Host of the Silver Bear - I

Aims

It has long been a desire of mine to do two things with my Dwarf and Orc armies

1. Have suitable figures to fight both huge epic battles and small, personal skirmish encounters using the same forces. Imagine a host o stout dwarven warriors arrayed against the ravening hordes of a truly gargantuan orc horde. Thousands of figures each side where strategy, tactics and the ability to command are paramount.
   Now zoom in to a small section of that battlefield - a key building that the dwarfs must hold or the tidfe of the entire battle turns. Look at the handful of stalwart do-or-die warriors prepared to stay put until the last swing of their axes to give their king their all. Can they hold out? Will the whole massed battle turn on the decision of the orc warparty leader to charge in? will a single dice roll turn the whole encounter?
   You get the drift i think...
2. Have a single force that is represented over the eons in history(?) and technological advancement, so the history of a single unit is represented from dark/medieval fantasy through the ages to the far flung future of star striding science fiction. The history and

My attempts at 1 are long and slow. I have the 1,000 figures of dwarfs and orcs that would make any self respecting gaming table groan under the weight of good old lead. I admit I haven't painted many! But there are outlets for 6mm fantasy miniatures where I could - given the inclination, time and money - establish a few thousand figures either side. Its possible. Its a goal. I need goals.

This thread of blog posts is more about item 2 and my long ignored yet first love - DWARFS.

History

My nom de plume "Brandlin" was an ICE RoleMaster/MERP character from back in the 1980's. He lead a varied life in a number of Tolkienesque high fantasy settings which found him hatching dragon eggs, going insane, repelling gravity, annoying the party's elven spellcaster, and hitting stuff - mostly with a large morning star. He later went on to be a protagonist in a number of games I GM'd both over the table and in play by (e)mail. He became a leader of a group of "Dwarf Supremacists" fell in love with an Elven Dragon Mistress, was driven insane by a spellcasters necklace and gathered quite a following. Eventually amassing an army sizable enough to declare himself king (through rather dubious second-cousin thirteen times removed kinship rules) and set about taking back that pesky mountain. He was last seen "Doing a Gandalf" and bravely/stupidly delaying a marauding fire demon whilst the cowardly elves and humans ran. (In my head he was always going to come to the rescue in book two - there has just been a very long delay in publication).

It is Brandlin that is and always shall be the leader of my Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Dwarf army. I imagined him setting up a dynasty that lived long long into the future, through the industrial revolution, the information age and out into the far future and distance worlds of space. These far flung descendants are represented by my Hassle Free Grymn Army (with Old Crow vehicles and "The Drop Ship").

Yes, yes I know that I've finished very little, haven't painted in ages and haven't rolled a dice in even longer. But I thought I'd share how in my mind the whole thing fits together.

My FW Dwarf army includes a couple of regiments of the wonderful bear riders and (the only non FW figures) three of the old Ral Partha sleds pulled by three bears. I have always intended painting these as polar bears and taking the Bear as a symbol for the whole army.


So, without further ado, welcome ....

The Host Of The Silver Bear

Colour Scheme

My colour scheme of choice has also long been a turquoise / teal (for you blokes out there, that's a greeny blue, and for the computer literate its a dark cyan colour) and white. The Foundry Triad of these shades is my chosen go to colour. I like the fact this isn't the usual blue or red scheme most dwarfs get, and I also like the cold nature of the colours along with the white/silver. Gold will feature sparingly and used instead of silver to identify elite units, leaders and other notable persons.

Sigil

Sigil? Yes, I've been watching too much Game of Thrones but I think Sigil sounds sexier than 'Emblem' or 'Banner'. I want to tie the two armies together with more than just colours.

Dwarfs have round shields. Don't argue with me on this, its just true. You wont find anything less round than an squat ellipse in my dwarf shields. And with units of bear cavalry I ahve long thought that a simple design of a bears paw would make a great emblem.

As its a fantasy army I think a differing range of these symbols would be best, tied together by the general theme rather than a slavish copy of each one. I'm imagining these in teal on white, white on teal and possibly with halved and quartered backgrounds. Heraldic rules? meh!

I like the celtic and stylised tribal Tattoo styles and think this might even be an extreme ornate version of the symbol for war leaders.

For the more organised forces of the Grymn I think a standardised symbol will be best and recreated on each vehicle. Perhaps the left most of the paw prints above, or even...

I shall be doing some work on these images and scaling and colouring them appropriately and then getting a range of different water slide decals printed. (I'd do them myself, except i will need to print white and that requires an ALPS printer).

Banners

No self respecting fantasy army takes the field without  the mass fluttering of banners, standards and pennants. This gives plenty of opportunity to add bear related symbols for different units, all in the similar white/teal theme.

Runes and Additional Markings

For additional fantasy unit markings I shall use the Angerthas (Cirth) runes from tolkien (obviously)

I shall make certain phrases in decals and maybe use individual markings for each unit.

However I have come across two problems.

1. I cannot find anywhere that has numerical runes. (I may have to 'invent' them - something simple like a tally system). I want 
2. I can get a FONT of runes easily - this makes it simple to 'type' out phrases and alter point sizes in the designs etc. However I'd like a more science fiction style font version of the same basic shapes - something that looks like its a stencil shape for vehicle markings in particular. This kind of thing - but runic!

 Anyway, that's my thinking and research to date. Plenty to do. No rush.

Have I over done it?

One of my very long term aims (around 24 years) has been to run a very large (trust me I mean VERY) Dwarf vs Orc/Goblin game using the old Fantasy Warriors rules and Grenadier Fantasy Warrior Sculpts by Nick Lund.
They may be old sculpts but to me they have enormous nostalgic value.
In what now seems to be an annual event, I've been sorting out my painting space and figure storage. There is a vague risk i may paint something! In doing so I started to pull together Chronicle Chariots (sculpted by Lund for his own Chronicle Miniatures which was later bought out by Citadel).
I thought. Only had 1-2 of these collected over the years. Turns out I have 8! Or certainly the bits to put together 7. I blame e-bay! I'm thinking of putting these into two units of three chariots each and using them as two-wolf light chariots.




Oddly I seem to be 10 wheels short. Anyone have any idea where I can get 18mm diameter lead or plastic solid or spoked wheels?
Note I also have three of the much large Grenadier Orc War Generals Chariots with 4 wolves apiece which will make up the heavy chariots division.
So, it begs the question, how much is too much?

Great new dwarfs from Hasslefree Miniatures

The Horrid Form I

An Old PBeM and RPG character I played was something of a shapeshifter; I've looked for a figure to represent his 'natural' (also known as 'horrid') form for some years but without any luck. So i decided i had to make one.

This is a little larger than i would have wanted but is a mix of Reaper parts - a giant scorpion man, an ice demon, and their very useful tentacle pack.


Its a little difficult to see at the moment but i hope all will become clear when i (eventually) apply some paint.

Two more characters

OK, OK, I know its been a while but real life has been something of a dog lately.

Anyway i turned my hand to a couple of simple paint jobs in the last couple of weeks. Both of these are figures painted for a now defunct PBeM game i used to play in as figures for a couple of my friends' characters.

Finndian Solmund - Bard, all round good guy with a strange fascination for tentacles...

Li San (i think from memory) oriental sword mistress and big time ass kickerdaughter of a renowned pirate.

I need to work a bit on the metals as the washes and glazes I am using are dulling and obscuring details.

A slow start to the year blog wise but I have been doing some painting.

I've painted up a number of additional figures for an rpg game that I play.


This is my Characters Mini-me... special weapon... spits napalm. A Rackham confontation familiar of fire.



His pet cowardly demon Jillafegh... A Wyrd miniatures imp.

His pet demon fey - thats a 20mm base on this figure - she's tiny. Made from a couple of GW familiar bits and some Green stuff.

And SEVEN different versions of my character from different timelines and dimensions...
Each with Rebecca, his tom siamese cat... "good evening Mr Bond..."

GW Dwarfs I

Just a small update over Christmas. I rebased this unit of Prince Ulthers Imperial Dwarfs - Dragon Company from GW in the mid 1980's so that their bases matched those I am putting together for the Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Dwarfs (You never know I may one day field an enormous dwarf army with both Grenadier and GW models if I can find a table big enough and an opponent worthy enough.)

The shields are not original, they are the griffin motif from the shield sprue included in the plastic dwarf warriors box set pre-2008.

The bases are 20mm slotta bases from GW but have a small magnet glued underneath, I get all my magents from this guy - great fast service and a huge range of sizes. The movement tray is constructed exactly as for the Grenadier FW Dwarfs I showed previously, and the snow, rocks and flock are identical too.

Grenadier Fantasy Warrior Dwarfs VI

Finished basing the First Dwarf Unit in the granite, snow and winter grass scheme. I'm happy with the overall look of this unit, although I think I need to plan the bases layout better on the following units so that the snow and grass patches line up and look 'cohesive' (Damn this just gets more complicated and slower!)

I had a couple of people asking me how I had done the bases for my Grymn Troops so I thought I'd share the sequence, materials and suppliers here. I haven't taken WIP shots as I'm pretty sure anyone reading this knows how to spread PVA on a base and dip it in stuff!?!!



All the troops are mounted on Laser-Cut plywood bases from the wonderul Fenris Games (ebay shop). These plywood bases are 1.8mm thick. I wanted to use the thinnest base I could as the Grenadier Miniatures have fairly thick integral bases so i didn't want every figure to look like it was sat on a hillock! The bases are dead flat and extremely accurate, (in my experience thin plywood is much less likely to warp than the equivalent to MDF and is tougher and more resistant to wear on the edges and corners) couple that to the friendly and lightning fast service and Ian (Geronimo Jones) at Fenris gets my whole hearted approval.

The bases are coated on both sides with dilute PVA glue to further prevent warping and to stop any moisture penetration. The miniature is superglued to the base and the edges built up with your favourite modelling putty.

The upper surface of the bases are treated in a similar way to the bases of my Grymn troops to create a rocky winter look. All of the materials I used to decorate the bases come from Antenociti's Workshop.


Diluted PVA is spread and Antenociti's fine talus (408) applied to around half the base area and allowed to dry. Then course talus (410) applied similarly in smaller patches. The base then receives a thinned coat of Foundry Granite 31b followed by dry brushed highlights of Granite 31c and (lightly) Canvas 8c.

Once dry the snow is applied. This is a mix of Antenociti's own AW Snow Powder, diluted PVA glue and white paint. Jez over at Antenociti's recommends mixing in the white paint to this powder so you get a more opaque look, I didn't do this on my Grymn figures, and I think the snow on them looks too translucent. The resulting paste is then smeared/dolloped onto the un-talos'd areas of the bases with a brush and allowed to dry.

The final element to the bases is the application of a little of Antenociti's own Winter Static Grass, with dilute PVA.

The underside of the base has magnetic sheeting applied curtesy of Tiny Tin Troops, another superb on line retailer who seems to break the speed of light in their shipping service - again recommended. Steel sheet (again from Tiny Tin Troops) is adhered to the movement tray.


The movement tray is one of the Modular ones from Games Workshop, although I bought these from Maelstrom Games a discount online retailer. This is probably the most useful thing that GW has produced in the last few years - I picked up half a dozen sets and will have all the Dwarf and Orc units equipped with the relevant sized trays. I made 20 trays in justa couple of hours sat in front of the TV the other night. The only issue in assembling them is needing to fill the joins between the corner pieces and the sides; here I've used Squadron Green putty and sanded lightly.

Overall the magnetic movement tray allows you to to invert the movement tray without the figures falling off. Its a bit more work, but well worth it I think, especially as I want to be able to use these figures to play with my 8 year old son. (Yes, I know I still need to paint up the movement tray!)

Overall this took me a couple of hours to do the 15 bases here, although that was spread over a few evenings of modelling and painting - normally while waiting for something else to dry!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to make a snow and rock board to game on.

Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Orcs II

Thanks to the 52 people who voted on my recent poll "What colour are orcs?" and to all those that left comments on The Miniatures Page and the Forum of Doom.

Well, the poll is closed, the results are in and they look compelling.

But, in the true spirit of online polls I'm going to do what I want to regardless! I'll explain why:

In the multi-racial horde that is coming together to to challenge my Dwarf Host I have the following species in roughly decreasing order of size/toughness. (Yes, I know that if I follow the FW rules I cant put all these in the same army- nor can I in WHFB, but hey they're my figures.)

• Trolls
• Orges
• Greater Orcs
• Hob Goblins
• Orcs
• Half Orcs
• Goblins
• Goblin rabble (lesser goblins)

Thats 8 separate although somewhat related races, and I'd like to be able to subtly distinguish between them by skin colour. (Yes, I realise that to confuse a troll with a lesser goblin you'd have to be extremely short sighted no matter what colour I paint them!)

So i'm going to paint them all in slightly different shades of the same basic colours I highlighted. Broadly using darker tones at the top of the list and much lighter ones lower down.

So, well done, If you voted Quagmire, Drab or Moss - Then you won. If you voted for stupid green - please report the the Games Workshop reconditioning unit. If you voted for "something else" and then failed to leave any kind of comment here or on the forums above then thanks for being so helpful :-)

I have a couple of units undercoated (Hob Goblins and Orcs) so will do some demo and WIP pictures in the next few days.

Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Dwarfs V

I almost didn't post this picture as the bigger version is very unforgiving of the standard of painting. But remember I have 400 of these to paint, and spending my usual 6 hours plus painting each one would take me... 100 days non stop no sleeping breathing eating or blogging to paint them all. This unit took me around 8 hours total for all 15 figures. As long as you keep the figures at arms length I think they're OK....

Grenadier Fantasy Warrior Orcs I

Well, its a simple question.... "What colour are Orcs?"

I love the old Grenadier Fantasy Warriors game and the Grenadier Miniatures that went with it. And i've been picking up second hand from ebay. I've started on the Dwarfs but also have around 150 Orc/(hob)goblins too.

Now I like to think of these sculpts as old school (certainly they don't have the definition of of modern sculpts and in some places are very poor, but for me its a nostalgia thing). And to me old school orcs don't have bright green comedy skin. I want something a little more 'realistic'. Yes i do realise the irony of asking for a realistic skin tone for a fictional creature. Maybe something like a green/flesh tone mix.

I work in Foundry Paints and am thinking of using either Moss or Drab or maybe even Quagmire?

What do you guys think? Please vote in the Poll on the right >>>

Then, once the skin tone is sorted I need to establish a colour scheme/theme for the army. They will mostly fight my Dwarfs who are in Teal and Grey/White colours. And they are likely to be fighting in snowy tundra terrain (thats how my dwarfs are/will be based).

So any great ideas for a simple two-colour strong theme? suggestions on Orc/Goblin symbols and heraldry also welcome. I'm not doing dags and checks! I like the lidless eye and white hand motifs but want to do something similar in simplicity and concept but a different symbol.

There is a Hasslefree Miniatures link here too. I see my Grymn as descendents of my Fantasy Dwarfs (a few hundred generations later). So am planning to buy a bundle of Hasslefree Bohkin (sci-fi goblins)for my Grymn to fight. These Bohkin would then keep the same livery as the Fantasy Orcs etc.

All suggestions and debate welcome...

Grenadier Fantasy Warrior Dwarfs IV

Started daubing some paint on the first of 32 units for my FW Dwarf army. The colour scheme is one that runs through all my dwarf miniatures and will be familiar to those who saw the grymn figures from earlier in the year.



I always struggle to paint units, its the monotony of it, and i always try to spend too long painting individual figures. Even though i know the steel toe cap on third warrior from the left wont be seen when they are ranked up, I still seem to end up giving it 5 coats of paint. So I am trying to be dedicated and paint in a simpler style.



I do all my painting in Foundry Paints, but this is the first set of figures I have used the new Citadel Washes on.