Seb Games - Battle Havoc - Dwarves and Orcs - Games Workshop - Black Tree Designs - Northumbrian Tin Soldier

 A game that caught my attention on 4chan's /TG board was Battle Havoc from Seb Games. It's a very light miniature agnostic fantasy army game. It gave me pause, largely because of the lovely Black Tree Design miniatures that accompanied it. BTD are renowned for their hilariously awful customer service, so this was a great way to gather some top-drawer minis without dealing with them directly. Turns out the ruleset is fun though I've yet to give it the time it deserves...

Northumbrian Tin Soldier Goblingtons based up ready to use as lightly armoured warriors. Seriously, NTS are my favourite new sculpts on the market.

The "savage orc" type orcs that came in the starter set.

The dwarves, again via B.T.D, that came in the starter.

Some cannons, from GW's Warhammer starter to help fill out the army lists - pretty casually slapped together, check out those mold lines. OOF.

Northumbrian Tin Soldier - Gnomes and Toads

 Northumbrian Tin Soldier create the loveliest characterful miniatures in the UK right now. They're characterful without being twee, whimsical in their approach but remain highly "gameable", at least to my eyes.

My ultimate ambition for this lot is a force for Frostgrave.

Gaming table finally looking playable

 Using existing kits and the DIY builds I've thrown myself at in recent months it turns out that I finally have enough terrain for a varied table. I definitely need more scatter terrain however.

There's some obvious scaling issues between various bits of scenery here, but the "Garden of Morr" stuff looks ok if you restrict it to a graveyard type corner.

A Northumbrian Tin Soldier "Goblington" takes the first treasure in this game - and keeps it from what I recall.

I call this terrain building phase of hobbying over for now. I have some Antares stuff that's been waiting forever, and an elf army....

Trash Scenery

 


The Manner In which these were built was almost identical to the previous bit of scenery. I used a lot of carved up lolly sticks and styrene bricks for this wall. 

The scale of the bricks is pretty huge against 28mm or lower, so a serious construction!

A more naturalistic tor.

Then undercoated grey, with some generic acrylic emulsion.

And finally painted to look like the ruins they're meant to be.

Northumbrian Tin Soldier gobbos populate them in the scenic shot. 

Scenery for my first Frostgrave game

While the intention was to build enough pieces for characters to play around in Frostgrave, one soon learns that terrain is King in this game. After building these first three, rather too large, elements I realised that if you're trying to stop ranged characters having a free run of the game you need a very populated table.

Primarily I wanted to experiment with a lot of building techniques as I'd only ever created small scatter terrain pieces.

I started by sketching out very roughly in packing polystyrene a playable shape of a ruined gate. 

Next, comes the filling in of details  with plaster, grout and milliput. It is mainly polystyrene foam sculpted to fit.

milliput "exposed brickwork" patches.

All followed up with layers of painting and inking.

The end result is pretty robust after being drowned in PVA.

Foggy Peak Goblingtons – Goblin Fantasy Tribe

 I found these miniature to be an absolutely irresistible purchase. 

https://www.northumbriantinsoldier.com/product/goblins/

I think Northumbrian Tin Soldier make some of the best miniatures around in the UK. They're at the very least some of the most characterful. As they tend to the 32mm scale however, not everything looks convincing next to 28mm. However, these gobbos are pretty slight and look superb.

I've only painted these 12 figures thus far, enough to take into my projected games of Frostgrave. I think I'll have a lot of building to do for that game however. 

Establishing a foothold in the Antares universe....

 

Test post.

First time in a long time of no blogging. I hope to keep this blog as an online diary of my re-emergent love affair with war gaming.

...which began with thinking the ruleset for "Bolt Action" sounded cleaner and more interesting than anything I'd previously played....