Warhammer - Skaven Army

Ratmen

Whilst digging through boxes I stumbled across my old Skaven army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  This is probably the first full Warhammer Army that I finished Painting and the First Army I ever used in a tournament.  I have no idea why I decided to build a massive swarm as my first Warhammer Army, I must have been insane.   So much Brown.   Anyway I managed to keep focused long enough to paint the horde of rats you see below.

This is another collection that has not seen the light of day for a very long time and is probably deserving of more table time then I have given it.

I think all up its a little over 250 models.  It looks great on the table and can be a bit intimidating when looking at from the opposition side.

Warhammer - Beastmen Army

Beastkrieg
Revisited

Well I started to look through all the boxes I have in the games room and dug out these again.  I am in a desperate need for more room as my interests are constantly changing and these have not seen the light of day for sometime.  Maybe its time to let them go to someone who will use them.

I built this army for a Warhammer Tournament some time ago.  Now I've never claimed to be that good at Warhammer, I generally just bumbled my way through games whilst have a jolly good time.

This little 1500 point army was just built for fun, I wasn't expecting much from it if I'm honest but somehow I managed to Win the event with it.   

The idea was to have a fast army and try to put my opponents on the back foot by having really aggressive charges.  Plus Chariots are just cool.

Blood & Plunder - Galleon

The Treasure Ship

Galleons were large, multi-decked sailing ships first used by the Spanish as armed cargo carriers and later adopted by other European states from the 16th to 18th centuries during the age of sail and were the principal fleet units drafted for use as warships until the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-1600s.  Galleons generally carried three or more masts with a lateen fore-and-aft rig on the rear masts, were carvel built with a prominent squared off raised stern, and used square-rigged sail plans on their fore-mast and main-masts.

Such ships were the mainstay of maritime commerce into the early 19th century, and were often drafted into use as auxiliary naval war vessels—indeed, were the mainstay of contending fleets through most of the 150 years of the Age of Exploration—before the Anglo-Dutch wars brought purpose-built ship-rigged warships that thereafter dominated war at sea during the remainder of the age of sail.

The Firelock Games Galleon is a truly massive model and will certainly turn a few heads when put onto the table.  Ideal for larger games or multiplayer games where the objective is to capture the treasure ship.

I painted mine up with the idea of using it to represent a Spanish Treasure Ship.  I followed the same principles I used with my other ships and rigged it in the same way.  Of course being a much bigger ship there was a lot more rigging to do.

I will do the flags for this ship at the same time as I do the flags for all my existing ships.

Pictures here show my Galleon with French crew as I still have yet to purchase and paint any Spanish figures.

A few more shots with some other ships for scale.

and finally a few more crew and characters that I've finished.

Blood & Plunder - Frigate

Light Frigate

With my new rigging done it was time to finish off my Firelock Games Frigate.

The light Frigate is a small warship designed to be able to keep up with the small and fast ships used by privateers and pirates.  Capable of carrying a decent amount of firepower and a sizable crew this ship will likely form the backbone of any Pirate hunters force.

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Building - New Rigging

Re-Rigging

Some time ago I posted up pictures of the ships I had worked on but there was always something about them that didn't feel right.  Something that needed to be done better. After looking long and hard at what I had done it became apparent to me that the sails and rigging needed redoing.  Dead-eyes needed to be added to enhance the look of the rigging and the sails needed a complete overhaul.  

Thankfully Rick Casler was able to come up with a fantastic way of doing sails and Old Glory had perfect deadeyes in their shipyard range.

I also changed my rigging from elastic to metal so that I could magnetise climbing sailors to it down the line.

I used metal wire which I twisted up using a small hand drill.  First I threaded one of the Old Glory deadeyes onto the wire before putting the ends of the wire into my drill.  Carefully I held the deadeye in one hand and the drill in the other.  The turning action of the drill causes the wire to twist around itself forming a rope like pattern.

 

Next I put the wire through the holes in the mast pieces.

And then the other end where the deadeye is through the holes on the ship body.

I found it less time consuming to do all of these before moving onto the next stage.

Cut off the wire using snips.  I used the line around the ship as my guide.   Some damage was done to the paintwork whilst I installed the wires but this is easily touched up at the end.

Eventually you will end up with something resembling this which in my opinion is perfectly acceptable.

To go a stop further I used thin elastic to finish off the shrouds.  I spaced each piece out 1.5cm to form rectangles.   I tied one end of the elastic on then thread the other under and over the metal wires before tying it off at the other side.   Using a piece of white paper behind the rigging makes it much easier to see what you are doing.  

I also drew lines 1.5cm apart on a piece of paper to use as a measuring guide to get each cross piece evenly spaced.

Once done I put a small dot of superglue on each knot before using matt varnish to take away the shine left by the glue.

Once all the glue is dry its just a simple matter of cutting off excess pieces to tidy things up.

From there you can continue to add more rigging to suit your taste.

Hope that helps.

Blood & Plunder

Ahoy me hearties.

Which is something i'm pretty sure real Pirates never said but I guess the people to ask would be those at Firelock Games who are responsible for Blood and Plunder a 28mm scale skirmish game set in the golden age of piracy.

Now the Blood and Plunder setting is slightly different then your normal pirate adventure.  You wont find the Kraken guarding Davy Jones' locker, nor will you find long lost ships crewed by ghostly visages.  The folks at Firelock have gone with a much more historical setting for their game.  Here you will find units of Spanish Lanceros, French Boucaniers and other aptly named troops fighting it out on both land and sea.

If you are even just slightly interested in this fascinating period of history then I thoroughly recommend taking the trip to the Firelock Games website page where you will find more than enough information and videos on how the game plays.

I started my interest in Pirates way back to when Wargames Foundry started releasing their range of Pirate figures.  Of course these now seem much more like Hollywood  styled Pirates, which there is nothing wrong with, compared to the gritty look of the Firelock Games models.

I signed up on a standing order system to receive every single set of Wargames Foundry Pirates as and when they were released.  I wrote up my own rules, loosely based on the Western 'Rules with no Name' system and off I went.

Fast Forward a few years and those figures I spent so long painting have been re-homed to make room for other goodies.

Of course this was not the end of my fascination and I had been building up a large collection of books to draw inspiration from.

With the release of the Blood and Plunder range and rules set it signalled a time for me to restart my Pirate collection.