Fictitious African State - Western Operators

Don't we all love a bit of kitbashing. These guys are a mix of Warlord Games, Perry Miniatures and  Wargames Factory sprues. They're supposed to represent of team of deniable operations mercenaries representing a rogue actor in my fictitious African state

Its a pretty quick and dirty paint job but will work fine on the table top, I reckon.
 

EIR - Auxillaries

 In my ongoing quest for an Early Imperial Roman army for Hail Caesar I managed to complete a unit of Auxiliaries. These guys look huge compared to the legionaries, which is weird as they're both Warlord Games. I'm going to justify it by saying that Romans weren't that tall and these guys are probably allied Gaul's.

The miniatures were easy to put together and pretty easy to paint, I may have to go with some victrix ones next just see how they compare!

Fictitious African State - Local Militia

Local militia, not very impressed with western forces coming in to their town and fighting their private little war amongst their wives and children. Whilst not very well armed or trained they have the most important motivating factor in their favour, this is their home!

These are Warlord Games (previously Wargames Factory) zombie survivors. Again not the greatest of models however they do have a good level of dynamism to them, although the pieces on the sprues are really hard to identify what goes where.

If they perform well on the table top I may have to build them some allies!

Early Imperial Romans Artillery

No, this isn't a bunch of howitzers or mortars, although that would be cool. No, the Romans developed a bunch of exciting long range lobbing devices that scared the very living crap out of the cultures they conquered, and as is usual for any wargamer I just had to have some in my growing roman legion.

First up here are my repurposed dwarven bolt throwers as Early Imperial Roman ballistae. The crew are a kitbash of regular Warlord Games EIR and the spares that came with their very nice plastic scorpion kit. I've based them for Hail Caesar as a unit of artillery is usually on 2 models on 50x100m bases.

And here are the aforementioned plastic scorpions based the same way as the ballistae. I quite like the plastic Warlord kit, the crew are better sculpts than the regular legionnaires but still the same scale so don't look too weird. I painted everything in my usual "it doesn't matter too much as I have to paint a bucketload of these because its Hail Caesar and you need tons to make an army" style.

Now I just need to find out if ancient artillery suffers the same curse as WW2 armour - freshly painted means utterly useless in their first game!

EIR - Cavalry

Typically cavalry consisted of allied troops rather than Romans although I believe that in the imperial period cavalry could be citizen soldiers. These figures are Warlord Games again, metals this time. I really hated these sculpts, there was quite a lot of flash and the legs and bodies were separate meaning they took some effort to get them to stick together in any kind of decent pose.

The models came with spears although I suspect they're supposed to be javelins as the models also come with a separate javelin pouch, which to be honest I couldn't be bothered painting. I did not enjoy these models and will probably get some Victrix plastics next time!

Fictitious African State - Unnamed Mercenaries

Kitbashed from Warlord Games Project Z survivors (make and female) and random crap from my bits box. This dastardly trio will be elite level and hard to kill, being tooled up to sin and assist l also armoured with an insane amount of confidence and chutzpah!

Fictitious African State

 I’ve been gaming historicals now for about 15 years although always stayed firmly in the “it happened a while ago so its far enough away not to feel too weird” camp. I know that’s not quite true as there are people still alive that lived through WW2 however most of the footage and pictures of that period are black and white which makes it feel “old”. However, in the main I’ve stayed away from anything that could be seen to glamorize or trivialize events that people are still struggling to deal with today.

When Osprey released Black Ops I was drawn into the potential of gaming fictional spy and action movies and video games, after all the cover does appear to feature Solid Snake! This post won’t be a review of Black Ops as that’s been covered by other, more competent bloggers than me out there, but this will be an introduction to the fictional setting for my foray in
to very near future/modern gaming!

So let me introduce the fictional African state of Zaka Neba, which roughly translates to Home of the People in the local language of Mooré (a real language spoken by the Mossi peoples of Western Africa).

This is a post-colonial western African nation sandwiched somewhere between Mali to the north, Nigeria to the east and Senegal to the west. Through negotiation and peaceful revolution, it emerged from its colonial past to become a democracy competing favourably with its neighbours in the wider African geopolitical community. Its people are ethnically and religiously diverse and currently enjoying a growing economy and improved quality of life equivalent to many prosperous African nations (although this is mainly in the cities). Rurally things still echo both the colonial period of rich european landowners as well as isolated tribal communities following traditional cultural practices.

However things recently got weird with the accidental discovery of a naturally occurring mineral compound that has the unusual property of being 20 times more effective at capturing carbon than any known industrial process. The team that discovered this were a joint initiative by the Zaka Neba government research institute and 3 leading western universities, and as you can expect the news  of this discovery made its way to several western governments who instantly prioritised the exclusive acquisition of this compound over their competitors.

What followed was aggressive negotiations by the west with the Zaka Neba government over who would have exclusive access to this potentially immeasurably valuable resource, however behind the scenes this would be decided through the age-old solution of take what you can by force!

The key players in this imaginary drama are:

• The Zaka Neba Ministry of Development – government officials and hired mercenary specialist “operators”
• US Marines and Delta Force – ostensibly a peacekeeping
• force, but may have CIA involvement
• Western Operators – unknown Spec Ops, possibly of various nations or private interests
• The Rural Peace Initiative – Local militia operating as police in rural areas
• Agents – Unknown who they represent, pose as civilians.

A Roman Invasion

At least that's what it feels like on my painting table. I've got legionnaires, auxiliaries, cavalry, command stands and light infantry coming out the wazoo (technical term).

So, here are some more legionaries, Warlord Games again. I've got quite adept at painting these production line style. It's boring but it gets the job done and so long as I intersperse it with something different and interesting I'll be fine.

Next up, Auxiliaries!

Saxon/Viking Light Infantry

I hate these models,  well most of them anyway.  I have a Gripping Beast and Bill Thornhill model on the two commands stands and they improve the look of the unit. 

The rest of the models are Warlord Games plastic Viking Bondi (previously Wargames Factory) and they're really light on detail and weird poses but they'll do for multi purpose dark age light infantry.

I did a pretty simple paint scheme with just base colors and then an army painter strong tone dip. Now that I'm slowly picking up Hail Caesar I have quite a lot of models to paint so need to get used to bulk painting again.  After years of painting skirmish forces I need to relearn how to paint lots of models!

Dark Ages Shaman

I don't even remember where I got this model from as I don't remember buying it.  But it really does suit my Jomsvikings and will work nicely adding flavor to our dark ages games. 

I went for pretty natural neutral tones as a color scheme. 

Stug

Dammit,  I hate resin models they're so hard to fix if they're molded wrong.  This is a Warlord Games resin Stug G and that's right, it's wrong. I've had this for year's and hated the original paint job, it didn't match any of my later models and just looked shoddy. So in a fit of positivity I pulled it to bits (carefully), stripped it and started again.  It was at the this point that I remembered that the tracks were curved and no amount of hot water baths and gentle bending would restraighten them.

So in the end it was a little green stuffing to the rescue,  I don't think you can tell they're bent anymore. 

I added the schurzen this time round as I like the flat space for the camo scheme and decals.

I don't think Warlord make these anymore with the introduction of their plastics range so I'll hopefully never have to deal with bent resin again (yeah right).

Hanomag

Another Rubicon kit with loads of cool parts and clever hidden joins. I did scratch build a gunner for the Mg42 but he kept breaking off so I decided to go with just a driver.  

I'm quite happy with the camo scheme,  it's in theme with my other German armor and gives a coherent them.

If anything my infantry now let's down my armor,  I've got a box of Warlord Pioneers that I need to put together to go with this,  but it'll probably take me a few years to get round to it. 

Death Guard Predator, Kinda!

OK,  I like to save money cos I'm stingy. That's right,  I'm a yorkshireman which means short arms and deep pockets so whenever I can avoid spending cash I will.  And with GW's terrifying prices down here in NZ its pretty rare that I would spend any of my hard earned on their products. 

I'm quite enjoying painting my 40k Death Guard at the moment,  it makes a refreshing change from the hordes of Saxons and Roman's I've been doing recently. So I decided that I needed some heavy support to back up my not Hellbrute and what better way than a not Predator!

This originally started life as a Tamiya 1/48 Cromwell that bought to support my slowly growing Bolt Action British however I bought it before they released version 1,  and not knowing how popular it would become and how everyone would get 1/56 scale armor for the game. Which is fine but my 1/48 Cromwell dwarfs Tiger 1's so unfortunately it's sat in my cupboard gathering dust for the last decade.  

However 40k minis are huge so the footprint of this is about right for a death guard tank so I grabbed my plastic glue, scalpel and set to work nurglifying it! There are parts from chaos marauders and warriors,  ogres, vampires, tau, rogue trader era space marines as well as a sh#t ton of milliput to give it that mutated look. 

I've gone a little overboard whey the rust effect but I think it works okay,  I may have to rusting my Hellbrute now,  just to keep them in theme. 

This top down view gives you an idea of just how much milliput I used to sculpt all nasty organs, flesh and random pipes type stuff.

Somewhere in the fleshy mutation on the front is a face of some poor lost soul dragged into this beast as it thundered across the battlefields of the grim dark.

I used a lot of inks and washes on this to try and get a suitably grubby and pestilence feel to it,  I quite like how it turned out. 

Ancients Skirmish Archers

Another bunch of the old Wargames Factory models,  I don't even recall what they're called but I'll be using them as generic ancient Mediterranean skirmishers (they look kinda Greek). 

They work nicely across a bunch of forces in for Hail Caesar.

I have the same complaint about these as I do for the Bondi, very vague features and not a lot of detail,  but in these it doesn't look too bad! Painted like the bondi, block colors and army painter dip, nice and quick. 

Hail Caesar Intro

A couple of weeks ago the Kapiti Gentlemen Historic Wargamers convened at Castle Bowman for an into game of Hail Caesar (and some general chit chat and merriment). Scott had kindly organized an intro game for Bryan,  Roly and I, so one stormy night Bryan drove us both up the long, dark and dangerous newly opened highway to Chez Bowman, meeting Mijnheer Roly there. 

What followed was a hilarious, embarrassing,  tense,  comedic and downright fabulous evening of gaming, with some of dark age Britain's most disreputable Kingdoms battling it out for possession of a tiny little bridge in the middle of nowhere. Where legendary decisions were made ("march across the bridge in column", "but they'll charge us sir!") and betrayals were rife ("how many turns have your viking mercenaries sat on that hill now Bryan?", "errr, they're having tea").

I'll let the pictures do the talking

Initial deployment, you can see the bridge in question, my Saxons bottom right cheerfully planning to run full speed to claim it with Bryan's Vikings holding my left flank on the hill. Roly was facing him and had plenty of time to ford the river to get in to position, whilst Scott was going to swing down our right flank while also pushing across the aforementioned bridge.  

Hmm what happened!

Lucky command roll, my medium infantry slammed into Scott's heavy infantry while in march column, however I didn't crush them (shocker) and so had to settle for being stuck in combat. But in the plus side those heavy infantry were unable to form up on the bridge so fingers crossed for next time. 

Ha,  next time I pushed them back.  And it only cost me my General (doh!).

Meanwhile Scott swarms my right flank with skirmishers. Luckily I had left a close order infantry unit to protect my flank as I was suspicious about those viking mercenaries I'd hired!

Rightly so as it turns out as Bryan managed to repeatedly fail his division orders and they refused to move.  Luckily so did Roly so all the action was on the right flank. 

However just when is given up hope The vikings surged down from the hill just as Rolys forces forced the river and it was on!!!!!

And unfortunately we kinda called it there as it was late, emotions were frayed, we'd exhausted all the tea and biscuits and our respective significant others were probably beginning to worry (apart from Lady Bowman who was possibly wondering when these boisterous old men were going to stop playing with toy soldiers and go home).

Next time,  Roman's!

Hellbrute.....I think

So this is an old model, not quite oldhammer in vintage but there is a new version of out now that I think is a pretty poor version of this original!

It’s the old Sisters of Battle Penitent Engine, a lovely sculpted but a pain in the arse model to put together (there’s a really niggly ball socket that joins the body to the legs). Now obviously this is not how it looked originally but as it has sat in my pile of shame for many years I decided to repurpose it for my slowly growing Nurgle warband. So obviously the first thing to do was kit bash the heck out of it! 

This now features parts from Space marines, Ogre kingdoms, Orcs, Plague Marines, Chaos Marauder, Warriors and other spiky bits as required. There is also a significant amount of milliput to replicate some kind of flesh mutation yuckiness!

When i was putting it together I honestly didn’t know what I was going to use it for however its slowly morphed into a Hellbrute which I think will suit it nicely!

Cultists Baby!

That's right,  cultists.  I had a bunch of Cadian imperial guard models left over from some project or other and so I went a bit wild with the bits box, adding bits from the Beastmen box and applying some random melted bits!

You'll see that I tried to cut or melt the imperial Aquila wherever I could,  these guys are supposed to be a guard unit on garrison duty on a newly reconquered world that's gone a bit native!