Converted Cyclops

I'm really proud of this piece.  This began life as Reaper's "Kagunk, Ogre Chieftain" from their Bones line, which I decided to convert into a cyclops for use with Broken Legions or Dragon Rampant.

I shaved down the brows of Kagunk and filled in the eye sockets with Green Stuff before building up a central socket, bulging eye and heavy brow ridge.  I've never done any sort of sculpting like this before - the only things I've ever made out of Green Stuff before are stalagmites, which are pretty easy.

Kagunk painted up nicely: I really like the blue of the kilt and the leather straps came out especially.  His skin tone came out a little lighter than I'd originally intended; I had originally been trying for closer to James Earl Jones' complexion, since I do have a figure of Thulsa Doom to paint down the line, but the highlights kept coming out very chalky-looking, and I ended up having to go a shade lighter to smooth them out; this may have been down to the brush I was using or the broader expanse of muscle I was painting; the original combination might look better on a 28mm human figure than it does on this hulking slab of muscle.

The camera also makes this look lighter than it is.  I might go back and redo his eye - it's hard to tell here because of the shade of blue I used, but he does have a defined iris and pupil.  Redoing it with a lighter blue might look better and make this more noticeable.

All in all, I'm really happy with how he came out and I'm looking forward to seeing him in action on the tabletop.

Progress on the Home Front

Greetings, readers, and to my fellow Americans, happy Thanksgiving! I certainly had a pleasant one this year, spent with friends rather than family, and more importantly, I've taken some time off work to give myself a five day weekend, during which time I'm hoping to get some serious modeling work done.

Going through the rules for Broken Legions, I'm finding myself not wowed by them - certainly not the immediate, viscerally-positive reaction I felt during my first read throughs of Frostgrave and Lion Rampant.  I think I'm going to have to give them a play-through or two to really see if they're for me or not.  That being said, I'm revisiting Lion Rampant (I might be getting Dragon Rampant as a Christmas gift, which is the only reason I've held off thus far on buying a copy) and I downloaded the PDF version of Wargaming Soldiers and Strategy magazine issue 82, which has a Bronze Age variant, "Chariot Rampant." As some of you may recall, back in 2014 I made a rather large order from Wargames Factory, before they went belly-up.  Among what I bought were a box of Greek Hoplites, a box of Fantasy Amazons, and enough Achaemenid Persians to choke the Hot Gates.

Digging out the box of Hoplites the other night, I assembled a unit of 12, based on round bases for skirmish gaming, for use with Lion/Dragon/Chariot Rampant.  I can also draw from this pool of figures to create an "Argonauts" warband for Broken Legions.  I opted to model them with kopis-style short swords rather than spears, in part to make them easier to store and less likely to break in storage, and in part because the default Argonaut in BL carries a hand weapon, not a spear.

Shields will be glued into place after they're painted.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get out the box of Amazons and assemble a unit of them; in a game I'd probably field them as Fierce Foot or similar in Lion/Chariot/Dragon Rampant.  After that I'd like to start on a couple units of Persians, but we'll see how much free time I end up having this weekend.  I'm envisioning them as the backbone of a "fiery sorcerer from the eastern deserts" type Dragon Rampant retinue, supporting an elemental-summoning sorcerer and backed by things like cockatrices or manticores.

The weather should be nice enough to prime this weekend too - I'm looking forward to painting these guys once the Challenge begins.

Carry(ing Case) On Up the Appian Way

Good lord that's a tortured mixture of pun and pop culture reference in the title of this post, isn't it? Terrible.  But it's the best I could do to appropriately title this post.

Yesterday marked my six year anniversary with Gina, and in keeping with her tendency to be incredibly thoughtful and generous, she bought me a new carrying case for miniatures, Reasoning that I'm looking at building all these warbands and armies for various games and my stated desire to run demo games at the store, she decided it would be a better gift to buy me the carrying case I'd been eyeballing rather than more miniatures.  This is the unbranded "Sword Bag" from Battlefoam, with pluck-foam trays rather than precut.  It came with a 3" tray, a 2" tray, 2 1.5" trays and a 1" tray, which will cover all my needs admirably.

Atticus thinks this is for him.  

Additionally, we bought it from our local FLGS, rather than ordering it online, in the interest of supporting our local gaming community with our purchase.  Just Games was running a Thanksgiving promotion this week, meaning by spending more than $40 in store, we got to select a free game off a pile by the register, and we walked out having added "Nitro Dice," a card/dice racing game, to our collection.  It is a game that can be played with 2 players (unfortunately, a number of games we've bought require 3 or more players to run), so we'll possibly be checking that out this weekend.  I've played a couple very fun racing games in the past, and this one looks like it'll also appeal to my fondness for women in tiny shorts.

*ahem*

Moving on...

I also picked up a copy of Osprey's "Broken Legions" skirmish game yesterday; for those unfamiliar, the premise is that Greco-Roman Mythology is true, and Roman's continued survival rests not on the backs of its legions, but on small teams of "special forces" fighting a covert war to claim and protect relics of divine might from those who would use them to undermine the Empire Without End.  On the first read-through, I'm inclined to agree with Richard Rush's assessment in the comments on my last post, that it doesn't look like it really does anything that Frostgrave doesn't do as well or better, but I'm willing to give it a run-through in play and see if that changes my mind.

Either way, I think I only need to buy something absurd like three or four more figures to be able to field four 150 point warbands - a Greek, Germanic, Egyptian/"Cult of Set," and a Parthian one.  I don't have any Roman figures handy; truth be told I'm eyeing Foundry's line of Imperial Romans for this somewhere down the line.  I have a ton of Wargames Factory plastic Greeks and Persians that I bought on sale two years ago sitting in my closet that will fulfill the Greek and Parthian warbands, and the "Cult of Set" and Germanic warbands will mostly just repurpose the Cult of Set and Valkyrie warbands I've assembled for Frostgrave.

I think the only figures I don't have readily on hand are a werewolf for the Germans, an Oracle for the Greeks and a Prince and Magus for the Parthians, and those will be fairly easy fixes I think.