Ogres Galore!

For over a year now I’ve been playing the excellent One Page Rules Grimdark Future rules and continue to do so, especially now that the 3^rd edition of those rules have been released.  But lately we’ve expanded our games into a bit of fantasy skirmishing using One Page Rules Age of Fantasy Skirmish rules.

So, I’ve been digging around in on the northern face of the Lead Mountain, plucking out a few small collections of as yet unused miniatures and getting them painted ready for use on the tabletop.  We’re on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, what with summer holidays and a few other disruptions, and I’ll be away next week so it looks like it’ll be early October before I can get these chaps into battle.

I found a sizable box of ogres, which I’d already made a start on for Warcry. However, I dug out the infantry and put them together.  This was actually a bit of a struggle as their previous owner had done some weird kitbashing with greenstuff and odd bits glued on here and there.  So, I returned them to the models as intended as best I could and laid down a basic paint job.

For me, ogres live brutal lives and so they should be carrying injuries, bruises, and broken bones, as well as big rusty, blood-stained weapons. 

I do also have a big mammoth model thing, but its really poorly built and is going to need some serious fixing.  I tried to deconstruct it, but as well as being poorly bult it’s also been soaked in plastic glue so bits are seriously melted together.  I will get round to it sometime, I think.  But in the meantime, I also found a dragon ogre, which I’ve built and undercoated.  It may be on the painting schedule soon.

Anyway, here’s the bloodied clan for now.

Its a hard knock life being an ogre foot soldier

He's the boss because he has a tattoo and two weapons for bashing.

I use this one as the magic user, with his totemic skull staff.

Every tribe needs a banner.
They're tricky to keep clean amid all the carnage though.

Every army needs some artillery support.

Always useful to have a pet goblin around...

The dragon ogre needs a bit of paint.

Edit: Last night I finished off the dragon ogre. Not including drying time, this took about 65-70 minutes, so not too bad.

Now then, I've had this model on the table for a few weeks and I'd been thinking about a green colour scheme, along the lines of the troll I'd painted with the goblins.  However, as this is a dragon OGRE, I think it'll see most play alongside the ogres.  A green colour scheme is an entirely different palette, so with a brief bit of thought, I decided to switch to a warmer, red/brown palette to match in with the ogres general theme and tone.

I'm fairly happy with the result.

Goblins!

For over a year now I’ve been playing the excellent One Page Rules Grimdark Future rules and continue to do so, especially now that the 3^rd edition of those rules have been released.  But lately we’ve expanded our games into a bit of fantasy skirmishing using One Page Rules Age of Fantasy Skirmish rules.

So, I’ve been digging around in on the eastern face of the Lead Mountain, plucking out a few small collections of as yet unused miniatures and getting them painted ready for use on the tabletop.  We’re on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, what with summer holidays and a few other disruptions, and I’ll be away next week so it looks like it’ll be early October before I can get these chaps into battle.

I happened to have a few bashed up old goblins, and a very old metal troll knocking about.  They had bits missing and were generally in disrepair, so I scavenged some spare parts of my bitz box and threw together a small force.

I think these are Games Workshop “night goblins” so traditionally should be clad in black robes, but I wanted to go a bit brighter than that.  I therefore diverged in my colour scheme and decided on yellow checks and brown leather robes. 

The troll is, I think, and old stone troll and probably should have been grey/blue (?) But for me, trolls are green so a nice bright yellow/green scheme it was.

The chequerboard pattern took a few hours, but overall these were quick to paint and create a viable OPR goblin force I think.  Two units of three spears, and two units of three hand weapons units, supported by a leader with two hand weapons, a wizard, and another hero with a standard (in this case a horse skull.  And of course, the troll!  It’ll run at 300pts, but I’ll probably need another troll and perhaps a couple of cave monsters (I have a bag of cheap plastic spiders somewhere) will probably do it.  If not I can sub in some ogres…

Anyway, these were fun to paint and turned out OK I think.

He's the boss because he's got two hooky hooks

He's the wizard because he's all blurred.
Its probably the mushrooms.

He's sort of a bos because he's got
a skull on a stick. Which is nice.

He's the boss because, well, look at him!
I mean are you going to argue?

Stormcast Eternals

For over a year now I’ve been playing the excellent One Page Rules Grimdark Future rules and continue to do so, especially now that the 3^rd edition of those rules have been released.  But lately we’ve expanded our games into a bit of fantasy skirmishing using One Page Rules Age of Fantasy Skirmish rules.

So, I’ve been digging around in on the easter face of the Lead Mountain, plucking out a few small collections of as yet unused miniatures and getting them painted ready for use on the tabletop.  We’re on a bit of a hiatus at the moment, what with summer holidays and a few other disruptions, and I’ll be away next week so it looks like it’ll be early October before I can get these chaps into battle.

I happened to have a few sprues of Games Workshop’s “Stormcast Eternal” figures.  Of course, I didn’t have the build instructions so things took a bit longer to put together, and there was a lot of trial and error bolting the bits on. Not sure exactly what these are but they look like high fantasy knights of some kind. As usual with these sorts of models i like to paint them close to the “box art”, so in this case a nice bright shining gold scheme was in order.  This sort of paint job is a struggle for me as I much prefer to paint a scrappy, battle worn and rusted figure, but these ones are bright and clean.  I did my best here to try to get the paint within the lines so to speak.  They came out OK I think.

It actually wasn’t too bad to paint and (not counting drying time) I think these got done in a couple of hours. 

I started with an ivory undercoat, painted thinned gold over that, and threw on a diluted reddish wash (Reikland Fleshshade). I then drybrushed a mix of the gold with silver lightly over the top.

The blue is a simple mid blue, applied in a couple of thin coats and subtly washed with a blue wash.  The red accents were a red contrast paint with a Carroberg Crimson wash.

The weapons were given a brass hilt and bright silver blade, with thinned brown and black washes.

A simple base and call them done!

In One Page Rules terms these are “Eternal Wardens” and I have enough figures here for a 450pt skirmish force.

Star Wars Legion

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…etc.

Yeah well, in 1977 Star Wars changed my little life.  Before I saw the movie at the local cinema I was obsessed with Dinky cars and dinosaurs.  Afterwards my childhood was dominated by Star Wars.

So, in 2018 when Fantasy Flight Games released the Star Wars Legion game I obviously bought the core set.  And…yeah.  Then, well I played it a couple of times and then shelved it.  Don’t get me wrong, Legion is an excellent game, but at the time I was playing other games and Legion just sort of passed me by.

With various stars aligning – a house move so that I now have a dedicated hobby space, and my recent adoption of One Page rules as my go-to wargames rule set, I figured it was time to paint up what I had.

Not sure exactly what I’ll be doing with them, but here’s the tally so far.

A combat droid force of the Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS) from the Clone Wars era. This is the force out of the core box, but I also added Asajj Ventress.

The core box force is led by General Greivous.  The figure comes with cloaked and uncloaked options and I chose the uncloaked version. Lightsabres are hard to paint so I went with a stylised scheme.  I may add some object source lighting effects at some point to try and represent their glow.

Asajj Ventress is a character from the Clone Wars TV series. I painted her in line with the box art.

B1 battle droid commanders. "Roger, roger!" These hard plasting models were INCREDIBLY fiddly to assemble and seem very fragile. As with most of the models I painted them as close to the on-screen imagery as possible. These commander droids have yellow marking.  I gave the heavy weapon droids a red scheme too, but I'm not sure if that's accurate.  It'll help identify them in a game anyway.

I always felt the droidekas were a bit odd as a robot concept. I struggled to get the colours right, but I think I got the colours pretty close. Again these models were super fiddly to assemble and they come in standing poses and also rolled up in a ball.  I thing the game rules allow you to transform between the two during play - one form for fighting the other for fast movement.

Next up, the clone troopers from the Clone Wars era core set.  These wear phase 1 armpur with the 1930's sci-fi style helmet.  These came in the older Fantasy Flight Games soft plasting so their guns are a little bendy.  The advantage though is they they are basically prebuilt which i very much like. 

Obi-Wan Kenobi in his prime (with bendy lightsabre). I'm really pleased with the way this figure came out.

The clone troopers were a struggle to paint as white is really quite difficult to get right.  That coupled with the need to do small neat areas of black makes for a nightmare of a painting session.

I made the clone leaders sergeants, so in phase 1 armour this means that have green markings.

The clones come with a BARC Speeder.  I struggled to find a definitive on screen colour scheme for this model so I went with a sort of light tan colour with red markings. I left the rider's torso unglued so i can swap out the weapon from a missle launcher to gun.

Obviously I had to get the Ahsoka model (I bought Ahsoka and Ventress at the same time - seems only right for these two adversaries). I painted her according to the box art.

Ahsoka's base still needs flocking.

Next up we move to the Rebellion era of the original movies, and here's the Rebel force.

I suplemented the core box force with some fleet troopers, because, well, I like them so much.  Interestingly the washes I used have turned out very shiny.  I think I need to put some matt varnish on them.

The Rebel field forces, I guess heavily inspired by the Battle of Endor's Moon. The blue headed dudes are Duros.

Luke is the core box "hero", so I baught his sister Leia.  I also picked up Sabine Wren from the Rebels TV series.

The Rebels get a couple of All Terrain Recon Transports (AT-RT).  Nice models.

Finally, the forces of the Empire, the classic stormtroopers led by Darth Vader.

Vader himself is an OK model but again the soft plastic Fantast Flight Games originally used means he has a droopy lightsabre. 

Of course the stormtrooper leaders have to have the orange pauldron. I found the stormtroopers harder to paint than the clone troopers.

Finally, some scout troopers on speeder bikes.  I really like the way these turned out.