A Veteran and a Traveller

So far so good in terms of painting progress – the initial burst of enthusiasm is still in effect and models are being started and finished. Long may this continue!

This battle-scarred villager is one of the Warlord Games celts with her left arm – originally bearing aloft a severed head – replaced to hold a shield.

I’ve also recoloured a Samwise Gamgee miniature from Games Workshop to create a well-packed halfling adventurer, carrying everything one might need for a long journey on his back.

Populating a Fantasy World

Much like my modern pulp collection, my fantasy miniatures hail from a great range of sources, certainly not all represented below.

These are my efforts so far:

The Beginnings of a Pulp Adventure

I have been keen to try Pulp Alley – a wonderfully flexible and unique ruleset – for a long time. I have bought and read all the rulebooks, but up until now have not had the miniatures to have a proper game (even with the rules’ very low minimum requirement).

Until I can steer the wonderful Mrs Doodler towards tabletop gaming as a hobby, I will be playing on my lonesome. Thankfully, Pulp Alley can accommodate this with its special Solo Deck, so all I need to do is build a reasonable collection of miniatures for adventuring.

While I have no traditional 1930s pulp figures, I do have a good number of modern armed and unarmed civilians from a purchasing frenzy for a yet-to-be-completed(-or-even-seriously-tackled) zombie apocalypse collection, so I do have the resources to put together some modern pulp miniatures – more in the vibe of Indiana Jones and James Bond.

Here are the first offerings:

It is a gift

When we were engaged, I felt it only fair to ease my wife-to-be into the enthusiasm of the one to whom she would be committing the rest of her life. She’s an enthusiastic board game player but finds it hard to get into the ‘war’ side of wargaming, so I needed to emphasise the extra-curricular aspects of this great hobby. A non-violent diorama would be my Christmas gift to her. I had a few weeks’ grace.

The Lord of the Rings being my first love in the tabletop world, I had a few collector’s pieces lying around, such as the resting trio of Frodo, Sam and Gollum, all set to be placed in a diorama.

I quickly and roughly mapped out the scene on an old and cheap coaster (too quickly – since when to rivers have perpendicular corners?) and then went to town with some very old green stuff – not good enough anymore use for particularly fine detail but perfectly sufficient for rough terrain features, and very durable to boot.

Then I started painting. As is so often the case, I berated myself for not thinking ahead better; these models, particularly Sam and Gollum, are a right pain to paint if you haven’t got full freedom of movement around the miniatures for the paintbrush. Having glued them firmly in place to the coaster, I couldn’t reach any areas which had an overhang such as the alcove between Sam’s leg and his pot.. Fine detail such as the eyes were also next to impossible, so it ended up being a case of painting the large block colours and applying minimal highlights.

This was definitely a ‘thought that counts’ present; it cost me little except time. Still, it went down well enough, and while I’ve still yet to coax Mrs Doodler into tabletop gaming, she’s appreciative enough of the creative side to let me shut myself away at my desk in the evenings.

The Dogs of War

Alas, I have very few of my first-painted miniatures, and they have all been mixed up together in a box. I may well take a plunge into memory pool in the future and bring up a couple of the early pieces, but I haven’t the stomach for it just yet.

In the meantime though, here is the first and only army I managed to paint enough units for to make up a legal Warhammer army list, and it was only a 500pts on at that.

I seem to make a point of rooting for the underdog in any endeavour (which works out well for an Englishman, since any English team will do its very best to be the underdog even when it’s the bookies’ favourite to win, and will promptly follow up any magnificent victory with a humbling reminder of its true position in the sporting world). So of course I would find myself drawn to the (literal and figurative) underdog in the Warhammer universe – the Dogs of War, an army without an army book.

These Tilean mercenaries were my first foray into non-GW-produced models, though I didn’t stray far from the style, these being produced by the excellent sculptors, Alan and Michael Perry. I was newly at university and had need of finding better bang for my buck than what Games Workshop would provide me, so I branched out and, boy, these fellows were so much cheaper. I haven’t looked back at Warhammer since.

Pikemen

Crossbowmen

Light Cavalry

Skirmishers

A start

I realised the other day, when posting these images on the Lead Adventure forum, that to my shock I have now been partaking in the wargaming hobby on and off for 15 years.

It all started, as the best things do, with a day off from school. The Fellowship of the Ring had come to UK cinemas a few months before, and like many nearly-teenage boys I enjoyed it. I lay ill in bed, and Mum brought me a Lord of the Rings-themed magazine she’d noticed while shopping which might keep me entertained for a few hours.

Back when White Dwarf had all of its Warhammer and 40k at the front of the magazine, and the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game had a full section at the back printed upside-down so you could flip your copy and essentially feel like you were reading a new mag.

That set all this in motion – I roped in a couple of nearby cousins and we were off. We started together on Lord of the Rings before parting ways geographically and thematically – they went down the 40k route (to this day Andy still beavers away at his Black Templars, and I believe he’s spent even more than I have on the hobby! I feel no guilt) and I continued with LotR and Warhammer Fantasy Battles (army: the High Elves released in the same initial White Dwarf – evidently I’m a sucker for marketing).

With no opponents to play against, I slid in and out of painting, marking each re-immersion into the hobby world with another load of purchases.

And so it proves again, though I am trying to limit the purchases a bit more – being married brings certain limits (as well as great joy, of course). Looking back on the last decade and a half I have depressingly few finished miniatures to show for it. We have recently moved into a new flat, one that allows for the set up of a hobby table in one of the smaller rooms, so hopefully a little more structure mixed in with the enthusiasm will produce more results, and I’m hoping that structure might be strengthened with some good old hobby accountability. I have lurked long enough on forums and blogs – I am now going to make an effort to engage.

Wish me luck (and a better attention span), and watch this space.

Humblest beginnings

Greetings internet, welcome all.

May this be the start of something long running and frequently used...