More Fireforge Knights

Here's the second batch of 13th Century German Knights, made from a mix of parts from Fireforge's range of mounted knights and sergeants. Apart from the 'heroic' proportions of some of the weapons, I love these figures. A real pleasure to paint.

Custom Movement Trays

Over the past year I've been basing most of my dark ages figures individually, for use in SAGA. Ideally however I would also like to use the same figures in games like Impetus and Dux Bellorum. I love the look of large bases looking like mini-dioramas, and I'm usually frustrated with the solution of using movement trays to group individually based figures. They never look realistically packed in close enough to each other, and usually stand in neat rows worthy of the Welsh Guards.

I got in touch with the good folks at Warbases and explained my dilemma. They were incredibly helpful and quick to respond, and here is the result.

I call these the 'Dux Homunculorum shieldwall bases'. Each base has a frontage of 12cm and depth of 5cm, so ideal for Impetus and Dux Bellorum. The individual 2cm holes for inserting bases are as closely packed as Warbases could get them, and they came up with several variations of slightly uneven rows and spacing at my request.

What do you think? They are still a compromise, with the figures not packed in closely enough to really resemble a shieldwall, but I reckon this is the best solution for basing individual figures I've ever seen. I'm sure Warbases would love to sell them to anyone who is interested.

Waterboys and Zombies

WARNING! NON-HOBBY RELATED POST!

Back to school tomorrow for another year of inspiring young minds. Nooooooooooooooooooo!

The last week of holidays has been quite nice. An absolute highlight was being able to see The Waterboys live in Sydney. They have been a favourite band of mine since about 1986. I fondly remember writing out lyrics from some of their songs on my school folder circa 1987, and from 1989-the early 90s they were the soundtrack to my life. So I've been waiting about 25 years to see them live, and finally Mike Scott got around to bringing the current lineup to Australia.

There were two Sydney shows. The Duchess bought me tickets to the first one for Christmas, which turned out to be an evening almost entirely showcasing Mike Scott's work putting the words of W.B Yeats to music. It was a great night, and stunningly beautiful music, but I had the strange experience of seeing a band I have been obsessively following for years and not really knowing the songs. They played three old favourites as encores, and it was quite sweet to see the pudgy middle aged audience go nuts (I include myself in this, obviousy). In fact, I was struck by the close resemblance between the audience and the crowd at most wargames shows, with the fundamental difference of course that there were lots of women at the gig. The Duchess and I had a grand old night.

Dux Homunculorum Having A Grand Old Night

So grand in fact that I couldn't resist buying some tickets for the second Sydney show, in the Opera House on Australia Day. This was much more a general retrospective set, and it was just brilliant to hear so many songs that are like old friends. Mike Scott is one of perhaps a minority of performers who sound even better live than on disk. My musical hero is still firmly on his pedestal.

Waterboys Live At Sydney Opera House

Why the zombies in the post heading?

Over the past few months I have been steadily coming to the realisation that I am in serious danger of developing what we might call a 'wargamer's physique'. I like food. I like beer. I like sedentary hobbies, and as the Duchess pithily observed, 'the trouble with nerds and exercise is that it is so very very boring.'

The crunch came when I had to go to a wedding a week or so back and found that one of my work shirts that I haven't worn since December no longer does up around my neck. Must have shrunk or something. Drastic measures are obviously necessary, so I've been a week not eating anything sweet, hardly drinking and even doing some structured exercise.

Which is where the zombies come in. You may recall my mate Antonius, who we last met fraternising with zombies in Sydney's Hyde Park. Antonius is ludicrously fit, and regularly runs distances I would feel tired to drive. However, he put me onto an app for my new iPhone (you may recall my previous phone was incinerated in a bushfire) called Zombies, Run! Basically it is a fitness program built around a zombie game. You head off on a walk or run, listen to your phone, and the story unfolds. You play the role of a Runner, collecting supplies etc for a community of survivors, and as you complete missions different parts of the story are unlocked. It's a brilliant idea, quite fun and has got me running a bit, or at least shambling slightly faster than a zombie. The cheap version (which I naturally bought) was only a couple of bucks. The more expensive one I think includes graphics so you can see your community grow and has a wider range of missions. Strongly recommended if you're worried about your weight but bored beyond belief by the prospect of just going for a jog or visiting a gym.

Sons of Death

This week I've been chipping away at the next unit of Fireforge knights, but also managed to finish a unit of Gripping Beast Sons of Death (Gall-Geidhill) for SAGA. These feature as a unit of Swords for Hire in the rules, but I mainly got them because I like the sculpts (by Bill Thornhill). One of the nicest things about Bill Thornhill's sculpts is the way the right hands come as a separate piece holding a weapon, rather than the less convincing open hands of most of the earlier Gripping Beast figures.

Since they are supposed to be a unit of mercenaries I gave them a consistent colour theme on the shields. Most of the designs are supposed to look pretty Norse, with a few nods to some Irish Celtic influence.

I'm looking forward to using these in SAGA. in particular, they should scare my Breton nemesis quite a bit. Heh.

First unit of Fireforge Knights

I've finished the first batch of 12 knights from Fireforge. These were made up from components of their three boxes (Teutonics, Templars and Sergeants) for maximum variety, and are going to be used as a mid-13th century force of the Holy Roman Empire. Some I like, others didn't quite work, but I'll get better. The bloke with the upright lance will be carrying a banner, probably of the Archbishop of Trier.

Project Kursk Part 8: Dug in Artillery WIP

Firstly, welcome to Johan Krieg, the 225th follower of this humble blog.

This is a WIP to show how I'm basing artillery for Project Kursk. Basically, I wanted to work out a simple and interchangeable system that would allow guns to either stand alone on their own bases or slot into bases showing entrenched positions.

The bases are cut out of 2mm plastic card. To start with, I cut out a 7cm square, then cut out of that an insert measuring 3cm X 5cm, leaving me with a U-shaped base 2cm wide to build up as a reinforced position. As you might be able to see in the photo below, I found it helped to drill holes at the corners of the section I was going to cut out of the 7cm base, heavily score it then carefully snap out the 3cm X 5cm section. I cut off the corners of the U-shaped section and bevelled the edges.

Next, I constructed the wooden interior face of the entrenchment. The first version used bamboo skewers (that's the one on the left in the picture below), but that looked a little too big for 15mm, so I switched to toothpicks. I started by plonking on the uprights in some blobs of Tamiya model putty, then build up the horizontal logs with toothpicks and PVA. Five toothpicks seemed about the right height at the front of the position.

The earth bank at the front was simply made up with some Das air-drying clay I had lying around. The final position is suitable for the 45mm, 57mm and 76.2mm AT guns made by Plastic Soldier Company, and should work for most German guns as well.

So there we are. Simple and quick interchangeable bases.

Assembling Fireforge Knights

Just after Christmas the Duchess and I took our retinue away to stay with her parents for a week. Fearing hobby withdrawal I took away a box each of Fireforge's Templar Knights, Teutonic Knights and Mounted Sergeants to assemble. I'm intending to use them as a Holy Roman Imperial army from the 13th Century, probably led by Frederick II, so I was happy to mix and match components from all three boxes together.

I know some people are interested in seeing these figures assembled, so here are some images of what I put together. To start with, what's the difference between the three boxes? Basically, all three contain the same core components (torsos, weapons, arms). The horse differ, with the Teutonics having all the horses with caparisons, the Sergeants having none, and the Templars having half of each. The shields are different in the three boxes, as are the heads, with the Teutonics having mainly crested barrel helms, the Templars containing a nice range of transitional helmets and the Sergeants having kettle hats and so on. Crested helms were certainly not peculiar to the Teutonic order, so I will be using them alongside other helmets for my Imperial knights.

There is lots to like about these figures. They assembly very easily, with no gaps and almost no flash of any kind. The components between the three boxes are all completely interchangeable, so this is a great way to get a large and diverse force of 13th century knights. Some torso and arm combinations allow figures to be defending against an attack to their right, which is a rare thing from figure manufacturers, and looks great. In short, these are nice figures, and check out Ubique Matt's blog for an example of how amazing they can look when painted.

Things not to like? Well, the weapons, frankly. The swords are great, but the morning stars, maces and axes included in the sets are really a bit overscale, I think. A little bit '1240K'. The axe, for example, looks like a two-handed weapon, and I think would be exceptionally hard to use on horseback. The lances may be a bit too long, and you need to be careful to choose the right arms to carry them or they look very unwieldly. I went ahead and used all the the weapons from Fireforge, but those more motivated than I might seek alternatives.

One final interesting point raised by Matt on his blog concerns the appearance of caparisons. Although Fireforge (along with just about everyone else) model the horses' tails sticking out of the caparisons, Matt suggests that medieval art seems to always show them covered by the caparisons. After flicking through a few images this looks to be right, which is a bit baffling. The caparisons must have got pretty filthy at the rear, shall we say. Fortunately I read this on Matt's blog after I had assembled the figures, thus avoiding the nagging feeling that I ought to research it properly and remove all the horses' tails. I'm looking forward to seeing these all painted en masse!