Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (undead warband for Mordheim)

[Hobgoblin]

Here's the lizardman general for Mayhem. Mounted generals and heroes convey command and control advantages in Mayhem, which makes sense.

The colour scheme for the bird is loosely based on that of walden's hornbill.

[Hobgoblin]

And here's the first batch of super-quick wolf riders. Same black + drybrush scheme for the riders as the foot orcs, but with a couple of slight refinements to make them a bit more colourful. They're now being based - the fourth element for the orcs so far.

[Hobgoblin]

Here's the first finished wolfrider element, along with the red guards. I've got another lot of wolfriders close to completion, and a lot more orc infantry underway ...

[Hobgoblin]

Early days yet, but the forces are just starting to shape up ...

[Hobgoblin]

And the goblins better have a general too ...

[fred]

I think the lizards are a little out numbered!

Great progress.

[Hobgoblin]

I think the lizards are a little out numbered!

Great progress.

Cheers! Yes, they are a bit - but many reinforcements are on the way. Some reptile cavalry next, and then many more infantry.

I reckon that Mayhem will work well with very large armies indeed, and I intend to test that proposition to the full. The reason I think that is that the "overdrive" mechanism enables you to bring up reserves fairly quickly. That's something that doesn't really work in a lot of wargames; if you leave units at the table edge for a few turns, they're unlikely to play much of a part in the battle. But if you've got a few standards and heroes at the rear, thus keeping your likely command points high, you can bring up units pretty quickly - perhaps with four moves in a single turn.

[fred]

Intersting to hear about the Overdrive mechanic. We played a bit of Mayhem a couple of years ago, and really liked some of the mechanics. Overdrive was good, where you spend increasingly more command points to focus on a single unit taking multiple moves. The idea of standards by having multiple of the same unit was nice too.

But my gaming buddy was put off by the roll a 1 and you kill the enemy mechanism. Mainly because I killed his heavy knights, who rolled 5d4 and failed to get a 1, and I rolled 1d10 and got a 1.

We never got as far as exploring the big battle potential, so it will be interesting to see how it goes.

Also I think the rules have been updated quite a bit since I played, so it will be good to see what has changed too.

[Hobgoblin]

Intersting to hear about the Overdrive mechanic. We played a bit of Mayhem a couple of years ago, and really liked some of the mechanics. Overdrive was good, where you spend increasingly more command points to focus on a single unit taking multiple moves. The idea of standards by having multiple of the same unit was nice too.

But my gaming buddy was put off by the roll a 1 and you kill the enemy mechanism. Mainly because I killed his heavy knights, who rolled 5d4 and failed to get a 1, and I rolled 1d10 and got a 1.

I actually quite like that sort of thing! There should, I think, always be potential for the best-laid plans to gang aglae.

The "build your own units" aspect is great - much more room for distinguishing between different troop types than in most massed-battle games, I think.

Here are some reinforcements for the reptiles - to be based up tomorrow.

[Hobgoblin]

And here are the based cavalry(lizard)men.

[Hobgoblin]

Here's a rather crude and garish hydra. The miniature itself is quite basic - it's one of those "large 15mm pieces that strangely fails to conform to any of the standards of 28mm". And the detail is really rough. And the pose is oddly static.

BUT .. it is a nice big piece of metal and - from the god's eye view of the gaming table - it'll do the job. I decided that there was no point trying to make it look realistic and instead scoured some medieval depictions of the Apocalypse of St John for inspiration. Rather than a hydra, it's more of a Beast, I think.

I might use it as a Duke of Hell in the Moorcockian chaos army I'm putting together for Mayhem. I can also see it getting a bit of 28mm time in Havoc (the hydra is one of the "Named" in that game) or SBH. (I really don't care much about matching basing or that sort of thing).

[Cubs]

Ray Harryhausen would approve!

[Hobgoblin]

Ray Harryhausen would approve!

Ha! Yes, it's got a sort of claymation look (and quite possibly some visible fingerprints on the greenstuffing too!).

This is the kind of thing that I was thinking of when painting it (although I found some much more brightly coloured ones in books):

[Cubs]

Those old medieval pictures of monsters are minging, the way they have disturbingly human features and bland expressions. Horrible.

[Hobgoblin]

Indeed: they're monsters rather than imaginary animals.

(I think the pantomime-horse front legs of the miniature lend it an additional layer of horror - or at least of general wrongness!)