The Three Sisters

The latest printed piece of scenery completed, this is actually a 15mm scale statue I found on Yeggi.

There is a larger 28mm one available there as well, but that would be to large to be standing around somewhere, and I already have two other big ones, one finished last week and one I`m still painting on.

In this scale, it's big enough to be placed in games and provide cover to a model instead of a full squad, making it handy for those LoS sniping and such.

Next as said will be another large statue, and then the focus will shift a little to building up more forces for my games as well as the base of Noshi's army for the 40k clubleague.

The Haul Report 153

Hello everyone to another addition oversight to the collection.

And this week, I kept it modest with only an old second hand book dropping in my mailbox, all the way from Poland.

War of the Ring is the nowcouple of years old 'mass battle' game system for the Middle Earth SBG, and allows you to field big units of troops.  While totally different yet familiar in gameplay (according to some you tube vids I've seen so far), this can reward the huge collection people, AND make life easier for huge battles.  I know from the Helm's Deep we did in 2003 at Crisis (see the header pic of the blog at the moment), the model on model pairing was a a pain for these sorts of endeavours, and to that end I went out to hunt for this book.

I found it in the end on a Facebook group; so next on the hunt target is the other end of the spectrum, the Battle Companies book.. so hopefully you'll see that pass by soon as well.

League of Gods

An Hong Kong fantasy movie starring Jet Li and the always gorgeous Fan BingBing, this movie can now be watched on Netflix.

In all it's dubbed and badly subbed glory mind you!

Plot (from Wikipedia)

During the reign of King Zhou (Tony Leung Ka-fai), an official enters his bedchamber, and is devoured by the monstrous tails of Daji (Fan Bingbing), his concubine. Outside their city, several warriors within a metal wagon discuss their strategies to free the Invisible People and their Chief, when Jiang Ziya (Jet Li) appears to them. He tells them that when King Zhou was younger, he let himself become possessed by the Black Dragon for his quest for power. Jiang Ziya later departs riding his crane.
Within the city, King Zhou and Daji hold a festival, and torture the chief of the Invisible People to foretell his future. The chief shows King Zhou a vision of himself pleading for mercy and disintegrating away, causing the King to order his guards to remove the chief's eyes. At the same time, the warriors sneak into a prison and fight several guards, where Leizhenzi (Jacky Heung), a member of the Wing Adept tribe, uses his powers to destroy the metal bars that seal the Invisible People, even though he was warned not to use them there. His powers attracts Shen Gong Bao's (Louis Koo) attention, and he rides on his black leopard to pursue them. Several of the Invisible People are then killed by more guards. Nonetheless, the warriors manage to escape with the Invisible Children, who use their powers to teleport to another location. To stop Shen Gong Bao from advancing any further, Leizhenzi destroys a wall and creates a barrier. As Leizhenzi and Ji Fa (Andy On) talk, he explains about his past in which his father was killed by an invading army that exterminated most of the Wing Adepts, and his father's wings were torn off his back.
Jiang Ziya arrives to interrupt the festival and stops time, allowing him to free the Invisible chief, and help the warriors and the Invisible Children to escape. As Jiang Ziya avoids Daji's tails, she casts a magic spell at him. To save him, the chief digs out one eye and throws it towards Daji to distract her, but he gets destroyed by her tails instead. Jiang Ziya escapes to his crane with one of the chief's eyes, while the other eye is obtained by Daji.
The warriors return to their capital. Leizhenzi tries to grow wings where King Ji Chang (Zu Feng) requests Jiang Ziya to use the chief's eye to find a way to defeat King Zhou and the Black Dragon. Jiang Ziya answers that it is by using a sword known as the "Sword of Light", which can only be used by the chosen hero "Golden Dragon", and that they must find the sword before the three suns converge, in which the Black Dragon will be released. But while doing so, Jiang Ziya becomes younger, as he warned that Daji cast a spell on him that reverses his age, and for each time he uses his magic the reverse-aging accelerates.

Leizhenzi volunteers to find the sword, and Jiang Ziya tells him that he must take three gifts from the Spring of Life with him. He also summons an egg from the well, out of which Ne Zha hatches and causes mischief. Leizhenzi and Ne Zha depart into a wasteland, where the first of Jiang Ziya's gifts, a one-eyed plant, gives Leizhenzi advice. Ne Zha plays with the plant, and the three are chased by an legendary desert centipede-like worm, which Leizhenzi kills. Ne Zha steals from Leizhenzi the second gift: a baby Dragon Prince whose growth was stunted by Ne Zha, and it subdues the quickly-grown Ne Zha (Wen Zhang) by breathing a gas on him, making him unconscious while turning him into an adult. Upon waking, Leizhenzi forces him to help him find the Sword of Light, while promising to him that he will help Ne Zha find his Fire Wheels.
Shen Gong Bao constructs and animates an automaton (Angelababy), and instructs her to find and kill Leizhenzi. Leizhenzi and Ne Zha stumble into a collection of pillars within a marsh, which turn into a palace in a desert, where a hermit (Huang Xiaoming) manipulates sand with magic.Irritated, the hermit attacks them, but is defeated. The hermit is revealed to be Erlang Shen. Leizhenji gives Erlang Shen the third of Jiang Ziya's gifts: his faithful dog Howling Celestial. Erlang Shen then leaves them to find his Golden Armor.
Leizhenzi and Ne Zha travel to a port, where the former encounters a beautiful woman who entertains children with glowing butterflies, whose name is Lan Die, in reality the automaton. Leizhenzi and Lan Die go find a sorceress Taiyi Zhenren, who uses his dreams to read into his mind. After being woken by the plant, Lan Die steals the artifact that they use as a ship to sail out of the port, and Ne Zha follows. That ship is supposed to sail to any location that its user desires. While in the ship, Ne Zha torments the baby Dragon Prince, who breathes gas on Ne Zha again to put him to sleep and reverting him back to a child. Lan Die and Leizhenzi admire the sunrise, but Shen Gong Bao takes her memories away, revealing her to be an automaton.

Leizhenzi wonders why is the ship going to the middle of the ocean, and the plant answers that it is because someone else, the baby dragon prince, has controlled the ship to return to his father's palace. As the Dragon Prince sings, the Dragon King of the East Sea (Waise Lee) hears him and orders his giant octopus to bring Ne Zha and his son back to him. While in the sea palace, Ne Zha demands the Dragon King to return his Fire Wheels to him. The Dragon King orders his guards to attack Ne Zha, but he defeats them by urinating and passing gas at them. The Dragon King gives Ne Zha the Fire Wheels, and is given the baby dragon prince in exchange. With the fire wheels, Ne Zha turns into an adult and flies away.
The ship is now able to fly to Leizhenzi's former home, which is now in ruins. He finds the Sword of Light, which is guarded by several rapidly-moving rings that surround its floating island. Shen Gong Bao arrives with a fleet of flying ships, and subdues Leizhenzi. In exchange for Leizhenzi's life, Lan Die overcomes the rapid rings, and retrieves the sword, but it inadvertently destroys the rings and blows Shen Gong Bao and his fleet away. Leizhenzi grows new wings and carries the dying Lan Die to see the sunset. She turns into a wooden mannequin, and he leaves her to rest at the sword's island, taking the sword with him. As he notices the suns beginning to converge, he hurries with Ne Zha and Erlang Shen (who has found his golden armor) back to the capital, which is now under siege by another fleet of King Zhou's flying ships. As Jiang Jiya struggles to use the city's defense system properly, Daji uses her magic again to revive Shen Gong Bao, which turns him into an invincible monster.
The three heroes return with the Sword of Light to find Jiang Ziya being reverted to a young boy. They fight Shen Gong Bao, who during the fight kills Ji Chang. With his dying breath, Ji Chang passes his command and the sword to his son, Ji Fa. Ji Fa rushes to the Spring of Life and dives in to charge the sword. As the heroes draw Shen Gong Bao into the Spring of Life, Ji Fa emerges as the "Golden Dragon" with his charged sword and new golden armor, and kills the monster.
The movie ends with Ji Fa mobilizing his forces for a counter attack and flies his fortress towards the Shang kingdom, while King Zhou turns into the Black Dragon awaiting for the heroes to attack, with a baby Jiang Ziya in their possession.

What I liked about it

* It's one of those amusing "over the top" movies you can just sit back with and let it come over you
* Ne Zha and Daji

What I didn't like about it

* Perhaps Netflix should give (at least here in belgium, no idea abroad) the otpion of watching it in the original language with english subs or the likes.

But it was a fun movie and I'm actually awaiting the sequel to conclude the storyline...

The Heroic Coward Dux Britanniarum battle report

Okay, that might be a title drenched in vinegar, but that is because I really wasn`t in a mood to play this game.

I love campaign politics and betrayals as much as the next guy, and I don`t mind if your ally betrays you after as soon as a month an alliance was forged, but it was his explanation that ticked my boxes.

I always liked Glenn, and he was the guy I lost to in the very first game, before going on the winning streak.  So he comes around again now and raid me (fair game) because he wanted to see how I did it, winning all the games on tactics.  Again, fair game.  He explained the breaking because he wanted to see in a straight fight he was the better lord on the battlefield, again, totally fair to me, it's a game after all and it is there to be played.
But then he goes on and brings along one of the blocks of Saxons that can be hired in the campaign (two of them are available, and you can only get them if you are at a certain time behind the pc to give your raid and hire them), because yeah, all those extra Warrior and Elite classed troops make it a fair battle of skills... so that`s where the vinegar comes from.  Heroic enough to come to my turf, and cowardly enough to bring along an extra army just in case... a real straight and fair fight of skills this is going to turn out.

I even considered just refusing the game.  But as the Dux campaign is already low on my "having fun" factor anyways even though I`m solid in the lead, because it's not because I`m winning the whole shabang that it means I`m enjoying it.  The reasons being simple, I just don`t like the ruleset that much, to much depending on luck in drawing cards as the main reason, and some game mechanics I can`t really enjoy as the other.
I just decided to get it over with, even if it would shatter my force.  I went in this game with one disgusting plan: focus on his warlord, try to assassinate him, and knock Glenn out of the campaign as a result.  And make it David's ultimate revenge versus Goliath.

The scenario rolled was Defend the Watchtower, and my plan to lure Glenn to a trap was simple: open the gates and run to my side.  I know this works on him like a red carpet on a bull, so his cavalry would race after them.  By saying I wasn`t planning on bringing up my army in the third turn, I tried to give him a (succesfull) feel of safety.

His army was as per the scenario split in two, and would come on both the far ends of the table.  My levy did just as they where ordered, making the hopeless sprint to my table edge, only to be caught halfway by his forces.

However, his cavalry with his lord strayed to close to my table edge in his third turn, and a 16 inch charge later my cavalry crashed in his line.  His units where beaten to a pulp and lost the amphora, running for their lives and taking for now his lord with him.  His morale dropped to 1 due to this, but I didn`t have any real "safe" targets anymore to break it.

In order to preserve mine as long as possible, I formed a huge shieldwall with my lord, to safeguard him and make his cavalry avoid charging into them.

I made the hopeless charge against a warrior unit and a saxon warrior unit, but they didn`t break hard enough to make him take another test unfortunatly.

In what would become the final turn, he charged and overwhelmed my elite cavalry with noble, pushing my morale under 0 and netting him the game.  But it was a bloody close fight where I managed to keep the saxons out of the game as much as possible, even though their presence blocked all my possible access lines.

While my losses where after modifiers only 2 levy units missing the rest of this month, and the killed noble surviving, it was a pity I couldn`t pull of the miracle win in the end, pulling almost any trick out of my hat that I had at my disposal with my hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed force.

But it was a fun game (Glenn is a fun guy to play with, it`s just the whole hire thing, see above) and it would have given a whole other result I guess without his extra 3 units of Elites (making it 4 against my 1) and 2 extra units of warriors.

Still, no prestige has been lost, so we are still on the path to the crown as Dux Britanniarum...

On the Painting Desk 66

Well, that desk is getting really loaded up now...

I managed to complete some things, as you could see on this blog the past days, and now it's time to go into assault on all that is on there for real.

Because by the end of the year, I want that desk as it currently stands cleared out...

Gandalf the Grey

The painting of Middle earth has kicked off really now, as I completed the first hero for the game again.

And who else might that be then the wise guide of our stories, Gandalf the Grey!

The wise wizard isn`t perhaps the greatest in the current edition of the game, due to the bit of nerfing on magic for Pelennor's Field edition, he still remains a steadfast model to have in a force, albeit in a supporting role.

He was a great joy to paint, being one of the older excellent metal sculpts, which lends itself greatly to some Strong Tone and then drubrushing.

So now he is ready to guide me on an adventure!

Azincourt - Bernard Cornwell

Another one of Mr Cornwell's historical set novels, Azincourt takes us back to the famous battle between english longbowmen and french knights.

And as such, I allowed myself to be indulged in the settings of a period I don`t actually ever gamed in... would it bring me to temptation to paint yet another period?

Plot

Agincourt is one of the epic battles of history.  Fought by two badly matched armies in atrocious conditions, it resulted in an extraordinary victory, a triumph of the common man over the aristocrat, which has been celebrated ever since.

Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt, the first novel to have been written about this battle for a hundred years, makes you feel that you are one of those longbowmen in the army of Henry V.  His archer is Nicholas Hook.  A man frequently in trouble back home, he finds his true place in the company of archers.
This is what it must have been like, standing in the mud on the field of Agincourt, facing an overwhelming enemy, waiting for the inevitable destruction.

What I liked about this

* the build up to the battle.  The way a novel describes it is always far more captivating then some "dry" historical write up after all

What I didn`t like about it

* not much actually.  I`m not saying it's a prize winning book, but there wasn't anything about it either that stopped me from reading

Dark Eldar Kabalite testmodel

No, I`m not starting a new army.

This is the first model for Noshi`s Dark Eldar force, a so-called "test model" for a colour scheme.

She is going to paint the "juicy stuff" herself, like the wyches, the Raging Heroes stuff, and more of those flashy things, but the lowly mass canon fodder, aka the Kabalite Warrior, will be mass painted by myself.

To that end we looked for a colourscheme that is both sinister yet not to dark, and settled on black body armour and grey helmets.  Add to that the bone of the gun casings and enchanted green for giving the guns a mystical glow, and it is quite contrasting yet not to gothic grimdark...

And now to complete a few dozen of them...

Nature Unveiling Herself

One of the pieces of terrain I had printed from a Yeggi file, the site where you get LOADS of freely available files of all sorts, was this large female statue.

Produced and uploaded by Scan The World, this is actually based on an existing artpiece.

‘La Nature Se Dévoliant Devant La Science’ - nature revealing herself before Science; a very fine multipatinated bronze figure with varied gilt highlights and green tinted Scarab Beatle by Louis-Ernest Barrias (1874 – 1905), cast by Susses Freres.

But it`s mostly a great piece of terrain as well, and I wanted this printed for use in both Burrows and Badgers on the one hand, and Lord of the Rings on the other.  I went to flocking a bit unto the statue itself, to make it look like one of the many slowly reclaimed by nature statues as so often seen in Middle Earth.

And here she is with a Rohan archer at her side to give an idea of the actual size of the model...

Hopefully you like her, and until the next one!