Painting: 1/72 fantasy individuals

Posting time has been a bit limited this week...in the previous post were pictures of the figures I finished up on Columbus Day.  Last Friday was not a scheduled work day, so I was able to sit down and do something with paintbrushes.  Most of the time, I find that trying to ignore the Muses doesn’t come to a good end.  So, having finished a nagging project in 1/72 scale, I found that I was inspired to paint a few more figures just for fun.  Here are two Caesar adventurers, two Caesar 13th century knights, and a Reaper Bones “saproling” done up as a 1/72 tree-thing.  Attempting to freehand the lion’s head on the central figure was a bit chancy, and the shield on the other knight was pre-embossed, so more practice on 1/72 heraldry will be coming up.

With this additional handful of figures, I feel like it’s time to play some sort of single-figure game with them. 1/72s are about at the limit of the practical for individual figure games, in my opinion. My basing system should probably have been designed to put a little more weight into the bases, to encourage the figures to stand through minor table bumps and so forth.  I am looking over Rangers of Shadow Deep as a possible near-term game, but haven’t done an order of battle to ensure that I have most of the miniatures needed yet.

Painting: 1/72 Dark Ages and 25mm Dux Bellorum

 Monday was a holiday, and I was able to finish up a couple of things on my work desk.  I have had 12 of the 16 figures wanted for two stands of spears for my Cold Islander army (Dark Ages mostly Vikings) for the Northlands/Portable Fantasy Campaign, and I finally received the inspiration (thanks be to Calliope) to finish off the last four.  They have been stalled for many months at this point.  However, as usual, once finished I usually have no trouble getting them based, varnished, and logged in my painting register.  That completes the originally planned Cold Island army (3 heroes, 2 blades, 6 warbands, 2 spears and 2 shooters in Hordes of the Things), and I can now move on and start working toward fielding the other two incomplete armies.

I also finished up and based a stand of 8 Romans (or Romano-British) from various Prince August and Dutkins home casting molds.  At this point both the Saxons and the Romano-British have some options in a Dux Bellorum game, so I am looking forward to an opportunity to get that on the table, hopefully before Christmas.

Encounter at Terril’s Tavern, part 1

I hope this will be a preliminary report, to be followed by some version of fiction.  I have had a battle in my solo “Northlands” campaign pending for a couple of months, and I was baking some bread this morning.  That gives me about three hours to wait while things rise and bake, so it seemed like a good time to resolve the battle.

Different hobby project

Overview of the field near the end

 The background for this is a raid launched into enemy (Darmis) territory by the King of Verdance, while Darmis was occupied with an invasion of Cold Islanders.  The last game played resolved the Cold Island invasion (in favor of Darmis), so the raiders were generally looking for one good score before heading for home.  As luck would have it, my battle generation system generated a skirmish (to be played with Dragon Rampant), and the forces turned out to be fairly general medieval groups. I therefore decided to use a scenario from Lion Rampant, the Dragon Rampant scenarios being not terribly generic.  I ended up with a convoy action (what else, eh, Ross?). Darmis, with a force of three knights (elite riders), an archer and a scout unit, had the convoy, and the Verdance raiders (a knight, an offensive heavy foot unit, an elite archer, a regular archer, and a scout) had the task of preventing them from getting it across the table.  The convoy player is allowed to attach his three transport elements to any unit, so I put two with the archers (carts I painted in August), and one (an Airfix Maid Marion as a Darmish noblewoman) with a unit of knights.  Having a transport element keeps a unit from being issued attack orders.  It’s not clear whether a countercharge should be allowed, but the Darmish situation was bad enough, in my opinion, that I thought I’d better allow it.  As a solo game, I knew the opponent wouldn’t complain...

As is usual for a Rampant-series game, there were a few turns where initiative turned over quickly, but they pretty much balanced out.  Both sides had their commander with a unit of knights, and lost them to repeated wild charges.  It might have been worth paying the extra points for the command units to be rated as “steady”, not subject to the wild charge rule.  At the end of the game, the Verdance raiders had both of their units of archers pouring arrows on the Darmish archers, who failed courage checks for casualties twice and rallied both times before ultimately routing.  It did prevent them from effectively returning fire.

Last of the Darmish units fails a morale check and abandons the convoy

 So, with the noblewoman and her attendants captured, I expected that the raiders will be heading home in the next map move.

Near the end; Darmish archers attempt to shoot their way through the roadblock without success

All in all, it was an entertaining little game.  It fit in well with the baking, and advanced the campaign a bit, which is pretty good for an afternoon’s entertainment.

Works in progress

With Barrage preparations having been taking most of my attention this past week, I didn’t get around to posting some recent work pictures.  I am halfway through a stand of 8 later Roman auxilia for the Dux Bellorum project.  The lead group is seen here along with a random Foundry Norman finished up one day when I forgot to bring more Romans to where I was painting.  I’ve still got a dozen or two Foundry Dark Ages figures which have been on sticks for handling, and primed, since about 1998...

Dux Bellorum later Romans

 The weather was good back on Sunday the 22nd of September, so I set up my casting gear outside and ran up a couple of dozen additional infantrymen (and parts) for the French Revolution project.  That should give me enough pieces to potentially fill out my planned order of battle over the winter.

Results of the most recent casting session