Hi all. I've been posting this blog-esque thread about painting and playing Battlelore on a few other sited. I can't believe I totally forgot about putting it here...where people really appreciate miniature painting.
This first post is a re-cap of what I've already posted elsewhere, hope you enjoy...
The big BATTLELORE threadA little over a week ago I went to the FLGS looking for something to grab my interest. I found it in an odd place for me…the boardgame section. I’m generally a RPG and Mini guy, not much of a board or card game guy. When I saw Battlelroe, however, something clicked!
I had been really missing playing “large scale” miniature wargames since my WFB days. I missed everything about the hobby: Painting, building terrain, reading the books, playing the game. But, as with most good things, you suffer from burnout sooner or later. I played Warhammer Fantasy Battles every week for 8 years! To be honest I got so totally burned out that every time I even think about getting back into the game I cringe. While I have many really good memories, there were things about the hobby; there were a few things I just couldn’t get around. First, finding a really good group to play WFB isn’t as easy as you would think. Second, I really don’t have the space like I used to (I used to own a house, and now live in an apartment) for the plethora of terrain and minis to effectively enjoy the hobby. And, to be honest, I really got sick of miniatures that I had to handle like eggshells when I transported, stored, or even played with them.
Needless to say, this is the reason Battlelore looked so good! Large scale fantasy battles…but with rules that don’t try to simulate battle as much as provide a good entertaining game. Still, the feel of the actual battle is there because of the way the game looks, with all its little miniatures and exciting battlefield game board. This game would take up hardly any space, even if I do decide to build a more dramatic 3D game board to play it on. The minis are so small and light that even if painted, I could still toss them around without having to worry about them chipping or getting damaged. The game is something that is easy and fast enough to learn and play that I can play it with anyone without much notice. Finally, the game has plenty of expansions…so there is even more fun stuff once you play out the core game!
The game is a little on the expensive side, so I did all the required research. I read all the reviews. The best one I found was on RPGnet:
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12616.phtml and then found this excellent demo movie that really tells you about the game, how to play, and what you get:
http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/?cat=2 (Needless to say, there are cool videos for lots of other games there too). Finally I downloaded the rules themselves, gave it a read, and decided that yes, I would enjoy this game, get a lot of play time out of it, and that it was defiantly worth the money:
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/battlelore/support.shtmlSo, a day later I ordered the game (and the next day I ordered all the supplements too…but that’s another story
). This morning the box arrived on my porch and I opened it and looked with wide eyed glee at all the little plastic miniatures.
Now, after doing this I realized that there are probably 3 types of people who get this game. The first are those who never plan on painting the miniatures and just got it because it looks like a cool board game. The second are those who buy it and keep saying that “someday” I’ll paint those miniatures. IMHO these people are probably never going to actually do it…because they aren’t the third type of person. The third type of person is the one who opens up the box, looks at the figures and starts to tremble with an uncontrollable urge to see this entire army painted and marching across the battlefield! Fortunately for me, I’m the third type!
So, in any case, this is just a thread to share my experiences with the game, and help keep myself motivated as I paint those 200+ miniatures (and hopefully some terrain). I have a friend who I plan on playing the 10 part campaign with on my rotating days off. I hope to post some type of brief battle reports on these and keep a running total of who is the big winner. Beyond that the majority of the thread will probably be pictures of the minis I paint as I get units finished. Hopefully, if time permits, this thread will also include some terrain building pics (but, we’ll see).
If anyone else wants to talk about the game, ask questions (from the professionals who will visit the thread…that wouldn’t be me, in case you’re wondering), post pictures of their own, or simply share in the Battlelore love, please feel free to do so.
Part 2Well I’ll start right off with pics of the first troop type I got painted. Needless to say I decided to start with the easiest type (mostly armor). There is also significantly less of this troop type than many of the other ones. This is the Red Infantry. Tough but slow.
I’m using a grey primer, and regular craft paints. I was going to mass paint these, but, decided they were too cool, once I had them in the palm of my hand, to simply block out colors. They are small, so I’m not trying to make showpieces out of them, just using basic technique to get decent results.
I’m using an industrial glossy sealer. Needless to say mini painting purists will have issue with this, but, since I play to actually spend a lot of time playing with the minis, and don’t want to have to worry about how I store them (I plan on just dumping them into plastic containers) the glossy sealer is much more resilient than the matte.
These took about 3 hours from start to finish. The hardest part was actually the banners. Since the stickers are already attached, I had to paint prime around them (instead of spraying them).
And for those of you who appreciate scale, and haven’t seen an actual Battlelore piece.
Part 3I got the next troop type done, the Green Infantry. Not really sure how long these took as I sort of picked at them all day here and there in-between other things. Needles to say I picked the second easiest troop type. Only 4 units of these too. These were a little more difficult and time consuming than the Red Infantry, because there were more details and colors, not to mention I had to do a wash on the flesh tone.
I’ve established the base color for each side. It’s not dramatic, but it will set a unifying color for the armies and differentiate between the two forces. For the French we will have brown as the base color and for the English we will go with grey.
The close up might not look that good…but this is a huge rendition of a really small figure. They look a lot better when you see them sitting on the tabletop in mass.
Finally, I’m sticking with the same shield motif throughout the entire army, half a yellow shield for the French, and the white stripe for the English. This, along with the base color (and the banner style, of course), should make opposing forces really easy to tell apart and set up.
Starting on Red Cav next! I’ll finish them and post pictures as time permits. I had the day off yesterday by myself, so could really tinker. Today I have the family, so I’ll probably not be as productive (on the painting end anyway
).
Part 4Taking a little break from painting my Red Cav to rest my eyes and figured I’d put a personal spin on the story. As I mentioned, I used to have a ton of space, but now I keep things pretty compact. Here are some pictures of my painting space.
That is the end of my Kitchen cupboard
. MY wife cringes when I haul out the painting stuff because she knows that I’ll dominate that corner of the kitchen with my mess for a while (although I do usually pick it all up every couple days). I keep all my painting stuff tucked away in my closet in that plastic container, so, if you’re new to the painting hobby (or thinking about getting into it) and think that you need a bunch of stuff to get started, think again. A few small brushes, a couple dozen bottles of paints (those are $.99 bottles you see on my table), some primer, and sealer are just about all you need to do the job.
You can see the Red Cav (just started in this picture) and the units I already painted in the background.
Here I am me several hours later. Since I’m working at the cupboard I can’t sit down, so I paint everything these days standing up and hunched over. Oddly enough my back and legs don’t get sore. Kind of like playing wargames where you always seem to want to stand up to command your army. That said, my wife and I are looking for a house these days…so hopefully I’ll have a nice desk to paint at again one of these days
.
You can see the Red Cav is coming along nicely. I’m going out to eat and to a haunted house (Halloween and all) in a bit, but I’m hoping to have them done by tomorrow morning.
Part 5 And here we are again. The Red Cav was more challenging than the other models…because there was twice as much stuff to paint, duh! I’ve never been a huge fan of painting horses, but these weren’t too bad.
I painted them up as normal, but didn’t really like the way they looked so I gave the horses a bull brown wash, but not the rider. This makes the rider stick out a little more and the Horse is the second thing you notice (well, in real life anyway).
I like the way they came out, but, looking at the pictures, I think I should have taken 2 seconds to paint the horse’s eyes. I might go back and do that…but, then again, the horses are a lot smaller than the pictures make them look, and they are probably fine the way they are. They aren’t Heavy Metal showpieces, but the look pretty good on the table and should function well in the game.
Well, I’m going to spend the day clothes shopping (
) with my wife and one of my daughters, so not much painting going on today. It’s back to work on Monday, so painting will slow down a little. Probably won’t have pictures every day now…but who knows.
Next are the Green archers. There are twice as many of them as any troop type I’ve worked on yet, and they have more components (a sheathed sword, quiver, and bow). We’ll see how it goes
.
Part 6See…told you the work week would bring my painting to a crawl. I had things going on every night this week, and tonight is D&D night, so I won’t get any painting done. It’s like a teenage boy and sex, the one thing I want to do the most, and think about all day, is the one thing I can’t seem to be able to do!
In any case, I managed to steal a few minutes here and there to get these French Archers done. I was hoping to get all of the archers done in half this time, but, I figured I’d break up the French and English so I could get a motivating sense of accomplishment (and get something posted on this thread
). Oh well, I’ll start on the English archers next. As you can see, all Frenchmen have black hair. All Englishmen are going to apparently be blond.
Since you’re never too old to experiment, I tried something a little different with these minis. After a fairly good base coat, I gave the whole thing a wash with a sort of dirty dark coffee brown, and then followed up with some drybrushing. I like the results well enough, but, wish I would have went a little more brown, a little less black on the wash, as it dulled the flesh tone considerably, even after some flesh drybrushing.
Part 7Man, work has been CRAZY! I’m a city letter carrier in the USA (I deliver the mail in the city), and with the election coming to a close the mail has been insane. I’ve been working 9-10 hour days, and with everything else going on there has been little time for painting.
I’ve been pecking away at the English archers and they are almost done (tomorrow I hope), but I took a little break to paint something completely different…my lore goblets!
You can’t really see on the pics. But I lined the bottom of the cup and the bottom of the interior of the cup with black felt. I also replaced the lore tokens with some lilac gaming stones…I’m a little disappointed that they don’t look very purple when they aren’t in a bunch. Oh well, maybe I’ll find some better purple ones.
Part 8Whew! I finally got those English Archers done! It seems like I’ve been working on those forever. Not because it took a lot of work, but, because I just couldn’t find time to paint them, even though I wanted to 24/7. Painting for 20 minutes a day doesn’t make for a lot of productivity. Hopefully I’ll have more time this coming week (and weekend).
So, I’m pretty happy with the way these turned out. I used the same technique as I did for the French Archers, but, I went a little browner, and less black, on the wash with these. I also painted the wash a bit heavier. They came out well, if a little dark in comparison to the rest of the figs I’ve painted so far.
I made the mistake of spraying the sealer a bit to close, so they are a little too glossy. Nothing that is going to cause any real problems (or require fixing), but, it’s something to keep in mind for future sealing procedures
.
Of course…there is no rest for the weary! Primed and ready to be painted are the French Regulars. Man, there are a lot more of them than anything I’ve painted so far for Battlelore…and when I’m done I have just as many to do for the English.