Contrast Paints on Skeletons

This is my first attempt at using the GW Contrast Paints. I tried them on a Reaper metal skeleton with two crossbows. I spray primed it months ago with Army painter Bone primer then tonight I painted with Contrast Skeleton Horde. After that dried (very fast) I block painted the crossbows Reaper Master Series Acrylic Drift Wood (light brown) and Army Painter Gun Metal as appropriate plus GW Bubonic brown (Ocher) for the shaft and a dot of red for the feathers. Next the gun metal was over-painted with Contrast Basilicanum Grey, and the wood with Contrast Snake Bite Leather. I was surprised at how much darker the Snake Bite Leather made the wood, plus a bit blotchy, probably as there was no grain detail. It is probably a good thing the wood is dark as it provides contrast with the bone. The only highlights done so far are on the arrow shafts. 

Left traditional paint job, right Contrast paints

Merry Christmas 2020

Best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas 2020 and a Happy New Year, may 2021 be a better year.

Christmas Tree and Joey

 

Christmas themed figures from "The War in Christmas Village" under the tree below plus a Trebuchet:

War in Christmas Village figures

 More information on the "War in Christmas Village" game and figures plus pictures from this year's (2020) Christmas themed games below: 

 

Club Christmas Holiday Game 18 December 2020

 SAGA Age of Magic December 2020 Christmas game

I have not been providing may AAR as I simply have not had the time, it comes down to prep and play games or write AAR, not usually time for both .  So here is a very late AAR. 

Shortly before the latest lock-down was imposed I got a chance to play a SAGA Age of Magic game along with a Festive Indian meal, all with social distancing and masks at my local games club on Friday December 18,2020.   This time I tried out the Lords of the Wild Board using my Wood Elves.

My Wood Elf Hearthguard under fluorescent light

SAGA Age of Crusaded November 20, 2020

 SAGA Age of Crusades November 2020

This is my  AAR from November 20, 2020 of a SAGA Age of Crusades game held at the Ottawa Miniatures Games club.

Initial setup

The game featured my Norman / Sicilian Crusaders versus Spanish Crusaders.  I will let the pictures tell the story.

SAGA Age of Magic: Undead versus Iroquois: Halloween theme game, October 2020.

Apologies for being a bit late in posting this Halloween SAGA Age of Magic (AoM) game report.   This was a second match up between these two opponents: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Undead board) versus an Iroquois war band (Lords of the Wild board) fought on October 12, 2020 using SAGA AoM rules. I added some Halloween scenery as appropriate for October.  This was a basic encounter scenario with the objective of killing the other sides warlord.

Above the the Undead Warband of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 

 

The Iroquois War band behind a pumpkin patch

The Four / Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Reaper Miniatures as used in SAGA Age of Magic.

 These are the Four  Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Reaper miniatures, which are actually five figures as I added in the Reaper Harbinger figure.

 

Above Reaper: 1) Plague, 2) Harbinger, 3) Pestilence, 4) Famine and 5) War

I have recently used these figures when I was playing SAGA Age of Magic (AoM) with the special Undead options for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In SAGA AoM the four horsemen are: Death, Conquest, Famine and War.   As you can see the Reaper designations shown above and SAGA AoM designations don't match exactly. Nor do they match to the Biblical descriptions (see later on).

 I picked riders number 2,3,4 and 5 pictured above to use as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as designated by SAGA AoM: Death, Conquest, Famine and War.  I use figure number 1 on at the far left on the wolf as an alternate SAGA AoM Four Horsemen figure as: Conquest or War. 

 

Bolt Action September 18, 2020

Catching up on posting some games from the past few years.  This was the first Bolt Action game I had played for some time and the first time back at the games Club since the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down began on March 13, 2020.  This game took place on Friday September 18, 2020.

My German Paratroops (1940 Uniform)

My outnumbered elite German paratroopers facing  hoards off lesser quality Soviet troops.  A classic quantity versus  quality game.  

SAGA Age of Magic: Iroquois versus Undead August 23

 SAGA Age of Magic Game: Iroquois Warband Versus the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

 After a long enforced break from gaming due to the Covid-19 social distancing rules I got my first game in since early March 2020, on August 23rd.   It was a two player  SAGA AoM game with my Undead Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse warband fighting a friend's Iroquois warband.   With the long lay-off from using the rules we were a bit rusty so it was slow going at first and we made a few mistakes. Nonetheless it was good to get back to playing SAGA and to put some of the figures we has been painting on the game table.   

Fighting toward the end of the battle

 

Warlords of Erehwon

Another new Fantasy rule set I purchased, the Warlords of Erehwon by Rick Priestley.  It is for "warband" size games of 5 to 12 units (5 to 10 figures each on average) or between 500 and 2000 points, which would translate to around 30 to 100 figures so smaller games than mass battle fantasy.

It looks very promising, and I have always enjoyed Rick Priestley's rules including: Black Powder, Hail Caesar, Warmaster, Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB) 3rd and 6th editions.  Warlords of Erehwon are well supported by Warlord games, the author and a Facebook group. Unlike certain other games is it not structured around army lists based on figures exclusively made by the publisher.  Plus the army lists are included with the rules, so no army books to buy.  Rick is adding new warband lists for online download plus the information is provided for players to create their own lists, for example the author sent me a guide on how to create a Dark Elf list (IMHO they should have been in the rules originally).  In addition to the rules and figures you will need d10, pin markers with numbers and Warlord Order dice as the rules do not use the traditional IGOUGO turn sequence.  The point system looks similar to WFB 3rd and 6th Edition so I can see these rules working with the Mighty Empires WFB campaign rules.

Here is a summary of the rules from the Warlord of Erehown rules from the  publisher.

God of Battles

I bought of copy of  God of Battles by Jake Thornton (published 2012) from Wargames Foundry some time ago.  It is a rule set for using 28mm figures in "mass battles" involving between 50 to 200 figures per side which encompasses war-band size battles and small mass combat battles.  I have been recently looking it over an it seems to offer some real promise.  In particular the turn sequence of alternating between players units rather than having one side move and fight all its units then the other (traditional I Go You Go). This seems to be a trend that is catching on as I believe a recently released mass combat fantasy rule set called Oathmark also uses this turn sequence.  Units in God of Battles fight as units not individual figures (avoiding buckets of dice)  but casualties are recorded by removing individual figures. The Army lists for God of Battles do not entirely fit my figure collection as it is based on Foundry 28mm fantasy figures rather than Warhammer Fantasy Battle Citadel miniatures which make up most my collection is (plus some Reaper, Grenadier and other miniature manufacturers). However the rules are designed to be flexible and allow the use of miniatures by any company.   There is a work around solutions for the lack of a Dark Elf Army list as those figures work for other lists in God of Battles.  In particular the intriguing new army lists such as the Sea Elves and the Godless Hordes.  There are also no extra army codex books or special dice to buy!

I still plan to keep playing SAGA Age of Magic while using  God of Battles for larger mass battles.  I am also waiting the release of Shadow Storm (Hail Caesar Fantasy) another mass fantasy battle rule set.

The designer's notes for God of Battles can be found here:

https://quirkworthy.com/2013/01/25/god-of-battles-designers-notes-which-armies-to-include/

Unknown Citadel or Marauder Elves - Oldhammer

Three Citadel or Marauder Elf figures

The centre figure looks to be a Citadel C09 female Dark Elf Mace Girl sculpted by Bob Naismith  for Warhammer 3rd Edition from around 1986-1988.  The other two female figures look to be of a later  vintage, possibly made by another company like Marauder (an off-shoot of Citadel) and not  Dark Elves?

Kings of War Campaign

  Update April 22, 2020 Fantasy Map Campaign Idea- Online

March 30, 2020: Since we can't get together due to the physical isolation required by the Covid-19 virus outbreak.It seems like a good time to resurrect my idea from February 27, 2017 for a Kings of War (KoW) campaign but now as an online Fantasy campaign using either: KoW, Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB)  Mighty Empires,  SAGA Age of Magic (AoM) or Hordes of the Things (HOTT) rule systems.

All of four of the rules systems above have campaign systems for their fantasy worlds, but some work would be needed to make them work for an online campaign.  There are PDFs for the WFB Mighty Empires and KoW campaign rules available online but for SAGA AoM and HOTT the campaign rules are in the actual hard copy rule books only as far as I am aware, but there may be PDFs available online somewhere.

The first challenge would be creating the map, I do have paper tiles from Mighty Empires I have downloaded that can be used to create a map.  There is also the KoW campaign map below  for  "The Winter's Flood" designed for a Mantic campaign in 2017 that could potentially be used if I added some grid references.

The WFB Mighty Empires system is the more developed rule system having been around since 1990 and the full original version is 64 pages.  This version and shorter ones can be found online, and I have a hard copy and PDF of the 64 page version and the shorter ones.  The longer version is likely the best as it will have more detail on the board game / campaign aspect as we won't be able to play the actual miniature battles generated by the campaign. The rules have a system for determining the outcomes of the battles without a miniatures game.  Here is a link to the 64 page PDF.

https://www.fysh.org/~katie/wargames/downloads/mighty_empires/

 A short version.

http://athenost.blog.free.fr/public/040101_Campagne_DW/mightyempirescol.pdf

Let me know if you are interested?  

More details below including three updated links as of April 22, 2020 of two sets of modified  Mighty Empires campaign rules designed for KoW and a blog:


ttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1NwBKyIzdf3_ye-OxVUdkVMo1jPP8KsYIckb3z1gfiv0/edit


https://github.com/UltraSalem/mightykingdoms/blob/capitals/mightykingdoms_full.pdf