Orc Navy Blood Bowl Team: Troll & Goblins Finished

Awhile back I showed the completed conversions for an Orc Blood Bowl team with a Navy Sailor theme I am donating for the Wounded Warrior charity for the Atlantic Coast Charity Cup.

I'm almost done with the team, and thought I'd show the Troll and the Goblins who are done.

Here they are:

The team will be given away as a prize,a full 16 player team with 3 tokens and a carrying case.

I wish I was going to the tournament, I wouldn't mind a chance to win the team myself, I'm already getting attached to them ;)

If you have time for some Blood Bowl on July 14th, and can get to Virginia, you should head over there- tons of prizes, good cause and lots of fun Blood Bowl!

More on this team to come soon. 

The Muppet Saga

Good Evening Ladies & Gentlefrogs.
The year is 1066 and it's time for the Muppet Invasion!
...
Yaaaaaaay!

Zombiesmith's Sale ended today and I couldn't resist getting some more of the fun minis for 'War of Ashes'...
Think Shieldwall Vikings & Saxons, but with creatures that look like they'd not be out of place on the Muppet Show. I previewed some of them earlier this month in the Zombiesmith booth update.

A friend and I got hooked- I picked up the noble and inspiring Elvorix and he got some of the pitifully dimwitted and danger to themselves Vidaar.  We discussed the idea of not only using them for the War of Ashes game, but having options to use them for SAGA. Nothing wrong with some whimsy in a historical game. So at the end of their sale I ordered what I'd need to have a good sized force for their game and enough for a 6 to 8 point Saga Force.  I'll likely run the Elvorix with the Welsh list.

A quick w.i.p shot of the Warlord and a conversion for mounted Hearthguard: he's riding a pig!
I have 4 of these pig-cavalry now, and I'll be making 4 more.

Not a lot of time for this project, but they don't look difficult or time consuming to paint, and they do look fun, so more to come I am sure...

No More Horny Dwarves

All too often I find Dwarves are too horny.  Not all of them of course, but a lot of them.  Far too Many.

It has never done anything for me personally.  But it seems a lot of people like horny Dwarves.

I hear many say "But it's fantasy. I like it."

O.K., I understand that anything can go in a fantasy, and for some they like the fantasy of horny Dwarves.

Many even pay a lot of good money for horny Dwarves.

If that's what they want then who am I to say it's wrong?  I can only speak for myself.

But I am lucky enough to have a client who also thought Dwarves would be better if not so horny.

So on the bench now is a Dwarf Blood Bowl team that have had this unnatural horny condition fixed.

It's an extreme procedure that requires cutting off a significant sized piece of the miniature.

Here is the result:

They've all had those huge horns from their helmets removed and helmets rebuilt to create a more modern and reasonable helmet.

As GW envisioned them:

He wanted a pattern on the helmet that'd be impossible with these big horns, I suggested removing the horns- not an easy task, but worth the effort.

In seriousness, horned helmets have never been a thing I liked much.  It is pure fantasy, which is fine, since so are dragons & orcs & more, but it's so prevalent in fantasy that it's not uncommon for people to think they are historically accurate, when the history of them only goes as far back as Wagner.  Kind of like how so many dinosaur and cavemen movies have been made some people believe that the two coexisted ;)

Anyway, the Dwarf team should be fun!  I even got to de-horn the old Deathroller:

I think that works much better.  

In a commission I don't always get to do what  I  think will look best, but this time I did :) 

Greystoke's Gallery of Apes & Associates

As promised here are some gallery shots of James Clayton, Lord of Greystoke, and those who assist his efforts in London, 1888.

This is my warband for Empire of the Dead, the Victorian Horror skirmish game from West Wind.
I've taken the Lycaon werewolf list and imposed my Ape-will upon it.

James Clayton, Lord Greystoke

Beastlord

Alphie the Ape

Packmaster

Bernard, Cecil & Dudley

Wolves (apes)

Milly, Woodhouse, Margaret

Wolfskins (Staff with tranq-guns (bows))

Officer Parker and Sergeant York

Wolfskins (Police-in-pocket with bows & clubs)

The next addition will be another packmaster character- I picked up a cheap 'clicky' ape for a dollar, so don't expect much, but the price couldn't be beat- I'll see if I can get something decent out of it :)

Apes Perform Deconstructive Dental Work: Empire of the Dead Battle Report

Life conspired against me from updating this much recently, but I'll be rectifying that, starting with catching up on Friday the 15th's Empire of the Dead game.

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Lord Greystoke was convinced that the western hills near Wales contained plants which might aid his transformations research, traveling under cover of darkness with his apes and trusted companion ape Alphie, as well as members of his household staff, he relocated for a bit of a holiday and some specimen collecting. Though it was day, and not terribly foggy (rare and unseasonable) Greystoke and his entourage were accosted by what at first appeared to be common highwaymen, but they soon caught the scent that revealed the presence of the undead: a Daywalker Vampire and his mate.

The vampire was actually on business of his own, and was just traveling through the area,but on crossing paths with the apes, it riled them to an agitation that they would not be reasoned with.

Lord Greystoke and his followers
(I'll get some better glamour shots of them soon)

...............................................

We set up the table for an outdoor setting with a river, hills and ruins and a graveyard.  

The mission said that the vampires had to get at least 2/3 of their party off the table on my deployment side, while I had to stop them.  The vampires had a lower Warband Standing, so would get an additional 5 shillings from the encounter. from memory, the Vampire leader had the day walking skill and a boost to his combat skill (or one of them) One member was out sick for the day, and he had a good shot with a repeater rifle. My group were as they last were at the end of my last Battle Report.  

A view from the hill overlooking the river. Peaceful... for now. 

Then Alphie directs the apes up the hill to ambush the undead and their ilk. 

Milly the maid covers them, no slouch with a tranquilizer gun (bow). 

At the other end of the small valley Lord Greystoke enters the ruins,a trusted ape tagging along, as well as Police Sergeant York, acting as bodyguard, and faithful household staff Butler Woodhouse and Margaret the Maid, or Mags as she prefers to be called when off duty, which is seldom. 

The Vile Vampyr sensed the danger and one of his enthralled called upon unnatural forces to summon a mob of the undead.  To be more precise, they were not undead, it turns out they were just simple commonfolk.

What they were doing in the graveyard, and what this says about the deplorable conditions of simple folk in Wales, to allow for them to be mistaken for walking dead, is anybody's guess.  

Woodhouse and Margaret spot the Vampire's sharpshooter.  These gypsy types really should refrain from wearing bright colors, as everyone knows there are no bright colors in the whole of Britain!

Quite easy to spot he was. 

The Apes,Cecil and Dudley, prepare to pounce on the enthralled.

Alphie tangles with the Vampire's personal guard while Cecil chases the Vampire, trying to make a run for it.

Unable to see what awaited him, the Vampire graf did not know that Lord Greystoke had already bounded down from the ruins and sprinted across the river, with preternatural speed.  

Woodhouse and Margaret had tried in vain to stop a swarm of bats from escaping, but it was small loss.

His escape cut off by Lord Greystoke, the Vampire turned to face his attackers.

Cecil contemplates the use of a bronze gauntlet in dental work. 

Even cornered vampires are fierce fighters with unnatural resistance. 

Molly began taking shots into the crowd while Dudley charged them after dispatching the fang flunky.

Sustaining minimal damage, the Apes and their Lord pulverize the Vampire, tearing his head from his shoulders.  The vampire turned to a pile of ash.  Sensing the spell broken, the mob scatter and the field remains in the hands of the apes. Srgt York collected the unconscious body of the vampire bodyguard and turned him in to the local authorities under suspicion of unsavory activities.  

...................................................................

In post-game, the vampire's body guard got the 'captured by the peelers' result, which he'd have to play to free him -which we did, and he was easily freed. The worst result was for the vampire leader: Dead.  Dead-dead,not mostly dead, but dead and gone unraisable dead.  Luckily in Empire of the Dead, you can sacrifice another member of the team instead.  Obviously what happened was the Vampire's ashes were collected, placed in a coffin and the sacrificial faction member was brought in, asked quickly 'what's that over there?' and when he turns to look, his throat is cut, blood fills the coffin and in a few days a fresh pasty vampire emerges reconstituted.  

My faction made some decent coin from this victory and I focused it on my two characters. 

Alphie went up in strength, which is nice, and Greystoke gained an extra attack. 

I also brought in my second police officer mini, another 'wolfskin' flunky, and equipped both of the police minis with bows clubs and knives. I had enough money to bring in a second secondary character ('beastlord) but since I didn't have a miniature ready, that will wait until the next time I have the money.  It seems wise to invest in the characters you hope to advance and keep at this stage though, so it is alright. 

With 10members, it is already a large team. 

Thanks for reading, 

Until next time! 

I think the vampire coming back was something like this...enjoy!

How To Host a War: Or: How Mantic Wants To Increase My Time-Debt by Three Lifetimes

There's been a lot of Kickstarter success lately for gaming.  And while Mantic's isn't quite at the numbers of a couple recent big splashes, it's certainly in the "wow, that's impressive' camp.  In just the last 24 hours, looks like it's gone up almost $50k.

If you haven't looked at it, go check it out here.  There's less than 2 days till it pumpkins.

Mantic has been steadily improving since their start as a company, and I like where they're going.
I've used their ghouls and zombies in a number of projects and when GW announced Warhammer Fantasy Battle 8th edition, I staked my hopes (bu-dump-bump) of making a Skeletal Host.  Then I heard more about the rules, the new Vampire army book, and those hopes turned to dust.  True, the new 8th ed. promised to return to the days of "big armies of infantry' but it didn't really pan out... still a lot of reliance on big magic & monsters/monstrous infantry/monstrous cavalry.

But it seems there might be hope in Mantic.

I've been looking at the rules for their mass-combat fantasy game, Kings of War and really do like what I see. The game is straight forward and simple, in a good way.  And best of all, the armies are characterful, yet balanced.  Balanced armies is a concept GW has been very upfront about not caring about. That's fair, they don't have to be, but I, and probably a lot of others, do care about it.

Also, the system is such that units fight until they start to lose confidence and finally abandon hope through attrition and loss of conviction- but they physically do stay on the table as an entity, you don't remove miniatures as 'wounds'. This means you could, if you want, make large element bases so that you can build nice mini-dioramas or scenic elements within the ranks of your troops.
You could even use 15mm minis and element bases.

Another nice thing is that characters don't seem to be demi-gods striding across the battle like they do in Warhammer.  I'm sure the upcoming rulebook will give them some more abilities, spells and such, but it doesn't appear they're going to win battles single-handed. That's a positive tick to my thinking.

Looking through the different army lists -which the current edition lists are free online on their site- has been very fun to look through.
In fact, I haven't been this giddy about looking through army lists since Warhammer Armies 3rd edition.

I don't know how many hours I lost decades ago looking through this book, contemplating armies.  

The Mantic lists remind me of this: solid armies with a lot of characterful choices.  

The current Mantic offerings aren't as varied as this book, but from the sound of things, the 3rd edition will be pretty close to the same feeling.  OK, warhammer armies did still leave a few unbalances, such as the all dragon rider high elf army, the all chaos chariot army, etc, but the drive of this book was flesh & bone, blood and angst armies with characterful support: the unit minimums helped to establish that.  Mantic doesn't have any unit minimums, but looking at the lists, I don't think they need to, they've captured the spirit of this old book in a way that none of the subsequent WHFB editions have for me.  

It's got me seriously considering committing to a BIG project.  

That itself is pretty impressive.  My time constraints have had me hooked on skirmish and small force systems for many years. And while I love skirmish gaming, there is something appealing about a BIG army. 

I was very tempted by the idea of a Skeleton army 

A true host raised from a Medieval battlefield, but the Kickstarter rewards all had a lot of zombies in them, and I'd want a Skeleton army, not a zombie one.  

I know I know, Zombies are a constant hotness now, but to me, Skeletons are just much cooler.  

Sorry Romero, Long Live Harryhausen! 

Another army I've always wanted to make is a Goblin Horde.  Not exactly a force to be reckoned with in Warhammer (Giants are now laughed at and not many troops with better than strength 3) but that's not a problem in Kings of War! The armies are balanced. Goblins have appropriate handicaps, but they can function and you can get a lot of them, and they get good support. And if you convince them to charge, they can deal out damage like any other army.  In WHFB goblins are just part of the Orc & Goblin army, in Mantic, Orcs are a separate army from Goblins! Finally Goblins are Masters of their own domain! 

... well they probably are that pretty often. 

And I like the Mantic Goblins! These are cool goblins! 

I don't care much for the mawbeasts, but I can find other minis- no manufacturer is going to please everyone with every item in their range, I wouldn't expect to like everything.  But the goblins I like and they're a good price.  The Kickstarter package has close to 200 goblins for $225.  Not bad at all.

The big question is: element bases or individual? Only reason to keep them individual is to have the option of using them in Warhammer, which is admittedly tempting... maybe I'd want to go to a tournament just because, or maybe Warhammer 9th ed will be awesome? Who knows.  But element basing has such great potential for making the army look cooler.  Heck, they die so fast in Warhammer, removing them in sets of 10 is probably not much of a problem anyway ;) 

I do want to try the Kings of War game, and given that it has over a thousand backers now, other people might be willing to try it out too.

I've heard that the $225 level gets you about $1,000 retail price of minis. Yep. 

The free minis from the stretch goals means you get about 70 or so free minis!  

And they have a long list of Buy One Get One Free deals.  Unfortunately a lot of them are just concept sketches or descriptions, but 6 trolls for $25 or 10 goblin wolf riders for $25 or 20 flying gargoyles for $25, or 20 cool battle nuns... you see what I mean.  

The BOGOF offers are simply amazing.  

You could easily set yourself up with the majority of a large scale army and have 60 extra minis to add to it or have available for other projects: Trolls and Mummies for Blood Bowl, Golems for Pulp gaming or statues, Ogres for fantasy skirmish, Gargoyles for Horror skirmish, Battle Nuns for Empire of the Dead ...that's my plan for them! all for about $300 if taking advantage of a few extra BOGOF offers. 

Most projects don't come close to this affordable, and this is a major army as well as many other projects or trade goods.  

So yeah, curse you Mantic.  Those Goblins are just too hard to resist.  The plans I have for them are too fun. 

And I also blame Mr. Lee.  Reading his blog, seeing his massive goblin army with TWO gargantuan spiders, rekindled my long held need for a goblin army.  

If you haven't checked out his blog, Mr.Lee's Painting Emporium, you should: he's a great guy and his blog definitely should have more followers than it currently has.  

So between nostalgia of the old 3rd ed. Warhammer Armies, Mantic's insanely good deals and enticing direction for large scale army battles, and the come-hither gaze of goblins, I will have another crest to my 'lead plastic mountain'. 

Your Guide to the Lead Mountain

What do you think? Tempted by their offers? 

Get Five Free Base Stars!

Five Free Base Stars?

I always wanted a Vyper, but I wouldn't turn down a Base Star.. then again, might be bad if they turn on you

Wait.. that just doesn't sound right..

Oh!

Not Five Free Base Stars.  Free Five Star Bases!  -That makes more sense.
Damn my dyslexia.

Frontline Gamer's sleigh isn't light enough to not crash yet, so more stuff is being given away.
You can put your name into the hat for the bases here: Give Me Free Bases!

So what's the scoop on the bases?

$100 worth of store credit at Dragon Forge Design.

(check out their store for yourself)

So I wasn't kidding about a Five Star rating ...yes out of 5 cheeky gits..I mean, 5 out of 5 stars, not 5 cheeky gits, asking out of how many stars was why I called you a cheeky git, and now you ask if I meant out of 5 cheeky gits? Yet more evidence of why you're a cheeky git.  So anyway...

These are excellent bases. I've used them for a few projects.  The Assyrian-themed Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl team used these bases (can find them in the Hall of Fame page tab at the top).  There are a lot of good resin bases for sale out there, and a lot that are not so good, but in my estimation, Dragon Forge makes the best.  Good detail without being so full of detail the mini is hard to place or gets lost, and sculpting & casting are both the best I've used. When I have a need for resin bases I check this source first before any other to see if there is something that will fit the style I'm looking for. 

And to get $100 of anything in the store for free? You'd be mad not to put in for it.

O.K., maybe not quite as cool as getting a Base Star, but still pretty cool.