Kings of War Kingdoms of Men Army

This weekend, I went to a Kings of War tournament called Refugees of the Olde Worlde in Rexburg, Idaho. It was a great time, but I realized that the army I used, which I had painted over several years, has never appeared on this blog.

I originally built this army years ago as a Burgundian Ordonnance Army for DBA, which is why most of the miniatures are on 60mm bases. Some new units, especially the fantasy types, and the Kings of War sized sabot bases, were added recently. I ended up running it for the "Kingdoms of Men" faction in Kings of War. I'm very satisfied with the way the miniatures turned out, even though the army is not competitive in actual game play, being one of the rather overlooked factions.

Household knights with ducal banner. All miniatures are from the excellent Perry Mounted Men-at-arms plastic kit, along with the paper banner. These are mounted on sabot bases as knight regiments in Kings of War.

The first unit of Burgundian Ordonnance pikes. Again, all are Perry plastics, with some conversions, from their European Infantry plastic kit. These are used as a pike regiment in Kings of War.

The second unit of pikes, from the same source with no conversions. Some of the men, like the other units of infantry, are single-based, to conform to the size of Kings of War bases. They have to be 100mm wide, and so can't take two 60mm bases.

To have a somewhat competitive list, I gathered some random Swiss halberdiers and Burgundians with sword and buckler into a "militia mob" regiment for Kings of War. This ruleset very much needs "cheap chaff" units as a part of gameplay.. Again, from the same Perry kit as above.

A large unit of knights on foot. These are mostly from the Perry Foot Knights box set, with a few armoured command figures from the other plastic infantry sets. This is used as a foot guard horde unit in Kings of War.

A large unit of longbowmen, with all figures from the Perry War of the Roses Infantry set. In Kings of War, they are a horde of archers. Unfortunately, there are no special rules for longbowmen or any other type of elite archers for humans in the game, so their performance is rather lacklustre.

A couple of Burgundian cannons. The crews are converted Perry plastic infantry with metal Foundry cannons. In the game, I actually run them as proxies for ballistas, due to those being cheaper and more competitive.

The human army by itself is very uncompetitive game-wise, and I had to add some fantasy-based punch (as well as flair) to it. I made some generals on winged beasts (dragonlings or small dragons in this case), with 3D-printed bodies and wings, and Perry knights riding them.

Another useful unit is a hero on pegasus, which is much cheaper in game points and more flexible (expendable!) than the bigger flying generals. This is a standard Perry knight with 3D-printed wings.

To add even more fantasy theme are a pair of wizards riding pegasus, as spell-casting is an important part of the game. These are more complex conversions, with Perry Light Cavalry bodies, Frostgrave wizard bits, and 3D-printed wings.

There is an interesting unit in the Kingdoms of Men list called a Monarch, which is a large command unit that provides a lot of useful buffs. I made a version of this unit with the Duke riding an armoured bear, along with his banner-bearer and trumpeter. The bear is 3D-printed, with the other figures from  various Perry sets. The figures are all removable as I can also use the armoured bear for another fantasy unit, the beast cavalry.

I have enough miniatures built for a unit of Swiss pikes too, although they don't fit in my current army list. I'm building more to have Burgundians and Swiss as two opposed sides in other games, such as Never Mind the Billhooks.

This is the only non-Perry infantry in this army, a 3D-printed Swiss horn blower from a file sold by Wargames Illustrated magazine. I used him as an additional hero who is a special character for this tournament.

The entire army together on a gaming mat, quite impressive looking if I do say so myself. Unfortunately I didn't manage to take too many pictures of the tournament itself, but it was definitely an unforgettable experience, with a lot of other well-painted armies for me to play against.

A Long Hiatus and Back to Epic

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while, but for the last year I ended up playing games more than painting. I guess that's pretty good, but I also didn't have a chance to write about new things I had painted.

Recently, I started taking an interest in doing some Epic scale miniatures again, actually before GW's announcement of their new Legions Imperialis release. Mainly I wanted to do Epic scale miniatures using the new Xenos Rampant rules, which look very streamlined and easy to pick up.

First up are a company of Leman Russ battle tanks. These are actually not GW miniatures, but metal proxies made by a Czech company. They are quite a bit closer to the actual 40K tanks than the earlier GW Epic miniatures.

They are led by a Vanquisher tank, which has a much longer gun than the others.

I also painted a company of Chimera IFVs. Due to Epic Armageddon's rules, Imperial Guard mech infantry companies only have 7 vehicles, so here we are. I have to try to figure out a way to work this into Xenos Rampant unit organization.

Here's a close-up of a Chimera, showing quite a bit of detail. Again, the same company that made the Russ proxies.

As in 40k, the tank and IFV are similar in size.

Just as a reminder, here's how big these are compared to a 28mm miniature.

On my paint desk, I have a mess of infantry to go with the Chimeras. These are metal miniatures from Vanguard Miniatures, and are very small. I find that they have a lot of detail, but are very hard to paint due to their small size and slimness. These are Death Korps proxies made by Vanguard, but I'm painting them as Steel Legion to go with the mechanized theme.

Since I'm quite into 3D printing now, I kitbashed some slightly bigger Death Korps style miniatures. Maybe these will be easier to paint and handle. I also designed some bases with ruins to help players handle them, instead of picking up the miniatures directly.

More Stargrave Creatures

I've been painting some more creatures for Stargrave for an upcoming campaign, and with this batch, along with creatures from other people, we should have enough to cover the basic game.

These are the only miniatures in this batch that are not 3D printed. They are actually board game miniatures from the game "Cthulhu: Death May Die". I think they are ghouls from that game, but I've painted them up as gaunches for Stargrave.

The back of one of the miniatures. They seem to have fur covering their backs, and there are a lot of wrinkles and other detail on them.

Here is a size comparison between a Mangalore from the last post and one of these creatures. They are basically man height.

One of the more common types of enemies in Stargrave is the bile worm, which is a big worm creature that can spit acid. In this case, I printed out some free worm creatures with teeth from Thingiverse, and used them as bile worms. Their maws open at the front and present an interesting element of horror.

These are also approximately man-sized, although of course a lot of their bodies are buried underground.

Another type of bug-like enemy is the magmite, which is an insectoid that bleeds lava. Again, I used some free miniatures from Thingiverse (some sort of Metroid creature I think), but painted them with a rock-like scheme, along with lava leaking out of their carapace.

These are compact but stubby creatures with a bulbous belly, which I painted as a sort of lava-repository.

One of the more bizarre creatures from Stargrave is the shengrylla, which is a three-eyed monkey with two tails. However, some kind soul on Thingiverse designed and released a model for free based on that description, so once again I was able to print some for our game.

A couple of them are printed using an FDM printer, so they are quite poor quality, but I can always keep them at the back of the crowd where they aren't visible close-up. The two at the front are resin-printed.

I also printed out another horat, from the same design as I did before. This is also an FDM print.

However, unlike the last horat, this one does show some very visible print lines. I guess I didn't do enough preparation with varnish to fill them in.

I'll keep on painting some more player characters for myself, to fill out multiple crews, but for now I think I'm done most of my creatures.

Back to More Stargrave Miniatures

Sorry that I haven't posted for a while, but between real life and painting up an army for Kings of War, I haven't had that much time for posting recent miniatures. I will be putting up pictures of my Kings of War army soon though.

I had the chance to do a few more Stargrave miniatures. These are all 3D printed from designs by various artists on Patreon.

This is a police droid from the excellent designer Papsikels. I modified it a bit by adding a knife hand to fit Stargrave's idea of a "runner" or "recruit".

The miniature was quite big by default, so I reduced it a bit (a good benefit of 3D printing) to fit my other Cyberpunk/Sci-fi miniatures.

These are Mangalores from the movie Fifth Element, sculpted by another great artist, BigMrTong. They will serve as generic enemy troopers in my games. These were actually painted very quickly with Army Painter Speedpaints, which I'm finding to be quite useful right now.

The original design was actually kind of small, and again I increased their size to fit my other miniatures.

I also painted another miniature from EC3D, again using mostly Army Painter Speedpaints. This is supposed to be an alien arms dealer, but I guess it can be used for all kinds of NPCs.

I'll continue to paint a number of Stargrave miniatures for an upcoming campaign, and will be posting more soon.

More Work On The Solar Panel

Continuing on from my work in the last post, I learned more about working in Blender. It turns out that for simple geometric shapes that I was working with, Blender is actually fairly easy to deal with. I was able to complete the base for my solar panel fairly quickly.

I managed to model the base for the solar panel with a minimum of pain. It's a simple structure with four feet and a "swivel" neck to mate with the underside of the panels from last post.

Here is what it looks like when printed.

Both the tri panel and the quad panel have a rectangular recess on the back, and they both fit the head of the base even without gluing. However, I will be fixing them with superglue after I do my typical post-processing for 3D printed objects, before painting them.

Next to a 28mm miniature, it's a fair-sized structure.

Remember, this is all available on Thingiverse, free for download and use by everyone.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4976446