Enslaved Guardians

The latest unit addition to the Mantic Armies of Dust army is this 'regiment' of Enslaved Guardians. The figures are traditional 54mm size. The colour scheme retains the bronze/red dominance with blue highlights.

First 'Armies of Dust' regiments.. finally .. whew!!!

In December last year I bought the Mantic 'Armies of Dust' army set. I've always liked skeleton armies in the fantasy genre, especially the 'Egyptian' style armies. There was huge anticipation, and in February I started on the first figures - the spear. Why so long? The box set hadn't been packed properly and was lacking quite a few key packs of parts. I found the project hard going from the beginning..  the new metal torsos didn't fit the plastic lower bodies, and most had to be individually fitted. The superglue I was using wouldn't seem to hold the body parts together (that may have been an environmental issue.. too hot, or too cold, .. or ..) so I had to use a contact adhesive to hold them.

I also decides to use a white (well, ivory) undercoat instead of my more usual black, and was surprised how it has taken me a while to get my head around the difference this made to painting demands and style. The figures were block painted over the white, and then given a black wash.

In Kings of War, regiments are normally composed of 20 figures, and I based the first 20 spear on that basis, but the figures looked far too dense. I took a closer look at the multi basing that has taken off within the KoW community. It reduces the number of figures on a base. I opted for 10 per base, which meant that instead of two regiments I had enough figures for four. I took the first 20 off their base, and rebased back to 10. I prefer the 'multi base' look.

It's been hard to keep the motivation going. Finally today the fruits of nearly 6 months of work.

The four spear regiments

A little Firefight ...

A week earlier Adrian and I played another Firefight game (the Mantic sci fi rules system). We played  a small 1000 point game with my GCPS (GW Imperial Guard figures) versus Adrian's Asterians (GW Eldar figures). At 1000 points the game is almost too small to create the best feel with the activation system we felt, but the purpose was to build familiarity with the system.

Again, not full AAR, just some photos that give a little of the look and feel of the game. We'll be persisting with the rules, and looking soon at the warpath version.

Firefight get's an outing

The Warhammer 40K models don't get much of an outing here. It's true that at the moment work tends to dominate life so most of my army collections don't get much of an outing, but the 40K armies even less so. Basically we have found the rules to be overly complex, with a lot of those 'annoying itches' that leave us dissatisfied. It's a shame, because we really like the miniatures that are produced for the game.

When Mantic produced it's Warpath/Firefight rules we looked forward to trying them out, and Andy and I subscribed on Kickstarter, taking early delivery of the rules. Firefight is the 40K equivalent with single based figures fought in units. Warpath steps the level of action up so that you are fielding units made up of multi figure bases.

The core mechanisms are not new, but they are good. Think 'Epic lite' if you want a mental model around which to frame your thoughts. The turns are activation based, with clearly defined options for action in each activation. Players take turns at activating units on the table top until all available units have been activated. Notions like basic melee and fire mechanisms, and nerve, are consistent with those used in Mantic's successful mass battle fantasy game 'Kings of War'.

So Adrian, Andy and I set out to try the mechanisms .. something of  a baptism of fire. We didn't pretend to be playing a full game. Rather, I set out approximately 640 points of Marauders and GCPS with a little terrain so that we could test the core mechanics.

The play test didn't disappoint. We could very easily see the layers of subtlety implicit in the mechanisms. There are plenty of opportunities to be clever without the encumbrance of a 200 page tome of rules. The appropriate combination of weapons (fire and assault), and the ability to create suppression, seem to be the key.

Here are just a few shots of this small play test in action. The 'flame' markers indicate suppressions.

A good start. Next we'll play a proper game with a greater variety of weapons. Finally, a thinking man's sci fi game that will use those 28mm miniatures I collected and painted with so much hope.