A belated Merry Christmas and best wishes for a Happy New Year - 2023.
Picture above of part of my SAGA Age of Magic (AoM) Warband, I will be posting an AAR of the 4 player Christmas SAGA AoM game we played on December 27, 2022 soon.
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| Overview turn 1 SAGA AoM |
This Christmas I hosted a 4 player game of SAGA age of Magic n December 27, 2022 with our forth playing being John was visiting over the holiday. This is something we had not done since John's departure and the onset of the pandemic. Once again I used the SAGA AoM Battle Royal scenario.
As a follow on from my discussion about a Kings of War (KoW) campaign (see blog entry) and discussions with friends in June 2020 I had been thinking of setting up a SAGA Age of Magic campaign using the Might Empires (ME) campaign rules. However more recently (2022) I think an even better rule set to use for this would be Fantastic Battles (FB) l.2, and it has its own campaign rules.
Alternatively the Mighty Empires campaign rules can be found here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L_5kUsTuwlADt99VXN5-hD3MxPejhbHS/view?fbclid=IwAR36QepvlSigFF_IgO3NDWuEexC98iCewMythS2dmjZOiBGe6YzCXfc8Vbc
The campaign I envisage will be for 4 to 6 players as anything larger has the potential to breakdown if players don't contribute in a timely manner. .
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| From the old Avalon Hill board game Wizard Quest |
I found this a plaster Egyptian monolith for $4 at a local Dollarama store. It looks similar to the statues that would be found in the Valley of the Kings. It should work well as Egyptian themed background in a Pulp game set in Egypt.
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| Egyptian monolith with two 28mm Dark Fable Egyptian figures |
It will need some painting, possibly with the Woodland Scenics Yellow Ocher stain that will create a naturalistic sand stone look.
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| Woodland Scenics Yellow Ocher stain |
I have had bout 17 of these OOP Wizkids Horror Clix Vlad the Impaler 32mm figures sitting around since I bought them some years ago at the local Comic Book Store in a bin sale. I had been planning to convert them to Impalers for a Vampire based fantasy army by replacing the end of the spear with just a point rather than an impaled victim, as a regiment of 16 would just look too weird, one victim as a standard is sufficient.
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| Wizkids HorrorClix Vlad the Impaler |
Accordingly I cut off the victim on all but 1 figure and planned to put spear tips on the end of the poles. After the figures sat around for a few years I finally got around to it yesterday. This was partly inspired by the new Fantastic Battles 1.2 rules that has
a Night Stalker army list that will work perfectly for my Vampire War
figures and these Impalers. They will be an elite Regiment called Vlad's Carpathian Impalers with 3 companies with the traits: Feast, Pikes, Highlanders and Doughty.
Below are some of the various spear options I experimented with:
Picked up this Flying Saucer based on the one in Plan 9 from Outer Space at my favourite Hobby Shop in Ottawa, Hobby House. I hesitated to buy it at first as there was no scale on the box and I figured it was likely 1/72, but some online research revealed it is 1/48. This means it should fit in with my heroic scale 28/32mm Martians from the Mars Attacks game.
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| Polar Lights Plan 9 Saucer kit 1/48 |
I believe this was originally a Linberg kit and was reissued by various companies including Atlantis and Polar Lights.
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| Tomb King's Army |
After many delays due to scheduling conflicts and weather we finally got another 28mm game of Fantastic Battle, this time with my newly based Dwarf Army fighting the High Elves. While some of the Dwarfs need further painting I think they are battlefield ready. This was my 8th game of Fantastic Battles that we played over two days, August 1st and 12th. I still need to do AARs of some of the earlier games, although they are outlined briefly in an earlier blog.
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| Turn 4 action |
In my 2022 New Year's message I had mentioned I was very interested in and had started playing the Fantastic Battles (FB) rules system by Nicholas Wright, for mass battles for both historical and Fantasy genre for a range of scales (2mm-28mm). The rules allow you to customize and build armies based on a tool kit approach of different traits added to company types including: Elite, Formed Irregular, Fantastic Beast, Vehicle and Giant. There is a separate system for characters that makes them significant but not exaggerated in power. FB is also well supported by the author and members on the Fantastic Battles Face Book Page.
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| Cover |
This is an old Undead catapult produced by Grenadier and re-released by Mirliton that I have been working on for some time and finally got the base ready in time for a game in Halloween 2019. This catapult and the skeleton giant I was working on at the same time will be used in an upcoming SAGA Age of Magic game at my local club. These figures will work well for a variety of rule systems:
Old Hammer (WFB 3rd or 6th Edition)
Fantastic Battles
SAGA Age of Magic
HOTT
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| Front - Side view |
After my last game of SAGA Age of Magic in December 2021 (AAR pending) I realized I need proper Sacred Ground markers so I have been built one for my Wood Elf (Lords of the Wild) and have almost finished one for my Undead (The Undead Legions) warband.
On the left for the Wood Elf Sacred ground I used 2 standing sacred stones and a totem from the Wizkids 4D Jungle Shrine set on a base flocked with brown ballast and light green grass flock. For the Undead I have used 4 skull pillars / death columns by RAFM plus a sarcophagus / crypt by Mega Miniatures (OOP) and I plan to flock it with brown ballast and dead yellowish static grass. The Scared Ground markers are the regulation 4" in diameter. For now I am not gluing the miniatures to the bases for ease of transport and flexibility.
Back in January 2020 I bought, from eM4 miniatures, a 48 piece set of 28mm plastic Dwarf Warriors which included 16 warriors with spears (as shown below) with the remainder being warriors armed with axes and crossbows, and it only cost £7.70 which works out to about 27 cents Cnd a figure (the 25 round plastic shield to go with them was only £1.50 extra)! These are former Grenadier dwarf figures sculpted by Mark Coppleston from the early 1990s, but they are still very serviceable for rank and file troops. As you can see in the picture they have built in bases.
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| eM4 Spear armed plastic Dwarf |
Spears are an ideal weapon for Dwarf warriors especially in Fantastic Battles when they have to deal with enemy cavalry! Too bad they are hard to find among GW products, but I really like the Dwarf figures produced by Grenadier Fantasy Warriors in the 1990s, sadly Grenadier is no more but the figures are still available from companies like Mirliton, Forlorn Hope and eM4. That being said I believe the new plastic Dwarf infantry set for Oathmark by North Star has a spear option.
https://www.giggrowth.shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=304022
They Oathmark dwarf infantry require assembly, the old Grenadier plastic dwarf figures do not other than attaching the shield, this limits the variety of poses but it speeds things up.
I received the sad news today that my good friend and scholar Dr. John Murray Clearwater had passed away after a lengthy battle with cancer. Some may remember my post from April 19, 2019 regarding the Casablanca film version of Lockheed 10 Electra model aircraft kit that he kindly built for me.
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| Lockheed 10 Electra 1/53 scale |
https://lordofwesternkeep.blogspot.com/2019/04/casablanca-lockheed-electra.html#more
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| John with some model loot he scored at a sale |
John was a member of the International Plastic Modelers Society (IPMS) Ottawa branch. He had the ability to build an impressive number of models per year, all to a high standard. You can see his impressive and eclectic output of plastic models here:
http://clearwatermodels.blogspot.com/
He was much more than just a plastic modeler, he was also a gifted scholar / historian specializing in post war nuclear policy, a classic British car collector, world traveler, cat lover and a good friend.
A project I was working on to create Resolution tracker counters for Fantastic Battles (FB). These are 20mm MDF bases spray painted green with self adhesive 5/8" Roman numerals designed for clocks. Sadly not a lot else to do on New Years Eve thanks to Covid-19, so watched TV movies and made counters.
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| New Roman number counters |
