Ogres and Goblins

Score!

A year or two ago, the first three figures below were spotted at a Cold Wars or Historicon flea market. While I was cruising the rest of the market & thinking about going back to pick them up, they were sold to someone else. Later I discovered one of my friends had bought them. So now he decided to sell them and I nabbed them up, along with the hand cannon ogre in the second photo.

This nearly completes my collection of Marauder "Imperial" ogres. I am only missing the one with the morning star/flail type weapon.

Normally I repaint figures to match my own, but the painting on these is so good I see no need. I'm just going to base them up to match mine and touch up one or two spots of chipped paint.





Speaking of flea market sales, I've been dragging around my last three bases worth of painted GW snotlings for years, practically trying to give them away with no luck. So I've popped them onto individual 20x20 bases and will call them "lesser goblins." In addition to the ogres above, I also picked up some more unpainted snotties to add to the collection below. They will serve several purposes. One is that they can be pressed into servitude in my Skaven army, for more slaves. Second... I've been having thoughts of creating a light-hearted, oldschool "Dungeon" or "Heroquest" type board game, but using figures and (eventually) a modular 3D "board." So these make ideal low level denizens.



I've sent a lot of other stuff off to Cold Wars this weekend, for sale at the club flea market table. I'm having to thin the collection out to help cover bills. I do have one or two items someone is picking up for me from the dealers room. Although I'd like a pile of them, I'm going to have to be happy with one box of the Perry WotR mercenaries -- just so I can see how they look. Once my employment is settled, maybe I can jump back into medievals full tilt. Also, with an eye on finally starting the Macedonians/Successors I've asked for just a couple packs of Molon Labe (ex-Vendel) figures, since they're now easilly available in the US. I've long been curious to check out their size & quality.

Historicon 09, Part 1

This year's Historicon ranks among the most fun I've been to. I kept pretty busy the entire time, pushed a lot of figures, rolled a lot of dice, painted a few figures, and had a lot of laughs. Hell, I even "enjoyed" playing Magic back at the room, and I normally hate that game.

I'll probably be posting some specific stuff regarding a few events later in the week, like the WAB doubles and medievals tournament, the Clash of Iron demo, and the painting events.

This year I also came home with several times as much loot as I normally do. The best part is that almost all of it was at bargain prices. I just couldn't pass it up! Jus for humor's sake (and to give an idea what I'll be painting over the next year,) here's a list:

• 28 Thureophoroi (Crusader)
• 28 Carthaginian spearmen (Crusader)
• Carthaginian command (mounted) (Crusader)
• Numidian Elephant (Crusader)
• 9 Spanish cavalry (Crusader)
• 8 Balearic Slingers (Foundry)
• 32 Numidians (Wargames Factory)
• 28 Germans (Wargames Factory)
• 3 German cavalry (Foundry)
• 5 German standard bearers (Foundry)
• German and Roman general (Wargames Factory metal)
• Roman general (foot and moutned) (Crusader)
• 2 organ guns, 2 light guns, and a bag of crew (Old Glory)
• 30 Landsknecht pikemen (Old Glory)
• 8 Landsknecht handgunners (Foundry)
• 90mm scale Landsknecht Dopplesoldner (Andrea)
  
• 16 oldschool Empire state troops (GW)
• Empire general (Rutgar) (GW)
• The follwing DoW (GW): Borgio, 3 galloper guns, 2 Bronzino, box of birdmen, 16 Pirazzo's lost legion, box of besiegers.
• Great eagle (GW)
• Boatloads (450+/-) 15mm medievals (Rank & File)
• 2 FoG books (Immortal Fire & Storm of Arrows)
• 2 WRG books (Dark Ages & Feudal)
• Ancient Warfare special edition on the disaster at Teutoberg Wald
• Misc stuff like paints, brushes, and so on.

I wasn't certain there was going to be room in the car for me on the trip home.

Sadly, with all the new stuff I got, I also lost my straw cowboy hat. I was quite fond of it. I brought it to keep the sun off my head, but I never wore it and left it at the hotel Sunday.

At any rate, I have plenty to keep me busy for quite some time, though I will be returning to some commission work for the next few weeks. I fell a bit behind trying to finish my stuff for the WAB tournament this past weekend. So now I owe some time to some other figures on my painting desk.

My photography skills left me, this time around. Not that I took many pics. But here's a few:


WAB Doubles:



WAB Medievals in front, WECW to the left, WAB Classical & Open in the distance:




Ancients area (is that the El Cid games in the foreground?):

The rest of Cold Wars

I didn't take many photos this year, even though there were some great looking games. I did take a few shots of some large games as inspiration for what a real game of toy soldiers should look like.

More toys = better. ;)

The first is an ACW game I walked past the first evening. The remaining three are what I believe is a large Seven Years War game. In addition to simply looking impressive, it's a period I can only dream of playing.











As far as loot I brought home, a rough list...

• Another box of WF Romans.
• Roman allies from Crusader minis: Numidian cav, Spanish caetrati, Spanish Scutari command, Spanish slingers (which I discovered were mispackaged but Crusader/OG is shipping me the right figures.)
• One bag each of OG Spanish Scutari and Numidian infantry that I spotted in the flea market for the cheap.
• Two boxes of the previously mentioned & photographed Zvezda medievals.
• I joined the Old Glory Army since I spent enough at the Crusader booth to make it worth while, and so I got a bag of 10+/- nice looking 18th c. figures (a duel diorama?) from Blue Moon.
  
• Some deciduous trees in kit form.
  
• Various dogs (from Mega Minis and IWM). I think I got an odd badger or two mixed in as well.
  

Rough estimate, not including the dogs & trees, is about 178 infantry and 9 cavalry. Combine that with recent mail order deliveries of 18 more cavalry and 97+ more infantry, and the barely started 32 Romans from the remainder of the first WF box and I'm feeling buried. That doesn't include the large amount of commission work that I've suddenly started on.

I may try painting a few of the Blue Moon figures as well as I can for the painting contest at Historicon if I have time. I was looking for something really eye catching on which to test my ability. I normally paint in quantity (for armies), so I haven't really pushed my skills lately. I was browsing the 40mm stuff for this reason, but abandoned that idea after I got these "bonus" figures.

Recent Lootings

Just thought I'd give a run down of some of the loot I've picked up since the Summer...

At Historicon I managed to nab some deals in the flea market, including a cheap if somewhat used Army Transport bag/case, some more old plastic GW Empire state troops, and a small starter force of Warmachine Khador figures for about 1/2 price. I looted some of the remaining WotR figures from Age of Glory's dwindling Front Rank bins, as well as some OG Flemish figures, some of which I've recently painted (and posted photos.) I got a few odds & ends, modeling supplies & such as well. I don't recall if I posted this figure from Ramshackle Games or not, but I will do a review in the near future. (When I get up the inspiration to paint it.)

At Buckeye Battles I won a few prizes and grabbed some new Fleshhounds and Galrauch the chaos dragon. I just like the figure for the latter, and want to paint him up. The former were going to be used in a Daemons of Chaos army, but after picking up the book I just can't play that army with a clear concience. It's so out of whack with the rest of the game that it didn't seem fun. So I traded them off.

I won some prizes again at Marauders Mayhem and got some gift certificates for the Krystal Keep, and cashed them in immediately for some GW wood elves and the WAB Alexander the Great book. I also spent some cash the first day on a few older figures that were in a clearance bin, but the most important score was two bottles of the old GW Flesh Wash, which is now out of production. I've tried all their other washes, but they don't work the way I use the Flesh Wash. So I've postponed my having to resort to finding an alternate solution. (The alternative will probably be to go back to Coat d'Arms Flesh Wash.)

I recently purchased the Hannibal & Punic Wars book for WAB at Recess Games (the more-or-less local game store), which just came in last week.

At the Recess Rumble this weekend, I got another prize certificate which I used to pick up the WFB Bretonnian army book and a few paints. I'm not certain I'm actually going to do a Bretonnian army, but like a sugared up 8-year-old with ADD, my army plans change daily, so who knows. The benefit being that I can use historical figures to serve a dual purpose.