Not sure what it is that keeps drawing me back to painting and buying Dark Age miniatures – I’ve plenty – enough for several armies. But I keep coming back for more…
This is one of those pipe-dream-projects that has actually taken a step forward! I’ve always been interested in the ‘Gladiator’ thing and quite interested in playing games based around the arena.
Anyway, nothing was ever going to happen without some little men so I picked up a set from Rebel Minis and followed them up with a host from Museum Miniatures when I deemed ‘4’ did not offer enough choice. 15mm of course.
15mm Gladiators from Rebel Minis
Now these Gladiators are not comparable to the likes seen with the new Arena Rex which are very impressive. But, not wanting to sound tight (I’m not, really), this gives you nearly thirty Gladiators for less than the price of 1 Arena Rex miniature. I like the Rebel Minis ones quite a lot. The Museum Miniatures are a bit of a mixed bag – some okay, some meh, some bleh. But then, if you don’t love your mini, you don’t mind when they die in the arena!
Various ‘arena’ ideas and stalled terrain projects have yet to produce a definitive playing area for the games themselves. But that will come.
Here are the Museum Gladiators – pack of 24 with 12 sculpts for £7.50 (duplicates not painted and not included).
15mm Gladiators from Museum Miniatures15mm Gladiators from Museum Miniatures15mm Gladiators from Museum Miniatures
A rather shady fellow – though that blood red walking cane is a bit of a give away. From the Horror Range. Purchased at the same time as this fellow vampire – that’s how long he’s been sitting on the shelf (which is still positively nothing compared to some…).
Had a great time this weekend at Carronade – Falkirk’s premier wargames show – and met up with old and new friends and made a few new ones.
I don’t recall ever posting about my ‘purchase’ stash before – it’s not something I feel strongly about – but I do enjoy reading other folks reports. So I thought I’d give it a bash as I picked up quite a mix of things.
First up – New items (i.e. not bargains).
I clocked the availability of these Time Bandit miniatures a while back. Sculpt-wise they are fantastic. They are a little ‘large’ compared to 28mm dwarves but, well, so what. £17, the second biggest spend of the day.I thought I’d try enhancing my bases a little and at the same time pick up some ‘flowers’ for the public park in my little fantasy town.
(Imagination says they are a troop from an earlier – or later – period than depicted in the TV series – so there!)
I also decided to play around with my Silhouette cutter and make a bunch of shields.
You can see from this early test run an attempt to produce one of the Night’s Watch shields that carried their oath (far right). Didn’t work.
15mm Dark Ages Splintered Light Game of Thrones Night’s Watch
So I thought a simple crow image would be more effective. In the process I opted to do a few ‘alternatives’ that, if not useful for these guys, I could use at a later stage.
The planned Photo paper printed shields and auto-cutting of the Silhouette worked out pretty well. One draw back, which was anticipated, was the need to double up the shield thickness by using two shields stuck together. And the need to paint the edges and back.
An unexpected draw back was the effect of white tack on the shield fronts that I used to stick them down while painting the backs. This meant having to paint in the black afterwards again. Bother!
At first glance you won’t notice a huge difference. I’ve replaced some of the smaller ‘true 15mm’ resin buildings with more Graffam houses. These ones are a little less ’15mm’ and more HO/OO or even 25mm in a couple of cases. Here’s the logic – by mixing scales a bit you can;
get a certain sense of perspective and irregularity of scale variation across the whole town
create (or undermine) a sense of ‘true scale’ thus making the terrain feasible with multiple scales (you’ll see a couple of shots with 25/28mm minis in there)
using mostly Graffam and paper models, get a better sense of architectural style. Some of the previous building just ‘jarred’ with the dominating theme.
Anyway, enough blether. Pics.
Vampires and Hunters battle it out.I’ve got a post in mind showing the use of some of the old Usborne cut-out-terrain books. These stalls are from a couple of them. HO/OO
