HAWKS

Rob Dean

In the previous post I mentioned that I made a road trip to Michigan to celebrate Christmas with my family.  My brother and I have been working on a fantasy gaming project most of the year, with the intention of running some games at conventions in 2016 using our vintage miniatures collections.

This was supposed to have been a simple operation, but was complicated this year by the Ral Partha/Ironwind Metals Kickstarter to revive Chaos Wars and put a lot of the Fantasy Collector Series elves and orcs back into production, and by a related urge to go into collector mode and recreate the armies that I owned and/or longed for as an adolescent gamer back in the mid-1970s with the help of eBay.

Because my brother lives in Indiana and I live in Maryland, our opportunities to put games together have been limited.  He visited here in May, and we met at Gencon in August.  We started discussing the possibility of doing some gaming around the margins of the Christmas visit, and things started falling into place when my aunt offered to let us use the game room in her basement, so we had a 4×6 table available without having to bring folding tables.  At that point we decided that we could play Chaos Wars, but that we would not reasonably be able to put on a Ringbearer test game.

My brother offered to bring the terrain, based around a Cigar Box Battles ground cloth, and some troops, and I packed up my travel kit as well.  I’ve showed pictures of elements of this before.  I did some research and concluded that a 12 liter Really Useful Box was the largest that would fit under the seat in a typical airline cabin, so I built my 1/72 scale fantasy skirmish project to fit into one.  It is all ready, just “grab and go”, and I brought it this time to provide the basis for scenery for a 25mm skirmish game, just in case.  For this trip, I also added the original edition paper copy of Chaos Wars.

Since I was driving, not flying, I also loaded two 6-liter Really Useful Boxes with a selection of multiply-based vintage Ral Partha figures from my collection.  I strapped the whole assembly together with a couple of lengths of nylon webbing and a “Strap-a-handle”.  The final dimensions were about 11x17x12 inches.

Most of my mass fantasy armies are based on 60mm square wood bases, with flexible steel bottoms (from Litko).  My boxes are then lined with sheet magnets.  As can be seen from the photo below, the 60mm square bases do not tile the box with 100% efficiency.  I can fit 18 bases per box, which leaves some extra space.  I filled that with figures on individual steel washer bases, or some of the newer Aurora Project bases, which are one inch wood circles with Litko flexible steel bottoms.  This seems to hold pretty well.  The two box pictures were taken at the end of the return trip, after an eleven hour drive, and everything is still holding.  I did deliberately leave home one or two taller figures that past experience as shown to have insufficient “grip”.

I also had to leave at home a couple of units of lancer cavalry whose lances are a little too tall to fit in the 6-liter boxes.  Eventually, I expect to have a 12-liter box with the magnet sheets for overly tall figures, but the dimensions will limit that to road travel rather than air.

In the previous post I gave a link to a battle report on our Chaos Wars battle, which I posted to the Ral Partha forums.  Since my brother had brought troops and had a scenario plan, we only ended up using about half the units I brought with me, but the package is easy to carry once all loaded and assembled, so it wasn’t a big deal.  While we didn’t end up playing an individual figure skirmish game, I will note that I chose the individually-based figures with an eye toward that, just to keep options open.

With all of the figures showing up from eBay, and with the expectation of the imminent arrival of the Ral Partha Kickstarter box with 200 more, I have been trying to keep up with painting at any opportunity.  I took my full travel paint kit with me (rather than the TSA-compatible flying kit), and had a couple of mornings to work on things.  I only finished two figures, though.  The left-handed elf archer is a Tom Meier sculpt from the old Ral Partha 98-006 Dungeon Party boxed set, an eBay acquisition, and the female on the right is an H-21, a warrior woman (looks more like a rogue to me) from the Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age range, one of three figures from that range that I stripped and repainted this year that have been in my collection since they were new.

Basing is still in progress on those two.

I bought a copy of the Osprey wargames rules Lion Rampant when they were released, but time management got away from me, and I still have yet to try playing them.  They have received some good buzz online, though, and we have a couple of HAWKs members who are working on retinues. When it was announced that Osprey would be publishing a fantasy variant, I went ahead and pre-ordered a copy on speculation.  One of the club members sent out a link to  a review of Dragon Rampant just before Christmas.  It looked like this was going to be something I would play. Unfortunately, my pre-order copy was due to arrive after our departure on the day we drove to Michigan, so I splurged on a Kindle copy and was able to read it on the trip up, during the periods when it wasn’t my turn to be the driver. (Thank you, Irene!)

My older son was also staying at my aunt’s house, where we had staged the Chaos Wars game on Saturday, and was kind enough to assist me on Sunday morning in playing through the rules, with a couple of warbands I built with what was in my travel boxes.  He is not a fan of games using activation rolls, so I knew that he would be a bit dubious, and we did have a couple of turns where we passed the dice back and forth as we each failed to activate anything.

Dragon Rampant uses a freeform system for representing things on the table.  In the medieval/historical version, units have either 6 or 12 figures (generally corresponding to mounted/foot), and casualties are intended to be removed.  In the fantasy version, units have 6 or 12 strength points, and you are free to depict the unit with whatever seems appropriate.  If the unit does not have 6 or 12 models, casualties/damage are shown by markers on the table.  Since I didn’t grab my gamemaster box for this trip, we made do with dice.  This ends up reminding me (favorably) of Hordes of the Things, in that you can generally find some game category (with the possible addition of special abilities) to allow you to assign values to pretty much any miniature you might wish to use.

I took a band consisting of a dragon (greater war beast with optional flame attack and flying), a land dragon captain (heroic elite cavalry, depicted as a single figure), some lizard riders (javelin armed rather than bows, with reduced range and a cost break), and some goblin infantry (being green-skinned, they were deemed to be a sort of reptile-man for the day).

Norman’s warband had six units, a heroic single-figure heavy rider leader, some heavy foot elf pikes, some sharpshooting elf bows, a spell-slinging single-figure elf princess using the “scouts” profile for stealth and ranged attacks, and allied centaur heavy and light warriors (using the heavy and light rider profiles).  As expected for a trial game, we had to flip through the rules a bit (difficult with the Kindle edition, I’m afraid) and I’m sure that we missed some options as far as our actions went.  There is a quick reference sheet in the book, so I expect that having a couple of those on the table will reduce the need to flip pages considerably.  In fact, I tend to expect that one will be able to play this from memory and your warband profile sheet by the end of the first game.

I’m looking forward to trying this out with the other interested club members soon.  I note that there is a (joke?) rule in this game giving a glory (victory point) bonus to warbands consisting entirely of pre-1984 miniatures.  My centaurs in this game are right on the borderline, but everything else on the table was well within that, so I expect that will not go over well with the rest of the club when I try to (habitually) claim that bonus…

We drove home on Monday, and I was pleased to find that my Ral Partha/Ironwind Chaos Wars Kickstarter box had arrived while I was away, so that made for a nice post-Christmas surprise. (OK, not that much of a surprise–they were very good about keeping us updated on shipping.)

Mine was full of all manner of Chaos Wars goodness.  I’d ordered the large version of the starter set, a package of additional command figures, a unit of elf pikes, an elven colossus, and the new figures sculpted for the Kickstarter.

They threw in samples of skeletons and dwarves, which will apparently be the next Kickstarter.

We also got a handful of bonus figures, originally all from the Personalities and Things That Go Bump in the Night range.  The winged panther is new to me.

The elven colossus, shown here with the new sculpted Tom Meier elves, was originally sold in the early years of Ral Partha as part of a small series of 54mm painters’ figures, and resembles, in larger scale, the earliest of the Ral Partha elves.  They suggest using it as a giant animated statue with the 25s, and I think that I’ll do mine in verdigrised bronze, a technique that I’ll being trying out on some Bones designated as Frostgrave statues before I try it on this.

I’ll try to post some New Years project thoughts tomorrow.  While I am really enjoying this revisitation of fantasy gaming, I also want to make time for the Not Quite Seven Years War again in the new year.

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Buck

The initial setup for Duncan’s World War I skirmish using Combat Patrol

As is the HAWKs holiday custom, Duncan hosted a game at his house last night.  He has been hosting a game sometime on or about Christmas and/or New Year’s Eve, depending on how the holidays fall in the week for some years.  This year he chose to use Combat Patrol for a semi-reprise of one of his WWI 28mm scenarios.

We Germans had to capture the bridge, church, and courtyard

In the scenario, we Germans had gained a small foothold across the canal (to the right of the picture above), and our mission was to expand that hold and push the British off the table.  There wasn’t enough time to actually push every Brit off the table, but Duncan said capturing the bridge pictured, the church in the background, and the other buildings around the courtyard would be evidence that we were achieving our mission.  While we initially outnumbered the British, we expected them to be reinforced at some point in the game.

The initial position of one of my squads as they prepare to assault the building on the other side of the alley.

Duncan’s figures were mounted for another system and were mostly mounted in pairs.  This occasionally created some issues tracking wounds and figuring out how to represent some morale effects, but in general it worked fine.  The buildings were a mix of manufacturers, including Grand Manor, Old Glory, and Miniature Building Authority.  I think the table was very nice.  As with all games involving a large number of buildings, there was some effort involved with getting figures in an out of the various floors of the buildings.

Geoff squared off against Rob’s squads in what became a bloodbath.

In Combat Patrol (which was written for World War II) squads are generally broken into two or three teams (depending on the country), which are the atomic unit of the game.  Duncan treated each early WWI squad as the atomic element.  I was a little worried at first that letting then men fire at the same time would either slow the game and/or prove too deadly to one side if the other got advantageous activation card draws early in the game.  The Combat Patrol mechanics didn’t seem to bog down with those large atomic elements, and the dense terrain with lots of protection seemed to mitigate the deadliness of fire.  In general, I’d say the rules worked fine for this historical period.

My Minenwerfer.

In addition to a platoon of infantry, I was assigned a Minenwerfer.  I only got to fire it twice, because of difficulty of my spotter being able to see targets and the slow reload time.  My first shot did some damage to British infantry ahead of Geoff’s advance, but it drifted a bit and caught some of Geoff’s men in the blast as well.  The second shot took the roof off a building in the courtyard, doing a lot of damage to Don’s men inside, but not before Don took out one of my advancing squads (to be described later).

My infantry advances to assault a British held building while Geoff covers me with fire.

The onus was on the Germans to advance, so while Geoff engaged Rob in a bloody firefight, I advanced through the alley and into the courtyard of a British held building.  In the next couple of activations, I pushed into the first floor.  The doorway was defended by just Rob’s platoon leader as most of the men in the building were on the upper floors where they had better fields of fire.  I eventually captured the first two floors and was ready to assault the third floor when we ended the game.  Aided by Geoff softening up Rob before I got there, I only lost half a squad in taking the building.

Dave crosses the canal.

Meanwhile, Dave advanced his platoon across the canal at the German-held foot bridge and moved into position to pass me and continue the advance.

I know there was a LOT of activity on the other side of the table, but I was focused on my side.  I know that Kurt’s field gun and machine-gun silenced the British gun.  Also Eric eventually got some good long-range shots against our company commander who was observing the fight from a rubbled building, forcing him to seek cover.  Eventually the reinforcements arrived from that end of the table.  They didn’t have a major impact on the game, because the German attack was pretty well spent by the time they arrived.

A close up of one of Duncan’s many buildings

While Geoff advanced up the alley to the right, one of my squads advanced up the street, only to be cut to ribbons by Don’s men in the building on the other side of the courtyard.

We needed to keep advancing toward the church.  While I was busing in hand-to-hand combat with Rob, Geoff advanced two of his squads up the alley to the right of the picture (above).  That had me advancing up the street in the center of the pictures.  I thought that Dave and Kurt had silenced the British in the building on the other side of the courtyard, because I didn’t see any fire coming out of it.  Not so.  As I advanced up the street, I was cut apart by Don.  I eventually lost four men and accrued eight morale markers.  On my second morale check, the remainder of my elite squad of pioneers ran off the table.

In retaliation, I dropped a minenwerfer shell on Don’s building.  It took out the roof and wounded many of his men on the top floor.  About this time, it was getting late and all of us old guys were getting tired, so we called the game a convincing British victory.

Combat Patrol worked really well for early WWI, with a few scenario-specific and period-specific modifications that Duncan made to give it an earlier feel.  For instance in the basic rules for WWII, any infantryman can re-man a machine-gun, but we thought that in 1914, not all infantryman would have been trained on this new-fangled weapon.  Also, he used the larger squads, which gave the units a bit of an unwieldy feel compared to the more nimble teams of WWII.  The game was a success and great fun.

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Buck

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Rob Dean

There will be a longer trip report later, but we had the opportunity to get together on the 26th for a Chaos Wars game. Here is a report on the Chaos Wars game…

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Chris Palmer

   This week I completed the IMEF set and painted the Torch McHugh and Sarah Blitzer figures. I now will move on to the Bedeviled set.
      I prepped the figures in the usual way; soaking them in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish- soap added, then giving them a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying them.  I then glued the figures to black-primed 1" fender washers with Aleene’s Tacky glue, and then glued the washer-mounted figures to a tongue depressor with a couple drops of the Elmer’s glue.

      I began by painting the figures with Ceramcoat “Territorial Beige”.  I then painted their faces with  Americana “Shading Flesh”; and their gloves,  knee pads, one of the pouches at their waists, and their elbow pads with Americana “Asphaltum”.  I also painted the heat shield pads on the flamethrower figure with Americana “Neutral Grey”

     I then painted some of the parts of their guns, and some of the items on the first figure’s back, with Americana “Khaki Tan”.   I also painted their pouches, as well as the tubing on the flamethrower, with Americana :Mississippi Mud".  I then did a camouflage pattern all over their armor as a repeated series of three small dots using first, Folk Art “Porcelain White”, then Folk Art “Dark Brown”. Next, I painted the flamethrower guy’s hair with Crafters Acrylic “Orange Spice”, and the girl’s hair with Accent “Mustard Seed”.   The goggles on the flamethrower guy I painted with Crafters Acrylic “Bright Yellow”.

      I then gave the figures a wash with GW “Agrax Earthshade"wash using a wet brush.

      When the wash was dry, I drybrushed all the armor, and the guns with Americana "Buttermilk”. I then painted the small insignia on the guy’s chest plates, and the head pieces on both figures, with Black, and then drybrushed all the Black with Folk Art “Settlers Blue”.  I also painted a triangular insignia on the girl’s right shoulder with the “Bright Yellow”; and added small red dots with Crafters Acrylic “Christmas Red” to her headpiece, to represent a laser sight.    Next, I painted her eyes, and then did highlights on their faces with the “Shading Flesh”.  I then did highlights on all the gloves, knee and shoulder pads with Crafters Edition “Spice Brown”, and on the heat shields with Folk Art “Grey Green”.  Lastly, I painted their bases with Ceramcoat “Walnut”.
          When everything had overnight to dry, I gave the figures a coat of Ceramcoat “Matte Varnish”.  Then, when that was dry, I spread some white glue on the bases, and dunked them in a sand mixture.  When the sand mixture on the bases was dry, I painted the sand first with Americana “Charcoal Grey”, then dry brushed it with GW “Khemri Brown”, then Ceramcoat “Raw Sienna”, and lastly Americana “Buttermilk”.   The next day, I sprayed the figures with Testors Dullcote".

    I’m very pleased with how they turned out.   Below is a picture of the whole set.  They now join the list of completed sets over on the right.

Figures 188 & 189: Complete

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Chris Palmer

    Back at Historicon of 2013, I traded my Bones Griffon to a friend for a couple of his figures, including the Darkrasp, Evil Priest from the Dark Heroes set. (You can see these changes to the count total on the list at the upper right of this blog.) When I had first seen this figure, back when my Kickstarter had arrived, something about its appearance read “Santa Claus” to me; especially with the long “list” he holds in his left hand, obviously containing the names of those who’d been naughty.  So, when I had the chance to get an extra one, I took it; with the thought of some day converting it into a Santa Claus figure.  Well, with the onset of my Frostgrave addiction, that day finally rolled around; as I decided I wanted to make a Santa themed warband, and I selected this fellow to lead it. And, given the season of the year, it seemed the perfect time to paint him.
     First,  I prepped the figure in the usual way; soaking it in a dish of water with a couple drops of dish- soap added, then giving it a light scrub with a soft toothbrush, and then rinsing and drying it.  I then had to make some changes to the figure to move him a little closer to Santa, and a little further from Death Priest. I began by cutting off the blade and skull top of his scythe, turning it into more of a wizard’s staff.  I then glued a small piece of lead shot to the end to make it resemble a stylized North Pole.   Next, I cut the bone-like ends off of the roll his scroll is wrapped around.  Lastly, I took some Tacky glue and layered it onto the front of the scroll in an effort to lessen the appearance of the runes that are carved into it, as my plan was to list “naughty” names on it.   I then glued the figure to a white-primed 1" fender washers with Aleene’s Tacky glue, and then glued the washer-mounted figure to a tongue depressor with a couple drops of the Elmer’s glue. I finished the prep with painting the little round shot on the end of his staff with some clear metal primer.

      I began by painting his entire outfit with Apple Barrel “Apple Blue Spruce”  I then painted his face and hands with Americana “Shading Flesh”, and his scroll with Americana “Buttermilk”.

     I wasn’t happy with the look at this point, as I felt the all-green outfit didn’t read Santa enough.  I had chosen the green because I planned to paint his staff in a series of red and white stripes, and I thought that if I painted his outfit red too, the staff might get lost visually.  At that point I made the decision to try a red outfit anyway, so repainted his robes with Apple Barrel “Apple Maroon”, and left his cape and hood the original color.  I then painted the shadows on the robe with Americana “Cranberry Wine”, and did highlights with Americana “Burgundy Wine”.  These highlights really didn’t show enough, so I mixed some Crafters Acrylic “Tutti Fruitti” (a bubblegum pink color)  with the “Burgundy Wine” to lighten it.   I then gave his face, hands, and his scroll a wash with GW “Agrax Earhshade” wash using a wet brush.

     Next, I did highlights on his cape and hood with some of the “Apple Blue Spruce” mixed with the much lighter, Folk Art “Gray Green”.  Then, I painted the borders on his hood and sleeve cuffs, as well as the white stripes on his staff and the ball at the top,  with Folk Art “Platinum Grey”.   I then highlighted all these with White.  I next painted his beard and the object hanging from his front chain (which I planned to paint as a lantern) with Americana “Neutral Grey”.   Afterwards, I painted the red stripes on his staff with Crafters Acrylic “Christmas Red”.

     I highlighted the red stripes on the staff by mixing a little of the “Tutti Fruitti ” with the “Christmas Red”.  I then painted the ball on the top of the staff with Folk Art Extreme Glitter “Hologram”, in attempt to give it a snow-globe appearance.  Next, I highlighted his beard with Crafters Acrylic “Storm Cloud Grey”, and then some of the “Platinum Grey”.  I painted his eyes, then highlighted his face and hands with the original “Shading Flesh”.  I then mixed a little of the “Burgundy Wine” into the “Shading Flesh” to give him, “a nose like a cherry”. Next, I painted the roll his scroll list is wrapped on with some Crafters Acrylic “Cinnamon Brown”, and then highlighted the scroll list itself with some Crafters Acrylic “Light Antique White”. I then used a ultra-fine point permanent marker to to write “Naughty”, and a list of “names” on the scroll. I moved now to the lantern, painting a small glowing circle with White, then painting around this small White area with Apple Barrel “Yellow”, and further around this “Yellow” with Crafters Acrylic “Pure Pumpkin.  I then mixed some of the "Pure Pumpkin” with the “Neutral Grey” to try and blend it into the shadowy area of the lantern.
      I then painted  all his chains, and the top and bottom of the lantern, with Ceramcoat “Bronze”, then went back and highlighted these with Ceramcoat “14K Gold”. I then gave the top and bottom of the lantern a light wash with some GW “Badab Black” wash using a wet brush, to help define them a little better.  Lastly, I used White to  paint the base, especially anywhere that I had accidentally gotten other colors.
      When everything had overnight to dry, I gave the figure a coat of Ceramcoat “Matte Varnish”.  Then, the next morning, I flocked the base with Woodland Scenics “Snow” flock.  Later that afternoon I sprayed the figure with Testor’s Dullcote.

   I’m very happy with how this figure turned out.  I think it really makes for a unique and fierce looking Santa, and will be perfect for my Frostgrave collection.

Figure 187 of 265: Complete

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Buck

I found two interesting sets of figures a month or two ago in the local hobby shop.  These are Bolt Action figures.  Though I don’t play Bolt Action, the figures are nonetheless useful.

The first is a three-figure set of a .30 cal machine-gun team on the move.

The second is a .50 cal machine-gun team with the gun in action.

I decided to block paint these and then dip them in the Army Painter dark tone wash.  I don’t think I would like this effect on Napoleonic figures, but on these WWII figure, I like the look — and it was very fast.

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Rob Dean

I think that I mentioned in my Huzzah report, back in May, that I had picked up a horde of old figures in the flea market.  Most of them were Hinchliffe Byzantines (and allies), but there were also a couple of dozen Minifigs, some Mythical Earth (ME) Dunlendings, some Alexander Nevsky figures, and some NS (Norman/Saxon) figures.

I have, perhaps, gone a little overboard on the vintage fantasy project which has been occupying my attention this year.  In any case, I had a chance to pick up a couple of lots of figures off eBay which included some ME figures and some Sword and Sorcery (SS) figures.  Somehow, the marginal rational part of my mind took over and I thought that I had better try painting a few old Minifigs before I sank a lot of additional money into looking for more.

So, I dug through the eBay lots and the Huzzah figures and came up with a group of a half dozen to try.  The goblin from the previous post was the first finished, and yesterday I completed this NS25, presumably Saxon, spearman.  I’ve still got a Hundred Years War foot soldier with an axe, an armored Norman swinging an axe, an NS crossbowman (presumably Norman, but without the distinctive Norman haircut), and an ME Gondorian swordsman to go.  I found this spearman to be easier to paint than I had expected, so perhaps additional Minifigs are in the near future.

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Rob Dean

I have been continuing to play around with some vintage figures lately, and finished these two off this morning.  The goblin on the left is an old Minifigs ME50.  I used to have a horde of 40 or more of these guys back in the day, but they went to a friend in a trade deal long ago.  He still has them, by the way, so perhaps I will see them in action again one day.

The figure on the right is a Ral Partha E551 Southron spearman, from 1976, an early Tom Meier sculpt.

I am hoping to get all of the recent vintage individuals into a skirmish game soon…

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