Jim's Wargames Workbench

 

On Saturday I found a boxed picture canvas in the local charity shop, very similar but much smaller than the one I turned into a desert themed terrain board a couple of weeks ago. This board is only a fraction of the size, at 55cm x 47cm or just under 2' x 2', so only really useable as a skirmish board or for smaller scale games. I decided to texture it but had to remove the stuck on felt circles and stitching first. The felt circles just pulled off but the stitching had to be sanded down, as it just wouldn't unpick and had to be left in place. I managed to cover it up in the end but it was a bit of a saga and hasn't completely disappeared from view.

To cover it up, I added a thick coating of acrylic paste, followed by a mashed in coating of sand, small stones and scenic dead grass fibres. It has now set and will be overpainted once I've added a bit more texturing. I haven't decided how to paint it yet, with several possible options on the table including tundra for 15mm WW2 Commando raids, 10mm 'Cold War Gone Hot' in Norway and 15mm Frostgrave. I also thought of No Mans Land for 15mm trench raiding or jungle for French Indochina and Vietnam. I was even thinking of the latter for Saurian Safari dinosaur hunting, which is something I've done before in 28mm but would scale down really well to 10mm, using the Magister Militum dinosaurs and Pendraken figures.

These arrived in the post on Friday, which was really quick, so I grabbed some time today to base them up. There's a shamen (witch) and an apprentice, a mail armoured paladin, a barbarian, a warband leader (knight) and four archers. This adds up to 700 points so I'm obviously not going to use them all together but will be able to try out different combinations of figures. I also have a lack of lower value soldiers, so have ordered some more unarmoured barbarians with single handed weapons to use as expendable low-cost thugs. The nice people at Forlorn Hope gave me 5% off as an introductory offer, so I felt obliged to use it!

It looks like Frostgrave is going to be making an appearance at the club soon, so I thought I'd start on a warband of half a dozen fighters and a magic user of some sort. I'm not overly keen on the plastic figures and so have been looking for some alternatives, if possible by making use of some stuff I already have at hand.

I have, however, decided to splash out on something a bit different, so have sent off for a handful of the old Grenadier barbarians sculpted by Mark Copplestone and now available from Forlorn Hope / EM4. I have a couple of these fantastic figures already but have added some archers, some two-handed weapon figures and a couple of champions.

The barbarians don't really fit with the warband lists in the rules but I can match the figures with their equivalent henchmen without too much trouble. At least one of them can be a 'barbarian' whilst the others can be archers, rangers, men at arms and so on. I'll ignore the lack of leather armour too, as they're tough enough already!

The magic is covered by a couple of the shamen figures in the range which are perfect as a witch and apprentice. I've also ordered a couple of mail and plate armoured knights from the same range to use as non-barbarian warband reinforcements. I think this lot will make a very unusual and interesting warband...once I get round to painting them up.

I'm being very cautious with my plans for the coming year, so I'm keeping down to a skirmish level and focussing on small projects that I can complete in the space of weeks rather than months. These will include both Dragon Rampant, which is already underway, and Lion Rampant War of the Roses which I've decided to do in 28mm rather than 15mm, at least at the moment. I'll may also have a crack at Black Ops, Ronin, Frostgrave and En Garde, all of which require a small number of figures and are published by Osprey. The Achtung Commando! project and Saga will be in there somewhere too.

One thing I will use to tie this all together is an ice and snow theme, using my lovely new(ish) tundra gaming cloth from Cigar Box Battlemats. This means that I can maximise the use of the relatively expensive cloth and combine any other terrain that I build or buy to cover several projects. I like the idea of War of the Roses in the snow for a start, all very redolent of Towton, and there are obvious connections with Frostgrave, the Heroes of Telemark and the Ice Elves on the workbench. I may even do something sci-fi or pulp set in the snow, either in 15mm or 28mm, who knows...

...and there will definitely be some more mdf !

One of the two or three things I'm thinking of doing in the autumn is a couple of wizard warbands for Frostgrave, one 'out of the box' and a second using a bit of lateral thinking. I have a box of the plastic soldiers and a necromancer with his apprentice, so the first bit is covered, leaving the 'do it yourself' half of the project to work out along with some monsters and undead.

After some thought, I've decided to go for an unusual approach and use a selection of castings from the Artizan Designs range of Andalusian and Moorish foot figures. This idea came about when I was chatting with a gaming friend at the club about 'non-frosty' alternatives to the background fluff in the game, which led to an Arabian Nights inspired theme amongst other ideas.

Whilst this would be pretty neat in its own right, the search for suitable figures led me down the Artizan path where I discovered the potential of the Moors and Berbers as the basis for a Frostgrave warband. Some of the figures have bare feet but that can easily be fixed. The layered robes, covered faces and scale armour are, however, ideal as protection against the freezing elements rather than the blazing desert heat.

There are archers, crossbow men and spearmen plus some excellent character figures including a book wielding looney, who would make a very effective sigilist wizard. The spearmen have open hands so could easily be re-armed with spare daggers, swords, cudgels and other pointy things to kit out a variety of soldiers as described in the rulebook. I think this has a lot of potential for a really interesting and different warband!

I gave into temptation (again!) and ordered a copy of Frostgrave last week, using the last of my birthday Amazon tokens left over from January. The rules only cost me £1.65 as a result, so I blew my pocket money on a box of the plastic soldiers that have been released to go with the rules. I've already had a rummage in the loft and found several plastic sprues of GW Bretonnian Archers and a handful of metal Bretonnian brigands, which I had bought years ago for some long forgotten HYW skirmish project. These can be added to the plastic figures and adapted using some of the extra bits on the sprues, to create some interesting additions to the opposing sides.

I haven't found a wizard and apprentice yet, not really wanting to use the 'official' figure sets, but I do have some rather nice monsters and beasties. These include a fantastic multipart Heresy Miniatures snow troll, which I originally acquired for a pulp scenario and which will look superb once assembled, based and painted. I'm thinking of taking the Frostgrave stuff off to France to do this stage, alongside painting up my 28mm Japanese Platoon for Chain of Command. I'm impressed by the rules already, having had a decent read through yesterday afternoon, so I'm looking forward to tackling this unexpected addition to the project 'to do' list over the Summer.

I must say that I hadn't really been particularly interested in this new skirmish dungeon crawl game from Osprey but, having read the relevant article in Wargames Illustrated, I'm giving it some thought. I have a bit of a dodgy track record with this sort of thing, having failed miserably to get Ronin past the initial stages, but Frostgrave does look like a feasible project. 

First up, it only requires a handful of 'medieval' and fantasy figures so there's some potential in raiding the leadpile and ebay for suitable models. Secondly, you can have some nice character figures for your wizard and apprentice, with EM4 looking like a good source of Copplestone sculpted cheaper alternatives to the official Northstar range. 

Thirdly, the monsters and undead can be scrounged from wherever, keeping the cost factor down to a minimum, while the plastic box set of soldiers will be more than sufficient to equip two parties. Finally, the terrain set up is really simple and fits on a 3' x 3' board, so would be easy to scratch build and would look very cool.