The everything miniatures wargaming thread

[The Brain]

Finished a bombard. Sieges of this kind weren't much of a thing in the WOTR, but there was some siege action on the Scottish border. And of course anything is possible on the tabletop. Medieval artillery is cool.

[grumbler]

Brain, do you have a recommend miniature brand for French and Indian war figures?

Way late for this but, back in the day, the Old Glory F&I stuff had us going for a long time.  Very nice figures and very reasonably priced.  The only downside is that you have to buy them in packs of 30 assorted figures.  They mix with some 28mm lines (I think Front Rank was what we used) to add some variety and specialist figures.  In particular, you want to use Front Rank horses even with Old Glory mounted figures because FR horses are just beautiful and OG are not.

[11B4V]

Brain, do you have a recommend miniature brand for French and Indian war figures?

Way late for this but, back in the day, the Old Glory F&I stuff had us going for a long time.  Very nice figures and very reasonably priced.  The only downside is that you have to buy them in packs of 30 assorted figures.  They mix with some 28mm lines (I think Front Rank was what we used) to add some variety and specialist figures.  In particular, you want to use Front Rank horses even with Old Glory mounted figures because FR horses are just beautiful and OG are not.

Thanks, I'm still mulling over which ones too get.

[The Brain]

The latest issue of Wargames Illustrated has a Wars of the Roses theme, and includes a booklet of rules ("Never Mind The Billhooks").

[The Brain]

So lately I've been making a lot of terrain, with an eye toward 6mm gaming. I've been eyeing 6mm SF for years, and I got inspired a bit by reading some Battletech stuff (the giant robots themselves I find meh, but it's a pretty cool one-stop-shop system for fairly low-tech humans-only SF). I'm also thinking about doing 6mm historicals (win-win terrainwise), likely early 18th century. If anyone's interested in the terrain stuff I've done let me know and I might take some pics. Anywhoo, since last year I've had a bunch of unpainted orks, and I decided to do something with that. So I've painted a Squiggoth from Forge World (see pic below).

As always my aim is "KISS decent tabletop standard". The howdah is empty for now, and I might keep it that way for flexibility. Forge World used to make some guns that were made to fit the howdah, but they are OOP. I like the squiggoth model, it's big without being crazy big, and they put some thought into the design (there's a system for steering the beast using levers and rope/chain, the ladder can be stowed or deployed, the squiggoth looks like it could conceivably carry a lot of weight on its massive legs etc). I realize I didn't put a model next to it for scale, but the squiggoth is roughly two human-sized models tall (not including the howdah).

[Sophie Scholl]

Whoa. That things pretty cool. I'd love to see the terrain, too!

[The Brain]

Regarding terrain, let me start by saying that I recently got three mousepad-style 6'x4' gaming mats, concrete/asphalt, grasslands, and badlands/desert. I've been doing my terrain stuff with these in mind. I also have a bunch of ready-made hills etc that I don't bother taking pics of.

I painted a bunch of 6mm SF buildings, both "normal" and desert style. Paintjobs are very simple, if I ever feel the need to do more details I can always add them later. The pic is just some examples, I have a LOT more buildings. A good thing about 6mm is that you can have a lot of stuff without running into storage problems. The goo is gloss varnished, the rest matt varnished. I included a 28mm figure in the pic for comparison. The building on the upper left is modular "build-your-own" (one of many), so you don't always have the exact same buildings.




For woods I got some railway model trees, and based them in twos on big bases and singly on smaller bases. Examples below. Many rules systems differentiate between light and heavy woods, and a simple way to visualize this is just putting an extra tree on the big base. Pretty neat I think. The tree bases can be used "as is", but mainly my idea is to use them with the modular area stuff (see further below). The tree on the right is a very nice tree, I only have those based singly though because they are so big.




Below you can see examples of my modular area system. The idea is to have a bunch of grasslands/desert flat areas of different shapes and sizes (plasticard cut to various shapes), and add smaller terrain bases on top to indicate what kind of terrain the whole area is. This way you can put models wherever you want without interfering with the game by just moving the smaller bases around (if needed, you can't put models on trees for instance) while the big area stays put. The smaller bases can of course also be used on their own. Many of the areas (not the smaller bases) have both a grasslands side and a desert side so you can just flip them over when you change your gaming mat (these irregular shapes aren't really great for urban terrain, so not having an asphalt side is fine). In the bottom row are (from left to right) swamp, rough ground (desert), rough ground (grasslands), and rubble (typically used when a building collapses). Some of the stuff works for any scale, the swamp for instance works just as fine in 28mm, the rough ground though doesn't (28mm rough ground would need bigger boulders and stuff). Another thing is that rough ground and rubble are designed to let models stand on top of them, they're not meant to look like totally realistic dioramas. The water in the swamp is gloss varnished.




Finally we have a lake (grasslands or desert) and a small lake/oasis (desert). I'm quite pleased with how these came out. By using a very simple technique with just two shades of blue you actually get a sense of depth (the swamp water above is just one shade since it's supposed to be muddy). They actually look like they are deep lakes with clear water on a sunny day with blue sky (well they do to me). The water is gloss varnished.




Making terrain pieces is pretty fun, you get a lot of result with limited effort, and it's not as fiddly as painting minis.

I've also got some other stuff, for instance some nice and cheap ready-made pieces of fire/smoke, using simple flickering electric candles and cotton-like smoke. Candle on you have fire and smoke, candle off you have just smoke (like a smoke barrage or drifting smoke from a fire). Looks nice (no pic, but trust me).

[Sophie Scholl]

Those are great! What minis do you plan on running/have you run utilizing them? It looks like maybe the Epic scale Space Marine stuff would work? (If memory serves on their size). The desert ones give off a very Star Wars vibe to be. Probably due to Tatooine.

[The Brain]

I finished the armored core of a generic 6mm SF army. I may add infantry and some support vehicles. 28mm figure shown for scale. Doing a 6mm army is a lot smaller investment of time (and money, and storage space) than a 28mm army... Since it's SF I wanted a ridiculously huge armored command vehicle. The model may be inspired by the Ogre of legend. These are all by Microworld Games in Joisey. I have a bunch of models from other manufacturers as well, I may make more 6mm armies from those. A nice thing about SF (and fantasy) is that you don't have to worry about minor differences in size between different manufacturers.

The colors of the landing pad are pretty "civilian" if you will, but there's two reasons for that. 1) you always want to be able to immediately tell what a model (or a big part of it) is when viewing it from "tabletop distance" say 3ft away, and 2) to break up the monotony.

[Threviel]

It seems like there can't be much ammunition stowed in those tanks. What games do you play with them?

[The Brain]

None so far. Possible rules systems are Battletech, Dirtside 2, Strike Legion, and similar.

[The Brain]

I did some IFVs and some infantry units for the army. Painting 6mm infantry is a nice change from 28mm, especially 6mm SF or modern. Just did a base of light grey, black wash, light grey highlight, pick out weapons and faces, done! Basing them is more work than painting them.




Then I did a second army. These models are from a mix of manufacturers, and the vehicles are all hovercraft (the first army was all tracked).




I also did some aircraft, in a generic paint scheme to fit whatever army. The Osprey-equivalent not on a flying stand has landing gear out, and I think it might look great for "dressing" airports (the others are all without extended landing gear so have to be in flight). So now I have two armies, including some air support, and lots of terrain. Once Covid is done I just need to find a sucker to get a game going. Nice.




But wait! Is that... wormsign??!?

I recently got some Reaper Bones 28mm minis for Sword & Sorcery stuff (they would likely fit great with my Conan boardgame minis). Those Reaper models are great, and cheap. Awesome value. One of the models I got happened to be a giant worm, and it occurred to me that with SF desert terrain that worm would work as an even gianter worm in 6mm. I think it's pretty cool (and obviously it still works in 28mm). Also the desert infantry models gave off some Sardaukar vibes I thought.

[Jacob]

Solid work, very impressive

[The Brain]

Finished some more henchmen for my Inquisitor. Now to paint the Inquisitor himself...

Figures are not based yet, will be based when they're all done.

[Sophie Scholl]

Great stuff! "I just need to find a sucker to get a game going". Ah, isn't that always the inevitable catch with all of this? RPG systems, too. Hahaha. I've got some games still in the packaging that I haven't gotten to yet for lack of enough people wanting to play. I hope that some day I'll get to them though.