The End is Nigh ... of 2020, at least

We are finally almost to the end of this annus horribilis.  The year end is traditionally a time to reflect on how things went, and consider how one might improve things in the year to come.  I should note that I am grateful that I have remained employed this whole time, and that we have had what we needed.

My plan for the year had included several conventions which were cancelled, of course, and my effort to get back to regularly attending club meetings failed due to the lack of club meetings. Irene and I had been planning a wedding, too, but that did get done, albeit in an appropriately down-sized and socially distant format.  

Some people managed to get additional miniatures painted and additional games (solo or played with remote players), but I ended up taking advantage of my former commute time to brush up on my baking skills, and to learn how to make sourdough bread.

At the beginning of the year, I had been working on the Bronze Age project with my son, using the DBA 3.0 rules everyone got for Christmas last year.  I had also planned to be working on French Revolutionary Wars figures for a joint game with Ross Macfarlane at Huzzah, but the cancellation of Huzzah! for this year pushed that project to the back burner. 

Norman and I had a test game with DBA 3.0 in February, the most recent time that we have been able to play face to face.  We’ve gotten in a couple of remote games of DBA this year, although we dusted off the old HaT Punic Wars figures for one of them.  My painting time was more limited than I had expected, but I did finish up my Bronze Age Libyan army. My son is much farther along with his painting.

Instead of the French Revolution, I ended up working on scenery improvement, on Prince August home cast fantasy figures, and on 1/72 scale plastic figures for the Portable Fantasy Campaign.  Without regard to size, which ranged from 1/72 scale sheep to medium-sized 28mm resin buildings,  I will have finished about 165 miniatures for the year. That’s not too bad (I’ve certainly had slower years, especially when I was a sports parent), but it doesn’t support too many new projects...

Here is my thinking.  Most of the “battle” rules I gravitate toward have units of 12 infantry or 6 cavalry (which are about as hard to paint as 12 infantry). Examples would include Chaos Wars, Dragon/Lion Rampant,  and A Gentleman’s War.  All else being equal, 12 units is a good force size, allowing for some variety in scenarios. Years back, Brent Oman advocated for the 12 unit army in the pages of MWAN, and I thought that made good sense and have adopted the idea for planning purposes. I usually anticipate that I will need to provide both sides of a project. Put all of that together, and a completely new project is approximately the equivalent of painting about 12 x 12 x 2 (or 288) infantry.  At this year’s painting rate, that would make a new project the equivalent of a little less than two years’ worth of painting. That’s not impossible, but it does suggest that these things should be considered carefully, and not started on a whim. (My record years, by the way, back around the turn of the century, ran closer to 600 figures; starting a new project when it amounted to less than half a year of painting was a bit more casual.)

Of course, all of my painting is seldom concentrated on one project for more than a few months.  Smaller projects would be a possible answer, I suppose.  With DBA becoming the house standard for ancients gaming, army sizes seldom top 80 figures, but, on the other hand, project planning tends toward three or four or five armies instead of two.  I am intermittantly working on some sort of urban fantasy skirmish game, which will most likely not exceed fifty figures, but which will need some scenery.  That’s the sort of thing which is a nice break from ranked units.  

As of right now, I have three potential new projects that look interesting.  The first was mentioned recently, the potential 19th century project using home cast figurs of one sort or another.  The second was alluded to in an earlier post as well and is some level of DBA classical Greeks and Persians using 1/72 scale figures.  The third would be a completely new start, a portable Not Quite Seven Years War for conventions, using 1/72 scale Zvezda plastic figures for the Great Northern War as the basis for imagi-nation armies.  The rules would probably be A Gentleman’s War.

Ongoing projects that keep getting paint include the French Revolution expansion, the Not Quite Seven Years War, the 1/72 scale Portable Fantasy Campaign, and the 25mm vintage fantasy collection (in which I have been primarily working on a Middle Earth collection using the original Minifigs range from 1974). 

So, there is a lot to do in 2021, and I’m sure that by March I will be totally derailed into something else...

According to my gaming log, I was involved in 24 miniatures games in 2020.  After March, of course, they were all solo or played remotely.  Somewhere in the summer I ran low on enthusiasm for remote games, and the lack of a space to leave a solo game set up for a week or two has made it more challenging to use solo gaming to make up for the lack of conventions.  Nevertheless, I did play a couple of games generated by the Portable Fantasy Campaign this year, most recently an encounter between the humans and the orcs, and will be keeping that going.  To encourage solo gaming in general, I joined the Solo Wargamer’s Assocation early on in the lockdown, and have been gradually reading through back issues of The Lone Warrior to try to collect some inspiration.

Another PFC game, played remotely with Chris Palmer
 

Back in April, I went through my projects list and noted that I had 16 projects that were available to play at home (i.e. had at least two forces and scenery), of which 7 had not been on the table in over two years.  We were able to address one of those project with some remote 2nd Punic War DBA,  and one project was 

thanked for its service and sent on its way (28mm colonials).  So I will be entering 2021 with 5 projects which haven’t seen service in over two years, three of which are 6mm portable projects, and one of which (French Revolution) is being worked on, however slowly. (The 5th is the 40mm French and Indian War project; I’d like to try that with A Gentleman’s War sometime soon.)

Going forward into 2021, I have hope that we will see conventions again by the fall.  I still want to do more with solo games while waiting for the world to open up again, especially games that advance the solo campaign.  I am also looking through material I started preparing recently (ok, 2013 still feels somewhat recent) for an NQSYW campaign.  I’m sure there will be more on that as it develops.

2021 holds three significant anniversaries; I will be 60 in March, and my introduction to Dungeons and Dragons will also be a multiple-of-five at the same time, since it will be 45 years since I was given the game for my 15th birthday.  Even more significantly from a miniatures point of view, though, at some unremembered date in early 1971 I was introduced to the idea of rules for toy soldiers when a friend lent me a copy of Terrence Wise’s Introduction to Battle Gaming.  Since I don’t have a specific date, the whole year will be a celebration of 50 years in the hobby.  I think that it would be fun to put a small game on the table using these original rules, however odd they might seem to be by modern standards.  Perhaps an updated version of the 2nd Punic War as demonstrated in the ancients section would be the most appropriate. It would only be updated in the limited sense of needing a tweak or two to use the multiple-based figures I already have, and, of course, being fought with HaT figures instead of Airfix Romans facing Carthaginians improvised from Robin Hood figures.

 

 

The Portable Fantasy Game/Campaign box

Earlier this week, Norm, over on his Battlefields and Warriors blog, posted an interesting look at his effort to put a whole wargaming project in a single box.  In a comment, I was going to post a link back to my blog, to a post I had done on the recent upgrade of the scenery in my Portable Fantasy Game/Campaign box.  I was a little surprised to find that I had never actually posted it.  Since I’m on a bit of a painting hiatus for a few more days, I thought it would be a good idea to post it now.   So, without further ado, here is what I should have posted back on the 29th of April:

I spent my extra time this morning (when I used to commute) doing one of the nagging little hobby tasks on my list: repacking the portable fantasy game.  This task became necessary last week when I received a package from my mother with new terrain pieces.

 

The original set-up started with a double-sided ground cloth and a group of double-sided hill/pillows (fabric over upholstery foam) done for me as a custom project by an Etsy craftsperson who was in college with my son:

 

 

What I got from my mother (whose main hobby is quilting) was the scenery bases.  Linear pieces are double-sided to serve as streams or roads.  The large irregular circle pieces are all backed with woods base material on one side, and brown, grey, or blue on the other side to designate rough ground, town areas, ponds, etc. as necessary.

 

 

The scenery package also includes a bag of small stones for scatter decoration and to marks fords or whatever, and lichen to enhance the appearance of stream banks, woods bases, or to serve as hedges as needed.

 

 

There is room in the box for about 10 trees, mounted on steel washers to engage with rare earth magnets placed under the scenery bases to give them a little stability...

 

 

There are also a half dozen plastic rocks, which are very light, and also nest for travel.

 

 

...and a couple of stone heads, because I don’t seem to be able to have fantasy scenery without stone heads.

 

A few old resin low walls, nicely sized for 1/72 scale figures, have been repurposed for this.

 

 

And, to keep things light, there is a collection of card model buildings (all Dave Graffam models printed at 75% of base size):

 

 

As I noted above, I expect to carry one or more supplemental figure boxes for a trip to a convention, but there are two boxes internal to the main storage box:

 

 

Since this is intended to be a ready-to-go gaming kit, there are rules, and a set of laminated orders of battle and quick reference sheets:

 

 

And a set of dice, markers for various games, tape measures, rulers, and measuring sticks:

 

 

Once it was all laid out and trimmed of extra rules, handouts, etc., it was time to pack it back up.

 

 

Buildings, troop boxes, and trees form the lowest layer, with small bits like tape measures and dice forming the next layer.

 

On top of that go one layer of hills, the rules, the ground cloth, and the other two hills.  Happily, the hills are fairly compressible.  Everything is stacked to avoid compressing the buildings at the one end:

 

 

And finally, to prove that it can be done, the lid goes on:

 

 

The lid has a thin steel sheet with a dungeon floor pattern attached above it, so that a dungeon environment can be deployed in a pinch.

 

And, there we are, ready to head to a convention...if there were such a thing right now.

Teaser — New Project —Semiflat 19th Century from Vintage Molds

 This is just a teaser for the latest thing that has caught my attention.  I have been acquiring various vintage Schneider semi-flat toy soldier molds, mostly in approximately 45mm, and I think there are now enough to put together some sort of reasonably historical Franco-Prussian War project.  If things don’t cast well enough, I suppose I’ll have to field what I do get as a late 19th Century imagi-nations thing.

There will be more about the Schneider molds in a future post, but, as can be seen, the smaller size of cavalry is a bit smaller than a Prince August 40mm semi-flat figure.

Along with the 19th century figures, there are a few knights, farm animals, zoo animals and so forth. I cast a bunch of farm animals for use with the Not Quite Seven Years War figures in one session last summer.  With the new lead-free alloy I was using, they generally cast well, so I have hopes for this.  Until the weather warms up and I can take the casting gear outside, though, I won’t know for sure.

Bronze Age Remote DBA Games in 1/72 scale

 

My sons and I got together yesterday on Google Meets (Hangouts is apparently dead) for a couple of games of remote DBA.  I hosted the first game, with the two of them playing, using my new Libyan chariot to command a Libyan army.  For those conversant with DBA, this is army I/7b, and I don’t have the figures done yet to provide any choices, so all the warriors were deployed as “auxilia” and there was a Sea Peoples stand rather than a second chariot.  There were up against later New Kingdom Egyptians (I/22b) whose only choice is whether to deploy the Sherden guard as “fast” or “solid” blades.  William was in command of the Egyptians and elected to make them “solid”.  A dice off for attacker/defender and for terrain left the Egyptians invading Libyan territory, so they were away from the water in a wilderness of rocky ground (represented by the brown cloth shapes) and a difficult hill.  Since we often have a hard time seeing things remotely anyway, we kept the terrain layouts pretty simple. If this were a convention demonstration game, it wouldn’t be hard to improve the table dressing. The Libyans deployed with most of their more capable troops to the left of the hill, and covered their right flank by deploying their skirmishers on the difficult hill.  The Egyptians were impeded somewhat by their need to carefully pick their way through the rocks and scrub.  They were deployed with most of their chariots out on their left flank in a bid to demoralize the enemy quickly by taking their camp.

 

Eventually the battle lines met at the edge of the rocky ground.  The Libyan swordsmen wilted under the hail of Egyptian arrows, losing one of two stands as soon as they were within range.  The usual DBA shoving match started, and the Libyans rapidly lost their fourth stand, ending the game.

I don’t know for sure what the screens showed at the far end.  For these family DBA games we have generally supplemented the  screen view with occasional cell phone pictures sent by text message, to clear up any difficulties in understanding the tactical situation:

We played a second game, with Arameans (I/6c) against Syro-Canaanites (I/20b) using Norman’s collection and board.

Unfortunately, however, for much of the game, it looked like that.  The Syrians (played by me) quickly rolled over the Arameans (William), aided by the fact that his general died in the first combat round in an attemtp to roll my army up from the flank before my chariots could make a difference.  As he said, in most games he’d have conceded right then, but we’d already be online for about two hours and I suggested that it would probably only take one more turn to actually decide the game by the rules.  I was right...

We wrapped it up after that.  I was glad to see my armies out; perhaps I’ll get a few more painted by the time we are ready for some face-to-face games again.

November Painting Summary

 

This is just a quick place holder.  November saw some painting done, though n ot what I expected, nor as much as I wanted.  I ended up working on a few things for the Portable Fantasy Game in addition to the Libyan chariot previously shown.  The Reaper “Sir Forscale” in the back row is not new this month; he’s just in for scale, as usual.

The fantasy campaign setting needs armies of orcs and elves, so I started by finishing up a couple of orc warrior samples from Caesar Miniatures.  The elves may get the tree things (more Reaper “Saprolings”) as reinforcements.  

Other than that, the merchant on the mule is from a Strelets Crusader transport set, and a Celtic Warrior Queen extra is doing new duty as a green-haiored dryad.  It’s time to put on a game featuring some of these things...

It’s the Libyans!

 I see that it has been a few weeks since I posted anything.  I actually took a week off from work back on the 9th, but my desk had reached this state...

...and it was therefore difficult to get anything done, except for one scenery piece.

I have been gradually working on improving my scenery collection, and decided a while back that I was going to build bases of trees and the like, to save wear and tear (at the expense of storage space, of course). As I worked toward the goal of staging a game with all-new pandemic era gear, I realized that I would need some walls.  These plastic walls from the Mantic Terrain Crate Kickstarter look reasonable, but are so thin that I can’t imagine how I would keep them standing on the game table. I decided that I would just go ahead and group them into a few permanent enclosures and base them on some of the irregular masonite bases I picked up last fall from an Etsy dealer.  There was some space left at one end, so I planted a few trees to make use of it.  The pictures above show the walls with a handful of the Prince August figures I’ve been painting.  When time permits, I have two more enclosures to go, plus a single spare broken down wall to enhance some other scene.

When that week was over, I had to clear the desk off to go back to using it as my work from home space.  When the next break started, I decided that I would depart a bit from my usual home desk procedures, by putting out ONE (and only one) thing to work on.  While there are plenty of Prince August figures awaiting my attention, my son has been working on DBA Bronze Age armies.  I have been one stand short of a complete Bronze Age Libyan army for months (I/7b, if you’re into that sort of thing), so I thought that it would be a good time to finish it.  I’ve had the pieces for a light chariot general stand sorted out since spring.  Our Bronze Age project is staffed by the beautiful and inexpensive Caesar Miniatures 1/72 scale plastics.  However, as extensive as their range is, there isn’t a “Libyan” chariot.  I built this one using an Egyptian chariot body, horse from one of their Mitanni chariots, and some of the Libyans as the crew and runners.  I thought about trying to jam in a driver as well, but it was looking too cluttered, so I didn’t.

This is what I ended up with.  

In keeping with the usual artists’ rendering of the Libyans (e.g., the New Kingdown Egyptian Osprey guide), most of my foot figures are painted with cloaks representing the hides of spotted cows with the hair left on.  I wanted to do something a little more upscale for the commander, so I went looking around for contemporary images, and came up with this:

I attempted to render the alternating lines of “arrows” and “eyes” from the second and fourth figures, and then echoed the same pattern on the chariot sides.  In the absence of evidence, that seems as good as any other possibility. 

With the completion of the command chariot, I now have all twelve DBA elements needed for my army:

My son has been pretty consistently building all the variable elements for his DBA armies.  For the Libyans, I could have a second chariot in place of the four man Sea Peoples blade stand, and three more “psiloi” in place of the stands of warriors (“fast auxilia” in the game).  I’ll probably build the chariot at some point, but I need to play some more DBA 3.0 to decide whether there is any reason I would choose to add three more psiloi to an army that already has five.

The next project on the desk will probably be fantasy rather than Bronze Age, but I do have a DBA army of Nubians sorted out, to give me another historical Egyptian opponent.

Down the Rabbit Hole — Part 6

 After a couple of weeks of using my painting space for work-at-home, I finally cleared it off during my day off yesterday for its primary purpose.  As mentioned in the previous five installments in this series, I have been attempting to put enough new stuff during the pandemic to run a game.  The ultimate goal may be to have a force sized for Osprey’s Oathmark rules, but in the near term, I’ll settle for a skirmish.

I have finished eight humans, which should give me enough for a basic warband in A Song of Blades and Heroes. I got as far as cleaning up and priming a dozen or so trolls, goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins from the Prince August molds a few weeks ago.

With inspiration having arrived yesterday, I pulled them out and did a quick paint job on six of them, two trolls and four goblins, all from Prince August mold #656.

They are shown here with a barbarian warlord from Prince August mold #670, to give a sense of the scale.

While I usually paint my orcs olive drab, my son’s recent orc painting prompted me to try something a little different, so the orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins for this project are going to be in a yellowish khaki.  I did the two trolls in the “traditional” olive, because it’s fantasy.  I still have another half dozen of the orcs, hobgoblins, and goblin wolfriders on the desk, and will need three to six of them to be ready for a skirmish game.  Back to painting...

Tiny Library — A Bookish Digression

This has not been a particularly good month for hobbies.  I have ended up with enough time to daydream a bit, but not much more.  We have been spending some decompression time watching some relatively kind and calm television series, including Tiny House Nation, which got me thinking about a Tiny Library (not a Little Free Library although that’s a good idea in its own way), but something that would fit into a tiny house, or, more practically, be suitable for hauling along on an extended retreat (or, as my son noted, 

suitable for an emergency evacuation...we used to live in a flood zone).  This Tiny Library would presumably be supported for the retreat by a painting package, and a miniatures package (the Portable Fantasy Campaign).  It’s also implicit in the selection that I might have access to another gamer or two...

So here’s how it breaks down.

FICTION

1) The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (India paper edition)

2) The White Company, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Books of Wonder edion with Wyeth illustrations)

The fiction section requires no particular explanation.  These are my two favorite most reread books.  To some extent, they also support the “wargaming retreat” theme as possible sources of scenario inspiration.

NON-FICTION

3) How to Cook Everything:The Basics, Mark Bittman

This one is a practical choice, intended to carry me through an extended period of civilized meal preparation, i.e. not camping nor in survival mode.  If I did need to camp, I have a couple of specialized camping cookbooks geared toward Coleman/Primus stoves and campfires.

4) Histories, Herodotus (tr. Robin Waterfield, Oxford World’s Classics)

5) The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (Landmark edition)

6) The Expedition of Cyrus, Xenophon (tr. Robin Waterfield, Oxford World’s Classics)

The main history of Greek and Persian conflict before Alexander is covered by these three books, all of which are editions with good academic supports (i.e. footnotes and commentary).  I have ben looking for time to dig deeper into this period, and a retreat/sabbatical would be a perfect opportunity.

ROLE-PLAYING

7) Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax and Arneson (original edition with supplements)

8) The Traveller Book, Mark Miller 

9) Fate Accelerated Edition, Valentine et al.

There are several thoughts going on with these selections.  The Traveller Book is the most complete one-volume version of this classic science fiction RPG.  I’ve been a fan since the first printing in 1977, and it’s always good to have a version of the game along on a trip because of the amount of inherent solo play there is in character creation and world building.   The Dungeons & Dragons set has been chosen for the practical reason of being the fantasy game I would wish to run next.  Preparations for such a game would be a reasonable retreat activity, but it can also be used for some random setting solo play with the aid of some early random dungeon tables.  The original rules were reprinted in 2013, so I usually carry around the reprint edition when I’m working on something.  Bringing my tattered original copy from 1976 is a sentimental move.  Fate Accelerated is here because it is generic with respect to genre, simple, and very thin.  If other people were not along on this retreat, it probably would not see use, but it also takes up very little space.

MINIATURE WARGAMES

10) Dragon Rampant, Dan Mersey

11) De Bellis Antiquitatis 3.0, Phil Barker

12) Setting Up a Wargames Campaign, Tony Bath

13) One Hour Wargames, Neil Thomas

Among the four categories, this one is probably the most subject to revision.  Part of this is due to the category needing an additional support package to be of use at all.  So, anticipating that the aforementioned Portable Fantasy Campaign would be the basis of the support package, Dragon Rampant is one of the main rule sets which ordinarily goes with that.  (Practically speaking, this doesn’t really need to be here; the actual physical box with the miniatures stuff has Dragon Rampant, Hordes of the Things, and A Song of Blades and Heroes already tucked in the box.) 

DBA is on this list as the current family favorite ancients rules to support the painting project implied by the Greek history books.  

One Hour Wargames is included for two reasons.  The primary reason is that its scenario collection is already scaled for small armies and for a 3’ by 3’ game surface (which is what I have for the Portable Fantasy Campaign).  The second reason is that there are simple rules for a variety of periods in case one needed a bit of a break, and was open to improvising a game using cardboard counters or some such in lieu of actual miniature troops.

There are three alternates that would be reasonable choices in this category.  My signed sentimental copy of Donald Featherstone’s Solo-Wargaming has some ideas on how to get through a period without other gamers around.  A copy of Morschauser’s How to Play War Games in Miniature could be a direct substitute for the “all periods” aspect of One Hour Wargames, and is something of a sentimental favorite even though I am not attached to any particular physical copy of the book.  If One Hour Wargames were replaced, a need for C.S. Grant’s Scenarios for Wargames would be greater.  The “Green Book” is also both rather rare (in general) and sentimental (in the form of my particular worn and much annotated copy).

Different choices in miniatures would imply different rules; choosing to paint 1/72 scale 18th century figures rather than Greeks and Persians would call for A Gentleman’s War instead of DBA; bringing along some Dark Ages figures to work on might call for Dan Mersey’s Dux Bellorum, and so forth...

IMPLIED SUPPORT

As mentioned, the choice of cookbook has to do with what sort of kitchen one might be able to access; having just an Instant Pot would imply a different cookbook, as would expecting access to be restricted to just a camp stove.

The role-playing games would necessitate a bag of dice and a stock of office supplies (notebooks of quadrille paper, notecards, colored pencils, etc.).  The would also benefit from access to the miniatures in the miniatures support package.

As mentioned the miniatures books imply access to a package of miniatures.  This should include at least a basic painting kit, some tools and basing supplies, and some miniatures awaiting painting.  

I haven’t double-checked it lately, but I had pulled out eight boxes of Zvezda plastics, which I had calculated had the troops necessary to support the four basic armies which might be needed for the project (two slightly varied Greek armies for the Peloponnesian War, two different Persian armies to do Cunaxa, and the Persian War to be done with a mix of them).  I haven’t sized them, but they should fit in a 9 or 12 litre Really Useful Box along with the basing supplies and tools.  My travel paint kit would probably suffice, although I’d want to make sure that the bottles were full before heading off on a six month retreat.

So, there you have it, a thought experiment made (somewhat) real ...

(Edited 10/29/20 to remove typing errors...)

Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 5

 This is a little behind the times, but last week I was tied up GMing a LARP for work...

I picked up some cheap brushes and craft paint the other weekend, and returned to a project on hold for a few months: the fantasy scenery upgrade expansion and Prince August casting project.  I finished several buildings back in July, but still had a few left.

Doing these ones reminded me of how irritating it is trying to neatly edge half timbered buildings.  However, they got done...

While getting ready to put them away, I pulled out the earlier ones.  That should make a reasonable village for the first outing of the Prince August figures.

I cleaned up and primed a dozen or so Prince August orcs and goblins, so the next task is to get them painted.  Happily, I have taken next wek off from work...

54mm Fantasy?

 While I have been casting about for inspiration this month, one other idea (other than Prince Valiant, that is) has been given a new push.  I have noticed recently that there are now two boxes of soft plastic 1/32 scale fatnasy creatures available on Amazon (and probably elsewhere). The Series I box was $20, and the Series II box was $25, within my impulse purchase range, so I decided that I would order them and have a look.

Series I contained orcs, griffins, skeletons, unicorns, minotaurs, wizards, dwarves, two headed somethings, snakey medusas, dragons, centaurs, knights, faeries, and elves, in a mix of light and dark plastic. Numbers were fairly even; 7 of each although I was apparently short a faerie.  For scale, they are shown below with a knight from Accurate Miniatures from my Medieval Mayhem collection. The sculpting on the figures is fairly basic, but the human-sized creatures are not a terrible match.  The dragon is a bit small, and would probably be more comfortable looming over some 1/72 scale figures.  There are no pose variations, so any units would end up with a bit of an old school Minifigs aesthetic going on.

The Series II figures were more of a mix.  They included Cerberus, Amazons, frog-men, wolves, lizard men, cyclopes, a second unicorn pose, a headless horseman, a phoenix, a militant mermaid, a berserker, and a harpy.  The numbers were more random.  I was short two figures of the 56 promised, and had 1 Cerberus, 2 phoenixes, and 2 frog-men.  As with Series I, size of the humans is a reasonable look next to the Accurate knight.  The cyclops, like the dragon, would be happier with the 1/72s, and one phoenix may also find his way into that project as a roc.  

The plastic is pretty soft, so a test of paintability will need to be done.  There are plenty of spares of things I won’t need in units to test compatibility with spray primers...

I’m not sure what I would use for rules; adding a bit of fantasy to Medieval Mayhem seems possible, and playing Dragon Rampant (perhaps with half-sized units—a default of 6 foot or 3 mounted rather than 12 or 6).

In addition to these new figures, I also actually have a bucket of plastic toys laid by when Toys R Us closed out in 2018.  They had a bucket of Mythical Warriors in their “True Heroes” line (there’s a mis-naming...).  It had included 7 different figures, a female rogue, a hero, two witches, an orc, an elf drawing an arrow, and a dwarf(?) with a hammer (who is big enough to pass for human, so possibly equally usable as a berseker).  

Each bucket included some rudimentary toy scenery; a bridge, a couple of pillars, a prisoner cage, some rocks, some machine gun nests (?) and a pile of candlesticks, plus an odd structure I’ve dubbed the “mystic gateway”.

As you can see from the picture above, the mix of figures was pretty random.  I got one rogue, three heroes, four orcs, and thirteen elves.

They also are not a bad match for the Accurate knight.  Unfortunately, with Toys R Us out of business, the molds are currently idle, so there’s no chance of acquiring more rogues or orcs.  

There’s more to follow on this, but I am enjoying considering whether I could finally have a 54mm D&D game...

(For the record, I am aware of Irregular Miniatures 54mm fantasy line...I may end up with some of those if I do get started on this; the humans tend to be rather taller than the Accurate figures, at least going by the Irregular 54mm medieval civilians I have for Medieival mayhem.)