Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (ogre bodyguard for Mordheim)

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

They're by East Riding Miniatures - one of those "undersung" 15mm ranges with lots of interesting stuff. There'sa  whole batch of them here.

The frogs are perfect example of the sort of "liminal" or "interscale" miniature I was blathering about above. They're big and bulky in 15mm, roughly human-sized in 20mm and small in 28mm. I'm going to get some 60 x 40 sabots to use them as hordes or lurkers with the 28mm Slann HotT army I've got planned.

[Hobgoblin]

I painted up almost 20 sabot bases this morning - just in time for a hefty game of 15mm Dragon Rampant this evening: four a side, with a huge number of big monsters on the table: two dragons, a hydra, a tyrannosaur, a ravage bear and an ettin. All but the hydra were 25mm beasties who worked just fine. We also had five units of light infantry, three elite foot, two lots of lesser warbeasts, a drider (single-unit venomous light rider) and some elite riders (the salamanders I painted up for HotT).

We started off using cm instead of inches for moves and shooting, but quickly settled for inches, keeping cm for inter-unit distance. This worked well: the smaller footprint of the 15mm units meant that there was plenty of room for manoeuvre on the dinner table, but shooting and charges were suitably threatening.

Here are some of the units on their new sabots. The goblin infantry are the last two hordes I painted up for Tuesday's HoTT tournament (great fun!).

[Hobgoblin]

For a science-fantasy feel, we gave the Harook scouts venomous (for shooting rather than close combat), making them quite nasty when shooting. For the Dagonites (see previous posts), we bent the rules a bit by allowing them to be elite foot with the shooting and venomous (for shooting) upgrades. That took them to an illegal 11 points, but they didn't unbalance the game at all.

I've also been exploring the possibilities of assembling some chaos armies from random RPG miniatures by dint of the sabots:

[swiftnick]

Lovely stuff and the new sabot basing look good.
I have a load of middle earth armies to do. Going to nick your black skin tone for the urukhai and the lighter one for the goblins.

[beefcake]

Yes. Very nice. I too like the basing. Nice range of minis there.

[Jagannath]

They look absolutely brill - I particularly like the orc/goblin unit, and I love seeing the FourA slug-man whenever I see that mini.

[Severian]

Great units and basing! The lizardmen in particular really work well.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, all!

I did feel that 15mm was very much the way to go with Dragon Rampant when we played it yesterday. The extra space on the table is a big plus. I also like the way it works with sabots, as casualty removal is crystal-clear. For reduced-model units, the empty space on a sabot provides gives a space for a dice to record casualties. And building 12-strong units out of three- or four-slot sabots means that you don't end up with a lot of empty base space once casualties mount.

One of yesterday's players got stuck into the magic system in a way that we hadn't before. So we had befuddles and healing going on as well as power bolt (pretty much the only spell we've ever used in our games, I think). I'm always a bit cautious of magic in fantasy wargames (too many bad memories of Warhammer!), but I thought that it worked very well in DR. With all the greater warbeasts on the table, we had quite a few "Harryhausen moments" with big monsters charging at each other repeatedly, and some judicious use of healing allowed a hydra to prevail over a dinosaur eventually (fittingly, really, as the hydra proved to be metaphorically hydra-headed).

Yesterday was also a good reminder of what a great game DR is. It has a lot of inherent balance: greater warbeasts and bellicose foot are terrifying on the charge, but don't like it up 'em; spellcasting comes at opportunity costs; elite riders mop up on the flat but are vulnerable when lured into rough ground; light and heavy foot are better defensively than on the attack. And the most powerful units have limited numbers, so that they're vulnerable to attrition; lots of our elite-foot units were dominant at the start, but struggled as frequent clashes wore them down.

That latter point works particularly well because of the way that "bells and whistles" are priced in the game: upgrades are expensive and lead towards an "eggs in one basket" approach. So, our 11-point illegal Dagonites were deadly, but not necessarily as game-changing as the nine points of light foot that eventually did for them.

[swiftnick]

Cheers!

I didn't know that Warbases were based (ahem!) in these parts. I bought some of their sabots at Claymore and really like them. The big advantage that the Wargames Products site has over Warbases and Supreme Littleness is that it's very up front about customisable sizes. (I've often looked at Warbases and wished they'd give dimensions for the various configurations they produce - or maybe they do and I've somehow just not spotted them!).

Did you know Supreme littleness are based in Porty?

[Hobgoblin]

I didn't! The world grows small ...

Here are three more 15mm ogres - in fact 25mm Chronicle orcs (aka black orcs). I really like the two bodyguard figures with the fur-brimmed helmets. I much prefer these chaps to any actual 15mm ogres I know of. Because Nick Lund's miniatures are always so brutal-looking, they make great "big nasties" in a smaller scale.

In last week's game of Dragon Rampant, I used the first three of these as a reduced-model unit of elite foot. I'll probably use six-strong units of them in future, though, just for the simplicity of the counting. I have some nice wedge-shaped sabots from Warbases that will suit them.

I've also got another ten or so on the go, including the leader, the shaman and another couple of bodyguards. With reduced-model units and a spell-caster, they could easily make up a DR force on their own - with the lighter-armoured sorts as bellicose foot, the armoured ones as heavy foot or bellicose foot with shiny armour, and the bodyguards as elite foot.

The other crazy plan I'm considering is a saboting option for the Chronicle wolfriders I've amassed. I based the first couple on GW 25 x 50 bases, but all of them would actually fit onto 20 x 40 bases. Those could then be sabotted on 60 x 60 for 28mm HotT (and 15mm DR), but used individually on suitably small bases to match the coins of the foot in RPGs. As those wolves are huge even in 28mm, they would be greater warbeasts in 15mm DR - and a non-single-model unit of greater warbeasts would be a bit of a novelty.

Obviously, the foot ogres will work fine for 28mm games - I plan to get some 60 x 40 or 60 x 60 sabots to base them as (slightly deep) HOTT warbands or hordes.

[Severian]

Nicely done! I especially like the variegated fur cloaks - very striking.

[beefcake]

I was just going to say the same thing about the cloaks. Love it!

[jambo1]

Those Chronicle Orcs are lovely figures and sooo very nicely painted.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, all! More to come tonight, I hope, as another four are just about done.

Those Chronicle Orcs are lovely figures

Yes, I think they're great. I'm keen to get hold of some of the three champions from the range, which were a bit different from the others.

My only quibble with these orcs is that the "bulldog" head - as on the bareheaded fellow wielding a glaive on the right of the first sabot - was used a bit too much. The other heads and their variants are much nicer. But I do like how a fairly large range was created by swapping and modifying heads and weapons - as with Citadel's Fantasy Tribe range, of course.

The next D&D adventure I do for the kids and their friends is going to involve a whole tribe of ogres. I'm thinking of ways to make it viable for lowish-level characters - possibly a series of raised walkways or beams above the ogre lair, which will help smaller and more nimble creatures to avoid and outmanoeuvre them.

[Hobgoblin]

Here's the chief - one of the "bulldog" sort. He's dwarfed by his bodyguards, but I quite like that.