The men from Greystone Castle

I bought the Knights on Foot at a convention over 10 years ago. The reason I never finished them has a simple reason: I didn't know for what. So we can conclude that I didn't even know why I bought them when I bought them. But you can always make use of knights and medieval miniatures by integrating them into fantasy scenarios because mostly everything looks more or less 'medieval' in fantasy worlds. Another practical thing about it is: I don't have to worry about the century and scenario in which the figures are "allowed". Fantasy allows everything. I mix them like I want.

They are not quite finished yet, some color on the base and the grass is still missing and Lord Grey also needs a flag. By the way, the renouncement of a colorful and individual design of the miniatures speeds up the painting notably. Choosing a simple color scheme and then painting them in batch does the trick.

The decals are from Games Workshop, I painted a few myself because there weren't enough. If you don't take it too seriously, you actually get to paint stuff like these lions yourself.

"Wear your helmet, it's dangerous outside!" - "Oh mum, cool kids wear headbands now!"

Some details:

• The Knights on foot are from Old Glory (Dismounted Knights, Third Crusade)
  
  
• The Archers are from Crusader Miniatures - Unarmoured Norman Bowmen

Home by the sea: Greystone Castle. The name came from the large rock on which it once was built. From this stronghold the Greystone Family has controlled the mouth of the Akron river and protected the empire from the sea people for centuries.

I jumped in the vortex mixer line - Shake, Senora!

At the moment I'm looking for anything that makes the hobby easier. And so I followed one of the newer trends among wargamers: the vortex mixer. Everyone seems to have now such a device.  Except me. I did not read anything negative about it, so I got one too.

These vortex mixers were supposedly made for chemical laboratories to mix the contents of test tubes. Another popular use seems to be in tattoo studios, where they probably stir the color bottles with these machines. But I don't really know, not my world. Anyway, the wargaming community seemed to have discovered these gadgets two or three years ago in order to bring their chronically dried-out paint bottles into a usable state.

Which is a bit funny, because many miniature painters lamented for years that the available colors were too thin and not pigmented enough. That is the reason why the color ranges that offer strongly pigmented colors have received great popularity recently. Now the same people need machines to stir their rather thick paints. Am I the only one who can see the Irony?

The 'Problem'

Nowadays, acrylic paints very often come in dripper bottles and when it comes to stirring them it is nearly impossible. That's why we all know the annoying and somewhat strenuous process of intensive shaking the bottles. Someone on the net seriously reported that he had trembling muscles from shaking the colors and that he wasn't able to draw a straight line afterwards. Well, I think that's exaggerated. But the shaking is a bit burdensome as we can see in this video from Geek Gaming Scenics. It even became a kind of reflex for me: as soon as I'm in a hardware store and take a can off paint of a shelf, I start shaking it slowly without even thinking about it.

The mixer

The handling of the vortex mixer is very easy: you press the paint bottle into the recess on the soft rubber top and so activate a switch that turns the device on. The machine starts to shake and you hold the bottle against it for a while. The vibration creates a vortex in the liquid that stirs the paint. (If you use it with a glass container you can see it.) As soon as you let go the device stops.

The results depend very much on the condition of the paint and the length of time you hold it to the mixer. After some tries I can say that shaking the top of a color bottle (like shown above) makes more sense than placing it with the bottom onto the machine. Paint is always taken from the top of a container and that's the place where the medium separates from the color. So it is better to press the top of the paint bottle onto the device to get the best results.

The whole thing hums audibly, but you will not wake up your neighbors. One thing is really annoying : the sticky soft rubber on the top collects dust very quick and you can't really clean it.

Mine came for under 30 Euros. There are mixers that cost about 100 (and more) but I don't believe that they will be that much better for this purpose. Except the really professional machines of course. But at the moment I can't tell.

To complete my reflections I just made another test with a bottle of "Barbarian Flesh" (Army Painter) that I haven't used for months: 

1. First a drop from the bottle without any shaking: Only clear paint medium, no color at all.
   
   
2. 10 Seconds on the machine: Color, but very thin.
   
   
3. Another 10 seconds : Usable color.

Twenty seconds and a good result, that's OK for me.

Would I buy it again?

Yes. I could live without it, but it really helps.

And for the people who don't know what the above title means : Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora) (Wikipedia)  Did anyone say 'Bettlejuice'? (Youtube)

Dungeon or temple interior

This weekend we went hiking. And on the way we were almost killed by a complete idiot on the highway. It was close. Very close.

Today we're pretty tired and I've only finished these parts. Soon coming to a dungeon near to... hmm....me.

The miniatures are from Reaper. The large is one glued only to the round base and can be detached from the pedestal.

When miniatures can see their own shadow, a long winter is gone

The sun is shining again. I guess you can spot the tricorn.

Do you know this feeling when you can't do anything anymore? When everything is too much? When you are only able to do the 'dumb' stuff but nothing that needs a bit of concentration? That’s the state in which I lived for a while. And for a reason as I found out.

Weeks ago a visit to the doctor revealed that I had less vitamin D3 and B12 in my blood than Count Dracula after a hundred years of sleep. The values were on the edge. No wonder that I was going down, down, down... The first injection of B12 that I got then made me realize why people use drugs: It felt like I would be able to dance for three days without a break. And I actually can't dance. (No, you don't want to see that, believe me.)

My first action with the new energy was that I started to declutter like crazy. I visited the recycling station several times with a completely full car and unloaded stuff that was no longer needed. Old electronic devices whose operation made no sense at all. Lots of old computer parts. A lot of other stuff. Our waste bin here at home was also very busy. I realized that I would never use the old stuff again. Jesus, for what? Definitely not for anything serious.

But not everything was thrown away. There is a kind of welfare supermarket here where they sell donated stuff cheap and all the income is also used to help people who need it. Whatever I found reasonable to be used again or to be sold I gave to them and they where really happy to take it. If you have something like that in your area: use it, it makes sense. And its a kind of real recycling by the way.

At the moment there is still a large pile of books in the trunk of my car that I want to unload at the public bookcase. Our bookshelves look a lot more organized now!

I also had a huge archive of CD‘s and DVD‘s (about 900), full of data, software, projects, backups, games, books, documents, music and movies. Data from nearly 30 years of computing and electronic 'entertainment'. Sometimes data so old that I once copied them via serial cable from a nowadays nearly forgotten home computer to a PC. Or movies from digitized video tapes. Yes, back in the days I did that. That was me. And I tell you : trough the eyes of today the quality was terrible. So I looked through all of it and I needed weeks for that task. In the end, almost everything that was allowed to stay found a place on a single USB hard drive that fits in the pocket of my trousers. What a contrast to a full shelf!

If you wonder how one would use such an amount of discs: I had a database with a complete inventory of the contents that I constantly kept up to date whenever something changed. It always amazed people when we talked about something, I typed a search in my computer and almost immediately picked the disc with the according information, software, film, book or whatever from the shelf. A kind of private internet on discs. But that's over now.

So, the sun begins to shine again, the mood lifts and the power comes back. What felt like a never ending winter is over and some new action is going on:

1. Paint Rack

I bought a color rack that should make painting easier for me. The painting place will be no longer full of bottles that stand in the way and it will be easier or quicker to find the colors. Fortunately, this rack from Vallejo also fits my Army Painter bottles. My copy of the rack, which I bought via Amazon, came a bit warped and therefore wiggled a bit. But a few days later it had settled, exactly as I had expected. Sometimes you only have to use common sense and wait a bit.

2. Airbrush gets new life

I am assembling accessories so that I can now re-enter airbrushing to prime or prepare figures in larger groups. Up to now I used the Army Painter Primer-Spray and it gave me very good results but that had its pitfalls. It smells and spreads of lot of particles and can therefore only be done outside where wind and weather have to play along. And I have no garden or other real good place where I can use spray cans so it was always difficult for me. And by the way, maybe I will use the airbrush again to paint 'pictures'. I did that in the past and I was not too bad.

Nearly there. A new airbrush, cleaner, primer and cleaning pot. The compressor sits under the table. An very old but still working 'big one' from LUKAS. Back in the days bought for a descent amount of money. My car back then cost only 500 ,- bucks more... I tell you: nobody in this country drives cars like that anymore. ;-)

3. Gaming-Table setup

I am buying and organizing material to build a FINAL setup for my gaming table. After a long journey I will settle with a system of square tiles with a modeled surface with some height lines and limited 'deepness' to emulate rivers and holes in the ground.

Mounted on 25 cm wooden squares that I will let be made for me in the hardware store and that I will decorate with material from railroad landscaping. I will not waste my time with strange experiments in self building trees and the like. I am going to end now my endless search for the 'best' landscape solution.

And in this moment, literally while I was writing this blog post, the doorbell rang and the grass mats arrived. Loose grass of the same kind like the one the mats - for movable parts, bases and so on - is on the way.

Tomorrow morning I will visit the hardware store for the fist time in a complete year thanks to the shitty Covid-19 desaster. I have a long list. On top: the tiles for the gaming table. The show will go on.

Reinforcement from the Battlemasters Boardgame

Apparently the Battle Masters game from 1992 game is only highly valued by board game collectors, who of course prefer the whole thing, complete and in a good condition. Loose and damaged figures on the other hand seem not to get much attention. And for many of today's wargamers, these old minis are rather uninteresting or they don't even know that this game ever existed. Great for me, because if you buy the figures loose, like I did, you get them amazingly cheap. The complete group of minis from that game came for only 25 euros. That's about 0,26 Euros per figure - also for the mounted ones - and that is a steal.

One of the previous owners was probably already on the way to detach these figures from their board game context and to move them into a 'real' wargame. There was a half-hearted attempt to paint one of the mounted knights and priming of the tower (ups, not on the photo...) had begun. Many of the holder bars from the minis have been cut off, probably because the figures were supposed to be mounted on (Warhammer?) plastic bases. And then it suddenly ended. Or the previous owner moved straight on to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, because attracting people to the Games Workshop Game was definitely one of the goals of this board game. Anyway, I'll pick up where the previous owner left off. 

But I have been very busy learning new development techniques for the past few weeks. I have created myself a massive 'tour de force' of books and educational videos to get back on track and examine new application and web development techniques and trends that I have neglected a bit over the years. That's the reason why it was very quiet here.

Since that took and still takes a lot of time and energy, I became a bit hobby-lazy during the past few weeks and so I only did the tower that was also included in the purchase. I always do the rough things like priming or assembling when concentration, motivation or energy is not really sufficient for anything else.

Since the thing is actually meant to be disassembled and stored in the board game box it had many open slots that I had to fill with Miliput after I glued the pieces together. Then I did the priming with 'Dark Stone' followed by drybrushing with 'Castle Grey', 'Uniform Grey' and finally with 'Ash Grey' (Army Painter Colors).

Lo and behold, the tower doesn't look bad. The nice part is that it has a lot of space on top so that you can put something on it and the whole thing is very robust.

And for the rest of the project I now have halberd-bearers that complement the Isenstein archers very well. And especially the 'dark' side of the game has grown considerably: orcs, goblins, wolf riders, chaos knights on foot and on horseback as well as beastmen and chaos archers. Around 60 minis plus for the baddies.

The dead hate the living... always

When I started working on my new fantasy project last summer (that feels so terrible far away now) I realized that I don't have a lot of figures for the dark side of my setup. And this hasn't changed much since then.

But I found something in my box for Ebay sales that took me a step forward. A group of skeletons from Reaper Miniatures that was bigger than I remembered them. I had sorted them out someday because I thought I had enough monsters and evil folks for dungeon crawls. Setting up an new 'army of darkness' was not on my list. 

They are here now and we all know, nothing represents the forces of evil better than the undead, normally shown as skeletons (and nowadays as zombies). A very old cliché that is actually a little bit strange because a skeleton is a part of every human body and we all will be only skeletons someday. But somehow we resent the undead when they return to life and automatically think they are evil. Maybe it's the smell. Consequently, whenever they appear in legends, movies, books and games, the undead always hate the living. 

From the movie 'Jason and the argonauts' (1963). The hero is finally confronted with a horde of skeletons who arise from the ground. The following fight is a masterpiece of stop-motion animation. A typical example of good vs. evil. Although we have to wonder if Jason, the thief of the golden fleece, is actually the good one in this story. (Picture: © Columbia Pictures)

 

The skeletons had not been painted very well and the shield was painted over two or three times because I was never realy happy with the result. Undead may be resistant against a lot of things, but not against a big portion of paint thinner. Don't do this with plastic minis, they would go straight to hell...

 

Here the the are, cleaned and ready for new priming. The archers on the left are from the boardgame 'Descent: Journeys in the Dark'. All in all 25 warriors plus 6 Archers.

 

Priming done and mounted on 25mm square bases. Another pile of bases where I had to close the slots with matchsticks. I would like to avoid this work, but I still have so many slotta bases and I don't want to throw them away.

The first test paint to find out which colors to use. 

And the result. Twenty five guys for the evil side of the game. The Skeleton that is attached to the standard is nothing religious by the way, only a different kind of 'banner'. Spontaneous comment from my wife : 'My God...!'

Progress report : Isenstein archers

Imperial Archers from 'good old' Warhammer Fantasy make up the first unit of Isenstein.

The archer is a Citadel/Warhammer model from the mid 90s. In the annual catalog from 1995/96 it is the archer No. 4. Back then, every piece from the Warhammer range had an order number and it was possible to order exactly the minis you wanted. It was also possible to order every single piece, loose arms, parts from warmachines or monsters. To me that was the golden age of Games Workshop.

I always hated the slotta bases with the diagonal openings so I mounted the archers straight on the square base. Means pinching off the holder bar at the bottom and filing the underside of the feet. The gap in the base was closed with an matchstick glued in place.

The holder bar shows something interesting. The figure is named 'FORSTJAEGER'. That is a pseudo german word because 'Forst' means wood and 'Jaeger' is the word for hunter but this combination of both words is not eligible in german. So the real meaning could be a 'forest ranger' but I can't remember that the empire had any unit like this. Forest rangers seemed to be more a wood-elven thing.

Something is missing in the linup above. A Lord who has only a unit of archers and nothing else would be in trouble soon. At the moment I don't know what minis I can add to make the picture complete.

The only ones I have that seem to fit are henchmen from Advanced Heroquest that I once bought loose on a wargamer flea market. In fact there is one here in the area twice a year and usually you can buy a lot of Warhammer and Games Workshop stuff there. Too bad. If the event comes back my fantasy armies will nearly be ready I think.

Don't know if I should use them in this context. I do not want to put the light blue color on them, a color scheme like this here would suit them better.

By the way, they share the same fate that a lot of plastic miniatures face : The material is a little bit brittle nowadays. The bodies are still ok but the weapons are not so durable anymore.

Fantasy homecasting : Men-at-Arms from Prince August mould No. 674

I said I would do homecasting for my fantasy project so I did it. My first fantasy mould is the Men-at-Arms mould no. 674 from Prince August. (Needless to say the name of the company, nobody else has ever produced fantasy moulds for the mass market.)

The first warriors of Zornburg and Lord Igor Zorn I. himself.

The mould before use.

 

First test. Not bad, but he mould needs some additional air vents.

 

With air vents: the weapons and contours are correct.

I casted a lot because I always cast too much. And as always there will be some minis where I did not see the miscasting in the first place so the amount made will be reduced by some pieces.

The outcome was not great 'art' but OK. A lot of other miniatures from the time when these moulds were designed - take some early Ral Parthas for example - would not fit into 28mm settings. Some wouldn't even pass for dwarfs. The miniatures from this mould are only a very little bit smaller compared to 28mm figures. Mount them on a base (like I did above) and the difference is nearly gone.

One of the next posts will be an overview of the mould series.

The army of Greenwood is ready

A quiet weekend later and the spearmen of Greenwood are also done. This part of the army of Midgard is ready now. Greenwood is not to be expanded beyond this 24+2 figures.

The spearmen with helmets and the hero in front are from Crusader Miniatures. The guys without helmets (and some without hair) are from another manufacturer whom I can't remember at the moment. The other minis have been mentioned in posts before.

I think I must switch back to matt varnish. Most of the time the shiny varnish looks nice when the minis are on the table. Maybe because our eyes like shiny surfaces. But when photographed all the the highlights take away a lot.

Some Normans for Greenwood county

Small update this week. Some Axemen and Crossbows for the duchy of Greenwood. Initially acquired for SAGA, now looking for work in Retrosia. Two of the crossbows were missing so I build them from wood and a small piece of wire for the bolt. Not 'art' but it's ok I think. (At least for me.)

The axemen are from Crusader Miniatures (Dismounted Norman Knights with Axes) but the origin of the crossbowmen is a mystery to me. The Greenwood division of the Midgard army is now nearly ready. The rest is a unit of spearmen that is almost finished, they only need the gras on the bases and a flag.

In the background one can see that skeletons are one of the next units I am going to work on. And, on my other blog, 54mm napoleonic artillery.

Brandor the Avenger is back

Let's go on with the strange things we can't let go.  I start the new year with another 'blast from the past'.

This is - as far as I remember - the very first fantasy miniature that I ever bought in my life. (In the shop that I mentioned in the last post.) And I am happy that I still have it after all the years so that I can give this hero a second chance to 'be someone'.

I never knew who was the producer and if the mini belonged to a kind of 'army' or something like that. But thanks to the Lost minis wiki I finally identified him.

It's the 'Super Hero on horse' (Nr. B20) from a british company named 'Borbur Enterprises' that had a fantasy line under the name 'Black Baron'. The company existed from 1975 to 2006 but according to the wiki their fantasy line was stopped in 1987. Funny, sold alone as B20 the hero's horse is named correctly a unicorn.

(By the way: there is an interesting piece about Black Baron on the 'Dear Tony Blair' Blog.)

The wiki also says that Stone Mountain Miniatures in the U.S. still produces Black Baron figures, but the fantasy line seems not be in production any more. And if we look at the minis in the wiki, we can see that most of the old figures have a special charm but not much market value anymore. Ok, I would buy the Winged Demon (B14), the War Chariot (B43) does not look bad and a band of that hobgoblins would also easily find a place to live in Retrosia. But thats me and maybe a handfull of other people around the world. No reason to dig out the moulds again.

The super hero after cleaning the old paint off. The Airfix paints I used back then were applied to thick and the white 'horse' was to yellow now to be acceptable anymore.

As you can see above the original miniature ist shown with a lance but I could swear that my copy came with the double ax shown in the photo (that I made a while ago). It's sad, but Brandor - so his new name - finally got a smaller axe because by mistake I used the original one with another mini and I cannot change it back because I cut the handle. So the weapon on my figure is not the original, but his shield, regardless of how often it fell off the mini, is still there after all the years and keeps the old paint.

(Note to myself : stuff like that goes together into a zip bag so that pieces won't get lost or used elsewhere...)

Riding of the painting table for new adventures...

...oh, wait, this way.

Now I have a leader for 'Brandors Avengers', a group like Robin Hood and his merry men, living in the free countrys on the border of the empire. Their home will be an old border fortress near to a river:  Orkford Castle.

A REAL time travel experience: Going back to 1987 simply by car (no DeLorean involved...)

One afternoon last November (2019) I got in the car and drove back to the year 1986 with no problems. Or was it 1987? I made a little trip and visited the shop where I bought my very first fantasy miniatures. The shop has a different name today and also has moved, but it's still the same company. And although they now actually operate a different business, there are still remnants of the no longer actively operated gaming and miniature business to be found in a corner of the shop. (Yes, strange but true...)

What I found was a big surprise: I found the matching figures for the wood elves from Essex Miniatures of which I only bought a few pieces in 1986/87 in the same shop. Packed in the same blue blisters as I used to know them.

 

When I told the shop assistant (not the owner but also an expert in the hobby) that I had bought figures from that series from them decades ago, he told me straight away that these blisters had been lying around since that time. And the blisters did look old, the outside was crushed and the foam inside had seen to much sunlight.

Back home and back in 2019 and I did a little research. Company reports published on the Internet showed me that the address on the back of the blisters was only used by the manufacturer (Essex) until 1995. After that they moved. And the shop I'm talking about also had a kind of 'business interruption' between 1989 and 1995. They did not run a retail shop during that period. (They came back as a producer of their own line of miniatures, but thats a different story.)

So it is very likely that the photos above actually show exactly the blisters that were hanging on the hook right next to my first fantasy miniatures when I bought them.

Seriously, I have absolutely no doubt: These minis were waiting for me for over thirty years! I am sure, I will never get that close to the feeling of real time travel again. A year later and I am still extremely happy that I made the trip.

The old group of wood elfs was always much too small to form a real unit and therefore didn't really fit in anywhere. Thats over now.  They will be part of a small army of brigands : Brandors Avengers.

This block of lead, that I also found, is of course not a wood elf but what was a "giant" back then. It is the Essex figure Q83 "Giant", modeled by Bob Olley. With its rather low height of just 50mm probably too small to be a giant in a modern game. But nice, a bit weird and I really like it. Very 'old school'.

 

Above's another look into the past: In the "Agamemnon" magazine No. 2 from 1986 I found the announcement of the wood elves shown above (FN103-FN107). Also look out at the masterpieces of modeling art from Citadel on the right. Even big ones start out small.

This is how some hobby magazines used to look like. You didn't had photos of everything and if you weren't buying in a store, you often would order the 'Dwarf with sword', 'Three different wood elf archers' and the 'Adventurer number five with a dagger' from a simple list and then you were really curious to see what you would get. Back then, people still had the courage to take little 'risks', don't they? 

By the way: As I wrote in a previous post, Essex has stayed true to itself and is still producing its old fantasy miniatures.

And now : Guess where I will go 'shopping', when the Corona-Lockdown is over...

Riders of the Retrocalypse

Another unit for the Copper Mountain Army. I had riders from here and there and alltogether they now make up the Horsemen of Copper Mountain. Or as I call them: 'The Riders of the Retrocalypse'.

Some Essex miniatures, some RAFM barbarians (see last post), Excalibur dragon riders on Essex horses, knights from Nemo Miniatures...and the guy in front is of unknown origin, his horse is from Essex and his weapon is from... Games Workshop? Reaper? Who cares. He has a big axe, who wants to discuss that?

Only good glue and a great commander can hold these guys together.

By the way, I cover my minis in glossy varnish. I like the look. But it is not easy to photograph them, they are to shiny. Maybe I will change that, it is still possible. I once tried 'Anti Shine' from Army Painter and that worked really good.

Making this picture I realized that I need some backgrounds so that taking photos for the blog will be quicker and easier. That allready was on my 'list', but far in the future. I'm doing this earlier now.

Not that I am really working with a schedule or something. This 'list' is in fact a great amount of numbered (and titled) directorys on my computer related to segments of my projects and in which I collect textfiles, pictures, pdf's, ideas, notes, inspirational material and other informations for a single task or subproject. And a storage for everything that comes in. The numbers are used to produce a - more or less - usefull sequence of tasks.

The numbers of the directories are arranged in steps of 10 so that I can put one or more of them somewhere between two others to move them to a different position. From time to time I re-number all diretories to get the gaps again. Not manually of course, in the filemanger 'Thunar' (Linux) this task is done with a few klicks.

If you are a little bit older - I think (and hope) younger people don't come in touch with it anymore - you may remember this technique from BASIC programming. We sorted our source code like that when BASIC still had line numbers (later there were versions that did not need line numbers any more). 

From the time when men where real men and manuals were real manuals.
Nothing to romanticize, but it was kind of fun. And the manual was great.

I had not planned to do it that way, it came with the process of sorting the stuff I collected. And it works.

So writing unorganized 'Spaghetti Code' a long time ago teached me to organize something else today. Take the good with the bad. The other good part was : If you survived BASIC, you were able to survive nearly every programming language. (My opinion. But please don't start with it today if you seriously want to learn programming, there are better options.)

Self made lances for my Runestone Warriors

The next unit are barbarian warriors from RAFM. They will belong to the army of Runestone which is part of Thule, the land in the north (who would have guessed that?).

I bougth the figures a few years ago and I was curious to find out how old they really are and whether they are still in production. First I looked into old RAFM catalogues and found them in 1989:

The barbarians in the RAFM catalogue of 1989, page 15. A time when miniature companys still had PRINTED catalogues!

As you can see I took no. 3821 and changed it into a lancer. The canadian company RAFM by the way ist still around and so are the barbarians that now have a new label: 'The Norse SAGA'. RAFM by the way offers a lot of interesting miniatures. I will come back to this.

 

The Lances in 10 minutes

Sometimes I feel a sense of stupidity. I have miniatures here that once were sold without weapons and others where the weapons simply disappeared somehow over the years. Or other weapons are needed like shown above. Magically I have a good amout of axes and swords in my bits & pieces box but nearly no lances and spears.

So on one of the last Crisis conventions I ran around like a headless chicken looking for packs of lances. The only ones I found were ridiculously thin pieces made of tin that I bougth although I thought they were way too expensive. 

A failure. They were completely crap because they bent with the slightest touch and became ugly and useless before I even could attach them to the figures. Meanwhile they have gone the way of all flesh : into the melting pot again.

Then, when I finally painted the miniatures, it suddenly was clear that I can make lances by myself: small steel wire rods (diameter ca. 1-1.5 mm) from the garden department of a hardware store (TOOM), clipped to length and made pointed at one end with my little Proxxon machine (a small grinding and drilling machine).

The whole process took barely 10 minutes and this homemade lances don't bend easily and the complete amount below cost only a few cents.

Note to myself: First think about doing it yourself before buying anything.

Oh well, of course I had these 'professional' made metal lances here that came up some years ago. We all thougth they were a great idea. So I once bought a package and after a while got rid of them again. They were spiky like needles! Whenever I reached out for a miniature that was holding a lance I stabbed my hand and very often started bleeding. That was anoying and they had to go. Realism is ok, but that was to much. My home made lances are not that dangerous

The Knights of Copper Mountain - my Fantasy Foreign Legion

If miniatures pile up for a long time and without a plan, then there are always some that don't really fit together and don't belong anywhere. Spontaneously I found a solution for this. I invented my private 'Fantasy Foreign Legion' that I called the 'Knights of Copper Mountain' and made this the home for minis that otherwise would not find one. This is especially true for older miniatures, which in the past were always bought a bit mixed up.

It started when I got my hands on the bronze paint and asked myself if I ever had used it for anything else than cannons. So I decided to made this somehow unusual color the trademark of 'Copper Mountain'. Miniatures that belong to this group now get bronze color on the armor or weapons, wherever it may seem to be 'appropriate'.

Oldies but gol... copperies(?)

So here are the first of the Copper Mountain troops. Miniatures mostly from Essex and some other Manufacturers. Decals (Axe) from Games Workshop.

More to come, there are still some guys somewhere who look for a home.

Wargamers loosing common sense?

Over at the 'Tiny Tin Men' blog Phil Dutré had a little rant about a 'soulless' plastic miniature that came with the last issue of  Miniature Wargames.

The magazine itself advertised it with the sentence below on its website:

...plus – for an exclusive for print purchasers – there’s a free Household Knight plastic miniature worth over £12.

OK, nothing against the magazine at all (I have a big pile of them and like Phil I am a magazine collector) and of course nothing against a manufacturer who does do everything to promote his product and brand.

 

The upper part from the cover of the December 2020 Issue of Miniature Wargames. The included miniature on the right, the 'value' in the upper left corner.

So far, so good. But, I must beg you: If you ever see me buying a single 38mm plastic mini like that for 12 pounds (13.14 Euros) ... please wake me up.

I never had heard before from 'Conquest - The last Argument of Kings' and I must confess that I am a little bit ignorant nowadays when it comes to the newest and coolest wargaming products. It feels like a new player enters the field every few months now and it simply is impossible to follow all of them. It is not easy to keep up and keeping up is of no real use anyway.

In the comment section beneath his blog post Phil guesses it's a system played with fewer figures and so they have to be more expensive. A quick look at the website of the manufacturer and the onlineshop revealed that it is not. It's a mass combat game with 'real' units and so on. 

From the Onlineshop. 42 Euros for three miniatures means 14 Euros for one. In plastic. And there is no Bourbon in it I suppose...

Wow, this is, from my perspective, expensive. I would never give that amount of money for three plastic miniatures of that size - regardless how fancy, complicated and 'modern' they are designed. When I see people buying wargaming stuff like that I have the strong feeling that we in the western world are going to loose more and more the economic common sense.

Another example from the shop. Infantry units seem to have a more reasonable price tag. To be fair, 12 Miniatures for 36 Euros does not sound so bad. 3,- Euro per figure is not too expensive - if you like plastics. And if you don't know that you still can buy metal minis that are much cheaper...

But I fear you will have no chance in any 'Conquest' game without some special characters (20,- Euros per mini...Wow again!) and some expensive monsters. And there is a rulebook (49,- ), Army Support Packs with 'Spell Cards' and the like (25,- Euros) and so on. It is not easy to see how much you will have to pay to get a sensible setup without studying the rules in detail, but I guess it will cost you a minimum of around 300 Euros. To be honest, I think the average player will invest around 450-500 Euros or more for his first army. 

Wargaming isn't a cheap hobby most of the time. (It can be cheap, but thats another story.) But the new trend to sell plastic miniatures more expensive than a lot of the metal minis on the market is strange. And that people buy the stuff is nothing that I will ever be able to understand. Yes, they are 'modern'. And?

OK, maybe my opinion isn't so important because I am nearly out when it comes to new products and systems. I don't need them. But as an experienced wargamer I still can do the maths and see the system behind this product. 

The most dangerous part is the unusual 38mm size that binds you to 'Conquest' because you won't find very much fantasy minis from other manufacturers. No exchange, no cheap addons or substitutes from the outside. (Correct me if I am wrong.) No use for the minis in combination with other wargaming systems and miniatures if you ever stop playing 'Conquest'.

You will be bound to this system and that is a stupid decicion in a market that offers you an abundance of fantasy miniatures - old and new - that more or less fit together. In the IT business we call that a 'vendor lock-in'.

The wargaming hobby isn't always about making sensible decisions. But you can try, it's still allowed.