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Showing posts with label Warlord Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warlord Games. Show all posts

I swear they followed me home - Thirty Years War TYW/ECW Minis


The Thirty Years War is a period that I have always wanted to do and a year or so ago I picked up the FOG rules and Warlords plastic stuff. I got a lot of that together and just decided that I didn't like the looks of the plastic and they weren't much fun to paint so they fell to the wayside. Over the last two nights I have picked up a couple of collections of ECW/TYW miniatures, mostly Bicorne and Wargames Foundry with some Perry Miniatures and Warlord Games thrown in for good measure.

The first box came from California with a very odd mix of troops in it, like a dozen three horse artillery limbers but no artillery pieces and about 40 officers but only in 3 poses (and what am I going to do with that many officers anyway?). I think what really made it worthwhile though are the 94 Cavalry miniatures. About 2/3rds are Bicorne and the rest are Wargames Foundry. I have pawed through the foot troops and there should be plenty of musketeers but there doesn't seem to be enough pikemen. Will do some more sorting of these over the weekend. There is one very odd pose for some of the pikemen as well. Odd enough that I'm not quite sure how they are supposed to be holding the pike. I have gone through the Bicorne site and I'm just not quite sure what figure it is to even ask for advice on it.

The second lot was much cleaner and had a mix of Bicorne, Perry and Warlord. I probably won't bother with the two boxes of plastic Warlord Games infantry although I may pull some officers out of there. Again there is a bunch of Cavalry (including Dragoons!) from all three manufacturers. Plus a lot of Bicorne Pikemen and a smattering of Warlord Games metal Pikemen. There are some personality figures from Bicorne and Warlord Games.

Included in the personalities is the Warlord Games' version of Fairfax who is on one of the worst sculpted horses I have ever seen (the sculpt of Fairfax himself is quite nice). I think the best use of this horse is to use it as a dead one, that would give me the added satisfaction of getting to stomp on it (I learned that little trick from Chris Fitzpatrick, owner and primary sculptor of Crocodile Games. He has also sculpted for GW and Ral Partha). In general I dislike Warlord Games pewter horses, they just never seem to be quite right and the plastic ones drive me crazy since all of the manes hang off on the horses' left side. Crazy enough that I'm probably going to convert at least half of the ones I decide to use to hang off to the horses' right side.

Since it doesn't look like I'm going to get my Normans in time for the convention painting competition this is going to be the army I put together for the show. I'll go through the FOG rules and figure out what I need for the Danes but I think I need five units completed for the convention so probably three pike and shotte units and two cavalry units. Should be fun but I have a lot of work in front of me to get these done in time. But then my entry for the convention is almost done now so that's pretty much all I need to work on.

So here are some pictures of the preliminary sorting. I'll do a lot more over the weekend so I can figure out what I need to order for the competition, if I need anything. I think I maybe coming up short on command figures for the various units, but I'll figure that out this weekend.

Warlord Games Boxsets. I'll use the Cavalry boxes for sure, the horses are plastic but the riders are pewter. Probably will skip the Infantry box. I have a box of Swedish infantry as well but it has metal command figures that I will swipe out of it.
 Warlord Games blisters; Woohoo two packs of cannon! Not sure what I will do with the dead livestock pack
Gotta love those little black boxes from Perry Miniatures! The larger boxes contain Cavalry, and the small boxes have musketeers in them.
 This is the Wargames Foundry Cavalry that I pulled out of the box. Its going to take some work to get in shape for painting though.
 This is the stash of Bicorne Miniatures stuff. Pike, shotte and more Cavalry!
 Ziplock bags full of the various infantry and other oddball piece that made up the CA lot. Mostly Bicorne with maybe a third of it from Wargames Foundry.
Some of the oddball stuff included, not one but two copies of the Sedan Chair and three copies of the Surgeon's set, will go right along with the dozen or so three horse team limbers.

Posted at 10:43 AM
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First Impression - Warlord Games Pike and Shotte

While I should be working on ReaperCon competition entries, I can't do that on the train ride into work. I just received my copy of Pike & Shotte from Warlord Games and I have been working my way through that on the train ride.

This is just a first impression of the book itself, not a review of the rules or how the game plays. I see some interesting concepts and I'm eager to get some miniatures on the table and try it out but that will have to wait for later. I did receive the free mini with the rulebook and he's very nice and is going to look marvelous when I get him painted up.

As with the current trend this is a full color hardback rulebook for the period running from 1500 - 1700. It is a sharp looking book and so far the spine is holding up great. That seems to be the first thing to go lately but so far I have mishandled it repeatedly and haven't lost any pages yet. The interior pages are a heavy weight and there are great pictures on every page. In particular I do like the diagrams and how they are handled in the book so big plus right there. Anything that gives me a visual clue to how things work is great. I have, of course, run through the sequence on shooting and charge attacks. There are a couple of key pieces that are kind of buried in the text and could have been highlighted better (and in fact are also missing off the quick reference sheets as well). There are a couple of things that I'm disappointed with; the army lists and the scenarios. I was hoping for a more extensive set of army lists and it didn't provide nearly enough information for covering such a broad period of time. In particular I was hoping for at list one list for Denmark and that was pretty much glossed over and off we go straight to the Swedes (certainly a more interesting army, I admit). For the most part I think this is a pretty minor quibble and maybe there is a more extensive army list book in the works. The scenario section overall is great, beautiful maps and detailed orders of battle for six very specific scenarios. My beef with these is that there is no scale on the maps. All six maps are the same size and I have no idea if they are meant for a 6' x 4' table (doubtful) or maybe a 6' x 8' table (I'm betting on this). Another small knock is that there are no generic scenarios provided although there is a section for how to point out your own army, again its less extensive than I would have liked. Really these are pretty minor issues and certainly should not be something that keeps you from adding this to your (if you are like me) extensive library of rulebooks.

One trend that this book doesn't follow is that of providing a healthy section of modeling information. There is nothing on how to paint and base your troops or how to make scenery. I think this is great. I know that GW considers this a must include thing but I don't feel that these things should be included in a rulebook just to increase the page count (and the price). This information is readily available in other places and really doesn't have a place here, I didn't even realize it was missing when I went through the book till I went looking for it.

That's it, just a first impression. Its a well done book and I'm certainly glad that its found its way into my collection. Now I just need to paint the mini that came with it and the several hundred other TYW miniatures that are strewn across my workbench.

Posted at 9:54 AM
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