Fred - 2017 Painting Diary

[DFlynSqrl]

Very cool.

[Techno]

Looking good, Forbes.

Cheers - Phil

[fred.]

Thanks chaps. Hopefully get them painted properly over the weekend

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Nice one Forbes

[fred.]

The Squid Faces and swarms got their first outing on Friday night, and while they generally died, they were on the winning side. Not only did they have to contend with being freshly painted figures, they also are the squishiest part of the army.

Got some more paint on them this evening:



Not entirely sure what colour to go with on the Squid Face's claws?

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Keep the green, black stipple at the tips, blend lighter green to white at the bases.

[fred.]

I like that idea, ta.

[fred.]

The Men Who Would be Kings

Had a day off today, and was able to persuade my eldest daughter to try out TMWWBK - due to figure availability it was rather more VSF than colonial, figure wise it was Lizardmen vs Naval Brigade. But stats wise it was Zulus vs British. As it was our first game with these rules, we kept things simple and went with standard leaders across the board. The leader rules are quite detailed, and this will perhaps be the hardest bit to represent in 10mm - perhaps I will introduce separate leader figures. Each stand represented 4 figures, irrespective of the number of troops on it.

The scenario was the suggested introductory one Just Passing By, where each force is trying to exit the far side of the table, casualties inflicted are a bonus but not key to winning.

The Lizardmen as a tribal force were the attacker, and as Tribal units get Move as their automatic action each turn, they are also not slowed down by rough terrain. I had 3 units of Fierce Warriors (the larger warriors) who are +1 to hit in Melee, and 3 units of Veterans (with more shrubbery on their bases) they are +1 Discipline, so they activate more easily, as Tribal units they are 16 figures strong.

The Naval Brigade, had 3 units of regular riflemen, 12 figures strong, whose automatic action is Fire. They also had a maxim gun, which was perhaps a bit of a liability in this scenario, as it moves slowly, but it gets +1 to hit when shooting, but doesn't get an automatic action.

The Lizardmen had the first turn, and making use of their automatic success at activating to move, ran forward en mass. I rolled for 1 veteran unit to double, and they moved laterally into the jungle area.  The Naval Brigade troops then failed several activations (only needing a 5+ on 2d6) so kind of stood around. The next turn or two carried on this way, the Lizardmen pressed forward on the right flank, with the Naval infantry moving across to try to engage them. The maxim went forward on the left flank, and got some long range shots at one veteran unit, pinning it (this unit is out of shot on the left). But while it was doing this two others were moving up under cover of the ziggarat.



At this point the Veteran lizards on the ziggurat charged the maxim gun - as you always need to roll to activate to Attack an enemy, for Tribal troops you may as well always Attack at the double, gaining 1d6" of movement. The Lizardmen rolled 16 dice needing 4+, the maxim rolled 4 dice needing 6+. The maxim crew managed to take 1 enemy with them as they were engulfed in spears. This suddenly cleared the far flank.

On the near side another unit of veterans moved forward to threaten a unit of Naval infantry, but weren't close enough to charge. At this point there were so many lizardmen units near to exiting, the Naval troops concentrated their fire on those trying to exit, shooting two units up, and pinning both of them. But this allowed the other unit to charge in the dice rolls favoured the lizards!!



This left the unit hanging on with just 1 figure left!!

The rest of the lizard units poured off the table



The thin blue line did its best, shooting up two units, causing repeated pins, and finally killing them. But it was too little too late.

The final score was 10 - 2 in the lizardmen's favour.

The Regulars suffered from failed command rolls and relatively slow movement - if they had been able to get on top of the ziggurat and shoot from their it might have gone differently. Though I suspect the lizards would have kept away from them, and chanced the long range shooting. With the speed and volume of Tribal units this seems a difficult scenario for the regulars.

We were going to have a re-match with alternative sides, but it was tea time!!

[Techno]

 

Cheers - Phil.

[Womble67]

Nice looking table

Take care

Andy

[Terry37]

This is a great looking army, and of course I'm not sure what rules you set hem up for, but I usually see everything as HOTT.

I wanted to mention that you might look at some of Rebel Minis (sorry Leon) sea creatures as he has a few others that might work. He also has some Capt, Nemo 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea types to fight them maybe. They're 15 MM, but a smallish true 15 MM so you might be able to use some of them.

http://www.rebelminis.com/15mmseawitches.html

http://www.rebelminis.com/nehein.html

http://www.rebelminis.com/caneandelgu.html

http://www.rebelminis.com/15mmdeepones.html

Again, I really like what you've done!!!

Terry

[fred.]

Nice looking table
Andy

Thanks Andy and Phil, it was good to get in a quick fun game.

This is a great looking army, and of course I'm not sure what rules you set hem up for, but I usually see everything as HOTT.

I wanted to mention that you might look at some of Rebel Minis (sorry Leon) sea creatures as he has a few others that might work. He also has some Capt, Nemo 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea types to fight them maybe. They're 15 MM, but a smallish true 15 MM so you might be able to use some of
Again, I really like what you've done!!!

Terry

Thanks Terry, it's been fun putting together the Fishmen army. I'd not seen those rebel minis figure snefore, the deep ones look like they would fit in. Unfortunately postage from the US is now very expensive for small orders - I had been looking at similar figures from Khurasan but the postage doubled the cost, and then the parcel is likely to get hit with import duties at this end.

[fred.]

Lizardmen

As the Lizardmen got a run out the other day, I realsied that some of them still need some flock and tufts adding to their bases, so that was this afternoons little project



This army is pretty much done, I have about 60 warriors still to paint, and a few flyers and bowmen. And I might get a few more Wizards and Commanders, from the new Warband ones. And I have a few dinosaurs to paint. But those are more finishing touches than anything more! They barely take up 1 row of a RUB.

[Terry37]

What rules are you going to game these with? They sure look a lot like HOTT basing?

Terry

[fred.]

We currently play with our home brew set, Hordes of War, which uses 40mm square basing. Lots of our troops are still based 40x20mm due to the Warmaster legacy - but obviously 2 of these together make 1 unit for HoW. A key part of our own rules was being able to use WM based armies as we have huge amounts of these figures within our group.

[Techno]

They DO look very spiffy, Forbes !

Cheers - Phil.

[DFlynSqrl]

Very colorful!  Really cool army.

[fred.]

Thanks chaps

[Womble67]

Very nice indeed fred

Take care

Andy

[fred.]

Jungle Shrubbery

Sticking with the jungle theme, made some jungle trees / shrubbery from various bits of aquarium plants, snipped apart into small pieces.



Attempted to glue them to the coin bases using hot glue gun - many took more than one go, which seems to be typical for hot glue, which doesn't seem to be the most sticky of glues