Latest WWII Output

After a couple false starts, my minor reboot of my WWII skirmish forces has been a great success. I'm quite satisfied with my work on these figures - or at least as satisfied as I can be, given that I'm trying some things for the first time - and I'm really liking using Artizan for the vast majority of my figures. They're full of character, and, of course, they all scale well with each other.

I've now got sufficient forces painted up for a game of Operation Squad. I've been focusing my efforts on finishing up a couple terrain projects - hedgerows and a farm complex, namely - and am very close to having a game-ready collection. The RPG campaign I've been running with my wife since 2010 is due to wrap up in the next couple weeks, after which I see lots more time for minis gaming. I can't wait!

In the meantime, here's what I've got painted up so far: a British rifle squad, Vickers HMG, and light mortar team (all Durham Light Infantry), and two German Aufklarungs half-squadrons (Panzer Lehr). This is actually slightly more than I need for a game of OS, but it gives the British side some nice force-building options.

I got to take my first crack at splinter camo pattern on the helmets. It ain't great, but it's a good start.

That squad leader front and center is easily one of my all-time favorite minis. So much character: the cigarette, the Mauser pistol with the rifle stock attachment, the wristwatch - he's even got an Iron Cross hanging from his throat. Plus his smock gave me more opportunity to work on my splinter camo technique.

Despite previous posts decrying fancy basing, I decided to have some fun with the support weapon bases. In the words of Doc Holliday, apparently my hypocrisy knows no bounds. 

It wouldn't be Normandy without some dead cows, so why not incorporate it into the light mortar base?

I did a little conversion work with the infantry here - Artizan Brits don't sport any netting on their helmets, and it was fairly common in Normandy, so I modeled some on a select few - another goal of mine is to get handier with sculpting putty.

I also couldn't resist taking a crack at painting up a Panther. This was my first pass with painting 1/56 scale armor, and I quite enjoyed it. For the camo I employed a mix of airbrush and drybrush. I expect that as my airbrush skills get better, I'll use that more and more until eventually that's all I'll use for the base colors. I'm also thinking about adding some foliage to the hull and turret.

The tank commander is mounted on a rare earth magnet, so he's removable and movable.

I've gone ahead and ordered some more vehicles and guns (250/1 halftracks for my German scouts, an 88, a 6-pounder, etc.) and will be adding a painted squad of Brits and some support elements to each side in order to enable games of NUTS! or perhaps Chain of Command (which I have yet to check out but looks totally awesome). Pictures of these reinforcements will follow as they're completed, of course.

The title for the British edition of NUTS!

Why I'll Always Be An Aesthetic Snob

I've posted before on the aesthetic appeal of miniatures games being one of the primary draws of the hobby for me. So you can imagine how gratified I was to read a post over at The League of Ausburg stating the very same. Best quote of the post:

If this is wargames porn then I am a pornographer without shame. Enjoy my dark secret and damn the eyes of wargaming's Mary Whitehouse Brigade. Mediocrity breeds the same.

I couldn't agree more.

Games featuring unpainted figures or, worse, proxies are the sort of affairs best conducted behind drawn curtains, with many a backwards glance over the shoulder. "I'm just testing out the new rules for this unit I haven't ordered yet, honest!" Games featuring unpainted or proxy figures run in public?

For me, the work I put into building the aesthetic appeal of miniatures games is sort of the point of the hobby itself. Otherwise I might as well be playing hex-and-chit wargames or their computer equivalents. To my mind, it's worth gaming less if it means each individual game looks better. (And, honestly, my [in]frequent gaming is due more to the fact that minis aren't my primary hobby; insistence on high-quality tabletop presentation need not be a barrier to frequent gameplay if minis are your main concern.)

We live in a world of instant gratification. I see no problem with taking my time on this one thing, and of experiencing the payoff of my hard work; of seeing my painting and terrain-building efforts get better and better over time, and of reveling in the uniquely thrilling beauty of a fully-realized tabletop layout.

On the Higher Standards of Being a Hobbyist

I've been involved in the miniatures hobby in some capacity or another for over 20 years now. Just a babe in the woods compared to a lot of old salts, but still long enough to see fads come and go and long-term trends play out. One of the trends I've been most simultaneously fascinated and disturbed by has been the rising standard in what's considered "acceptable" for a rank-and-file, wargame-ready miniature in terms of painting and presentation. Apparently I'm not alone (PDF link). Quoth Mr. Priestly:

Now, I’m not suggesting that this perpetuation of a style and quality of presentation is a bad thing. In so many ways, it is a very good thing, and an entirely positive way of presenting our hobby, both to fellow hobbyists and to prospective ones.  

The reason why all this leaves me feeling a little hollow is simply this – I know I can’t do it! Where, once, I could paint an army with a certain sense of individualism, with confidence, and with pride in the finished result, now I sometimes despair of picking up the paintbrush and showing the results to my fellow gamers.

There can be no doubt that the standard for wargaming miniatures has risen steadily since the dawn of the hobby. An interesting observation made in the essay is that the rising standard has also led to increased homogenization of style. I tend to agree. I certainly wish these days we'd see more John Blanches or Bryan Ansells held up as worthy standards of aspiration alongside the McVeys and the Dallimores.

Interestingly, my personal bugbear is not painting, per se, but basing. It's my own version of "back in my day . . .". Wellsir, back in my day, ya painted the base green, ya slapped some glue on the top (or, if you were really lazy/painting a big unit, you just used the paint while it was still wet as an adhesive), and ya dipped the base in a bag of Woodland Scenics flock and called it good enough. You did this even for your centerpiece figures, your exquisitely-painted masterpieces. But somewhere along the way, it was decided that bases needed as much attention as the figure itself. First it was texturing bases with gravel and stone. Then it was adding static grass. Now it's adding flowers and bushes and skulls and whatever else until the base becomes a miniature in its own right.

And in that, I echo Priestly's lament. Painting figures for the joy of it has always been a big part of the hobby for me (always secondary to actually playing, mind). But, even though I've gone along with the crowd along the Fancy Basing Road, it's enervating, just like in the quote above; the daunting task of spending another 30 minutes on a "proper" base after finishing with the figure. Basing used to be my favorite part of miniatures painting, because it was quick and easy while still giving the figure a nice "finished" look - putting the bow on, so to speak. Now it's my least favorite task.

Back when I was collecting old Grenadier and Ral Partha figures for my Fantasy Warriors armies, I intentionally used a more old-fashioned basing method (as pictured above), and it was a welcome relief. And yet I continue to base all my other figures in the latter-day styles. Because, let's face it, it looks good. I just wonder sometimes if there's a middle ground.

Armies of Arcana Battle Report #5

Nat-Li, priestess of Athena, stood by the banks of the flowing river, staring down at the ripples that washed near her sandaled feet. It was cold up here in the mountains, the more so for it being just before dawn. The sky overhead was pale gray and she could hear the sounds of the army forming up for battle behind her. Scouts had returned bearing news that the undead host of the feared necromancer Germanotta was trudging its way through this riverine pass and the decision had been made to spring an ambush.

Germanotta. She wasn't always known by that name. Not back when they were little, when they had played together as sisters in the hall of their parents... But that was a long time ago, Nat-Li thought. Now the sorceress commanding an army of abominations was her sister in name only. Today she would see this stain on the family's honor expunged!

It's been nearly two years since I've had the opportunity to play a full-fledged miniatures game. It's been my intention to start playing more in the latter half of this year, and as I was reading through old battle reports on this blog a couple weeks ago, feeling nostalgic for good times past, I realized the time had come at last. So the wife and I sat down for a good old-fashioned epic fantasy slugfest this afternoon, with the always-capable Atomic Banana operating the camera and providing color commentary. Let's look at some pictures, shall we?

On the Importance of Fluff

I'm re-reading the Adeptus Titanicus rulebook and old Epic battle reports from White Dwarf and, in so doing, I'm being reminded of the value of "fluff" (ugh, sorry to use that term) in miniatures gaming. Lining up armies and having a bash is all well and good, but the games take on a much deeper meaning if there's some sort of background to the conflict and the forces involved. An extra dimension is added. It's why I'm not just painting up generic "Normandy" miniatures for my WWII project, but instead choosing a time and place (the fighting around Tilly-sur-Seulles during the first week after D-Day) and modeling units accordingly. Thus, it's not just "British", it's men of the 6th Durham Light Infantry; it's not just "Germans", it's panzergrenadiers of the Panzer Lehr Division. All of this adds an extra level of immersion to the game, even if the battles themselves are not based on any actual engagement.

Something that's long been missing from my fantasy wargaming (first with Fantasy Warriors and now with Armies of Arcana) has been this sense of background immersion. I was going back through old posts and noticed that in my very first FW battle report (which was also the very first post on this blog), I wrote a bit of game fiction in the style of those old White Dwarf battle reports. I'd like to get back to doing that once I start gaming and posting battle reports again in earnest, but without a clear idea of a game world that the battles are taking place in, it's tough to do that.

Part of the problem has been getting a fix on what this fantasy world might look like based on the miniatures in our collection so far. A few weeks ago I posted that, in the wake of Ray Harryhausen's death, I was coming to realize that our Undead and Amazon armies convey a pretty strong vibe of pulp fantasy. That vision has only grown stronger in the time since, growing to the point that I'm now envisioning a sort of Appendix N-style fantasy world of amazons, necromancers, cavemen, and dinosaurs, all with a healthy dose of post-apocalyptic fantasy thrown into the mix. I've got visions of making some terrain pieces of "futuristic"-style ruins, maybe a half-buried spaceship, and of tracking down some vintage fantasy miniatures armed with sci-fi blasters and such.

To illustrate the value of even a bit of fluff: as soon as I'd figured out even a background as vaguely-sketched as this, I immediately came up with an idea for a third fantasy army, a project I've been wanting to put together for some years now. I've toyed with various ideas: crusading knights, "regular" dwarves, "feral" dwarves, "Roman" gorillas, Wargods of Aegyptus, and so forth, but they all felt too much like bog standard fantasy or, at best, a thinly-veiled derivative. With my pulp fantasy idea, though, I instantly thought of a perfect third project: cavemen and prehistoric animals! I haven't decided if I'm gonna go with "early" hominids and dinosaurs (as in the style of the Frazetta painting above) or "later" hominids and Ice Age mammals (certainly, a woolly mammoth or two on the caveman side would form a suitable counterpart to my Undead Mammoth). But whatever the case, it certainly feels right. I love the idea of there being this degenerate race of savage cave dwellers as a counterpoint to the bronze-clad Amazons, and I really like the various caveman miniatures I've looked at so far. I don't know why I never thought of doing a Frazetta-esque fantasy army before, particularly in light of the Amazons and their curvy general, but it's on now!

Or rather it will be once I clear a project or two off my table--hoping to get started on this one maybe by fall or winter. In the meantime, I'm hoping to fill in some of the details of this Appendix N fantasy world that's brewing in my head.