Down the Rabbit Hole — Part 8 and Final

 With last weekend’s painting, I finally had enough newly completed Prince August figures to run a little solo skirmish with A Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH). SBH recommends a typical game of 300 to 500 points.  I have noticed previously that the point system doesn’t seem to be as finely balanced as the carefully calibrated two-significant-figure point values would suggest, but, there’s a lot of randomness in the game, and it was going to be a solo game anyway.

One warband consisted of orcs and friends (an orc leader, three orc warriors, a troll, two goblin wolf riders, and a spare goblin warrior).  The other was all human (a leader, two warriors, two archers, an apprentice magician, and a cavalryman), and I managed to finesse them so that each was exactly 300 points. 

I set up a battlefield on my dining room table, using a “Kill Team-sized” neoprene matte (22x30”). The road and river are also neoprene pieces.  The road predates the pandemic, and the river was purchased just as everything was locking down.  The three-dimensional elements of the terrain are all pieces that have been completed in the last year, as were the troops.  So this game finally closes out this little digression, by having been created (almost; roads excepted) since the lockdowns started.

Upon looking over the table, a scenario suggested itself. The humans simply need to cross the table, unlock the tower, and get inside.  Had this been properly planned as a narrative battle, I would have given everything names, but, after months of delay, I got a bit impatient and just played...

The horseman rides out ahead to scuffle with a wolf rider

 

Initiative in SBH is handled on a “push your luck” system of choosing to roll dice for 1, 2, or 3 actions per figure.  Failing two rolls will hand the turn over to the opponent, until they have activated each of their figures, or hand it back after two failures.  Since you need actions to get anything done, you can’t be too cautious, but it also means that your turn has a tendency to end at some unpredictable time, and, not infrequently, when some figure is in a desperate situation.  The uncertainty makes it a decent solo game without further modification, since it’s pretty easy to swap hats and be able to see what the most desperate situation is, or the one with the greatest opportunity.

The skirmish began with each side sending out their fast-moving mounted troops, to see what the situation was.  On the human side, the archers were also pushed forward to provide some covering fire.  This proved to be entirely ineffective this game; no orc fell to a human arrow.  

The horseman quickly found himself embroiled in combat with half of the orcs, a situation which was bound to end badly for him sooner or later. (And did...)

Following the death of the horsemen a wolf rider scored a lucky kill against a human

The sorceress approached the combat guarded by the two warriors, but one was forced to hold off several orcs, and the other fell in an attempt to protect her from a wolf rider. As seen above, one of the archers was forced to abandon his futile attempt to shoot something and to leap in to protect the sorceress with his sword.

The human leader falls to the troll

As the initiative passed back and forth unpredictably, the human leader jumped into the combat in an attempt to save the warrior outnumbered by the orcs.  Unfortunately for him, he found himself facing the ferocious troll.  While the Prince August troll is not particularly impressive as a casting, in the game is is big and tough, and made short work of the unfortunate leader.  Disheartened by the fall of their leader, the humans all attempted to run, with the surviving warrior cut down as he attemtped to flee combat.  

The sorceress and the two archers were able to flee the field, hoping to find their way back to other friends, and await a more favorable day.

The orcs, meanwhile, were able to obtain the key to the tower from the fallen leader, decisively winning the day.  Did they loot the tower and depart, or choose to occupy it as a base for future operations?  That is a scenario for a different day, perhaps...

So, all in all, the game played out in 45 minutes.  Had I had an actual opponent it probably would have taken a little longer, perhaps an hour.  All in all, it was a satisfying little encounter, and I will look for an opportunity to use these rules again, both solo and with an opponent.

Vaccination is still in the future, so this may not be the last solo game before this is all over, but it does conclude my little self-imposed quest to create a game from scratch.  Had I not had a couple of long gaps of not painting, and of working on other projects, I probably could have gotten this knocked together in two to three months’ worth of weekends.

 

Down the Rabbit Hole — Part 7

 Well, well, well...it’s been over two months since I posted anything.  The good news is that I and my family are well; the bad news is that this winter has been a motivational low point.  So, I haven’t been painting, and the couple of games that I have gotten in didn’t result in battle reports.

I finally picked up a paint brush last weekend and knocked out a quick Prince August orc archer, using a limited paint palette (my travel paint kit), just to knock the rust loose and get things moving again.  My gamer family has been gathering for a weekly hobby chat time on Discord, so we decided that we would paint while we talked this week.

Having gotten started on Prince August, out of several possible to-do things in my project box, I finished up a couple of armored orcs (from mold 659), a pair of goblin wolf(?) riders (from mold 668), and a mounted human (from mold 667).

 

That finally gives me enough figures to put together 300 point war bands for A Song of Blades and Heroes, so I hope that a little solo game will be on the table shortly, entirely staffed and scenicked with things painted since the stay-at-home orders originally went into effect almost a year ago.  

Down the Rabbit Hole — Part 6

 After a couple of weeks of using my painting space for work-at-home, I finally cleared it off during my day off yesterday for its primary purpose.  As mentioned in the previous five installments in this series, I have been attempting to put enough new stuff during the pandemic to run a game.  The ultimate goal may be to have a force sized for Osprey’s Oathmark rules, but in the near term, I’ll settle for a skirmish.

I have finished eight humans, which should give me enough for a basic warband in A Song of Blades and Heroes. I got as far as cleaning up and priming a dozen or so trolls, goblins, orcs, and hobgoblins from the Prince August molds a few weeks ago.

With inspiration having arrived yesterday, I pulled them out and did a quick paint job on six of them, two trolls and four goblins, all from Prince August mold #656.

They are shown here with a barbarian warlord from Prince August mold #670, to give a sense of the scale.

While I usually paint my orcs olive drab, my son’s recent orc painting prompted me to try something a little different, so the orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins for this project are going to be in a yellowish khaki.  I did the two trolls in the “traditional” olive, because it’s fantasy.  I still have another half dozen of the orcs, hobgoblins, and goblin wolfriders on the desk, and will need three to six of them to be ready for a skirmish game.  Back to painting...

Down the Rabbit Hole, Part IV

It has been more than usually busy here the past couple of weeks.  My partner and I finally got married yesterday, in a quiet ceremony at home.  For pandemic protection, attendance was limited to eight total, but we still had everything all cleaned up and looking good around the house.  The folding wargames tables did double duty as actual banquet tables for a change.

I got a few additional Prince August castings finished up for the fresh start fantasy project.  There are two figures from the Men of the City mold (652), and a wizard from the Wizards mold (657).  

I’ve got a mounted warrior in progress that I’ll probably finish next. That would give me nine humans, which is probably close enough to work up a standard-sized Song of Blades and Heroes warband.  (There are also four Men of the City spearmen being done as a group, if it turns out that I’m a bit short.). That means the next thing that I will get started on is an opposition warband, to be drawn from the collection of orc, goblin, hobgoblin, and troll castings.  The undead warriors, skeletons, and wraiths all cast reasonably well, and would be an alternative possibility, but Oathmark currently has no undead unit profiles, so my intention is to do this with an eye toward future expansion.

Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 2 ...

I mentioned last time that I had decided to cast a batch of Prince August fantasy figures (as well as some historicals for my Dux Bellorum project).  I grabbed five of them with reasonably good casting quality and tried painting them with my travel paint kit.  It’s taken all week to get them finished, time being somewhat scarce, but here they are.  The sorceress and the spearman were shown before basing last week.  From left to right, we have a sorceress from mold 657 (Wizards), a female rogue/fighter from mold 660 (Female Adventurers), an archer from mold 669 (Heroes and Fighters), a spearman from mold 652 (Men of the City), and a barbarian leader from mold 670 (Barbarians II).

Sample Troupe of Prince August Figures

I had fun painting them, which, of course, is the main object.  I set up another dozen, including some sample dwarves, and enough spearmen to start looking like a unit plus a Men of the City swordsman/officer, and we’ll see if I make any progress on them in the near term.

While the Oathmark game remains the end goal, once I finish this dozen, I will probably try cleaning up and painting some goblins, orcs and trolls, which would give me a chance to get them on the table as a small skirmish game, probably using A Song of Blades and Heroes.

Down the rabbit hole...

TL;DR version: Got out some Prince August molds, cast things unrelated to any recent projects...

This has been an eventful month here in the United States, which has been interfering with my motivation to play with toy solders.  I delayed a remote game expected to be played with my brother (a re-visit of Chainmail) and it’s now been several weeks since I laid out a game, and (until yesterday) as long since I put a brush to a figure.

However, I have been keeping my eyes open for anything interesting in vintage toy soldier molds, and recently received two packages containing these three molds:

Newly arrived vintage molds

 The top one is a Buck Rogers in the 25th Century mold, one which is new to the club collection.  I foresee a resurgence in the influence of the Tigermen of Mars in the near future...

My brother has been practicing his sculpting again recently.  (He’s the artistic one in the family.) That led him to think about mold-making and casting, so that he’ll be ready when he sculpts something he likes.  He has a small collection of Prince August molds that I gave him a few years ago, and decided that he would finally get them out and try casting.  He ordered a melting pot, and ten pounds of lead-free pewter (“Britannia metal”, an alloy of ~92% Sn, ~8% Sb, balance Cu, to be specific) from  Nathan Trotter.  (You’ve got to love a company that’s been in the pewter business since 1789...).  They were very polite about his inquiry and ten pound order and responded promptly, which is the sort of business style getting to be all too rare these days, so I wanted to give them a shout-out.

Prompted by his interest, I ended up deciding that it was finally time to convert over to lead-free material as well, so I ordered 25 pounds of the same material, and had it on my doorstep the next morning.  The very same delivery also brought me my long-ago-preordered copy of Oathmark, a new set of fantasy mass battle rules from Osprey Games, written by Joe McCullough, the author of  Frostgrave and Ghost Archipelago.

Osprey’s latest, from the creator of Frostgrave

I had agreed to watch over my brother’s shoulder (remotely, of course) as he tried casting, and then I set up my own casting equipment so that he could watch the way I did it.  That’s how I ended up casting Prince August figures from rubber molds rather than trying out the new vintage mold collection.

Setting up the melting pots outdoors

I decided that I would cast some figures I would want for my Dux Bellorum project.  To prepare for that, I went through my existing inventory of castings and started organizing them into unit sets.  I concluded that I needed some horse, some shields, and some skirmishers, so I pulled out the appropriate molds and went to work.

I was interested to see that the Britannia metal has good flow characteristics, and my success rate in pours was pretty good.

Results of a casting session

I had spent a little more time preparing the molds in advance, cutting additional vents pretty aggressively.  I was pleased to find that the Persian cataphract figure (who at Prince August in 1982 thought that multiple part 25s was a good idea?) was suddenly casting with both arm variations and the open hand all in good shape.  

Prince August 605, Persian Cataphract

The bow and quiver will need to be removed or disguised to render him a more generic western Dark Ages horseman, but at least the multiple separate head system allows me to substitute something more generic (e.g. a spangenhelm) for the big Persian hat.  It will be time to work on cavalry.  

Because I needed shields, and also wanted the somewhat Roman-esque archer from the Prince August 652 (Men of the City) mold, I ended up pouring that mold quite a few times.  Add the figures that were coming out reasonable well, and the new fantasy mass battle rules (which my brother also decided to buy), and the next thing I knew, I was deciding to do trial casting on all of the fantasy molds I own, especially the ones that have never been tested. 

That had to wait until this weekend, though.  To keep the process orderly, I decided that I would take them in catalog number order, starting with the molds I hadn’t used, so I skipped over 651 (Barbarians) and 652 (Men of the City) and started with 653 (Dwarves).  You can see from the picture below what I mean about aggressive venting.  However, it seems to have paid off, since between that and the new metal, the success rate was running above 75% yesterday.  

Prince August 653, Dwarves (old mold)

I tried molds 653-658 (Dwarves, Wood Elves, Orcs, Troll and Goblins, Wizards, and Armored Dwarves) as well as the half-armored Persian cataphract horse to go with last week’s rider.  I turned out about 70 reasonable castings in a two hour session.  Irene, my partner, wanted to know whether this was really cheaper than buying figures.  I weighed the human-sized figures in the new metal, and it looks like one could expect about 40 25mm humans on foot from a pound of the material.  At $12.50 per pound for a 25 pound order, that works out to less than 32 cents per figure in metal cost.  With vintage 25s from Iron Wind metals running $3.50 or more, the answer is a resounding “Yes”.  She also wanted to know how long the molds lasted, and I really don’t know the answer to that.  The most-used 40mm NQSYW molds I own have produced hundreds of castings and seem to be fine.  At $15/mold or so, the amortized cost  of the molds is probably less than a penny per figure.  The amount of time invested in the casting process is also not much; yesterday’s session averages out to less than two minutes per figure.  There is certainly more time needed to prepare a home cast figure for painting than a commercial figure of similar complexity (i.e., if containing the same number of pieces needing assembly).

That leaves questions of art to be considered.  An individual home cast figure, due to the limitations of the process, is going to be less detailed than a commercial spin-cast figure.  On the other hand, simpler castings can be easier to paint, and that’s a plus if your goal is to fill the table with painted armies. On the third hand, the variety of castings in somewhat limited.  On the fourth hand, limitations make good art...

My brother has tentatively decided that he is building his Oathmark armies with home cast figures (jumping into the deep end?).  While considering the question of whether I am backing him up in this endeavor (in the hopes of running a joint game at a convention someday), I started painting a few trial castings.

Sorceress from Prince August 657 (Wizards)

While the main benefit of casting things is that masses of troops are inexpensive, I do have molds for things that would only be needed in small numbers.  I don’t think the sorceress came out badly as an individual.

Spearman from Prince August 652 (Men of the City)

The spearman is one I cast last weekend.  I’ve got five more sitting on my desk to be cleaned up, and we’ll see what a unit might look like.  

I’d like to try a small skirmish with Oathmark before I write a rules review.  My first observation, though, is that the use of a non-standard basing system is mildly off-putting.  Units have a fixed maximum frontage of five figures, with a fixed base size of 25mm square for most foot.  Prince August “true 25s” are going to look like they are in pretty loose order, so I am currently thinking that I am going to be using group movement (sabot) stands.  

So that’s what’s been going on here. I’m glad to have painted anything, and hope to get back around to the French Revolution, the Renaissance, and even the NQSYW while I’m in the mood for home cast projects.