Who Let the Dogs Out!

 Here are a couple of new companies (bases) painted for my Fantastic Battles 28mm Dark Elf army:  Whelp Master with two Chaos War-hounds.  Obligatory sounds effects

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MK1lLI_zQ

The Dark Elf figures are Marauder Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) 1990 Whelp Masters and Whelp Mistress, and the Chaos War-hounds are also WFB figures made by Citadel but from over a decade later.  The asking price for the original Marauder 1990 war-hounds was just too much.

 

My two bases of Whelp Masters with War-hounds

As you can see the bases still need to be flocked, I will use a mix of brown ballast and green static grass.

Defend the Pass October 5, 2025

 This was a Fantastic Battles Defend the Pass Scenario held at my local games club on October 5, 2025. I provided the Dwarf and Dark Elf Miniatures and Morgan provided the Vikings that he played.   The Dwarfs played by Morley were the defenders and the Dark Elves and Vikings were the attackers.  I played the Dark Elves.

 

Initial deployment turn 1

 

WIP Dwarf Rangers

After a recent Fantastic Battles game on October 5, 2025 at my local games club I decided it was time to upgrade my Dwarf Long Beard unit from eM4 (Originally made by Grenadier) and make them Foresters.   The Dwarfs were defending a pass against Dark Elf and Viking attackers.  The Long Beards looked a lot like Rangers in the rough terrain area with their axes and brown trim on their chainmail so I decided to make them Rangers.  The leader in particular (back of formation) needed some repainting and the bases need work.

 Dwarf Rangers in combat with Witch Elves and Vikings

 

Fantastic Battles Convoy Ambush December 27, 2024

 This was our annual Christmas holiday game, using Fantastic Battles mass combat rules set this year and its  Ambush the Convoy Scenario, a 3 player scenario. It features a dwarf convoy attempting to exit the board with ambushing forces on either flank, made up of Dark Elf and Undead armies, all in 28mm scale.

 

The three armies overseen by Joey

In keeping with the season I used my tundra mat and snowy pine forests. I played the Dwarf army.

Fantastic Battles Game at the Centre Point Public Library 15 December, 2024

 I have run a fair number of Fantastic Battles Games, but it has been about 9 months since the last one and this was the first one I have run at the Ottawa Centre Point Public Library. The game ran fairly smoothly, other than a minor hiccups, involving refreshing my memory on some rules. 

Overview Turn 2

Fantastic Battles Game St. Patrick's Day game March 17, 2024, at OMG - Undead versus Wood Elves.

On March 17, 2024 (St. Patrick's Day) at the Ottawa Miniatures Game Club Nick and I had our first Fantastic Battles mass fantasy battle game, with 1,000 points per side with his UNDEAD versus my WOOD ELVES  in 28mm scale.

Overview

Belated 2023 Halloween Post

Sadly no Halloween game this year, but recently I did receive Tim Prow's The Battle For Black Mere kick-starter set of 28mm skeleton figures.  

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diehardminiatures/the-battle-for-black-mere-undead-faction

These pictures are from the Kick-starter project and not my work, I have yet to paint my figures. These are by no means all the figures available in the kick-starter, just the ones I ordered.

Die Hard Black Mere Skeleton Pikemen

Activation Tiles for Fantastic Battles

 

Below is a picture of the activation tiles / counters I use for Fantastic Battles 1.2.  I bought them from the Dollar Tree, they costed only $1 plus tax for a packet of 26 in 4  colours (medium royal blue, green, purple, fuchsia) and measure 20mm x 18mm x 5mm.. They are marketed by Craft Medley and I have also seen them in black and white.. I add number stickers to them to keep track of the number on the table but this is not essential.  You can of course paint them, and I have painted some of the fushia counters dark red.   Sadly I did not see any on my last visit to the Dollar Tree, but they may have just been put in storage to make room for seasonal decorations.

 https://www.dollartreecanada.com/

However  if you can't find them at the Dollar Tree  you can buy  a pack of 100 from Amazon for a higher price, but with a different mix of colours (red, orange, white, green and light blue), see link the below.

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B09MZGVSRB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Tiles by Craft Medly from the Dollar Tree

Tiles sold by Amazon

Fantasy Miniatures Campaign Ideas

 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.  .

This will be an "evergreen" document as it gets updated with new ideas and modifications.

Potential Campaign maps.

 

From the old Avalon Hill board game Wizard Quest

 

The above map would work for up to 9 players in FB 1.2 as you need 4 regions per player, although it is set up for 6 players. I have 9 races I could use: Undead, Tomb Kings, High Elves, Wood Elves, Dark Elves, Dwarfs, Bretonnian / Human, Orcs, and Chaos.

Possible race distribution on the Wizard's Quest map's 6 regions:

 

1. Golden Dunes = Tomb Kings or Dark Elves

2. Whispery Meadows = High Elf or Bretonnian / Human

3. Misty Forest = Orcs or Dark Elves

4. Fields of the Fallen = Gothic Undead and or Tomb Kings

5. Ancient Woods = Wood Elves and or High Elves

6. Crystal Mountains = Dwarfs
 

Spears and Impalers

 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.

 

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:

Halloween 2022

If I do have a Halloween themed game this year it will be a post Halloween game in mid November as other activities prevented a game this past weekend.   In the meantime here are some Work in Progress pictures of possible figures for a Fantastic Battles Halloween themed game.

Tomb King's Army

 

Fantastic Battles Dwarfs versus High Elves August 1, 2022

 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.

 

Turn 4 action

 The High Elves were a confident force having defeated the Undead in their last battle, but they were now facing an entirely different enemy, not the slow Undead with primitive weapons, but the Dwarfs and their technology.

Fantastic Battles

 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.

Cover

Since early  December 2021 I have played at least 7 games of  FB, but sadly I have not had time to provide detailed reports for each game.  I still don't have time now to provide detailed reports but  read on to find information on basing, table size and a list of games played with selected photos.

Undead Catapult and Giant (updated 2022)

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

Front - Side view

I have based it on an 80mm wide by 103mm deep base and I flocked it so it will work for a desert climate (to work with my Egyptian themed Undead army) and added  little more vegetation as compared to the pictures below. I have updated this report in June 2022, see notes at the end.

Grenadier eM4 Dwarf warriors with spears and sheilds

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.

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.

Happy New Year 2022 and Fantastic Battles Project

 Happy New Year 2022

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.

 New Roman number counters