Army Showcase - Wood Elves

My 'Do A Little Bit Of Painting Every Day' resolution resolution continues to pay off. Whilst it is directionless - I'm not painting towards any goal - it does allow for sustained effort in a particular direction, and that's seen me complete a new HOTT army.

These Wood Elves were based up and undercoated ten years ago*, and have sat like that ever since. A little bit of work each day for a week has seen them completed. 

It's not an exciting army. At present I have 28AP of troops - 9 x Shooters (including the general) 2 x Lurkers and 2 x Behemoth (the Ents). Here they are:

The colour palette is fairly muted and does get lost a little against the bases but, as my wife says, that's kind of the point.

The shooters, led by the general.

The lurkers, making use of some of my cheap and cheerful sponge trees which I made back in 1989.

The elves are from Peter Pig. I'm not sure who made these Ents, which I confess look a lot better painted than they did as bare lead.

I'm sure that in a box somewhere I have odd figures which could be used to add some kind of hero or magician element to the army, and I'd like to add some beasts as well once I find something suitable that's not already been absorbed into my Palaeo Diet collection.

Anyway, my directionless painting strategy appears to be paying off. I think I've already painted more this year than I managed in the whole of last year.

*This is not a record. Long-time readers of the blog will remember this post in which I showcased an army that had taken me fourteen years to complete.

Army Showcase - Fishmen

A number of people have admired mu Fishmen over the years, but I realised I'd never done an army showcase for them. So here it is.

They're a 15mm army I painted around 2002. They were originally 24AP, but I've added a few extra elements over the years and they'll run as a 36AP force if you feel that way inclined. They are a good example of how a simple bold colour-scheme can make for a bold and eye-catching army.

I don't do much in the way of back-stories for my armies, but I've always seen them as a theocratic society whose warriors often take live prisoners for sacrifice. A lot of the figures have nets for just that purpose.

Anyway, here's the full army.

The core of the army, which includes the general, are the fishmen with tridents, which I run as spears. There's six of them. They're from Pendraken, as are all of the core troops, and they are some of my favourite fantasy figures.

They are supported by warriors with harpoon guns, classed as shooters. There's four elements of these.

This is the cleric element. I have, in the past, sometimes run them as a magician. But mostly they are run as a cleric.

A cleric means that there's an awkward 1AP left over, so I made a lurker. This is one of the GW Man O'War sea-monsters.

So that's the original 24AP accounted for. A few years ago I added some extras. These were the first - a couple of elements of warband. The figures are Deep Ones from Rebel Minis and were gifted me by my friend Terry Webb.

The original Pendraken army pack came with a small cannon and a couple of crew, but i never felt it fitted my view of the army. But I liked the idea of some artillery, so added this ballista and crew from Evil Gong's Fishman range.

Finally I felt the army needed some heavy-hitters. This is their behemoth - a sea-troll I 3D-printed from a file designed by DutchMogul on Thingiverse.

And the Fishman god turns up from time to time - it's Reaper Bones figure. I can't remember what's it's packaged as, but basically it's a mini-Cthulhu.

And that's the army. It's not fast of clever but often wins by slowly grinding down their foe, the spears in the centre being ably supported by shooters on the wings and varying levels of help from whatever else I bolt onto the army. 

In all this time I've never given them a stronghold. I should, really.

Army Showcase - The Morthbrood

This army is the evil opponent of The Forces of Light and, like it, draws ideas from both 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The Moon of Gomrath'.

Here's the army in all its glory. The list is:

1 x Magician General (The Morrigan and Grimnir) @ 4AP
1 x Sneaker (Brollachan) @ 3AP
1 x Flyers (Crows) @ 2AP
1 x Behemoth (Mara) @4AP
1 x Beasts (Palug Cats) @ 2AP
1 x Beasts (The Hounds of the Morrigan)@ 2AP
1 x Lurker (Svart Alfar with Nets) @ 1AP
6 x Hordes (Svart Alfar) @ 1AP

The Morrigan (in her guise as Selina Place) is the magician general, whilst the weed-coated Grimnir is her second-in-command on the same base. The Morrigan is a railway figure, whilst Grimnir is a Micro-Machines Star Wars figure with some added weed.

The creatures of the Morthbrood - the crows are railway model seagulls (I kid you not) with their wings clipped. The Palug Cats are Irregular Miniatures tigers, but painted to look like tabby wildcats, for that is essentially what they are; huge cats. The Hounds of the Morrigan do not quite match the description in the book, but are Warmaster Chaos Hounds.

The behemoth in any HOTT army is usually the showcase figure, simply because of their size. The Mara are basically 20' tall malachite green troll-women. I used an Irregular Miniatures 54mm nude woman as the base, and gave her a ragged tunic made from tissue-paper. Their faces are supposed to be shapeless, so I chopped off the head and replaced it with a milliput blob with a few rudimentary features added. Fun Fact: The Mara were apparently based on the reclining female figures sculped by Henry Moore. 

The Brollachan is the figure I'm least happy with. It's described as a being of black smoke with two red eyes at the centre, which is not easy to model. I used some soft-toy stuffing, shaped and painted black, with the eyes painted in the middle. To be honest I really need to redo it and make it less of an unthreatening blob.

The Svart Alfar are basically your classic goblinoid horse, and I used Pendraken 10mm Orcs and 15mm goblins from what was then Chariot Miniatures to make them. The element with the net are the lurkers.

'The Moon of Gomrath' features Bodachs, which are larger goblin creatures. 

I hope you have enjoyed seeing these armies as much as I did putting them together and playing with them.

Army Showcase - The Forces of Light

Last year I had a request to do an Army Showcase for my matched pair of armies based around Alan Garner's novels 'The Weirdstone of Brisingamen' and 'The Moon of Gomrath'. Published in 1960 and 1963 respectively, these were popular childrens' fantasy novels when I was at school in the 1970s, but I never got around to reading them until I was an adult. They are set in Cheshire, in the area around Macclesfield, contemporary to the time they were written, and concern two children, Colin and Susan, who, whilst staying with friends whilst their parents are overseas, become embroiled in a magical conflict between good and evil. A lot of the concepts, creatures and characters are drawn from the mythology of the British Isles.

It's always hard to do this kind of army showcase without giving away spoilers, and I don't plan to summarise the events of the novels. Instead I will do a post for each of the two armies. The HOTT armies make use of things from both books, gleefully thrown together. Inevitably some things were dropped, simply because there weren't the points to allow for them.

In this post I will showcase the Forces of Light. Here is the army (you can click on the picture to make it bigger):

The list is as follows:

1 x Sneaker (Colin and Susan) @ 3AP

1 x Magician General (Cadellin Silverbrow) @ 4AP

1 x Hero (Albanac and Uthecar) @ 4AP

2 x Riders (Lios Alfar Cavalry) @2AP

1 x Shooter (Lios Alfar Archers) @ 2AP

1 x Lurker (Lios Alfar Ambushers) @ 1AP

1 x Blades (Dwarfs) @2AP

2 x Knights (The Einheriar of the Herlathing) @ 2AP

Here's the two main characters - Colin and Susan - along with the wizards Cadellin. The children would work as a cleric - one of them has a protective artifact - but this would hinder the magician in HOTT. But they also infiltrate the villain's stronghold and evade their minions so a sneaker works just as well. Colin is a plastic model railway figure whilst Susan is, I think, a Peter Pig French Resistance fighter with the gun filed off. Cadellin is a pretty standard literary wizard in the Gandalf/Merlin style, so I used a generic wizard figure from (I think) Irregular Miniatures.

This is the hero element, depicting the man Albanac and the dwarf Uthecar. Albanac is an ERM Border Reiver with a milliput hat, whilst Uthecar is a Peter Pig dwarf whose axe has been replaced by a sword.

Other dwarfs feature in both books, some of them named. I have lumped them together into a single blade element. Once again the figures are from Peter Pig.

I've noticed that in some games I run them as warband, thus showing that I don't really know my own lists. They work as either troop-type.

The Lios-Alfar are basically classic fantasy elves. They are four feet tall, and dress in silver and white with feather cloaks. So to depict them I used Irregular 10mm elves and a simple white/grey/pale-blue wash and dry-brush colour scheme. These are the cavalry.

And here are the archers - one element of shooters and also an element of lurkers.

Finally 'The Moon of Gomrath' features a lengthy appearance by the Wild Hunt (The Einheriar of the Herlathing). Five different groups of them are described in detail, but I only had room in the army for two and these are they. The figures are Sub-Roman British cavalry from Outpost.

This was a fairly easy army to put together, since the fact that it's based around common fantasy tropes means that there was a wide selection of figures available. I did a lot of it using spare figures, in fact - the 10mm Lios-Alfar were probably the only specific purchase I made.

In the next post I will showcase their opponents - The Morthbrood.

Army Showcase - Boxers and Foreign Devils

I was looking through my Flickr account the other day when I came across this set of photos I'd done about ten years ago of my 15mm Boxer Rebellion matched pair for 'Hordes of the Things'.

The basic lists for these armies can be found on Page 77 of the v2.1 of the rules, so I won't repeat them here. The lists also have the notes on the various abilities attributed to the troops by Chinese writers at the time.

Tigermen and musketeers. Although historically the Tigermen appear to be skirmishers of a sort, I run them as warband, because they look like they ought to be. The Imperial musketeers are shooters. All of these figures are from Irregular Miniatures.

Peking Boxers. They were said to be 10' tall and bulletproof. I used 25mm figures from Irregular's Ancient Chinese range for these sword-armed heroes. Flanking them are the rank and file. They are based as hordes, and that's how the list does them and how I originally ran them. However the army performed badly against its historical foe with hordes, so these days I run them as warband, albeit on a very deep base. Again the figures are from Irregular Miniatures.

The Boxer commander is also a warband, and is based as such. More Irregular Miniatures.

The feature elements of the army are the Red Lantern Auxiliaries; women possessed of awesome magical powers. This one can fly so is a ... flier. She's a 20mm figure from Atlantic's Maoist Chinese set (yes, they did such a thing). She was originally seated in a rickshaw, which brings us to ...

... the other Red Lantern. I left her in her rickshaw. She's the army's magician.

Finally the army can call on the aid of Guandi, the God of War in his golden armour. Guess what he is. Aside from being an Irregular Miniatures 25mm Chinese general.

Opposing the Boxers are the Foreign Devils. These are primarily from Tabletop Miniatures' Boxer range. I wanted to do one element to represent each nationality involved, but I ran out of elements, so I'm afraid fans of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians will be disappointed.

These are the Russians and the Japanese. Solid and reliable, they are blades.

There are two elements of British troops, representing a mixed party of Royal Marines and sailors. Fearless, and always ready to bring the fight to the enemy, they are warband.

Less gung-ho are the Italian Bersaglieri and US troops. Skirmishers by nature they are classed as shooters.

The army's cavalry is provided by the Bengal Lancers. I think these are Tabletop figures, but I'm not sure if they originally had turbans or if I added them myself. Anyway, they are knights.

The general for the Foreign Devils supervises their artillery. But who are those ladies next to the gun? And why are they naked?

It was well-known that the Foreign Devils disrupted Boxer magic by means of naked women, so the army includes an element of naked women. they are from Peter Pig and are classified as a cleric.

The army actually includes a real-life cleric. This is Bishop Favier, who led the defenders of the cathedral in the north of Peking and was apparently the incarnation of a 200 year-old devil-prince. I generally run him as a paladin, but he would work as a hero as well. I have no idea of the origin of this figure; I think it was in a mixed bag I got on a bring-and-buy.

To be honest I find that the Foreign Devils generally get the better of most games. More so when the Boxers were bulked out with hordes, but still with them as warband. I think their troops combine together better, and with both a paladin and a cleric they can pretty much nullify the Boxer's magician  for the entire game; for the Boxers to remove both causes of magical disruption they pretty much have to eliminate the Foreign Devils' army. One possibility is to run the Bishop as a cleric, but drop the element of naked women (using the figures elsewhere in the army) and add 4AP of new troops.

Still, these armies have seen good service over the years, particularly the Boxers, who predated the Foreign Devils by a while.

Army Showcase - Redwall

I reported a battle between my Redwall matched army pair yesterday and promised an Army Showcase for them So here it is.

'Redwall' is a children's book written in the 1980s by British author Brian Jacques. It proved so successful that he went on to write around twenty more, three of which were made into animated TV series. The world of Redwall is one of anthropomorphic woodland animals (almost all native to the British Isles) adventuring mostly in an area called Mossflower Woods, but sometimes straying into other areas as well.

The books are very formulaic, which is both a strength and weakness. You know what you're going to get with each one, which is great, but the downside is that there are few surprises. They generally feature a heroic animal of some kind, plus companions, setting off on a quest, whilst evil forces gather and threaten some part of Mossflower. The morality of the characters is pretty much defined by their species (another area that has attracted some criticism). Mice, otters, hedgehogs, moles, shrews, hares and badgers are invariably good, whilst 'vermin' animals - rats, wild-cats, weasels, stoats, foxes and so on - are always evil. And within this each species has particular traits - for example, shrews are argumentative and militant (the author based them on Liverpool dock-workers), whilst the hares are heroic and talk like WWII British fighter-pilots.

The series jumps around chronologically; the books skip back and forth through Mossflower's history, and often the main characters only appear for one book only. Central to most of them, though, is Redwall Abbey, which features as a bastion of decency and community throughout the stories and it's around the Abbey that the first book in the series is set.* The story is simple. The peaceful Abbey is threatened when the mighty rat warlord, Cluny The Scourge, arrives with his horde. The inhabitants use wit and courage to defend it from his army, whilst a young mouse called Matthias begins to get dream-messages from a legendary hero called Martin The Warrior, and sets out on a quest to recover his lost sword and shield and save the Abbey.

It was my wife who started reading the series and suggested that there was a lot of potential for HOTT armies in it. The trickiest part was figure availability. There is a manufacturer who does suitable miniatures now, but twenty years ago (which is how long ago I put together these armies) there was nothing. I had to resort to conversion and scratch-building.

And here are the Defenders of Redwall

The army list is as follows:

1 x Hero (Matthias, with the sword and shield of Martin The warrior)
1 x Hero (Basil Stag-Hare and Jess the Squirrel)
1 x Horde General (The Abbot)
1 x Behemoth (Constance, the Badger Mother)
2 x Shooters (Mouse Archers and Otter Slingers)
1 x Warband (Heroic Abbey Defenders)
1 x Warband (The Guosim)
1 x Lurker (More Guosim)
1 x Flyer (Sparra Warriors)

And here's Matthias. He's the guide for most of the figures in this army; he's a Pendraken 10mm figure, with a head sculpted from Milliput, and that's pretty much the case for everything else.

Basil Stag-Hare and Jess. These are 15mm figures from Peter Pig and Irregular, but again the heads are sculpted. I might give Basil a sword at some stage. I can't remember why I didn't arm him originally.

Redwall generally has an Badger Mother, and during the events of Redwall the role was taken by Constance who proved a fearsome fighter. Classing badgers in the series as behemoths does not seem unreasonable.

Constance is an old-style plastic GW Skaven with the weapons and ears removed and more clothing added.

Although the various heroes and Constance provide the main fighting strength for the Abbey, it is still run by the Abbot, and so he is the general for the army. Classing him as a horde makes him suitably weak and vulnerable. Again these are Pendraken 10mm figures with Milliput heads. The mouse in the yellow dress is Cornflower.

The army has some conventional rank and file. These are its missile troops - otter slingers converted from Peter Pig figures and mouse archers converted from Pendraken figures.

There's also a warband, representing some of the minor characters involved in the defence of the Abbey - the otter is Winifred, and the hedgehog is Ambrose Spike. I can't remember who the squirrel represents.

The Guosim provide a lurker and warband for the army. Guosim? It's the Guerilla Union Of Shrews In Mossflower, of course.

Finally in the roof of the Abbey dwell a fierce tribe of Sparras (sparrows). Although they initially hinder Matthias's quest they end up as valuable allies of the Abbey. They are slightly modified giant eagles from Peter Pig's 6mm range.

Finally, of course, the Abbey itself. This was bought from Forgeworld who, many years ago, did resin models of parts of famous Irish castles. Needless to say that it cost me more than all the miniatures I used for the actual army.

Most heroic armies based in or around Redwall in the series would be similar to this one. The Sparra are written out early on, but a number of books feature helpful birds of prey that would make a suitable replacement.

And what of Cluny The Scourge? This is his horde:

1 x Hero General (Cluny The Scourge)
1 x Warband (Cluny's Lieutenants)
2 x Shooters (Rat and Fox Archers)
1 x Sneaker (The Shadow)
1 x Sneaker (Tunnelling Rats)
8 x Hordes (Vermin)

Cluny is big and fierce with one-eyeand a poison barb attached to his tail. I used a plastic GW snotling as the base figure, and added a plastic GW rat head. The sword and tail were scratchbuilt.

The rats that make up the bulk of Cluny's army are either from Pendraken or what was Chariot Miniatures. I liked the rat with the pirate hat, and thought it would make a good lieutenant for Cluny. The standard is part of a tapestry of Martin The Warrior that the rats stole from the Abbey. I scanned it from an illustration in the book, then coloured it.

Cluny tries a number of stratagems to get into the Abbey, and these are represented by two sneaker elements. One represents his attempt to dig a tunnel under the Abbey walls, whilst the other represents his mysterious assassin, The Shadow. The tunnellers are converted from Chariot figures, whilst the Shadow is a Pendraken rat.

The Archers are foxes and rats. They are all from Chariot - the foxes are dog-headed archers from their Fantasy Egyptian range, with Milliput tails.

The Hordes. Pendraken and Chariot again.

The two sneakers make this army tricky to use, and I'm inclined to consider adding another warband and downgrading one of the sneakers to a lurker instead.

Cluny's army is pretty much the prototype for all vermin armies in the books - not all of the generals would be heroes, but a mix of warband, shooters and, of course, hordes would pretty much cover most of them. The corsairs of the island of Sampetra offer an interesting addition of monitor lizard shock troops which are best represented as spears. And there is one all-aerial horde; the ravens and crows of General Ironbeak.

The other main army of the Redwall series is that of the mountain stronghold of Salamandastron, which is ruled by a badger-lord who leads an elite army of hares called The Long Patrol. This would be best represented by a behemoth general for the Lord, maybe a hero to represent the bravest or most skilled Long Patrol members, and then a mixture of blades and some shooters for the rank and file.

*The first book, 'Redwall', was written as a one-off, so there are a lot of things in it which are not consistent with the later books. Some of them are explained in later books; others are simply ignored.