In The Beginning - Part 1: Knights & Vikings

If you ever listen to wargames podcasts where the host interviews a guest or luminary from the hobby, you'll be familiar with the obligatory opening question along the lines of "so tell me, how did you get into the hobby?" Queue that 'Bingo Card' moment while the guest reels off an often predictable list of influences, depending on their 'era' - Airfix, Featherstone, 40K, Warhammer, D&D, Commando Comics, Avalon Hill, etc.

As I listen along, oftentimes the answers resonate with my own wargaming origins. Probably one or more will resonate with you too. We wargamers of a certain vintage have a lot of shared heritage when it comes to beginnings and early influences. This got me thinking about my own wargaming journey, particularly those early years before I left childhood behind (though it could be argued I never really left it). Hence this, the first of what will inevitably be an irregular series of blog posts entitled 'In The Beginning', in which I touch upon some of my early influences. Unapologetically self-indulgent nostalgia for sure, so I can only hope that some of my shared memories may chime with you and trigger some of your own.

And so, In The Beginning...

Every wargamer's journey has to start somewhere. Mine started Christmas 1967.

That was when my parents gave me my very first toy soldiers - and not just soldiers, but a whole play set with figures, scenery, siege engines and equipment, and a castle too; Knights & Vikings, by Marx Toys.  

Here's what the box art looked like. Image credited to Collectors Weekly

Well, I was hooked. I've always had quite an active imagination and to this day, wargames with a strong narrative story-telling element are what attract me most. It is tempting to suppose that, at that tender age,  this play set fired that imagination and kindled a life-long love for our little world of toy soldiers.

Of course, I knew nothing of history then so the odd anachronism of Vikings vs Late Medieval knights in plate armour didn't register at all. Anyway, I've seen plenty of unhistorical match-ups (DBM and ADLG tournament players, I'm looking at you), so perhaps Marx were on to something after all. 

Best of all, it was a complete package; not so different from today's trend for 'everything you need to play is in the box', albeit without a set of rules - which is where that most important quality of play, imagination comes in. So, there were pre-painted figures (more on them later) multi-part plastic trees, rocks, a siege tower, ladders, barricades, and of course the castle. There was a paper play mat too, which my father had carefully taped to a large sheet of plywood for durability. He must also have spent time late in the evenings after work and after I had gone to bed, constructing the castle which came in several parts, plus the siege equipment and trees. My late father, bless him, was never a wargamer. Steam engines and Model Engineering was his thing, but he had a love of making things and I'm sure he would have gained a lot of enjoyment from putting the play set together. Some of that creative streak surely rubbed off on me, though little could he have guessed the hobby journey I was to later embark on. Thinking about my father now, I'm sure he will feature more than once in future posts in this series as there are a good few moments along the journey where his influence is felt.

A mock-up of the paper game mat with the castle. Game mat image credited to Collectors Weekly

The most wonderful thing for me is that, over five and a half decades later, I still have at least part of that play set; a direct and tangible connection to my childhood. The castle is mostly intact. The winch and chains that once raised the drawbridge are missing and there are a few places where parts have broken off, but having survived many toy sieges and the passage of time it is in pretty good shape. I have just a few of the figures too, all rather battle-worn but still special to me. As for the rest, well the plastic rocks were first to go. Launched by overpowered elastic band catapults they would either fly over the castle or ricochet off it, well beyond the range of the play mat, where they were soon all swallowed by the carpet monster. As time passed, other components must have wandered off to the land of lost toys and the paper mat succumbed to wear and tear. Some of the knights and their mounts were no doubt accidentally crushed under foot while tilting at giants (everything was usually set out on the carpet in close proximity to my clumsy childhood feet) and some of the Vikings surely went to toy Valhalla under similar circumstances.  I think the plastic trees were most long-lived as I do remember that I used them, much later on, in other games. 

Given the passage of time, multiple changes of location and a succession of all the usual life events that go along with both childhood and adulthood, it is remarkable to me that any of this has survived at all and remained in my possession.

So, here is what is left.

First of all the castle, moulded in hard grey plastic. I always liked the design of the towers. As a child it always looked 'right' to me. I know it isn't historically perfect, but I still like the look of it.

Battle damage clearly visible here.

And now the figures. Just four remain from the original 30-odd figures that came with the set; two 'knights' and two 'vikings'.

They are roughly 28mm, foot to eye and moulded in a single-colour hard plastic (silver for the knights, flesh for the vikings) over which the clothing colours and other details have been, (as the box art proudly proclaims), "hand decorated by artists". Due to the brittle nature of the plastic, thin parts such as weapons were very easily broken and lost long ago. So not particularly child-proof, but then Marx Toys probably didn't intend them to have much longevity given the fickle and short attention span of the average child when something newer and shinier comes along. Er, as a butterfly wargamer does this sound too familiar?

Lets have a closer look. First the Knights:

The chap on the left is an odd character. I remember that, even as a child, something struck me as a bit 'off' about his 'fencing' pose and fluted armour. I liked the archer on the right better. Perhaps it was the combination of silver and pale blue that I found attractive. That and the fact that the painter has managed to get his face right, so he has a bit more character. Something terrible has happened to his right elbow and his ankle is cracked, but he still manages to look the part. 

Now, the Vikings:

Our man on the left. Heck of a black eye you've got there Olaf! As a child I always thought this figure was wearing some sort of bright orange hood. It was only much later that I realised it was supposed to be his hair and beard. At least it matches the tunic of his friend on the right. Best we ignore the strange golden cone-shaped shield, and don't ask about the silver nipple protectors!

Jesting aside, I have a soft spot for these figures in all their quirkiness. Any oddness was invisible to my childhood eyes and my adult eyes are more than willing to overlook it, accepting them for what they are; toys. Here are some more pictures of them in their element, posing around the castle...

"Viking! What Viking?"

"Hey Olaf, 'ave you seen my hand?"

"Have at you, knave!"

If you have got this far, thank you for indulging my reminiscences. I hope that maybe they have triggered some of your own, perhaps even sending you off to search some dusty corner of your attic or garage for some long-neglected childhood toys. If I have succeeded in conjuring up the Ghost of Christmas past, I hope it smiles upon you benevolently.

Till next time...

To Horse!

They've been a long time coming, but the cavalry finally arrived. My Red forces for Red Actions! just received some mounted reinforcements. These are a mix of 'Bolshevik Cavalry' and 'Bolshevik Cavalry in Greatcoats' from Copplestone Castings.

I haven't tackled painting horses for ages. I know a lot of wargamers hate painting horses, but I quite enjoy the process. No speedpaints, oil paint wipe method, or other fancy tricks here. I just paint them the same way I paint any figure; base coat, shading and highlights. It's what I'm used to and works for me. I wanted to get these done quickly, so I've restricted the horse colours to bays and chestnuts. I guess they would have been the most common colours anyway. I make no claim to authenticity of colours or markings. I know, for example, that the manes and tails on chestnut horses aren't dark, but hey, I like that aesthetic and choose to paint as I like. Horse purists be damned!

For ease of handling I prefer to paint the riders and horses separately.  To achieve this, the riders have to suffer the indignity of being temporarily impaled on a length of brass rod set in a weighted base. Once painted, riders are matched to horses and fixed with a blob of two-part epoxy glue, which I find gives a more durable bond than superglue. Any small gaps between rider and horse are filled with modelling putty which, once set, is painted to match.

Cavalry, of course, need leaders. A search through my collection unearthed three likely candidates. I remember these were an eBay purchase from years back when I first became interested in gaming the Russian Civil War. They've been waiting patiently all these years for the chance to saddle up. I think one of the reasons I bought them (apart from being a decent price) is that they fit in well with my own painting style. After re-basing them to match my other figures, I think they work perfectly. I have no idea now which seller I bought them from, or who painted them. If by some unexpected chance you are reading this and recognise these three splendid chaps as your own handiwork, do let me know so I can credit you!

And now,  To Horse, Proletarian!

Colour me Curious

I don't often buy painted figures. I have a modest number in my collection, but cost severely limits the possibility of acquiring more. That and the fact that I'm rather choosy about what matches my own painting style. I don't usually buy 3D printed miniatures either. I have my own printer and much prefer to print whatever I want rather than pay someone else to do that.

So, why would I buy pre-painted 3D printed miniatures? Good question. 

I suppose curiosity got the better of me again. It was an advertisement for Only-Games in one of my subscriber emails from MyMiniFactory that piqued my interest. Hmm, "Pre-Colored" 3D printed miniatures? They were running a promotion with a decent discount so I decided to take a punt. All in the name of research you understand.

Only-Games are licenced printers for a number of independent designers, so there's a varied selection to choose from. I deliberately selected two very different miniatures; the 'Vault-Tec Poster Girl' by Modiphius and a 'Kobold Cleric' by Bite The Bullet Studio. 

I chose the Poster Girl miniature as I felt this would be a good test of how well the printing process coped with representing flesh tones and hair texture. Then there's the bane of the shaky brush; the eyes. I do sometimes attempt to paint eyes but my worst failures come out looking like goggle-eyed freaks. Could colour 3D printing do better? I noticed that the miniature also has an integral base with lots of raised detail that would be a joy to paint in the traditional way. How well would the printing process manage this, I wondered?

I was interested in the Kobold miniature because it appeared to have quite a lot of detail and a number of different colours. I was curious to see whether the 3D colour printing process could represent shading, highlights and colour gradations that were similar to traditional painting.

Only-Games state that all their products are made on demand, with a production time of 10 working days for pre-coloured resin miniatures. I think I waited slightly more than a couple of weeks for the miniatures to arrive, so pretty much as Only-Games advertised. The miniatures came very well packaged, each in their own blister pack. They were protected from moving about inside their individual packs by a 'nest' of shredded paper strips (removed in the picture below) which did a good job of protecting the miniatures. Some time after I had unpacked them I did notice that the tip of the Kobold's tail was missing. However, I suspect that may be due to my clumsiness rather than any damage in transit. In any case, it is a very minor issue.

Blister packs (minus their shredded paper inner packaging).

Only-Games' website shows coloured digital renders of both my chosen miniatures, but no photos of the actual 3D colour printed figures. As you can see from the following pictures, what you see on the website and what you actually get are a little different. I wasn't surprised by this, but it would have been nice if there were pictures of the actual miniatures. To be fair to Only-Games, they do show pictures of some printed miniatures in the Pre-Colored range, just not the one's I chose. 

What you see...

... and what you get.

I was pleased to see that the colours on the digital render of the Poster Girl had been reproduced pretty faithfully on the actual printed figure. The blue in particular is a nice strong colour. There is a slight blurriness that is most obvious at the edges of the yellow trim. I guess this is a limitation of the colour print resolution. This seems to produce a slight graininess that you can also see around the edge of the base. On the plus side, I was happy to see that the miniature definitely has some shading and highlights. Had I painted the figure by hand I would have given greater contrast to the skin and hair, but otherwise the effect isn't bad at all. Close-up digital photos are also quite unforgiving and when viewing the figure at arm's length as it would be seen on the tabletop it really looks quite good.

Oh, and the eyes are there too. I doubt I would be able to improve on them if I had to paint them by hand.

I don't think I would have been able to improve on the base either. The details are nice and sharp and the choice of colours really help to make them stand out. Top marks to Only-Games on the base.

I'm not sure what method is used to apply colour to the miniatures. Only-Games don't say on their website, but I suspect it is something similar to the colour-printed option offered by HeroForge where colour is applied using something akin to a 3D colour 'inkjet'. This means the colour is only on the surface, which you can see in the photo below where the base is slightly mis-printed, revealing the underlying resin. Presumably the pigments are fused with the resin at the printing stage, so should be resilient to wear from normal handling.

The branding had me baffled until I realised that Modiphius hold the licence
to produce miniatures based on the Fallout video game by Bethesda Softworks.

Now, on to the Kobold Cleric...

What you see (Only-Games' digital render)...

...and what you get.

I really like this miniature. The colours are more muted than the digital render but I like it better for that, particularly the paler green skin tones. Like the Poster Girl, there are shadows and highlights, particularly noticeable on the hood and loincloth. Again, definition is slightly weak. If this was a hand-painted miniature I would have made the recessed areas darker and added brighter highlights to the raised areas to create greater contrast. I'd probably have used a bit of black lining too, to better define and separate the various parts of the miniature - for example on the straps and buckles of the bag. 

So my verdict? Well, not bad at all. If these were traditional hand-painted miniatures they would probably have sharper lines between the colours and greater contrast but as I said earlier, at arms length they look perfectly fine. I think the main consideration for me is cost. Had they not been offered at a significant discount I think I would have passed over them. At the time of writing, the Kobold is £11.80 which is comparable to the going rate for a 'table-top standard' hand-painted miniature of this level of detail. However, the Poster Girl is £20.00. I guess the base adds to the cost and there is probably a mark-up for the licence Modiphius pays to Bethesda Softworks, but that's a bit steep for what would be a fairly basic paint job by traditional methods.

The other pertinent issue is the miniatures' intended use. I do think they are aimed more at the Role-Playing Games community, rather than table-top wargamers. In that context, they are probably filling a niche but I think that's a long way from breaking into the wargames market. Now, if they ever start 3D colour printing Napoleonic armies, or troops in Tartan kilts, that would be something else!

Back to the Bolsheviks

After a long gap, I have returned to my Russian Civil War forces with a new addition to bolster the Reds. Using my chosen rule-set, Red Actions! by The Perfect Captain, these will represent a company of Red Regulars. I didn't want them to look too uniform since the term 'regular' doesn't really refer to the state of their dress. A mix of Copplestone Castings 'BU03 Elite Bolshevik Infantry' in budenovkas and 'BU01 Bolshevik Infantry' in peaked caps did the job.

I tried something different with the flag this time. My previous flags were simply printed onto plain paper which gives perfectly acceptable results but doesn't reproduced the intensity of the original image colours particularly well. That's fine for representing battle-worn or faded flags, but I wanted something a bit more pristine this time. The answer was to print the flag as before, but then 'paint' it with artists' inks. I printed several copies so I could experiment and practice a bit. It needs a steady hand for some of the finer detail, but I found that with a bit of patience I could achieve an acceptable result. It's really just careful 'coloring in' over the existing printed colours, but the colour saturation is much improved. 

I chose not to represent a specific unit, so the flag is a generic design with slogans and symbols pulled together from various online sources and assembled in Word and Photoshop. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the text, but at this scale and at a distance on the tabletop I think it conveys the right look.

Imperial Alternative

Another small addition to my forces for Star Wars: Legion; an Imperial officer from AGM / Alternative Gaming Miniatures. 

AGM used to produce some interesting Star Wars inspired miniatures and I've added a few of them to my collection in the past, usually when they were running a sale as they were otherwise pretty pricey. They are traditionally sculpted, cast in resin and scale well with the official Star Wars: Legion miniatures. Sadly, they appear to be out of production now. I believe the owner did announce a permanent closure then reappeared briefly, but their website has displayed a 'closed for maintenance' message for a long time now.

This figure came with a choice of two separate heads (helmet and peaked cap) and a choice of two separate hand weapons. Assembly was very straightforward. All the parts were very cleanly cast, requiring a minimum of cleanup and preparation prior to painting. The nice crisp detail on the miniature meant painting was a joy.

I've photographed him here with a couple of the barricades from the Star Wars: Legion boxed set as I had forgotten to include pictures of them in my previous posts.

WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD!

Continuing the Star Wars theme from my previous post, here's the latest figure fresh off the painting desk; Star Wars: Legion - Darth Vader.

I'd put off painting him for such a long time, pushing him to the back of the queue in favour of other Star Wars: Legion figures. It's probably the thought of painting all that black. There's actually a lot of sculpted detail on the figure and I worried about it being lost with everything turning out a bit on the dark side. (See what I did there! 😉). 

The helmet was the first area to receive attention as I figured if I could get that to look right, everything else would flow from there. It took me a while to get a satisfactory result as to begin with I wasn't bold enough with my highlights. Possibly I could have gone even further with the highlights to give a really shiny effect, but decided to stop when I was happy with it and not push my luck too far. By this stage I was feeling a lot more confident about painting the rest of the figure.

For the cloak and clothing I started with varying shades of blue-grey and toned them down with successive black washes to add depth. This was followed by dry-brushing successively lighter layers of blue-grey to gradually bring out the highlights. This worked well as there is a lot of texture on the figure and the cloak has plenty of folds.

Before I started painting, I already had a good idea how I wanted the lightsaber to look and knew that using a single solid colour just wouldn't give the right effect. It needed to have that red aura, but with a white-hot center. I'd already experimented with painting a paler inner stripe along the length of the lightsaber on the Luke Skywalker figure, but I felt I could have been a bit braver with the contrast and wanted to try this on Vader's lightsaber. This was achieved by painting the lightsaber in an appropriate red base-coat, then adding a thin pink line along the length and then a thinner, almost white line on top. I used several very thin layers to build up the effect so the lines didn't appear too 'hard'. Second time around I was a lot happier with the final result. 

I did have to think carefully about the placement of the white stripe on the lightsaber as the effect only works best when viewed from certain angles. An obvious choice was along the top of the lightsaber when viewed from above as this is how the figure is most likely to be viewed on the tabletop. (See the picture below). I also painted stripes along each side of the lightsaber so these are visible when the figure is viewed from the left or the right. The second and third pictures above show this. I took them from angles that show off the effect to best advantage but on the tabletop, depending on the viewing angle,  you won't always see this. This is a compromise but I decided it still looks better than leaving the sides of the lightsaber plain red. I think the effect works best from angles where the reflected glow on the clothing is visible. 

Painting that red reflection did give me a headache as apart from a fairly cautious attempt on the Luke Skywalker figure, I have not tried painting Object Source Lighting (OSL) effects before. I was already really happy with how the figure had turned out and was worried that I'd mess up the OSL and spoil all my hard work. As it turned out, I achieved the effect I was looking for and do feel a lot more confident about trying more OSL effects in the future. It's always nice to learn a new technique. 

Painting this figure is something of a milestone as he is the last of the miniatures to be completed from my Star Wars: Legion core set. Looking back at the blog, I posted the first group of completed figures from the set about two-and-a-half years ago. Scarier still, it's been nearly four years since I first bought the set. Ah well, as I said in the very first post on this blog; "To begin is good. To continue is better. To finish is best".

May the force be with you!

Farmboy Hero

I fell off my hobbyhorse rather badly toward the back end of last year (long story not worth repeating here) and it has taken me far longer than I anticipated to get back in the saddle - at least as far as painting is concerned. That's not to say the past months have been a complete hobby desert. On-line games via Skype resumed in the New Year and Ian and I have just wrapped up a cracking series of Star Trek games using Fistful of Lead Galactic Heroes. Maybe one day I'll recreate some of those games and post on the blog. 

Anyway, to get back to the painting, here's the first fruit of my labours this year; Star Wars: Legion - Luke Skywalker. 

I like this figure a lot. The sculptor did a great job of capturing the look of the young Skywalker as he appeared on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back. He wields his lightsaber, but he's "not a Jedi yet" - and he knows it, which is probably why he still carries a holstered blaster pistol as 'back-up'.

I really enjoyed painting this figure. There's not too much fiddly detail and painting progressed fairly quickly by my own standards. The only thing that caused me some hesitation was figuring out how best to paint the lightsaber, but I think I nailed it. I'm happy with the result and that's what counts.

So a very enjoyable return to painting in 2023. It feels good to get the paintbrushes out at last. Next up in the painting queue; Luke's secret dad, Mr Vader himself.

Till next time.