Sunday, January 28, 2018

Paint Table Saturday 221 - Still those Knights

Hi All,

For some reason I've been feeling too busy to post lately. Track season started on Saturday and my son ran the 3000m and the 800m. I think he PR'd the 3000 and ran a sub 3 minute 800m by my stopwatch, we'll have to see what the official time is.

Anyway, here are the Knights.


As is usual for me, I am frustrated with how the paint is going on and my putty job to cover the seams in the plastic horses is not very good. I like the perfect plastic putty, but I need to figure out a better way to apply it. I also need to get some precision sanding stuff. Sanding between the horses legs has been difficult.

I also have been reading my Adventurer Conqueror King books.



Produced by Autarch, I got these from DriveThru RPG about three years ago. I really like how they develop the Old School notion of what we were trying to do in AD&D. None of this, I'm going to go and fight gods bullshit and become 30th level. We were trying to make enough money from adventuring to make a keep somewhere and lord it over peasants in our retirement. My original intent with this was to help me flesh out my map and build up the realms. Mighty Empires is a little too abstract for me. I will use it as the basis for my idea "Insignificant Realms!"

I'm hoping to get the knights finished and posted on Monday in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge and the Old World Army Challenge. Check those out for some absolutely fantastic painted figures.

Happy painting!

Monday, January 15, 2018

When you should be painting, make heraldry.

Hi All,

Well, what with Track, practicing ropedart, and "Family" time in front of the TV I didn't get much of anything painted yesterday.

I did manage to noodle around on the Inkwell Ideas Coat of Arms creator to make the heraldry for those Knights of the Realm though.

It took me a fair amount of noodling around and my recollection of heraldic terms made it a little more trial and error, but I got something that seems to work. These are more or less in the order I've ranked them up and will paint them.

No names yet. The Buck's head is really front view but the software didn't have that. You can add your own vectors, but I just wanted these to be quick and dirty. The colors of the creatures are set by the colors of the decals I have. For the displayed eagle I thought white and blue would contrast well with the red eagle. The quartered Red and Blue is for the Viscomte. I used the seated lion because I didn't see the rampant lion. The blue lion is because I have two Lion shields. This guys head dress is some kind of bat winged almost lion thing, the first departure from the matchy, matchy thing I've done with the first three. Lastly the bull. This one was also supposed to be just the head, head on. Again, just making these quick and dirty. To me, although very simple, the black bull on plain white seems more visually appealing. Unfortunately I do not have a bull head dress so he will have the Dragon. I'll make up some reason why. Now I just have to think of what color to make it. Maybe just keep with black.

It's the Martin Luther King Jr holiday today, so no work for me, but a lot of errands to run. Hope you have a productive day.

Thanks for looking.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Paint Table Saturday 219 - Chevaliers D'HHonneur metal blocked

Hi All,

Got a little bit of painting done today. I finished prepping the Knights of the Realm and primed some retainers.


I rigged up some new holders using bottle caps, bamboo skewers, blue tack and hot glue.



Retainers, a couple of wizards and that Reaper Dormur that I need to finish the base on.


Close up of the Baron leading the retainers. You may remember I cracked him straight through the middle. I filled him with Jet super glue and a fine point tip. You can still see a partial crack on the left.


I also received my Zombies of Karr-Keel set 2 today.


Great figures at a great price.

Thanks for looking.

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Paint Table Saturday 218 - Chevaliers D' Honneur

Hi All,

On the table today we have one of the next units of my Bretonnian Army for the Old World Army Challenge. 4 Chevalier D'Honneur and a 15th level Hero (Viscomte) to lead them.


Just cutting things off the sprue and cleaning up mold lines right now. I also have some retainers with spears, and some with crossbows for another 20 figures I could do, but they also need a little more prep so I'm thinking the five for this month. It would have been nice to have these guys all ready to go before the challenge kicked off, but I'm never totally ready for these things.

Here are the pics of those figures I finished on December 30th.



Two views of the foot knights lead by a baron (Level 5 hero) to show the banner and figures.


15 Peasants with bows. The front rank are my original ones bought back around 1990, then most of the rest are Wargames Foundry with two Plastic Archers that my brother gave me. I believe he said they came with the video game Shadow of the Horned Rat.


One Chevalier D'Epee to round out the points. I was mostly successful at getting rid of the join seams. I still have to figure out how to fix the one miscast horse I have.


Group shot that gives away my impromptu studio a little.

Anyway thanks for looking.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Ambull Extraction

Hi All,

So here we have the last game of 2017 played and the first post of 2018 written. This was another Ambull scenario, this time using the Shadow War: Armageddon rules.

Dai had brought two kill teams, I had my Ambulls and monsters. The table and all the scenery was provided by Great Escape Games in Sacramento. I had never been there before and enjoyed myself very much. Nicely stocked store, tons of room for play in the back.

I think I need to do an analysis on close combat, the Ambulls are proving very deadly, and on the probability of random monsters showing up. What with the Old World Army challenge taking up a lot of my time and energy I was also not quite as prepared as I should have been. Cheat sheets, handouts and some tables for various things would be good to have.

That being said , Dai and densmol were great sports and I think we all had fun. See what you think.












Special additions to the scenario were that Felipe and his "buckets" could be grabbed in lieu of the Male Ambull. I used the artillery scatter dice again for the movement of all monsters as well as Felipe and Chochtoxtoc. It may seem odd at times, but I think it adds an interesting element to the game. Aside from figuring out close combat and stats for all the other monsters, I need to figure out how to randomly generate monsters better. We agreed that rolling doubles wasn't frequent enough, we then switched to bullseye on the artillery deviation die, which was too much. Anyway, I think we need more civilians to get in the way and maybe random gangs to pop up and start something.

Hope you had a good holiday break and are ready to get back to the serious task of hobbying in 2018.

Thanks for looking.