It's A Bug's Life!

Or as Monty Python would say: " And now for something completely different." This time last year I bought some packs of Pendraken Aliens, I think to be used in some Dragon Rampant games, but to be honest I can't remember! I know I did intend to finish painting them by the end of February for Pendraken's annual painting contest but, well, that never happened, as like so many projects, I moved onto other things.

But having sat there being moved each time I needed to access my paints, I thought why not just get on with it and finish them? And so I did. I had intended on some very fancy painting of markings on the heads, some subtle highlights etc, but these went by the wayside as I realised that my shaky hand was not up to the task, plus frankly I would notice said higlights when on the table top. A shame really as they are very nice sculpts!

So with my practical head firmly in place and with a desire to finish off more projects this year, I went with a very simple colours scheme of black bodies, with some colourful marking on the heads that I could just about manage, finished off with some gloss lacquer to give that shiny carapace look. This meant that whilst they look fine for a game, they do not photo well, but hopefully you can get an idea from the following:

'Alice the Alien'. The mother of the brood depending upon the rules used, with the Hive Mind approach as it were. I couldn't decide upon which colour to use and where for the markings, so just left her overall black instead.

Some mid-level Aliens, the red denoting close combat chaps.

More mid-level, but the green meaning some ranged gas attacks.

The Critters, in this scheme...

... and this one.

Some Scorpions (there are three) for a larger close combat bug.

Alice and family off for a picnic. I had no idea how big the sculpts were until they arrived and, whilst larger than I thought, they actually work really well. A standard 10mm figure and pack horse to give an idea of size.

Every Alien needs an egg or something similar, so at Xmas whilst SWMBO was shelling walnuts, I thought these would make a good bit of terrain for an Easter egg hunt! The texture is just great and I pondered over what colour to paint them, tempted as I was to try and make them blend in. In the end gloss black won out as I really wanted them to stand out when on the table. 

The finished product.

Given how often they are going to get played with, I'm happy with my simple and quick paint job. It would have been nice to spend more time on them, but many other projects deserve more time and attention! Still it's nice to see them finished. I do have some other 'bugs' to be assembled, but I'm in no hurry to do this.

Rules wise they will be used with 'Dragon Rampant' as originally planned and now I have 'Xenos Rampant' too, I'm sure they will get a look in with these too. I have some more odd figures to paint as I'm really enjoying this process, so hopefully I might even get in a game soon.

As always thanks for reading and commenting too:)!

TTFN.

The Camberwick Green Chronicles

During my recent (and ongoing) sort out of my wargames stuff, I came across two storage trays of figures for use with 'The Pikemen's Lament' and 'Dragon Rampant' rulesets. Like so many of my projects, I had a burst of enthusiasm of planning, purchasing and painting, only for it to fall by the wayside as my interest wained for a variety of reasons. Looking at the figures anew, some of the ideas I'd had for both sets resurfaced and so I decided to look through my notes and see if I could get a game or two in before Xmas.

Essentially the original idea was to have a bit of fun with a narrative campaign set in and around the Forest of Dean and the Mines of Gloria, with Dean being some sort of Demon and Gloria well, just the person who owned the mines. Obviously a bit of a nod to JRR Tolkein's Mines of Moria, but the whimsy tickled my fancy! This led to the idea of setting it in and around the village of Camberwick Green, inspired not only by my love of the whole Trumpton tv series, but also of Norm Smith's Piggy Longton chronicles and Keith's Border Reivers Ballade's verse.

Plenty of ideas abound for sure, all with a very whimsical slant, but first and foremost I need to reacquaint myself with the rules. Looking at them I've decided to have a mix of both rulesets, calling the mishmash 'The Dragon's Lament'. I'm not sure how well they'll play, but looking at them there is very little difference between the two. Time will tell. At least I made up some basic unit cards for a game, to try and speed things up and set up a very simple encounter type scenario, as it didn't need to be anything fancy at this stage.

To set the scene:

Somewhere in the Forest of Dean, 1685.

The Glorious Revolution has caused chaos in the area and rumours abound. One such is:

"You fear to go into those mines. The miners delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Hazard's Doom ... shadow and flame."

The scene is set.

The miners are defending their church.

A 'Basset's All Sorts' force.

Some of Camberwick Green's finest.

Commanded Shot lead the way.

The action underway, as the Miners see off an attack by Goblin Scouts, routing them.

The 'Basset's All Sorts' force closes in on the church.

Treemen watch on in case anyone wants to damage their trees.

Reckless, rowdy Rupert counter-charges the Saddleback Pigs...

... and is driven back...

... but the Saddleback Pigs rout! Oh the shame of it in their first battle.

Gerald the Giant easily sees off the Commanded Shot.

A few Turns into the game.

Goblin Shamans throw fireballs at anyone in their way.

That reckless and feckless rogue, Rupert, decides to charge Derek the Devil, which is not a good idea as he routs from the table!

Gerald the Giant charges Jones's Pikemen...

... who force him back despite taking losses themselves. He doesn't like it up him!

The end of the game.

Derek the Devil is happy to see more Saddleback Pigs arrive as reinforcements.

The Camberwick Green Militia have taken losses and are waivering, so decided to call it a day and retire to the pub for a pint of cider or two.

Post Game Thoughts

Well it's been quite some time since I've played these rules and I'm happy to say it all came back to me, bar the odd query, which was nice. So a few thoughts on how things went:

• First and foremost it was fun! I loved the mix of figures and scales which I think helped give it that real fantasy look that I remember as a kid, something I was hoping to achieve. So the Giant looked like a Giant rather than a slightly bigger figures on the table.
• The unit cards I made really made it easier than looking up on a unit roster. As I get more au fait with the rules, I will make more bespoke cards for the fantasy figures to better reflect them than the current generic Great or Lesser Warbeasts for example. As an example Derek the Devil will be able to fly, maybe the Treemen will be more vulnerable to fire attacks etc. 
• The mash up of the rules worked fine and I saw no issues at all in this first game. Early days of course but given this will be a solo outing, I can always fudge things if need be.
• I think the Camberwick Green Milita (as they are currently called) might need some fantasy input in terms of units they can call upon. Dwarves are on my list for sure as Bellicose Foot and probably a Cleric or Wizard. Maybe even a Solomon Kane type hero?

What's Next?

Well more playtesting for sure, then firming up the background story too, along with character and unit names. Then of course the ever present need to paint figures!

TTFN.

The Return Of The Prodigal Son

A few posts  I mentioned that over the years the only figure that I have ever regretted selling is the original White Dwarf sculpt I bought as a teenager. Luckily for me and yet another example of the wonderful generosity of fellow gamers, Iain of caveadsum1471Blog fame had a spare figure, that he very kindly sent to, free of charge. I was so happy to receive it and it instantly brought back so many memories of my early forays into wargaming, at this time a mix of WWII and the original D&D. 

Having received it, I dug out a tin box from the attic that had other figures from this period too, to have a bit of a wallow in nostalgia, and very pleasant it was too. As is the wont of these things, it then re-kindled some ideas I had pre-Covid for some Fantasy games, using Dragon Rampant, but more on that in another post.

For the moment I thought I'd share a few images of some of those figures that I had to hand. There are a few more but they are tucked away behind other boxes at present and so will have to await their moment in the limelight.

The Prodigal Son himself. I'm not sure the manufacturer but he has FA19 scratched into his base and some other text, which I cannot make out.

 Medusa and a Zombie. From a time when I was playing Mordheim and using white primer. How times have changed since then!

A Warrior Monk I believe, from my D&D days, as are all of these figures.

A Dragon that would be a mere baby compared to the huge sculpts you see these days. There are some wings somewhere that I took off another figure.

A Chimera and still a lovely sculpt IMHO. It looks like I had planned to have a rider mounted on the back.

A Wind Elemental and I have the Earth one somewhere too. Both are great sculpts.

A Giant of some description with ES69 on its base. Possibly Ral Partha as it is very dynamic for that time.

A Balrog, that is in complete contrast to the above, being very static and two dimensional in its pose. Still, it was a figure we all coveted at the time.

A Frost Giant that I attempted to improve by adding Milliput to, to make it look more Viking in appereance. A failure really, not helped by a really bad paint job, from a time when I just got back into wargaming in the mid-1990's.

A Fire Giant from the same range as above. Again very static, rather poorly proportioned and based as per the GW style then.

A minifigs Pig-Faced Orc, from a batch that a friend bought me some 20 years ago. The moulds are pretty shot, so there was lots of flash to clean up in places. I loved this figure back then and still do, but again it shows its age in terms of pose and detail.

A Ral Partha Barbarian from 1977, which inevitably was called 'Conan'. At the time a big improvement on what was on offer then and he seemed rather dynamic to our eyes. Still one of my favourite figures though, with 18/00 stats!

Well I hoped you enjoyed that trip down memory lane and maybe even recognised or still have some of these figures.

TTFN.

The Mines of Gloria - a Dragon Rampant AAR

For sometime I have been planning to run a mini Dragon Rampant campaign, set in and around the Forest of Dean. I've come up with some broad background fluff, made up the rosters etc but for one reason or another, I've never got around to kicking things off. So whilst on some post-op R&R, I thought I'd have a trial game to run through things just to remind myself of the rules etc.

Table Layout & Deployment
I knocked up a couple of opposing warbands, bunged some terrain on the table and played a simple advance to contact type scenario. Nothing fancy, but something simple to allow myself to get re-acquainted with the rules.

An overview of the 2' x 2' board.

An English mid 17thC warband.

A Goblin and Troll warband.

Turn 1
Both sides moved as best they could, with only the English Dragoons failing to move.

The end of Turn 1

The Goblins and Trolls fan out to both flanks.

The Devil leads his troops up the road.

Giant saddleback pigs gaurd the right flank.

Turn 2
Again, more movement and some English troops were just out of range to shoot. As the Goblins and Trolls advanced, the Saddleback Pigs charged forward into the English scouts, who failed to evade, forcing them back with losses.

The end of Turn 2.

The Devil moves to the right, guarded bu Trolls and Goblin scouts.

Both sides have taken losses, but the English are the ones forced back.

Turn 3
A mixed turn of fire and manouevre, with the English Scouts and Militia causing hits on the Saddleback Pigs, who even though at 1/2 strength, charge into the English Scouts, causing more losses and pushing them back.

The end of Turn 3.

Goblins move towards the English Dragoons lining the hedge, whilst the other English troops try to form a good defensive line.

The Dragoons are in a good defensive position.

The Devil still protected by Goblin Scouts.

Turn 4
The English somewhat unnerved by the Giant Saddlebacks, fail to activate to shoot or completely miss, allowing the Saddlebacks to once again charge in, but take hits and have to retreat. As the Goblins charged the Dragoons behind the hedge, they came off second best and failed their morale roll and legged it off the table!

The end of Turn 4.

The Goblin and Troll left flank is somewhat open.

A view from the English position.

The Dragoons now face off against some Goblin Scouts in the woods.

Turn 5
The English have a string of failed rolls, but the Militia manage to shoot at the Trolls, who manage to pass their morale rolls despite taking quite a few hits. In response the Goblin Scouts, Saddleback Pigs and Trolls all attack the Militia, who take so many hits that they easily fail their morale roll and exit table left. The Goblin Scouts and Devil all attack the Dragoons, who are forced to retreat.

The end of Turn 5.

The Devil forces the Dragoons back.

The Trolls not too keen to charge the formed English pikes.

The Dragoons look nervously at the Devil.

A Valley of the Four Winds figure, one of my oldest, used as the Devil.

End of Game
At this point I called it a draw, with both sides having taken casualties and myself having got a hang of the rules again. So both sides withdrew to fight (hopefully soon) another day.
 
Post Game Thoughts
It was nice to have finally got a game of Dragon Rampant in, although I did feel a bit rusty with the rules, but it did the job I had hoped it would. So a few thoughts on the rules etc:

• The game went at a fair old lick, which was nice and I reckon with a bit of planning you could play a mini-campaign in an evening, should you wish to. 
• The rules are fun and certainly easy to pick up, but I didn't use any magic, as I wanted to keep things simple. I must admit I prefer the historical Rampant rules, but doing the Fantasy version did allow my to use some very old figures from my early wargaming years, which I greatly enjoyed.
• I allowed all units to roll for actviation, as per the later Rampant rules, as I find this speeds play up no end. I'm also toying with the idea of allowing alternate activations, but this may be too hard to keep track off, especially when playing solo.
• I forgot to test for 'Wild Charges', simply automatically charging units with this trait. In hindsight this probably made them too effective, but the point of the game was as a refresher, so it worked from this point of view.
• Both sides managed to pass pretty much all of their morale rolls, which is unusual as in previous games, I've had units moving back and forth, which breaks up the game rather nicely.
• Having drawn up both sides lists quite sometime ago, I had forgotten what they actually were, so whether they were Greater Warbeasts, Belliscose Foot etc. i need to go over them again to do a few tweaks based upon the game and double check everything. 
• The game worked perfectly on a 2' x 2' board with 10mm miniatures (plus some larger ones) by simply halving all the distances.

This has picqued my interest in digging out my miniatures from the loft for some Baltic Crusades using Lion Rampant, plus carrying on with my English Civil War units for The Pikemen's Lament. However with som much stuff already 'planned', I'm not sure when they might get onto the painting table. So many ideas, so little time...