Roman villa; abandoned or not?

I'm on a scenery vibe at the moment. I've not bothered with it much since I commissioned a whole town of 28mm WW2 stuff back in 2005. Further discussions with Paul's Modelling Workshop about where to go next with the 15mm stuff yielded this;





A provincial Roman Villa - this one being 28mm, but you get the idea. A 15mm version would be around 8" x 10" (roughly the size of an A4 sheet of paper) - which given a typical 15mm skirmish board is rarely bigger than 48" x 48", and more normally 24" x 24" makes it a fairly sizeable thing to fight over/round/through.

This would give my Romano-British something to fight for, and something for my Saxons to raid, not to mention the Scots-Irish and Pictish warbands also in the club. As with the other pieces, it would also double up for Songs of Splintered Lands, and Pride of Lions (if I ever get that far).

The decision I'm stuck on is whether to have the Villa abandoned, or have it occupied in a good state of repair?

Historically the villas remained in use after 465AD, but seem to have slowly fallen into disrepair as the old skills were lost, and the Saxons encroached ever further westwards. From a gaming perspective it has relative merits either way.

Thoughts, chaps?

Scenery Pt.II

Hurrah!

The rest of the scenery pics arrived.
Marsh/Swamp area


Woodland section


Another view of the section above, plus the other section of the set.


Very pleased with these - will photograph accordingly when they appear.

Now thinking about what to add next - an abandoned Roman Villa is an idea which won't go away.

Commissioned Scenery

Nothing has happened in my world of wargaming of late. I bought a Splintered Light 'Beastlands' warband a few months back, half started painting them, then lost interest in the whole thing. The reasons for this are manifold, and beyond explanation in print as they'd really need a supporting powerpoint presentation, and I do enough of that with the day job.

This morning, an unexpected email appeared from the chap I'd commissioned four or five months ago to make some 15mm scenery. To be honest, I'd given up expecting anything from him, and was considering cancelling the cheque.

So, the email was most welcome for this reason, and primarily because it contained pictures of what he's made.



Now, suddenly, I'm looking forward to turfing out my Saxon warband to paint them up to fight my Romano-British - probably using Saga - and will also crack on with the Dwarf and Beastland warbands for Splintered Lands.

Happy gamer.

More pics when they arrive and I've got my grubby palms on them and scattered toy soldiers artistically across them.

Dinosaurs!

I like chancing across things on the internet. Well some things I don't like chancing across, like the this morning's Google burp whilst looking for something entirely unrelated; "Eh, What's that then? Good grief, look at the state of her... Oh, she's not going to...". What has been seen cannot be unseen.

Erm, anyway. Last night on a gaming forum there was a discussion about Blood Bowl figures inspiring someone to convert some Warjacks into Blood Bowl Dwarfs. I've no interest in Blood Bowl these days, but I still clicked the link, and ended up spending an hour or so browsing the brilliance contained therein.

This one caught my eye in particular;

So I'm now scouting around for 15mm Dinosaurs so my Splintered Lands warbands can undertake some big game hunting when they're not tearing each other limb from limb.

Also, downloaded Pride of Lions last night. Written by John McBride, author of the Song of Splintered Lands supplement, and father of David McBride of Splintered Light.

In my head I'm eventually getting towards gaming larger fantasy battles in 15mm, and really like the look of these rules. Can be adapted for non-magical (historical basically) battles if you like, by simply ignoring the magic section. Uses opposed dice rolls, with quality of troops represented by the size of their dice - D4 to D24.

No pictures on this entry - there's enough eye candy at Laughing Ferret to keep you all busy.

Splintered Light painting WIP

A big pile of painting WIP, all Splintered Light, all brilliant sculpts/casts. Just to prove that sometimes I do get the brushes out. Note these photos were taken outdoors on a bright sunny day, in the shade. My camera is completely stuffed.

I also, somehow, managed to order a Beastlands warband (Satyrs, Fauns & Minotaurs) from SLM, so will need to reduce the lead pile a bit before they arrive

First elements of my Dwarven warband for SSL. For non-uniform units, I tend to batch paint things these days in fairly identical little groups... once the warband is complete it gives a good overall impression of variety


Second elements - a little further behind.


Mr Toad, possibly resident of Toad Hall. Because he's awesome. Rest of the not-Willows gang on the table too.


A little band of Otters which I'm slowly building up. These guys all come with the original Faithful boxed set, and I've got six Otter Rogues to go with them


Rebels/Flowering foxes with wolverine. These belong to my friend who almost never paints, so wanting to battle against painted toy soldiers, I'm working through his boxed set. Also got some supplementary Fox warriors to go with them.


Lastly, the brilliant Fire Dragon, which was intercepted and claimed, then subsequently painted by my 4yr old daughter. She's got drybrushing to learn next. Proof that the Camera is smegged - right wing is bright green, left is vermillion. Camera says otherwise.

Out of the Forests

Way back, in the dim distant past, before I took up breeding, smoking, debt, paying tax, and before I understood EBITDA, Dense Wave Division Multiplexing, and how to sell stuff, life was a simple affair; Could I complete my paper round in less than 50 minutes? Would Claire go out with me? (she did) How could I raise funds to pay for the latest wonderous thing from Citadel? What fighter plane would I fly when I joined the RAF?

My ridiculously vivid adolescent imagination was fired in no small part by the artwork which always accompanied the Games Workshop products. Space Marine box art by Jim Burns remains, to me at least, the seminal box cover of any game, anywhere - it is exactly how my imagination portrayed the legions of identikit genetically enhanced super soldiers of the future (only much later did I realise the nod to De Niro's 'Leetle Friend').

Burns' solitary work apart, the only artist which really defined the whole period for me was Paul Bonner. Then, as now, an unknown outside of the gaming world, it has been argued that he influenced the GW spiral death dive into comedy space orks, or that his comic-esque lantern jawed hapless Guardsmen were the opposite of the gritty depravity of Blanche's work which defined the preceeding Rogue Trader era.

However, I like to recall the pen & ink work he did for the Adeptus Titanicus rulebook, including the feature panel work for the Warhound Princeps narrative. Or remember the obsessive attention to the minutae - spent cases, toolkits, etc. Or observe the expressive faces, the dynamics of the interaction between the subjects in the art.

So, some years ago, I decided to email Paul and see if he'd sell me any of his originals. To my surprise he replied with the unsurprising news that GW had retained all his artwork, but countered this with the welcome news that he had a book coming out.

So I bought his book.

Out of the Forests by Paul Bonner

It is, without a shadow of doubt, the best book I've ever owned. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in fantasy wargaming, or fantasy art. Simply stunning. It's also the only book in my considerable library that I would not part with, ever. Spanning his early work, his time in-house for GW, his work for Rackham and onwards, and his stunning Nordic themed Dwarfs and Trolls.

If you only buy one book this year, spend it on this, it's that good. If you aren't completely blown away by it, you have no soul.

Years after buying it, I still get it down from the shelf from time to time, and immerse myself in a world all but lost to me now; the world of my imagination fired by fantastic art.

More Splintered Lands

Sooo, I may have possibly sent some more money in the general direction of David @ Splintered Light... again...

This time I'm blaming it on my virtual pal Mike - although I think we've got a reciprocating he made me do it . In truth, I think Mike commented on my Splintered Lands Druid's Children a while ago, and then I suggested he take a look at Songs, and specifically Song of Splintered Lands. Then David @ Splintered Light decided to have a 20% sale for his regular customers (now extended to everyone), and the rest, as they say, was inevitable.

As I was getting a warband on Mike's behalf, I thought it prudent to, erm, save on the shipping, and get myself a Dwarven warband (of the Bob Olley Splintered Land variety, rather than the tiny 15mm fantasy range sculpted by Whiff Whaff). I also got my youngest the rather spiffing Fire Dragon to paint - she's rather positive about Dragons.

As I'm an old 80's Citadel type of chap at heart, I find the Bob Olley sculpts just tick all my boxes - and they have leapfrogged the Splintered Light Saxon warband on the painting table. As of this afternoon, all of them have been stuck on coin of the realm, sprayed black, and painting is underway. They'll be Saxon themed - mainly because that's the colours I've been using of late - so not many grey hairs, but lots of blondes, stripes, and so on. Slapping some more paint on tomorrow, so should have the first five completed - will post pics accordingly.

What else has occured in the tangential world of my wargaming? Well, the scenery commissioned from Paul's Modelling Workshop is still WIP, so waiting for that. Also, I picked up four 2' x 2' TSS scenic tiles from someone off a forum - cheap at £4 a tile. I've been looking at these for yonks, but never taken the plunge - something I regret doing now - they're brilliant.

So, if all works out, should soon have a nice load of spiffing scenery to put on my new tiles, and fight over with Romano-British, Saxons, Dwarves, and Badgers. Can't go wrong. Well, can go wrong, and seemingly is going rather wrong, but that's another story.

Oh, last bit of news - in my capacity as copyreader for WSS, I've blagged myself a copy of Bag The Hun 2, reviewing, for the purposes of. Major problem with this is that I don't have a bloody great hex mat - so the coming months may see a sudden lurch back into flying things. Pete and myself gave the rules a small run out the other evening, and I really liked some of the elements of the rules.

That's all for tonight folks. Pictures of painted things next time, promise.