Fantasy Villagers and Townsfolk

Howdy folks! This post is a bit of a random one, but I had great fun playing toy soldiers whilst putting the shots together and I hope that comes through in the pictures at least!

It came about in response to two things. Firstly I have been working on a whole bunch of beautifully Oldhammer-esque Fantasy Villagers and Townsfolk from the Bruegelberg range from Ratnik/Lead Adventure, which I picked up from the lovely people at Magister Militum while I was at UK Games Expo 2017. Incidentally, there is a new Breugelberg KS campaign still a couple of days to go at time of writing, if you fancy it?

Secondly, fellow hobbyist Rusty Painting has been teasing us in the Middlehammer group with work in progress shots of his uber-townscape and it made me think about getting all my fantasy villagers, townspeople, and tavern folk together for some group shots to see how they all looked alongside each other. Sorry that the photos don't all show the minis mentioned as clearly as they might, but many of those have been seen on this blog before.

First up is the "Rat Catcher" from Bruegelberg, who has been painted up in the Dark Blue and Red colour scheme I often use for my fantasy NPCs, partly with a nod to them eventually being part of an Altdorf themed Empire WFB3 baggage train or similar, but also with a nod towards the colours of the Gloucesters medieval reinactment company that part of my family belong to...

I love this model. My paintjob and these photos simply are not doing justice to the sheer number of rats on this sculpt, they are curling around his feet, squeezing out of the sack, and nibbling at his cap. I also like his grotesque-face cod piece, and all the details on his equipment including the massive trap hanging from his belt. Completing this model also coincided with a friend getting in touch to say she wanted to run a game of WFRP (1st edition), did I want to roll a character? Hell yes I did, as long as I could be a Rat Catcher! And so (Jozef) Sykes came into being and should probably get his own blog post at some point in the future...

Next up is "Angry Woman" another sculpt I love, but a name which doesn't quite do the job imho. Partially armoured, armed with a sword yet wielding a ladle and carrying a swaddled infant under her arm tells such a richer story than just "Angry Woman." Not sure "Irate Mother" is much better either, but that is how I currently think of her.

Sticking with the Altdorf/Gloucesters colours, if not the patterns, and with the idea of WFB3 baggage trains, here are a couple of Pay Masters (or Veneticum Mercatori in Bruegelberg parlance). The second one is in the secondary colour scheme of Tan Leather and Olive Drab I have gone for to reflect either rival houses, or maybe a poorer rural possession of the more affluent Blue and Reds? It is a theme that has sort of evolved naturally as I've been painting some of my other fantasy NPCs and villagers, but really came to make sense when I started work on the Bruegelberg set.

 

The "Old Hag" is a sculpt that just screams RPG potential. So many uses from simple crazy cat lady, to full blown gingerbread house dwelling witch. I'm already practicing my character voice deary! Won't you come inside for a cup of nettle tea? Don't mind the smell. The cat's been ill...

The "Plague Doctor". I have to admit I'm not happy with the paintjob on this one. I put a bit more effort than some of the others (which to be honest are just base coat, one highlight and ink jobs, relying on the quality of the sculpts themselves to do the work) but I didn' quite get the grizzly butcher look I was going for with the patchwork leather apron. It's a sculpt with fantastically dark potential for better painters than I though. Don't let the fact I now think of him as the 'Death Womble' put you off.

A couple of peasant "Thugs" now, picking up on some recurring colour schemes again of tan and drab, and a simple blue and grey I use for low lifes. These are among the most striaght forward of the Breugelberg sculpts, and it was a shame that they also showed some of the more pronounced pitting among what was otherwise an OK batch of casts. I think that put me off a bit and I didn't really spend much time on them, but when you see them next to some other likely trouble makers they still look the part.

Another beautiful sculpt and one with som nay talking points, the "Peasant Woman" is well provsioned with fish, sausages, a whole wheel of cheese, and a goodly sized tankard. No wonder she is being pursued by a rat! But she has also lost an eye at some point, but also picked up a pilgrims token on her travels, which she wears on a rather nice floppy hat. Again, bags of character and really good to see such interesting female sculpts.

"The Musician" instantly won himself a place in my D&D campaign, where a disfiguring pox is an important part of the recent history of the area, and his bandaged face and apparently missing nose immediately play into that. I've gone for the tan and olive drab colour scheme again, as this fellow definitely seems more down on his luck than the Altdorfers/Gloucesters.

These next two are the "Durer Peasants" based on the illustration by Albert Durer and a brilliant example of the level of historical referencing that goes into these sculpts. Some tan and olive on the first one, but I got carried away with trying out the different greens I had accumulated over the years, so the second one looks like a badly outfitted robin hood with a basket of eggs...

 

I was keen to see how the Bruegelbergers looked alongside my existing cast of multi purpose fantasy villagers (which includes minis from Hasslefree, Heresy, CP Models, Black Tree Design, Prince August, and some unknown pre-slottas as well as some modern plastics from the excellent Frostgrave Soldiers sprues), so threw together a little scene around a farmstead...

Here we see a small rural scene in the Farmstead at Little Rumping. It looks like the tables are just being set out to feed the workers lunch.

We can see the local official has come to collect the taxes, a rat catcher plies his trade near the tithe barn, and a muscician is just winding up his hurdy gurdy

Peasant famers laden with produce come to lay out the tables for lunch, while the old hag and the Plague Doctor watch on

Work is coming to a hlat in the fields nearby, the local children are causing trouble and fighting again, but who is that gathering on the hill in the background?

They've done it now! They've woken the baby! The "Angry Woman" sets about the Hasslefree Medieval Kids

Some Thugs have teamed up with some (Frostgrave soldiers) peasants from a rival village...

...looking to get some easy loot from Little Rumping!

Of course the problem now is I really want to see what happens next... Ah well, the beginnings of a WFB3 scenario maybe?

Anyway, next up are some two Breugelbergers "In the Tavern", who can be seen here in front of their rputable establishnment, The Green Griffon (which is an old resin set from Grendel which I remember playing with in the early 90's, and which the wonderfully generous AVP Shaun gave me last year after he found it in his mum's attic!) You can see more of teh Grendel set along with some tables from Dwarf Wall(???), and a couple of tavern maids from Hasslefree (actually, I think one of them might be a "Strumpet" but I didn't like to pry)

  

 

 

No Breugelbergers in this next scene, but it does include a whole mish mash of manufactures, including some OOP Citadel Flaggelants. Among my favourites are the One Man Band from CP Models and the female Plague Doctor (also from CP Models, under the Night Horrors range). Also worth a mention are the VL3 Juggler and VL4 Blacksmith from Prince August who are not great sculpts by any means, but at time of writing are available so ridiculously cheaply I almost bought them again!

Finally we come to the "Arnolfini Family" - another example of the level of historical referencing in the range, these two figures are directly sculpted from the famous portrait - which also happens to be the picture my Dad and Step-Mum used to base their outfits on for their Medieval wedding. As you do...

For that reason I have gone for a pretty faithful recreation of the colours from teh painting. Which is exactly what they did for the website too. Sorry that is not very inspiring, but it works for me as it also picks up on the Dark Blue and Red theme. One other thing to note here. Sadly the face of the lady was badly squashed and what little nose she had was either obliterated in the blister pack or was miscast. I toyed with the idea of putting some greenstuff down, but my GS skills are truly woeful and it would have been a disaster, so in the end I have tied it back in to the disfiguring pox in the D&D campaign, proving that the disease is no respecter of class.

These seem like castle or town types to me, so they have been based up appropriately and can be seen below with a cast of more frost grave soldiers (seriously, I love that sprue - not only did I make a bunch of 8 farmers/peasants as seen above, but I got 4 town guards, 4 rogues and 4 Night Watchmen all form the one box), some more Hasslefree fantasy humans, and some scribes from Prince August and CP Models (one of three Dark Age Monks, the others of which can be seen lurking behind the flaggelants in the pics above). The boxes urns and chests are from Black Tree Designs, picked up during one of their regular sales to make them good value for money as either treasure tokens, objectiives or scatter terrain

Night time on the town streets...

The Village Idiot from Hasslefree is wondering who stole the treasure from the urn, and is about to get clocked by a rogue

The alarm has been raised and the Town Guard are making sure no more treasure goes missing!

The Night Watch are on the scene, but these rogues no the narrow alleys well and should be able to make their escape

Meanwhile, oblivious to the trouble outside, the Lord and Lady unveil their new shrine to an audience of scribes and flunkies, including the Minstrel and Dwarf Tavern Patron (who can be painted up to look like Lemmy from Motorhead!) both from Hasslefree

Like I said at the top, I had great fun playing with my toy soldiers for this post. The only down side is that I realised I still have too many more fantasy NPCs on my wants list, and that new Breugelberg KS to consider... damn!

Thanks for stopping by :)

2016 Gaming Review and Ambitions for 2017

So, it's that time of year again and the blogosphere is filling up with yearly round ups and hobby resolutions. Yes, it's cliche but I find it a useful exercise, and I've surprised myself at how much I have actually produced in 2016 - although no where near the consistent standard of many Oldhammer luminaries.

I've followed the lead of some other bloggers and my 2016 round up focuses on those minis that did not get featured in a blog post - mostly for two reasons a) the standard is table top ready at best and/or b) they are intended for my D&D campaign, so I tend not to show them on line before they have actually debuted in our campaign and we only play once a month so that can take a little while. 

I've not kept an accurate count for 2016 (something I should try and remedy for 2017) but a conservative estimate is just over 100 minis, of varying quality and detail. You can check out the rest of my output by checking out my blog posts for 2016 :)

I also wanted to revisit my Hobby Ambitions for 2016 and see how I did, before deciding on my ambitions for the coming year. So lets start by taking a look back at what I wanted to achieve in 2016:


1. Finish painting my Caledor themed High Elf army.  Well, this was to be my major project this year and it got no where near the attention it required. I certainly didn't finish painting them all, and I may even have made an additional purchase in the shape of a very badly treated Prince Imrik on Dragon which will probably take years before it sees the light of day. I did however make some progress, adding a couple of basic troop units, a couple of bolt throwers, a fair sized unit of Silver Helms, and a couple of extra character models.

More importantly, I managed to play a couple more games of WFB4 with the ones I had painted - and this actually contributed to why more elves were not finished, because I felt the need to work on my Greenskin army in parallel, adding two units of Goblin archers and a few more lines of assorted Orc infantry along with the Goblin Doom Diver and Wolf Riders already shown on this blog.

Given my other projects I'm going to be more realistic, but am determined to keep up momentum with both WFB armies, so my 2017 ambition is going to be to add at least 2000 points spread across both armies by the end of the year.

The forces of Caledor - I have about the same again, plus more cavalry, still waiting to be painted.

Da Greenskin Horde - loads more in the lead pile to add to this mob, including some chariots if I muster the gumption.

2. Start work on my Rogue Quest project. This has definitely been my most successful ambition. Four out of six embers of the party finished and blog posts published, a couple of spin off projects thrown into the mix and a couple more lined up before the end, the next member of the party on the table and already base coated, the final member finally acquired after more than 12 months of searching!

It also spurred me on to bash out a few gangers that had been hanging around since before my 2015 painting revival.

Plastic Orlock Gangers from Necromunda and a metal 40K 2nd Ed Catachan match up well as general urban scumniks

You can review my progress on the main project by following the link: Rogue Quest

For 2017 this ambition becomes Finish the main Rogue Quest Project and any associated side projects currently planned.

3. Improve my basing technique.  OK, so as predicted I'm still working to complete existing forces so I still paint my bases a fair amount of the time, and use basic sand flocking or poorly textured putty most of the rest of the time, but at least these days I use putty to fill in the gaps, and the painted bases have got a bit better (in some cases).

There are however some genuine signs of improvement. I've taken to using lentils or small balls of putty or dried lentils to represent toadstools, and small stones as boulders etc. Really basic stuff, but it does make a difference. The Discworld models below are an example of what I mean.

I've seen the light with this one and I think it is going to improve naturally from here on, so I don't feel the need for a basing related ambition in 2017. I'm going to set myself a different challenge: Complete an all metal (or primarily metal) conversion. 

This should involve actually cutting into lead! Drilling and pinning, and filling with green stuff. All things which any hobbyist worth their salt should be proficient in, and which I've never had a huge amount of success with, prior to a half a decent fix on a broken Trolls leg earlier this year. I'm reasonably confident, though not very skilled with converting plastic, but working with metal will be pushing my modelling skills.

4. Collect, convert, and paint my first Frostgrave War band.  FAIL! I've certainly managed the collecting part in that I let myself free wheel and buy whatever minis I thought could fit in to any number of FG war bands, but I have not assembled any complete war bands.

I did build and paint a set of models from the Osprey Frost Grave Soldiers box set, which is a great set and one I will have to acquire again as I turned all of mine into D&D NPC types. I jumped at the chance to create a few unarmed farmer/merchant types as well as assorted town guards, watchmen, rogues, angry flaming brand wielding peasants, and foresters. I guess some of them could be used in FG, but that's not why I made them...

Now, if only someone was making a similarly diverse kit with fantasy female models, my D&D NPC needs would be so much easier to meet!

Night Watchmen (complete with a poor first attempt at Object Sourced Lighting)  - built from the Osprey Frostgrave Soldiers kit

Rogues - built from the Osprey Frostgrave Soldiers kit

Rogues (rear view) - loads of great bitz in the FG Soldiers kit!

Town Guard - built from the Osprey Frostgrave Soldiers kit

Angry peasants and Foresters - built from the Osprey Frostgrave Soldiers kit

Treasure token made from bits and bobs from Blacktree Miniatures - Farmers or Merchants (FG Soldiers kit again)

I also cobbled together some basic treasure tokens/scatter terrain for FG/D&D using some crates, chests, and urns from Blacktree Miniatures, and some press moulded quivers of arrows. So it wasn't a complete bust!

This ambition stays as it is, with one amendment - NO MORE COLLECTING - the war band has to be assembled from the minis I already own. Apart from the replacement set of FG Soldiers. Obvs.

5. Sell or trade more minis, games, and rule books. FAIL! I've not sold another thing all year. I have drastically reduced my purchasing however, and am making good progress at actually painting things from the lead pile and actually using them in games! I really need to pull my finger out with this one though. Did I mention the 28 KG of superfluous rule books? This ambition stays as it is, but maybe it moves up a few places in importance?

So what else did I manage to get painted in 2016?

Discworld Characters

Because I didn't have enough painting deadlines towards the end of the year, I decided to paint some Discworld characters from Micro Art Studio as presents for some members of my family, all of whom are big fans. It was only this year that I was able to bring myself to read his last book before he died, The Shepherd's Crown, and I painted these very shortly after finishing the book. A poignant moment for me.

These were finished the day before they were due to be given as gifts - luckily I managed to get some WIP shots, but sadly none of the fully finished versions.

WIP of the whole bunch - Granny Weatherwax was a popular choice with my family :)

Note the dried lentil toadstool :)

Basing with Rocks on it

The basing is part of the model on this one - so I can't claim the credit for this one ;)

More D&D NPCs & Monsters!

Most of my painting in 2016 focused on my D&D campaign, though with an emphasis on usability across a number of game systems such as WFB, Heroquest, FG etc...

I've shared lots of my recent work in my post of Mini-collecting driven D&D Campaigning (or vice versa?), so these pics focus on minis that I have not shown on the blog before (with a couple of reappearances). The minis come from a variety of producers, but many of them current - More from Blacktree, plus some from CP Miniatures, Hasslefree, a couple of Necron Scarabs from GW, a giant centipede floor tile (I can't remember who made this I'm afraid) and a Prince August noble for good measure.

Dungeon based NPCs and Bad Guys

Tavern/Village based NPCs

Religious NPCs

I find myself painting a lot of Bards etc. due to the nature of our D&D campaign, and one of my favourite models of the year was this chap, the One Man Band from CP Miniatures 28mm Victoriana range - who has now made his debut as Sparrow the Bard in our campaign, so can be shared here.

Sparrow the 'One-Man-Band' Bard

Heroquest Rescue Jobs + RPG PCs for Son #1

A combination of wanting a distraction from other painting projects, and the inspiration of the brilliant Heroquest Hero Quest over at Scalecreep, saw me work on some HQ models that AVP Shaun sent my way as extras, and the ones we mainly use when my son and I play (rather than the pristine set I paid ridiculous money for as one of my first key Oldhammer purchases!)

I started off with the handful of undead that had already been half painted by AVP Shaun, in 2017 I'll be moving on to the surviving greenskins who have suffered a bit more at the hands of a previous owner :(

HQ Undead - I'm not happy with either of the zombies, but they were a chance to experiment with dead/rotting flesh tones

 

Red Panda from Darksword Miniatures and a pimped up HQ Orc in a shiny Gold Leather jacket serve as Son #1's PC options

Shot of some of the extra bits added to the Orc Treasure Hunter - from the FG soldiers kit again!

The promise of more HQ and some creative genius from the 4year old mind of Son#1 has also spawned the first side project of the new year, and filled me with so much enthusiasm I rescued a can of spray undercoat from the near freezing garage and now have it inside a sock coming up to room temperature ready for action tomorrow!

So what are your hobby related ambitions or resolutions for 2017?