Devilry Afoot: Witches and Hills

 A few more figures finished for Devilry Afoot, and starting on some terrain pieces. I should be able to get my first game in this weekend to get a feel for it!

First up are a trio of Witches - these are Cultist miniatures, sculpted by Kev Adams for a company called Dark Fable, which is sadly no longer around, its founder Mike Burns having passed away a few years ago. They are now available through Dragon Bait Miniatures in the US, along with Dark Fable's incredible line of Egyptian miniatures. I went with a simple scheme of grimy slightly-grayish brown robes and black hoods. 

Next, an incredibly sinister goat from Pulp Figures; part of an occult accessory pack I got a while back as part of Bob's "Arcane Academics" Kickstarter. This was a very simple paint job, spray black, drybrush dark gray, pick out horns and eyes. It will serve as a Pact Devil in game. 

Next up is going to be terrain. I've got STLs for a few Tudor-style cottages as well as a blacksmith's and watermill that I need to take to my friend Dave for printing. My wife got me a few pieces of scatter terrain - a pumpkin patch, pigsty and village well - as an early anniversary present that need assembly and painting, and I bought a "Battlefield in a Box" hill a few weeks ago after watching Big Lee's video on the subject, which needs flocking.

My wife is astonishingly good to me.

I've gotten the pumpkin patch and the pieces of the well primed (though the well does seem a bit overly large), and I want to get a piece of MDF to glue the pigsty to to keep it secure and in one piece once assembled. I've even got pigs for it! 

Tonight, however, I stopped procrastinating and started flocking the hill. 

 The hill arrives as just a brown-painted resin lump with some dirt texture that's been drybrushed, with the idea being that you flock it to match your home table. This is a mix of two different shades and coarsenesses of railroad flock from Woodland Scenics - $15 a bottle, which will last me years and years at the rate I go through it. This is the same mix I use on all my miniatures' bases these days, applied in patches over a "dirt" layer of flock. 

I have placed a couple orders to round out my bestiary for Devilry Afoot - zombies, bogeymen, a barghest and some redcaps, as well as a collection of innocents for them to threaten. So between that and the figures finished, it's time to update the tracker again. 

Figures Purchased in 2025: 113

Figures Painted in 2025: 116

Perilous Tales: Bride of the Gator Ghoul!

 I got the table cleared off last night and set up for another game of Perilous Tales - this time using the "Swamp Fiend" as my villain, a wonderfully nebulous descriptor that I opted to fill with a Reaper Bones Gator-Man carrying an enormous bone-bladed axe. The locale was once again Hangman's Swamp, and my heroes were once again Cappy Boyd's Expatriate Mercenaries from Pulp Figures. 

 

Our Heroes:

• Cappy Boyd (Leader), with Eagle-Eyed and Tough
• Sgt. Piney (Teammate), with Hair Trigger
• "Boomer" Murphy (Teammate), with Demolitions Expert
• Zeb Walton (Teammate), with Medic
• Pvt. Junior Jones (Teammate), with Marksman

Our Objectives:

• Disrupt the Ritual
• Rescue the Prisoner
• Plant the Explosives

 The story so far: Socialite and heiress Margo Plumme-Duffe has been kidnapped, muddy bootprints leading from her hotel room into the sinister, venomous reaches of Hangman's Swamp. The Gator Ghoul, a terrifying half-man half-alligator, plans to enact a ritual that will transform her into his scaly bride. It's up to Cappy Boyd and his mercenary commandos to disrupt the ritual, rescue Margo, and plant enough explosives in Hangman's Swamp to make the USS Maine look like a champagne cork. 

The commandos start slowly, moving forward in a group and keeping Eyes Peeled against any potential threats; Cappy used his Eagle-Eyed skill to scope out the nearest threat marker, which was a "1" - the Gator Ghoul himself! Cappy moved forward to the swamp altar to begin the 3-round process of disrupting the ritual. Zeb and Boomer began working their way towards the cabin, while Piney moved up towards some ruins in the northwest corner of the board. 

Unfortunately, Piney got a little too close to a threat marker, and got attacked by one of the Gator Ghoul's alligators!

Having Eyes Peeled let Piney put a bullet in the alligator as it attacked, for 1 Wound.

The villain phase sent everything straight to hell on the second turn - a total of FOUR threat markers moved within 6" of the heroes and spawned their threats - two more alligators and the Gator Ghoul erupted from the swamp! The peril "Utterly Horrible" also activated, forcing Piney to make a Horror Check.

The overall Threat Level of the game was still low enough, and there were enough hidden threat markers, that the alligators and Gator Ghoul used the "Lurker" AI to govern their actions, which saved my bacon a bit. Junior Jones took Cappy's place messing with the altar, while Cappy raced to the cabin to rescue Margo.

Here, Cappy encountered the crazed Cap'n Stubbs, fallen under the Gator Ghoul's sway and responsible for kidnapping Margo. Cappy's appeals to Stubbs' humanity failed, forcing the commando leader to resort to a jaw-shattering haymaker. Piney and Boomer managed to lay down explosives on the ruins and the old tree, respectively, and Zeb managed to finish disrupting the ritual while Junior fought off another alligator. 

And then the Threat Level hit "7" and all the villains switched to the "Aggressive" AI. 

Piney was caught between two alligators, Junior succumbed to a third, while the Gator Ghoul and one of his pets made short work of Boomer before moving on to Zeb.

Untying Margo, Cappy planted the last bundle of dynamite in the cabin and urged her to make a run for it. The Gator Ghoul's plans were thwarted for now, and surely nothing could have survived the series of explosions that rocked the swamp...

THE END?

Tallying up my victory points...

• +3 for rescuing Margo
• +3 for setting three explosive markers
• +3 for disrupting the ritual
• +1 for my leader surviving

For a total score of 10, "a truly heroic performance!"

I had a really good time with this round of Perilous Tales, though I notice that 1) I forgot to apply Cappy's Toughness to the wounds he took from Cap'n Stubbs, and 2) I realize as I'm writing this that I gave Cappy the exact same traits that I gave Left LaRue in the last game. In fact, a lot of my traits carried over from the heroes of last game to this game. Using the Eyes Peeled action (letting any hero with Eyes Peeled fire off a shot at an activated threat marker) extra liberally has definitely boosted my success rate, but I want to make sure next game I give some other traits a go.

Latest Finished Figures

Not much to say here, just a photo dump of my most recent finished figures:

Mummy Lord and Queen by Reaper Miniatures, front row from Dark Fable Miniatures.

"Sleazy Merchant" from Forge of Ice, ladies from Dark Fable Miniatures.

Sir Reginald Plumm-Duffe flanked by his daughter Margo and batsman, Bunting. 
Figures by Pulp Figures.

Armed Archaeologists from Copplestone Castings

A few more Archaeologists from Copplestone Castings.

Catch-Up

I've been neglectful of this blog again - granted, I've been wildly inconsistent in the time I've been spending picking up a brush! It doesn't help that it's been ungodly hot here lately, that's for sure, but I have accomplished a bit. 

So let's see here...

I did get a set of five Raptor-style dinosaurs from Reaper's Bones 4 Kickstarter painted, in a color scheme I'm really happy with - the underbellies are basecoated in Yellowed Bone and highlighted with Creamy Ivory, the flanks are Auburn Shadow highlighted with Carrot-Top Red, and the dorsal surface and stripes Dark Skin highlighted with Dark Highlights.  The open mouths are Dusty Rose Pink highlighted with Blush Pink, and the eyes are Vallejo Livery Green. 

I'm backing Crooked Dice Games' Colony 87 Kickstarter, and that reminded me that I have some figures from Lead Adventure Miniatures' first Astropolis Kickstarter still sitting in my lead-pile.  I got those cleaned up and glued to their slotta-bases and puttied over the edges of the slots.  Maybe it's just because these were early casts in the molds' lives, but these figures required almost no clean-up, which is remarkable considering how much detail they're covered in.  I was so impressed I ordered another five packs this afternoon.  These have had their bases textured and are in the priming box right now. 

And finally, I had backed Dark Fable's most recent Kickstarter and got myself a baker's dozen of fabulously sinister cultists, as well as a pack of cult treasures which will make phenomenal treasure markers in Frostgrave or similar games.  I haven't begun cleaning or basing them yet. 

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.

Two More Frostgrave Warbands in the Works

Because it's not enough for me to tweak and improve my Summoner warband, right? I need a few more warbands as well.  I look at it as, if we're playing at the club and someone walks up and shows interest, I can hand them some figures and they can hop right in.

First up, the Choosers of the Slain, an Elementalist Warband:

The Wizard is Reaper's Ice Queen, while the rest of the warband is composed of Wargames Foundry Valkyries. I bought the Foundry figures on sale last Christmas, and it took them a month and a half to reach me.  A couple of the figures were miscast as well, with not enough metal entering the molds - I had a couple girls whose swords stopped at the hilt, and one of my fat ladies is supposed to have a spear but ended up with a staff instead.  No matter, really; I salvaged enough to make up my force.  Honestly at that point I was just so relieved to have received them at all that I didn't want to deal with trying to ship anything back!

Also, I'm excited to get to paint a couple of well-fed Scandinavian ladies.  Outside of Hasslefree, there aren't too many "plus-sized" female figures on the market.

Next up, the Cult of Set, which will be a Witch warband:

These figures are all from Dark Fable - I backed their recent Cult of Set kickstarter and got a couple packs of cultists and, as a returning backer, was entitled to a figure that was quite obviously James Earl Jones' character from 1982's CONAN THE BARBARIAN, slightly Egyptian-ized.  He'll be my Wizard, with a cultist holding a book and staff as his apprentice.  The other Cultists will be Thieves, and I bought a pack of Eunuch Guards to give me my Infantrymen.  I still need to get an Archer of some description to round out the band and finish off my points, but I haven't decided on a figure yet; nothing in Reaper's lines is really jumping out at me, it's a bit too pricy to order a pack from Dark Fable for a single figure, and I'm waiting for Crocodile Games' Archer Captain to come back into stock.

So if anyone out there has an extra Egyptian archer in 28mm they can part with, I might be willing to take them off your hands :)

These figures all came with 20mm plastic "slotta bases" - which I utterly can't stand, because the tabs never fit into the slots well at all.  I recently bought a lovely set of sprue-cutters and they clipped the tabs off these figures' feet like it was nothing at all, allowing me to glue them to my preferred Renedra flat plastic 25mm round bases.

Planning Ahead for the Painting Challenge

last year's logo

I may be getting ahead of myself, but it occurs to me that it's just a few months until Curt over at Analogue Hobbies announces the 7th annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  I think I should probably start thinking about stockpiling figures and getting what needs to be cleaned and primed done while the weather's warm enough to prime outside.  Nothing gets a drop of paint before the challenge begins - that would be cheating!

First up, taking stock of my current lead-pile.  Here's what's currently in my stash:

12x Foundry Valkyries
1x Reaper "Ice Queen"
1x Reaper "Cactus Joe, Gorilla Gunslinger"
1x Reaper "Magda Mintsilver, Female Dwarf"
1x Oathsworn "Female Fighter"
1x Oathsworn "Pregnant Villager" (given to me as a freebie for supporting their "Heroines in Sensible Shoes" Kickstarter)
1x Dark Fable "Prophet of Set"
6x Dark Fable "Cultists of Set"
1x Reaper "Bones" "Jabberwock"

pictured: little weirdo

Somewhere I have a box that Ray from Don't Throw a 1 sent me last year, containing 10 eastern cataphracts and a couple miscellaneous infantry figures, but darned if I can find it right now; last I saw it it was on the shelf in our bedroom closet, but since then Gina cleaned and reorganized the closet and now I have no idea where it is, and neither does she.  We'll find it.

The big challenge is having the closet door open; Atticus, our cat, is obsessed with the closets in our apartment and will take any opportunity to get inside, find a dark corner and squat there for hours.  We keep our closet doors rubber banded shut because he's figured out how to pull them open, and we don't want to risk the little weirdo pulling something down on himself and getting hurt.  So I'll have to lure Atticus out on to our enclosed patio or something and close him out so I can ransack the closet.

Once the Bonus Rounds get announced, I'm going to try to do as much as I can for them with Reaper Bones figures, seeing as how I can paint those in the winter without having to worry about priming them beforehand.  I've got a pretty good handle on painting Bones now so I think I'll have better results this year than I did last time around.

I think I want to give myself a big project for the winter as well, and I'm leaning towards assembling a couple retinues for Lion/Dragon Rampant.  I got the rulebook for Lion Rampant for Christmas last year and found it a really enjoyable read and looks like it'd be fun to play; I imagine Dragon Rampant, the fantasy version, would be much the same.

I'm looking at using 1/72 scale plastic figures for this project, to lighten the financial cost and to speed up the painting process; using the Plastic Soldier Review website, I tallied up the numbers and types of figures I would get from buying one each of Zvezda's Hundred Year War English boxed sets; I figure these would be a good choice for "generically medieval" retinues.  I did the math and figured out how to turn the contents of those two boxes into two full size, 24-point retinues for Lion Rampant with only about six figures left over for future projects.

While there's some Frostgrave interest growing at my FLGS, and Guild Ball is very popular among the local wargaming contingent, I'm hoping to stir up interest in other games as well, and I think Lion Rampant would do well if I can run a few high-visibility demo games.

For those who aren't interested in historical games that don't involve tanks, a purely fantasy army is called for, I think - brightly-colored knights aren't enough on their own, but brightly-colored knights and a dragon will draw people in.  For these people, I'm thinking of grabbing a couple boxes of Dark Alliance "Army of the Dead" figures and putting together a retinue of skeleton warriors to march inexorably across the land, laying waste to all in their path.

I've never painted 1/72 scale figures before; I had a couple boxes of them as toys as a kid, and my dad always hated them from his model kit building days because back in the 1960s and 1970s the tools needed to successfully paint these little soft plastic figures just weren't available.  I've been reading tutorials to figure out how best to apply paint to these figures and not have to worry about it immediately flaking off.  Should be an interesting exercise, to say the least.

So that's what I'm looking at right now for this winter's big painting challenge.  I think that'll put me at a good start and keep my morale up through the long, dark Rochester winter.

Dark Fable Egyptian Mummies (and Lady-Friends)

As promised, here are some quick snapshots of the Egyptian figures I painted this weekend:

Serving Pharaoh

So, I'm a bad boy, and bought more figures.  More specifically, I backed Mike Burns' Egyptian Miniatures IV Indiegogo.  It's in its final stretch so if you want some topless Egyptian women gracing your painting desk, now's the time to get in.  I kept my donation modest - just enough for a pack of figures and the "Mummy and Victim" add-on.  I figure there's only so many bare-boobed women I can sneak past my loving significant other, even in 28mm scale.