Wargames Factory Spartans - Base 1

Happy New Year, wargames and RPG enthusiasts! As they say, what you do this night will be what you do for the rest of the year, so I ate some tortilla chips and guacamole and assembled some toy soldiers.

I had decided I would assemble and base my Wargames Factory Greeks, Amazons and Persians for Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames - I bought a stack of 50mm x 100mm bases to glue groups of figures to; eight figures to a base for heavy infantry, six figures to a base for archers and skirmishers, four figures to a base for cavalry.

In proper gamer fashion, I rolled a die to determine which unit I'd do first - my plan is for three bases of Hoplites, three bases of Persian Archers, three bases of Persian Immortals, and three bases of Amazon Archers/Skirmishers.

The dice came up with Hoplites, so I pulled out the box and got to work after dinner.  It's been a long time since I've assembled a multipart plastic kit like this - I think the last time I'd done one of these was back in high school when I was still doing Warhammer figures, more then a decade ago now.

So with this first batch of eight Hoplites there's a couple where the poses ended up a little wonky but by the time I reached the sixth Hoplite or so I was feeling pretty confident, and the next eleven bases I'm going to assemble will look darn good.

They're not glued down to the base yet - I'm going to sticky-tac them to a couple of popsicle sticks, prime them, paint them, paint and decal their shields, glue those on, and then glue the figures to the base.

The Kraken Wakes

Here's the first set of shots of Cthulhu finished:

As you can see, the "nature-inspired" pattern I mentioned yesterday has resolved itself into a series of leopard-spots, done in dark green and a deep, nearly-black purple to break up all the medium green and because who else has a leopard-print Cthulhu? No one, that's who.

I've got to start getting ready to drive out to Buffalo for the finale of Christmas, so some close-up shots of things like his eyes and the spots themselves will have to wait until I get back.

From The Eternal Sea He Rises

Work has been continuing at an excellent pace on my Reaper Cthulhu - in fact, by the time you read this, I'll have completed work on him.  Yes, my painting is happily outpacing my blogging, but I wanted to stop and show you some "in progress" shots.

First off, a good shot of the tonal changes on his belly and thighs:

Next, a headshot, showing the color gradients from back of skull to tentacles:

His nails have been done; it doesn't show up real well here, but they're a very dark gray, not quite black:

And this is the beginning of something a little sneaky; I decided that I didn't want my Cthulhu to just be simply green...I wanted some patterning to him, something inspired by nature.  My first thought was a fine stippling with a dark green down the spine, but that morphed a bit...

One Hour Wargames

I got Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames: Practical Tabletop Battles for Those with Limited Time and Space on my Kindle yesterday and gave it a quick read-through.  For an ultra-light, ultra-streamlined game I have to say I like it; it looks like there's some things it's not built for (wargaming the Mongol Invasions of the 1200s, for example) but Thomas comes right out and is open about it, especially in the chapter on Ancients Wargaming - no horse archers, no scythed chariots, no elephants, but still a solid little set of rules.

The rules for the nine eras of warfare - Ancient, Dark Ages, Medieval, Pike & Shot, Horse & Musket, American Civil War, Horse & Sabre, Machine Age, WWII - are simple and straight forward, filling generally no more than 2, or at most 3, screens on my Kindle, and involve armies composed of 4-6 "elements" chosen from a short list of element types - for example, the Ancients list is composed of Infantry (including Hoplites, Roman Legions, etc.), Archers (such as those employed by the Achaemenid Persians), Skirmishers (quick-moving Peltast-types) and Cavalry.  Games consist of turns, with each player performing all their actions - moving, shooting, melee, etc. -  at a go, then their opponent doing so.  Elements are removed from play after suffering 15 "hits," which are calculated by rolling a six-sided die and adding or subtracting modifiers for troop type, terrain type, etc.

The rules take up maybe a third of the book, and then the second third is different scenarios to play through - and Neil Thomas really kind of opened my eyes here, because he comments on how often "tournament" games are two perfectly matched armies lined up and slugging it out in a pitched battle, and I realized that yeah, every time I've seen a Warhammer tournament that's exactly what's going on at every table.

The final third of the book covers solo and campaign play, which I'm looking forward to experimenting with as well.

I think once I finish Cthulhu (which honestly shouldn't be long now - I'm at the point of doing detail work, more or less) I'll base my Greeks and Persians as described here and start playing around with these rules.  I ordered a stack of 50mm x 100mm bases as a Christmas present to myself, enough to base two full-sized armies for One-Hour Wargames -- a little smaller than the 4-6" frontage Thomas recommends, but still a respectable size.

I think I can squeeze on 8 figures to a base (two rows of four) for Infantry such as my Hoplites, and then do six to a base for Archers (such as Persians) and Skirmishers (such as, perhaps, my Amazons).  Or maybe just four to a base for Skirmishers.  This also models the relative toughness and damage-dealing capacity of each type of element.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All

As a gift, the first draft playest rules for A.R.M.Y.M.E.N. is now available for download on the right there.

Gina was kind enough to give me a set of noise-cancelling headphones for Christmas - I can now safely work in my office without having the endless gossip of the people around me drowning out my music or podcasts - I'm thinking I'll test-drive these babies on Monday with the Hardcore History podcast's series on the Mongol invasions - nice, relaxing listening with an educational bent; I strongly recommend it.  I listened to the Mongol series almost two years ago when I was at my last job and enjoyed it; I've got some vague ideas about building a Mongol DBA army and some of their enemies in 1/72 scale plastic once I'm done with my 28mm plastics so I'm jonesing to listen to that again.

I've gotten a little more work done on Cthulhu with highlighting and shading, but it's subtle enough that while he looks good to the eye, the camera isn't picking up the tonal changes real well.  Pictures to come once I've got something done that will show up.

Gina's estranged from her family, unfortunately, but we spent the evening with my mom's side of the family last night and had a very good time and on Sunday we're driving out again for brunch with my parents and sister.  This is our first Christmas actually spent together despite having been a couple for four years now; long distance relationships and all that.

Can I Paint With Madness?

Just a quick post to show that I am finally moving forward with Cthulhu - he's all primed and a base coat of "Spanish Olive" acrylic paint has been laid down.

Going Mad with Cthulhu; Charging Forward with A.R.M.Y.M.E.N.

I'm currently a little frustrated with my Reaper Bones Cthulhu project; it's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die...ahem.  Sorry, CASABLANCA flashback there.  As I was trying to say, it's the same story many painters have had regarding Bones; getting the paint to stick.

I primed the head and body separately because I wanted to be able to paint a lot of the detail in the head without straining my wrist holding up the entire figure.  Even though I primed them the same way, at the same time, in the same conditions, the body is completely fine, but the head is tacky and flaking.  I tried putting the head in baking soda, as was recommended to me, for 24 hours (I ended up giving it 72 because I haven't had much time to work on painting lately), to alleviate the tackiness and this doesn't seem to have done anything.

I'm going to have to think on this.

***

In other news, the first draft of my Accessory Rules Making Your Military Escapades Nerdy has completed, and comes to 15 pages including "identifying your troops" photos.  I've got a couple friends interested in helping playtest the game, which I find heartening.  I decided to splurge on playtest materials; instead of going to my local junk shop and buying a $1 bag of badly-cast, detailless army men made from brittle plastic, I spent a bit more and ordered some better-detailed, well-cast Greens and Tans, as well as a couple vehicles,  I also did a quick walk-through my local pet store to check out the plastic aquarium plants for sale - I'll be back on my next paycheck to pick up a few I can build a forest from.

As an aside, while I have Amazon Prime and can get free two-day shipping, that would put my delivery date for my stuff at December 24th.  My dad's a mail carrier, and I know what hell this time of year is for them.  I'm not about to put more work on my mail carrier, so I opted for a slower delivery and so won't be playtesting until around the first of the year.

If anyone's interested, let me know and I'll put up the playtest rules for A.R.M.Y.M.E.N. up for download.