The rise of the Bodurian Army...

Readers may recall my Fantasy Cliches post last year, it had its' tongue in cheek but it made a clear point; Fantasy gaming tends to stick to fairly narrow tropes.  Which is not true of fantasy fiction for example.  Consequently I thought I should maybe spend some time on a project that tries to break a few, if not all of those rules.

So what to do, well, Given my present Historical interests, it seemed there was an obvious choice:

 

 Yes, a Napoleonic-esque force.  Drawing a little inspiration from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell perhaps, alongside a little bit from several other sources, and lastly a big chunk of my own imagination....

As a tester for an overall style I kicked off with a unit of Scouts, using Perry British Rifleman parts, paired with Russian infantry heads and a French Dragoon sword for their commander.

  

I went for a winter scheme, as my vision is of Boduria as a rising state in a Eastern European context.  Mixing modern Black Powder and military theory, with the old ways of dark arts and sorcery.

  

Part of this would allow for magic and mystery to be a part of the force, but I wanted it also to feel like an established structure in the military; Hence the Regimental command is a mix of a traditional officer corps and a religious order.

 

 The composition of this elite infantry unit has a rather Transylvanian tone to it perhaps.  A young witch is accompanied by monastic cultists and her protective Golem and ever present eyes and ears (bat swarm), as powerful as she may be though, she is junior in command to the Colonel, who military skill, tactical knowledge and discipline are what truly leads men.

 

This unit is a Perry Russain command figure, two Perry Crusade Monks I had spare, a couple of Reaper Bones models and an antique Julie Guthrie scuplt for the witch.  From the old Grenadier range.  I think this had sat unpainted in a box since I purchased it in about 1989!

Finally, to begin with, I prepared a unit of Heavy Riders, making sure I broke the rule about humans only using horses as mounts.  In fact the beasts of burden here are to become a theme across the army (See the army standard above).  Wolves:

 

 Bodurian Guard Hussars ride massive wolf-like creatures, in fact an ugly but effective crossbreed with blood from savage heavy jawed dogs, giving it enough docility to be trained by normal means.  True wolves in Boduria are far more massive, and generally only controlled by magical means, and deep bonding with their masters.  But more on those another day...

 

These are a blend of spare parts from several Perry French cavalry sets, combined with the Games Workshop Hobbit series Fell Wargs.  All the 'horse furniture' was sculpted with GreenStuff; making these a slow process to prepare.

In  the interest of speed I used a glaze technique to paint these models up fast; wanting a good wintry finish I dusted the bases with a frosty highlight and then added globs of fake snow.  I hope it gives the right impression.

These three units represent about half of the initial 24pt army, with lots more in the works.  Hopefully this project will continue to develop quickly in the coming months; and continue to steer away from the usual fantasy gaming tropes...

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General Jacques Thomas Sarrut

Another command addition to my Napoleonics collection.

 

"Jacques Thomas Sarrut (16 August 1765 – 26 June 1813) joined the French army and became a division commander in the First French Empire of Napoleon. He led a regiment at Hohenlinden, a brigade at Jena, Bussaco, and Fuentes de Onoro, and a division at Salamanca. He was mortally wounded while leading his soldiers against the Anglo-Allied army at the Battle of Vitoria."

(Wikipedia)

 

Not otherwise especially notable, being something of a journeyman commander, the figure I've used for Sarrut is one of the Front Rank generic French command figures.  That said he has a rather natty cape to protect him from the weather (it's not always sunny in Spain!)  This resulted in a lot of chopping of details from the horse furniture to get the figure to sit at a decent position.

The wheel seemed a nice added touch, and came from a stockpile of Victorian 28mm artillery wheels I was given years ago.  It may be a little later in date but I doubt there's much difference.

A useful little figure.

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The Mandalorian

As suggested, I've knocked out a quick Star Wars model from the pile of shame.  In fact this chap had sat in the corner of my painting tray for about 18 months!

No prizes for guessing who this notorious bounty hunter is:

There is some tricky undercutting on this model from a painting standpoint, but the hardest part seemed to be getting a decent reference for the costume colours - simply as there was too many choices, but film stills were not as definitive as you'd like.  This is based on a costume replica, letting them do that legwork for me.

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Imperial Assault: Skirmish Mode

After an eternity, longer than it takes to crank out a Star Wars sequel anyway, I had the chance to get the Imperial Assault minis back on the table in the last month or so.

Not in campaign mode however, myself and Gav - for a change of pace - tried the Skirmish mode, a head to head wargame mode with some role-play wrinkles thrown in.

Darth Vader leads a Raid on a Cantina hiding Rebel scum 

The mechanics are largely the same, but given the rebel player is no longer comprised of heroes, the game plays more the less like the Imperial role in Campaign mode for both sides, with simpler actions, but special orders cards to add back a level of uncertainty.

Local drinkers are quickly dispatched 

Whilst there may be issues with certain troops being very powerful (Darth Vader is a beast), this all works very well, and as can be seen, with painted models on the lovely terrain tiles, looks glorious.

Red robes support the Sith lord against Han and Chewie 

Having the rare novelty of playing the Rebels, I soon found myself outgunned and outmanoeuvred.  Gav led the shiny forces of evil forward in a way that cost scarcely a Stormtrooper even.

It's not going well  

Turns out Droids are a bit of a points sink when you don't have enough firepower to back them up.

  Chewbacca in deep doodoo...

The Imperials were soon triumphant.  But the main benefit of this was to establish the IA in Skirmish mode is actually a fine game I should have been playing more of for a long time.

 Sad losses to the Rebellion

Given the difficulty of running the campaign (Read - organising sessions, herding even a very small number of cats is still hard!), I think I will be rolling this out instead, and it may prompt me to paint the last couple of miniatures I have knocking around too.

Oh, and buy some more rebellion troopers, or maybe some new heroes, or add some mercenaries, or......

*sigh*

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