Hired Goons

Today I finished the last archer for my Frostgrave band, which means I just have to do my Wizard and her Apprentice now - I've left these to last as they're deserving of a wee bit more attention than the goons. I'm really chuffed with how they've come out though, and I like that I've given them all different names from different places (with the exception of Jester, who's using a nom de crime). There's Hjordis (Nordic), Chamuk (Nivkh), Igor (Russian), Bijul (Punjabi), and Dreda (Old English). It gives the feel of a bunch of mercenaries and ne'er do wells recruited from all over the place, or who have all descended on Frostgrave to seek their fortune in the employ of the wizards who need guards and goons to protect them and help them in their expeditions.

 Dreda's dark green trousers are highlighted, I promise.

What all this photography nonsense has told me is that I need to ask for a lightbox for Christmas...!

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 1
2024: 92

Wrong End Of The Kill Zone

Tonight my Wyld Kats took on the Van Saar of the Carbon Copies and got absolutely wrecked - the combination of plasma guns and a highly mobile hand flamer with my own inability to sit tight in a nice close confines and force them to come to me meant that the third and final game in the first half of this campaign did not go my way at all, and the Narco Den ended up with the Carbon Copies!

Deployment - I was hoping to try and use Tia Venom and Faye Starr to cover the kill zone with close combat backup from Penny Diamond, while Fancy, Vikki, and Ripperjack waited in the close corridors to jump anyone who came after them

End Round 1: Tia Venom went out of action to the very first shot of the game from the Carbon Copies' boss Axel and his plasma gun, while Faye Starr was pinned by plasma fire from the champion Bella's own plasma gun. Penny joined Fancy, Vikki, and Ripperjack out of line of sight!

End Round 2: Ouch! In an attempt to try and get some flanking pistol shots both Fancy and Ripperjack got shot down - Fancy having managed to pin the Ambot with a max power plasma shot that both failed to wound and caused her to run out of ammo, she was then send out of action by Bella. Ripperjack, stood just to the side of the gap in the right wall, got flamed by Gina the neotek.

End Round 3: Having decided not to face off against the Van Saar, Faye Starr legged it through the door to try and catch up with the others. Unfortunately Gina the neotek swung round on her hoverboard and set both Vikki Vicious and Penny Diamond on fire!

End Round 4: The ambot coup de gras'd Vikki Vicious, who had been left with a serious injury, and then Faye managed to wound it with her stub gun (atta girl)! Penny Diamond put the fire out and then moved into cover.

End Round 5, end game: Penny managed to charge and take out the ambot, then, with a judicious use of the tactics card Chain Attack, got into combat with Gina and took her out of action too - before being shot to bits, of course. Then the remainder of the Carbon Copies lined up to take turns shooting at Faye until she succumbed. At this point, with my two remaining gang members seriously injured, I conceded.

In the aftermath it turned out both Vikki Vicious and Ripperjack Knox were critically injured... and I could only afford to treat one at the doc. So Vikki lived, and Ripperjack died of her burns. Worse, neither of my Settlements produced any Juves or Gangers, and I rolled well below average for their income again. On the plus side, it turned out that Penny had savagely dismantled the ambot with her power sword, destroying it - Gina on the other hand survived... next time I'll get her!

So now we lick our wounds and prepare for the second phase of the campaign. The Wyld Kats might be down, but we're not out!

And there were a lot of other games at the club, too:

40K - Marines vs Necrons

Extra tiny WW2

Two games of Bolt Action (on the right, Finns vs Poles, on the left Germans vs British I think)

Beautifully painted SAGA

More 40K - Chaos Knights vs Imperial Guard

More 40K - Dark Angels vs Genestealer Cults

More (!) 40K - Tau vs Tyranids

More (!!) 40K - Dark Angels vs very lovely Imperial Guard, I think Death Korps

Age of Sigmar: Spearhead

Kill Team (3rd edition)

Kill Team (3rd Edition)

Even MORE 40K - Eldar vs Chaos Marines

And finally there was...

The Old World - Grudge match! High Elves vs Dwarfs

The more I see of 10th Edition 40K the less I like it. I think I'll stick to 4th Edition and be happy about it honestly.

Anyway, there you go, a nice little Battle Report and some photos of games in progress at Warwickshire Gamers to start the week.

What's In A Name

Well, despite a day mostly spent relaxing, I did manage to finish the last woman-at-arms for the Frostgrave mob:

I actually misspelt her name and didn't realise until after I took the photos - it should be Hjordis - but it (roughly) means sword-maiden or sword of the goddess. She has a sword, and she's a woman, so it seems pretty fitting honestly! I've tried to be reasonably on the nose with the characters' names, so far. 

I spent a bit of time reading through my old blog posts, which date back fifteen years (almost as long as my son's been alive). It's been interesting to see what things have stayed, what's gone, what's been on hiatus for a decade or more, and what mad plans I had that have disappeared into the ether of time. I wonder what plans I have now that will, or won't, see fruition in another fifteen years... by which time I'll be 53! Good grief, Charlie Brown, indeed.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 4
2024: 91

A Figure A Day Keeps The Pile Of Opportunity Down(?)

 Or something like that anyway. Today I managed to finish one of the Frostgrave archers - the dwarf - and did a bit of work on the remaining woman-at-arms. Getting there, getting there. I also spent a bit of time at a meeting in Coventry organising people to go and oppose the fascist march in London on the 26th of October, which - if you can get to it - I encourage you to go along to; the more people in the street opposing the far right, the better. Assembly at 11:30 on Regent St, SW1Y in London.

Anyway, back to the hired goons:

His name's Bijul, which is a Punjabi (and Sikh, and Marathi) name meaning flashes of lightning, and I thought it makes a change from dwarfs taking designs from various NW European cultures. I really like the way his expression turned out, honestly, he looks very much like he's concentrating on his shot. I am, however, hugely frustrated that I missed a mould line on his right arm! You can't really see it though, but the camera exposes all one's painting sins...

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 3
2024: 90

Birthday!

It's my birthday today! Another orbit around the sun, another year of nonsense ahead. Hopefully mostly good nonsense, that is.

I haven't done any painting or anything today (although I intended to) but I did watch some of the very fascinating lectures from the recent Warhammer Conference which are on YouTube here. I particularly enjoyed this one on medievalism, the Dominican Order, and the Sisters of Battle. 

Anyway, a quiet hobby day and a quiet day in general really - tomorrow I'll be home alone so might get some painting done. I only have five figures from the Frostgrave band to do and a week and a bit to do them in, so I'd best get cracking!

I shall leave you with some a portrait of me as Joanna Quen, my occultist from the LARP A Faint Hope Blossoms:

Art by Kristina Amuan

 (I particularly like the expression on the stuffed toy bunny!)

Eagle Woman

More Frostgrave minion-painting (and not the yellow kind in dungarees) today. I cracked out Chamuk, a woman-at-arms with axe and shield. Her name means "eagle" in a Siberian language (I think Nivkh).

The shield design is from a Games Workshop Imperial Knight decal sheet - I think it's a bit small, but it looks ok in person. I might eventually add a few details around the edge of the shield, but perhaps not.

I hit on an interesting trick with one of my contrast paints - I did the axe haft and back of the shield with XV-88* and then painted it with Wyldwood Contrast and the end result looks really nice, which was a happy surprise!

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 2
2024: 89

* I still think of this as Snakebite Leather!

Everyone Needs An Igor

After all, who else is going to sew your hideous necromantic creations together? Admittedly this Igor is a little less hunchbacked than the classic style, but he is at least handy with a needle and thread:

The base isn't finished yet as I'm going to do the basing all at once when the whole gang is finished. I deliberately went for a very simple black robe as a way to tie him to the Wizard, who will have a similar (but much more ornate) sort of dress on.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 1
2024: 88

Tying Figures Together

(But not with string!)

I've worked a little bit more on the Frostgrave minions today; getting the bulk of the base coats on and starting to work on some highlighting. The group is made up of lots of different figures from different manufacturers - North Star, Eureka, Ral Partha, Eolith, and one that I can't identify - and they're all wearing very different clothes. Which is fine, they're a band of adventurers in the pay of a wizard, not a uniformed group at all. However, how do you go about making them look just a little like they belong together?

The best way is twofold, in my experience. First, a limited palette - use roughly the same colours on each figure. Here I'm using quite natural colours, mostly: khakis, olive green, bleached cloth, dark brown leathers, grey fur. Second, a spot colour to tie them all together. That was rather decided for me when I painted Jester like Bruce Timm's Harley Quinn, in black, red, and white. Red is a striking colour that stands out even in small quantities, so red is present on all the figures so far:

The thug's robe is edged in red, the women-at-arms have red on their shields (and backing their fur cloaks), the two archers use red fletching on their arrows, while the human has a red-backed fur cloak and the dwarf has a red hat. Jester, of course, is wearing red quite prominently. The wizard's going to have red embroidery on her dress and probably a ruby topping her staff, while the apprentice will probably get a red cloak. 

Once they're all done, and based together in a mix of snow and a bit of grass tufts (and maybe some cobblestones), the overall effect should be of a reasonably cohesive group of cut-throats and ne'er-do-wells.

A Dwarf In The Cold

I said I needed a thug, and so I ransacked my figure drawers for suitable candidates. There were a few that made me go "hmmm... maybe" but in the end I settled on converting what I think is a Eureka Miniatures cultist with some GW plastic parts - specifically a 7th Edition Warhammer Empire state trooper's sword and a 5th Edition plastic zombie's feet:

Post-surgery. I love the pose - a sort of "come and have a go". Had to give him shoes, it's cold in Frostgrave!

Then, while I was rummaging, I came across the five North Star Dwarf Light Infantry that I'd built up as archers ages ago - I think they were another single-sprue present from P purchased from Wayland's Forge. One of those will do nicely as a second archer, replacing the infantrywoman with spear I'd subbed in for an archer in the first place after initially being unable to find a second archer!

The merry band - a thug, a thief, two archers, two women-at-arms, wizard, apprentice

So I've slapped some base coats onto the dwarf archer and thug, and laid the base work for a sheer dress on the wizard (she's magic, she doesn't need to worry about mundane stuff like "temperature" or "wind chill"), although I'm not quite sure what colour to do it - I have a vague idea of a sheer black with some red and gold embroidery but my fine detail freehand might not quite be up to that. Time will tell, etc.

Motley... Crew?

Having rifled through my various drawers of unpainted and random miniatures, I have assembled (mostly) a Frostgrave warband. I just need to find a thug. Not much progress in terms of painting of them, though: I re(re)based them so they're all on 25mm rounds, which took a lot of clipping of plastic bases and carving with a knife and so on. Then I undercoated the Wizard and Apprentice, and that's pretty much where we are now:

L-R: Woman-at-arms, woman-at-arms, infantrywoman, wizard, apprentice, thief, archer

We're using first edition Frostgrave (I have a signed copy - I bought it off Joseph McCullough at the 2017 Games Expo in Birmingham) and as a result my 500 gold is being stretched quite far here. I do need to go back through the trays and drawers and find that thug, but I'm hopeful I'll be able to bash this little group out reasonably soon. I've got until the 21st after all.

The origin of these figures is quite varied - the bulk of them are from a single sprue of North Star Barbarian II minis that I got given as a present a couple of years ago or so by my partner P, but the Wizard came from the same bunch of random minis I got from Black Lion Games all those years ago. I have no idea who makes her - I'm assuming Ral Partha, but I honestly don't know. The Apprentice is a mini sold by Heresy Miniatures but which used to be a Spyglass/Eolith mini; sculpted by Steve Buddle. Really this has been a great opportunity to make a small dent into the pile of opportunity's stranger minis that haven't got an obvious home.