The Peninsular War - Buildings

Ever since I sold off my Indian Mutiny collection I have been looking for another setting for Sharp Practice and a new project. Initially I was looking into the French-Indian War with it's small skirmish groups and distinctive terrain. In the Autumn of 2016 I met another wargamer Erik, and we got talking about different projects. Unlike my friends Erik likes unit based games and is very eager to play Sharp Practice. With the Dawns and Departures campaign setting PDF released I got thinking about trying out Napoleonics again in The Peninsular War. Erik was also keen and we started to look at minis and I looked into what terrain could be obtained without breaking the bank.

So with miniatures ordered - I will be playing the French, while Erik will be putting some Rifles on the table - I settled on the War Bases modular buildings and some extra bits. These are very cheap and will form a good base for a larger buildings.

Researching what other wargamers had done with the buildings I found that for a small price I could get plain tiles sheets for all the buildings from Wills - so an order was placed with Model Railways Direct.

Both orders arrived within a week of ordering. Assembly of the modular buildings was very easy and only took about two hours in total.

Looking at the buildings I realised that I would need to put them together with other types of buildings in order to make them more usable. Luckily for me Rich Clarke from Too Fat Lardies is also doing Peninsular buildings so his blog entries has provided excellent inspiration.

I began to put some small walls, extra buildings etc. next to the War Bases models so that I could get an idea of the buildings I wanted. I ended up with four buildings.

Next up was gluing everything in place on 3mm MDF.

The most lengthy task was up next - plastering all the buildings and walls with filler. This took more hours that I care to remember, but the end result was what I hoped for.

For the walls I had some small tiles that was suitable, so they were glued in placed. Sanding of the bases was done quickly and left to dry for a few hours.

Everything was then spray primed with a dark brown colour.

3 layers of drybrushing from light brown/beige to unbleached titanium white to off white gave the look I wanted.

The bases where repainted dark brown where the paint from the buildings had touched. 3 layers of drybrushing was then applied before adding some light green flock in different places around the models.

The tiles on the walls was painted in antique red and then drybrushed with a red-orange before a final highlight of light rosa. The same was done with the Wills plain tiles sheets.

Finally I added some barrels, benches, crates etc. as the final touches.

In all this has cost me around £40 since much of it is scratchbuilt from pieces I had lying about.

I am very pleased with the final look and look forward to gaming with the buildings.

Broken Legions - Argonauts

Got these wonderful minis for Christmas. With the exception of the Oracle (an old D&D mini, repained and altered a bit), they are all from Foundry's World of Greeks range.

The Argonauts or Cult of Hera is the greek warband in Broken Legions. Similar to the Sons of Spartacus, this warband does not contain the heroes associated with the original Argonauts, but instead has types similar to them. I think this is a clever way from the author to incorporate a few more centuries of ancient heroes. This makes it possible to pit an elite Roman warband against the Argonauts.

The sculpts are excellent and they paint up were nicely. I went for the same look that the minis have on the Foundry website as I think it looks cool.

This is likely to be the last warband I do for Broken Legions for some time. I have all the warbands in the book with the exception of the Sons of Spartacus, so I am more than covered.

While we enjoy our games, we have changed some of the rules to what we thinks give a better game. I am surprised that Broken Legions have not really taken of and become more popular. Maybe it drowned in the hype of Congo and Konflikt 47. But this is a game that is very good, and which should grab many gamers' imagination. I use a lot of the scenarios from Frostgrave as there are some similar goals to the game. In Frostgrave the wizards look for treasure and magic, while in Broken Legions the warbands look for artefacts, so it is very easy to convert scenarios from Frostgrave to Broken Legions - and the Frostgrave scenarios are superior to the ones in Broken Legions.

Anyway here are some pictures of the warband I took the other evening.

 The Argonauts

Oracle, Argonaut Captain, Heraclean champion

Argonauts

 Mercenary Archers

Mercenary Hoplites

Broken Legions - Bits and pieces

During December and here in early January I have been painting bits and pieces for Broken Legions. These bits and pieces are mostly Auxilia, and some monsters, but I also found a suitable Magus figure in my lead pile, and some elementals that he can summon.

 Harpies

Statues - primarily to be used in specific scenarios

Necromancer and the skeletons he is able to summon

Magus and the elementals (still need a suitable fire elemental)

 Sicarius

Daughter of Lamia, Necromancer, Sicarius, Lost Legionary, Skinchanger

Roman Civilians

A few months ago I purchased 10 Roman Civilians from Matakishi.com - I wanted some minis to represent the characters in our Cthulhu Invictus RPG, and these were cheap and showed a lot of different types. I think I will be able to use them in future home brewed scenarios for Broken Legions as well.

Judging from the images of the painted minis I was unsure about the quality of the sculpts, and I must admit that I was not pleasantly surprised. These are among the worst sculpts that I have painted. The details are minimal and often the feet and hands are just lumps of meat. This meant that I had to exaggerate some of the highlighting compared to my normal painting style.

Once they were painted and based they look alright I think. But having just finished painting my Parthians from Aventine the difference in sculpt quality is huge. Still it is a cheap deal and they will size wise blend in with Crusader, Aventine, Warlord etc.

So not highly recommended but still recommended for the value for money.

For the pictures I tried to make it look like nighttime.