Skullvane Manse (Well, Some Of It!)

Not by the hair on your chinny chin chin!

Skullvane Manse was a big terrain kit that came out in 2013 or so, a few years after the Empire Fortified Manor kit. In terms of design, it's somewhere between the earlier kits, with their Grimm's Tales/medieval look, and the later kits, which are a big pile of enormous skulls. Quite what use it would be on a Warhammer battlefield, I don't know, as it's really tall and I doubt units could really interact with it.

There's some cool stuff going on here, and some nice design - and it's all horribly undercut by those awful cheesy skulls. OK, a huge castle called Skullvane Manse (what is a manse, anyhow?) is probably not going to look like a 2-bed flat in Chelsea (and would probably cost a quarter of the price), but still, it looks silly.

Anyhow, ages ago I bought part of this kit for £20 on ebay. The bit I got was the main body of the model, minus the octagonal tower and the bridge at the bottom. I had a go at finishing it off a few years back, but it was a bit half-hearted, and this Christmas I tried to make it look properly good. I acquired a huge amount of coffee stirrers and, crazed on caffeine, got to work with sharp implements.

First up was making a ramp to the upper door, along with props to hold it up convincingly. Then I used green stuff to sculpt some bricks to fill in gaps around the stairs. After that, I built a wonky bridge, a handrail (which, in retrospect, looks a bit too solid) and a platform at the end. All of this was done with coffee stirrers. I made some metal strips to hold it together out of blister pack plastic, a trick which I stole off the Gardens of Hecate blog.

It's decently sculpted, but the casting feels a little bit primitive, and it's clearly made to take a certain amount of battering.

It's a long way down!

(Warning: pretentious arty talk ahead)

When converting a model, there is often a sense of movement to the miniature, which leads the eye of the observer from one point to another. In this case, the eye naturally follows the ramp up to the door, along the curve of the rocks sticking out from the side of the model and towards whatever's on top of the wooden supports. Basically, the platform just didn't look sufficiently interesting.

So, I added a cannon (thanks James F), and painted it in fairly bright colours to make it stand out. The cannon can be removed, and I'm planning to use the platform as a landing point for big monsters and flying machines. But for now the cannon - especially the shape of the gun carriage and the angle of the barrel - works for the platform.

And here's a view from the other side. I didn't fancy removing the skull, so I tried to minimise it with grass, to suggest that it was overgrown.

It certainly towers over the landscape!

Elite Soldiers For Hardwired

A while ago, I painted up some old Sedition Wars models to function as soldiers for the cyberpunk game Hardwired. In Hardwired, successively tougher waves of baddies swarm onto the streets as the game goes on, and it made sense to make some larger troopers to support the rather scrawny little Sedition Wars men.

I bought a sprue of plastic Algoryn soldiers from Warlord Games' Beyond The Gates Of Antares. They're not the greatest of sculpts, but they are big and bulky, and have the sort of smooth, shaped armour that fits both the Sedition men and the cyberpunk look in general. As per their smaller comrades, I sprayed them white and applied Black Templar contrast paint.

It's not terribly subtle and it won't win any prizes, but it looks fine, and it works. Here's one of the new heavies next to a Seditioner.

I've had some other Algoryn metal models lying around for about a year, which I purchased in a sale. I took the chance to paint them up with the contrast paint. These are the bodyguards for an officer, who I'd use as a corporate or alien commander. They're clearly not human, and I painted them green, which does make them look slightly like old Doctor Who villains, or unusually fascist sprouts.

I really like the poses, especially the guard checking her earpiece. And here's the boss:

Anyway, I will leave you with a bonus photo of the Anata No Warehouse, a Japanese arcade modelled on the old Kowloon Walled City. This is how I imagine the game would look!

Prince Rupert

Here's the finished model of Warlord Games' Prince Rupert, leader of the Royalist cavalry from the English Civil War. I painted him very much as I felt and didn't attempt any historical accuracy.

He's assembled as per the standard model, although I replaced his small (and realistic) cavalry hammer with a slightly larger Warhammer axe for drama. The model also came with Prince Rupert's dog, who I haven't added as I wouldn't have had room on the base.

It's a very good sculpt, and I particularly like the leaping horse. I'd like to say that he was a pleasure to paint, but frankly the model was terrible for paint chipping off. That said, I'm pleased with the painting, especially of his horse.

"I love mince pies, it is nice"

So, it's a new year and, on wargaming blogs, that tends to involve taking stock of the previous year's painting and looking forward to the next twelve months. Unfortunately, two weeks solid of cheap wine and Christmas food have left me incapable of saying anything deeper than "I love mince pies, it is nice", so here are some chaos marines instead.

These are the plastic models from the Shadowspear box - two sets of the guys fitted out for close assault, to be precise. I have painted them in the vaguely-Black-Legion scheme that I've used before, although these guys have a bit less metal and more gold than their shooty comrades. I did wonder about painting them as Khorne berserkers, but I didn't want them to be red and the berserker helmets look a bit silly to me, so here they are.

Again, I've gone for an unnatural blue colour for the skin, vaguely inspired by the funny men from Prometheus (I'm sure that's not what they were credited as, but you know what I mean). I did a few head swaps in the unit, and one of the champions got an executioner-type hooded helmet from an old Dark Angel, but otherwise, they're pretty standard.

I think GW have done a really good job on the new chaos marines. They're a bit bigger than before but not silly, and they look mean without being covered in spikes and (surprisingly) ridiculous amounts of skulls. I've now got 20 of these chaps painted, along with a dozen old school marines and six chosen chaps. That's a decent horde. I love them almost as much as mince pies.

Two More Frostgrave Solo Missions

We're three missions in now, and I've enjoyed them very much. The second single-player game, "The Weapon Shops of Isher", involved running across the board, stealing two treasures from a vault, and running back out again. Easier said than done, as a horde of gnolls (once again, nobly portrayed by the undead Romans) and a huge gnoll warlord (portrayed by a troll) poured in. In fact, they poured in rather faster than anyone expected, because I misread the scenario. Glurk and his kleptomaniac friends escaped, but not before Roger the Archer and Nobby the crossbowman/dwarf were killed and the thug brothers so badly wounded that they missed the next game.

Sir Vaylance and his dwarf friend get a surprise

The third mission, "Dog Days", involved the warband travelling to the edges of the board to destroy four crystals. Until the crystals were smashed, magical hounds (or bloodletters of Khorne, in my case) kept appearing and piling in to fight. This game involved some real swings of luck, including a moment where Snow White the treasure hunter tried so ineptly to destroy a crystal that she fell on her face and suffered seven wounds.

This little fellow killed three demons, somehow

Overall, I've really enjoyed these missions. Frostgrave is a great system, and seeing the characters progress is entertaining. As far as I can see, there are two main problems: firstly, the d20 involved can lead to some wildly differing rolls, which means that the safest way to proceed is often to bunch up groups of very skilled soldiers to gain the biggest possible bonuses for supporting one another. Actually, even this tactic is still vulnerable to bad rolls, but it helps.

Secondly, while the constant respawning of villains is effective and makes for close-run games, it does get a bit samey, and the satisfaction of racking up a row of dead monsters at the side of the board (I assume other people do this too) isn't there.

Perhaps standing on the spawning point wasn't the best idea

But overall, it's a lot of fun. The system is slick and easy to grasp. The games are the right length and have the right level of challenge and variety. Also, I've realised that each game introduces a slightly different mechanic for future use. In that way, the adventures in Perilous Dark are a kind of tutorial for people wanting to write their own.

So forward Glurk and his merry band - on to their next adventure!

"Writhing Fumes": A Frostgrave Single Player Mission

[Cate-Blanchett-as-Galadriel voice]

A thousand years have passed since the mighty castle of Prince Abulurd the Crass fell to the forces of darkness. Not for centuries have the halls rung with the sound of song, laughter and percussive belching. Generations have grown up in the shadows of the great walls of the keep, but all have shunned the ancient castle. For it is said that, when the night is deep, and no moon rises above the battlements, the idiotic king and his eternally-inebriated minions still walk - well, stumble.

But now, who has come to disturb the ancient ruins?


Glurk the Simple and his mighty band of warriors, that's who! His strange features fixed in a grimace of hopeful idiocy, Glurk gathered his brave comrades around him for a voyage into the unknown. Bold explorers like Magic Sally, the Thug Brothers and Porridge the Cyberdog gathered to venture forward and uncover the secrets of Abulurd's castle. First, however, they'd have to break in...

Roger the Archer, Sir Vaylance the Vigilant, Glurk, Nobby and Porridge the Cyberdog

This was the first mission in the single-player Perilous Dark expansion for Frostgrave, named "Writhing Fumes". In it, the team basically had to run across the table, smash open a door and rush off the board. Of course, it was complicated by weird smoke-creatures (in this case represented by the trusty Infelix Legion of Flavius Flava) and two huge ballistas (in this case, two huge ballistas).

It sounds simple, but really became very entertaining. Much like the game of Hardwired I played a few weeks ago, the continual flow of villains onto the battlefield made for a rising level of difficulty and urgency. It wasn't helped by the fact that I forgot the rule about pushing enemies out of combat, meaning that my men were permanently struggling to evade the grasping hands of the undead.

The heroes run away, heroically

Three of my warband bit the dust, including Roger the Archer, one of the thugs and the noble hound Porridge. Luckily, all three healed up for the next game, despite being overrun by skeletons, and we were able to escape with a single pile of treasure. It turned out to be 80 gold coins and the Grimoire of Elemental Ball. Glurk promptly blew the cash on hiring noted treasure hunter Snow White, and will make use of the grimoire as soon as he's figured out what it is. Overall, a tense and exciting game!

A Granary for Frostgrave

On Christmas Eve, as I was desperately buying presents and cards for people, I went into the local art shop and bought another little wooden birdbox for a few pounds. A while back, I used one of these to make a fantasy cottage.

This one was smaller and more solid: too small, I thought, to work as someone's home. I decided that it would work as a granary for the little town. That meant that it would have no lower doors, to prevent rats getting in and eating the crops inside. I used my standard method of putting on timbering with coffee stirrers and tiling the roof with bits of card.

I also used coffee stirrers to make the planks for the upper door. The metal bars on the door were made with strips of plastic cut from a blister pack, and the lock was made with a bit of wire bent into an L-shape and some bits of Green Stuff. I added a ladder and a spade that I had lying around to hint at the function of the building.

And there it is. The base is a bit thick, but maybe that's to keep the rats from tunneling up underneath. Here is the granary in the little town. In a typical scene from the period, we see an evil dark lord and his henchmen demanding grain as part of their plan to conquer the world, while an idle youth looks on.

I'm hoping to try out the single-player campaign from the new Frostgrave book, Perilous Dark, so the more terrain I can get, the better!