North Star Frostgrave Necromancer and Apprentice

Back in February, Nick Eyre at North Star announced a painting competition. The objective was to paint the new Frostgrave Necromancer figure. Of course, I had to give it a go. I bought the figure, who comes with a nice (well, nice if you exclude all the necromancy stuff) apprentice. They arrived, I prepped and undercoated them and then I caught Covid and didn't feel much like painting for a few weeks. Finally, I got back to painting and today I finally finished them and even got them varnished, because it stopped raining and the sun came out. Here are my finished efforts; Necromancer front and back, ditto for the apprentice and then both of them together.

He is a pretty dynamic figure and, being a resin cast is beautifully crisp. I decided to do a fairly simple base to portray a blasted heath with clumps of dead grass. The tufts are by Gamer's Grass. Overall, I think he looks OK.

Here is his evil sidekick. He clearly graduated from pulling the wings off of flies a few years ago.

Annoyingly, I noticed a stray piece of ballast on the strap of his bag after uploading the photo. It is gone now, but doesn't really matter because it is the main man who matters for the competition, which I am not expecting to win anyway. It is the taking part that matters.

I think they have come out reasonably well. Certainly good enough for gaming purposes, which is the reason I paint things in the first place.

Here they are together;

Ten Elite Infantry for Xenos Rampant

 Please scroll down to see all ten figures;

These figures are, obviously, Games Workshop 40K Space Marines, but I won't be using them for Warhammer 40K.

I bought a box of 10 plastic Space Marines for £10 from someone at the club ages ago, because he didn't want them. My original plan was to paint them up and just sell them on, but I never got around to doing it. 

Once Xenos Rampant came along, it seemed to be a pretty simple thing to paint them up and use them as Elite Infantry for those rules. It also had the other advantage of me not having to spend any extra money on more figures.

I haven't used any 40K Space Marine heraldry on the figures, neither have I painted them up as a particular chapter, although I suppose there is a very slight nod towards the Dark Angels in the basic colour of their armour.

I put them together so that there are five figures with heavy weapons and five more suited to getting close up and personal, if required. That will give me two Elite units for Xenos Rampant.

I'm reasonably happy with how they look and they will do the job perfectly well for XR, with the support of a few units of more standard heavy, light or recon figures.

Three years in and I finally came down with Covid

I've not been doing much painting or anything else for the last week or so because I have succumbed to Covid. The first few days were really awful but I am hopefully on the mend. The problem I have now is that I am so very tired all the time and I am finding it hard to concentrate on anything.

I have figures that I was working on before I fell ill and these need varnishing. As today is the first sunny and dry one for a week or so, at least I can get them varnished.

Watch this space.

My next project

I don't often post WIP pictures, but I thought I'd make an exception for this lot, which are all intended to be primarily for Xenos Rampant.

Above I have 30 figures based on Frostgrave plastic  Cultists and Ghost Archipelago plastic crew figures. The crewmen have the same kind of baggy trousers as the cultists and once they have been given suitable headgear they blend in rather well. All of the figures have been equipped with weapons from the various Stargrave plastic sets, plus the occasional Cultist knife, sword or spear. These will work as cult members, pirates, post apocalyptic reavers or ragged mercenaries.

Next, here are 40 figures made up from the Stargrave Troopers and Mercenaries I box sets. I intend these to be Heavy Infantry.

Finally, a mixed bag made up from a mixture of the Mercenaries II and Crew II Stargrave boxes, who will be Light and Recon Infantry (the latter equipped with sniper rifles), five Wargames Atlantic giant spiders with sci fi weaponry and finally 10 Games Workshop plastic Space Marines that I bought from someone at the club ages ago for a tenner and which I intended to paint up and sell, but never got round to it. These will be two units of Elite Infantry. Obviously, I won't be bothering with any Chapter heraldry or other 40K gubbins.

I still have a box of Crew I figures, 15 Crew II figures and 15 Ghost Archipelago figures, plus 12 small spiders and seven giant ones to use. I am sure they'll end up as something useful.

I have to admit that I will leave it a while before I make any more giant spiders. They are pretty tricky and time-consuming to put together and I don't think I'd have done it yet without Guy Bowers' really useful guide on the WSS blog HERE. Having said that, they are worth the effort because they look pretty impressive, even without an undercoat.

Mixing Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago and Stargrave figures together is really easy and generally everything goes together without any hassle or swearing.

I now have a total of 100 individual figures to get painted over the next couple of months. I am planning to do them in groups of 10 at the most.

Winter Wonder Lard 2023

So, yesterday saw a disparate bunch of Lardy gamers, and Richard Clarke of TooFatLardies himself, head down to Bristol Independent Gaming in South Bristol for a day of Lardy Goodness, followed by beer and curry. I was running a 15mm game of Big Chain Of Command with four players in the morning and here are a few pictures from it;

The scenario was based around the fighting near Bréville-les-Monts in the aftermath of the D Day landings in June 1944. In this scenario, the fighting was concentrated to the south-west of the village of Bréville-les-Monts between elements of 9th Parachute Battalion's C company and troops from the Festung Grenadier-Regiment 857 supported by armoured assault vehicles.

The terrain was deceptive, a ridge above a road lower down the slopes with plenty of dead ground, low ridges, hedgerows and interrupted lines of sight, small wooded areas and a paddock (visible on the upper edge of the first photo. The German objective was the crossroads halfway along the road along the ridge. Unbeknown to the British airborne troops, the Germans had a pre-registered target for their limited off-table mortar support (only two barrages were allowed) and that target was the objective itself. 9 Para would also suffer from an unpredictable availability of troops due to the dispersed nature of the airborne and glider drops on D Day itself. 9 Para had moved to the area around Bréville-les-Monts on 7th June following the action at the Merville Battery where it had suffered casualties.

The game itself was pretty brutal for both sides and resulted in a German win. Of course, in real life, the fighting would continue for several days more before Bréville-les-Monts was captured and the German offensive was broken.

In the afternoon, I played  in a terrific 28mm game of Chain of Command set somewhere in Egypt between 8th Army and Afrika Korps troops trying to gain control of the Ark of The Covenant. This was amazingly enjoyable, and featured aggressive camels, mysterious men wearing fezzes, blasts of ancient magic, reanimated evil mummies, Indiana Jones (who perished at the hands of the Chief Mummy) and many more pitfalls, as well as normal CoC things. The game resulted in a British victory, but it went right down to the wire in the end.

Here are a few photos;

The day was organised by David Hunter, hosted by Jim and Ellen at BIG and the curry arranged by Andy Crow, who all deserve a huge round of applause.

Some resin scenic pieces

 These are all 15mm scale and were bought from The Square, who is a regular at most shows.

The piece above is a large improvised firing position, with the figures placed for scale purposes. It is large enough for a whole infantry section, I think, depending on base sizes. Below are two smaller improvised fortifications.

Next are three piles of rocks or rubble, which are bound to come in useful.

Finally, a more formal fortification, this time a concrete casemate with an earth glacis. The 6-pdr gun fits in rather well, I think.

These were all pretty quick and easy to paint and texture with tufts, flock and ballast. I did all the pieces in a single afternoon. The tufts are all from Gamer's Grass, who are stocked by Bad Squiddo.

I've been working on lots of scenic stuff

I needed to get lots more trees and hedges for 15mm wargaming and I've been working on them for weeks now. The word for this is BORING! but it had to be done.  Here are all the things I've done. Apologies for the picture quality. I was in a rush and used a camera that isn't really designed for close-up flash work.

First, here is an orchard. The trees are quite large for 15mm.

The trees are on bases and can be removed for ease of access to troops etc under the trees.

Next, a couple of small coppices. Again, the trees can be removed. These are a mix of large and small trees.

Twelve more small trees here, again on separate bases;

These will work well as trees lining fields or around the edge of a village, I think.

Next I have lots and lots of hedges of various kinds;

And to finish, some large free-standing trees and poplars to line roads;

I reused some old rough roads made from cork tiles as the bases for some of these items and used tongue depressors for other pieces.  

The flock and ballast stuff comes off very easily, but a blast with Hycote matt spray varnish seems to have stuck everything in place pretty well. 

The trees were all bought ready-made and came unbased, so I had plenty of flexibility as to how I used them. I bought them from K&M Trees. Nice stuff and quick and efficient service.