More dungeon heroes and beasties!

After tiring myself out on painting too many miniatures I took a lengthy break.  Then I tackled the boring Gladiator slaves, and finally moved on to the last of my dungeon miniatures.  I have nothing else to paint except a few Otherworld figures.  I have some more stuff on the way.

 Three new adventurers (will be used as NPCs or baddies as well...) an Otherworld miniature, a Reaper miniature, and a plastic kit bash (again Viking/Crusader mix).

 A Reaper Bones stone/rock golem.  The eyes stand out in this picture but are far less noticeable in person.  He's been painted using the same colours I used for my DF kickstarter gametiles - added some washes and some green/brown turf to break up the monotony.

 Bones griffin.  Wasn't a fan of painting this (I hate feathers and fur).  However it ended up perfectly useable and I'm glad it's out of the way.  I will point out also that using Army Painter black primer has worked 100% perfect on my Bones miniatures with no pre-washing and no issues so far.

 I swapped the head on this fella, and that's why he's wearing a double chain-mail hood! (whoops).  I hated the 12-year-old-in-armour look of the original head.

 My favourite of the batch.  I wasn't overwhelmed by this figure when I purchased it, but I really love the way it turned out.   And I assure you, it's more pleasant in person. (and at 2-3' distance!).  He's a huge brute of figure, more 35mm than 28mm but he'll make an excellent bodyguard or adventurer.

 Plastic kitbash turned out fine.  Generic adventuring knight look.  Again this is Gripping Beast plastic Hirdmen stuff with Fireforge Crusaders bits tossed together.  It creates a very convincing "fantasy" medieval look.

The latest additions - as usual the normal minis are on 25mm Renedra rounds, and the larger beasties are on 40mm Renedra rounds.

That wraps up all of my primed and assembled figures.  Next on the list is a batch of 9 lizardmen in the mail right now.  I think after them I'll be moving onto dungeon dressings (terrain).  Thanks for looking!  I hope the next update doesn't take two months!

Noxii! (Slaves!)

Here is a pack of armed civilians from Foundry that I'll be using as simple Noxii, or slaves to fight in the arena.  I'll be developing some rules to use them Blood on the Sands as I playtest it.  I'd like to have the occasional game for a single gladiator (or pair) test their mettle against a group of slaves.  It'll take some tinkering to get the rules to work, but I'm confident.

They've been marked with blue facing triangles in place of the red ones (gladiators).

Slaves are marked with blue facing arrows as opposed to the red ones for Gladiators.

Drake's Branch gets some new terrain.

So, for those of you who followed my development of Shoot N' Skedaddle you'll know my 'town" is Drake's Branch, New Mexico.

While my Old West project was nearly complete a year or so ago, I'm never far from adding the occasional detail.  Well boredom and spare time caught up with me the past few evenings so I decided to get rid of a bunch of stuff I had sitting around.

I cracked open the 4Ground fencing and built several enclosures.  Then I had enough spare to build one under construction (some added cover).  Then I found a dozen plastic tree armatures and some spare lichen so I threw together five more tree-bases.  I hope to have enough terrain to run a wilderness game and cover a 6'x4' table now.

Then as I finished them I was fiddling with a spare wagon wheel I had in my palm.  I immediately started sawing, cutting, and gluing...and next thing I knew I had a windmill put together.  This will help with the eventual ranch setting I'd like to put together.  It's a pit...finnicky and in retrospect I did it wrong (cut the pipe in two, instead of using a single pipe).

Oh well, more terrain.  With the new allotment some of my old tired stuff shall be retired to the waste bin.

 New terrain!

Three fenced enclosures, each with a different shape, and a gate/door.

The last section under construction...I didn't have enough fence left and I had a pile of useless bits which had been sitting around in my bin for a while, so I glue them all to the board and said "screw it". 

Scratchbuilt windmill.  Total time: about 40 minutes from thought to final product (well, sans painting).  If it survives being transported to a game, should allow a decent place to shoot from.

Putting on the pontus!

I had my brother over tonight for a game of Blood on the Sands (a gladiator game I'm playtesting).  We decided to give the pontus (wooden bridge/platform) a whirl.  I had built the model a long time ago but never tried to game with it.

While BOTS does not have pontus rules we made a few.  The pontus fight is not a well documented thing but we did our best.  While how it was carried out remains a bit contentious the idea seems to be a single Retiarius defending a platform/bridge against two Secutores.  For this game we used a Secutor and an Arbelas (both Retiarius foes) since I had just completed the Arbelas model.

While this idea and game mode will likely develop more later we made the following decisions:

• Moving up the ramp would cost two hexes per hex moved.
• Any gladiator striking down would gain +1 dice bonus.
• Any gladiator knocked prone on the pontus would make a speed test to avoid falling from the platform.
• If the Retiarius left the platform he would gain -1 crowd favour each turn he spent off of the pontus.
• We allowed the Retiarius his net, but did not issue him stones (stones are occasionally depicted on the pontus, giving the Retiarius something to throw at the Secutores as they advance on him)

We rolled up three characters, a single Retiarius, an Arbelas, and a Secutor.  I took the Retiarius, my brother the others.  No one rolled anything spectacular and only the Secutor gained a skill bonus.

The Arbelas charges forward as the Secutor takes his time.

Fearing the Secutor more, the Retiarius moves to defend that side - the Arbelas attacks but is tripped up by a well placed leg-sweep with the net.

The Secutor moves up the pontus, crashing into the Retiarius.  The Retiarius is forced back but trips over the Arbelas and falls off the platform.  He gathers himself and moves to re-board the pontus.  In the scrap the Retiarius suffers a very light leg wound.

The Retiarius prepares to regain his position as the Arbelas rights himself and stomps down the ramp.

The Retiarius and Arbelas scrap back and forth.

The Retiarius forces the Arbelas back with his trident - and he trips on the ramp.  The Retiarius seizes this opportunity and presses, delivering a massive strike, forcing the Arbelas to yield.  He rolls out of the engagement, embarrassed and exhausted.

The Secutor pauses for a breath then stomps down the ramp, feverishly striking at the Retiarius, forcing him to drop his trident.  He is also backing him near a fall.

The Secutor pins the Retiarius against the wall and strikes him with a brutal blow to the leg, shoving his gladius through his thigh.  Blood pours onto the sands the Retiarius is crippled, yielding.  Having inflicted no wounds, and having been forced from the pontus the crowd looks down on the Retiarius and his dispatched by the Secutor.

It was a really good balanced game.  I think if the Retiarius had scored a hit or two up top on the pontus he would have been in better shape.  It was definitely rough being solo, but with the addition of stones or perhaps a more skilled Retiarius - the pontus games will definitely return.  My brother and I agreed it was quite fun and didn't feel lopsided.

The grievous leg wound which doomed the poor Retiarius (six wounds, four of which were pouring blood).  This brutal leg wound immediately forced the Retiarius to retire, and the crowd had no pity on him.

Ludus reinforcements, the good...and the ugly.

So I've added a handful of new gladiators to my ludus from the hit-or-miss range from Brigade Games.  Pardon some of the hand-held cell phone pics but I disassembled my photo booth for gaming the other day.

A Brigade Games Retiarius (or "net pansy").  A decent sculpt though it's a shame he mirrors his fellow Retiarius almost identically.  Would have been nice to see a different fellow (only their shoulder guards are different).

A Secutor (again Brigade Games).  He looks better in person than this poor photo - and I actually touched him up a bit after this.  The miniature is mediocre with a rather absurdly bent sword (the angle of his wrist, sword pommel and sword blade don't match - and the sword is attached to the helmet).  You'll notice the weird angle in the photo.  Overall I still love my Secutores.

A Brigade Games Myrmillo - nice mini, but nothing to write home about.  As usual my plastic Roman scutums from Warlord games replace the metal ones from Brigade Games (absolutely hate metal-on-metal figures - and the plastic scutums are more accurate and easy to paint/glue).

Brigade Games Provocator - a nice figure, easy to paint.  He is quite slight compared to the others.  Again, a plastic Scutum from Warlord Games.

And the final surprise of the bunch - a Thraex which turned out to be a quite lovely figure.  One of the best ones of the last two sets I ordered - easy to paint, nice detail, reasonable pose...and I absolutely love the way the paintjob turned out.  He's up there as one of my favourite gladiators now.  (read: He'll die immediately in his first fight).

Ludus Reinforcements...

I painted up a couple additional gladiators the night before.  Here they are, a Brigade Games (Paul Hicks) Retiarius and a Crupellarius.

The Crupellarius.  Not overly enthused with the miniature (detail is iffy and a bit soft in places).  I also really wish he had come with a separate shield instead of the implanted small round unadorned parma.  I'm not chuffed with the paint on him either, but having finished him I'll keep him employed.  Never run a Crupellarius in B.O.T.S. before - should be fun!

The Retiarius.  I like this figure pretty well.  Nothing to complain about with this fella.  I continue to find the Brigade Games stuff is not as clean or pronounced with detail as I'd like - makes painting them a bit of a pain/bore.  Overall the Retiarii from sets 2 and 3 are very reasonable.  This guy may end up cutting his teeth on the newly erected pontus.

A picture taken of the House of Oscarus for the State of the Ludus address, before Negrix and Apottus got too deep in the wine...a small batch of new recruits is rumored to be on way from Londinium by caravan.

Of Giants and Men...

So, after running to the local crappy game store and paying too much for an additional can of Army Painter dip I finished up my Giant (again a pre-paint from D&D or something).  I believe the figure is actually a mountain or stone troll of some sort, but since it's quite large it'll be playing the role of "Giant, mean stompy guy who squishes things."

The guy came out a lot darker than I had planned, but he works well enough for a big baddy so I'll leave him be.

Scale shot along with a Reaper elf (who's actually a rather large 28mm figure...)

 Gladiators

I received sets two and three of Brigade Games (Paul Hicks) gladiators as a birthday gift.  I have to say I'm a little less impressed with them.  The sculpts are nothing special, but they are nicely historically accurate.  However...

Here is an Arbelas (Scissor)...looks okay, the sculpt is okay and he'll work...however...

 On the left is a (admittedly) rather large Foundry Secutor.  In the middle is a Brigade Games Secutor from Set 1...and the comparatively tiny Arbelas from Set 2 or 3. He's a friggin' midget compared to the other Brigade Games guy.

As much as I like the historical nature of the Brigade Games figures and the reasonable price (and if you buy all three sets your ludus is almost set for any game)...the mediocre sculpting and the apparent inverted scale creep is a problem.  I'll have the other painted soon and see how they compare.  I'm not stoked about a range containing what appear to be 25mm and 28mm, and I'm not normally bugged by scale - but in a game when you only have 2-4 models on the board it's pretty damn noticeable.

Here is a plastic kit-bashed Dimachaerus (gladiator who fought with two swords - unknown armour or equipment).  I don't like many of the Dimachaerus figures I've seen, nor much of the art work.  There was one piece I thought looked fairly legitimate so I went for a version of it...let me see if I can google it...

This is the image I found most suitable.  Using the plastic bits I had laying around (Viking body, roman legionnaire legs, greek swords and a 100-years-war helmet...and greek plume?) I wanted to get something similar.  I may eventually invest in making a proper one using some other gladiator bits, but he'll stand in for now.

 

A silly little thing...

While I'm not exactly in love with this figure, nor chuffed with the paintjob...here is a troll/ogre/thing that I received in a ebay listing I purchased.  I wasn't going to use him, but then I figured he looked like an easy paint, so why not.

Also, a fellow on a forum asked for a size comparison of the spiders from the previous post, so I've included that photo.

Showing the standard and large spiders - note neither of them are as large as the big Otherworld spiders.  All of my spiders so far are Bones miniatures.  25mm base on the left, 40mm base on the right.

Some kind of weird executioner troll?  His previous meat clever was chopped off and replaced with an axe.  40mm base.

Base Sizes
For my dungeon crawl project I'm using Dwarven Forge mastermaze and gametiles, so I'm using the 1" square system.  The bases I've used so far are all 25mm (1") Renedras, and 40mm Renedras for the monsters.  I will use a handful of larger Renedra bases for dragons and other "Huge" monsters.  I originally started with 50mm square bases to properly cover four spaces but then realized that many of my 2-space wide corridors were just a shade under 2" and it made putting monsters in/out a huge pain in the rump - hence the reduction to 40mm (still will take up 2x2 squares for movement/fighting purposes.

Creepy crawlies and heebie jeebies!

I went into some speed painting the other night and knocked out a ghost thing, and some spiders (medium and large spiders).  These are all from the Bones line and painted up fine - used Army Painter black primer - didn't have any issues with application or final product.

A simple ghostly thing...

Perhaps another weapon is in order...

A nice family of cave spiders...

Led by big momma!

Thar be dragons...

Well, after a near disaster with the anti-shine, this is the finished cheapo ($8 shipped!) Hero Scape dragon that was simply rebased and repainted.  I'm happy with the result.  The anti-shine did it's random "we're going to discolour everything to a flat grey..." nonsense that occurs very rarely.  Of course it simply had to happen when I was flattening a large dragon model.  Some scale shots included.

The paint scheme...while a bit drab was inspired by an idea I had a long long long time ago for my fantasy world setting.  The idea of cave/cliff dragons which resided on the cliffs overlooking the sea.  They'd perch there pouncing on whales, large fish and other poor ocean-going vessels.  Hence the stone-grey colour scheme, a kind of camouflage as they clung to the cliff face waiting for a meal.