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

[Sunjester]

They look really good!

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, both!

Here are some kitbashed goblins. At various points, I've picked up bits and pieces of the old GW 'goblin regiment' sprue. These goblins seem to be widely disliked, and they do look pretty awkward, even in the official website photos, but I wondered if anything could be done with them through a bit of kitbashing.

Oddly enough, the spark for doing these was the thought of some swashbuckling games. I recently downloaded the Eureka 'All For One' rules, and I might pick up Ganesha's Flashing Blades. Goblins might seem an odd choice for that sort of game, but I thought they might work quite well for the assumed 17th/18th/19th-century background of many fairytales. I'm imagining scenarios involving soldiers rescuing captives from goblins and that sort of thing.

[Grumpy Gnome]

Looking good! Or rather, if not necessarily good… Gobliny. In a brilliantly Goblin kind of way.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, Rick!

I meant to say a bit more about my plans for these goblins before I had to get my daughter to school. The ecological slot I see them occupying (in a gaming sense) is in skirmish games with highly differentiated individual character roles - Battlesworn, Frostgrave, Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes, Havoc, etc.

It struck me that the roles in these games often match up - so that Battlesworn fighters = Frostgrave thugs = Havoc skirmishers (all roles that can be fulfilled by miniatures with a hand weapon and no shield). Similarly, the guy with polearm here could be a Frostgrave infantryman, a Battlesworn fighter and a Havoc spearman. Meanwhile, the fellow with two swords might be a brute or a rogue in Battlesworn, a dual-wielder in Havoc and a treasure-hunter in Frostgrave. And ASoBH has lots of potential for tailoring profiles.

And, of course, they'll all have roles to play in a "swashbucklers vs fairytale goblins" scenario - either as a pure RPG thing or as a tabletop hybrid using Savage Worlds, perhaps.

So I'm going to try to get about a dozen of them done, with at least four fighters/thugs/skirmishers as the cheapest or most common troop type and then a hefty dollop of specialists on top. I'm going to port in a couple of gretchin with blunderbuses to cover arquebusiers/marksmen/musketmen. I'll probably add a few cavalry types too - I quite fancy having one of these chaps on a boar (a nod to Fantasy Tribe great goblins and to Legend).

[beefcake]

Those are nice. Not tried Havoc, what's that like?

[Hobgoblin]

Those are nice. Not tried Havoc, what's that like?

Ah - now that requires quite an involved explanation! I've had the rulebook for years and have played it just once or twice, from memory. When we did play it, it was fantastic - a really great game with lots of original mechanics. But the rulebook is, to be frank, a mess. It's overwritten, poorly edited and far too long (it looks nice, though). But that's entirely separate from the quality of the game design. So the challenge is to tease out the game from the rulebook!

Brent's other rulebooks (Rogue Planet, Mayhem, The Battlefield) are all a huge improvement on Havoc (writing/editing-wise) and are also brilliant games. I'd say that all of his games can be a little awkward to understand until you actually play them. In the more recent rulesets, that's mainly because of the freshness of the concepts, though if I were being picky, I'd say that his preference for acronyms for stats (RAT over "shooting", for example, and MAD instead of "combat") doesn't help. But - from memory - Havoc is just as good as the others once you get it to the table. And in all cases, they are absolutely state-of-the-art wargames - fast-moving, exciting and intuitive.

So one thing I want to do over the summer is write up a quick QRS so we can remember how to play Havoc and - more importantly - keep that knowledge close to hand in easy-to-use format.

From memory again, one thing Havoc does really well is distinguish between different troop types. All miniatures fit into one archetype ("melee and shield", "duellist", "great weapon", etc.), and they can all do radically different things (big sweeping attacks that can hit multiple foes for "great weapons", for example). And there are brilliant rules for heroes and creatures (giants, hydras, etc.). It's a game for about 20 figures a side.

As others have noted, it's a game crying out for a cleaned-up second edition!

[Reed]

I saw this on your blog. Brilliant! I remember I saw some time ago a conversion using regular Goblins bodies and legs with Grot heads from 40k and weapon arms from Night Goblins, and the results were spectacular.

[Gibby]

Love those goblins! Cracking little figures!

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, both! I have four more of these very close to completion - but I've turned for the moment to some Tin Soldier orcs (a mere pound a pop brand new and very efficient delivery). Here's the a close-up of the first:

[swiftnick]

Looks pretty good.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks - I've got a small band of them done now, barring some greenery on the bases. Will try to finish them off today.

Here are some Hordes of the Things elements in 1/72. HotT's pretty much my favourite wargame, but the eponymous hordes tend to be underused - simply because the work-to-points ratio is deeply unfavourable! A horde element tends to have around twice as many figures as a warband or blades element, but it only costs half as much. And if you're going to field hordes, you want lots of them - a minimum of four elements, I reckon, but probably more.

So, I decided to put a bit of work into getting a respectable six hordes to field alongside my orc warbands. These bases use all of the 30-ish figures in the three Dark Alliance 'orcs' sets. They're not quite done - I'm going to add patches of greenery to the bases of all the elements (probably just painted on), and there's always more black-lining, neatening and final highlights to be done. But they're fieldable now and will be on the table today or tomorrow (more likely, given the Lions game tonight!).

I've also added four more warband elements for a total of six. The warbands are Caesar orcs: both the new ones (which are very dynamic and fierce) and the old set (which are a bit goofy, but will do the job). The latter are at the back in the photos.

As it stands, the orc army consists of six points of hordes, twelve points of warband, four points of spears and sixteen points of behemoths - so 38AP with a magician and some beasts underway. We've got about the same points in my son's lizardman army (friends and foes to the orcs, depending on whether the battle is purely domestic or against friends), plus sundry dragons, behemoths and gods that can be roped in as needed.

[Hobgoblin]

One thing I'm planning to add to the hordes are some 40mm elements with two or three figures on each - not for HotT, but to allow the bases to be used in Dragon Rampant, etc., and also to give me a 15mm HotT army in the process.

The 'liminal' quality of 1/72 means that these creatures can be small orcs in 28mm, short but burly sorts in 1/72 and 'giant orcs' or bugbear-sized beasties in 15mm. My old 15mm HotT army was destroyed when I rebased a lot of the figures on 28mm bases (a project rendered redundant by the 1/72 elements), but with the prospect of HotT tournaments restarting if and when the pandemic abates, it might be quite handy to have an army ready. So I reckon I'll base up some of the spare sprues 'thematically' as shooters, blades, warbands, etc. - depending on armament - and have matching elements that will allow these guys to be used in other games.

I'll probably do a dozen or so figures on 20mm square bases too, so that there's plenty of scope for casualty removal in Dragon Rampant. As it stands, the hordes have five figures each, so adding a two-man 15mm element to each would bring it up to DR standards. As three of the elements have bows, I could use two of those together along with a 15mm shooter base to field a unit of Light Foot (Mixed Weapons) in DR.

[RSDean]

This is a digression from the painting discussion, but I generally just use numbered counters for casualty tracking when playing Dragon Rampant with my 1/72 HotT elements.  I figure each base is nominally 6 infantry strenght points regardless of whether I’ve base 6 or 8 figures on it. (I do intend to do some 3 figure bases for scouts one of these days).

[Hobgoblin]

Digressions are always welcome on this thread! Yes, that looks good - and your Caesar orcs look great!

I'm mildly counter-averse, though, so I'm planning to go with  the smaller additional bases - not least because that will give me a 15mm army in the process!

I've already started basing up the 40mm elements, and I'll probably put one sprue's worth of orcs on individual 20 x 20 squares too. I'll slant the individual bases towards archers, so that I can readily field scouts or mixed-weapon units. I might make some casualties for 'battered' status too.

Here are some shots of the 1/72 army in progress. The trolls aren't quite ready for their close-up, as they need attention to their bases and, in a couple of cases, their feet: those two were roughly rebased in time for a game. This lot are 38 points, and I have six points of blades, two points of beasts and a magician close to completion, which would take me over two regulation HotT armies.

One thing about this orc army is that quite a few of them are compatible, size-wise, with 28mm figures. The trolls are huge and work as behemoths at that scale, and the hordes are fine (about the size of D&D goblins or smaller Tolkien orcs next to 28mm humans). The newer Caesar orcs are fierce enough looking to work as undersized but plucky warbands at that scale too; the big axes they're wielding are much bigger than 28mm Dane axes, and I actually replaced one weapon with a 28mm axe, which is now the smallest weapon that any of them is wielding. So if I ever need a 28mm HotT army, I've got the full 24AP ready to go.

[Hobgoblin]

Some details of the hordes below.

One of the oddest features of the Dark Alliance sets is the bikini-clad orc-lady at the rear of one of these elements. Not quite sure what to make of her, but for the 15mm set, one of the duplicates will make the basis of a magician element when paired with a suitable familiar. I think I have a Wizzkids bat on a rock pinnacle that might do the job.

As ever with 1/72 (barring Caesar, with its more treatable plastic), there are mouldlines that can only be treated so far. But from arm's length, they aren't much of a problem.