Them Bones.. painted Undead army

In the last Blog post, my newly painted undead forces took to the field. 

I thought I'd have a go at taking some slightly better pictures and a note on how I painted the Oathmark skeletons which make up the bulk of this host..

The 'heroes' are a mix of Reaper Bones and a mounted D&D figure, and the giant Wurms are 3D prints, figure sourced on Thingiverse.

The Oathmark skeletons are really nice figures, and I was quite keen to get the 'ancient bronze' look right. I ended up using a bit of a mix of ideas from various blogs and videos and really like the result.

They were primed with Army Painter 'Skeleton Bone' , then given a wash of the GW contrast 'Skeleton Horde'.. Some of the skeletons also had an additional dark wash and drybrush with Iraqi Sand. The spear shafts were done with Vallejo German Camo green with a light deck tan drybrush, and the bows Vallejo Deck Tan. The few straps and rags of clothing were all Vallejo 'English Uniform'. 

The crucial antique bronze effect was a done by applying GW Warploque bronze, a wash of GW 'Mechanical Nihalac Oxide' and some green ink splotches. The whole lot was washed in AP Strong Tone, along with the leather and cloth bits.

The background in these pictures is a poor print of a really nice free picture from Jon Hodgson

Everything is based up on rounds, the skeletons are all on pennies, which allow me to use them to play Dragon Rampant, Midgard, or any other game really (except perhaps Oathmark!) and although I'm telling myself that the army is 'done' at 24 archers and 50 warriors.. I suspect their numbers will swell!

Some of the army 'at play' recently

Going underground.. Greeks, skeletons and giant wurms!

This Sunday saw the 'chums' gather at the Sherwood soldier shack for another game of Midgard, the upcoming heroic battle rules that James has been writing and we've been playtesting this last year or so. See James blog for far more detail on the battle and the rules.

James and I lead the undead forces of Hades against Paul and Tom, who commanded Basil and his Greek forces.. their mission was to escort the captured Cerberus out of the underworld. It was a nip and tuck affair, the undead almost losing the day, but being sneakk sneaksters, managed to recapture the pooch just in time. 

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day, and great to get my old hoplites and newly painted skeletons out on the table for a bash in the underworld. I was a bit brain fogged so handy to have the rules author on your team!

Next blog post I think I'll post some better pictures of the skeleton army (which I thought I'd 'finished' but now want to expand further!)

Tom and James setting up

skeleton archers (Oathmark minis) with some Celtic undead

all very noir

One of the skeleton champions (Reaper Bones mini)

Orpheus with Cerberus on a leash!

Hades arrives and looks decidedly unimpressed

Fiery horsey skeleton champion

The Greeks

Parthenios dropping in to slay Hades. Cheeky blighter.

Deianeira, casting mist about the place

Undead champions 'inspiring' the legions of bones

the forces clash and many bones are crunched

Parthenios eventually finds his end, swallowed by the Wurms

On the Greek right, the undead make some headway

And finally recapture Cerberus, who turns on the Greeks

Not so quiet on the Western front.. WW1 28mm game

Despite not playing many games with actual people of late, I've been painting quite a bit and just thought recently that perhaps I ought to update this blog with some Skellies and Prussians.. but before that, a brief report of this weekends actual face to face game.. I have to say it was great to meet up with old gaming chums and roll some dice again. We even got in a summer stroll around the local graveyard, seeking out Rorkes' Drift defenders, and a nice shared tapas lunch at the 'local'!

On Sunday, I drove over to Scrivs 'wargaming annex', picking up James on the way. I had nothing to bring to the day, not having played any WW1 stuff for a very long time, and sold the few figures I had in the last millenium! The chaps have a combined excellent collection, of course, of figures and terrain, which were laid out for a game to try out the 'Bello Ludi' ruleset. None of us had played them we were  interested to see what kind of a game they would give us. We were conscious that we've been playing wargames for 30-40 years and these rules are stated to be aimed at beginners, so we expected some abstractions. (Not a bad thing, just a thing).

The scenario pitted three German platoons (each platoon consisted of a CO and four 12 man sections, a mix of LMG and 'bombers') against a slightly less numerous French force holding a defensive position around a village and local wood - both pretty well bombed out (I believe James set this scenario in the Verdun area, but I'm afraid my WW1 knowledge isn't great)

The rules were certainly easy enough to pick up.. we came across some things that we thought we'd rather tweak.. toning down the effectiveness of VB gunners for example, and refining the rules around cover.. a brief reset and phase two played after our pub lunch tested these ideas satisfactorily. James had also picked up the cards which added a lot to the game, but we were firing off ideas for some much more WW1-specific cards which we thought could really add some period flavour.

I enjoyed the game. The rules worked okay.. I struggled to imagine the scenario where a WW1 tabletop miniatures game would be used for a 'team building' exercise as described by the rules authors intent.. I'd imagine 'shiny' classic toy soldiers, or something like SYW? I was also surprised that an introductory ruleset was dependent on a quirky order dice (even thought these worked very well) and a deck of unique cards, rather than sticking to D6 or similar, but that's just idle head scratching, and not a criticism. I can see me trying these out for some 1866 or 1870 games when I've got enough figures painted up!

Oh, and the Germans won in the end..despite some very stiff resistance against the odds.

French reserves move up

a view across the Germans advance

French machine guns pick their targets

The woods are heavily defended

late arrival of artillery supported the german assault

Heroic action from the French bombers!

PARTIZAN WARGAMES SHOW MAY 22

Thoroughly enjoyed donning the Midgard T shirt and joining James and the chums to put on the Battle of Degsastan -  Saxons of Northumbria taking on some unruly Dal Riada celtic types.. (see here for James'  pre-game brief).

Partizan was great- it seemed very busy and was loud and warm all day.. I only managed until lunch time anyway, having had a rather long couple of days scooting to Cornwall and back..

The game drew a lot of interest and I spent most of the morning talking to visitors about the rules, the figures and the battle.. James won the 'best demo game' (again?!) , so it must have gone down well!

Had a moment today where I stopped and looked around and was truly grateful for being able to enjoy the hobby like this. We almost take for granted being able to play such great games and I imagined young teenage me, counting my pennies to buy half a dozen 15mm minis from Tabletop Games, seeing pictures of the games I've taken part in and posted on this blog in recent years.. Partizan was absolutely buzzing today and honestly no sign that this hobby is 'dying', not anytime soon anyway!

Pooped, so enough words for now.. some pictures, along with a number of some of the games on display.. as ever, only a small sample of what was on offer..

Morris and Chums - Battle of Degsastan

Today's crew before battle commenced

There was a lot of interest from visitors

figures pooled from our joint collections, we think around 1,000 ?

Battle is joined!

The Saxons sacrifice predicted an inauspicious day, it was not to be..

The Dal Riadan army prepares to meet the Northumbrians

Final checks before the doors opened

Best Demo Game! (and a Saxon victory)

Perry Miniatures - Battle of Dorking 1870

No apologies, they were next door and always put on a gorgeous game..

Steve Jones - Freemans Farm AWI

Also next door, Steve is also guaranteed to always put on a gorgeous game..

Steve and Henry Hyde sharing a chuckle over his new book?

Some other games

There were so many more that I missed or didn't get good photos of..

Anschluss Wargames 12mm Sicily, looked great!

Absolutely stunning table

Simon Miller's Roundway Down.. on quite a slope

Lovely ACW Riverine.. all scratch-built models, very impressive

Modern wargaming is a broad church...

Barry Hilton's beautiful naval game, very hard to photograph

Nick (Toofatlardies) and his perfect dutch houses

Like a Stonewall group playing Hougoumont