Final AHPC Post - The Shelf Soup Post

 Last weekend of the Challenge and time to clear off anything on the workbench that is close to done. It's kinda like shelf soup or leftover day, a mix of everything.

First up a trip of nominally 28mm Wizkids monsters for my Beowulf RPG.  These have been sitting around finished or nearly so in some cases since January, but weren't as satisfactory as some of my other beowulf baddies.  We have a troll, an earth elemental and a Sea Hag,

I tried to get a different green effect on this troll from his skinnier compadre posted earlier. I'm not quite happy with the results but he's big green and ugly, and I'm pretty sure I've seen him pushing Chaos Space Marines around a 40K battlefield.  The earth elemental is a nice figure but I kinda whiffed on my attempted morph into a elemental from the sea bed for a Beowulf adventure.  I had ambitions of sculpting the base with modelling gel so that the broken rocks looked more wave like but in the end went for a paint conversion.  I gave him a green wash to represent marine growths and overdid the gloss medium applied over top.  The Se Hag came in the same pack as the Bheur Hag posted earlier.  Unlike her sister (which has a Disney villainous vibe) the Sea Hag lacks character and has more of a Zombie Luau dancer vibe. 

Next up a set of 28mm Bad Squiddo Women of WW2 ATA members with rifles, and an NCO from attached to a Highland regiment.  They are great figures, but not as colourful as the other packs in the Kickstarter I back (i.e Lumberjills and Pig ladies).  I am not sure of the uniform colours but am unlikely to ever field them on table and they look ok.

And finally a Wizkids 28mm well and Bad Suiddo Land Girls Rat catcher.  Yes she is proudly showing off her collection of dead rats which have been strung together and are draped over her shoulders.  I am not sure what to make of a woman who smiles so broadly while wearing a lei of dead rodents, but this sculpt is based on a period photo.  Lots of character but kind of disturbing, particularly as in the Miss Marple rural England universe she might be your Great Aunt Sally or Mrs Jones from down the lane.

So that's 7 regular 28mm figures (the 6 Bad Squiddo ladies and the Hag) for 35 points plus the well (5 points as being about the size of a 28mm figure or maybe 1-2 points as terrain.) and 2 two bigger figures.  My previous troll was counted as a 54mm figure so I suggest the same for these two.   The hag, troll and elemental would count towards the fantasy duel.

AHPC Coruscant Good vs Evil Encounters

Second post for me today (ok, actually the second this week on this blog) and I will be hopping from Perelandra to Coruscant with my take on good and evil RPG encounters.

Wizkids Bhuer Hag on the left and Stag on the right.

On an earlier post, my stag got some positive comments.  I obviously liked the sculpt so much I bought two of them, so I went with a white stag on the second.  

I am not as thrilled by my results as with stag #1, but it'll do.  In my experience white animals are actually various shades of off-white which is the effect that I went for.

The White Stag has a place deep in Celtic Mythology and appears in any number of stories, including Arthurian legends, Harry Potter and Call the Midwife!  In my Beowulf RPG campaign he might be a Noble Beast that can provide assistance to my heroes if they prove worthy.

I won't be accepting any treats from this old dear!  She's got a lovely Disney villainness  vibe to her.

I'll share my best hag related story, which actually came from real life.  While visiting my dad, he and my step mum took me to Chichester Theatre with their octogenarian friends to see a production of MacBeth.  It turned out to star Patrick Stewart, who none of my elders had heard of!  It was in the round and we were in the front row at stage level six feet from the action.

A set of 5 Oathmark Revenants, not nearly as nicely done as Millsy's

My adventurers had an epic graveyard fight with a super-revenant plus two regular ones.   Two of the party were saved from death by followers (a nifty Beowulf second chance mechanism) and the other two were almost in the boat.  

I really like the ancient Celtic vibe to these sculpts, they fit into my Beowulf setting as tomb guardians and the like very nicely.

Finally a set of 4 Wizkids woodland critters that have been cluttering my work bench.  I don't like the  regular timber wolves nearly as much as the Winter Wolf I painted earlier, and was disappointed that they are in the same pose.

However, the fox has a good sculpting pose to him/her.  reminds me of my favourite book from childhood, Harlequin the Fox.

Challenge veterans might remember that there was a badger themed location a couple of years ago.

Points wise there are a total of 11 figures of various sizes (the hag and stag are quite large) but all in 28mm scale.  For simplicity I'd suggest averaging them all out to 5 points a head for 55 base points.  If the Snowboard approves, the Coruscant bonus brings this up to 75 points total.

I think that the hag, white stag and 5 revenants could all count towards the Fantasy Side Duel lost cause.

AHPC Dark Age Ring Fort

 

Advance and be recognized

 

If all goes to plan, this should be the first of two posts from me this week.  Having been thrown way off schedule by my bout of COVID at the start of my teaching semester, I've decided to bin the challenge locations and focus on the stuff I've got ready to paint on the workbench.  

All of the pieces lined up.  Four straight sections, three curved sections, two gates and two end caps.

Backside view of the whole array.

I had two largish modular terrain projects planned for this year's challenge, the modular ruins posted a few weeks back and this Dark Age Ring Fort.  It's a set of 28mm pdf kits by Sarissa Precision. As with all the Sarissa Kits I've worked with it was a joy to put together, an easy hour of punching out, applying glue and clicking the bits together.  And yes there are two camps regarding terrain, those of us who enjoy making scenics and those of us with irrational phobias towards terrain brought on by extreme emotional trauma while in uteri.

My Gripping beast warriors on the ramparts.

This sort of works would protect villages, towns and manors all over Western Europe from the early days of the Roman Empire into the middle ages.  it's inhabitants might be Celts, Saxons Franks, Danes or Scots-Irish, but the basic plan remained constant.  Sloped earthen ramparts topped with a fence or palisade and flattened off on top to make a fighting platform. 

 

Close up in better light to show the kit details.  The wood work was painted with washes of raw or burnt umber over a parchment base.  The ramparts were painted dark earth tones with ground cover applied and bushes to hide major flaws.

Most Sarissa kits come with doors, but oddly the gate houses did not come with gates.  I bodged some together using left over doors from other kits.  I did one gate open and one gate closed.

The roadway and fighting platform are done with fine railway ballast firmly cemented in place (thanks for the tips Curt) and overpaid in earth tones

The pair of gates in the open position are to narrow to full close of the entrance, but modeller's license and forced perspective means that can be ignored.

The kits are marketed as 28mm but the walls and gates seem low compared to my GB figures.    As with most war-games terrain it's a matter of balancing the differing vertical and horizontal scales and looks ok on table.  Anyway, I'm not sending it back!   

I see a ton of uses for this on table.  First off for my Beowulf RPG when we go on TT.  Also it will fit my El Cid armies nicely and can be morphed into other eras easily.  I now have a pretty good tied collection of terrain to cover Dark Age Britain, and so I think that I need to build Sub-Roman armies and enemies to fight over it!

Points wise the ramparts measure 36" long, 3" wide and 2" tall.  That's a perfect terrain cube for 20 points.

AHPC Pictish Bard

 The next stop for me is Bablyon 5 with a brief of Operatic or Low Budget Fun.

In my Dark Age RPG word there are no Operas, so folks made do with the local Bard, Skald or Scop.  If the story teller was good, it was a lot of fun and it was certainly low budget.  

This fellow with his Pete Townsend harp technique is another Gripping beast 28mm figure from the same Picitish command pack as the two competing religious types in my last post.  I think that he's grateful to be released from his internment with them!

Quite what he is singing is anyone's guess as the Picts are somewhat of a historical mystery and no one knows what their language sounded like.  The competing best guesses are "pretty close to the early Welsh spoken everywhere else in Britain"  and "a non Indo-European language that pre-dates the Celts by centuries".  The only written records that they left themselves are carved stones in Ogham. 

No mysteries about the figure however, a nice sculpt in typical Beastie Boy style and pretty nice to paint up.  Although labelled Pictish he's pretty much generic Dark Age Britain in dress and equipment.  The red cloak is a pushing it a bit historically, as dyes should be pretty much muted browns, yellows and greens - much like an over cooked dinner at your English Grandma's.  A continual challenge in modelling this period is to paint figures that looks right, but don't fade into the background. 

It being early days of the Challenge I am picking off a few smaller pieces while the bigger stuff goes on in the background.  Assuming that he counts as either Operatic or Low Budget fun enough to count towards the location, this is 5 points for the figure plus 20 for Babylon 5 for 25 points.  I will be using him in an RPG, but have taken Curt's point so won't count him towards the fantasy Duel.

AHPC XII Discussion in Pictland on Heresy

 I have these two 28mm figures from my Beowulf RPG game having a spirited discussion on the nature of Heresy.  In Beowulf alignments differ from standard D&D, as PCs and NPCs can be aligned with the Book (i.e. Church)  the Old Ways (Pagan religions) or be Neutral (undecided or decided that they are both full of it).  To represent the Book and Old Ways I have an Irish Priest and a Magus.  Both are by Gripping Beast and both come in the same Pictish Command pack.

Padraig is part of the Celtic Church which was very active at the time.  Lots of scope for Adventuring quests here with the likes of Saints Patrick, Columba and Brendan.  They prompted my all time favourite line fro the old WRG army lists:   Saint Columba was given the main credit by contemporaries for the Ui Neill victory over King Diarmait in 561 AD, decisively out-praying Saint Finnian on the other side. It turns out that the battle was sparked by a copywriter dispute between Finnian and Columba.

Clearly Patrick is outspoken on his views and the cast has lots of character.  With his pot belly, bald head and stringy pony tail I am pretty sure that I've been buttonholed by his doppelgängers who needed to tell me about their unbeatable Blood Angels army or the lyrics from some gawdawfull forgotten prog rock band from the 70s.

Oengus on the other hand is clearly of the Old Ways and not having Padraig's BS.  In my adventures he should do as a Pagan holyman, evil sorcerer or lead singer from some gawdawfull forgotten prog rock band from the 70s. He also needs to have that mold line trimmed on his left hand, not sure how I missed that until now. 

I will need official confirmation from a vet or the Skullometer, but I believe that's a horse skull that he's sporting as a hat.

That's two 28mm foot figures plus a Challenge location for 30 points by my math.  I am not sure if fantasy side duel is a go, but if so I'd like to claim the 10 points towards my total in it.  

(The fantasy side duel is a go, but Curt's not having me claim historical figures against it.  Oh well.)

More Photos from The Battle With Sea Serpent!

 These are courtesy of Curt, and better quality than mine.

Battle in Orkness Harbour

 We fought the conclusion of our latest Beowulf adventure on table last night.  Pictures from the game are below.  Spoiler alert if any one cares to play the Seven Stones adventure.

Thigmund the Thee Therpent swims into the harbour for this full moon’s  sacrifice.

The sea serpent is a 3D print from MyMinifactory printed off by local gamer Jeremy.

The sea serpent and the town.

The town buildings and long ship are MDF kits from Sarissa Precision sold as a Viking Town set along with a dock.

Instead of the town’s sacrifice, the raft carries Alys with a torch and  a barrel of pitch and oil

Alys narrowly avoided becoming gravlaks and substituted the flaming barrel.

The serpent took its revenge with a couple of nasty tail attacks as Alys swims for shore.  Duncan the Old Ways spiritual leader comes to her aid and is killed in her stead.

The final action between the sea serpent and the adventuring party plus followers.  The figures are mostly Gripping Beast except for the four heroes on hexagonal bases. 

The four heroes are by Handiwork games, publishers of the Beowulf RPG, and 3D printed by Curt.

Beowulf Miniatures

 A bunch of freshly painted minis for tonight's Beowulf show down with the Sea Serpent.  These represent the Heroes' followers and Local NOCS.  All minis are 28mm Gripping Beast.

Sea Serpent for Beowulf Adventure

It's been nearly two months since my last post.  I've been doing games with our local group almost every week, but not much in the way of painting.  Fall is never prime painting time for me as its always a busy time with a lot to get done before the snow comes.

We've been chugging away at the Beowulf adventures and are now onto our fourth in the series.  To date my crew of adventurers has defeated a troll, a revenant and a giant adder all of which were unbeatable until they discovered their secret weakness.  No PC deaths yet, but there have been some close calls and deaths among their followers.  

Prior adventures had been done virtually using Zoom and Roll20, but we are able to game face to face so I want to fight the final battle for the current adventure on table top.  It features a giant sea serpent and I found some time to paint one up.

It's a 3D print sold by MyMiniFactory and printed off by gaming buddy Jeremy.  We'll see how the serpent fares net week/

Beowulf Adventure 1. The Hermit’s Sanctuary

 

My new bookmark fits the theme nicely!

The first Beowulf Adventure is the Hermit's Sanctuary, which Handiwork made available as a free download on Drive Thru RPG.  You get some pre-generated characters, a lite version of the rules and a very nice scenario.  This was created as a teaser for their kickstarter and like everything else connected with the game was nicely produced.

This adventure is a bit Agatha Christie with Trolls.  You hero (or in our case party of heroes0 goes to the aid of an isolated island sanctuary beset my a recently appearing monster.  The party had great fun working though what is essentially a looked room mystery.  The socail interactions with NOCs are nicely thought out.  For instance the order that you approach the NOCt matters  as success with one chaacter may lead to a better (or wrse) chance of success with another.  They had to peice together bits of the mystery from the NPC's stories, ancient standing stones and other evidence.

 This was my first experience as DM in 40 years, and my first  experience with DnD 5e so I was rusty and made lots of errors.  I was too easy on my party, but it was fun with a good end result.  They solved the mystery, killed the Monster, sorted out a few things with the NPCs and sailed away.  Another weekends work for the Dark Age adventurer!

What I Played During Lockdown

Our group did a number of Zoom games during the lockdowns over the last year.  One of the games was an RPG campaign DMed by me using Handiwork Games Beowulf game.  We had a lot of fun with this very well put together and thematic RPG.  It is based on early medieval epics such as the Anglo Saxon Beowulf, although there’s room for Danish, Slavic and Celtic heroes and even Irish Saints.

Beowulf is by Handiwork Games and is best described as a DnD 5e hack.  They took the core 5e mechanism, hacked out a few bits and added different stuff.  Gone are magic using PCs, DnD alignments, and character classes.  Every PC is a hero, essentially a beefed up fighter and the only magic is run by the DM or NPCs.  They have really bought into the early medieval theme and the world created holds up very well.Beowulf was designed to be run in tandem play, one DM and one Heroic PC with a number of NPC followers representing the heroes’ followers.  However, we’ve run it using a party of up to four PCs and it’s worked very well.  I just scaled back the follower NPCs and scaled up the bad guys as required