Adventures on the Wargames Table

War and Conquest is a rather splendid set of rules so what better way to spend a pleasant Sunday than to enjoy a few games of the aforementioned rules? A dozen gamers descended on the sleepy village of Iron Acton to re-enact battles of the ancient world. Rome clashed with Rome, and with British Celts, and with hairy German types, whilst Greeks traded blows with Spartans and Persians, and vice versa. Yes, this was the first (of many I hope) War & Conquest gaming days! Naturally I took along my EIR to impose the Pax Romana on the unwashed, hairy hordes. One of the great things about these gaming days is the opportunity to play against someone new in a very relaxed atmosphere where simply rolling a few dice, pushing some toys around the table and having fun is everyone's main aim. My first opponent was Ken. He was leading a compact band of Roman legions against my rather mixed Legion/Auxilia force. Here's a pic early on in the game. The very evenly matched armies ...

Whilst I have plenty of painted Romans, Auxiliaries, etc, I always lacked a proper command group. Until now that is! I've painted a Legate and Aquilifer. Here they are. Both figures are from 1st Corps, actually the Roman Civil War range. The Legate is the Pompey figure. These figures are slightly smaller in scale than my BTD Legion figures, but as they're mounted and on their own base any difference is not noticeable. Painted using my wash and highlight technique. Block colours, highlight skin and armour, apply AP dip with brush, matt varnish, then very quick highlights. They're not quite as tidy as some of the figures I've completed recently with this method, but I needed to complete them in a hurry as tomorrow is the inaugural Scarab Miniatures War & Conquest gaming day! The two main themes of the day will be Rome and her enemies, along with Sparta and Greece. Hopefully pics and report to follow soon.

Some say it with flowers, others with chocolates... but Mrs Matt was delighted with these Vikings. All Gripping Beast figures. This means she now has a 6 point warband for Saga. All painted using my dip and highlight technique. Which is basically as follows. o Undercoat white o Metal - black then heavy drybrush with GW Chainmail or GW Shining Gold. o Flesh - GW Dwarf Flesh then drybrush with any light flesh colour (I use Foundry Base Sand Light) o Everything else gets one block colour mostly using the lighter shades from the Foundry range. o Apply the dip (AP Strong Tone) with a brush taking care to avoid pooling. o Leave 24 hours to dry! o Brush on Windsor & Newton Matt Varnish (more reliable than sprays) Finally, here's the stage that makes all the difference. Use some of the original colours to highlight tunics, hair, fur, etc. This stage is surprisingly quick and very easy as the shading from the dip shows you exactly where to put the highlights Here's ...

As promised in the last post, here's some more of my recently completed scenery for Dark Age games, principally Saga. All scratch-built from MDF, cocktail sticks, garden wire, balsa, glue and sand. Here's an animal pen. Like much of my scenery it was painted by my lovely wife. Another view. This is how it looked before painting. The basic method is to cut a piece of MDF to slightly larger than the desired shape, then drill 2.5mm holes around the edges at intervals of about 5-6mm. Glue cocktail sticks in the holes; I also used a few pieces of slightly thicker kebab stick for some of the corner posts. When totally dry, weave garden wire back and forth until it's about the right height - have a few models to hand to check this. Next, give the wire several generous coats of PVA glue. This gives it more strength plus it fills in some of the gaps. Here's another animal pen with a bit of garden. The tree stump is simply part of an old shrub I cleared from ...

Here's the latest addition to my scenery collection for Saga, the Gripping Beast Saxon Church. A Father's Day present; it was recently painted for me by my wonderful wife! (Although I did do the base). I wanted the corner stones painted in grey to make them more noticeable as they are properly 'dressed' stonework and so probably looted from a crumbling Roman building. The thatch has been painted to look fairly new as this sort of building might have been given a little more attention than more ordinary dwellings.   I added some plasticard stone slabs outside the front and back doors. Somewhere for the Thegns and Ceorls to stamp off the mud and dung!? I also added some 'mini-natur' grass and flower tufts to the base. Next, I'll be working on some scratch-built hurdle enclosures, more fencing and a small Saxon turnip patch.

At last ... I have a complete battalion for The Great War!!! It's taken me far longer than I expected but here it is. Some closer shots, here's Red Company And here is Blue Company HQ. The Highlanders Supporting troops Most of these figures have previously appeared on the blog as each group was painted, so if you're interested in how they were painted, based, etc then please have a look back through the blog. Is the army finished? Hmmm... is any army ever really complete? No. I plan to add quite a few models to this army in the future. For example, increase all the platoons to 12 men and have two Lewis Guns in each. I'd also like to add a Whippet, possibly an 18lb-er. Then there's trench raiders, snipers, armoured cars, etc. Not forgetting Gripping Beast's lovely range of WW1 figures that would provide some Kiwis. :o) However, I think I'll be taking a little rest from painting WW1 figures as I intend to focus o...