Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (Rust Monster face reveal)

[Old Hob]

The fur is especially nice on your ALF warband. I love the mix of pelt colours, very similar to your skaven back along. Great stuff.

Great painting on those! I have been curious how those look (the pics on RP Europe’s site are pretty small). They seem like they would be good mixed into beastmen units to use alongside Khurasan Miniatures chaos warriors to make an army inspired by 3rd Ed WFB.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if a gamer's bank balance suddenly cried out in terror...

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks! Yes, I'm keen to mix the pelts up. I'm trying to make everything at this scale a bit brighter and more distinctive than I would for 28mm, so variety is in. I'll probably add the odd albino and maybe even some in unnatural colours too.

I felt a great disturbance in the Force. As if a gamer's bank balance suddenly cried out in terror...

Haha! The good thing about 15mm is that there are a fair few suppliers who do very reasonable postage, making small orders much more psychologically comfortable/affordable/tempting [delete as applicable]. It's easy to order from RPE or Eureka or Tin Soldier in very manageable chunks.

[Hobgoblin]

Here are some 15mm orcs from Alternative Armies. They'll go on a 40mm base. I'm currently unsure whether to base them as a group (as a unit of skirmishers given the javelins and bows) or to mix them in with the various Eureka, Chariot, Essex and Tin Soldier orcs I'm currently working on.

[Pattus Magnus]

They look sharp!

They definitely could work based together as a band of skirmishers or raiders. To me, it makes sense to take into account how they will fit in relation to the rest of your 15mm army and overall collection, though. I usually make my decisions around basing in those terms. Ex. If the rules I am most likely to use the figures for have a useful role for a single base of raiders (and the sculpting style isn’t too much of an outlier), I wouldn’t hesitate to base them that way. HotT would fit that criterion- single bases are units in their own right and I would class the raiders as shooters or a horde. On the other hand, in Fantastic Battles (my current 15mm obsession) a single base of goblins would probably be a liability and might look funny in a multi-base unit with figures sculpted in a different style, so I would spread them across bases in a 4-base unit (which is exactly what I did with my October orcs and goblins).

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

Yes, sage advice. I have lots more of these AA guys - I bought a few packs years ago and then have acquired others in eBay job lots since. So I'll have no problem expanding them with several more bases for Fantastic Battles, etc. They'll be a horde in HOTT but something more fleetfooted in Impetus and Fantastic Battles.  I may need to paint one or two more to fill this first base (hard to tell until they're off the coins), though I don't want it looking too crowded given the skirmishing aspect.

The rough way in which I'm developing the 15mm forces is to paint up a good mix of bases to start with, so that we can get some games of Arrowstorm in (one base = one unit) and then expand to multiples for Impetus, FB and HOTT (which I'd like to eventually play with 80mm frontages like Impetus, so two bases per unit, for extra massed effect).

In Arrowstorm, these guys will be levies, the bugbears foot knights, and the Battle Valor orcs warriors. Most other small orcs (Eureka, Tin Soldier) will be levies too. I'll treat ogres, trolls and giants as heavy cavalry for now and wolfriders as light cavalry. I also have some very nice Grenadier orc archers to serves as shooters.

[Pattus Magnus]

That sounds like a practical approach for building up the armies and getting in games along the way.

Given that you already have a supply of AA goblins to make more bases, going ahead with basing these guys together seems like a good way to go.

Regarding how many to place on a base, I found 5 goblins (mostly Blood Dawn figs from Magister Militum) worked well. I originally planned for 6 (3 melee and 3 archers), but decided to hold back an archer from each base to make some dedicated scout/skirmisher bases. The 5-goblin bases don’t look quite as dense as my 5-barbarian bases, but I feel that fits - the goblins are a bit weaker per base as I statted them up for FB.

One thing I often do is to do a mock up with unpainted figures before I settle on a basing scheme. In your place, I would break out a pack or two of the AA figures, and some of the others (Tin Soldier, etc), and some blue tack and try placing them on bases to get a feel for how they will look. I find  having the figures in front of me helps make decisions easier (some ideas I had just didn’t work when I saw the mock up…)

[Old Hob]

Those little fellows are very nicely done.

[Luigi]

Love the yellow skin.
Excellent work!

[Vladimir Raukov]

Mix 'em in, I say. Good minis go well with more good minis!

[ced1106]

Maybe a movement tray?

Amazon has cheap 2" wooden squares and hexes. Give them a coat of craft paint, and base with fine craft sand. Stick the miniatures, bases and all, on the movement tray, with sticky tack or Museum Wax. Once enough have been killed off, remove the remainder from the base and move individually?

[Hobgoblin]

Happy Year of the Dragon!



(animation by my son)

[Basementboy]

Saw this on his channel a little while ago- looks fantastic!

[Hobgoblin]

Cheers!

Here are some kitbashed Skaven slingers for Mordheim, using Oathmark goblin slave bodies and greenstuff tails.

[DivisMal]

Very cool and creepy ratmen! Love them!

[Pattus Magnus]

Very cool! Just curious - do you think the goblin slinger arms would work well on Skaven clan rat bodies? (I’m thinking the last clanrat version released previous to the AoS change-over.)