Sell swords

Well the Mordheim project continues but I haven't had much worth posting up on the blog. I've got two more human war bands in various stages of completion. I've started sticking together a fourth war band (Averlanders) using some Perry's plastics and a load of GW empire bits my mate Jim sent me (Cheers Jim!). I've also got half a dozen ruined building at different stages of construction.

In the mean time I've started trying to get back into painting at work on my lunch break. I have a paint station and a a very limited set (think black, white and some basic colours) of GW paints in my office. The pictures above are the results of this weeks efforts.

All the miniatures were found in my bits box. I've painted them up to represent various sell swords that Mordheim warbands can hire on. Starting at the top we have

1) A pit fighter - an old citadel Norse miniature with a Mordheim plastic buckler added.

2) A Warlock - very old citadel pre-slotta wizard sadly he was so old when I tried to bend his hand it broke off. So a rummage in the bits box brought out a new hand and a lantern.

3) An elf scout- A 5th edition GW wood elf. A bit chunky for an elf IMO but you can't beat the price.

4) A duelist - an old dogs of war miniature from GW.

5) A Freelancer an old Grenadier fighting man miniature

I mat sprayed these miniatures but they look a little flat now so I might go back and use some gloss varnish on things like the metal work and gems.

Cheers Jon

Mordheim Warband No1- Marienburgers

I finally finished these guys last night. As I said in a previous post the basis for these guys is the Perry miniatures WOTR mercenaries box set mixed with plenty of GW and other parts from my bits box. The only miniature that isn't from the Perry's box is the captain who is an old metal GW Mareinburg captain that I found in my bits box (bonus!)

Generally the GW parts (arms, heads and weapons) are a little bigger than the Perry's stuff but as long as your consistent with things like arms I think they look OK.

This particular band of ruffians are from Marienburg. In game terms Marienburger war bands have more starting gold crowns (600GC as opposed to 500GC) to start their initial war band
meaning you can have a few more men or snazzy wargear to start with.

I worked out a rough war band before I started sticking together and painting the miniatures which looks like this

1 captain -sword ,buckler,heavy armour

1 Champion -sword, buckler, light armour

1 young blood - helmet, halberd

2 marksmen - handguns, helmets

2 warriors - halberds

3 swordsmen - bucklers, swords

now I just need to finish the roster off with some names and fine tune the equipment and jobs a good'un.

Cheers Jon

Mordheim - building no.2 and first test miniature

Well I've had some good fun with the Perry's plastic WOTR mercenary box, I've spent a couple of evenings with my bits box and the perry figures and now have three fine mercenary warbands to prowl the ruined streets of Mordheim. There are a couple of shots of my first test paint job for my Marienburg warband. This guy is a swordsman henchman. I've gone for a blue and yellow colour scheme for this band which is quite striking and perfect for flashy Marienburgers.

Talking of Mordheim's streets I've put together another ruined building using the same techniques I described in my last post. Came out quite nice I think. I'm putting together a larger building in the form of a ruined inn as my next building. I'm also going to crack on and finish of the Marienburg warband to.

Cheers Jon

Mordheim - ruined building test piece

Here's my first piece of Mordheim scenery made just to try out some ideas and test my skills really. It's a simple two storey ruined house corner. The basic shell is foam core on a hardboard base. The upper floor is built from card with a balsa wood veneer. The street paving is made from a thin layer of filler left to semi dry and then paving stones were scratched in the filler with a sharp pencil. While the tiled floor is just squares of card glued onto the base.

While searching my scenery bits box I came across a bag full of the original plastic bits from the Mordheim box set (door,windows, ruined roof pieces and supporting wall pieces) which was a stroke of luck. So I've Incorporated a couple of windows and some corner wall pieces into this building.

The whole thing was given a liberal coat of homemade textured paint (pva, grey emulsion paint and floor tile grout) to give it some texture. The building was painted with various craft paints and household emulsion paints (much cheaper than using your good mini paints)

All in all I'm quite pleased with the result I'm going to need to do quite a few more though to fill an average 4x4foot Mordheim board. In fact I think the scenery will take longer than the warbands to do. One thing that does need careful thought is the amount of rubble /debris that goes into each building to much and it will become to hard to fit miniatures in to the ruins to little and the ruins will look far to clean.

Cheers Jon

Mordheim.......My new project.

Well after a good rummage through my rule books to decide what project to kick start my new (improved?) wargames collection with I've settled on Mordheim as my first project.

I use to play Mordheim a lot when it first came out and it is a great little game. For those of you going Mord..a what? Mordheim is a skirmish game set in the Warhammer world. The background story is that the great city of Mordheim has been struck by a meteorite turning it into a post apocalyptic waste ground in which various factions have sent warbands to loot the ruins.

As well as providing skirmish games of Warhammer between warbands of 5-20 models. Mordheim has an excellent campaign system, anyone who has played legends of the old west or pirates of the high seas by WH historical will know the system, that allows your warbands to increase in experience gaining new skills and equipment.

I decided that Mordheim fitted my new frugal criteria quite well

1) The figures are 28mm but no warband can have more than 20 models in it and most can only have 15 which keeps the cost down.
2) GW have all the resources as free downloads on their website (yes really!) even the rulebook
3) I don't have the original buildings from the box set anymore but I have loads of foam core and balsa to scratch build some city ruins.

All in all the project should stay relatively cheap. I was going to buy a box of GW Empire militia to build my first warbands but while I was looking at ebay I came across the Perry miniatures European medieval mercenaries box. The Perry's box has twice as many models armed with a variety of weaponry for £3 less than the GW box so I ordered a box (post free too!).

I've made my first ruin as a test piece and hopefully I'll post some pictures soon. The perry's box arrived today and I hope to build the three basic Human mercenaries warbands (Reikland,Middenheim and Marienburg) from the miniatures in that box.

Cheers Jon

Comments....

For some reason blogger won't let me leave comments at the moment. So If I don't reply please don't think me rude. In particular those who left comments for my last post I'd like to say Thanks guys!

Phoenix rising

Well you might of noticed it has gone very quiet around here recently and in truth I've done very little on my hobby for some time. 2011 has seen the economic realities of the world bite home in our household. Threat of job loss, cutting of overtime and a whole host of household repair bills (motor bikes, car, tumble dryer, oven the list goes on). Has seen the family finances get rather ropey to say the least.

The wife and I decided we need to act clear our debts and sort out our finances. We re-negotiated better deals on our mortgage, fuel bills and insurances which saved quite a bit of money but to really benefit we needed to clear some debts to. In the end we decided to sell of some of the family silver which included ..............my wargames collection.

It wasn't an easy decision but it had to be done for the sake of the family so everything went to an ebay reseller for a price I was happy with. Well not quite everything I kept my painted AK-47 and Rapid fire Germans because I couldn't bare to part with them and a new unpainted Mantic elf army and 20mm US task force for rapid fire. I also kept all my reference and rules books, my paint and model supplies and a few board games. All my other miniatures and scenery went.

It was quite upsetting at first but now my wargames room is clean and tidy and I don't have unfinished projects staring at me from every corner it is also quite liberating. I now have a new 125 motorbike (the old one had cost me more in repair bills this year than it was worth) bought out of the money I got for my wargames stuff and the family budget is now in credit again each month. The result of this is I will now have a small hobby budget each month of about £25.00 (yay).

I've decided to re-evaluate my hobby too with a few rules that will hopefully allow me to make the most of my hobby budget and not leave with lots of half finished projects everywhere.

1) I need to drop down to smaller scale miniatures. It's time to admit I have neither the time nor the fiances to put together Wargames magazine style uber games in 28mm. It's what I've always aimed for and failed to do repeatedly.

2)I like painting 28s so will use them for skirmish games only (no more than two dozen miniatures aside say). For larger armies It's time to go to 20mm for ww2 and 15/12/10mm for other periods where I can get more for my money and paint up quicker.

3) I need to stick to a project and see it through to the end. No more jumping around to one shiny new thing after another.

4) I need to try stream line my scenery collection in to something that will cover as many period's and scales as possible.

5) I need to provide both sides to any conflict so don't have armies without opponents.

6) everything has to be kept cheap.

So like a phoenix rising from the flames my new wargames collection starts to day. I'm going down the wargames room latter today to look through my rule books and choose a new project which it quite exciting I have to say, the wargames world is my oyster (within budgetary constraints of course)

Cheers Jon