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Sunday, 15 March 2020

Harlequin and Wolf Chariots!

Hi!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I happened across my old Eldar gubbins and in a moment of madness decided to have a bash at painting them in retro 2nd edition technicolour magnificence!

 Harlequin!

I settled on a NMM finish but using all the old school techniques I had to make the little guy fit the classic imagery of my 2nd edition memories.

I even primed him white (which in hindsight was a total pain in the bum but did result in a pleasingly bright finish that I wouldn't have got with black). There's lots of washes on there too but it doesn't seem to show up too well on the pics but I am quite happy with how he turned out.


 So many jewels!

That's not all though! I also managed to paint my way through a trio of tiny wolf chariots for my 6mm Goblin army:

 Teeny tiny chariots

As with my previous post, the figures were primed black then drybrushed grey which brought out the details and allowed me to quickly paint up the little guys.

 The force so far

With a strong cavalry force now painted, I need to sort out some infantry, monsters and artillery, not to mention characters which need to be worked on to complete the force!


I'm really chuffed with the progress I've made with the little guys and am really enjoying painting the Irregular Miniatures range as while the unpainted metal is rather uninspiring looking, once that first drybrush is on, they really come to life and I'm seriously pondering picking up some Empire proxies for the Gobbos to fight and defend the borders of the Empire from whatever forces that wish to bring it low...

I've mentioned my Song of Blasters rules that I've been working on over the last couple of years and one of my latest addition is to do away with traditional rulers and go for measuring sticks instead.

Here's the movement measuring stick:

 Move!

Infantry generally moves half the length of the stick while infantry the full length while fast cavalry 1.5 or even 2 for very fast units. This seems to work quite well in 2mm, 6mm and 15mm scale with only a few small modifiers.

Next up, here's the shooting stick:

Dakka! Dakka! Dakka!

Unlike movement, shooting has a longer range with short range being one stick, medium 2 and long 3 and individual weapon rules allow for a deal of customisation. For example the Beam option allows the firer to roll to hit any unit the ruler touches which represents things like flamers or grape shot.

The sticks are jumbo lolly sticks and measure 15cm which is very handy when it comes to measuring stuff and I am thinking of making some themed ones for my Goblins and more for my Imperial troops and Vongola ironclads!

It's interesting how simplifying rules down has resulted in a far more pleasing game than making things over granular and complex. I've found myself rather inspired by the likes of Epic 40k which has one of the best systems I've played for years and will continue to post the odd ruminations on the rules as I go so watch this space!

In the meantime, All the best!

8 comments:

  1. A very colourful Harlequin, the blue suits him perfectly.
    Your 6mm force is growing rapidly too and the models are really tempting, but I think I would prefer the Warmaster scale if I ever started a fantasy project like this.

    Very curious about your rules system, sounds like a great project to go on Kickstarter with.

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    1. The Warmaster scale is lovely but sadly the miniatures are rather difficult to get hold of these days and quite often insanely expensive!

      Irregulars stuff will do the job for a cheap version.

      The rules I've been working on over the last while are a bit of a hodgepodge of Song of Blades meets Epic 40k with some other gubbins thrown in too!

      I'll put together a PDF for it once it's written up for folks to peruse but it may be a while before I have a workable set as at present it seems that each game I play of it, I end up changing or incorporating elements.

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  2. Great stuff, the harlequin looks very nice, and I like the small warhammer stuff. I agree Epic 40,000 is a great rule set, I really cannot understand all the legions of people who prefer the mind-numbing tedium that is Net-Epic or its earlier official iterations. Surely the point of games like that is to have a huge battle that you can play easily and simplification and abstraction must surely be part of that. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it anyway.

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  3. I also love that Harlequin, the work really paid off. The chariots are nice too, but I have to say the measuring stick really made my day, what a clever idea!

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  4. Love the harlequin, very reminiscent of the old box set. Nicely done.

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  5. Thanks for the comments folks!

    I'm rather enjoying painting up some old school lead and have a few more that I plan on working on over the next few weeks of enforced isolation!

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  6. Ohhhh, that Eldar guy - awesome colours!

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