Triumph of Death now up for sale!

I'm happy to announce that all of the Triumph of Death line of miniatures from the first kick starter are now up for sale on the skull and crown store! www.skullncrown.com

If you belong to any Face Book group or other gaming site that I do, you will hopefully be inundated
with my adds and blurbs for the next few days. 

  
Thanks again for dropping by- and a Very Happy New year to you all!  I am as always humbled and inspired by all of you dropping by from time to time and I love your feedback. 
until next year, I remain your most Obd't Toy Maker, &c

~Thos

A shot from "take your kid to work" day

 

Warmaster Siege: Towers and Mantlets prototypes

siege tower prototype and mantlets

For our next upcoming warmaster siege, I am thinking some towers and mantlets would be a big help. Especially since I will be the attacker...
These are first pass WIP pattern cuts to get shape, size, and thoughts on assembly. 

Scale is based on the Original Warmaster siege tower of which I have one, but scaled up a bit to fit the castle walls made by Michael, at Supreme little Designs. I also widened it a bit since it never made sense to me that the 40mm base was too big for the tower. 

Erm- pay no attention to the rest of my painting table...

wheels look right. They will be glued onto a solid "strip" of wheels for strength

Gonna make the gang plank door much longer, going to the top of the tower.

 This has a long ways to go, but it shows promise. If this works out well, I will be able to offer these up for sale. 
 Lemme know what you think? 

Warmaster Siege: the Butcher's Bill

MVP unit!

Warmaster Siege Day 4 and final count: After three more turns of assaulting the castle and obliterating the rest of the Empire troops that sallied out (to their doom), the Orc commander decided to leave off the siege when he realized that 4 goblin units and 2 orc units were all that were left, half of which were missing at least one stand. To top that off the Balrog (giant) was critically wounded and would have at least one cannon trained on him next turn. It was a great game, and although we didn't count up official army points the butchers bill was 23 orc units and one officer down, Empire was 10 units (mostly cav) and an officer.

Hand gunners watch the last of the sally force go down

 MVP went to the crossbow unit over the main gate who slaughtered one unit of orcs, drove back several goblin units and did 3 wounds to the Balrog! 

The butcher's bill, Empire

This is a shot of the whole Orc army. It lost about half again these numbers

Now we set up again, and I get to be the attacking force. Time to make some siege towers... :)

Warmaster: the Great Siege- Day 3

Orc Army's Right flank attacks

The Great Siege-Day 3 (turns 9-11) 

The Orcs and goblins managed to make it to the south walls, while the balrog pounded at the door trying in vain to smash it in- and losing half it's hit points to wizardry, crossbows and handguns. On the north side of the castle the ever ensmallening sally force takes the brunt of the attack. Their only hope is to weaken enough units before going down, AND bring them into firing range from the castle walls.

The Balrog beats at the door, and takes 4 wounds for his troubles

Goblins storm the walls but are repelled twice!

The few units left in the castle get ready for the balrog

 9 dice worth of attempts to bring down the castle wall via stone throwers and magic from the wizards tower fail each turn (whew!)

Repelled goblins. the line is getting thinner

Commanders do the stare down thaang

At this point in the siege the invading force still has enough to take the castle, especially if the giant and the orcs get in. Another day and we should have a final outcome. 

Beauty is in the 11 Eyes

...And the DM said unto them," Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great...Roll for initiative!

Beholder Tree Topper

So, each year we have a big Christmas party, and the Mrs. picks a theme for the tree. This year it was the 25th anniversary of the party, so the theme was silver, which then went to blue and some red... because reasons (did I mention I don't get to pick the theme..)

Anyways, we get the tree into the house and the first thing my daughter asks is," do we have any big googly eyes"- which of course we do, and she proceeds to put them on the tree, proclaiming it a mimic.

And, things kind of went downhill from there. When asked to make this years tree topper, I knew where we were heading.

Beholder: One day build

That's no moon! a 5ish inch foam ball for the base

This build is pretty easy, actually. Armed with my Volo's Guide to Monsters, monster manual and the internets I chose an image that I felt I could achieve pretty well- a classic not too fancy beholder. Having made sculpts like this before where you have to get to a lot of spots with wet clay, the first thing I did was make a stand out of some scrap wood and a dowel. This was, as I later learned, key to actually making this project a success.

punch mouth!

Once I drilled a hole in the ball for the base, eventually the tree stand, I drew in the mouth and main eye, then poked holes and added pipe cleaner eye stalks. In retrospect and if I had more time to shop for materials, I would have used a stiffer sculptors wire.

Cracking toast- Grommit!

  after covering the entire body with a thin 2-3mm layer of Crayola air dry clay, I worked from the eye down to the mouth, then added in mat board teeth. Then I did the eyestalks, and finally adding bits of detail in the way of horns and some armor bits.

Honey! the meatloaf is ready...

I was on a 3 hour deadline as the Mrs was going full bore baking literally 100's of cookies and a few cakes for the party. I had to get this guy into an oven set to 100 degrees over night to speed up the air dry clay.

I could have kept painting, but remember this is going on top of a tree..

The next morning, smiley was dry and ready to be painted. There were some cracks in the eyestalks that I tried cleaning up a bit with liquid green stuff, (see above, should have used wire) and some happy accident cracks all around the body that looks like armor.


I painted him(?) up with a mix of Plakka red and the standard slew of minis paints. All told about an hour to paint up.

I'm on Top of the World! 

That's no tree- it's a mimic!

The prettiest angel!

Done and done, the beholder weighed in at just over a pound, and fit well atop the tree. This was a great one day project that took roughly 4 hours to build. It really helped that I was familiar with the materials and had a good plan, and stand.

Now, what else to do with this after Xmas???

Cheers and cool Yule to all!
Ths

Warmaster Siege

Bolt the Gates! 

This wee I got to rope a friend at work into trying out our first siege in Warmaster, using my new shiny castle. Opening shots of the battle here show my Empire knights supporting a relief force of some halberds and pistoleer light cavalry who were trying to get as many of the 10 wagons into the castle with supplies before the Orc Horde came a knocking. Somewhere in the realm of 4,000 points worth, give or take a goblin unit or two...

 

Wagons in, Knights out!

These guys feel totally safe...

Warmaster rules have been my go to favorite table top game since it came out. I have planed hundreds of battles using the rules and have even made variants of the rules to play Napoleonics in 6mm, and Wars of the Imagination with my 54mm woodens. Grats to Mr. Rick Priestly for making such a fun and eloquent rules set.

Wanting only the best, I had my castle assembled and painted by the talented and handsome Darrrell Empey- you can see more about it on his blog http://a28mmbrain.blogspot.com/2017/08/10mm-castle.html
The castle itself is the fine creation (and are for sale) of my pal Michael, at Supreme little Designs.
http://www.supremelittleness.co.uk/

More on the Siege as the battle continues...