Minis & Modeling Monday - Glowing Ember Sword, Slate Black, & Orboros Tanith

Over on the miniwargaming YouTube channel, we're shown "How To: Paint a Glowing Ember Sword."  Hot!

Also, on the miniwargaming YouTube channel, it's revealed "How To: Paint Slate Black."  I'm floored!

Finally, on Doctor Faust's Painting Clinic YouTube channel, check out the video on "Painting Hordes Circle Orboros Tanith the Feral Song."  Enjoy!

Minis & Modeling Monday on MFWARS.com 

A look at prepping and painting Miniatures,
crafting buildings and paper Models,
and other non-terrain stuff for the tabletop.

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Minis & Modeling Monday - Fantasy Figs

Over on cheapfantasyminis.blogspot.com, 1Mac popped up after a summer hiatus with "Guards and Bandits and Bondic" here.

Also, on The Lost and The Damned some years ago, Mortis showed off his Skaven Army here.

Finally, on the Dungeonmaster Mark YouTube channel from earlier this year, as part of his GM Tips, he showed us how to "Make your own custom D&D minis."  Enjoy!

Minis & Modeling Monday on MFWARS.com 

A look at prepping and painting Miniatures,
crafting buildings and paper Models,
and other non-terrain stuff for the tabletop.

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Nostalgia Thursday - Chainmail (1971)

Just last week, the offspring of the authors of Chainmail (1971) got together at Lake Geneva Games to play the classic Battle for the Brown Hills scenario.

The description from Board Game Geek is as follows:

Chainmail is a medieval miniatures wargame created by Gary Gygax and fellow Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association (LGTSA) member Jeff Perren, a hobby-shop owner with whom Gygax had become friendly. The game was first published in 1971 by Guidon Games. That first edition also included a fantasy supplement, and is one of the oldest sets of rules for fantasy miniature wargaming.

Nathan Lyke (who took the first two photos) ran a Chainmail game last Friday at the Lake Geneva Games store with the Son of Gygax (Ernie) and Daughter of Perren (Victoria) in attendance, along with Tom Wham and some other friends playing. This is the 45th anniversary of the rules being published and what better place to play than Lake Geneva, birthplace of D&D which was guided by these minis rules!

Nostalgia Thursday on MFWARS.com 

Focusing on the roots of current tabletop gaming
with an eye toward the last century and before.

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Nostalgia Thursday - Fantasy Tabletopping

Over on examiner.com, they put forth a list of their "10 greatest fantasy tabletop games of all time" here.

Also, on toddcannon.com, Todd Cannon asks "What Is Old School Role Playing?"  Find out what he thinks here.

Finally, on the David Megarry's Dungeon! YouTube channel, enjoy "How to Play Dungeon! with Ross Maker."

Nostalgia Thursday on MFWARS.com 

Focusing on the roots of current tabletop gaming
with an eye toward the last century and before.

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Minis & Modeling Monday - Hobbit Heroclix

It was reported on Facebook in some circles recently that Target stores were blowing out their Hobbit Desolation of Smaug gravity feed packs at $1 each (others seem to range from $3 to $6 depending on the brand and product line).  Even if I was not going to get into the game, this seemed like a pretty good deal and since I was taking a road trip for Father's Day anyway, I decided to pop into a Target or two along the way and snag some.

I discovered their were two Target stores along my chosen route and the first had none of these in stock, so I wondered if this was going to prove to be bad luck.  At the second, however, I found two open gravity feed boxes with 37 booster packs between them out of a possible 24 each or 48 total.  Since it is my intention to eBay some of the uncommons, rares, and chase figure if I found any, I grabbed what was there.  I wasn't disappointed.  Eight of the figures should resell on eBay for well over the invested funds and even pay back the gas used for the trip and then some.  The remaining 29 can be used in other gaming efforts.

It's fair to call these Heroic 32mm scale figures, I think, and they are prepainted plaster that can be easily taken off their Heroclix bases and put on a base more suited to other games, if that is what someone desires.  I will put the eight uncommons, rares, and the chase figure up on eBay in a single lot for a starting bid of about half of what the going market rate is at popular online singles stores.  If they go for more, that's great.  If they just get the opener, that's fine too.  They include the Necromancer, Thranduil, Beorn, Master of Lake Town, Thorin Oakenshield, Tauriel, Alfrid, and Gandalf the Grey.  I'll be getting my investment back plus a bit more for the effort.  If you're interested, check the auction out here.

Minis & Modeling Monday on MFWARS.com 

A look at prepping and painting Miniatures,
crafting buildings and paper Models,
and other non-terrain stuff for the tabletop.

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Minis & Modeling Monday - Surcoat Evil Army

I was doing some work over the last couple of weeks gathering the forces of evil to fight against the other Surcoat units I had put together.  More about those simple Surcoat minis can be found here.  Here are some pictures I took of the figures on their bases.

As I was looking around for some inexpensive 54 mm minis to stand in as evil guys, I ran across some bags of skeletons on Amazon that were less than $7 at the time.  I added them to my cart and watched the price fluctuate until they were down below $5, then I snagged six bags of them.

They're nothing special but with 30 in a bag, they will help bulk out an evil army on the cheap.  These will generally be Medium troops, easy to kill with no morale checks required.

They had a decent selection of models/poses in the bag though the distribution was lousy.  Out of 120 figures (122, actually), there were 29 with the double axe, 20 with the overhead scimitar, 19 with the sword & shield, 20 with the spear & shield, 6 with the mace, and 28 archers.  I set the maces aside with some of the double axe wielders and took the remaining double axe wielders, the scimitar wielders, and the sword & shield fellas and based up 20 units, three to a base, mixed up in various combinations.

The spear & shield will get their own units, though I am not yet sure if three to a base is the way to go with them.  I will definitely have ten bases of archers, two to a base, somewhere down the road.  The remainder will be filler pieces for repairs and such.

I had a Pirates of the Caribbean figure I snagged at a garage sale for $0.10 laying around and waiting to be part of a 54 mm Surcoat army, so I busted him out and slapped him on a base of his own to be a "leader" unit.  I also based up a lot of the Dragon Strike minis I had gathered up some time back from American Science and Surplus in Chicago.  They had some sprues of the teal and grey figures and I bought up what I could in bulk.  Above, the trolls base up in pairs and make for good Heavy units.

The Dragon Strike "Bugbears" above are a bit small for the 54 mm, so I go with three to a base, call them Medium-ish units, and refer to them as Hobgoblins (or they could stand in for Orcs easily enough).  The dragon Strike "Orcs" below work out as good 54 mm Goblins, IMO, and with the handheld crossbows, act as good Light units with ranged weapons.

Finally, I also wanted to share an adhesive chart I saw posted elsewhere.  I move some of the graphics around on it, to tighten it up a bit, but the logo and whatnot are all still included.

Minis & Modeling Monday on MFWARS.com 

A look at prepping and painting Miniatures,
crafting buildings and paper Models,
and other non-terrain stuff for the tabletop.

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Wargaming Wednesday - Surcoat (2016)

We wound down the weekend with a game of Surcoat (2016) at Lake Geneva Games in wonderful southern Wisconsin.  I grabbed some pics of the action.  We added a table and two teams of two squared off against one another.  Floyd and Keith, neither of whom we had seen since the Fall, came up from Wheeling to roll some dice.  They're regular wargamers though they tend to play mostly skirmish level games like Bolt Action, though Floyd has played more than his share of Warhammer.  We split them onto teams with Will and Norm respectively, since they had played before, and John was only able to stop in as he had a work shift this week, unfortunately.  Our friend Nancy even popped in to check out the action toward the end of the evening.

It's a pretty simple set up.

Two teams, with teammates on opposite corners.

The idea is that two converging generals have caught

an opposing general on the wrong side of a border wall.

That errant general does have allied support on the wall.

The teams have to decide the best way to deal with the other.

In this engagement, two of the armies clashed away

from the wall while two fought on it.

While attempting to breech the wall . . .

That lost catapult might have made the difference.

But the wall was being overrun.

And in the scrum on the other side . . .

The opposing catapult was lost as well.

It was a close match decided by a few points!

Wargaming Wednesday on MFWARS.com 

A closer examination of board and miniatures Wargaming.

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Minis & Modeling Monday - Fire Giant, Landsknecht, & Waterloo

Over on garycon.com, my buddy Keith showed off his "Garycon Fire Giant Miniature" here.

Also, on analogue-hobbies.blogspot.com, a new blog post from Curt C features "Italian Wars Landsknecht Pikeblock - My Last Entry to the 6th Painting Challenge."  See more here.

Finally, on the VOA News YouTube channel, from a couple of years ago but resurfacing lately, check out how "One Man Creates [an] Army of Tiny Soldiers to Replicate Battle of Waterloo."  I hope his work got into a Waterloo display for the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo somewhere!

Minis & Modeling Monday on MFWARS.com 

A look at prepping and painting Miniatures,
crafting buildings and paper Models,
and other non-terrain stuff for the tabletop.

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Wargaming Wednesday - Surcoat (2016)

In a recent post on the Surcoat (2016) Medieval Fantasy Wargame System here, I outlined some of the many influences on me while wargaming for more than forty years and working on these rules over the last decade and a half.  As said then, "My goal is to produce a rather simple, straightforward set of unit-to-unit Medieval Fantasy wargaming rules that can scale nicely to handle combat for very large armies utilizing a d20 as the primary resolution method and which players can buy in for almost nothing more than their time and imagination."

Additionally, the intention is for someone to be able to use these rules seamlessly alongside an RPG to handle conflict beyond the one-figure-equals-one-individual level.  To my way of thinking, most skirmish level combat rules aren't much different from the combat rules embedded within many RPGs.  With little to no modification, an RPG combat system should be able to handle skirmish level battles.  However, once one scales up to army level combats where a unit represents ten, fifty, or even one hundred individuals, it takes a different type of rule set to do this effectively.

From what I have seen over the forty-five years I have been a avid tabletop gamer (first of wargames then RPGs when they were invented in the mid-1970s), when an army level wargame rule set is designed to work in tandem with an RPG, it seems awkward.  In some areas, abstractions are made or assumed while in other areas, skirmish level rules are substituted so that individual characters can be shoehorned into the action.  This tends to be where such systems breakdown.  They fail to recognize that in the grand scheme of things, individuals cannot make a huge difference on army level combats except as generals and leaders of units.  I'm hoping that Surcoat is seen as a way of smoothing out that awkwardness and manifests as a system that can be integrated into RPGs of many stripes.  We will see.

Wargaming Wednesday on MFWARS.com 

A closer examination of board and miniatures Wargaming.

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Terrain Tuesday - Railway, Barricades, & Traps

Over on thewargamestable.blogspot.co.uk, highlights "Building Railway Tracks" here.

Also, on wartornterrain.blogspot.com.au, a nifty tutorial features "Stratagems: Barricades" here.

Finally, on the Wyloch's Crafting Vids YouTube channel. check out the recent video on "032 - Clip-On Traps." Enjoy!

Terrain Tuesday on MFWARS.com 

For purposes here, the term Terrain is used broadly
to cover 3D and 2D maps, foam, felt, and such.

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Minis & Modeling Monday - North Star Military Figures

A friend pointed me toward North Star Military Figures recently and I noted quite a range.  Although I am focusing below on a couple of Frostgrave figures, they have historical and fantasy miniatures in many lines.  See more here.

One of the minis that drew my attention was a fairly good sidekick or hireling type which North Star has paired with another in their Bard & Pack Mule here.

Finally, I think they did a particularly good job on this Frost Giant here.

Minis & Modeling Monday on MFWARS.com 

A look at prepping and painting Miniatures,
crafting buildings and paper Models,
and other non-terrain stuff for the tabletop.

Please Like, Share, Plus, Tweet, Follow, and Comment!

Wargaming Wednesday - Surcoat (2016)

Surcoat (2016)is a set of Medieval Fantasy Miniatures Wargaming rules written by me and that I have been playtesting for close to a decade and a half.  They incorporate influences as far flung as Chainmail (1971) which I played in the early 1970s to Warhammer (1983) to Hordes of the Things (1991) (based on De Bellis Antiquitatis (1990) which I should include here as an influence in its own right as well as De Bellis Multitudinis (1993)) to Field of Glory (2008) as well as many more minis wargames old and new that shaped my thinking on such systems up to today.  The name, of course, is a homage to the first Medieval Fantasy minis wargaming rules I played, the aforementioned Chainmail.  I recently ran a slot of Surcoat at Gary Con VIII, pictured below, which was well received and I have a couple more games planned at upcoming events in the area.

When I am asked why after four and a half decades of playing minis wargames I am writing one of my own, why I haven't before, and why after starting playtesting so long ago I haven't released it yet, it gives me pause for thought.  Truth is, I love the games I have played and am not looking to publish to replace any of them.  I don't feel there is necessarily any deficiency in the market, as such.  I also don't think that what I will eventually publish is going to feel particularly groundbreaking though they might seem somewhat innovative.  Others will be the judge of that.  This just feels like something I want to do though I haven't felt rushed to meet any sort of outside or financial deadline.  I've been lucky in that regard and I do think the rules are about ready for widespread release.

My goal is to produce a rather simple, straightforward set of unit-to-unit Medieval Fantasy wargaming rules that can scale nicely to handle combat for very large armies utilizing a d20 as the primary resolution method and which players can buy in for almost nothing more than their time and imagination.  I'm not looking to sell a minis line along side these rules nor to pile up quarterly supplements that must be purchased to keep up with a manufactured arms race though I would like to put out a few army list books tied to my Grymwald setting at some point (but they won't be required reading to use the rules).  So, Keep Rolling and Game On and watch for near-future developments on Surcoat!

Wargaming Wednesday on MFWARS.com 

A closer examination of board and miniatures Wargaming.

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