Those Parthians

I should, I think, share the end results of my painting marathon with those of you who don't subscribe to Curt's blog. Once I'd got these assembled, they basically took me a Sunday plus a week of evenings, and I was quite pleased not to be varnishing at 6 am on the day of the tournament.

As I'm sure I've said before, I am not the world's best painter: if it wasn't for Army Painter, I'd be too embarrassed to show my handiwork. :D


First up, we have 23 cataphracts, being a mix of Old Glory Parthians and Palmyrans, with some A&A Miniatures Palmyran command figures. (Old Glory UK didn't have enough of the Parthians, and they basically said 'will the Palmyrans do, they're very similar'. Since they're going to double as Palmyrans before I'm done, I didn't have a problem!). Horses were undercoated in Army Painter Matt Black, and dry-brushed with Army Painter Plate Mail (or, for the unit leaders, Weapon Bronze). Riders, to provide a slight contrast, were undercoated in Plate Mail spray, faces, hands (AP Tanned Flesh), metal kontos (Vallejo US Field Drab), leather work (Vallejo Red Leather) etc painted, and then washed with AP Strong Tone ink and the faces retouched with AP Human Flesh (a lighter shade).

For an encore, 72 (yes, really) horse archers, being 6 complete boxes of Wargames Factory Persian cavalry, which turn out to fit almost perfectly in a Really Useful 7L box.

Horses were undercoated in AP Matt Black, then given assorted shades of brown (AP Oak, Monster, Fur Browns, Vallejo Flat Earth). I went with the 'mostly bay or black' approach for what's probably a set of fairly inbred mounts, though there are half a dozen pale enough to be duns or roans. Saddle blankets in Vallejo Khaki, and one of AP Red, Ultramarine Blue or Angel Green detailing, and then harness in Vallejo Red Leather. To be honest, I rushed these, and there'd have been more coat variation if I'd had more time.

The riders were undercoated in batches of twelve in AP Daemonic Yellow, Desert Yellow, Bleached Bone, Uniform Green, Ultramarine Blue and Necrotic Flesh. After that, I snapped them on the mounts (they're a tight enough fit not to need glue, actually!), did faces/hands (AP Tanned Flesh), headgear (AP White, which covers *superbly* well), leggings (AP Leather Brown) and leatherwork (Vallejo Red Leather), and bows (Vallejo US Field Drab). Final stage was a wash of AP Soft Tone ink which dragged back and evened out the overall 'look' of the different colours, which was remarkably effective, if you contrast these pictures with the shot of the un-inked and basically just undercoated ones from the previous Monday.

Basing was Tamiya textured 'Desert Sand' and then dipped straight into Javis Desert Sand mix: left to dry, a few dabs of PVA and a sprinkle of AP Winter static grass. Varnished with AP Anti-Shine.

And there you go.

For Sale - assorted RPG books

I'll be popping these on eBay when I get back from Seattle, if none of my readers are interested.

We have:

• the Champions rulebook
• the Vampire: The Masquerade rulebook and Clanbook: Tremere (yes, I'm ashamed!)
• TORG (there's a system to conjure with!) plus the Living Land and LA Sourcebooks
• The Car Wars compendium
• GURPS: Space

Offers for the lot or individual bits entertained.

Battle Report - 04 Mar 2013 - Judge Dredd prog 3

A battle against Rob, who was playing a lone vigilante - who may look oddly familiar if you like certain snarky Marvel heroes - as a single 500+ point force against my Judges. Brilliant fun, and I had an absolute ball creating this battle report.

Reflections on Battletech

[Administrative note: I'm on a plane to Seattle this lunchtime. With a bit of luck I may get to meet up with Pat and Dean from the Historical Wargames podcast, but mostly I'm there for a work conference (and to catch up with a few other friends). I've been doing my damnedest to get enough posts scheduled to keep my posting streak going: I should have access while I'm out there, but this is insurance against a combination of potential jetlag and a busy calendar.]

My attention was drawn to a post by Ashley - actually on the subject of the last ever issue of Battlegames, in which (go her!) she has an article on the subject of one of my favourite boardgame/RPG/wargames, BattleTech.

If you've followed my first podcast, the one thing BattleTech had going for it that set it head and shoulders (on a frodding big stepladder) above most of the competition at the time, was that it had context. Oh, boy, did it have context! The basic game was, pretty much, about moving 'Mechs about on a hex map, and as such it wasn't that different to any of a number of other games. But it had the might of FASA behind it, who weren't just a games company. They also published RPGs (Shadowrun, Traveller supplements, EarthDawn etc), and as a result, had a bunch of experience in world, or in this case, universe, design. Of course, it didn't hurt that they quickly managed to get a bunch of halfway-decent authors (say what you like about Michael Stackpole, he was a dab hand at tie-in novels) to create fiction in the universe, as well as a RPG (MechWarrior).

And it was, at least to start out, a quite brilliant setting. The core Houses were all shades of grey, with different things that would appeal to different players, and there was massive scope for all manner of interesting political interactions. Equally, you could (and the setting basically made it canon and fun to do so) just play a bunch of mercenaries. The whole concept of lostech, that the Star League of three centuries ago had the cool tech, and that what was left was nowhere near as good, was cool, and in general it was a fantastic setting to play in, if you wanted to extend your game beyond just 'Mechs on a hex grid. Several online games sprang up around it - I was a faction co-leader on BTech3056 MUSE, which tried to handle the whole Inner Sphere on a MUD-type text-based game, complete with ASCII-rendered 'Mech combat using the game rules, and there were many other similar games.

On top of that it was a nicely balanced and intriguing board game. Those who've played it will remember the interesting challenges of heat management - something like a BattleMaster had more guns than it could actually fire at once continuously, without cooking the pilot.

And then they had to go and spoil it.

You can, I guess, understand it. FASA had to produce new stuff to keep the range of minis and books selling, so they introduced the Clans. It's not a spoiler after 25 years of the game to say that the Clans are the descendants of the Star League, but unfortunately, to my mind, they came with munchkin-grade tech. See, the original game had balance - there was pretty much nothing that could blow your 'Mech's head off outside short range, and the things that were a risk to life and limb at long range generated enough heat you had to be careful when using them. The 3050 additions, to my mind, just blew this out of the water, and completely ruined the careful game balance. Ok, to be fair, they made for some interesting stories, but there's a part of me that so thinks FASA weren't in any way done with the pre-Clans setting...

I loved... I still do... the setting. I and a couple of friends on BT3056 wrote and submitted a novel outline to FASA, set on one of the lesser known worlds, a tale of one of the lesser mercenary units... It wasn't that bad, but let's face it, by the the time we were playing in 3056, the FASA campaign clock was already moving on inexorably, and moreover the FASA planning clock was probably several years ahead of that.

I sold my Battletech stuff not over long after I got married - it was taking up space, and I had no-one to play it with. Kind of wish I hadn't now, and I'm definitely looking forward to Ashley's article.

Battle Report - 04 Mar 2013 - Judge Dredd Prog 2

The second encounter on Monday was against Dan's robots, who were an entirely different ball-game: his team's basically one seriously heavily armoured kick-ass Terminator type and several minions. Let's just say I lost and leave it at that.

A horse of a different colour part 10 - painting greys, duns, roans etc

You know how I said this would be positively the last part of this series? Well. It sort of is. This is the last of the 'Mike pontificates a lot' posts. I am systematically working on painting, and photographing stage by stage as I go, examples of most of the main colours and markings, and these should appear one at a time over the next week or two. For once, I'm not in a hurry and trying to batch paint horses by the dozen, so do actually have time to do this.

Anyway, that aside, let's crack on with some of the other relatively common horse colours. Unfortunately, these do tend to produce more variations within an expression of a gene than the 'straightforward' ones, so I'm going to be saying 'use a reference photo' a lot. Hopefully, though, the previous articles will have meant that you understand why horses are the colour they are, and that can inform how you approach painting them.

Greys

Here's where the fun starts - a quick Google image search should make it pretty clear that the range can vary from quite a dark grey (usually on a horse that started out black as a foal), through a range of shades, with our without dappling, to almost white, and past there to flea-bitten. Start by deciding what colour the animal started out (all together now: "mostly bay"), as that'll govern some of your approach, and also the mane and tail colour - if it's a bay or black, odds are the mane and tail may stay pretty dark. If the animal's at an early stage of grey, it's probably worth starting out painting it the underlying colour, and then adding the grey by a combination of drybrushing and stippling. If it's a definite grey, you can probably get away with starting with a suitable grey shade.

Really, your best bet is to pick a suitable reference picture, and work from there - greying is a pretty idiosyncratic thing! Greys do tend to be 'hero horses', unless you're working with an 1815 British army, so you probably won't be painting too many. It's also worth noting that the mane and tail on a grey tend to go at a completely different rate to the coat, so it's quite possible, for example, to have a grey with a flaxen mane!

Dapple and flea-bitten

I've had success with these with a stippling approach. For a dapple grey, start by painting the horse a darker shade (I've mixed Astronomican Grey and Chaos Black, or you could even start out with a greying bay/chestnut). Then take a large, knackered, round brush with spread bristles (the one you left in the dip too long is a good bet), pick up some pale grey or white  on just the tips of the hairs, and dab it almost dry on kitchen roll - dab, rather than wipe, seems to work better. Once you can tap the end on a surface and get a pattern of tiny dots, you're in the right ballpark. Apply carefully to the horse (again, I really recommend a reference photo) with the same light, dabbing motion.

For flea-bitten (and by extension bloody-shouldered) greys, start with an almost-white grey horse, and do the same, but stippling one of the shades you'd use for bay, if anything even more sparingly.

On one of my 'hero' horses for my El Cid army, I tried the other approach - that of spraying very lightly from a distance of about 2' with Army Painter spray white. It's a bit nerve-wracking, but it does work!

Duns

As I'm sure you remember, dun is a colour dilution gene. As far as painting goes, you can treat the animal like a bay, chestnut or black, but picking the right base colour - the brown/red shade in bays and chestnuts lightens to anything from almost cream to almost pink, via some very nice honey/gold shades. Again, a reference photo will help, but the important thing to remember with duns are the 'dun face' (generally darker) and the primitive markings - a black line down the spine from mane to tail is almost always visible, and some have barring around the knee/hock joint.

Roans

Roans differ from duns in that the apparent lightening of colour is caused by an even mix of normal coloured hairs and white. The result tends to look almost washed out, if you check some of the reference photos, and I went on a hunch that a good approach would be to paint a normal coloured horse, and then apply a very very dilute wash of either white or Astronomican Grey. It seems to work.

Battle Report - 04 Mar 2013 - Judge Dredd Prog 1

Monday was the first night of the club's Judge Dredd campaign. The system is very bloody and short, as I think I commented before, and we got several games in, of which I'll only detail the first one today, as the battle reports are pretty labour intensive.

Suffice it to say that Paul's Citi-Def force (from James Cameron Block, that well-known 20th century documentary filmmaker) didn't last long against Judges Turner and Stone, and Psi-Judge Nicks.