A Good Painting Day

Some time to paint yesterday along with most of today allowed me to make a lot of progress on getting the new dwarves painted and based up for Polemos Mythic Army.
The Army:

Dwarven Army

I really like the sense of mass the larger bases allow. For the next batch, I will get a little more creative.

The Infantry:

Dwarven Infantry

A closer view. The figures on the painted base are from the first army pack I bought. The others are the new guys. I took a more relaxed approached and skipped the belts and boots. You really can't notice the difference. What is noticeable is the shield bosses on the new guys. A simple feature with a lot of impact. I will be repeating in on future figures.

Finally the Heavies:

Dwarven Combined Arms team.

Classic Baccus pusher carts backed up by high-tech steam driven fliers. I am really happy with the flier conversions. Fairly simple and very effective.

Dwarves!

I was going to wait until I had based them up but I can't. Here is the first installment of the PMA Steam Dwarves project:
Side view:

Top View:

They are Baccus war carts converted to fliers with brass shim, solder and #6 lead shot.

Dwarves - A New Stope

As noted in a previous post, almost all of my based up dwarves have been removed for re-basing to Polemos Mythic Armies standard. I have also placed and received an order with Baccus for additional troops including Napoleonic Russian Cannon. All of this is in aid of my Steam Dwarves project. Since I am digging deep into weirdness and re-interpreting both dwarves and Baccus' minis, I'm calling the project A New Stope. In progress photos will be up in my next post on this topic.

Re-basing again - Dwarves

After looking over some of the spell and army lists, I have become involved with Polemos Mythic Armies (PMA). Based around the Baccus 6mm line of ancient and fantasy figures, it offers a more detailed magic system than HotT and an epic feel to the game. Given that my dwarves are of Baccus provenance, I have decided to re-base them for PMA.

Another night of HotT

Marc came over last night for a "quick" gaming fix.

Game 1

The first matchup was the one we used previously. Goblins with beasts on his right, riders on his left and a warband general centre supporting a line of hordes. I was defending and responded with the stronghold centre covered by two artillery out front. On my left was a 2 column block of blade supported by warcart knights and a hero general.

The goblins advanced rapidly on the flanks using the mounted and more slowly in the centre. I played a waiting game, expanding one column of blade out to the left to face the beasts while moving my hero out to my left as well. The knights went out to my right with an eye to going after the gobbo general. The goblin mounted moved up. On my left I was able to get the beasts entangled with my axemen then kill them with the hero. On the right, I pivoted my rock twangers to face the goblin riders advancing in column. Shooting was ineffectual beyond recoiling the riders, but when we go into hand to hand, the artillery crews shone, beating back the wolf-riders several times before succumbing. The riders continued on to attack my Stronghold.

While the fight against the goblin mounted was underway, my knights crushed the horde in front of the general, pushed him back and disrupted the horde line before dying in double overlap at the gobbo general's feet. I really need to get another couple of bases worth of warcarts. With the beasts gone and my hero on the flank, the goblin horde line started to fall. It didn't hurt that in an attack by my hero against a horde with a hard flank from a blade,  I failed and both elements were repulsed. The goblin riders had little luck with their attack on the stronghold due to poor pips and one died. Poor pips were a problem in general for the goblins with hard choices required between keeping his attacks going and bringing back on horde. In the end I was able to kill enough to end the game.

Game 2

Again I was defending. Marc went for a goblin magic user as his general this time retaining pretty much the same forces and disposition as before. I in turn ditched the artillery and replace them with an extra blade and an another hero and used my knights as general. I set up more centrally this time in an inverted U with a hero at the back of each arm. I liked the block formation I had used in the first game but it didn't exapnd as quickly as I wiould have liked so I went with the U instead.

My intent was to use the two heros to split the fire of the magician. Marc wasn't playing that game however. He rolled very well for pips initally and was able to move his whole force forward quickly. I did some wing expansion and threw the heroes out as flank support. There was much measuring in the mid-game while Marc and I figured out firing ranges for the magician - he was the first one either of us had used. In time I figured I had better get stuck in and pushed my blade line forward. The heroes kept the flank cavalry busy, the knight general waffled about in the end zone and the silver line of steel ground forward. Marc sniped at the line doing little damage but forcing me to spend the pips to keep it dressed. Marc's early success with the pip die betrayed him in combat.  I lost a hero to his depleted rider force, kept his beasts busy with the other and finally managed to contact his horde line. A judicious choice of combat order, some good rolling on my part and dice betrayal for Marc lead to a double flank attack on the wizard and down he went taking the game with him.

Despite my inadequate descriptions, they were a pair of close fought games each with some nail biting moments. A good night of gaming fun.

A Cunning Plan - 6mm Baccus Dwarves

A week before the Easter break, I received my battle pack of dwarves from  Baccus6mm. Based on our usually busy schedule, I calculated I had enough time to get them painted for a HOTT game I had planned for Easter Monday unbeknownst to my opponent, Marc.

The minis themselves were crisply molded with very little flash but some strips had large sprues on the bases. These were easily taken care of with a coarse file. The alloy itself is what I would call "medium". Much harder than the old lead minis, a bit harder than my Essex 15's but not as hard as the alloy used by Corvus Belli. This gives the dwarves a good weight for their size and makes them very robust. The only area of concern was the command strip standard poles which are very thin and will probably need to be replaced with a plastic bristle or dress makers pin in the future. The only assembly required was for the war carts which went together with some 5 minute epoxy. Cyanoacrylate / super glue would have worked as well if not better but I would have wanted to use a gap filling variety.


Painting was straight forward but more time consuming than I expected. I mounted all the strips onto painting sticks using generic Blu-Tack. I find this is much easier for repositioning and removing the figures than white glue or hot glue and is reusable even if painted. While some of the bigger 15's can be a bit heavy for this method, the tiny 6mm strips weren't going anywhere.

Priming was done with grey generic automotive primer. I didn't hit every nook and cranny but then I have only recently started using a primer coat at all. My painting technique is best described as dab and flow. More or less following the painting guide on the Baccus site, I started with an overall coat of Tamiya aluminum. No particular reason for Tamiya other than it hadn't dried up in the 20 years since I last painted any minis. This was followed by dabbing on GW elf flesh on all the faces and hands.

Once the main colours had dried it was onto the beards and hair. With silver armour and helmets, this is one of the few places to easily add colour. The hair and beard pass was followed by another for weapon shafts, weapons and shields. Now this sounds straight forward but in fact each new pass revealed some bit I had missed in the previous pass. So working on the hair revealed any number of helmets in primer grey requiring touch up and colouring in the shields exposed where beard colour was smeared over armour - and more touch ups. The paints used were a mixture of acrylic craft paint (cheap) Tamiya (on hand), GW (my wife's) and one bottle of Vallejo which was beautiful to work with.

One of the saving graces was the presence of a number of artillery models, the war carts and single hero figures. Just when frustration set in with the mass painting, I could take a break and do a single model 15mm style.

One of the final things to do was to go over the boots, touching each with one of several browns or black. Then onto basing. Since we were to be playing HOTT, I based them up 15mm deep as Blades. Over this went a wash of wrought iron as I will be "flocking" with coal and stone. Remember all those boots I painted? - all gone under the wash and given the narrow space between the two ranks, much of the detail on the back of the front rank and front of the back rank is now lost in shadow.

Final thoughts, The Baccus dwarves are very nice figures and look great en masse. My painting technique needs to be further simplified to avoid wasting time on things that won't be seen.

More Troops!

As well as a good game, George brought over some of his Celts needing a good home. I now have 95 more figures to paint up and base but my barbarian hordes are on the way.

Since I walk to work everyday, I have taken to listening to podcasts and E-books as I go. Most recently, I downloaded 60+ episodes of Meeples and Miniatures and I have been working my way through. In 2008 I think, Neil interviewed Pete Berry of Baccus 6mm. Neil raved about Pete's 6mm Napoleonics so I decided to go have a look. I was also smitten but by the fantasy and ancients lines. I ordered up a dwarven army for HotT to see for my self and have been checking the mail constantly in over eager expectation. I'm committed to 15mm Celts for DBx but if the 6mm are as good in person as they are on the web, I will probably go 6mm for future ancients while keeping the 15mm standard basing..