Getting Set

I managed to paint the Harbinger of Set figure by Crocodile Games this week, which I am planning to use as Set himself for our OGAM games. He is on a resin base from Fantascape.

Now the reason why I had the time to paint him is because I am now at home nursing a broken foot, specifically the fifth metatarsal. The injury occurred on New Year's Eve, so I spent the last day of the year having my bone set. Getting about the house is a bit of a pain now with a bulky plaster backslab on, but hopefully I can switch to a lighter plastic cast or a boot next week.

Meanwhile, I hope to prep the Egyptian infantry which will be part of the same warband. Will take me a while and I may have to hand-prime instead of spray-prime them, but one does what one can.

Here are a couple more pics of Set.

"Come at me, bro!" said Set to Osiris.

Out of Egypt...

I like mummies.

They are one of those figures that you can use across periods and genre, from fantasy and mythical to VSF to Pulp, and even games like Blood Bowl.

The latest addition to my small collection of mummy figures is the one from Northstar which they released as part of their Of Gods and Mortals Nickstarter. You can see him standing proudly atop a resin base from Fantascape, showing off his six-pack abs. I also managed to paint up two bases of Egyptian-themed critters, which are Bones miniatures given to me by fg.

I really like the Northstar mummy because it wears the double crown of Egypt, which to me speaks of the ancient history of that land.

The next figure on my painting list is the Harbinger of Set figure from Crocodile Games. Hopefully I can get that done over the New Year break.

Odin and his wolves

Painted Odin and his wolves over the weekend - I still haven't decided which is which yet though...

The wolves are from West Wind. They do look rather cartoony, but as fg had some handy they got recruited. I orignally planed to make them rather plain, but on fg's advice decided to stipple their fur a little.

The Odin figure is rather obviously a Gandalf figure, in this case from the Mithril line. I cut his wand off and drilled through his hand and inserted a brass wire for the shaft of Gungnir; the head is from a GW High Elf. Again, it looks rather cartoony, but I couldn't fit a more realistically-sized spearhead securely onto the end of the wire.

Anyway, with these three figures complete I can now field another warband for our OGAM project. I am now working on a Gallows Grove model from Privateer, after which I may start work on an Egyptian faction.

OGAM: First games

fg and I got together this afternoon to try out the OGAM rules which I have been enthusing about for the past few months.

We set up a basic scenario and played two games using my Norse dwarves versus my Fomorians, swopping armies between games.

We had some initial confusion regarding the casualty removal, but soon got the hang of things.

By and large the game played like a fantasy skirmish game, but the gods made things... different. Slain gods can be "respawned" on the table by the followers, but killing a god also triggers a morale check for the whole warband, which in the right circumstances can decide a battle.

We will probably need a few more games to figure out how to maximise the potential of each faction, and the interplay of the traits between different gods and legends will certainly mean more interesting match-ups. fg and I are already talking about larger games where gods become less dominant, but I guess we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Of Gods and Mortals

After a 5-month wait, my copy of OGAM arrived today.

Despite having learnt and played a few games of SOBH, I am not ready to play OGAM yet as there are some differences between the two systems, particularly in the melee resolution part.

The interplay between gods and mortals adds a level of strategy to the game, which I think will take some practice for a player to become good at.

Anyway, the first thing I did was to look at the army lists, and come up with lists for my forces.

So far, I've got:

Celtic

God

Balor of the Evil Eye - 304 pts

Legends

Bres (as Ferdiad) - 70 pts

Druidess - 54 pts

2 Fomorian champions (as werewolves) - 160 pts

Mortals

Unit of 8 Fomorian Warriors - 136 pts

Unit of 8 Fomorian Archers (using Celtic archer stats) - 176 pts

Total = 900 pts


Norse List 1A

God

Odin with Gungir - 380 pts

Legends

Norn - 30 pts

2 Valkyries with Flying - 180 pts

Mortals

Unit of 7 Dwarven Nobles - 154 pts

Unit of 6 Dwarven Armoured Archers - 150 pts

Total = 894 pts


Norse List 1B

God

Odin with Gungir - 380 pts

Legends

Norn - 30 pts

Geri or Freki (as Fenrir) - 104

Mortals

Unit of 8 Dwarven Nobles - 176 pts

Unit of 8 Dwarven Armoured Archers - 200 pts

Total = 890 pts

I decided Odin should get the Prophecy advantage given by the Norn because he drank from the well of Mimir...


Norse List 2

God

Thor - 376 pts

Legends

Dwarf Champion (as Valkyrie) - 70 pts

Dvergar Weapon Smith - 50 pts

Mortals

Unit of 8 Dwarven Warriors - 120 pts

Unit of 8 Dwarven Warriors - 120 pts

Unit of 8 Dwarven Rangers - 160 pts

Total = 896 pts

The Thor list is difficult since I can't really add most of the Legends as Thor cannot take Giants, and I don't think it's thematic for Valkyries to be fielded with non-noble Dwarven warriors, but as I must take 1 to 5 Legends, and the bonus from the Dvergar Smith is wasted if I take only him, I am sort of forced to take a Valkyrie-proxy.

Egyptian List

God

Set - 356 pts

Legends

1 Greater Mummy - 86 pts

Mortals

Unit of 8 Egyptian Elite Warriors - 152 pts

Unit of 8 Egyptian Elite Archers - 192 pts

Unit of 6 Mummies - 108 pts

Total = 894 pts


Trojan List

God

Apollo - 380 pts

Legends

Hector (as Achilles) - 108 pts

Aeneus (as Armoured Greek Hero) - 70 pts

Sarpedon on chariot (as Mounted Greek Hero) - 86 pts

Mortals

Unit of 6 Trojan Spearmen - 120 pts

Unit of 6 Trojan Archers - 120 pts

Total = 884 pts


Well, those are the plans anyway.

I'll see if I can get a review of the rules up in the near future.

When the gods conspire

I'm usually a rather cautious about starting new armies, and will ponder over the issue for weeks if not months. But sometimes the gods conspire against you, and if reading the Iliad has taught me anything, it is that you can't fight the will of the gods...

It all started when I was doing some reading about the Norse gods when I found that that Thor is the patron god for the peasant class, while Odin is the god of the warrior class. This prompted me to search for a suitable figure for Odin.

I decided on a Mithril 32mm Gandalf figure, as I wanted to represent the Wanderer aspect of Odin rather than his warrior aspect. I went on ebay and found that the seller offering the lowest price for the figure was also the one who had the lowest price on the Wargods of Aegyptus Harbinger of Set figure I had been watching; since I was paying the postage, I decided to get the figure too, as I already have these:

These are the latest line of resin bases from Fantascape, which I decided to buy when I got the bases for my Norse warband since they looked really nice. I had so much fun painting the large chariot base that I think it may turn into a new hobby for me; it will be the movement tray for the Egyptian spearmen in my OGAM Egyptian warband. The sloping surface on the 40mm base is a good match for the pose of the Harbinger of Set figure.

The round bases came in a set of three. The last one is quite nice but I don't have any figure posed to take advantage of it, and so I used it as the centre piece of the movement tray for the archers in my OGAM Egyptian warband.

I ordered a pack of Foundry Egyptian spearmen and one of Egyptian archers, and plan to get the Great Mummy figure from Northstar's OGAM Nickstarter. I really love the crown on that figure. When all those figures are painted, I will have myself a full Egyptian faction for OGAM.

You would think that the gods would be appeased with my spending and give me a break, but...

While looking at Redoubt's page, I found that not only are they planning a Christmas sale soon, they will also be increasing their prices come next year. This means that I will have to buy the Trojan warband which I have been thinking about this year. When I do, I will end up with all four factions in the basic OGAM rulebook.

The gods must be laughing at me right now...

Valkyries done

I managed to paint up the valkyries in two evenings.

They were nice sculpts to paint. I used a similar palette to that I used for the dwarves and Thor, and gave them raven wings instead of swan wings. The one with the braids *had* to be a blonde, and the other one became a redhead because we all know pre-Raphaelite women are all redheads. They have blue and green eyes respectively - not that you can tell at this scale... . Curiously, while they don't seem to have a need for warm clothing, they are wearing furred boots. Or maybe the boots are what's keeping them warm.

A rear shot showing the wing details and the gemming on the sword.

Finally, here's a shot showing the runic bases from Fantascape. I guess I should paint the sides of the base brown to match the rest of the force.

Valkyries

L to R: GW LOTR, Celtos, Red Box, Celtos, Reaper.

It took me a while to decide if I wanted valkyries in my Norse Dwarf warband, but once I decided, the choice of which ones exactly to buy was simple.

The two valkyrie figures above are Celtos Vanir (dwarf) figures (shown here without their wings), which happily match the rest of my dwarves. They do look rather sexist in their scale-mail one-piece, but then the whole concept of valkyries is just high school boys' fantasy, if Vikings had high schools... . Like their god Thor, they are based on Fantascape resin bases.

A little plug for Roy of Fantascape: the bases are well-cast with almost no defect (only one bubble on one of the bases), and they sit flat - I do hate resin bases that wobble because of an uneven bottom.

Roy also makes an Egyptian range of bases, which I bought a couple packs of because they look so good (and so I can have an excuse to start an Egyptian faction later...), so if you are planning an OGAM warband it's worth heading over for a look.

Veteran Beastmen or Tharn Ravager Whitemanes

I like my beastmen.

They are a sort of an "accidental army".

I started out buying a few leader type figures just because they looked good, and then added some GW beastmen fg had lying around to build them into a couple of units for our Strandhogg games. Before too long they are slated to do triple duty as Fomorians in our planned OGAM project, as well as Tharn Ravagers in Warmachines/Hordes.

The latest addition are these two Reaper beastmen woodcutter figures with heads from GW beastmen Gor.

As you can see from the second picture, they are about the size of the GW Gors, but hairier and leaner.

The reason why I painted them with white hair on the top half of their bodies is because I wanted them to represent Tharn Ravager Whitemanes, who are veterans under the rules.

Tharn Ravager Whitemane. Picture from the-outpost.co.uk

Well, there is some resemblance...

 

I didn't want to paint them completely white because I thought they would look weird, so I googled around and found some pictures of Fannin Sheep, which have white hair on their necks and heads - the other beastmen in my army are painted like Big Horn sheep, you see.

Fannin sheep. Photo from anne_shaw.tripod.com

With two Whitemanes, I can field a "themed" force under the Hordes rules, which gives certain bonuses, which is of course all rather irrelevant at this point in time since we haven't even layed a single game. I just wanted an excuse to get the Reaper figures, really...

Of 37 Gods, 45 Legends and 53 Mortals...

Finally! A bit of buzz about OGAM on TMP.

The Amazon blurb is somewhat out of date (and damned if I can get them to change it!). Of Gods and Mortals (OGAM) is based on the Song of Blades and Heroes system, but introduces new mechanics and rules to make it stand apart from that predecessor.

Warbands are smallish affairs, with a God leading the force, a few Legends, and a couple of units of 4–8 Mortals being the norm – e.g. Thor, Fenrir, a Dvergar Weaponsmith, two Valkyries, a unit of 8 berserkers and a unit of 4 skirmishers.

Changes since the Amazon blurb include the reworking of the faith system as mentioned above – there's no tracking of levels or faith points, but the interplay between Gods, Legends and Mortals remains, and each must rely on the other to work effectively.

The rulebook contains Celt, Greek, Norse and Egyptian lists (totalling 37 Gods, 45 Legends and 53 Mortal units). The 'missing four' (Chinese, Japanese, Aztec and Pre-Islamic Arab) haven't really been forgotten (I know for a fact at least two are fully developed, so keep an eye out closer to the October release date). As suggested above, this reduction was due to space constraints, but we did make sure that the book includes a full unit builder that allows you to stat up your own pantheons, adjust existing units you think should be represented differently, and create whatever new units you like.

Fomorians and Dvergar ARE already included in the book, so those two cracking armies shown above should be really easy to field.

There's some more detailed discussion, including an example of unit creation, and some photos of more sample warbands and the forthcoming North Star OGAM figures here: link

Cheers!

Phil Smith
Commissioning Editor
Osprey Wargames

That's splendid news to me.

A Clash of Pantheons, and Three Warbands for the price of One plus some

As promised, here are my two OGAM warbands.

Balor leads the Fomorians against Thor and the dwarves.

It looks like quite a lot of figures for a set of rules that has not even been released, but really I have only added the two god figures to arrive at this.

The dwarves I have had for the longest time, and only Thor needed to be added for them to be a full OGAM warband.

The Fomorians are mainly my beastmen force. Configured for Strandhogg they look like this:

One beastlord with two warbands, each with a Wargor leader, 3 Ungor skirmishers, and 5 Gor warriors.

By adding a Hordes Skorne Cyclops Shaman as Balor, a Hasselfree Ceril as Bres, a beastman female shaman as some sort of priestess, I have an OGAM warband.

Balor, Bres, a priestess, a couple of beastmen heroes, a melee unit, and a missile unit.

Finally, with the addition of a minotaur and a barbarian figure, I get a legal Hordes Circle Orboros themed warband:

Kromac in his human form with his beastman form behind, minotaur as Ghetorix proxy, Gamezone troll as a Gorax, two Tharn Ravager units of 4 figure each, one with a Chieftain and one with a Shaman, two beastmen heroes as Tharn Whitemanes, and the Ungors as a Tharn Blood Pack.

So there they are. Three warbands for two sets of rules I haven't even tried before.

Time to take a break from figure-painting and do some terrain work next.

Reaper Tharn Helmsunder, or a Dwarven Thor

I managed to get the Reaper Tharn Helmsunder figure painted today, completing my second warband for OGAM.

I don't think I did a good job on this figure; I had a lot of difficulty with the eyes in particular.

He is, as I mentioned in the previous post, painted after the colour scheme of Marvel's Thor, but that doesn't really come across because the red on the back of the fur-lined cape isn't visible when you look at him from the front.

Maybe I'll do some touch-up in daylight later this week. I also hope to get him posed together with the rest of the Dwarven warband for a group shot, and I'll do the Fomorians too when I do that.

Coming up...

Carried by the momentum, fg and I are planning to work on more VSF terrain stuff over the coming weeks.

While we have the basic boards and a canal and bridge more or less settled, we do need quite a bit of stuff to litter about the table to break line-of-sight and block movement. I've ordered another bridge kit by Wills along with other bits (one crossing point makes for a boring game), and we will be making some bollards.

One piece that I managed to make from stuff on hand is this monument:

Professor Fliners Petrie enthuses over the find; Abdul is not impressed.

It was a simple build: a Celtic cross on plinth from the Renedra gravestone set, glued to a Renedra 20mm square base, glued to a 25mm square base with a recessed top, glued to a Renedra 40mm square base, glued to a Renedra 60mm x 50mm base. I added a thin square of plasticard to the plinth as a bronze plaque. It's much smaller than a real monument should be, but it should add to the overall look of the table.

Also, my small order of Reaper figures arrived yesterday, which gives me my Thor figure for my Norse Dwarf warband for OGAM. This is the original figure:

Even though he is only man-sized, his proportions fit those of a LOTR dwarf. To make him more Thor-like, I simplified the hammer's head and shortened the shaft. I snipped him off his integral base, added some putty to repair the lost bulk from his shoes, and drilled the pin holes to fit him on a Fantascape resin base with runes on it.

Suddenly, it occurred to Dili that maybe this guy wasn't a god-sized dwarf, but a normal-sized human...

I am very tempted to paint him in the scheme of the Marvel Comic Thor: red cape, black top with white metal rivets, yellow metal on the belt, black skirt, blue pants, and yellow-brown legging and boots. The bracers will probably just be yellow metal instead of red though.

Mjolnir will be all white metal though, and I will make him a redhead as Thor was is.

Thor will be the priority project now, and once he is done it's a wrap for my OGAM warbands (which reminds me, I still owe you readers a group shot of the Fomorians...) and I will hopefully devote the long weekend next week to completing the VSF terrain.

Balor, King of the Fomorians

Remember when I said I had an idea of a figure for a Balor for my Fomorian warband?

Well, painted over three evenings, I present:

This is the Cyclops Shaman from the Skorne faction in Hordes. He is the only cyclops who looks like a cyclops, because the other cyclops figures wear full-faced helmets. Go figure.

Anyway, when I saw him I thought he was ideal for what I wanted. Most cyclops figures look either too Greek (for good reasons) or too barbaric. Skorne figures have a samurai look to them, but the only obviously samurai parts on this figure are the knots on his vambraces - the rest of his dress and weapon have that Celtos look. To add to that effect I used a 40mm resin base from Fantascape, which has Celtic knotwork on it. The designers of the game probably feel the same way as I do, because they actually gave this figure an 'Evil Eye' shooting attack in the game stats.

Adrian got the figure for me and made it a gift (thanks, bro!); Privateer Press figures are nice but expensive, but this one is a must-have. The cast was quite clean, but the shaft of the weapon was a bit irregular, and so I replaced it with a piece of 1/16th inch brass rod.

I used essentially the same palette as I did for the rest of the warband, but I did use a lighter flesh tone for him. I chose green for the colour of his eye, because he is, well, Irish, and because that was the colour I picked for the gems on my other figures; I guess the fluff is that because their king's eye is green, the Fomorians like green gemstones?

I hope to pose him and the rest of the warband together for a group shot over the weekend. In the meantime, here are a couple more shots:

Front view. I like what I did with the eye.

Rear view, showing the stains on the skirt and the patterned border.

Gaspez Minotaur complete

At Matt's urging, I decided I push on and complete the Gaspez minotaur.

I think the contrast in the skin tone is mostly due to the lighting - I learnt that it's really quite hard to paint something black under artificial light; I'll have to look at the model again tomorrow to see how it looks like under sunlight.

My favourite view of the model, showing its eye and the curve of its horns.

And here is is posing next to Kord, who will be the warlock for my Hordes Circle Orboros warband. Kord will proxy as Kromac, and the minotaur will be Ghetorix, a giant werewolf who wields an equally giant axe.

Gasthorix and Kormac?

I am now waiting for the arrival of the Reaper figure I plan to paint as Thor for my Norse dwarf faction, as well as a figure I plan to use as Balor...

WIP 4: Gaspez Minotaur AND Kord completed

No game today, which allowed me (and hopefully the rest of the gang too) to get some painting done.

I'm having some trouble getting the minotaur secured onto its base, but here's a teaser of his eye:

I quite like the look.

I did manage to complete Kord the barbarian, which together with my beastman warchief will proxy as the human and beastman forms of Kromac.

Incidentally, Kord was sculpted by Tre Manor, whose Red Box Games dwarves I love. I ordered a dozen dwarven footmen from his latest kickstarter

Finally, here's the hawk from a Reaper Animals pack which I got for the bear.

 I'm not sure why I decided to paint it. I guess it can be a scenery item or an objective marker.

WIP 3: Gaspez Minotaur

Happily, the resin bases I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to complete my project.

I whittled the putty on the axe shaft to the diameter of the original, and then smoothed it with a file. A couple of drill holes in the resin base, and this is the final product.

I hope to get the model primed and painted over the next two weeks, before my Dystopian Wars Ottoman fleet arrives.

WIP 2: Gaspez Minotaur and Kord the Destroyer

The Warhammer Minotaur arms and weapons bits that I ordered arrived in the mail today, allowing me to do the next step in my conversion project.

The arms of the Gaspez minotaur are further apart than those on a Warhammer minotaur, so I had to extend the shaft of the axe. To ensure that I have a strong structure, I cut off the middle section of the piece, drilled holes in both ends, and then fitted a steel wire in between. I then applied epoxy to the wire, inserted it into the two pieces, then blu-tac'd the hands onto the main model itself. The telescoping nature of the construct allowed me to adjust the alignment of the two pieces while the epoxy set to ensure that the shaft ended up straight.

The end product was rather long, so I snipped a bit off the end of the shaft, which still gave an eventual length of 7cm, or more than twice the height of a man in scale!

Once the epoxy has set, I needed to build some "meat" around the wire skeleton to match the rest of the shaft with epoxy putty. Rather than sculpting the shaft while the putty is soft, I decided it might be easier to just form a sausage around the skeleton and then shave it down later when it has hardened. I'll let you know how that works out later...

The hands needed a bit of bulking up too.

Also in the package today was the Reaper mini Kord the Destroyer. I got it because I wanted to use my beastman warchief as Kromac in Hordes. Now Kromac is a warlock who has a human form and a beastman form, which meant I needed a human form of my warchief. Using Reaper's Figure Finder, I found and bought Kord, the original form which is shown below.

When the figure arrived, I found that the axe was comically smaller than the one held by my warchief. Well, it can't all be perfect.

I removed all the spikes on the figure, shaved the letter M off his buckle, and decided to take off the nicked dagger in his right hand. The axehead was bent almost 180 degrees onto the shaft when the figure arrived, so I snapped it off and drilled through it, his left hand, then replaced the shaft with a length of wire such that the eventual length of the whole weapon would be the same as the axe held by the warchief, then applied putty to it too.  I also bent the arm at the elbow a little and turned the axehead so it is orientated in a more natural angle so the axis of the blade is in line with the axis of his forearm, and anchored the end of the shaft onto his cloak for stability. It is only now when I am typing this that I realised that I could have placed the axe in Kord's RIGHT hand to better mirror the warchief figure; well, too much trouble to switch it now. Grr.

I epoxied the figure onto a 25mm square base (as the warchief), and then puttied over the integral base on the model and added a piece of cork for terraining.

So when Kromac transforms into his beast form, his axehead also miraculously enlarges, and he turns from being left-handed to being right-handed? Seems legit.

Now to wait for the putty to set overnight. Hopefully the base which I ordered for the minotaur arrives tomorrow and I can move on to the next and final step of the conversion project.

WIP: Gaspez Minotaur

I don't usually do WIP posts, but the latest model to arrive in my mail is such a neat model, I thought I just had to.

Now I've been looking for a minotaur figure to go with my beastmen force for a while now. It's proven to be quite difficult because it had to have the right head, the right 'clothes', right weapon, right size, and the right price.

When I decided recently to add a few figures to my beastmen to allow me to field them as a Fomorian warband and a Circle Orboros warband in the not-to-distant future, I decided I have to decide.

My choice is this Chaos Minotaur from Gaspez, made for Blood Bowl or other fantasy American football games, and shown here in its original 'green' form.

The head isn't really my "ideal" head for a minotaur - I refer one that is more like a real bull's head - but I really like the horns. The hands come loose, which means I can (and plan to) graft the hands and two-handed axe from a GW minotaur to it. The simple style of his 'dress' fits with the look of my beastmen, which is important for me. It also for some strange reason has Balor's eye on its belt, which sort of sealed the deal for me.

The figure is 6cm tall when assembled, and comes in 9 parts: a head, two horns, the torso, the shoulder plate, two hands, the lower half of the body, and a tail. There are two options for the horns, a pincer-claw and a tentacles option for the hands, and a rear loincloth flap option for the tail.

What is neat about this model is how the parts are "dovetailed" to give a snug fit so you can put it together without pinning. The horns have notches in them that fit to the top of the ears so they not only point in the correct attitude, but are also symmetrical. The tail fits into the butt in a squarish rather than round peg so it orientates the correct way. There is also a large peg on the right hoof of the model, which will help me secure it to a resin base. All in all it is a model designed to make it easy for you to assemble.

In assembling my model I nonetheless decided to make some changes to it.

First of all I decided I would discard the shoulder plate, which has too much of a Blood Bowl feel to it, and sculpt the strap so that it goes completely around the (now bare) shoulder - fortunately for me the sculptor did sculpt the shoulder under the plate. The shoulder plate will go into my bits box and perhaps one day "convert" a non-Blood Bowl figure to a Blood Bowl figure.

I also decided that the tail, while looking dynamic, is really just an accident waiting to happen for a wargames model. In addition, it makes the model hard to store in my newly-made sponge tray. So I clipped the connecting part and positioned it so it has a three-point contact to the model.

Finally, I extended the mane running down the back of the minotaur to its forehead - when I googled about the auroch and Spanish fighting bulls while thinking about a colour scheme I learnt that most bulls have a sort of a forelock.

This is how my model looks so far:

The assembled model, waiting for hands and weapon and a base.

View showing the sculpted forelock and strap.

Detailed view of the direction of the horns. Note also the good detail of the teeth.

Rear view showing how I glued the tail with a three points of contact for more stability.

I now have to wait for the arrival of the hands and weapon bits, as well as a 50mm round base before I can continue the project. Hopefully that will be some time within the next two weeks.