Victorian Civilians - Empire of the Dead

One of the scenarios in the Empire of the Dead game, required there to be 10 civilians on the board. They are essentially going to be the prey for one faction; Werewoves or Vampries, whilst the opposing faction - Gentlemen or Brotherhood, are trying to protect them!

So as part of my recent mini figure haul from Westwind, I grabbed their assorted civilian pack, and a pack of their strumpets (love that word!).

So I got 6 males and 4 females finished and ready to give me an interesting assortment of 'targets' for the game!

Again they were the older style figures with cast bases, which I cut away to put them on the round plastic bases, and effected a paving pattern with greenstuff.

The 'gents' arrayed outside the cemetery...

... from L to R; the old codger, the stevedore/sailor(?), the chimney sweep, the drunk, the paper boy and the bare knuckle fighter...

And the 'ladies of the night'...

... quite a mixed bag of strumpets here! I have tried to restrain the colours and not go too over the top. Thinking that these women would be hard living and probably equally hard drinking souls, frequenting gin shops and the like, and then selling the 'wares' to those they can find in the street, probably in not the cleanest of locales... I wanted to give them a rather grubby look, yet perhaps with an attempt at 'airs and graces.'

However, to quote local parlayance; "Go on mate, you're 'aving a larf! I wouldn't touch 'er wif yours!"... ;-)

Bearing in mind the diseases that would be widespread by dealing with such as these delictables of the nocturnal setting, is it any wonder someone set about their demise with a rather sharp knife!

Also remember that the cure for syphilis at the time was to inject mercury down the shaft of the willy, todger, johnson, call it what you will. Whatever you call it, the thought of it brings tears to my eyes I can tell you! ;-)

 These would have made a nice little start to my Painting Challenge entries but I had started them last week so no hope of that. Still it clears the painting table for the Challenge to commence!

So I think that brings to more or less conclusion the figures I need to play most scenarios for the Empire of the Dead. Now I just need to make a selection of city buildings and effect a terrain board for them. I have got hold of some brick patterned Plasticard and am just awaiting Atenocities Workshop getting into stock some doors and windows, and I can make a start. I have an idea for a corner public house to start with...

However this project will have to vie for attention with 'Goblin Town' that I started making yesterday, for The Hobbit. My Hobbit starter set arrived in the mail today, after having my new Hobbit Rulebook arrive on Friday, so I am positivley fizzing with creativity. The new rules look great and I am looking forward to trying them out...

As ever I am typically biting off more than I can chew with projects in states of completion around the house! Just aswell I have an understanding wife!

----------ooOoo----------

Beauties and the 'Beast'... oh, and the Wehrmacht!

A bit of a varied and eclectic mix of subject material in today's post! First up...

Reaper Strumpet and Madam

I have had this Reaper Strumpet and Madam, undercoated on the workbench, for many months now, and just hadn't got round to painting them, I guess as I haven't played Legends of the High Seas for a while. I tend to paint what I am actively playing at the time.

But with the VSF Prussians project kicking off, I decided to clear the workbench of its distracting backlog.

It also made a welcome change to painting 15mm WWII stuff.

This strumpet had a bit of a saga attached to it... I bought the figure set off an ebay trader, but when the pack arrived this figure was snapped off at the ankles. It was in a sealed blister pack, and the ebay trader suggested I contact Reaper as their customer service is good.
A little while later, the replacement pack arrived... with the same model snapped in the same place!
I couldn't believe it.
I got back on to Reaper who apologized and sent out another pack. Apparently it had been a faulty batch...
When the good figure finally arrived, by then I had gone off LotHS gaming and was doing other stuff... so they sat unpainted for a while.

As part of the Analogue Hobbies Winter Painting Challenge, I painted up a dark skinned beauty from the Indian subcontinent. And as I already had a blonde (that got me into to trouble with SWMBO!), I decided to continue the 'international' feel of my strumpets, and this last figure I felt perhaps had a little of the orient about her, so I painted her with black hair and pale skin.

 So here she is, provocatively raising her dress, for a flash of underwear! Bound to catch a sailors eye!

Strumpet

The last figure of the set is the Madam, of the establishment, looking after her charges and ensuring plenty of work comes their way. She holds out a large tome, I am not sure whether this is a list of clientele, or services on offer! I leave that to your imagination.

Madam

So now I just have to make a suitable establishment for them to occupy. Here they all stand together touting for business...

Strumpets and Madam out for business beside the Chandler, its not just the ships that need servicing after all!

Business is never far away in a busy port...

Clientele arrive on scene no doubt attracted by the bright colours and posturing. Party on!

Next up today... the 'Beast'... Golfimbul

The appearance of this blog has always had a strong 'Lord of the Rings' theme, and I enjoyed playing this game for sometime, until I grew somewhat disillusioned with the way GW were handling the game and hobby.

I went whole heartedly into their new game War of the Ring, only to become increasingly frustrated with it... It now appears this game is being dropped, recent chat with a friend at my FLGS says the item (War of the Ring), and its supplement (Battlehosts)... are no longer on their order system...

GW re-released the army lists for the Skirmish Game, but I never got round to investing in them... and haven't played the game for well over a year, possibly two, now...

And yet I still have a fondness for Middle-Earth and the works of Tolkien, and still check out the LOTR hobby blogs out there...

One such blog; Dramatic Katastases by Panagiotis Batsos of Athens, Greece, recently featured a post on Golfimbul. I left a comment there concerning the availability of this figure, as its seems currently discontinued and thus unavailable. Panagiotis replied that they were still in the shops over there, and that he'd be happy to send me one over!

I was rather surprised by this kind offer, and very happy when the package duly arrived. Panagiotis wouldn't take any payment, saying that my blog had inspired him to launch his own blogging! What a kind comment!

So, as you can imagine, Golfimbul jumped to the front of the painting queue...

Here he is depicted as a large fat goblin upon a warg mount.

I painted him in my usual manner for Mordor forces; earthy colours for the clothing, dark metal for the armour and appropriate flesh tone, then all washed in Black Wash. Then the original base colours are worked up again, with the odd highlight here and there and a little facial detail of eyes and teeth added. Scenically based as desired.

I added a small piece of bark chip from the garden as a rock on the base.

Here's a little detail on Golfimbul, courtesy of wikipedia:

"Golfimbul was a chieftain of the Orcs of Mount Gram, who led his band in an invasion of the Shire. He was defeated at the Battle of Greenfields by a force led by Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took; the battle was only the first of two which were ever fought within the borders of the Shire (the second was the Battle of Bywater, the last battle of the War of the Ring, where his descendant Pippin fought). Bullroarer knocked off Golfimbul's head with a club and it soared into the air, finally falling into a rabbit hole. According to Hobbit folklore, this inspired the game of golf, which takes its name from the Orc. Golfimbul's name was probably specifically constructed for this pun; fimbul is Old Norse for "great".^[3]
The Orc incursion in the northern Shire occurred during the reign of Arassuil as Chieftain of the Dúnedain, and the Orcs led by Golfimbul were but the most western pack of Orcs which had left the Hithaeglir. The only reason Golfimbul could make it all the way to the Shire was that the Rangers at the time were fighting many battles with Orcs, preventing them from settling all of Eriador."

I look forward to the chance of fielding Golfimbul in a raid on the Shire. I just need to make a load of hobbit holes and paint up a pile of hobbits first - they're buried somewhere in the lead mountain... ;-)

A big thank you to Panagiotis, once again :-)

Last for today - German Infantry Gun platoon, Flames of War.

I recently felt compelled to get this 7.5cm leIG18 Infantry Gun completed for my Wehrmacht forces.

I have entered another mini FoW tournie; Bob Pearce's 2012 FRACAS in Shannon on 4th August; a 600 point small forces affair, themed for Early War.

I must admit Early War is not of great interest to me, it all seems to have been rather one sided in history, and doesn't greatly appeal. But a chance for more gaming practice for the later CTA tournament couldn't be ignored.

My Wehrmacht Grenadiers will do nicely for games set throughout the war, and to these I just needed to add a little extra kick to finish off my small infantry company. Some mortars will help with smoke and pinning, which I already had but I thought some infantry guns could give me a versatile little platoon to help my grenadiers; smoke, bombardment and direct fire which could even deter some of the thinly armoured tanks of the early war period.

Observer

I was a little unsure about my paint scheme though... I wanted them to match my existing forces and was a bit concerned they should be German field grey... but Bob was quite unconcerned at their colour, so long as the list was accurate and appropriate models were fielded.

7.5cm leIG18 infantry gun team

So we'll see how my day of small games will go. I haven't played such small games before, nor seen Early War forces in action so I am not too sure what to expect, though I suspect mostly infantry forces at this small game level... time will tell.

SMG platoon command team

I look forward to trying these out with my Lehr Panzergrenadiers too for Late War, as this gun was widely used throughout the war. And no doubt when I get round to Mid War it will be equally useful there.

Now, I MUST press on with those VSF Prussians!

Dusky maiden

A return to my Legends of the High Seas era, with a painted civilian 'Strumpet' figure.

The model is a 28mm scale Reaper miniature, part of a set.

I have seen the model painted several times on various blogs and wargames websites featuring Pirate gaming.

She was painted as part of my entries in to the AHWPC.

I thought I would give the model a different twist, in part due to the outburst on the domestic front, my prior 'strumpet' caused (as seen above in blog header picture!)

As you can see from the side bar picture of 'Scott & Tracey', my wife is a 'dusky maiden', who took a little umbridge at me painting a blonde temptress. To be honest I had never thought twice about it - just liking the combination of colours I put together for the model...

So amends needed to be made to earn back some 'brownie points' on the home front...

Therefore thinking laterally about my main inspiration for 'piratey action', I contemplated a certain Jack Sparrow's , ahem Captain Jack Sparrow's, voyages...

So if Jack had been as far from the Caribbean as Singapore, he and other pirate and merchant captains could well have stopped off in the Indian subcontinent on the way past, and thus we have the sorry tale of Prashanthi Maduralawa, who fled from the arranged marriage that was lined up for her, and fell in love, and off to sea, with her bonnie sailor boy... but her sad tale continues as her beau loses his life in ship to ship action fighting off a pirate vessel, who take the crew prisoner, and poor Prashanthi ends up in Tortuga, having to resort to the oldest profession to make ends meet...

So a brown skinned beauty, with very OTT make up, but it had to be this gaudy to stand out against the dark skin, and to attract her clientele!

So there we have her, a nice change of pace from my recent WWII 15mm activities, and a worthy entry I hope for the AHWPC, special category of  "Sarah's choice". Sarah being Curt's wife, who is hosting the challenge.

First pack of 'pirate civilians' painted up

Whilst I enjoy making terrain, it's nice to get back to painting miniatures sometimes. Especially when faced with a long slog of sticking on hundreds of roof tiles... So obviously with this renewed period interest I have been scouting around for suitable miniatures.
This first pack of Reaper miniatures arrived first, and has accordingly been painted up first.

Strumpet

 

A wonderful strumpet. The first of a small group, I am just awaiting a replacement pack from Reaper for the others due to a miscast in the pack. She's a great figure, one that I first saw on Elhion's blog via the Lead Adventure forum, so that was a cool find! I have to say she was a serious change to the more usual battle ready wargames figures we use in gaming. After all, I don't often get to paint bright blues, yellows and pink! Plus I am always a little wary painting female figures as I find the skin shade and highlight needs to be done a little more subtly than male warrior types, otherwise the heavy brown base tone can wreck the look of the female figure. I am rather pleased the way she has turned out.
Also, you wouldn't believe the angst this has caused the Bowman household. My wife immediately took umbridge at the fact I painted her blonde.... Jeez, the green envy monster came out to play that day! How can you get so reactionary over a 1" metal figure? Go figure... ;-)
Anyway if she caused that much of a stir there, lets hope she distracts my male opponents suitably on the games table ;-)

[UPDATE:  this is my entry to the Air Supplies competition, Jan 2014, (http://www.airsupplies.co.uk/blog/competition-win-bambi-bb8-silent-air-compressor/) , check out the link for more :-) ]


The next figure is a beggar, down and out, tramp like figure. Bound to be a few of these hanging around the port.

Beggar

 

And last a huge blacksmith. This guy is very large indeed. Reaper are slightly on the large side of '28mm' scale figures, so this guy is a giant compared to my poor Foundry pirates. Still, working that anvil and furnace all day is bound to make a big strong boy... not some wimpy looking blacksmith portrayed by dear Orlando. Interesting - he's been a blacksmith twice now, in PotC and Kingdom of Heaven.

Blacksmith

Final shot of today's montage, just messing about with my batch of jungle plants and a large hill I made some time ago, together make a nice jungle isle, although it could do with a sandy beach perhaps...

 

 

Jungle Isle

That's it for today, must press on with those roof tiles for the Governors mansion.