Imrryrian Mercenaries

 

I recently asked folks on my YouTube channel what my next project should be. There was enthusiasm for the Melnibonean force I had assembled over the last couple of years, so I thought I'd give it a crack. My intention was for this to be a small force of mercenaries, refugees from destroyed Imrryr, travelling the land under the leadership of a noble. Much as Dyvim Tvar was when Elric encountered them in The Stealer of Souls. For the leader I had originally selected a Copplestone dark elf rider (most of this force are Copplestone Fantasy Warriors bought from Battlezone Miniatures), but when I saw this lady rider (also on foot below) I thought it would be more interesting to have her in charge of the band. Moorcock needs some better female characters...

The bulk of the figures are the ex-Grenadier Fantasy Warriors high elves, with a few of the debauched dark elves mixed in for flavour. I wanted to give the impression of fallen grandeur and paint grubby elves rather than shiny white ones. I figure the Melniboneans wouldn't know how to look after their equipment without their servants and slaves around to do stuff for them. The oxide on the bronze is Vallejo verdigris which I've had for a while but not really used much. I originally intended to do some on my undead, but didn't like the look. I'm not sure I like it much more here, it's not as green as I would like and I didn't feel like washing it all again. I think my big mistake here was to start with bronze and try to 'rust' it rather than starting green and adding a few bright spots back in.

Moorcock doesn't describe Melnibonean armour much. He says Cymoril's personal guard wear bright blue and describes other soldiers' armour as 'yellow'. I think they're more supposed to be in plate, but mail coats feel more fitting for an army on the road. I've gone with a colour to denote each small unit and purple as a spot colour to tie them together. They are from the many-coloured city after all. I figured each unit would be the household guard of one noble, with perhaps the yellow and black being the general uniform of the city guard. The waspishness is what I think of when I imagine Rodney Matthews' images of Melniboneans.   

I'd originally intended to just have archers and spearmen, but at Colours last year there was a chap selling Harlequin miniatures (saves me battling with BTD) and so I picked up some swordsmen to expand the force. This might have been a mistake. My intention was a small group of models I could enjoy spending some time on, but the extra troops made it feel more like an army, more pressure, more to get done. I didn't enjoy it very much, so have spent very little time on them and ultimately called them done without putting in a lot of care and attention. I'm not entirely sure why, they just didn't grip me whilst I was painting, despite listening to some Moorcock to get in the mood. They may end up for sale sometime in the future.

I also hadn't inteded to do an Elric as, like with Star Wars, I find the stuff which doesn't involve the 'main character' to be far more interesting. Give me smugglers in the back streets of Mos Eisley over Jedi duels any day. But Mike kindly gifted me one of Drew's Elrics so it felt rude not to paint him up. I don't give much for the band's chances now Stormbringer is in their midst...

Imrryrian Mercenaries

Half-things and beasty elves

 

Here are the last of my palate-cleanser between-project paint jobs. A little unit of halfling militia archers to go with my Stanclud contingent and some elf beastmasters. The halflings are from Macrocosm, but again I can't find them on the website so not sure if they're still available. They scale well with the Wargames Atlantic plastic halflings and are just a bit taller and skinnier than Old Shcool Miniatures. They're a bit larger but spot-on aesthetically with the former-Westfalia armoured halflings,

The beastmasters I was very happy GW had rereleased for Old World... until I saw the price tag! I was kindly given a voucher for GW for my birthday last year and ACTUALLY HAD SOMETHING I WANTED TO SPEND IT ON! so picked them up at a much more reasonable price with that discount. :D I wanted to go fairly colourful and patterned with the animals whilst staying in the 'natural' realm so went for Eurasian lynxes (the metal feeds on the ends of the ears stayed on to make them look tufted), Irish wolfhounds (not so very colourful), patterned wild boar and a spectacled bear.

Either these have been very popular or GW are using old moulds for them as there was quite a lot of flashing and some detail missing due to mould tears. I don't mind too much, but if I'd paid the full whack I'd have been put out by the quality. Whilst on elves I also painted up a wardancer to take my unit up to a nice round 20.

Half-things and beasty elves

Kev White beauties

At Reveille last year there was a chap with a big box of old Celtos blisters. You may know that Celtos is my absolute favourite ever fantasy range and, whilst they're still available from Brigade models and I have most of them, I'm always keen to pick up more. A good rummage even revealed a couple that Brigade don't currently sell. These got painted up to fill out a few units in my barbarian horde and as another palate-cleanser whilst I decide what big project to move on to next.

 I took the opportunity to get all my barbarians off the shelf and reconfigure them a bit. I decided since I have a lot of champion and shaman type models I could shrink the units right down to 8 figures and have a character and shaman accompany each, the close retinues of powerful champions no doubt. I tried to 'theme' each unit either by the manufacturer, style of dress, weapon or wider theme such as the veteran (oldies!) unit. Here's the current breakdown of units, I may have to get some more Celtos to fill a few gaps, oh dear!

Kev White beauties

Refueling the tank, refilling the ranks!

 

Hi everyone. It's been a while. I've been beavering at Oakbound stuff for ages getting a load of new releases ready. Now it's time to take a break and do another project. I haven't chosen what it will be yet, so as a palate-cleanser I dug out some models I wanted to add to my existing armies (told you, nothing is ever finished!). Some Marauder dwarf pikes, the elf beastmasters I bought new from GW recently (with a voucher, I'm not insane!), some Celtos models I found at a tabletop sale last year (some of which not available from Brigade... score!) and some halfling bowmen. I couldn't decide which to paint so I asked on the Oldhammer Community FB group and the response was resoundingly 'dwarves', so that's what I did. I did actually paint everything in the end, more posts to come in the near future! Worth noting I did NOT buy these Marauder spears direct from GW. The new price on them seems pretty ludicrous to me, especially compared to the fairly-reasonable slayers which can't be that much easier to cast. Especially nuts given you want a decent block of these guys!

There are a few ex-White Knight (I think) now The Assault Group dwarves in there, pic for scale reference. The two on the left are from my other spear unit, from Macrocosm/Theoc- though I can't see them on the website at present. A bit less hunched, but similar in physique.

Speaking of slayers (as I was), here are three more to round out my unit. I didn't have a dragon head, so substituted a troll. That will get painted when I get round to doing the rest of my stone trolls so it matches. The fourth guy here is a newbie from Foundry at BOYL last year. There were two variants released. I believe he's a Pickford sculpt from the same time the very-similar-but-different Harrig the Wise was sculpted and not released. We think they were all variants from the same base, a possible range of dwarf wizards to choose from before dwarves and magic parted company? If so, why are they all so similar? So many mysteries...

Refueling the tank, refilling the ranks!

Blood on the Snow- a tribute (part 2)

 

Continuing the Blood on the Snow project in honour of Matthew Street, we have dwarves. Now, anyone who knew Matthew will know that his dwarf army was staggering. The painting, shields, banners, just beautiful. As part of the (now seemingly defunct) 'A Middlehammer Tale' project, Matthew was adding some particular Citadel Norse dwarves to the army with a view to them being the core troops for Blood on the Snow. 

Sadly, these particular dwarves seem to have vanished. Nobody knows what happened to them, but they don't appear to have been in the boxes of toys under his bed with the rest of the collection. They may yet appear, but in case they don't I took it upon myself to take a selection of Matthew's unpainted Norse dwarves and try to get as close as I could to his own masterpieces.

You gotta have a drunken dwarf, right? Or this may be a dazed dwarf having been rolled down the hill in a giant snowball as written in the scenario.

As always, Perry dwarves are a delight to paint.

Blood on the Snow- a tribute (part 2)

Blood on the Snow- a tribute

 

You probably know that the wonderful human being that was Matthew Street departed this world last year, leaving a hole bigger than I could possibly describe. For the last few years he had been planning to run a big communal game of Blood on the Snow, an early Warhammer scenario, at BOYL. He had done artwork for it (see above) and planned a scenario booklet to accompany the game. He'd also begun painting forces for it, which you can find on his blog "News from Hell before Breakfast".

Matthew's human fighters are shown above and below. Sadly, ill health and life pressures meant that progress stalled a few times and the planned game never took place. At his funeral a bunch of us vowed that this year BOYL would see Blood on the Snow in his honour, using his miniatures. Now, here's a bit of a sticky problem. Matthew had collected a lot of figures for the game. Most of them were unpainted and in clearly labelled boxes. These we distributed, aiming to paint a unit or two each. After the game they would be auctioned off to support Matthew's partner. Unfortunately, nobody has seen or knows where the painted figures are. They don't seem to have been among his stash of lead. There are plenty of figures to run the scenario with (except in some quarters where I believe Matthew had hoped the designs he was doing for Old School Miniatures' Kev Adams goblin range would fill the gaps) but it seems a shame not to field the models he painted himself.

Against the possibility that his works of art turn up, I decided to try and keep the selection of figures I had taken to work on matching the colour scheme and look Matthew had selected. Teal and white uniforms with red accents and a brooding, high-contrast look. I am pretty sure he worked over a black undercoat and likely used oil washes. Being an artist he was also very picky about his paint choice. I wasn't, just using my regular Foundry paints and Army Painter washes. I also stuck to my usual grey undercoat as I wanted to do the selection justice rather than use it as an excuse to experiment. There are some lovely Citadel sculpts in here (mostly Foundry rereleases) and they were refreshing to paint after months of my own sculpts. I did try to go heavier with the shading and black-lining than usual on them. It used the last of my Citadel Expert Paint Set black ink, but worth it in Matthew's honour.

This is a unit of 20 militia and 20 archers, all mixed sorts selected from Matthew's bags of options. That's twice the size of the units listed in the scenario, but I know Matthew wanted to up-scale the game. He also had plans for dwarf slayers riding wild boars and more greenskin shenanigans, but those are in the hands of better modellers than I! I did, however, also take a unit of dwarfs to paint in the event that the Streety originals do not surface. More on those in another blog post.

Blood on the Snow- a tribute

Wot? No post?

Two months without a word?

Dearie me, I'm sorry about that.

I have been very busy. As soon as everyone got back from their Christmas break my work announced a big restructure of Technical Services which, on the face of it at least, looks like a bunch of redundancies looming. At last count there are 9 other people in the running for my job, so let's say it's not been the most fun time. Added to other bollocks that's ongoing, it's not been the best start to a year. BUT! I have been putting the final touches to something cool. Behold!

Shivershield!

This is the new iteration of The Woods skirmish game. Think of it as Woods 3rd Edition, but without the RPG stuff (which got expanded and went into Deepwood Shadows, released before Christmas) and the Battle bits. We all know 3rd editions of things are the best ones, right? My mate and former housemate Roderick and I have been working on this for the last 2 years so it's amazing to see it finally come to fruition. With the successes of two advent calendars and Thunder Under Mount Silence, I have been able to invest in cardstock and go all-out on a boxed starter set. Something Oakbound could only dream of when 2nd Ed came out in 2019. It's packed full of tokens, templates, dice, screens, trackers and, of course, miniatures! 20 of them, all new sculpts, enough for two full warbands to start slugging it out. And if you've already got your warbands ready you can just pick up the rulebook, a glorious full-colour hardback full of lovely, glossy pictures.

Release is scheduled for Salute, with pre-orders now live and a big ol' article in Wargames Illustrated (probably the April edition). Over the coming months I will be posting some videos on Oakbound's channel about how the game plays, but for now let's just take a look at some scenes from the world. Amazingly enough we now have at least one of every miniature covered by the book, so plenty to pick from when setting up some shots. If you're interested in how these photos were taken that'll be the subject of March's members video over on YouTube. Enjoy!

Tuatha defend their home from a bucca assault. 

This is the terrain board I'll be taking to Salute for demo games this year.

A gnawloch scout creeps up on an armoured fae warrior.

A pixie battle bard summons elemental spirits to join the warband.

Leprechauns and a spriggan ally ambush unwanted goblins in the hill country.

Bucca emerge from a coastal tunnel to find their way back to sea blocked.

A myeri warrior shows you how to run around in the mountains.

Fenfolk on the march.

A cludbur militiaman tries his luck with a sling against the armoured carapace of a woldlouse.

A nuckelavee charges out of the marsh to confront the guardian.

Fae hounds break from the cover of the trees.

Wot? No post?