The Secret Warband episode #2

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Things have been quite busy around the house and as usual lots of projects and things happening. Getting tons done but “posting” is way down on the list! Having put a few chores out of the way along with quite a few commission “build and paint” job’s I finally have a few moments to pound out an update.

The SAGA Age of Magic Undead army has been my main focus as far as figures for myself and the subject of the previous post The Secret is out, an UnDead Warband where I promised to post up the waband as I completed various units.

There are several more boxes and “sprues” that didn’t make it into the original picture. They are just so cool!

After purchasing nearly “all the skeletons in the world” the first units were built from the Warlord Games skeletons produced for their fantasy game “Warlords of Erehwon”. Starting with these was a deliberate choice based on their look and style. These were the skeletons that I remembered from my youth and the movie “Jason and the Argonauts”. They were also fairly simple allowing me to develop a painting and basing style for my army before tackling more intricate and complicated figures. Those readers who are paying attention might notice that in the picture there are not only a box of 30 of these figures but directly below it another of 90 more figures! WTF? Bill you said a SAGA warband? That’s way more figures than you need! Yep well I just don’t know when to stop in fact there are about 200+ figures in the collection but I plan to have lots of force options as well as use this army for other games where a larger figure count is needed. (Thanks for the commission work gents, see what it bought me!)

I’ve painted all 30 from the first box as well as completed my warlord and started on my “Sacred Ground” terrain piece that will appear in future post. I may use them as warriors or perhaps “mindless” in SAGA will see. For now, here’s the 30 “skeletons”

I have about 100 more of these to build and paint! It goes fairly quickly and you can see with some simple cutting, bending, and swapping bits and pieces around no two are alike!

They are a bit fiddly during assembly and a bit delicate in handling but in my opinion some of the nicest and most fun to build “skeletons” out there! Add that to the fairly inexpensive cost of around $25 for 30 of them makes it even better.

As I said before “posing” them was just a hoot and allowed me to capture those cool shots I remember from the movies. Rey Harryhausen was a master at this posing or positioning in his stop animation work and I tried to recreate some of those looks! These two and the ones in the “gallery” below are a few of my favorites so far.

I remember as a lad seeing the skeletons clawing their way out of the ground and thinking that was the coolest! This pose I created is a tribute to that memory!

Building the dirt up around the “hole” helps the impression. This was originally a standing figure.

Painting was done by starting with a white primer base using ACLAD II primer in my air brush and then going with GW/Citadel paints which is a change for me as I mostly go with Vallejo paints. After the primer comes a wash of Citadel AGRAX Earthshade (its a brown wash) straight out of the bottle, then a heavy dry brush (not too dry) of Citadel USHANTI BONE, and a finial highlighting of Vallejo OFF WHITE. I did not age these guys weapons/shields down much as I liked the brighter look off setting the bones and figured “hey they were magically restored” Most of the “coming out of the ground” poses where custom made just using parts with a little cutting and bending. Enjoy, I did!

 

In “Jason and the Argonauts” the Skeletons fought and moved in a way that truly made them look like they were undead and not as coordinated as the living. This was partially due to the stop-motion process but also deliberate by Harryhausen to give them a character unlike the living.

Ends of the arms and legs are ball socket-ed to allow easy posing and the other joints can be easily bent with a slight cut. Heads are the same way.

NEXT Post UP, a Warrior unit using Mantic Games Figures!

 

Napoleonic book that’s a must read!

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I’ve always been an avid reader and tend to pick up interesting books even if  I may not read them right away or maybe even for years. They are sitting on the shelves like little gems just waiting their chance to shine. Now finding the time to read some of these gems has always been tough but the current state of world affairs has somewhat changed that. We have all lost plenty of our daily routines but what nearly all of us have gained is “time and solitude” and those are the two main ingredients for an activity called reading!

One of those books that I decided to pull off the shelf and give a read turned out to be a real gem and takes its place on my list of must reads when it comes to Napoleonic military books. The book covers the roles of Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, and how Command and Control was used to tie them all together. There is also a great section on Siege warfare, an often overlooked part of the period. The book ends with nice section on Navel warfare at the height of the Age of Sail.

FIGHTING TECHNIQUES of the NAPOLEONIC AGE 1792-1815 Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin Press

The book is a very easy read unlike many books of this type, and presents the information in a very clear and understandable way. There are lots of great pictures, maps, and illustrations to augment the text when explaining the how, why, and evolution of warfare and tactics in the Napoleonic Age. The book goes into wonderful explanations as to how the different nations armies fought and why some battles were won or lost based on this. I highly recommend the book to anyone gaming or interested in warfare in the period. It goes a long way in explaining or making sense why rule sets give an edge or penalty to various forces in Napoleonic rule sets.

I love how book uses actual battles to show where and how these fighting techniques were used and the effects they had on the battle. A very nice way to tie it all together.

The wife and I spent a great weekend up in the beach town of Cayucos, California over the 4rth of July weekend to avoid the heat and save the dog from the traditional “fireworks freak-out” most of them go through. The book was a great companion to the ice chest of tall frosty beverages while relaxing on the beach!

The book retails at $35 but it’s routinely found below $20. I got mine at a favorite “old book store” in their military section for $16, in brand new unread condition.

There are loads of these types of illustrations to help the reader visualize and understand the information clearly.

 

 

The Secret is out, an Un-Dead Warband

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Places like Paul Freilers (Torrance, California) were magic and I could spend hours there just dreaming among the oh so cool treasures!

Back in the beginning (early 1980’s) when I first started to collect and paint miniatures it was only a hobby to relieve stress from work, an outlet for my creative/collecting desires. I didn’t play games with them, I simply bought figures I liked, painted them and stuck them in a small cabinet I had. Most of the first figures were from the Dungeons & Dragons world since that was the rage at the time, for me Historical’s would come later but it was fantasy first.

Like most folks I painted the “good guys” to start with, some Wizards, Elves, a few Human hero’s, my collection grew. One day while in a shop looking at figures, I noticed a rack of books with small rule books allowing you to play games with these miniatures, sort of a way to bringing them to life. I now became interested in playing with these miniatures, found a group in Santa Monica’s Aero hobbies (sadly closed) that played and I signed up for a Saturday session. I was hooked, my minis now had a purpose in life!

Back in the day painted mini’s were not always that common in games, well painted was rare, and basing…whats basing?

I painted, I played, but after only a few sessions the Game master of our little group failed to show up for our Saturday adventure. In his place I was nominated to run an adventure (perhaps because in of all the group my minis were actually painted in more than two colors!) so letting my imagination go I winged the group through a made up on the spot adventure. Afterwards I figured I had done so poorly that they would never have me as a GM again but to my surprise the players said it was one of the best sessions yet and could I do it next week! I agreed but without telling them that I had no idea what I was doing, that most of my die rolls had nothing to do with actual rules, I just rolled dice and then interpreted results, balanced with what I thought should have happened for FUN! Most players back then had little knowledge of the rules anyway…thank God for those GM screens!

Sure I read the “Hobbit” and had to have three trolls for under the bridge!

I realized that as a GM, players relied on me to bring the “bad guys”, the monsters, NPC’s, the things in the game they had to fight, out think, and overcome. I started painting Goblins, Orcs, and the various things one finds in D&D dungeons. Remember Kobolds? Lots of those! I would go down each week to the hobby shop to see what new treasures had come in, yes, remember when you had to “go to the shop” to see figures!

Fast forward to 2018, D & D is long behind me, I’ve been playing “historical games” for many years and with many different groups. One of the groups I have played with the longest is the “Dogs of War” in Los Angeles, they had gotten deep into a game called SAGA by Studio Tomahawk, dark age battles involving warbands instead of full armies. I was never a big fan of Ancients, Dark Ages, or the Medieval period although I had painted several large “Tactica” armies, Romans, Huns, and played that for a while. Still this new SAGA “Dark Ages” period interested me, especially since it had “Vikings”. Several of the movies from my youth involved Vikings and had left strong impressions on my young mind, adventure, gold, sex, and hacking apart your fellow man to get them! What’s not to like?

Who better than Kirk Douglas to play a Viking!

Yes, my dad and his buddies had a habit of taking me to all those movies their wives were not interested in, Goldfinger, Fantastic Voyage, The Longest Day, etc.… (thanks dad!). I’m sure my mom was not thrilled about me going either but go I did (thanks Mom!). Movies like “The Vikings” staring Kirk Douglas. Tony Curtis, and Ernst Borgnine as well as “The Long Ships” with Richard Widmark and Sydney Poitier were what SAGA was about! I got roped into a few SAGA games with a “lender” Viking warband and was hooked! Soon boxes of “all the Vikings in the world” were headed to my house (I bought almost the entire line of Foundry Vikings). Warbands of Vikings, Saxons, Normans, Teutonic Knights, and Moorish hordes poured off my workbench! I painted, played and enjoyed SAGA for several years but then like many other popular games it grew and produced an updated version SAGA II

It was the move from SAGA into SAGA II that worried me. Now SAGA II changed a few things around (for the good) but it introduced “Fantasy” warbands and “magic” as an option, yet another peroid, and one I was not interested in starting, my lead pile is big enough! . As we moved into SAGA II some of the group leaned towards creating some “fantasy” warbands, in fact they fairly quickly built them! Ha! “Not me” I said “NEVER, not going to happen” I told them, over and over, right up to the point while watching one of their silly Saga Magic games I picked up the “Age of Magic” supplement book to help look up a rule. While looking through the heavily illustrated book I saw a skeleton warband in 28mm and felt faint….my head started to spin…..I spun straight back to my youth once again, I’m sitting in a darkened movie palace, gobbling down popcorn, and watching “Jason and the Argonauts”.

Burned into my memory was one of the last scenes where after Jason kills the Hydra and steals the fleece the local king cuts out the Hydras teeth and scatters them on the ground to release long dead victims, “Children of the Hydra”, only skeletons now to catch and kill Jason and his band. The Ray Harryhausen’s master piece of animation that brought the “children of the Hydra” to life was when I fell in love with skeleton figures.

What young boy was not inspired to create his own adventures after seeing this!

The “Master” of stop motion Ray Harryhausen works with one of his skeletons on the set!

Now this photo in the SAGA II  Age of Magic book was not the first time I felt that pull from my past as far as skeletons are concerned, it was years ago on one of those trips to the hobby shop for some new D&D figures that I first saw skeleton mini’s! They were quite possibly the first skeleton minis ever made in 25mm, and knocked me over, I had to have them!  They were modeled in the style of Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death, or “Totentanz” renaissance wood block prints from the 1500’s. As I recall the sets were produced by Minifigs in 25mm and the range was called “Valley of the Four Winds” or “VFW” for short. I bought perhaps 30-40 figures in the range and had them on display in my miniature’s cabinet for years, even after becoming mostly “historical only gamer”. Yes I did some Victorian Science Fiction, Battle Tech, even Starship Troopers. As the years passed, I started to sell off most of my unused fantasy figures to create space and cash for the historical figures. The cherished VFW skeletons went to greener pastures, but I never forgot them….

Pretty impressive for the early 80’s….many of the GW crowd who might think they came up with this stuff were still learning to walk.

Original packaging from the still popular among collectors line. (out of production)

It was after returning home from that game at the “Dogs” clubhouse that I felt the urge to see those old skeleton figures and what was produced in 28mm Skeletons nowadays, heck just “looking” wouldn’t hurt… Little did I know that like a fish below the boat looking at the bait, I was in dangerous water.

 

Wow! found an old picture of my painted VFW skely’s! Painted Circa 1981

Wow, there are tons of skeletons out there nowadays!!! A dozen or more manufacture’s, different period’s, styles, historical and total fantasy to choose from. Now being a very “traditional” type I was not impressed with the many times overblown sculpts popular with some gaming systems and manufactures, I yearned for the style I remembered from my younger days. I wanted Skeletons from “Jason and the Argonauts”! Well it was not long using the power of the internet that I found what I was looking for. The bait was looking good!

I couldn’t believe how close these figures looked to the figures in “Jason and the Argonauts” and then I read the box that proclaimed “Children of the Hydra” doh!

There it was, a box of 24 Skeletons looking as if they came right off the silver screen! They were pretty bare “bones” (pun intended) and had only options for spear, sword, or bow, and a few Greek style shields. I figured I’d just take a look at prices and availability but  before I knew it my shaking finger hit the “buy it now” button… the hook was set, and I was into the net called “Age of Magic”

The figures arrived and while unboxing them I remembered they were plastic, I had to assemble them and oh boy what a lot of parts, small parts, fiddly parts! This was going to take time. The good news was that there was little flash, and mold lines were not bad at all. Yes, there are a lot of parts but with some proper glue and a bit of patience I built the first one and he (?) looked great! I soon got the hang of assembly and could churn out 5-6 of them in about an hour. You get plenty of options for body parts, and since they are plastic the posing possibilities are nearly endless! They even have options for a few coming out of the earth which is really cool and something I definitely wanted. I actually really enjoyed building these! The box says you get 24 figures but if you want you can use extra pieces to make partial skeletons emerging out of the ground, or as casualties, and increase that number. I think I got 28 figures all told with a few casualty markers (pile of bones) to boot!

Now normally I have a habit of not revealing my new projects until they hit the table, it’s fun that way, the big reveal. Now with the Corona Virus, Sheltering at Home, and social distancing get togethers are done for a bit so I have decided to just share my build of this warband here.

Ok, enough! Let’s see the figures!

REMEMBER “clicking” on the picture will give you a larger version.

Some might question the basing choice since I went with a “fairly” simple flocked base instead of a more intricate “undead looking” base that many people use. Well several reasons,

  1. I didn’t want the base distracting from the mini, sometimes “skeletons” are  a bit plain.
  2. We play mostly on “grass” covered mats (and see above)
  3. Skeletons, even with their armor, weapons, and dressing, can be a bit monotone so the green color really helps off set this.
  4. There was going to be a lot of skeletons and simple is faster!
  5. I had a plan to “tie” in the basing with the figure! (see further down)

While there are a few bases designed for “clawing out of the earth” poses its very easy to take spare parts and create your own. I actually found creating varied poses was a lot of fun and pretty easy given the thin plastic. In part two of this series on the “Undead Warband”  I’ll talk more about the nuts & bolts of building and modifying.

My crazy brain like to analyze figures before I paint them, what are they doing, why are they doing it, what are they thinking, etc. I find it helps me in selecting how to paint and pose them. With the “skeletons” I started thinking, “well their frekkin dead so what keeps them going?” and thought “ok, dead equals no “life force” so to reanimate them the Necromancer gives them a magical shot of “life force” but how can he keep this up for a whole army?” well he doesn’t! Once they are brought to life and sent off they have the ability to steal “life force” from any living organism they contact.

So if you look at my bases you see that the grass where the skeletons walk is black or brown, wilted and destroyed as the “life force” is pulled away. Yea, I sometimes go down the “Rabbit Hole”……

These are just the first five of 30 that I’ve done already, they are fairly simple as I was using them to develop a style and paint selection for the rest of the army. I will post picks of the others soon. There are also quite a few other components to this army to be revealed in future post!

Blast from the Past, Wargame Memories!

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Since most of us have not been gaming much the discussion of games gone by has come up more often. I have been going through boxes of old pictures and came across some I thought many of you might find interesting in fact some of you might find yourself in!

I’m going to start putting them up randomly in post and then on a page of their own. If you have any better info on some of the pictures please let me know in a comment on the site or an email reply. I you have pictures you might want to share of gaming in our area, with us, or are relevant please let me know or send them.

 

Static Grass gone Wrong

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Several years ago I decided to learn to make my own “Static Grass Tufts” and as part of that I built myself a negative ion grass applicator. Now those who know me are well aware that when I go, I go big most of the time, and this was no exception. Not content with buying one, or a simple small conversion using a cheap 9 volt battery powered electric bug zapper, I went full tilt and made a 120 volt powered applicator that Darth Vader would be proud of!

Fun to learn about, build, and have it work but its not that practical for most “wargaming” applications.

It works great, full coverage over big areas!I guess if you were do some large battlefield or convention terrain it would be great but as the wise Tim D said “Tufts? Why?, I buy all I want online”

Me being sorta stubborn I was determined to justify making it and having just finished  some 15mm French Cavalry I decided to use it to static grass the bases!

Just used it on the Cavalry, what do you all think? Perhaps a tad too much?

I might give them a permanent “in cover” bonus the next game! “Dam! is that French Cavalry on our flank?” “No sir! just some oddly shaped bushes”

Seriously the applicator works great, but for basing where you also have a “metal” figures the electric “charge” causes the grass to gather on it as well! For terrain and other projects its great but really more of a model railroaders item or even static “plastic” modelers tool. For basing a plastic squeeze bottle like the ones used in restaurants for ketchup or mustard works fine for basing.

Gripping Beast 28mm Viking Bowmen conversion.

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Steve Gausche life long gaming pal! We had just re-based his ACW troops on magnets!

For most of us the current situation has given us a change in schedule, for me working at home equals no commute time, less shopping trips, dinners out, visiting, trips, and gaming with my friends (booo!). When I saw this coming I vowed to try and use all the unexpected time to do things that have been put off in the past. If you have been following the post here (please subscribe! top right home page) you will know that one of the goals was to organize my website better and post more often! So while going through files I found several partially completed posts and articles that for one reason or another never made it onto the site. One of them was the “second half” of Stevie G’s “Byzantine Birthday Bash” article. Remember it was when I painted up some Byzantine Cataphracts for him and he accepted them with “wow great! but…I would rather have some plain old Viking archers”. Well I never finished the article “Stevie G Birthday Bash part two!” so here it is, finished.

Byzantine Birthday Update! In the last post “Byzantine Birthday Bash” I talked about Steve not being totally enthused with my gift of the Byzantine Cataphracts and while loving the figures he just felt he would not use them much. It was decided that I would keep the Byzantines and instead paint him up a 12 figure unit of “Viking archers” since his Viking war band was currently using a unit of spear-men to represent archers. I had gotten a pack of Gripping Beast archers from Steve months ago and was going to give them some custom additions to make them look a bit “cooler” on the battlefield. This would be the addition of bowstrings and arrows that are normally missing on molded figures. I have a very nice Viking Warband (even if I do say so myself) and I took great care to make my bowmen look realistic, like they were really firing their bows. My Viking warband uses all “Foundry Vikings” as I regard them as some of the best ever produced! The adding of bowstrings and arrows to figures can be tough since many sculptors have never shot a bow, or figure that the end user wont care about the missing parts.
When I opened the Gripping beast package of 12 “bowmen” I was somewhat disappointed in the poses and sculpts. First the poses are really only three, Standing firing, kneeling firing, and moving / drawing arrow. There is a bit of fiddling with the basic pose to try and make them look different but in my opinion it fails. I felt when finished  this unit would look very much like a unit of “toy soldiers” no matter how it was painted.

The GB figure with just a bit of preliminary modification to see what was possible.

The GB figures with just a bit of preliminary modification to see what was possible.

Well me being me, I decided to do something in an attempt to remedy this by trying to give some uniqueness and variety to the figures. As I pondered how to do this I started to prep the figures for bowstrings and arrows. I quickly found that this was not going to be easy given the figures current poses. Many of the arms were at wrong angles, resulting in the bowstrings having to pass through the figures face or body.

Arms were at the wrong angles or to short making major modifications a must!

Arms were at the wrong angles or to short making major modifications a must! Three of the same figure. The second one shows original position with out bow, arm pulling back an imaginary arrow. First figure shows the bow installed and the attempt at adding the bow string. I would have to cut off his head to make it work and archers rarely held a bow in this position except when on horseback. The third figure shows how I corrected this by cutting off and repositioning the arm.

A small bit of reach was added to each arm to correct it's proportion.

A small bit of reach was added to each arm to correct it’s proportion and angle. A brass rod pin holds it in position while filling and sculpting as well as adding needed strength!

Simply bending the arms would not work either since the arms were a bit short in the original sculpt. I resigned myself to the fact that to make this work I would have to extend all the shooters arms as well as change the orientation of the knelling shooters arms by cutting / pinning/ filling them for every figure. Even the moving figure had a raised arm and hand that made one wonder what he is supposed to be doing. I solved that by putting an arrow in his hand as if he just “drew it” from the quiver and was about to nock it up.
As I delved into the project I also decided on other small modifications to “individualize” the figures from one another with additional shields, weapons, and hair styles.

Pro Tips: To avoid damage to figures when trying to bend arms, legs, or other thick parts use a good quality pair of needle nose pliers BUT lay a small wrap of leather in between the pliers and the figure to avoid marring or damaging the casting! The compression of the leather will give you a better grip and allow more force to be used. Also the area is thick, hard to bend, and to avoid distortion, try making a few cuts with a hobby knife or thin blade saw on the side you will be towards. removing a small amount of material there will make the process easier and look better. Fill the tiny cracks with gap filling super glue.

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A bit of a change in hair and a shield creates just enough difference in the figure that combined with different paint schemes makes the group look much more realistic. The lengthened arm now works to create the right balance of dimensions between the arrow, bow, and arm. The first figure now clearly gives the impression that he has fired one arrow and is getting ready to fire a second.

The “Bow Strings” were made of steel wire, cut, and super glued. I thought I might add a wrapping around were the bowstring is connected to the bow but decided that in this scale I could just paint that on and get the “effect” without all the work.

The arrows are made of thicker brass rod and “arrow heads” made by gently hammering tips flat then filing. I also sculpted “flutes”, the feathers you see on the end of an arrow that makes it fly true. They are a bit big perhaps but I think they will look right after painting.

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The “fletches” or feathers on the arrows are rough and would be historically as arrows had to be made quickly and cheaply in time of war, they were also not expected to be used over and over. There were better arrows made but those were rarer and used more for hunting or when individual accuracy was needed. Dark Age bows in warfare were more of a massed effect weapon than a specific target weapon.

I wished that the figures were arching up a bit, they are all shooting straight and level. Most archers would have been used as a group and be kept back to use their range so their aim would be higher.

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I have used thick industrial thread for bowstrings at times but it can be fiddly to do and not look that great. Using small steel wire is much easier and sturdier. Brass wire is used for the arrows as it is easier to shape and work with. Two part sculpting epoxy “kneadite” was used for the feathers.

The other side of the figure shows where a sword out of the “bits box” was added and a belt sculpted on to make it look right! Shields and swords were added to many of the bowmen as they would have carried them for defense or when called upon for melee support!

The easy addition to the center figure of a arrow in his hand and the bow string make a huge difference!

Probably 3 or so hours of extra effort was put into modifying these guys prior to paint but the results are well worth the effort in my opinion.

These guys were actually rewarding to do and not that hard especially since I have done this for fifty to 70 others before in my warbands. It just makes archers sooo much better looking that for me it’s a must do!

Yea! Now these bowmen look like a proper threat! Well worth the effort!

with the modifications, additional weapons, shields, and a some paint they look a cohesive yet individual unit.