QuickPic - Hundred Years Project

I just snapped this photo a few minutes ago of some 15mm Hundred Years War miniatures by Corvus Belli. These guys are for my HYW: English army for the fast-play historical wargame, de Bellis Antiquitatis. I have an element of four billmen almost fully painted and ready for basing, after which I'll have finished all of the support and optional pieces for the army. Not too shabby considering it's only taken me, um... 3+ years to get this far. :)

Next up will be six elements of deadly accurate longbowman who form the core of the army. I then plan on painting the three elements of mounted knights and their dismounted counterparts. Finally I'll wrap things up with a camp and possibly a separate element of camp followers, though I might model them as part of the camp itself. Since I'm saving that for last, however, I have plenty of time to think it over.

Happy painting and gaming... goodnight!

Old Stuff Day!

As decreed by Rob over at Warhammer 39,999, today is Old Stuff Day for all of us hobby bloggers. It's a chance to dust off some old favorites and to take another look at posts that may have been forgotten, overlooked, or otherwise somehow missed by the internet since originally being posted. Not many folks have the time or interest to dig around through archived material to find the juicy bits, and certainly some blogs [ahem, diceRolla, cough cough] do not make it terribly accessible either. So hooray for Old Stuff Day!

For today's fun I've picked out links to a sampling of vintage diceRolla posts, including a bunch of still unfinished projects, all of which I plan on returning to later this year. Therefore as well as being a sort of review of diceRolla's past, this is also a preview of some projects which I hope to work on in the coming months. Even though I might not have mentioned them in quite a while, they have not been forgotten. For your consideration the posts I have chosen are: a 40k army project, a Killzone project, the collaborative results of a contest, a "semi-regular" blog feature, and a 15mm historical minis project from long ago relative to the lifespan of this blog.

The Drones of Sector 7G (Illustrated) - I love the Simpsons, and I love 40k. Newer readers might not be aware of the ways I've been trying to make the two subjects intersect. This post describes the selection process I went through in choosing which units to include in one of my current army projects, the Blisstonian 9th, an Imperial Guard army based on the workforce of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Competitiveness, efficiency, and all other normal gaming considerations were discarded in pursuit of my chosen theme, an admittedly silly one at that. Work on this project has been on hold for several months with just a little bit of occasional painting but it's still one that I am very eager to get back to, hopefully sometime this coming spring or summer.

Killzone WIP: Rogue Trader Crew - What can I say, Killzone is awesome! Unfortunately I've only been able to play a handful of games so far since Big Jim and the Killzone development team made available this amazing set of fan-created skirmish rules for 40k. As part of the 10/10/10 Killzone Blitz I decided to put together a Special Ops team based on a Rogue Trader accompanied by his closest associates, bodyguards, and allies. I didn't finish painting these guys in time for the Blitz but was able to get a decent amount of color onto each one, certainly enough to get a sense of what they'll look like once fully painted. I'd like to have them completed later this month in anticipation of the big Killzone extravaganza at this year's Adepticon.

Contest Links Bonanza - This was the culmination of the most recent diceRolla contest, a big list of links supplied by lots and lots of hobby bloggers. To participate in the Good Karma Pre-Heresy Celebration and qualify for the prize drawing, I had asked everyone to provide a link to something of which they were particularly proud, or to link to someone else's work that had inspired them in some way. I really enjoyed following the links to learn more about my fellow hobby enthusiasts and to see the sort of things that really motivate and inspire them. This contest was a lot of fun for me and I look forward to hosting another one in the coming months, though details of which are yet to be determined.

Flashbacks and Nightmares: Plaguebearers - Ahh... the sweet, sweet taste of internet fame. :) This post garnered the much sought after approval of my peers in that it made From the Warp's Tuesday's Top Ten list. WOOHOO!! Many thanks to Ryan for being so kind as to honor some of my own handiwork with inclusion in one of his weekly lists, this was indeed an early highpoint in my blogging adventures. It also happened to have been the second and final installment in what I had planned on being a semi-regular feature here at diceRolla. I have a fair number of old minis I'd like to photograph for use in future Flashbacks and Nightmares, I just haven't gotten around to it yet... almost a year later. Pitiful, just pitiful. We'll see, I'd like to revive this series if it can even be called that.

Woo-Hoo!! Painted Archers! - I generally advise against going too far back into the history of my blog but this is a special day after all, so for this last one let's go waaay back. This post is from the second week of diceRolla and showed off the first minis painted since having started the blog. At that point I was primarily focused on de Bellis Antiquitatis and so I spent most of my hobby time working on various 15mm armies. These archers from Corvus Belli are for an unfinished Hundred Years War: English army that I haven't touched in over a year. Since moving on from the idea of collecting Bretonnians, I've realized that whatever interest I had in painting medieval knights and archers could be directed at this old HYW project instead. I don't know when I'll work on them again but it's nice having them around should I feel so inclined. And once I've finished with the English there's still the French to be painted, too.

That's it for my participation in Old Stuff Day. I hope it's been an enjoyable look back at some of diceRolla's past glories. Thank you very much to all my readers, both old and new alike. It's been an exceptional joy posting up my hobby ramblings here for you to read. I appreciate everyone who has taken the time to check out what I've been up to and I am grateful for all the excellent feedback and comments I receive. I understand the blog has been quiet lately but with Adepticon less than a month away it's going to be a busy couple of weeks. Thanks for sticking with me so far... there's lots more hobby fun still to come!

Odd Times

Something unusual is going on. It has been kind of a weird day and I'm in a weird mood this evening. I haven't done any painting today as well. Maybe I'll still do some tonight but who knows. Whatever, I'm taking it easy right now and not stressing it. I've got one more chapter to go in the FoG book and think I have a good understanding of how the overall game functions. Field of Glory has a lot of novel ideas and mechanisms that I haven't seen before in other games. Knowing myself, I believe that at some point I'll probably start collecting and painting figures for such an army but for now I think I will be happy sticking with DBA. I don't really foresee that many opportunities to play FoG, but then again it's not like I play a lot of games of DBA either. There's no point in worrying about it now as I've got at least another five or six armies for DBA already purchased and which I am excited about painting. As unlikely as it may seem, I'm actually showing quite a bit of restraint in not getting even further ahead of myself!

The Old Glory Experiment

I didn't read as much of the FoG book as I had wanted to today, but I did take a four hour nap right in the middle of the day which was nice. I've been working my way through the movement and maneuver rules which at first have come across as a bit cumbersome to me. I do see however the potential for these rules to feel comfortable and intuitive with some practice and experience. I've never been happy with the way Roman Republican armies of the Punic Wars are represented in DBA so right now I think maybe collecting them and a Carthaginian army would be a good idea for my foray into FoG. The armies of Alexander and Darius are also really appealing to me but I'm generally satisfied with how they work in DBA.

The number of figures required for FoG has tempted me into trying out Old Glory miniatures. Their prices are good but not quite the great deal that I had associated with them. Perhaps as long ago as a decade or more I ordered a few bags of 15mm guys from them and at the time I think they were packaging them at 50 per bag. I really don't remember much about Old Glory from back then but I must not have been that impressed if it's been this many years since I last purchased from them. That might be though because of the extra expense involved in using their miniatures for DBA. It's frustrating to have to buy 24 slingers when you only need two!

Despite this I decided yesterday that I would give them another look and ordered five bags from their Dark Ages range of Andalusian Arabs. I'm going to start off using them to make an all-option DBA army (III/34ab). If they're decent enough figures, I will most likely place an order for some Carolingian Franks so that I could put together a historically matched pair of armies. After that, because of the number of miniatures in each bag, I would only need a few more in order to be able to put together Big Battle DBA versions of the army. But considering the rate at which I am currently painting, I think such plans would be pretty far off. Especially since my initial purpose was to just get a sample of Old Glory's stuff. It would even be satisfying for me to finally have a couple of armies from Book Three of DBA's army lists. Anything more than that might be asking too much of this painter.

Possible FoG Warning

I've become increasingly interested in the game Field of Glory since it's release a year or two ago. I bought a copy of the rules a year ago but set them aside in fairly short order. I couldn't bring myself to read through the book and that was it for some time. Since then I have noticed more and more references to it and decided to give the game another look. I've spent some time now looking through the various companion books that I've purchased and I feel like I should really make an effort to read the rules. I realized today that I've become so accustomed to the simplicty of DBA that the FoG book itself was a turn off. But then it occured to me that I should instead try to think about it as more like Warhammer or Warhammer Ancients rather than comparing it to DBA or even DBM, despite their shared basing conventions.

It has a chunky and somewhat lavish feel and is a very well illustrated rulebook, it is an Osprey product afterall, with a bunch of related period-themed army books. The army lists used are based on a point value system and they seem to allow for a decent amount of flexibility in the compostion and organization of one's chosen army. So given that adjustment to my thinking, I am once again going to see if there's enough there to sustain my interest over the amount of time I know it would take me to paint even just one army. Even though I think it could be a lot of fun and the usage of battle groups reminds me of the old Armati rules, I am just not sure if it would be worth it since one FoG starter army uses the same number of figures as five or six armies for DBA. To justify that, it seems like it had better be a very fun game.

As for the here and now, today I finished painting the 25mm knight and glued him to his base. I am no however planning on completing the base until I'm working on the bases of the archers and billmen as well. This afternoon I sprayed the primer coat of paint onto the billmen and mounted them on their temporary stands. I'm excited about being ready to begin painting them as they are some of my favorite miniatures in this range. It's too late for me to get started on them tonight but I'm content to wait until tomorrow as I can in the meantime start reading the FoG book. Hopefully it will be good enough that I have something positive to report.

Two Weeks In

Today is diceRolla's two week anniversary... salut! Even though it's a pretty early milestone to be celebrating, I'm still pretty pleased with how things have gone so far. I've painted every day and feel like I've done a decent job with the blog updates. So hoo-ray for me!

As for the hobby part of the day, I didn't do quite as much as I had thought possible but oh well. The billmen are now all cleaned of their mold lines and will be primed tomorrow. Also the 25mm guy is virtually done. I still need to touch up some areas around his belt and do a little more with his sword's hilt and pommel, but otherwise everything else is complete. I'll post a picture once the marker is finished since the WIP shot was already close to being fully painted.

Barker Marker WIP

Despite what I wrote yesterday, I went back to painting the 25mm figure for use as a Barker (Z.O.C.) Marker. I didn't make any progress on the billmen so when I had time to paint, it was again the only thing ready. And besides, I thought, why not give it another go? Even though I painted for only about a half hour tonight, I'm starting to feel better about him. I think at this point I might as well finish painting him and stick with my original plan and complete the Barker Marker. Tomorrow promises to be a good one for getting in some quality painting time and I'm hopeful that I can do the rest of the painting on this project, and perhaps even get the base done!

Noting the Z.O.C.

I'm still trying to paint every day, but once I sat down this evening I realized that I didn't have anything new prepared for painting. Fortunately, just before I rationalized taking the day off, I remembered that I had started late last summer work on a 25mm Hundred Years War miniature from the Perry brother's Agincourt range. My plan was to mount it on a 40mm square base so that I could use it as a Zone Of Control marker for use in De Bellis Antiquitatis. I already have a Z.O.C. marker, or Barker Marker as it is more commonly refered amongst DBA players, which I had made about four years ago to use with my classical period armies. I thought it would be nice to make a new Barker Marker to accompany my HYW: English army, as well as whatever other medieval armies with which I end up.

Once painted and mounted the larger scale figure should be functional as a marker since it will be easy to handle and use during a game, but also still looking good and fitting in visually with this part of my collection. So for about an hour tonight I went back to painting the big fellow. It's a nice change of pace but I want to resume painting my 15mm English as soon as I can... I just don't want to have to scrape off all the mold lines. Ugh, lousy mold lines.

What I'm Painting

Yesterday I resumed painting some medieval archers with longbows which I had initially begun painting approximately six months ago. Last summer I started work on an English army of the Hundred Years War for the game De Bellis Antiquitatis using the beautiful 15mm-scale HYW range by Corvus Belli. I completed my first element for the army, a base of two wild Irish kerns that would serve as my Psiloi, just before my wedding on August 20, 2008. In the fall I managed to paint another three elements (spearmen, crossbowmen, and a bombard) as well as priming the aforementioned archers and giving their skin its first coat of color. But that was all until I finally got back to it yesterday afternoon. I did some more painting today and will hopefully be getting photos up soon.

After this batch of archers is complete, this is what I will still have left to paint for my Hundred Years War English army:

3 mounted command
4 dismounted command
6 mounted men-at-arms
8 dismounted men-at-arms
18 archers with longbows
4 billmen
Camp and camp followers

I think I should be able to finish tomorrow the 4 archers that I’m currently painting and so may start prepping the billmen tonight, but even if not they should be ready to go by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest.