A Retro Warband for Dragon Rampant

As I pressed on with the KoW 'Middle Earth Good Guys' army I realised I would soon have enough painted stuff to put together a full 24 point warband for Osprey's brilliant Dragon Rampant game.

I already had plenty of Beornings. I chose six of the unarmed ones to represent two units of 'lesser warbeasts'. Dragon Rampant does include rules to make a unit into 'werebeasts', which I will probably do in the future, if I make some 'man-mode' Beornings to compliment these figures.

I added a unit of Rohan warriors with mail, sword and shield. I use 12 to represent a full regiment in Kings of War, and that's also the recommended number for a foot unit in Dragon Rampant. The Leader with the plumed helmet can lead the warband.

Next I added some Riders of Rohan- lightly armoured with bows. I'll use 5 for a troop in KoW, but adding just one more gives me the recommended strength for a cavalry unit in DR.

Lastly I wanted an Ent. I don't have an original Minifigs Ent, and anyway, they're really a bit too small, so I made this chap from Milliput very quickly ast night. With the right paint job I think he fits in quite well. He counts as a Greater Warbeast in DR, and will be part of an elf ally contingent in my KoW army I think.

The finished Warband! Now for some baddies...

Old School Middle Earth

In a few weeks' time, my gaming group will be starting its second escalation league for Kings of War- building an army a little at a time, in 500 point increments, and comparing progress. It really helps with motivation, and gets you a playable army in no time. Here's the dwarf army I built during the last one.

A little while ago I acquired a few hundred very old fantasy miniatures from a friend, and I intend to use these as the main source for a 'Middle Earth Good Guys' army, possibly using an allied Herd and Kingdoms of Men list. Many of the figures  were homecast, either using Prince August casting kits or by recasting (mostly Minifigs Mythical Earth range) existing miniatures. Recasting isn't something I take lightly, but it's hard to object in this case- it's been done with more enthusiasm than accuracy, and purely for personal use, many decades ago. It's also given many of the miniatures a pleasingly indistinct look that reminds me of Spencer Smith miniatures. I've repainted a few already in a 'shiny toy soldier' style that I really like- it suits the figures and is very quick to achieve. Here are some Beornings, Wargs, a Winged Nazgul and some assorted knights.

The Beornings I'll be able to use for the 'Good Guys', and I'll supplement them first with some Riders of Rohan. Here's a test miniature which I painted as a banner bearer, following Tolkien's description of the horse colour, hair, shield device and banner.

And here's the miniature before I started. Under the dust of years, it's got a very nice solid colour scheme, and a great banner painted in washes over a dot matrix printed pattern which has a sort of  'Persian Rug' feel to it.

RPG Adventurers

Since reviewing those Caesar goblins, and coming to the conclusion that they would be of far more use for RPG encounters than for wargaming, I've been bitten by the D&D bug. I've been looking closely at 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons as well as a few alternatives, and have been listening to quite a few podcasts of live 5th ed. D&D play (favourite so far being Adventure Zone). I've also been taking stock of my old-school RPG minis, and wondering what needs adding. I've been trying to stick to stuff from the '70s or early '80s, and the latest addition, the Hinchliffe Dwarf on the end, fits the bill and rounds out my party of adventurers nicely. I'll thank you to ignore the fact that he is the same size as the humans, and taller than the elf- we'll put it down to sub-species variation!

Minifigs Knight Hospitaller

one of those old Minifigs knights, dehorned, re-lanced and repainted. I wasn't too precious about the freehand- I think a certain quickness about the whole thing is better when painting in this simple style, or you risk it looking overcooked. Or perhaps i'm overthinking it, as is my wont! I have to say I think this horse is one of the finest sculpts I can think of - I love it!

Minifigs knights to strip and repaint

I'm hoping in the next week or so to get my 10mm KoW army finished to 1000 points. After that's done, I've an urge to start a new army in the usual Kings of War scale. I do have ideas for a Nightstalkers army of scratchbuilt weirdness, but I'm also feeling an itch to do something medieval that I can use in other systems too perhaps a Milites Christi army of Templars and Hospitallers and Kingdom of Jerusalem with Turcopole allies and whatnot. They'll be usable in KoW Historical, Saga C+C, Lion Rampant, Hail Caesar and just about anything else. Add in a pegasus or two, a griffin maybe and some other weirdness and then I can use it in KoW, Dragon Rampant, etc. as well .- One possibility is to build on the test mini from a few days ago and use mainly Fireforge plastics. This is not a bad idea- I have lots of Fireforge ready and waiting on the sprue, as well as bits of an old army that would be easily rebased and touched up. They're nice models and I know I can get them looking good reasonably quickly. However, I've a real hankering to expand the 'shiny retro toy soldier' look I've used for Frostgrave and skirmish stuff into a whole army, and the old 25mm Minifigs stuff (still mostly available from Miniaturefigurines.co.uk) is just beautiful- to my eye at least. It's true 25mm scale though, quite a bit smaller than modern 28s, but as result it looks much better on the 'standard' wargaming base sizes: 20mm square for infantry and 25x50mm for cavalry. The Fireforge plastics require quite a bit of planning and nudging to sit happily on those sizes without tails being rammed against the muzzles of the next rank.

As it happens, I have a regiment of old minifigs Nevskiy knights bought cheaply that I can have a play with to see how they'll look before buying new ones. They'll need their horns snipping off so they look a little less Teutonic, and I'd like to replace those lances with wire ones- do lead lances ever look properly straight? First things first- into the Biostrip20 to get the paint off.

Creatures and Warbands for Frostgrave.

I've been playing a little Frostgrave lately, and I've been using it as an excuse to paint a lot of models from the 1970s in a very clean bright and shiny 'toy soldier' look that I think looks good and suits the era of the miniatures. I've also created a few larger scratch built creatures, painted in the same style.

Here's my Giant Spider, made from dressmakers' pins, bamboo skewers and Milliput.

...and here's my Giant Worm, made from Milliput again, and a child's coat hanger! The orc-for-scale here is an old Prince August one.

Lastly, here's some sort of slime monster composed entirely of bamboo skewers and hot glue. The other figure is a golem, probably by Minifigs.

I hope you can see the kind of look I'm going for with the paintjobs. It polarises opinion a bit I think, but I really like it, and it's QUICK! A huge plus. Here are two of my Frostgrave warbands which also sometimes see action in Song of Blades and Heroes and Open Combat as well as dungeon crawls and whatnot. I'm hoping to expand both into opposing good and evil armies for Dragon Rampant.

THE GOODIES

The Fellowship of the Red Wyrm

THE BADDIES

The Thrall of Kronos

These two warbands are mostly composed of old Minifigs, Ral Partha, Prine August and Minot stuff. The giant mushroom is a 'proof of concept' for a fungal forest I'm hoping to finish later.