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