Uppity Medieval Women

More from my Bad Squiddo order; the pack "Defending Villagers". These lovely ladies are full of attitude and ready to defend hearth and herd from raiding orcs, Vikings or Englishmen. I used air brush paints for the green, red and blue dresses. I also attempted some embroidered flowers and animals on their pinnies.

The complete group

One of the matrons

Gran doesn't put up with any nonsense! 

Plucky girl providing short range missile capability. I tried to do bunnies on the fringe of her pinnie 

Mom keeping her baby safe. Should probably get a bonus for ferocity. 

My favorite I think. Looks like the leader of the bunch. 

Adding guard dogs and my more belligerent looking Foundry and Essex civilians to bring them up to a full unit. 

Appropriately I listened to the Medieval Baebes while working on these.

Arise! Arise! Sons of Eorl!

It appears I am building a force of Rohirrim now. I hadn't really meant to this year, but serendipity or kismet or whatever. They had always been on my radar, but in a "someday" sort of way. The Riders of Rohan are, I think, the most popular Middle Earth army. Always liked them. Theoden gets some great lines and the charge of the Rohirrim at the Pelennor Fields in the movie is one of the best cavalry charges in cinema.

But someday.

Later.

Then Pasha Dan brought me a box of the Gripping Beast plastic Gothic cavalry from Fall In. Nice allies or enemies for my Middle Empire Romans. This made me look at the big pile of Wargames Factory sprues that Pete had picked up as free samples at a Historicon for me waaay back when they were new and historical plastics were the hot new thing. We're talking before the Perry's released their first ACW infantry plastic set. So that's how far back? 12? 15 years? Longer? Wargames Factory went bust several years ago and Warlord bought them up. I was thinking maybe turn them into a big host of Germans or Goths to fight my Romans.

The other night, too tired to paint, so started gluing things together. The Gripping Beast Goth cavalry go together wonderfully and it was easy to get some dynamic poses.

The Wargames Factory Germans are a pain to assemble (separate arms and weapons) and the poses are hard to make not awkward looking. The arms are always sticking out akimbo and the figures are unbalanced. Most of the figures are barechested and I would have to use the hexagonal shields  (which wouldn't look very Gothic). After 3 figures I gave up in disgust.

You can see the first attempts leaning against the tea mug

But next day I had the idea to trim the arms more to keep them tighter to the body for more natural, and better balanced, poses. I would stick to only tunic wearing bodies and round shields. This way I could build some 2 dozen levy foot spearmen without losing my mind.

2 dozen more of these guys. Bit boring but what do you expect from levy foot? At least they stand up. 

 I still have the suspicion that the designer has an optimal combination in mind, so why not save us the hassle and just have the bodies cast in one piece? Of course the sample set of Wargames Factory Celts in the pile have separate legs, torsos,  arms, heads, weapons and shields! But I managed to get 5 figures out of it with a bit of puzzling.

The Celt figures. Guys with shields up had shield arms molded that way. They'll be in the front of the shield wall I guess. The captain is the Celt chieftain body, German head, Gripping Beast helmet plume and a RAFM shield.  

This reminds me when the Games Workshop Rohirrim were first released and some one on The Miniatures Page asked if they could be used as Goths. Russ from Old Glory answered in exasperation "why not use our Goths as Goths? And maybe support one of the smaller companies?" Good point.

So only this pile to work through. I'm going to attempt a few more with shield up to make a proper shield wall.

"Arise! Arise! Riders of Theoden!

Spears shall be shaken,

Shields shall be splintered!

A sword day, a red day,

Ere the sun rises!

Ride for ruin and the world's ending!

...

Forth Eorlingas!"

Ambush in the Panjwayai

Played a semi-solo game of  Contact Front this past weekend. I set up the table, photographed it, and sent a picture with mission objectives to the Mad Padre. He then picked his Support Options and gave me his plan which I then executed.

He needed to hold a jirga at A, set up an OP on building B and establish a check point at C plus sweep for insurgent activity in the village. I hid 3 weapons caches in the grape huts for him to find, guarding the one closest to his table edge with an IED.

His plan called for infiltrating a 3 man team into the grape hut on the right of the table predawn (wish I'd put that IED somewhere else now). Then they would establish the OP on objective Bravo while the rest of the platoon arrived, set up a cordon and held the jirga.

Not entirely kosher by the rules, but Canadian infantry do hold with aggressive patrolling to deny the battle space to the enemy. So I allowed it, but gave the Taliban an extra move.

Morning market at Objective Bravo

Morning gossip at the well

Commuter traffic

Taliban infiltrating through pot fields 

Taliban crossing ditch about to bump Canadian patrol

Canadian patrol moving  to objective Bravo 

Rest of platoon arriving 

Firefight! Dropping a 40mike on Timmy wins the firefight

Establishing a cordon. Note fighters on rooftop. 

Firing on the jirga. Much of the Taliban force wasn't in position (bad command rolls) but had to open the fight before they got challenged and detained. In hindsight I think I should have randomized the casualty allocation rather than assign to the closest. Also keep forgetting that small teams get to refill a failed save. 

Confronting Taliban LMG team.  He opened fire rather than be searched and detained. Canadian team all seriously wounded. 

Sniper! 

Attack on the checkpoint 

Gunship giving support fires 

The Canadians have 4 KIA and 6 wounded being moved to a Casevac by LAV. But the Taliban have pretty much shot their bolt.

So  the Canadians get 5 VPs for finding one weapons cache, 10 VPs for the OP. 4x KIA is -16, so net -1 VP. Although holding the jirga after the shooting stops is arguable which would be 15 more VPs.
Taliban get 10 VPs for killing enemies. They didn't manage to dominate the market place or exit a patrol off the far table edge.

I'm tempted to play again, with another platoon coming on to recover the wreck and search for more weapons but dismounted and try more support options than the platoon LAVs.

Land Mattress

Another piece knocked off the lead pile.

A few years back someone found a blister pack of Battlefront Land Mattress rocket artillery for $5 and gave them to me for my WW2 Canadians. With their 8 kilometer range, in my games of I Ain't Been Shot Mum I'd need to set them up next door. But my friend Don plays Flames of War and has a Canadian army, so I painted them up for him.

The warheads were a challenge, with their green and red rings, but if you don't look too close they'll do.

Deployed in front of my books on the Rhineland and Scheldt battles until Don comes North again.

Corps of Guides

Playing The Men Who Would Be King last week got me poking around the Northwest Frontier of my lead mountain.

I found these two officers who had both been given to me by various people. The foot figure is Foundry. The mounted figure is either Foundry or Perry Miniatures. The poshteen on the foot officer fits him in with my poshteen wearing Guides infantry.

The mounted officer looks like this painting by Simkin of a Guides Cavalry officer.

I dug out one of my Guides sowars as a reference.

I also splashed some paint on these Ghazis from Bicorne Figures because I discovered that I didn't have the 16 figures required for a unit of Ghazis.

They aren't great sculpts. But they'll do. And they were free from Don when he owned the Bicorne moulds. I'm sure the Imperial player will shoot them down pretty fast anyway.

A Very Boring Hill Upgrade

Many years ago I made a Very Boring Hill for my 15mm Sassanid Persians.  It was a a rough cone of expanded polystyrene  (the crumbly white stuff) covered in tissue paper, glue,  and sand. Troops slid down the sides like they were on a ski holiday. It was terrible, but I never threw it out because I'm like that.

Decided to give it a renovation similar to my other hills, since I'm feeling a bit Middle Earthy and might get some more dwarves later this year. So a nice rocky hill that can be defended resolutely by dwarves or elves is what I wanted. Plus I wanted to try some things out before launching into a tower on a rocky hill suitable for dwarves and elves.

Friday might I sat down with a box of chunks of insulating foam from saved off cuts, and a hobby knife. I carved rock shapes and glued them in place with wood glue.

I wanted to make sure the top was left open to hold a unit, and also make some ledges for figures attacking up the slopes to stand on.

Saturday morning the cracks were filled with latex caulk, smoothed out with a wet finger.

Sunday morning I grabbed a big brush and big bottles of cheap craft paint and slapped on a runny base coat of black and brown.

After lunch I grabbed a big old stiff nylon brush from 25 years ago when the kids did tempra painting. 3 shades of grey and some tan to do a fast and dirty dry brush of the highlights. Some of the base colours were still wet, but that just created some interesting blending.

Add flock before dinner.

And some flower tufts after dinner.

Now that's a much more Exciting Hill!