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Barbarians Built

Well I decided to get these finished.

As you can see they brought a couple of little friends with them. Not exactly a dread hunting pack. Where someone else might have bears or wolves they have  a pair of foxes. Wolves I have plenty of. Foxes…two!

The one thing that kind of bugged me with these were the way the bits were fastened to the sprue.

Bugged is maybe too strong a word, luckily I have sharp cutters and files. Trying to get these off with a knife would have been an absolute sod. It literally is 25% of the base of the arm. There were others just as bad.

So maybe I will get to start painting stuff again sometime.  I have forced myself off the console and onto the kitchen table to get back into things again. The backlog is starting to pile up. I was going to say ‘again’ there, but higher is probably a better description.

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Mystery Miniatures…

A mystery no more!

So as I had convinced myself that these were indeed Mantic miniatures I decided to search for Mantic troops using various ideas as to what they might be. Eventually Barbarians threw up an image I was looking for…

“The humans of the Northern Alliance come mostly from the northern clans who have sworn allegiance to Talannar, but they can come from many disparate lands. Of these, some are remnants of eastern tribes desolated by Varangur raids. Others are refugees of wars to the south or exiles from the numerous Kingdoms of Men. Whatever their heritage, each has found a home as part of the Alliance and will fight to their last breath to protect it.”

Evidently these are still available, so not sure why Google couldn’t work out what they were.

I had 10 in the sealed bag, the box for sale seems to have 20. So I am not sure whether they did smaller amounts or it was a standard system of packing.

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Mystery Miniatures

Well my son decided that he wanted to build his Agincourt foot knights he got in August tonight.

I can’t say anything some of the stuff I decided to build was years old. As I was mooching around for something to build I came across a sealed bag, but actually couldn’t really tell what they were apart from they had fur.

Turns out they were chonky humans.  I actually haven’t got a clue where they came from or when I got them.

I haven’t even got a clue of the manufacturer, I tried Google Lens and totally flummoxed it

I  thought maybe Early Mantic again, but these are big, way bigger than the Skeleton dudes and bigger than the Frostgrave Cultists.

So if anyone has any ideas of what they are then I would love to know.

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Five More Townsfolk

Well this evening I decided to do a few more townsfolk for Traitor’s Toll.

So from left to right we have… A lady with sickle and wheat (not quite sure why… Maybe a window box or something) a fishmonger, some raggedy arsed man with a sack, a dude holding out a snake (the mind boggles… Maybe he is doing an act where he shoves it down his trousers) and finally we have a young lady playing a flute.

Now there are only five unique bodies in the set, but with plenty of heads and arms then really no two should look alike, same body, different figures.

Because they looked so different in the photo I actually had to check that it was the same body. In fact there are a couple of aprons as well as the mantels that can oomph them up even more.

Well after whining about not having the right magnets I decided to splash out and purchase some 3×1 mm ones to fit the holes I have. As I was ordering them I decided to get five parsecs from home as my son is more interested in sci fi than fantasy.

I have a Stargrave box of miniatures as well as a pile of other stuff so we should be able to get going over the Christmas break.

As I said in an earlier post I have decided to downsize the collection. Anything with no interest is going the journey.

So off the top of my head… Staying are the 15mm armies I have, ditto with the 10mm and 6mm.

I will keep my hundred years war and Celts in 28mm as well as the stuff for Five Leagues and The sci-fi stuff for playing with James.

My bookshelves and boardgames are also going to get a radical cut. I live in a tiny house and don’t have the room for a shit load of stuff.

I have asked for a book on the Italian Wars for Christmas. No miniatures this time, well not exactly true I ordered three frames of cultists to become baddies for Five Leagues etc.

So starting soon I will be offering stuff to Thule gamers and thence to eBay. Wish me luck. Some of this stuff I have had for 30 years.

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Painted things…

Well I got going again this evening and slapped more paint on the Brotherhood… Nearly got them finished…

I very cleverly painted a halved shield, was really proud of it  then realised I had reversed them. Evidently I never learn as that is exactly what I did with my full size shield…so tomorrow I will try again!

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Five Leagues, the Map…

So as I said yesterday I had drawn a bit of a sketch map which is going to come in really handy. Now some of the settlements are going to move and I need to get the terrain sorted as well…

I also fleshed out the characters, they now have their weapons and equipment.

I had a bit of a problem with the mystic, trying to choose his/her spells

I was trying to work out the type they would be.  The rules say choose two, roll for the next three. I flipped these to give me a starting point..

I rolled:

Fog… Basically a three inch fog patch appears on the table blocking line of sight.

Shield… A protection spell against ranged attacks.

Infuse… Gives the target a counter attack ability.

I decided that he would be some form of hedge wizard as opposed to a battle wizard.

Because of this I chose Shadows and Barrier.

Shadows allows an ally to move 4 inches and avoid terrain, including walls.

Barrier, does what it says on the tin, it will put a 4 inch wall of fire on the table. I am going to change it to something like thorns.

The final thing I rolled was to find the background story for the leader. Turns out he has a loyal follower, as one of them is a former soldier it all fitted in nicely.

Tomorrow I find the rest of the miniatures.

The other thing I did was to get the stuff off the printer…

So two cruisers, an ambulance and a coroner’s van. Oh and some Team Yankee stuff in the background.

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Three of Three

Cor, look at me. Three posts in three days… Today I got a package in the post.

Well I wanted a few extra bits and bobs to bulk out the Traitor’s Toll types and also to make a force for Five Leagues from the Borderlands.

So I went for a sprue of Foot Knights, one of Foot Sergeants and another of Peasants. The Fourth sprue is extra weapons for the Sergeants. Mainly pole arms and pointy sticks.

As I was kicked off the Console I decided to build a selection of the knights…

One of these will become the leader of the Borderlands forces. When I rolled up the troops one of them had a full set of armour.

The only sort of issue I have with these is that the guards set are in plate armour while these are in mail.

Back into work for four hours tomorrow. I will try and do the foot sergeants when I get back.

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He’s Off…

Well today I did another painting, had a go at some hills…

I then decided to start making some of the Wargames Atlantic miniatures…

These did make me swear a bit as although they are meant to be multi part/pose they were annoyingly fiddly and didn’t quite go together as well as I would have liked.

The heads don’t always fit the neck and there are huge hands that don’t seem to have an opposite partner. Maybe I should have checked out the assembly guides on the website.

So my phased return is 12 hours this week, based over 3 days.  Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Next week I am up to 15 hours so I am trying to get some hobby stuff in when I can.

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Froggy Boyz

Well this evening my son and I did indeed have our painting session. I managed to finish the frog riders. If I compare how I feel about these to how I felt about the Sisters then it is like comparing chalk and cheese.

I love these, I think in part because they are such a bonkers idea. Not one of them is sitting on the mount, they are all airborne in one height or another. I also love the randomness of the equipment. Yes I deliberately chose the options to make them this way, but again – bonkers. The lances in the description is frog cavalry with pointed sticks… and that is it down to a tee. They are just long sticks, not even pointy! The frogs themselves look bloody dangerous.

The one thing I noticed when I put them all together is thar the originals are in a polished silver and the new ones ate in gun metal… nothing a wash won’t solve.

So here they are in all their bounding glory…

With these, the frog colour is the unifying colour. If you think back to the frog herds, they were all colours and the leader was pretty colourful too…

In a way I wish I hadn’t gone as bright on the frog herds… at the time I was thinking poison arrow frogs.

James is still busy painting the chaos dudes. They were a present too him from Joe.

The big question is… do I go steppe goblins next… well obviously after I finish the peasants to go with the various knights. With regards to the latter, I have literally just scratched the surface.

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Goblin Frog Riders

Well as expected I printed the three missing frog riders, and because I can never ever leave any space on the build plate I added a couple of Gallian men at arms.

I even managed to choose ones I hadn’t used before… (pure fluke!)

But because it is me then I decided to print another half dozen men at arms!

Sadly I didn’t feel up to painting and didn’t even try. Not sure if I will manage tomorrow as it is the school leaver’s assembly. I probably won’t be up to much.