Role playing with a six year old.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that it was time to give role playing a go with my eldest Arthur. He is almost six now, has done two years of school and is always writing little stories and drawing comics. Also since I don't know when I have made up stories for him, with him as the hero where periodically in the story he has to tell me what he would do. No stranger to the concept then.

I then decided to give Dungeoneer, advance fighting fantasy, 1st edition a go. He rolled up a charecter, with ten for skill he was already doing well. He insisted on having points in strength, sword, spear and throwing daggers. He also took climbing, dodge and world lore. He named his charecter Bob the barbarian. A name that I guess has been used many times over the forty odd years of role playing. We then prepared to try to save the Princess from Xortan Throg.

Warning, sort of spoilers.
The trip to the secret entrance was wonderful, the book suggested some roleplay between the Prince, his general and the adventures. Arthur spent ages telling the general the best way to kill goblins and the correct manner by which to dispatch a griffon. For those that re interested, either from underneath with throwing daggers or from above with a spear, just, dropped. Said that way, a though it were final.

The encounter with the goblins was magical, when I pointed out it was likely he would be surrounded he came up with the idea of retreating to the doorway to fight them one at a time. He dodged a portcullis rescued two prisoners, one an inexperienced Mage. Climbed over swinging blades, slammed a door on a griffon, bravely stepped brought a fireball illusion and tamed a giant riding lizard. Next he and he wizard fought three orcs and an ogre with barely a scratch.

Reiksguard knights.

I promise I'm still working on the Templars but in the mean time here is another speed painted unit. The horses in particular need some more love but they will look fine from three feet away. I've had these knights for many, many years though they were not part of my first Empire army. They were released in time to be used in games of 3rd edition warhammer before 4th was released  so I am still sticking to my guns about making this a 3rd ed army, just.

I do have a 4th ed army and these guys are part of it so I've painted them up in the familiar red and white rather than the purple of this force. I'll be using them as +3 elites. Somewhere I have a bunch of the individual empire standard poles, if I ever find them one of these knights will get a conversion to a standard bearer. That's got to be a promotion.

If I find the time they may be joined by my knights panther with original paint job from the early 90's tided up a bit.

 Here they are ready to ride down some commoners, er, I mean green skins.

Marauders Flagellants. Some fanatics for my Empire Army.

When I first started playing warhammer I made what units I could out of my role playing collection. I added to this with the odd regiment of renown or blister purchase. It was never guided by army building but did concentrate mainly on Elves and Orcs.

That all changed when I decided to collect an empire army, it was during the final year or so of 3rd, before we knew a new edition was coming but the new empire figures that would become most associated with 4th were beginning to come out. The Marauder offerings came out before the Perry sculpts and the following Flagellants were part of the well considered set of purchases I made.

They have been painted to a very basic standard for some time, including a pretty poor standard topped with the worlds worst milliput twin tailed comet. The standard however has seen many battles so it stays. With minimal effort I did a quick splodge of shading formula and a basic layer of colour afterwards. Do they need lots more work, definitely. Do I have the time, no, not till after BOYL14. So here to join my growing army is a unit, gaggle, mob, of flagellants.

According to warhammer armies Flagellant only take to the field in groups of eight, no more no less. The keen eyed amongst you may notice there are fourteen. What can I say, sometimes the book is wrong.

Converting the Citadel Mighty Fortress Part 2.

Converting the Citadel Mighty Fortress Part 2.

So I promised you a breached wall section and here it is for those that care. I'm rather chuffed with how it turned out but I'll make this a quick pictorial with but a few words. Still so much to do.

 

The breached section is made from one of the vast surplus of gateway sections you get from three sets. It is going to need a base but because I don't want it any higher then the rest of the fortress I start by slicing off the bottom mm a few cm either side of the gateway.

 

 I then mark up the base to fit in the gap. I don't tend to measure stuff, I'm more of a bodger then an engineer, my grandfather would be turning in his grave, all his scale models were fractions of a mm perfect.

 After hot glue gunning the base and trimming it in a rough ovalish shape I add chunks of the offcuts and fill with, er... filler.

 And that's it for the first night let the filler dry. You will hopefully notice that I have carved out the block shapes from the edges of the collapse.

 Speaking of which I then carved up the excess from the tower conversion trying to cut out individual blocks.

 These blocks are added to the base and PVA coated around them to stick sand and small stones to.

 The core of castle walls are made of rubble in a lime mortar. I've tried to recreate that look by carving out the centre of each wall and adding alot of model railway ballast.

 You can see the effect best from above. In the UK we are very lucky in having a great many castles, some in exactly this state and to my eye this is about right.

 The view from inside the fortress.

Here with a miniature for scale. The breach fits three 20mm bases. I'll make the second one bigger.

Now onto the keep in progress. Not much but I got the stairs modelled. from blue foam.

 

The white circle is some depron from a chilled pizza. The stuff is really great for bases. I've decided to make the stairs as a separate piece so I can choose to incorporate the keep into the fortress wall.

Mounted on it's base the stairs look pretty good in place. I can only stand miniatures at the top but I couldn't make the stairs look right with wider steps.

Converting the citadel mighty fortress.

With BOYL14  fast approaching it isn't just a new army I have promised to bring to the table. I've also promised at least a couple of mighty fortresses painted and including a few breached sections and perhaps a keep. This means taking a 2lb lump hammer and...well perhaps not. It does mean a well planned couple of conversions.

Luckily I have enough Citadel Mighty Fortresses to leave a few towers and wall sections going spare. Indeed that's why I collected three of them many years ago.

First lets tackle the Keep. The 1988 siege rules handily give us instructions on how to make a multi-section tower. Just two I feel is enough for a small keep, any more and I'm using more towers than I care to.


In actual fact the conversion isn't as obvious as the book makes it appear.  Trimming the parapet off one side of two towers doesn't do the job. This would leave holes where they are not required. To be honest I wasn't entirely sure how the towers would fit together and it was a matter of just diving in.  Any mistakes and I'd just have to wing it.

So I started slicing using an old bread knife and proceeded to cut at an odd diagonal. Never mind, press on.

  

 Next as suggested by the siege book I add cocktail sticks (or trimmed down skewers in this case, not enough martinis in the Erny house).

 

 Then whack them together with the hot glue gun. Looks OK, the gap for the lower doorway will be covered up by a set of stairs leading to the upper doorway.

 

So it looks OK from the top too. I usually sand the round mold makings off before painting so don't worry about that. My youngest, Wilfy has been handily pointing out the ones I've missed as i pain t the wall sections.

However sanding or no sanding I feel it's worth filling in the gaps. Now what do you us to fill in unsightly gaps and dents in your walls?

There we go then just a roof and a set of stairs to make. Easy, next time I'll detail the progress I've made making the breech. It's jolly good even if I do say so myself.

Helblitzen. Halberdiers for my 3rd ed empire army.

Every Empire army in 3rd needs twenty Helblitzen and here we have twenty two with a leader and champion. They are a mixture of old citadels collected over the years, about a third of them are foundry citadel re-releases. In some cases I have both the original citadel and the new foundry cast. I take all but a thin strip of the foundry cast bases off the new miniatures and use that as a slotta tab. This means even turning them upside down I have to look carefully to tell which are old and which are modern. 

Again this is my simple speed painting in action sticking to the yellows and purples so evident in  warhammer armies. This time I've even done some of the layers on top to tidy things up a little. Not much more effort and though far from the best of my ability I think this standard will do for BOYL14 as we only have a few weeks left.

I decided these would be the main professional body of the watch as they have good equipment  and harness. To that end I painted them more uniformly and made a nice banner depicting the city in purple and yellow.

We have two low level characters.

I just need to get the bases done on these now.

As to whats next in my current speed army frenzy.....

The knights of the flaming heart. Templers of Sigmar for my 80's Empire army.

Last post I showed a few halberdiers suggesting that this would be the next unit to be painted but I got distracted. I've had a selection of the 1988 Empire knights on giant plastic horses for years but never got round to painting them. Why I here you ask?  Because of the lack of barding on the horses. I've often thought about sculpting my own but lacked the courage, milliput or greenstuf on plastic has to be reasonably one way.

I could just mount them on the 1992 warhorses with barding. They are contemporary to 3rd ed but for me it just doesn't seam right. I know that those of you who use which ever great sculpt from which ever age or company must be rolling their eyes at the need to use 3rd ed horses of any kind, let alone the giant horses. We'll just have to blame it on the way my brain works and not over think it.

With BOYL14 fast approaching I decided to take the plunge. They are a little rough but they are not terrible. More importantly they seam right so I'm a happy lead head.

Only one is supposedly a templar but I like the winged helmets.

A big flag, hey it's fantasy.

I think I can get them a little less rough with a bit more sanding.