Thistle & Rose Gallic Army

A new owner is bringing Thistle & Rose (T & R) 15mm miniatures back on line. I haven't painted 15mm ancients in ages so it was a great opportunity to get back in the saddle by painting a T & R Gallic army for Triumph.  

T& R are true 15s, comparable in size with Corvis Belli.  Not too tall or plump and very detailed. I don't know how they managed such fine detail on 15mm figures.  Some of the shield work was so intricate I used washes and glazes to highlight the handiwork. The "Dying Gaul" figure is a great touch too.  

The T & R FaceBook page is up here.  When they go live, they'll have a deep bench of periods and armies.  In fact, I should have another round of 15mm painting in the Spring with Saxons, Normans and Vikings.  

This project was a good reminder that one can never paint too many Gauls.  I do miss the days of playing ancients with our disbanded ancients group.  One day!

Strathclyde Welsh Giveaway!

Just a heads up that Gripping Beast is giving away a Strathclyde Welsh starter box in support of SAGA THORSDAY! That is 25 MOUNTED metal models! All you need to do is go to the YouTube video page and comment on what you are excited about for Saga 2.0. (Although you can comment on this blog post, you need to comment on the video itself to get entered into the contest!) 

More Picts

Once I start a SAGA warband, I like to paint up all options.  And Picts have lots to choose from!  Reinforcements from the painting table include:

• 12 Footsore crossbowmen who'll run as levy. 
• Fenris Games terrain including a Celtic cross for when I run the Picts as Scots, a Celtic-themed temple floor and rocks with Celtic swirls.  I love Fenris' stuff!  
• Warlord Games Celtic chariot.  I bought this because the Picts can mount their warlord in a chariot and Footsore hasn't yet released their Pict chariot.  I loved the energy of the naked warrior so much I decided to make him a warlord. He looks like he's shouting orders to his troops or getting ready to launch himself into combat.  
• Footsore war hounds.  These huge and wonderful dogs looked so cool I had to paint them up.  

Lastly, here they're parading as Scots for a local event.  My battle board turned out nicely and I hope to build off what I learned here for the US SAGA Grand Melee next March. This wraps up the Picts and now on to the next thing!

Picts Warband

There's an upcoming day of SAGA organized by Eric Hagen.  He puts on the best events including Adepticon's annual US Grand Melee.  If he were to organize a "Rock, Paper Scissors," I'd sign up!  

This event is for Dark Ages warbands only and that left me scrambling.  I'd sold off all my Dark Ages warbands so I decided to paint my Footsore Picts and run them as Scots.  This is another reason I love SAGA.  Few people can paint up all 30 factions but with a little planning, anyone can paint up a warband that can be played as 2, 3 or more other factions.  

Footsore Picts are superb sculpts just as we've come to expect. There is a lot of variety in the figures, faces, and poses. Even with a 48 warrior build, my Picts have a great, massed look.  Bonus, Footsore is expanding their Pict line.  They recently finished war hounds, cavalry, and crossbowmen.  Still to come is a Pict warlord in a chariot!

The naked fellows are the Attecotti and my favorite of the bunch.  Bonus, when you order from Footsore you sometimes get art with your miniatures! If all of this isn't enough to pull you in, you might be interested to hear that Footsore is working on a full line of Vikings and Normans too.

Curse of Dead Man's Hand, Round 2

Here's another drop of new gangs from Great Escape Games.  The front row is the Magnificent 7 and behind them, the Malevolent 7.  Ranked up, it's a pretty awesome look.  The Magnificent 7 will also pair well in a showdown with the Bandito gang. 

I also finished up the Mountain Men set.  I love the beardy fellow who looks like he just carved "I kilt a bar" into a tree with his Bowie knife.  The Longhorn steer are for in-game color.  To round out the bunch, a Buffalo Man and a Mountain Lion who are part of the forces of good in Curse of Dead Man's Hand.  

It's another fine set of figures by Great Escape Games.  While clicking through their web store, I saw they had WW II Romanian army figures presorted for Chain of Command.  After mulling it over for 5 minutes, I decided Romanians will be my next Bolt Action/Chain of Command army! 

Curse of Dead Man's Hand AAR

My friend Hugh and I put Curse of DMH on the table for the first time and I was reminded again that we need to keep this fun game in rotation!  Pro tip for those who play, you can't use standard gunfight tactics against the undead.  Being a slow learner, it took me a few losses to sort that out!

Scene 1 saw 2 Wendingos loose in the town.  They can race across the table and excel in hand to hand  combat as my poor cowboys quickly discovered.  I lost this round quickly!

Scene 2, the undead turn up.  While slow, they attack en mass.  They too are great in hand to hand and mouth to hand combat.  My cowboys went down in a sea of dead flesh.

Scene 3, it dawned on me that I needed to change my tactics.  Starting near the gallows, I decided to make a stand on the platform and use height to my advantage.  I kept a "blocker" on the stairs and used my collective firepower to take down the undead, one by one.  It was a good idea but undead Ned Kelly is a hard to kill tank.  He went on a tear and soon it was down to 1 undead versus 1 cowboy.  Unfortunately, I missed with a sawed off shotgun at short range and lost again! New tactics, same results.

Scene 4 , things heat up.  The Baron is in town with a gang of beasties.  To make things worse, the Baron can bring my dead cowboys back to life to fight for his side!  Hardly seems fair but then life isn't fair.  Early on, I tried to jam the baddies by covering the windows and doors of a building they were moving through.  The Baron had a surprise ability to move everyone at once quickly and in one go, it cost me most of my gang! Down to just my shotgun fellow and desperate to make a play, I spotted a move that let me take a single shot at the Baron .  With shooting modifiers, I needed to roll a 20 to get a kill and save the game.  If I missed, I'd be swarmed by monsters.  I threw my die, looked and laughed.  I rolled a 20 to win!  If you can't be good, its good to be lucky!  

Curse of Dead Man's Hand

Great Escape Games hit a home run by bringing the undead into their Dead Man's Hand franchise. My friend John and I have a standing zombies versus gunfighters game I look forward to every year around Halloween. With Curse of Dead Man's Hand, you can pitch right in to the undead at any time with new factions, characters, abilities and a campaign. And figures that are lovely and gory all at once.

Everybody say "Cheese!" 

Fantasy painting normally pulls me out of my comfort zone. Hours of watching The Walking Dead finally paid off as I was comfortable painting this set once I found a recipe for painting blood and dead flesh.  When it comes to painting blood, it comes down to personal taste and how gory you want to go.  My recipe for blood was as follows:

Vallejo Hull Red for the base.
Vallejo Scarett Red for midtone
Vallejo Carmin for highlight
Citadel technical Blood for the Blood God to wash it all down.

If you don't have these colors, its essentially a dark red base, red  and then bright red highlights washed down by a fairly heavy red wash.

Haunted Bear and Storm Crow

Cannibal Dwarves and Dread Wolves

Wendingos

I played around a bit to come up with a recipe for dead flesh. Again, it comes down to what looks right to your eyes.  My recipe for dead flesh was as follows:

Vallejo English Uniform for the base
Wash with Citadel's Reikland Fleshshade or Druchii Violet
Highlight with Vallejo German Beige

Undead minions

If you're a Dead Man's Hand regular, you'll recognize the minions above are all based on of past figures and gangs. So if you ever wondered "hey, what happened to The Preacher," well, now you know.  

Perhaps the most important question is "How does it play?"  The Curse of Dead Man's Hand campaign is a blast.  The scenarios do a great job of setting up a cinematic arch and story to the campaign.  When we finished our first round, Hugh and I were laughing and shaking our heads. it really does play out like a movie!  I'll share up an after action report in my next post. Spoiler alert, the undead are really tough!  

The Witch and the Baron

Late Romans

Footsore's Late Roman archers give me another look for my Late Roman warband. Ideally, I'll run them as a 12 pack of warriors with a banner.  With an armor of 3 to shooting and melee, I'll have to hide them away from the enemy.

Looking for any excuse to paint  my Footsore's Attecotti warriors, I decided to use these as mercenary Scouts in my Late Roman warband.  If you're considering an Aetius and Arthur warband, take a look at Picts. Along with the option of putting your warlord in a war chariot, you can upgrade 1 unit of 8 warriors to Attecotti.  If they are the attacker in melee, each figure generates 3 attack dice! They can double move into combat without taking a fatigue and while their nakedness makes them an armor of 3 to shooting and melee, their magical tattoos allow them to re-roll failed defense dice. Honestly, the Footsore figures are so lovely that's reason enough to paint Picts.  You can also use these figures with the Scotti, Scots, Irish and more. Score!

Last up is Sarissa Precision's Roman Villa, available on the Footsore webpage.  I figured I needed a nice mansion for the Governor overseeing my Romans.  This kit goes together with a minimum of fuss and effort.  Once done, I primed it leather brown and then airbrushed it up in a base and highlight color.  Quite a bit of bang for the buck!