Long Distance Wargaming

The One (Acutally Four) Box (Actually Boxes) to Rule Them All has been blooded.

Check out the Castalia House blog, the best dang fantasy and science fiction blog on this or any other internet, today for a full review of how you - yes, you! - can play miniature wargames across twelve time zones and still capture the tactile joy of miniature wargaming.  All you need is a little patience, a love of painting, and basic human decency, and distance no longer has to prevent you from playing your favorite game with your favorite people.

Check it out right here!

Wrap It, Stack It...

Smack it on the bing-bong!  The four fantasy boxes are done.

Four mounted troops, three big bossmen, thirty-five infantry, and a cute little doggo.  If you can't field a good four skirmish forces out of that mix, you're in the wrong hobby, buddy.

This aerial shot shows how well the different basing colors work to help distinguish one troop type from another.  From left to right we're looking at humanoids (brown/yellow), undeadish (black), elves (dark green), and heroes (white).

Boxed up in tubs two-inches by three-inches, lined with a bit of scrap foam, they are ready for transport.  Being a cheap friend, they'll go by slow boat, and two of them are headed half-way across one pond, across a continent, and then across another pond.

It might be a while before they see the table in a competitive way.

On to the next project!

Wonder what it will be...

Unleash the Hordes!

Been playing some Orcs Must Die! lately, so the painting slowed a bit.  My four year old loves watching those green waves get sliced and diced and hacked and whacked.  Big fan of floor spikes that one.  She better not expect these little guys to get chewed up, though.  Irregular Miniatures' goblins make a fine full force for skirmish wargaming.  This faction will include four hand melee goblins, two archers, and a pair of boar riders to round things out.

Those are hand weapons on the left, boars in the back right and archers in the front right.

Here's a clean shot of the boar riders.

And the hand weapon guys.

 And and the bowmen.  The eight I got feature a great selection with a wide variety of shields and cloaks, which would be great for a normal 10mm fighting force.  It makes the four boxes I'm building a little eclectic, but they'll do.

Eight goblins is actually a little light for a fighting force in most games, even if they include a couple of mounted outriders, but I don't expect them to fight alone.  They'll usually be paired up with an ogre or two, slaves to a wizard, or teamed up with some orcs.  Above, you can see how well the darker skinned and smaller goblins stack up against their larger orc brethren.  The orcs are from Copplestone, and have a little more detail, but these are two great foes that work great together.

Scale Mail

One of the things every wargamer wants to know prior to purchasing figures is, "How will these figures match with the ones I've already got."  Some think that this question becomes more critical at the smaller scales, because a millimeter out of six or ten is a much bigger difference than one out of 28 or 30.  Personally, the smaller scales are less detailed, and so if there's a slight difference in scale, I think it matters less.

In the interests of furthering the culture of the hobby, and now that I'm back into 10mm skirmish, here's a few shots of my figures from various manufacturers that shows how well they all stand with each other.

Sorry for the focus on that last one.  You can see the heights well enough.  That's a Copplestone, Pendraken (I think - I might have those two reversed) and Irregular elf in each shot.  Bear in mind we're comparing wood elves to high elves, so in my mind a little height difference is understandable.

Make Gondolin Great Again



The One box to Rule Them All continues apace.  Ten bucks netted me all these figures - four complete elven warbands.  The bright blue and yellow will help them stand out against other figures and the ground cover.  Note the dark green bases, which should help as well. 

 



 

 One stumbling block here is that the figures are not identical.  The manufacturers, in this case Irregular Miniatures, do a great job varying the figures.  If mounted in a big block as intended, these would look great.  Heck, the look fantastic like this, too.  But they aren't in two sets of four.  The spears are matched sets, as are the bowmen, but the cavalry are nice and varied - no real problem, because as figures they really only serve one function.  For this game set "cavalry" is all we need.  Whether they have shields or not doesn't make much difference.

 Here's a group shot of the one warband that shows the two mounted figures, two spearmen, two bowmen, two swordsmen, and a hero.  The heroes or leaders of each warband look a lot like the swordsmen - they have big yellow plumes on their helmets.

A Wargamer's Life: A One Act Play

 

Me:  I'm going to do more playing and less painting in 2018

Also Me:  I'm going to build four matched wargaming sets

Me:  That's not gaming, that's still painting

Also Me:  But it's 10mm, that hardly counts

Me:  It's painting

Also Me:  Have you seen these guys?

Me:  Say, that's pretty - ah, hell with it, you know what?  Paint away.

 

Fin.

 

Irregular Miniatures, take a bow

 Forty dollars netted me another big slew of 10mm skirmish figures.  Since these were bought specifically for this project, I could target actual needs.  The first two orders of business were to build some actual matched factions, so the new contenders are heavy on the high elves and greenskins.  I threw in a few cavalry troops, too, just to keep it interesting.  The new horde includes a few new heroes and some more skeletons to round out the undead faction.

Each kit will get three more skellies and a pair of bowmen painted up in a woodsy, maybe even wood elf style.  At this scale, they can do double duty.

I painted these bases a nice garish green with a hint of yellow to suggest grass, but they don't match my existing figures.  Thinking on the matter a little more, I should use the ground cover to my advantage.  Since the figures are so small, it might make sense to match the ground color to a faction as well.  That's more painting (Me: Naturally!  Also Me: Shaddup, you.) but whatever helps keep the gaming moving.  I'm thinking a nice gray ash color for undead, bright green for the elves, and desert brown for the orcs.  Then the heroes can have a more subtle green/brown base.

And all of them should work fine with the drop cloth.

Four by Twenty Figures

Last post I showed you my current project's status.  For those new to Chateau Abox, I'm building four identical game sets, so that I can do some online wargaming with a tactical component.  If you ain't pushing lead, you ain't miniature wargaming, after all.  By using 10mm figures already in hand, and not already in use, I was able to put together a fun little set.



 

This all fits inside a small shoebox sized plastic tub, along with the figures:

 

Opening up the blue-handled box, we see the small host of random figures:

Which parts out to a 5-man adventuring party, two ogres with four orc slaves, a minotaur and his three man dog-head retinue, and five skeleton warriors.  Not bad, but needs more Dakka.  I've got another 40 figures per box on order from Irregular that will really round this out and make this box sing.  You'll see.

One thing to point out is that the adventuring parties all consist of a wizard, an elf, a sword and board human, a dwarf axeman, and a hobbit.  They aren't the same fighters, they aren't the same elfs, and they definitely aren't the same wizards.  For example, one wizard is basically Gandalf and another a fire-wizard, and the one shown is more necromancer than anything else. Eh, close enough for 10mm figures shot on camera, right?  This whole thing is a little more abstract than is my usual wont.

That said, I'll have to make sure my planned wizard towers match the figures.  Did I mention the wizard towers?  Oh yeah, we need some serious fantasy terrain to really make this special, and we're going to get 'em.

AAR: The Necromancer's End, Part 2

To recap:  Our humble and noble Necromancer was passing innocently through a pleasant wooded glade when he was viciously accosted by a troop of inbred and illiterate ogres.  

The Necromancer, his assistant, and his skeletal party were heading south through the forest as shown here. The ugly ogres and their pet troll, spotting a potential victim, immediately headed in for the kill.  Being slow and stupid, this took quite a while.  First one ogre would shamble forward, then the other.  Thanks to their bumbling ineptitude, the Necromancer had plenty of time to organize a defense.

Rushing through the fallen columns of an ancient abandoned temple, lurking behind any available hiding place, the cowardly and thuggish Warchief split off one ogre and the troll to cross the stream at a narrow footbridge (on the right of the photo).

The Necromancer, fearing for the safety of his lizardman employee, chose to split his own forces.  He stationed three shooters to the west and gathered up his five swordsmen to the east.

The first of the ogres foolishly charged the shooters on the left, clearly signalling his murderous intent.  The handsome and dashing Necromancer whipped up a bit of sorcery, and transfixed the ogre in place.  The skeleton archers, the weakest fighters in the battle, somehow manage to defend themselves and their beloved boss by knocking their attacker out of the fight.

Meanwhile, to the west, one of the wall-eyed knuckledragging ogres was hurling massive boulders across the stream, to no effect.

The ogres finally sent their heavy hitter across the bridge and straight into the massed rank of skeletal warriors.

The brave Necromancer met the threat head-on.  His warriors swarmed the Troll, to little effect, until the Necromancer himself tranfixed the savage troll, which allowed his warriors to desperately work together to dispatch the relentless beast.  That feral and probably rabid beast put out of its misery, they turned their attention to the ogre waiting nearby, but disaster struck!  The Necromancer, having spent his spell points healing orphans and saving kittens from high trees, found his reserves depleted - no more could he call upon his ancient arts to protect his poor bony friends from the depredations of the Warchief and his minions.  Alas and alack!

On the eastern front, the archers fought one ogre to a stalemate.  Time was not on the archers' side, however, as the foul and greedy Warchief slowly picked his way across the bubbling brook.  Adding his considerable (and most likely alcoholic) weight to the fight proved to be too much for the skeletal archers.  At odds of 3:1 they stood a fighting chance, but at 3:2 the outcome was inevitable - two standing ogres and a pile of bones.

With the death of one too many friendly skeletons, the Necromancer encouraged his skeletons to quit the field.  After a brief start, they reconsidered and rushed back to assist their beloved employer, who stands alone to buy them time to escape. 

Alas.  The Necromancer's erstwhile reinforcements arrived too late.  As they reached the fight, the Necromancer was sent spinning through the brush, his poor lifeless body as crushed as his love of all things good and just.  The Warchief celebrated his victory over the innocent and humble Necromancer in the traditional dim-witted way of his kind, by looking for some other poor soul to beat up on.  

Guess which faction was run by your humble host.

Aftermath:  So this battle pitted a large force of easily activated weaklings against a larger force of poorly motivated brutes.  The ogre player got off to a rough start, pushing his luck by rolling for two actions.  With 4+ figures, that didn't work out so well.  His Warchief in particular took himself out of the game completely.  Late in the game, he went with a slower and more methodical approach by throwing just one dice for each ogre.  That way they each got a chance to do something each round rather than risk having that first guy come up snake eyes and wasting a full turn standing around.

The real back-breaker was that triple-failure roll on the Necromancer's spellcasting early in the fight.  A fallen troll triple-teamed by skeletons still has the advantage in the fight, but a transfixed troll is at their mercy.

For my part, I made the mistake of using my Leader (the wizard) to order the melee skeletons around.  He would have been far more successful ordering the archers to combine fire while shooting energy bolts at a target.  That way even a lost fight wouldn't have resulted in a casualty.

Live and learn.

We're still learning the ins and outs of this game, but hope next to run a more complicated battle between a small adventuring party and an orcish warband.

Sisterhood of the 10mm Pants

I've had these two archers languishing in my paint box for months.  They are the best I could do at finding female archers for characters in the long-on-hiatus D&D campaign for my kids and their friends.  Pendraken's Amazons might work, but they'll need a lot of green stuff before I let my daughter use one to represent her.  The characters are sisters and elves, so these should work find for that.

Does this mean that more D&D is on the horizon?  Let's hope so...

Monsters on the Prowl: Manticores

As we trundle along, merrily throwing alien after alien at the hapless human intruders, it's always nice to pause and add a little sumpin sumpin to the lists of the fantasy dungeon.  Why not some twin manticores to spice things up?

DN58 - Manticore

 These ugly mugs can be found in Pendraken's Dungeon Monster line.

They aren't that big compared to the humans, but with that uncanny valley face, they're still pretty intimidating.

Leaping Lizards

Remember the guy on the left?  Lizardman shaman?  Posted him a few months ago.  Maybe rings a bell?  

Yeah.  He's got company. This big guy is the new Lizard King.  The lizard with the skull staff becomes a shaman.

FTL17 -  Tribal lizardman hero

Don't think this one's looking to sell insurance.

 What's a king without an army?  Here the are all lined up and ready for a scrap.

FL2 - Lizardman with spear

Fantasy Backlog

My current miniature wargame project remains sci-fi, but I'm still adding to the D&D collection, too.  The latest Pendraken order from across two and a half ponds included these fun guys, too.

DN58 - Manticores

FTL17 - Tribal lizardman hero

The new Lizard King

FL2 - Lizardmen with spears

By Request: Size Matters

I've had a couple of people ask me how the figures of various 10mm manufacturers stand up to each other.  Here's a series of comparative photos to demonstrate.  The guy on the far right serves as a universal indicator across all photos.

DWARVES

Irregular, Pendraken, Copplestone

 HALFLINGS

Copplesone, Pendraken

 ELVES

Pendraken, Copplestone

 HUMANS

Irregular, Pendraken, Copplestone

Hope this helps.  For my money, the variations in size aren't a big deal.  At 10mm, a 20% difference is barely noticeable.  As a result, for figures at this scale, what's really important is the look of the figure.  Dwarves better be beardy, halflings better be chubby, and elves better be...elfy?  Hard to say on that last one - it's like the legal definition of porn - I can't explain it, but I know it when I see it.

Turns Out We Have Vehicles

Rummaging through the treasure trove that is the box of random toys in my son's collection turned up these little numbers.  Perfect scale for 10mm gaming, but I have only the vaguest memory of picking them up years ago at the local library's used book sale of all places.  These were part of some clicky game or other - MechWarrior if memory serves.  We only ever had the two bases of them.  The bigger one was labelled "MIT M.A.S.H. Vehicle" and the other a "Demon Medium Tank".  No clue what those mean beyond the obvious.

They both need a paintjob, de-arming, and the BNL logo added somewhere.  These are civilian vehicles, a runabout and a cargo transport of some sort.  No game effects, but they will provide more cover for anyone who needs it.