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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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Villagers, Miscreants or…

Both?

This evening I managed a little bit of snipping and glueing. These are the four remaining miniatures from the peasant levy sprue.

They will be useful in either Traitor’s Toll or Five Leagues. Not exactly a huge amount, but more than I had this morning.

The sprue still has a load of arms, heads and weapon options remaining. I have some 3D printable WA miniatures so I will have to see if any bodies will be useful.

In other news I am up to 30 hours next week in my phased return to work and am heading off down to Manchester in a couple of weeks for some training.

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Brotherhood of the Silver Boar

Well I eventually got around to making my brotherhood… Aka my force for Five leagues from the Borderlands.

So here are the six of them… From left to right:

Starting with the heroes:

Bragollach the mystic. Rowan the frontiersman, Sir Percival Fanhard, knight and leader. Nellas the Fey ranger. We have two followers as well…

Caedric the former soldier. A loyal retainer to Fanhard and finally Oswyn an outcast drifter.

So the Brotherhood are on a ship heading to Blackwater Landing: the initial starting point. Now I could have started them in the port but I decided to do a travel roll. So on the journey across the sea they met a physician named Eldrin Marrowell. They got on famously and as he was going to start a practice in Blackwater it seemed a great start. Unfortunately he was worried that his previous employer was unhappy with him leaving. Sure enough as they come down the gangplank a group of what seems like very organised Robbers demand the Brotherhood hand over Eldrin. He asks them for aid and when Fanhard refuses to hand him over weapons are drawn. Not exactly the best start in a new town

After much angst about how to find a suitable ranger cloak for Nellas I decided to have a go at making one for myself. I got the idea from Peachy’s YouTube channel.

Basically the idea is that you use masking tape… It’s not bad for a first attempt.

I had better get some stuff painted so I can find out if the Brotherhood can save Eldrin.

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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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A Single Horseman

Tonight I painted a mounted Celt. Just the one, but all done bar the basing.

I also stuck my debased miniatures onto some MDF circular ones. My order from Warbases came yesterday so I now have sixty new ones which should keep me going for a while. Sadly in reality this won’t last me that long as I just realised I have forty already painted that will need basing! Whoops!

Well luckily I have to order some bases for the chariots and now the extra cavalry… see how much this lot costs!

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Ludus Ultima Thule

I am now the proud owner of a school of dubious gladiators.

So from left to right we sort of have a dimachearus with his two swords, they are meant to be sicas but, I had gladius handy.

Next is a guy with an axe…. Errr there is no known reference to an axe wielding gladiator… there is a gladiator in the Galleria Borghese in Rome that is sometimes confusing as part of it is missing and a foot is behind a guy with a gladius… when you look at a picture it kind of does look a bit like an axe at first glance, in a poor light and the wish to see an axe!

An axe if you want to see one

Next up is a quasi hoplomacus with his spear and round shield.

Next up a thraex with his sica and parmulata (small shield). These shields were usually rectangular. The sica’s curved blade was designed to reach beyond a scutum and do damage to the shoulder of the opponent.

Next in the front is the murmillo. Outside of a retiarius this is probably the most iconic of the gladiators. Think gladiator and most people think of him. Generally he would fight the thraex and hoplomachus.

Front right is a bit of a sort of weird retiarius. I say weird as his trident isn’t as it has four prongs. I also stuck the arms on the wrong body so this one has ocrea (greaves) on his legs. This guy would generally fight the secutor. And not the murmillo as was originally thought. They did pair up and indeed in one bout a retiarius was purported to be on a raised platform with a pile or rocks. A ladder was at each end with a murmillo at the bottom. I cannot remember where this came from, so it definitely isn’t gospel.

At the back I made another sort of retiarius, with a spear this time. I cut the spear point off the original end and gave it a different look to the other one.

As for footwear, on the whole they didn’t wear any. Some confusion comes from the mosaics where leg wraps come down to the foot.

I am going to have a fiddle about and see what other types I can make. A laquerius should be easy enough spear and a lasso instead of a net and trident. A bestiarius or venatore should be easy enough to too. And as for a poor noxxi – some poor dude with just a sword, if he was lucky fighting one of the types above. I might be able to do an eques… all I need is a horse and an ancient rider. Add gladiator arms an helmet and voila!

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Printer back to Printing…

I hope!

So last night after having another failure I decided that enough was enough and that i Would relevel the bed. Good job I checked as although the front bolt was well and truly solid, thse side one was decidedly loose.

So I took out the resin, did a tank clean, which I had never done before and relevelled the plate. I gave some 40mm Gladiators another go. Yesterday I got two bodies and nothing else, today I got everything.

I am doing a reprint of the pair I printed the other day.

Today’s print on the left, yesterday’s on the right

Hopefully I will get everything printed on that one too. Everything seems to have printed properly.

Today i did battle with the rotten floorboards in the lounge… i won, but it was a close run thing… This is the joys of a 200 year old house that has no foundations and everything sits directly on the ground (the floor is about 6 inches above the soil). After feeling quite proud of myself, I found some more that need replacing… i must admit i did say the off naughty word, especially as I had just nailed the replacements down. if i had noticed earlier my life would have been easier as i could have used the spaces i had made to eaily remove the extra bits…

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Panem et Circenses

Tonight I printed off four gladiators for the kids in the Geek Club.

Now okay I am a bit of a Gladiator Geek and these representations are a bit odd. These were prebuilt by Wargames Atlantic. There is a bit of a swapsy going on here. As an example the Hoplimachus is using a scutum instead of a parmularii and he seems to have lost his helmet. But before I write a whole essay and bore the pants off everyone, I had better get back on topic. So as I mentioned in an earlier post, these miniatures are round about the same size as Perry miniatures. My Geek club is used to painting things that are a bit bigger. So I did an arbitrary 140% increase… these are now 40mm miniatures! Whoops.