The Silver Bayonet - British Warband and an assortment of monsters

 I finally got around to playing my first few games of The Silver Bayonet by Osprey Games.  For those not familiar The Silver Bayonet is a skirmish level wargame set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

Although the mechanics of the rules are different than Frostgrave the structure of the game and it's scenarios are very similar.  To that end I'm planning on painting all the monsters needed for the 14 scenarios in the game as well as a few odds and ends from the random encounter table.  This will also be the kickoff for my plan to start building a collection of historic based/themed fantasy figures not only for The Silver Bayonet but for an assortment of other games and scenarios I'm planning on playing this year.

First up my Silver Bayonet Warband is led by Lt Archibald Tavington III.  Archie is a proper gentleman on loan from the 95th rifle regiment.

Along with their Lieutenant four rifleman have been seconded to the unit to explore and battle the unknown.  Two of the riflemen are by Warlord Games and two of them are from Perry Miniatures.

Accompanying the chosen men of the 95th is Doctor Theodore Theopolis.  The good doctor is proper soldier and in addition to his medical skills is not afraid to use his pistol to see off any hobgoblins that might be found harassing the countryside.

Lastly Angus McHaggis is a highlander from Scotland.  Angus keeps to the old ways and carries a great claymore to mete out the king's justice to the forces of the unnatural.

For my first batch of baddies I painted a bunch of Dark Wolves.  For these models I used the WizKids wolves.  The thing I like best about these wolves is that they scale properly with 28mm figures as they are the size of a large dog, and not the size of a horse that could be ridden by a man-sized figure.

Next up are the goblins.  I used the Hobbit Escape From Goblintown goblins which are some of my favourite goblin figures EVER.  I have used these for a bunch of other projects and I'm sure I'll continue finding more uses for these excellent figures.

No horror game set in this era would be complete without ghosts.  Again WizKids had the perfect ghosts.  These are great transparent figures that fit the theme of the game perfectly.  I particularly like the ghost lady carrying her severed head and floating through the headstone.

One of the figures I struggled with the most was the Hobgoblin.  The description of the Hobgoblin in The Silver Bayonet doesn't really match the design or aesthetic of any of the hobgoblin miniatures I am aware of.  I decided to ignore the names on packages and actually landed on a Reaper orc that seemed like a perfect fit for the description in the game.  I'm really happy with how this figure turned out and could see adding more of these style orcs down the road.

One of the other models I struggled with was finding an appropriately scaled Scarecrow.  Surprisingly (to me at least) most of the Scarecrow miniatures on the market are surprisingly large and over-scaled compare to man-sized figures.  Once again WizKids had a model that was both a great size and had a nice look to it.

I'm off to a pretty good start.  I have a few more packs/units of monsters to add as well as a bunch more single figure entries to be completely ready for the full campaign.  I'm hoping to get at least another dozen miniatures done this week, and then I might switch gears to scenery next week just to change things up.

And as always remember The Silver Bayonet and all the miniatures I've painted here are available from your friendly local game store.

Thanks for checking in,

-Jay

Is this a new genre or am I just late to the party?

 Generally speaking if I get interested in a new style or genre or gaming it was an intentional choice.  I don't usually find I'm suddenly playing a genre of game that I hadn't consciously chosen.  Having said that in the midst of playing a bunch of fantasy miniature and role-playing games I realized that without trying or planning I'm suddenly playing and prepping for a bunch of fantasy games with one linking thread; they are all reimaginings of historic periods rather than being entirely fictional constructs.

I started off with my friend Ash getting me to work on a force for Sludge, a full game featured in Blaster Magazine #3.

Sludge is a black powder based fantasy miniature game (somewhat in scale between a battle game and a skirmish game) set in a dark alternate time and place heavily influenced by the art and imagery focussed on the horrors of early modern warfare.  Sludge is great because it pretty much lets any gamer collect and paint a selection of historic miniatures from different periods mixing and matching figures without necessarily having to worry about historic accuracy.

After I'd started building and painting my Sludge models (literally before I'd finished a single figure) two of my friends completely separate from each other started texting me and asked me if I'd heard of Osprey Games upcoming game; The Silver Bayonet.

The Silver Bayonet is set in Europe during the Napoleonic era and features soldiers of the area hunting down and fighting supernatural creatures.  The Silver Bayonet is both a quick simple skirmish game, and a fairly thorough campaign game.  As a role-player one part of the appeal of The Silver Bayonet for me was that in addition to a small warband each player paints and collects a small collection of supernatural creatures.  If that wasn't enough the game also includes a small solo campaign, I haven't traditionally played many solo miniature games but with an increasingly erratic work schedule that makes it hard to get together with friends the solo element really appeals to me.

But this trend didn't stop at miniature games.  I've been playing a lot of D&D over the past few years and when I reached out to some friends for suggestions for cool adventures from publishers my players might be less familiar with one of them suggested the line of adventures published by Lamentations Of The Flame Princess.  I had some exposure to LotFP a few years ago and I had had mixed feelings about what I'd read at the time, but when I picked up No Rest For The Wicked I was super impressed and ready to take another crack at some of their offerings.  I've since ordered England Upturned thinking it looks like it would fit with No Rest For The Wicked and might be a great jumping off point for a new campaign.

While going through the RPG posts floating around Twitter I also stumbled across a really cool looking Indiegogo for an adventure that combined a number of factors that appealed to me; D&D compatible, urban based, undead monsters, and that historic fantasy feel I suddenly seem interested in.  Wightchester Prison City Of The Damned by Postmortem Studios.

Thematically Wightchester looks like a D&D horror version of Escape From New York set in the 1600s.  Sometimes you see an indie project and without knowing a ton about it you still know it speaks to you, this is definitely one of those for me.

So...this means I'm going to need a bunch of historic miniatures, and a bunch of historic miniatures converted into weird fantasy creatures and monsters.  Luckily there is no shortage of great companies making amazing plastic black powder era figures, unluckily I live in Canada and it seems no one domestically is carrying very much of this stuff to there's a lot of international shipping in my near future.

If you also find this genre interesting keep watching this space.  This looks like what I should be working on for most/all of December.

-Jay

Welcome to the Exclusion Zone

(or if you prefer..Time for a Roadside Picnic)

Osprey's newest (in this case; soon to be released) game is Zona Alfa, which appears to be inspired by the Russian sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic.  In both the game and the novel ex-military operators journey into the Exclusion Zone like Indiana Jones style treasure hunters in an attempt to recover forbidden tech for fun and profit.

I'm pretty stoked about trying out a new post-apocalyptic game (because I clearly don't have enough) and based on the art and imagery I've seen so far I think I already have a great start on my force.

Years ago I bought some RAFM modern SWAT figures as well as some criminal/terrorist figures that are now going to get used for the first time.

In addition to these figs, I have four more across three different variants that should give me a decent-sized start to force to head out into the Exclusion Zone.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I'll have a first game to report on and some new models added.

-Jay

Getting ready for; Last Days!

We're about a month away from the release of my friend Ash's first game from Osprey Games; Last Days.

I'm gearing up to play some games ahead of release so I'll save a review until actual release week but I thought I'd just touch on a few things as I dust off a lot of the models I was painting back when I started this blog.

First up Last Days like all Osprey Games I'm familiar with is miniatures-neutral which means you can play it with any models you already have in your collections, or you can go out and cherry-pick all the coolest stuff.  This means for anybody already playing a zombie miniature game you already have everything you need, if you're one of those collectors like me who just buys cool models hoping to one day have rules to use them with you're all set as well.

Back during Ash's first pass at the game the forces were themed (cops, survivors, bikers, etc) so I tended to collect and group my figs that way.  Now you can mix and match as each model represents a trope rather than part of a traditional 'force' of soldiers.

In addition to each player's chosen force you will need a small collection of zombie models.  For anyone who's been into the genre previously this will be a non-issue but for newer gamers there are a ton of options for easy cost-effective zombies to fill out your ranks.  Walking Dead zombies are easily available and great durable figures, Warlord Games produces the old Wargames Factory zombies, even board games have some decent quality zombie figures these days, I've personally used a bunch of zombies from Last Night On Earth.

If there's one piece of advice I would give a new modeller collecting together different zombie and survivor figures it would simply be to base them the same (or at least similarly) so they take on the appearance of one coherent collection.

This is my trip through one old figure case, I plan on painting a few new figs up this week to add in, and hopefully you'll all see a full game review in 3-4 weeks.

-Jay

Frostgrave - The adventure begins!

I'm going to be talking about two new games and a new D&D campaign this week so I'll be diverging a bit from "look what I finished" and spending most of the week on "look what I'm working on".

Today's new game is Frostgrave by Osprey Games.  Frostgrave is a game I had recently heard a lot of buzz about and to be quite honest at first I really didn't care.  Historically one of the problems I have had with jumping on board in the early days of a new game system is that I hear a lot of enthusiasm from people and then six months later none of my gaming friends have painted their models and I've spent time and money on a bunch of stuff collecting dust in a corner.
That being my issue going in there were two things about Frostgrave that dispelled that concern instantly.  First up the game is set in a classic medieval fantasy setting with characters who fit generic fantasy tropes.  What this means in practical terms is that anyone who has a collection of; D&D or Warhammer or Mordheim or whatever game make a force out of figures they already own.  My second issue is that typically skirmish games that feature a campaign or warband experience mechanic get old very quickly for me, in Frostgrave every campaign is meant to end, so it doesn't go on forever.

The book itself is fantastic.  Hardcover, 128 pages with terrific art and miniature photography throughout and a simple intuitive game system that seems to offer reasonable depth without becoming bogged down in endless rules.  All this for a price between $25 (US) and $32 (Canadian).

The only requirement for a starting warband in Frostgrave is that it must have a wizard.  There are 10 different schools of magic to theme your wizard around but me being me I'm starting off with a Necromancer.  You also have the option (which the rules directly and highly recommend) to hire an apprentice for your wizard.  There are a lot of neat mechanics around the apprentice, he is statistically similar but slightly inferior to your actual wizard and knows all the same spells but at a slightly lower level of proficiency.   One of the mechanics that should strike an immediate chord with campaign players is that after a certain amount of levelling up your apprentice can take over the warband (becoming a wizard themselves) if the actual wizard is ever killed.  For my wizard and necromancer I build them from the Games Workshop Empire Wizard two-pack, the only extra piece is that the apprentice has a head lifted from a Bretonian archer.  The Empire Wizard pack is GREAT for Frostgrave because a number of the pieces in the package work towards the schools of magic in the game.

The next classification of models in the game are soldiers.  Soldiers refer to any figures hired into the warband that are not the wizard or his apprentice.  For my first three soldiers I assembled some characters from the Games Workshop Bretonian Men-At-Arms box (more of these figures will be featuring in a different game next month!).  They are from left to right; an Infantry Man, a Man-At-Arms and an Apothecary.  There are 15 types of soldiers in the basic game book and they represent most of the character options for D&D and other classic fantasy RPGs so you have quite a lot of options for customisation and modelling.

Last but not least I have a Warhound.  The warhound is from a dwarf sprue from Mantic Miniatures, I'm actually not sure what unit box it comes in because I got this particular sprue from a Dwarf Kings Hold game box.  The warhound is just another type of soldier, but I had the model and was trying as much as possible to keep my warband all plastic so I thought I'd give him a go.

So that's where I'm at so far.  The plan is to start painting this stuff (I'll still need to add another model or two) this week and hopefully get done in time to play a game by next Friday (8 days from now).

That's it for Frostgrave until something gets done, up next Batman!

-Jay