Warhammer Kislev Winged Lancers

Anyone remember Kislevember?
Well, nearly six months on...

They need shields - six months is long enough for things to go missing.

Of course near the end of the process I realised my mistake - I should have done a unit of six, then I could use them for Dragon Rampant.

Empire Jade Wizard

Fed up of my Bright Wizard blowing himself up and having been on the receiving end of some hefty Life magic, I thought I'd see how Bretonnian knight lances like a little taste of "six dice Dwellers"

This is the old Perry (I think) Games Workshop single piece plastic Jade Wizard.
Nice and simple to paint up and looks quite pleasing.
Looking forward to seeing if he performs better than Mister Fiery Pants.

Empire Crossbowmen

In the loft I also discovered these things lurking in a cobwebby corner.
They're the "hybrid" metal and plastic Empire crossbowmen (6th edition WFB or thereabouts). Metal arms (and some windlass things and pouches) on the plastic Empire state troop bodies.

Very nice Perry sculpts, but an absolute arse to put together.
Fortunately past me did that ten or so years ago to save future me (or actually now me as it turns out) the pain of gluing heavy, slightly roughly cast white metal to fine plastic.
I was so thoughtful back then.
But ten years on I still remember the pain I went through.

There were a few more, including command, with them too, but twelve seemed about right, and anyway who uses command for missile troops?

Quite looking forward to painting them (though I need to locate a head for one of them).

Warhammer Kislev

Failing to get my Winged Lancers painted for the campaign meant I went scurrying into the loft for my Griffon Knights. In the case with them were some horse archers and a boyar. So I thought I'd grab some pictures of the lot of them.

 Boyar!

Boyar on a bear. He's the old Elector Count of Ostland mounted on a very old Wood Elf Beasmaster Bear. He's just a boyar on a warhorse for game purposes, but bears are cool.

Horse archers are cool. I decided to use just the clothed ones for this unit, rather tan the more Mongol shirtless versions.

Griffon Legion. Or Legion of the Bear in my force. The shields are from Beorg Bearstruck's Dogs of War regiment. One day I need to paint either a bear, or just a giant paw-print on the flag.

There is also a small unit of Kossars somewhere, but they must be in a different figure case.

I painted these many moons ago when Stephen and I attended one of the early Doubles Tournaments at Warhammer World. We each took 500 points - I had Kislev and he had Dogs of War. Both of which, even at that point, were novelty, out of date, sub-optimal lists.
We played plenty of warm-up games and were quite the well oiled machine before the event started. Unfortunately I prepared for the opening day by visiting the fleshpots of Nottingham on a leaving do, sampling a variety of noxious cocktails and going to bed at around 4am.
So I was without doubt still "well-oiled" for most of the following day's gaming.
But we had a splendid time. At that point the Doubles was very much a fun gaming affair. Later events became a powergaming minefield at which people not good enough to win a proper tournament turned up with hideous combinations (Dwarf and Wood Elf gunline anyone?) in order to claim some glory by "winning" the doubles. The joyless hour or so we spent being dismembered by a humourlessly creepy brother and sister partnership is still the stand out worst experience of my entire gaming life.
So we stopped going.

Anyway, I have quite a pile of Kislev models in my loft and one day would like to turn out something resembling a whole army of them. They're ridiculously overpriced points-wise for the current edition of the rules, but I may explore the fan army book and see if that works a bit better.

Warhammer Dark Emissary

I saw another example of this chap on someone's blog recently.
So when I came across him in a figure case yesterday I grabbed him and took some pictures.

He was the bad guy character in the Warhammer Albion campaign and I painted him at the time.
The paint job's not bad, though there's a couple of bits that need a touch-up.

Stone Troll

The ongoing purge of my painting queue brings you this.
A Citadel Stone Troll.
Fantastic, characterful model that I've had for ages.
I hesitate to say that it's actually a lead model, but under all that bluey-grey paint he might just be.

Got two more of his mates to finish off too.

Toy Soldiers at Wallington

Over the summer I visited the National Trust's Wallington property in the North East of England. It's a great day out in its own right with adventure playgrounds, climbing trees, the inevitable scone-heavy cafe and the chance of spotting a red squirrel (we didn't).
But unbeknownst to me there was a bonus inside the actual house.
In a large cabinet in what was once the children's nursery was a huge collection of late 19th century toy soldiers.
Apparently these had belonged to the three Trevelyan brothers Charles, Robert and George, who had played with them extensively in the 1880s. Also in the cabinet were some kreigspiel rule sets which the brothers used to plan their moves and campaigns before resolving battles with their toy soldiers. According to the notes the two elder boys used George in the role of "fate". Rather than deciding combat outcomes by the roll of a dice "fate" had to decide the results and casualties. This was clearly a system open to some abuse and George was  "persuaded" and "enticed" to favour one or other of his elder siblings (those of you with children are invited to imagine how well that worked).
That aside, I think this sounds an excellent system and think it should form the basis of 9th ed. Warhammer - it would certainly cut down the number of rules arguments some players seem to suffer from.
I think what I found interesting was that this pre-dated HG Wells and Little Wars by some 30 years - I suppose I always knew wargaming wasn't an original idea of Wells', but it was fascinating to have it confirmed that boys were playing with toy soldiers (at least in wealthy houses) for a long time before any rules were written down.

The miniatures themselves were an interesting and eclectic selection. Some were flats, some of them more full figured. They were apparently bought pre-painted, though many bore the signs of wear and tear of years of campaigning. There seemed to be a wide selection of 19th century troops, from Napoleonics (including some rather splendid kilt wearing redcoats), via ACW (both rebels and bluecoats) and the Crimea and on into contemporary bersaglieri and picklehaube wearing Prussians. Evidently the boys were bought units of whatever was available on trips to London and then formed them into broadly British (led by Wellington) and French (led by Napoleon) with allies such as Blucher (leading some of the aforementioned Franco-Prussian war troops) slotted in where appropriate.

Unfortunately the lighting wasn't great and I struggled to get decent pictures through the glass. But here are what I did manage to grab (apologies for the poor quality).

 A "flat" Napoleon at the head of his flat Old Guard

 I believe one of these is Wellington

Blucher, as he's facing toward the right, is part of the "British" forces

 Busby wearing (not flat) redcoats

 The Old Guard in more detail

 Kilt weraing redcoats, though they appear to have changed sides

Bersaglieri, I think

 Lifeguards (?) lead the British advance

 View from one end of the cabinet

And another view along

As I said, Wallington is a great day out if you're up in the North East and well worth a visit. And if you can pretend to be as surprised as I genuinely was when you spend the 45 minutes gawking at toy soldiers then your respective wargames widows will probably never suspect you had an ulterior motive for visiting.

Caerphilly Castle

I was in Wales this week and thought it'd be rude to visit that great country without at going to see at least one castle.
So I picked the biggest one in Wales, and it didn't disappoint.
Even though it has had quite a lot of restoration work done to it in the early and middle parts of the last century in the main it's been tastefully and historically accurately done and the end results are spectacular, even on a slightly dour, wet and overcast Welsh Wednesday.
Anyway I took loads of pictures and as I know wargamers like real castles almost as much as toy ones here they all are:

For some reason Blogger has scrambled the order of these, and I can't be bothered to sort it out, sorry. But you get the general idea, I'm sure.

A great day out, and thanks to my English Heritage membership completely FREE! (due to their reciprocal arrangement with Cadw).
I had a great time, and I think the three small boys I dragged along with me enjoyed it too (though probably not as much as me).