The Battle of Deadwald

As Rogvaldas' army marched south to plunder the weak lands of men, they encountered a stench very familiar for those devoted to Nurgle. The stench of death and decay.  Rogvaldas and his Chieftains gave the orders to push further South through Deadwald with hopes of avoiding the unliving. The undead were a chore to combat with little glory or carnage. The only glory found in fighting undead comes from felling a vampire or a vampiric creature. The army and the Gods would prefer a real opponent, a living opponent. 

As the army continued through Deadwald, it became increasingly clear that they were not alone and their presence was unwelcome.  Rogvaldas' quickly drew his battle line.  

Meet the Lords and Heroes of Chaos

Rogvaldas Storm Rider and Ivar the Unbound, as well as their bodyguard of Chaos warriors.

Baldir the Bastard, and Vilkas Dragon Tongue, with their marauder tribesmen 

And the Hero of the battle Rurikas the Unyielding and his Warrior bodyguard.

Meet the foul undead

Uhtred Von Karstein, and his skeleton horde

Heinrich Kimmler the Deranged. A Necromancer on his beloved corpse cart.

And Goebels the Wight along with his Grave-guard 

The Field of Deadwald pre deployment

Deployed Battle Lines: I refused a left flanking force, because I was seriously outnumbered.

Opening views

Black Knights make a rash decision and charge out of the woods at Rurikas' and his warriors. A unit of ghouls surges behind, through the forest, in anticipation of flesh consumption

On the Right Flank, a slaughter-brute catches the ethereal hex knights, where they remained engaged until the penultimate turn when the hex knights finally fell the beast.  

The Baldir the Bastard, Vilkas and their Marauders meet the graveguard for greatweapon on greatweapon action. And the Chaos Knights charge the Skeleton spearmen.

Sadly this is where my pictures came to a grinding halt. Probably because its where the battle was in full swing and all units were engaged in combat.  Rogvaldas and his warriors met Uhtred and his Skeletol horde in Combat. Rogvaldas challenged Uhtred in single combat, and the two remained locked in their duel for 5 rounds of combat. Rogvaldas was outfitted with 2 extra attacks from his Tyrfingas sword and armor forged by chaos dwarves that bestows a +4 ward save and the mark of tzeentch stacking his ward save to +3.  The damned Vampire had a beguiling power that forced a leadership test at reduced leadership, and if failed all successful hits had to be rerolled. Rogvaldas failed every leadership test in the duel. Rogvaldas wounded the vampire Uhtred every other turn, but those wounds were often regenerated through foul necromancy.  The Vampire was finding it difficult to wound Rogvaldas. However, the Necromancer Kimmler boosted the undead armies fighting capabilities, giving Uhtred the final edge needed to fell Rogvaldas Storm Rider in their long duel. However Rogvaldas' Bodygaurd and Ivar the Unbound carried on the combat with their flank occupied by a horde of zombies.  Eventually the remaining warriors killed all the skeletons left in Uhtreds unit, leaving the Vampire to take the wounds the undead incur from losing combat. This was the end of Uhtred.  Though Kimmler lost his beloved corpsecart by a blast of fiery chaos magic from Vilkas Dragon Tongue, the undead army was lucky the necromancer lord Kimmler was alive and well, and held the undead forces intact

Rurikas and his warriors slaughtered the Black Knights, and then were surrounded by ghouls and freshly raised skeletons on their flank.  A terrorgheist flew over the chaos battle line and met the Hellcannon in comabat, where the Hellcannon and chaos dwarves met their ends.

The Graveguard and Marauders were also locked into a long combat, that eventually lead to the graveguard victory and the demise of Baldir the bastard, Vilkas Dragon Tongue and their Tribesmen. But before Baldir the bastard met his end he killed Goebels the Wight in single combat.

The final turn looked like this: The Graveguard had failed to kill the remaining Chaos Knights and the hex knight refused to help in the combat for fear of losing its last knight and counting for VP points.  The terrorgeist was off in irrelevant land. Rurikas and his warriors were able to catch the Necromancer Kimmler and brutalized his corpse.  This final kill gave the ultimate edge in victory points to the Chaos forces, if Kimmler remained the battle would've been a draw.

Terrain, Huns, and Fireforge markers

In anticipation of Saga Invasions, I've started a Hun/generic Steppe army.  So far, I've largely used a box of GB Arab Heavy Cavalry and FF Mongol cavalry.  The heavy cav is a mix of both sets, mostly from the GB arab set, and the light cav is mostly made from the FF mongol set, with some warlord celt heads and torsos thrown in.  Also in the background of the first picture is Fireforge's new Black Hood command set.

Elite Cav

Light cav

I started to paint the loot and burn tokens from Fireforge, I wonder if they'll be sending the rules with my next/final portion of the Russian kickstarter sets. The kickstarter didnt seem like it earned much funding, and Fireforge has really mishandled this kickstarter... I coudlve purchased the Russian plastic set a month ago from other retailers with free shipping, yet I still dont have mine.  The fireforge site offers free shipping on certain order amounts yet for the kickstarter this didnt apply.... So it seems like it was a largely pointless endeavor to participate in their kickstarter. If I hadnt I woudlve saved money on shipping as well as had the Russian plastic set by now... Bizzarre

And Finally some forrest terrain.  I really enjoy creating and building terrain for miniatures. It might even be the portion of the hobby in which I find the most satisfaction and creative vigor.  These pieces were quite easy. The smaller trees are fallen tree branches hot glued to cardboard, with sand and a large rock added to weigh down the base.  The large tree is made from the cardboard from a paper towel roll, crumpled slightly to give an irregular shape, covered with one layer of PVA and paper towels, roots created from rolled up wet toilet paper covered in PVA, the branches were created by puncturing kebab skewers into trunk and gluing foliage to the ends, the whole model was then textured/reinforced with a hot glue gun, which creates the bark texture on the tree.  I will definitely be making more of the paper towel roll trees, sadly I have to go through a lot more paper towels before I can make more. 

Arthurians and Celtic Northerners

Here's the nearly complete Arthurian/Late Roman armored Infantry. The Figures are a mix of West Wind and Gripping Beast.  The dragon windsock banner needs some details painted, and the bannerman in front of the door needs a banner. 

The Celts. L to R: Javelinmen, Hearthguard, Warriors.

I purchased a sprue of conquest archers, I might've posted them before, but here they are now

I repainted the cultist hoods from brown to light grey. Gives them more of a wintery feel.

Long Overdue Update

These pictures are months old and ive been lazy about blogging them.  The Figures werent 100% done and I guess I was waiting for their completion and to set them up on the gaming table before I actually posted them. Oh well.

Here we have some Celtic/Pictish/Scottish reinforcements for Saga or Lion Rapmant.  The armored figures to the right are hearthguard made with Warlord Celt bodies and GB Saxon Thegn heads.  As I delve into the migration/invasion era research it really is apparent that most osprey depictions and figures on the market wear similar equipment no matter the region they hail from.  The GB Saxon Thegn helmets are representations of a helmet from the 600s and reflects post roman/late roman design features. These helmets are totally appropriate for any use from the 400s to 800s. The unit to the left are levy javelinmen made from perry sudanese tribesmen and wargames factory celtic and germanic heads.  The sudanese outfits looked like togas/kilts so I figured it would work.

This is a unit of 8 warriors for my celtic/pictish/scottish forces using some warlord celtic bodies and GB dark age bodies with mostly GB saxon thegn heads.

These are GB late Roman/Arthurian metal figures, and West Wind arthurians.  The GB non Saga metal ranges are rare to come by in the States so I jumped on the purchase from ebay when  I saw them, probably a year ago. Saga Invasions, Saga in the late Roman Era, will hopefully be coming out within a year. So I've fully invested in creating some forces to play upon its release.  

Set up some terrain for a frostgrave table

These Figures are the perry HYW French infantry plastics.  The set is awesome and has a vast array of armaments and armor types.  I built these figures to possibly split purposes as both GOT Stark infantry as well as 1300-1400s Lithuanians, but I think I am gonna fully go into the Stark Infantry look and scrap the Lithuanian uses.

Reaper Bones loot and Scale Comparison

Got a shipment from Reaper, so for the benefit of all here's some height comparisons. (I didn't bother looking up the names, so bare with me)

L to R: Reaper Warg, GB Saxon (with fireforge head), reaper evil knight, reaper soldier, frostgrave soldier, reaper horned satyr, reaper oswald the overladen, reaper evil knight, gripping beast late roman, fireforge mongol, reaper tyrant, reaper werewolf.

L to R: reaper spectral wolf, reaper warg, reaper werewolf, reaper soldier, reaper throne, fireforge mongol, gb saxon, reaper ice troll, reaper minotaur, reaper mountain giant, frostgrave soldier, reaper ogre, reaper oswald, reaper cave troll, gb late roman, reaper cthullu thing

Frostgravery

The Draugr have been awoken! The LOTR army of the dead now have some reinforcements. The non LOTR minis are warlord celts with mantic ghoul and GW skeleton heads. These guys feel a little like the Game of Thrones white walkers and zombies.

I wish I took a WIP picture of this rubble pile.  It's made from a cardboard base, one folded up piece of paper towel covered in a little water then PVA, irregularly cut cork tile pieces, and wooden coffee stirrers.  

This model's helmet was bugging the crap out of me.  The aventail was suffering from serious wind flow, and this slowly advancing model did not seem like he would incur that type of wind.  So my novice green stuff skills were put to the test. After a little knife work the green stuff was applied.  One tip I utilized was the use of water to avoid finger prints.  Im quite pleased with the result

Previously the model looked like this: (center)

Now thats more like it.

Here's a scratch built table from wooden coffee stirrers.  The beer barrel is a GW bit and was not glued on. Which was not done to ensure the tables variety of uses.  

This is the largely completed dollar store baby cart now turned awesome wagon.  The carriage is quite roomy and can fit 2 25mm bases no problem.  Here's the pre painted look: http://rogvaldmwb.blogspot.com/2016/04/cork-terrain-update-and-horse-cart.html

Cork terrain update and Horse Cart

Here's the newest picture of the cork terrain arch section. I added a railing with beads and coffee stirrers from starbucks. The cobble archway stones were made with hot glue by smearing the glue and then melting lines.

this is a dollar store baby carriage that comes with three of them in a pack.  popsickle sticks, coffee stirrers and thin cardoard were added to create the horse harness and drivers platform. The model is quite large and can fit 2 20mm basses in the cart, and has room for another model on the driver's platform.  Here's the instructional video from DM Scotty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY5_zA3LWJA

Frostgrave Terrain Update

I completed a few pieces of terrain over the past two weeks. All the pieces were based on cardboard reinforced/textured with hot glue.

 The WIP picture of this piece before paint was applied can be found in my last post

This is a Warhammer Age of Sigmar terrain piece. I quit like it, it reminds me of Skyrim's High Hrothgar and the Blades Sanctuary.  It is also mount on a piece of cardboard.

These were made from cork tile, which is very easy to work with. These are also mounted on cardboard.

I slapped some paint on this one real quick. I am quite pleased with it, and also pleased with how easy it was!