A Spanner in the Works

 Hi!

I've been quietly working away on my 2024 Leviathan plans but have hit a bit of an issue, namely my car going in for a service which has resulted in £600+ of work needing done on it.

Where's a Technomancer when you need one!

Unsurprisingly the repairs are taking precedence so my hobby budget is taking a massive hit for the foreseeable future so I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board with my plans for a years worth of gaming and really concentrate on gaming on a shoestring.

Now this still leaves me with some interesting options but its going to involve a lot less painting miniatures than I'd foreseen, at least in the scale I'd planned.

As I see things, I've got several options left open to me, all of which I should be able to do pretty much for free:

Option 1: Give up. Write off the whole thing and give up. This is a rubbish option that I shall immediately discard as stupid and defeatist!

Option 2: Go back to my sci-fi stuff as I've got enough painted figures and terrain to keep me entertained for years to come, not to mention quite a decent stack of unpainted stuff that I can work on.

Nexus Rebellion troopers

This option is a fairly easy one to do but I really feel that 2024 is the year I need to get Leviathan out of my head and onto the table so we go onto the other options:

Option 3: Make it myself but small! Essentially go back to 2008ish and make some 15mm scale warbands myself from greenstuff.

The original Boar Company

Now this option actually has some possibilities as I can sculpt 15mm quite quickly and include some bigger monsters without too much effort so its feasible to make a warband in a week, paint it and get it ready to play in a similar amount of time. Combined with the smaller playing area and it may be a bit of a winner. My only issue with this is that there is a limited amount of detail I can feasibly get into these little guys and the visuals are important to me.

Option 4: SD shenanigans! As above but with my larger scale figures. I must admit that this is my preferred option as I love making these characterful little figures and while it's a bit more effort than the 15mm option, its a pleasure to work on them.

Option 5: Papercraft it! I've been experimenting with Papercraft miniatures for a couple of years now so I could make entire warbands in a week and play campaigns easily.

I must admit that this is quite a tempting option as its super cheap but I hark back to the importance of the visual and while I love making the paper standees, I can't help but feel that its cheating somewhat as they're not 'proper' miniatures.

I think I'm going to go ponder a bit and put together a few bits and bobs and see what I like the best but I refuse to let my hobby be derailed before we even reach the end of January.

I'll post my progress in the next couple of days and hopefully I'll have something more concrete to show in my next post.

In the meantime, All the best!

Further Leviathan Musings

 Hi!

I've spent the last few days looking at my collection to see what I want to do in the coming year with regards to Leviathan.

I actually have at least the beginning of several warbands that just need a bit of fleshing out that will allow me to play a number of skirmish type games in the setting, be it Dwarf, Orc, Barbarian or even Elf so I have the option of just picking up some suitable figures to paint and cracking on.

While most of these were painted about ten years ago, I figure I could keep working in a fairly similar style and within a few months have all I need.

The other option I'm actually leaning towards is to go back to my Boar Company SD scale figures that I made myself and really dig into sculpting my own stuff again as its a really satisfying process that will allow me to get the figures that I want for my warbands.

The downside to this is that it is a pretty slow process and I'll need to pick up some fresh putty as my current stuff has started to go off...

I've also delved further into my rules collection to see what other rulesets would fit in with my ideas and have decided that it may be a good idea to have a bash at something like these:

I've got copies of all of them and they all look rather fun so maybe its time I actually bit the bullet and planned out and put into motion a project that would allow me to actually play them. I hope to build up my figure collection using whatever I decide on over the next few months and then try to play as many games as I can using as many rulesets as I can which will be a challenge in its own right!

With this in mind, I think I need to spend whats left of January making scenery which will be suitable for fantasy skirmish gaming in the wild frontiers, ruined cities and desolate spell wracked wastelands of Aeroth and see what I can come up with to set the scene before re-exploring the whole figures, rules and whatnot as I feel that if I can set up something that looks how I imagine it being I can start getting some figures fitted into the equation as I go.

With that in mind, I've rummaged out my old copy of How to Make Wargames Terrain from GW back in 1996 and will be using it to make some easy terrain to cover a 2'x2' battlefield initially before moving onto a 3'x3' setup which is the maximum space I have to work with. I'm also limiting myself to cost and attempting to just use scrap materials and to fit the lot into a single box once its done. 

Is it possible? I have no idea but I'll see what my day off today can result in!

In the meantime, All the best!

2024: The Year of Leviathan

Hi!

Well here we are in 2024, the 16th year I've been blogging which is totally mental! 

Over the last decade and a half I've picked up and put down many different projects but one has kept being worked towards before failing miserably and stalling again and that project is Leviathan.

Its a game that is almost like the holy grail of my hobby as I've worked at it on and off for the entire time I've been blogging, even with my Leviathan blog being my first real delve into sharing my thoughts over the interwebs. This largely forgotten and niche game with its lumpen resin sculpts and incomplete rules keeps drawing me back in and I think I want to actually do something about it.

Now Leviathan is stated to be a mass battle game but one needs a 8'x4' board to play it and large armies of infantry, cavalry, warengines and mighty monsters to play it. None of which I currently have. This got me to thinking that could I approach a Leviathan project in a different way? 

Instead of using the rules and all the massive miniatures could I use another, simpler and quicker ruleset for the mechanics and use the frankly brilliant setting to play out games in a quicker and less complex manner?

The answer is that yes I think I can! I've got a massive stack of rulebooks for fantasy and science fiction gaming and I'm almost positive that I'll be able to make use of at least one of them for a good basis for my obsessive quest.

The next thing I'll need to think about is what scale of figures do I want to use? I've played games set in Aeroth , the post apocalyptic world of Leviathan in everything from 28mm to 2mm so I'm spoiled for choice but I think I'm kind of settled on using one of three different levels of conflict:

Mass Battle 2mm 

Using my 2mm stuff and Land Ironclad rules its a cinch to play out massive battles featuring wartowers, engines of destruction and all manner of other exciting stuff that I expect in a massive wargame and should be fairly easy to put together both cheaply and relatively quickly.

Large Warband 15mm/28mm

I'm still swithering about what scale to go for in the warband level games as 15mm is cheaper but there is something awesome about seeing a 28mm scale warband on the table and by using Dragon Rampant or No Quarter I think I could put together an army in about six months so I'd have two over the course of the year and if I rotate through forces, I'd have two small armies to play by summer time.

Small Skirmish 28mm

For small warbands of 5-10 figures a side, I plan on using Brutal Quest as it is such a great rulebook and I think that if I use 28mm figures for the Large Warband option, I'll be able to use figures for both projects. It would be a fairly straight forward process to put together two warbands and game out all manner of interesting scenarios as I go.

We shall see how things develop going forward as I am more than aware that each time I've tried it, my Leviathan project has rapidly gone pear shaped and been derailed by other projects but surely this year will see me make a go if it!

I think the first thing I need to do is to look at what I've got squirrelled away and then set out a budget, timeframe and whatnot to see what I can come up with and post up here with the final(ish) decision before moving onto the project itself.

No doubt I'll be tempted by other projects as the year progresses but I think that if I can set myself with an achievable challenge and work towards actually getting the Leviathan obsession onto the gaming table, I'll be doing well.

In the meantime, All the best!