Flintloque Wraith Infantry

I wanted to try out having some more unusual troops in my "Undead" army. Wraiths seemed like fun -- they get to have ranged weapons, command points and so on but they also get to turn into spirits and run through the scenery... and be invulnerable while they do it...

But Alternative don't make Wraith infantry as far as I could tell -- I certainly can't see them in the catalogue

Finding suitable figures turned out to be a little difficult. Many "Wraith" figures are very obviously tooled up for fantasy medieval combat -- lots of glaives, giant swords and so on. Those that are unarmed didn't look easy to convert.

I looked at the two Warmachine Pistol Wraiths, and decided they would make possible leaders if I could fill out the rest of the unit, but I couldn't locate suitable figures so I parked the idea for a bit.

While at a show I was browsing a pile of Reaper figures on Caliver's stand and they not only had a Banshee which I thought would work really well as the musician but several other wraiths -- which led to me wandering about Reaper's website where I discovered Reaper actually do a lot of wraith figures and the rest of the unit came from them; the banner is one of their traditional cowled "invisible" figure (There's nothing inside the cowl or the sleeves). The unit was completed by finding a two-pack of skull-headed, misty wraiths with open hands...

Some mail orders later, and I had two of those packs, a banner and two pistol wraiths. And an armoury pack from AA which provided muskets for those open hands. The duplication was minimised by reposing the figures (ever so delicately, the screaming of the pewter bending setting my teeth on edge..)

When it came to painting them, I knew I wanted them to look connected -- the differingstyles of figures meant I needed to tie the unit together with colours. Plain bone would have left me needing to do something with the almost-naked banshee which wouldn't match, so I eventually went with all-black clothing and both flesh and bone in shades of light blue. Weapons were muted down (tin instead of gunmetal and mahogany instead of my normal mid-brown) to add to the dark and gloomy air. The bases are the usual woodfiller, scenic materials and snow made from glass microspheres (sold as boat-repairing resin expander) mixed with wood glue.

So I have a banner bearer (with the improvised melee attack of hitting with his banner), a banshee who is the unit musician and has the scary music attack from Grapeshotte along with a sword, four musketeers and a sergeant and lieutenant both with a pair of pistols, making exactly 300 points.

WoooooOOOOOOooooo.....!

Royul Marines!!

Marines!!!

Basically, one of the problems with my painting output has been a bunch of pending projects which are only now all getting completed at the same time..

This time it's the crew and marines of "HMS Violence". There's two naval officers, two sailors and six marines. There's actually only two poses of marines and I dislike duplicates within groups as small as this, so I did a little customisation. First off was a bayonet transplant so that one of each duplicate has one and the other doesn't. I also added some extra baggage to some of the figures; one being a fiddle (figure on the far right) which came in a recently purchased Reaper pack.

I'm not actually sure marines of the time carried bayonets -- they used the "Sea Service Pattern" musket which is shorter than the other variants so it could be used in the close environments of a ship's deck more easily. While the musket had suitable fittings, adding a bayonet would remove the point of the shorter weapon..

In the section profile for this unit, I've listed them as equipped with carbines due to the reduction in power and accuracy from the regular Bessie which is nearly a foot longer.

In a change from the normal recipe, I based them with various grades of ballast and scatter and then gloss varnished portions of that to be a watery beach they're storming.

Italians vs Spanish & Portuguese

We had an opportunity to try out a new scenario I wrote.

The Spanish Guerrillas have taken advantage of French forces going on a "foraging" expedition to move in an occupy one of their gun batteries which lies on the line-of-march of an Allied force.

While they hold the position, an Orc exploring officer races off to get reinforcements and is returning with a unit of Goblins to bolster the defences.

Meanwhile the Baron Petrochemicoli's force of Todoroni -- a company of the elite Bella Manicotti regiment and a company of light infantry -- have been ordered to retake the position. Colonel D'Kless has decided to accompany the toads to "evaluate" how well they get on with using the muskets supplied to them. Petrochemicoli is, of course, offended by any suggestion that he isn't a truly great military leader...

Goblins marching as fast as their little legs will carry them!

Sophie advanced the shorty green goblins along the north side of the valley, with the intention of linking up with the Spanish. As Lorna advanced the confident 3rd Companie of the Bella Manicotti towards them, they carefully avoided engagement for as long as possible. It's what you expect from gobbos.

Toads, making use of ammunition to create noise and excitement...

Meanwhile the gloriously enthusiastic Light infantry advanced towards the gun positions, halted and emptied their weapons in good order while being peppered with erratic gunfire from the treacherous point-eared tanned ones hiding behind the gabions. Sadly, what the Light infantry makes up for in enthusiasm, it lacks in ability to actually hit anything.^[1]

The Spanish hide and shoot, shoot and hide..

The Spanish resistance (or "getters in the way of proper soldiering" as they're known) take minimal casualties from the toad gunfire, thanks in part to Chris' ability to repeatedly roll 9s on a D10. (Later on, it was much funnier watching him trying to roll a number between 1 and 5.. and having many, many, many tries..)

Singing like mad, the Operato stands behind the troops.
So that any thought of retreating will require the
consideration of getting closer to the singing.

The elites adopt a battle formation, usually referred to as "Everyone hide behind Fred". At this point things got really interesting. The goblins decided it was time for a small fight (if it's a large fight, they can't reach up that high) and shot a number of toads. Sometimes in the face, but quite often in the knees because they're closer if you're only four feet tall. The toads responded by shooting away at various targets -- most decisively the serious wounding of Hogan, the exploring officer (and the most powerful figure on the table) before he'd really had a chance to get involved in the fighting) -- and also plunking away at the north end of the Spanish defence line.

Two of the toads ran away, badly wounded, shouting "Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!" and would have left a trail of blood, except that the club won't let me put red substances on the green battlecloths.^[2]

The Manicotti turn the tide!

The rest of the nearby front line toads piled into the goblins, beating them about their heads with the butts of the expensive, ornate and delicate muskets so thoughtfully provided by our pale, blonde and very, very distant Imperial masters.

The other flank of toads leapt the defences and, outnumbering the disturbingly stabby Elves, started to roll up their line. (And were also slightly relieved to have some sturdy earth banking between them and the effective musketry of Sophie's goblins.)

The light infantry are having a breather in this photo just before executing plan "pile over the wall and kick people". The battle was soon after decided to be a casualty-heavy win for the Italians. The poor Spanish got several figures suffocated in toad-slime although the Goblins took relatively minimal casualties.


It would all have been so different if anyone.. anyone.. had remembered to bring cannon ammunition with them...



^[1]To say I own these percentage dice, they're surprisingly unloyal.
^[2]Paint, ketchup. Actual blood.

New Infantry Units

Actually they're not that new, but I've only just got round to photographing them.

Bavarian Dwarfs

This unit of Bavarians are Ferach allies. There's a captain on a pony, sergeant, drummer and 8 soldiers. The 300 point target for skirmish units means missing out one of the regular infantrydwarves. The uniform is reasonably historical; light blue coats, black crested raupenhelm with bearskin crest for the sergeant/drummer. The green plume indicates light infantry. Originally this unit contained the blister packs listed as the "Legion de Nain", but when we tried them out, that group was a bit underpowered -- the Dwarf musketry skills being lost in a unit with so many people armed only with close-combat weapons. I didn't want to double up the poses, but I realised that "52013 Beervarian Line" could be used to expand it. So the figures became less elite, but the unit got bigger.

The Emperor!

No Ferarch army would be complete without The Emperor. This version is from my copy of Slaughterloo. I wanted to do a dappled white horse so he stands out, and I added extra decorations to the base.

Spanish Guerrillas

This 300pt group of guerrillas is led by a version of La Spiga on foot from LE005 which I bought from Ainsty. With most of the contents of the two guerrilla blister packs, the add up to a pretty interesting group -- with the Dark Elf trait of melee bonuses it's worth giving them lots of knives and swords and other sharp pointy, stabby things to make the best of it.

Portuguese Line Infantry

Captain Stonelaugh's Centre Company is 300pts of Portuguese who are dressed in the Britorc-supplied dark blue line infantry uniform with yellow turnbacks. They don't have a flag yet because I've not managed to run into anyone selling one at a show yet. But they do have a Lt. Elvis Madkaff in the rear rank!

Orc Characters

I've been slowly adding character figures for the various armies -- this is Sir Marcus Conclave (a exp/civilian who leads pioneer teams) and Mrs. Stone, widow of the popular Sgt. Stone from the Sarf Essex who still accompanies them.

Italian Todoroni Light Companie.

This 300pt company is commanded by Capt. Alberto Bertoada assisted by the enthusiastic Sgt. Giovanni Oppeti. Newly formed, they're not the best troops. Each is armed with a musket and the cowardly trait. Technically they should be in a pale green uniform, but I didn't really want to do that because it wouldn't give a lot of contrast with their skin. Some Italian units did wear all-white uniforms (although not with bicornes) so I've stretched reality a bit, but we are talking giant musket-armed toads here..

Elite Todoroni

This unit is LEU001 "Bella Manicotti" along with LE043 "Baron Petrochemicoli". The LEU (which I bought off Ebay) contains 16 figures which makes it phenomenally expensive as a Flintloque unit (way over the 300pt guide). I pondered converting some of the figures and moving them into other units, but in the end decided to go with it as intended and six of the figures will stay in the box. Numbers 1-10 make up a 300 point regular unit, including the opera singer! Petrochemicoli gives me a commander for the pair of units, making them a nice-sized force.

Spiffy Tokens for Flintloque 3

We're switching to using FL3 largely to avoid the faff of written orders. However, instead of orders it needs a lot more tokens -- especially if you're planning to have no scribbling or notes at all.

I though this would work much better with some proper tokens (rather than photocopied things stuck to cardboard). When I found a UK supplier for the 15mm round wooden disks which are used as game pieces in 'German' style boardgames a solution was becoming obvious...

They sell them individually in various colours or big bags of 50 each of 6 colours. The colours will help distinguish the tokens;

• red - wounds.
• yellow - status markers.
• green - turn-long markers and Command Points.
• blue - activation.
• black - dead.
• grey - objectives and shaken.

I was also going to use blue for hit tokens (the idea being that all blue tokens go at the end of a turn) but actually that was a bad idea because it's hard work telling hits from activations. I'm re-doing the hit markers in pink (because they become red wounds later..)

I also ordered white for some of the undead specific markers; sooner or later there are going to be Zombies...

So the next part of the problem was how to make the actual token parts. Laser-printable sticker sheets are the answer here; they're like address label sheets but don't have any scoring on them. You just print where-ever you want.

I didn't really fancy cutting out that many circles -- for a two-section game you need 20 Activations, probably 20-25 "Wound", a bunch of "Dead" markers, maybe a dozen "Unloaded" and so on. It adds up quite quickly -- and I want to be doing big games of 3 or 4 sections a side (otherwise where would the chaos come from?)

Fortunately, I found on Ebay a place selling various scrap-booking punches -- including a half-inch circle. Punching out the circles from sticker sheets is easy -- you turn the punch upside down and then you can line the hole-punch up and click it through.

(I'd like to emphasise I did not pick a pink one. They just come in pink. Apparently these things come in different colours depending on the size of the hole.)

The sticker sheets can be a little fragile, so in practice I tend to put a couple of sheets of scrap paper behind them.

The tokens themselves then needed designs. Fortunately, since I'm a software engineer, firing up a text editor (GNU Emacs) and writing a bunch of PostScript solved that problem.. the PS converts easily into a PDF which can then be printed. Pixel artwork is a bit of a pain in raw PS; and even drawing stuff is fiddly and time consuming. Fortunately, we're talking about half-inch diameter circles; there's not a lot of room for extra stuff. So actually it worked out that I could get most of the way there by using a decorative font and using the text of the token itself as the artwork.

The PDF files containing the tokens is free for downloading if you fancy using it; it could also be used to create tokens by either gluing printed sheets or printed stickers to sheets of thin foam (available in hobby stores in loads of colours). Or just use cardboard, but you miss having the colours then.

It's actually taken me a while and a couple of iterations to work out what tokens are needed; I can't, for instance, see why one needs "Misfire" -- that's just an "Unloaded". Or "Critical Hit"; you turn a critical hit into a bunch of "Hit" tokens and those are the ones you need. Nor can I really see what the "Double Length" initiatives are for...

(If I'm wrong on this, please let me know!)

So after those, and then adding some extras -- objective markers, fire, blown up and, of course, "Gold!" that fills a sheet. I've started on a second set of markers for various skills which need their status recording and undead markers. And the "over the hills and far away.." is, of course, the marker for a musician who's playing this turn... :-)

And how spiffy have these turned out then...?

What I Did On My Week Off.

People seemed fairly keen on me having some time off. And to be honest after the stressy year I've had, I needed a break as well. So what did I get done? Well, I tidied up the garage a lot and shredded mountains of paperwork dating back to the mid-90s for a business that I no longer run...

I also bought a car. My beloved old Hyundai, mere weeks after having a new clutch and a recovered gearbox fitted (to replace the one which shredded itself), once again started to make a funny road-speed-related thrumming sound. Something expensive about to fall off type sounds. So I decided it was probably time to follow all the advice that I should buy a new car (or at least a less elderly one).

I also managed to get WAY loads of Flintloque figures painted.

After discovering that veteran light elite figures are murderous, we thought we should revert to using regular line infantry, so for 200 points each;

Britorc Centre Company of
9 Privates and a Lieutenant

Britorc Grenadier Company of
6 Privates, a Sergeant and a Captain.

Highland Scots Rats Centre Company of
6 Privates, a Captain and (of course) a Piper.

Ferach Elf Centre Company of
9 Soldats and a Lieutenant.

Another Ferach Elf Centre Company of
9 Soldats and a Lieutenant

Wow. More Elves are on the painting table...

Orcs...

Flintloque comes with the ten elves posted below and six Orc riflemen including the famous Sharke and Harpy.

Now they've got their flag, you can have a look;

The figures are, of course, AA and the flag is from Redoubt who do a pack of flags especially for Sharpe-based stuff (two colours for the South Essex and this 95th Rifles pennant). The rest of the rifles (including another Sharpe!) are still on the painting table.

Finally, after all the weekends spent working, got back to painting. This is a section of Elf Voltigeur for Flintloque -- the guys at the club are up for having a game. As ever, if I provide the figures.. :-)

They're actually from an original edition box set I picked up ages ago at a Bring&Buy at (I think) Salute. I got Sharke's Victory and Deadloque 1st ed ages ago when they were relatively newly released, so when I saw a reasonably priced base set considered it a bargain to get the actual rules.

Painted with a mix of VJ and CDA with Army Painter washes. Still need bases doing, but it was late Sunday before I'd got the colours on.

Next weekend I'll have a bash at the Orcs to go with them. Then we can try it out. And then if it flies, I can paint the other couple of hundred quidworth of figures which are stored under my table. Some of them are still in the original blister packs...