Hippolyta's Tiny Footsteps: Averland

Showing posts with label Averland. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 May 2025

I don't usually do WIP posts but here is one today

I'm working on a fantasy army for Midgard using Wargames Atlantic Conquistadors.

This chap below will be its general.

He is kitbashed from a Perry War of the Roses horse and horse armour, a Wargames Atlantic Renaissance mounted body and arms and a Warlord Games Landsknecht head. Since taking this picture, I have cleaned up the blemishes from where things were attached to sprues and he's ready for undercoating.

The fantasy army in question will be based upon a Warhammer Empire Averland force, so I think that the inspiration for the general is fairly obvious. In case you aren't familiar with Warhammer Fantasy, the original is this guy below;

He is the Elector Count of Averland, Marius Leitdorf. My figure is going to keep the black armour and red and yellow sleeves and also the metallic blue horse armour, but I'm definitely not painting suns on it.

I'm hoping he will look pretty good once completed. I'll probably undercoat him later today.

I'm still painting up the first few groups of his infantry, but none are near completion yet.

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Wargames Atlantic Ogres (all nine of them)

I've had a project in mind for a while, and these guys are the starting point. There are nine bodies in the box and I've used all of them. First, the Boss;

He's clearly the Boss, because he's got a nice tidy moustache and beard that almost keeps his fangs hidden. I bet he even uses moustache wax!

Next, two ogres with halberds, which they probably call Ver Big Choppas or suchlike.

Then, a couple of swordsmen with bucklers that would serve as a full-size shield for a human.

Another leader type, but not a Pwoper Boss and a guy with a dismounted cannon he's using as a "handgun".

Finally, another "handgunner" and an ogre with a Big Club and a dagger, which would probably be a two-handed sword for a standard human.

These are the start of my Midgard Fantasy army, which will be using Wargames Atlantic conquistadors (both foot and mounted) to make up an army based upon the old Warhammer Fantasy Empire province of Averland, hence the predominance of yellow and black in the colour palette I've used so far.

These ogres are huge, over 5cm tall and really bulky chaps too. I've got movement trays to turn them into two units of four figures, who would be led by their own Hero figure.

I've got all in foot figures for the army assembled and undercoated and I'll begin painting them fairly soon. I have Roman auxiliary archers to finish first.

Tuesday, 18 March 2025

28mm Wizards project

This is going to be a bit of fun, I hope. I am planning a Renaissance 28mm fantasy army based upon the Warhammer Fantasy Imperial Electoral Province of Averland for Midgard and other sets of rules (e.g. Sword and Spear Fantasy) based on the Wargames Atlantic Conquistadors, Landsknechts Ogres and Renaissance Cavalry sets and I thought that a couple of wizards would be a good idea. My original plan was to get a single sprue of the Frostgrave Wizards I set but then, I realised that the whole box would give me eight bodies which could come in handy in the future.

I then got to thinking that the Warhammer Fantasy Empire used to have Eight Colleges of Magic and I now had eight wizard figures. Therefore I knew that I'd have to make up eight wizards who could be painted up to represent each of the eight colleges. I assembled all eight figures and have now undercoated them.

So, across the back line in the photo above, I have a Jade Wizard, a Bright Wizard, a Gold Wizard and an Amber Wizard and in front there are a Grey Wizard, an Amethyst Wizard, a Wizard of Light and a Celestial Wizard Obviously, I've chosen an undercoat of primer that will work well as a base for the various colours I'll be using for each Wizard.

As I said at the beginning, I see this pretty much as a fun project. I'll do a separate post for each Wizard as I finish him.

Monday, 19 June 2017

A HOTT afternoon at the club

Yesterday was hot in more than one way. The temperature was up around the 30C mark and the major thing at the club was a series of games of HOTT (Hordes Of The Things).

This was a chance for me to roll out my Averland-inspired army against some actual opponents. "How did things turn out?" you ask. "Not very well!" I reply.

I played four games, two against Nick's Orcs and two against John's Dwarves and Elvish chaps. In every case, I lost. Now, that could be down to inexperience, but bad dice rolls and impetuosity both played a part too. In the first game, I defended on a table that really didn't offer me much help. Neither did a truly bad initial deployment, which pretty much left my Knights in an endless series of rounds of combat with Nick's Orc Knights.

It didn't help much that I soon lost my Behemoth (the Da Vinci turtle tank), for no gains.

Eventually, I lost because I had taken too many casualties.

In the second game, I defended again, and once more deployed my forces in a formation that pretty much isolated my Knights. This time, though, I deployed Riders on the right flank and these at least had a useful role to play.

I lost my left flank Shooters and Blades early on and this really didn't help me at all, even though my Spears managed to push back Nick's scorpion Behemoth.

The real problem was that I'd got my general into a bad position defeating Nick's Knights, which led inevitably to his demise, and my defeat.

My next two games were against John's Elf/Dwarf alliance. Both times I tried to ensure that my deployment was more coherent and I decided to occupy the hills on my half of the table. John deployed in a solid line.

My Knights advanced along the road.

At this point, things seemed OK. I didn't expect that his Flyers, including an Aerial Hero would be such a problem. I soon lost one unit of Knights to John's Hero General, which showed up the flaw in my plans.

My Spears saw off an attack by Flyers

But the Aerial Hero (identified by the red counter) caused a realignment of my line.

With my Blades standing firm, the Shooters rejoined the battle line.

The Hero Flyer refused combat and left my Blades exposed as John's line advanced.

I threw caution to the winds and charged. Bad mistake. Although I won combats, all I was doing was forcing his troops to recoil. I couldn't destroy any troops. Eventually, I lost my remaining Knights, inevitably followed by my Hero General.

Game over.

We managed to squeeze in a final battle. We both deployed Magicians, and I brought in some Riders, dropping my Spears.

John was defending, and I was pretty much forced to advance, because he just sat still in front of his Stronghold.

My Riders managed to tie up his right flank for a long time, including his Magician.

I advanced and got into combat. This is where it all went wrong. I felt sure that I had an advantage but my dice rolls were truly appalling and my line got twisted out of shape and I was destroyed piecemeal. Happily, there are no pictures of this shameful collapse by the army of Averland.

So, I reckon that I have a lot to learn about how to win at HOTT.

Monday, 12 June 2017

HOTT - My Averland army's Stronghold

Having completed my Averland-themed Renaissance army, my remaining task was to build and paint a Stronghold. I knew the sort of thing I wanted, which was a nice vignette of a Late Mediaeval/Renaissance camp, with camp followers, tents and various odds and ends of stuff.

After the obligatory googling, I decided that the best option was to head over to the Magister Militum website and peruse the Baueda resin models. This was a good idea because I was able to buy two nice tents and a couple of sets of campfire pieces. Together with a few odds and ends I already had, I quickly put together what I think looks like a pretty decent Stronghold.

The Baueda campfire cooking sets came with four figures who, although they are actually mediaeval chaps look fine when painted up in Averland livery colours. I added a Magister Militum carter and horse that I had leftover from my SYW Sharp Practice imagi-nations project and four Peter Pig figures from their Pirate range, again surplus figures originally bought for my SYW imagi-nations project. These are also out of period, but with the right livery paint job, they look fine too.

It had been pointed out to me that my Leonardo Da Vinci turtle tank would have problems being ranked next to other figures because of the overhang, so I've created a plinth to put the thing on when I need to brigade it with other elements. Here is how it looks;

It is just a standard 4cm square MDF base with a layer of foam glued on top, sealed and flocked. The tank just sits on it whenever necessary. Problem solved.

Saturday, 10 June 2017

A new project - Hordes Of The Things

I was recently introduced to Hordes Of The Things at the club. I have to say that I enjoyed the games I played and it left me thinking that I really ought to put an army together, not least so that I could take part in the club's annual HOTT tournament.

It is a very, very long time since I last played Warhammer Fantasy and almost as long since I sold my Empire Army, and, I have to admit I've always had a soft spot for the Renaissance period pike and shot period, so when I first looked at creating an army for HOTT it didn't take me too long to whittle down my list of possible armies to a few contenders, with a Renaissance army pretty much top of the list.

This got me looking around for figures and, to be fair, there is an embarrassment of riches out there in 15mm for this period. However, because we are talking HOTT, I wanted to add in a magical dimension, but none of the available 15mm magic user figures around really looked right for the period to me. I started to reconsider what kind of army to create but I really wanted all those pikes, arquebusiers, gendarmes etc, so, when I found out that Alternative Armies ALTUOS 15mm Renaissance range contained a pair of Leonardo Da Vinci figures - on foot and mounted - PLUS a nice resin model of his famous "Turtle Car" tank, I knew that Leonardo would be a perfect character to use as a magician and his tank would be ideal as a Behemoth. The range of figures was perfect for what I wanted because you can buy small numbers of figures (they are priced individually, rather than as packs) and they have plenty of variants.

Anyway, going back to Warhammer Fantasy for my original inspiration meant that the figures should look like those of the later 15th and early 16th centuries, with halberdiers and sword and buckler infantry as Blades, arquebusiers and crossbowmen as Shooters, gendarmes as Knights and pikes (yes, I know that Warhammer didn't have pikes, but you really do have to have pikes in a Renaissance army) as Spears. For Riders I had lots of options. Did I want mounted crossbows? Maybe, but I have always been fascinated by Stradiots, light cavalry used by many armies in the Italian Wars of the late 15th and 16th centuries, who were recruited across the Adriatic in the Balkans, so Stradiots it would be.

My old Empire Army had been a bit of a mishmash of colours, with troops from various parts of the empire, but it had a core of troops painted in the black and yellow livery of Averland, which I really liked then and still like now, so I simply had to create an Averland-themed Renaissance HOTT army. The stark black/yellow scheme would be brightened up by adding red and green to the colour palette, especially for the stradiots, but also for the carriages of the artillery pieces.

So, here are the Spears, Blades and Shooters. Note that one of the units of Blades are Halberdiers and there is an officer figure, so that I have the option of having the General in that unit;

These are followed by the Knights and Riders. I chose to use fully-armoured Gendarmes for one unit of Knights, because they look like Warhammer Fantasy Knightly Order troops and what were known as "Archers" but who were equipped with lances as well as crossbows as the other one;

And finally, here is the Artillery, the Behemoth and, left to right a Paladin, a Magician and a Hero (who will also serve as a mounted General);

I decided that I wanted a large enough army to be able to play large games of HOTT, so I bought enough miniatures to give me a 48AP army. Here is the whole army, which I think looks rather impressive.