Fantasy Warriors Time Dial

Fantasy Warriors is one of the few games that makes extensive use of time in the game. The day is divided into 12 periods and not only does the daylight or night darkness matter (affecting the soldiers abilities), but also at dawn, ghosts disappear and there are other time triggered effects.

The original game came with a cardboard dial and an hourglass to move around on it, but since I'm replacing things like the ammunition tracking with nice tokens, why not the time dial?

Warbases very nicely cut me out a double-sized version of their casualty counter to use as a starter. I wrote up some PostScript to generate a suitable disk to go in it numbered 1-6 twice. The disk got some light painting (oranges & yellow for the day and then two shades of blue for the night).

Then I needed something to put on it -- GW at one point did a monk with quill... Actually he's a techno-monk, but that was easily fixed with a scalpel trimming off tech down to just being ornamentation. The rest of his station is made of pieces from the bits box. A lantern from Mordheim, an Ainsty barrel, a telescope and theodolite from Mega Miniatures and various other bits and bobs. I've left them on smaller bases so that I have the option of using them separately or swapping them in the future for other features.

You can't see it too clearly in the picture below, but the crate is being used as a desk, with a chest, scrolls and an Alternative Armies pie on it.

The dial's basework was built up with the same B&Q filler I use for figures and Woodland Scenics scatter with tufts from Great Escape Games.

And so, instead of a boring cardboard dial, I have a monk, recording the battle for history!

Time Dial

The Miniatures Page

After many years of membership, I've been banned from The Miniatures Page by the increasingly erratic editor.

It seems my "crimes" were;

• To complain about the site not having a privacy policy which would protect my personal data.
• To complain about another member threatening physical violence against me -- the other member is still posting away and appears to have been granted immunity over this because he's American and I'm not.

I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage people to use alternate sites instead;

• Lead Adventure
• The Wargames Website

Both these sites have the advantage of having consistent moderation, a sanity which has been missing from TMP for a while along with the refugees from TMP posting & contactable on it and also no habit of blaming and banning the victim when something does happen. I've already been using them for a while, as "katiel" and can be PMed and so on.

If you're into casual racism, misogyny, your personal data being sold off and having threats made against your life, TMP is still there. But I won't be.

---

Regular service is going to be resumed in a couple of days when I've recovered from going to Zurich.

Zurich, I found, is a lot like London, except that it's peaceful, clean, tidy, organised and when you look the wrong way when crossing the road (because they drive on the wrong side^[1]) the traffic patiently stops instead of just running you over... I'll admit I've not been to a lot of other European cities, but Zurich & its people definitely seemed very nice. Thank you all there for looking after me.


^[1]It is the wrong side. We picked a side first... :-)

More Flintloque Painting Done!

Goblin House

This is, of course, the 2013 Christmas release. I only just got round to doing it -- it's been sat in the box on the table in the hobby room for 12 months. So I cleaned it up, assembled it, filled some small gaps in the joins with miliput and undercoated it. The walls then got coats of Americana "Toffee" which I use for plasterwork on buildings; I think white looks too stark and greys are cold. The stones got two coats of neutral grey and then staining with inks and a drybrush of Howard Hues "Old Wood" as is usual for stonework. Then I went to work with foliage; I decided it would be more useful to turn the "snow" into overgrowth. The roof snow was painted green and then covered with Noch Olive Leaves. The ivy is something that (I think) Warlord sell. The wood got my traditional khaki/light brown/old wood drybrushing and then the metalwork picked out in various CDA colours and several washes of Army Painter inks. The damage on the walls similarly got washes and daubs of ink.

Princess Julianna Dwarfs

This is half of the limited edition box set -- I thought they looked a bit plain with being duplicate poses, so I added some character by giving them all extra stuff to carry about. In keeping with the idea that they're the staff of a brewery, they're all carrying things that would be part of their jobs; so the chap with the big copper kettle is the brewmeister. The paychest is being carried by the bookkeeper, the nightwatchman has a lamp hanging from his pack and Hans the Cooper is carrying around a barrel. They make a nice 300 point section.

The other half of the box set is also pointed up and makes up 300p of reinforcements but they don't have the customisations.

Von Rottes

Another 300 point section comes from the Von Rotte infantry -- resplendent in their red uniforms with blue turn-backs. They're accompanied by Von Rotte himself on Bristle.

Dwarf Landwehr

This is the largest of my Flintloque sections. Yes. That's nineteen figures in 300 points. Well, they are mostly militia. The sergeants are regulars (so they can have grenades!). These figures were actually bought in 1999 (the delivery note turned up in a stack of paperwork I was sorting out) when I was planning on taking up Slaughterloo. They're in blue uniforms and red turnbacks/hatbands which means they can take on the role of militia attached to either the Ferach or Orcish forces.