenge entry. These guys were staring up at me with pitiful stares.

These are all Warlord figures and, with the exception of one figure, they are all the plastics from the old Bolt Action starter set. They aren't intended for use in Bolt Action, so the groupings below are all rough guesses. They will be used for things like 7TV, so the actual unit composition isn't relevant. This may change when the Bolt Action or Achtung! Cthulhu weird War rules come out, but for now... 

We have an officer with his two body guards. The one on the right is the only metal figure in the force. Somewhere there is a gestapo officer and a mad scientist from the same set.

 Next we have a medic, who would probably be shot by the allies if anyone spotted him with that pistol... but he needs to defend himself against the mythos beasts that he is likely to face in the future.

 Then we have a sniper team... not that headshots work on things without heads...

 Fire team 1 has 1 MG and 2 panzerfaust to add a bit of punch to the rifles

 Fire team 2 has 2 MGs and 1 panzerfaust instead. These are more fixed position troops.

In total this is 21 Heer to add to my small WW2 collection. This really needs some additions as they will be easily outclassed by the British Commando and Russian forces already sitting on my shelves

Finishing projects

The thing I've learned over the last few days is that by finishing a project, you realise you want to add more to it, even if it is one that you didn't think you wanted to carry on with. My two updates in the Analogue Hobbies challenge today were both meant to be one shot and done; much like the Wars of the Roses project last year... Unfortunately my st00pid brain now wants me to add more to them even though, in the case of the Germans, it took me 2+ years to get around to painting them up in the first place.


Finishing projects is a nice feeling though. I must do it more!

Calth musings

I grew up on GW games, I love the universes that they created (until the Warhammer world went kablooey, but that is another matter)... but a while back I stopped buying anything except paint from them as the prices were just too darn expensive. When the Horus Heresy game came out late last year I was interested, but managed to hold off on buying it as I need space marines like a hole in the head... pretty though they may be.

Today Aidan picked up a copy and we've been looking through the very very heavy box full of goodies. Damn it looks nice. The rules are very simple, but that works nicely as a board game, and the scenarios look like fun, especially the dual board one.  I'm still managing to hold off on picking up a copy, but it did make me stop and think... about the same time that Betrayal at Calth was released, GW announced the return of Specialist Games.

I can't help but wonder if Calth was a calculated way of experimenting with a simple ruleset and people's willingness to build multipart models for a board game. The box contains so many Heresy era marines that it was a guaranteed sell to a massive proportion of their current and past followers. 

I can just imagine playing a version of Necromunda on boards like these...

I can see the turn sequence and card mechanics working really well for Necromunda and Mordheim as they add a lot of interactions between the sides and interesting events through the card decks. It wouldn't take too much work to include multiple layers by saying the red outlined items can't be directly passed through, but can be accessed via ladders or walk ways (for example). We shall have to see what happens with Specialist Games over the coming months...

Nostalgia strikes

The Nostalgia bonus round was a tricky one to decide what to paint. I had a few different options available, but something for 7TV seemed the most appropriate as the whole thing is based upon Nostalgia. These guys are some generic mooks, the likes of which you'd see in a Bond film, or in an Avengers episode.

The models are some of their oldest, so also kinda fit from that perspective too. It isn’t clear from the photos, but they could do with a resculpt sometime soon as their feet are tiny and the hands quite big and lumpy… but they are perfect for the job. 

More monsters

This entry for the Analogue Challenge is a mixed bag of models. Some for Dungeon Saga/Frostgrave and some for Shadows of Brimstone.

First up we have the banshee from DS, which leaves one of the core set villains left to paint and 6 armoured undead. The banshee is quite a nice sculpt, with the exception of blobby hands and will see a lot of use in various games.

As a change, I decided to try some of the Dungeon Saga demons. These guys are the same size as the undead trolls and act as their equivalent in the demonic campaign. Again, very nice models to paint, though some of the seams are tricky to clean off as the plastic is slightly bendy. If the Kings of War ones are as nicely sculpted, they should be great models... not that I need any more of them. They will also be nice large size demons for Frostgrave. These guys suffered from a partial varnish fail. You can see the white marbling on the back of the middle demon; though in this case it adds to the texture rather than obscuring detail; so not so much a fail as an unexpected detailing!

Last and definitely least are two of the ghosts from Shadows of Brimstone. These figures are some of the worst I've had the misfortune to work with. The detail is shockingly soft, which makes them ugly lumps... so a quick ghost paintjob was done at the same time as the DS banshee to get them out of the way. Scale wise they are only useful in Shadows of Brimstone as they are 1/48 (ish), which makes them really tall when compared to any other Old West figures that I have, even Black Scorpion.

Because it was asked in the Challenge comments, here is the recipe for the ghosts:

1. White undercoat
2. HEAVY wash of GW's Coelia Greenshade. Add some black wash to the deepest, darkest areas if you want to get it really dark
3. Wipe of excess with fingertip
4. Lightly drybrush white. Make absolutely sure the wash is dry first, otherwise you get weird green marbling instead (which actually works sometimes)