15mm Fantasy/Historicals Old Glory Gaul Barbarians

Digging way back into the past today with a big batch of figs painted in 2010.

 

 

These are Old Glory Gauls, and boy, are there a lot of sculpts of these guys.

 

They were painted in a pseudo-historical scheme, since they were done for a fantasy game we were getting set to play.

 

Unfortunately that project wound up falling through, and they wound up getting sold off a couple of years later.

 

While they're ten years old, they aren't absolutely awful.

 

I can see a lot of things I'd do differently these days.

 

More washes, more highlighting, bit more careful work on the shield patterns.

 

 

But not hopeless, they're a decent tabletop standard job.

 

Good example of how my painting has changed over the years anyway.

 

The shields are separate pieces, the rest of the models are single part castings.

 

Bit chunky for 15mm scale, but not bad sculpts and tremendously varied even before you start with shield variance.

 

They do raise a question I'd like to ask the 15mm fantasy gamers among my readership. 

 

When it comes to buying figures ready-painted, what kind of basing do you prefer?

 

There's no obvious One True Rule set for the genre, and individual rule sets vary a lot.

 

 

Some use single-based models on pennies, or small washers.

 

Others use element bases with several figs on each stand.

 

And multi-figure stands vary in size and number of figs from game to game as well.

 

So, is it better to do what you see here, where the models are stuck on popsicle sticks to be painted?

 

That way the buyer can base them to suit their preferred game system rather than re-basing.

 

Is that the way to go?  Let me know in the comments below.

 

15mm Fantasy: Old Glory Werewolves vs. Villagers

Stepping back in time seven years today to an old 15mm fantasy project using figures from Blue Moon/Old glory.  This set was used with some simple homebrew rules a gaming buddy of mine was working on.  The figures can be found on Old Glory's store here:

 

Transylvanian Church

 

Werewolves

 

Angry Villagers

 

Witches & Crones

 

 

The basic concept was a scenario with a table mostly covered in dense woods, with a big Eastern European fantasy church near the center and various roads and smaller trails running throughout.  Night has fallen and the full moon is coming up, and a large pack of werewolves has attacked the nearby (off-map) village.  The populace has fled to seek shelter in the church, the lycanthropes being unable to enter consecrated ground.

 

The mob of villagers came in from one table edge and had to make their toward the church, arriving slowly in random numbers over several turns.  Meanwhile some of the werewolves have spread out through the woods and are hunting the fleeing survivors, and more of them will appear behind the villagers from the road back to town.

 

The villagers are armed with a mix of weapons, farm tools, and torches.  The latter were important to have in a group since movement and combat were improved by light sources, while the werewolves are stronger and faster in the dark.  Victory was determined by how many villagers reach the church, with bonuses for the rare werewolf kill.  The poor peasants aren't carrying silver and are no match for their hunters one on one, but if you stick enough pitchforks into a lone wolf and then set it on fire, they can be killed. 

 

Old Glory sells a remarkable number of unique figs for Eastern European peasant mobs.

 

Aside from their use in "Hollywood horror" games, they'd be handy for civilian militia in various historical scenarios. 

 

Nice to see a good mix of male and female figures in the range, too.

 

Also useful in generic fantasy games, of course.  Sometimes you just have to drive off the orc raiders yourselves. 

 

There aren't as many werewolf sculpts, but they're still nicely varied.

 

No duplicates at all in the set.

 

I like the mix of stances, too.  You could add to the mix with regular wolves, obviously.

 

The scenario also had optional rules for including witches or crones to one side or the other.  Can't remember the mechanics after all these years, but I recall they were slow but provided bonuses to friends or debuffs to nearby enemies.  There are six different sculpts for them, this first lot being the monotonously-dressed witches. 

 

The crones or wise women got a more varied palette, in keeping with the rest of the villagers.

 

Sadly, these are the only figs I've got a rear shot of.

 

Particularly fond of these sculpts, they have a lot of personality.

 

And yes, the one does appear to be holding a frog, or possibly a newt.

 

Sadly, my friend died after a lengthy illness a few years back.  I have no idea what wound up happening to his rules project.  We playtested it four times that I recall, and he had some other scenarios in the works, but as far as I know nothing ever came of it beyond the few games I was involved with.

Stargrunt 15mm Harook: Space Parrots of Doom

Well, it's 2020 now.  Still no moonbase, humanity hasn't set foot on Mars, and not a peep out of the aliens my childhood assured us would be showing up to invade or offer us a spot in Galactic Civilization.  The present is a thoroughly disappointing future.

So let's look back six years at some aliens that came and went.

These are the Harook, a set of 15mm scale avian aliens that originally came out from Mad Robot Miniatures.  They were later sold to Skullduggery Press, where they have languished, unreleased and out of production for half a decade or more.  Skullduggery hasn't had an update on their Facebook page in since 2017, and that had nothing to do with the Harook.  So, not holding my breath on ever seeing these for sale again, which is really a shame.  They're very well made and deserved a better fate than they got.

The line consisted of a mix of infantry troopers, a couple of special weapon birds, a couple of command figs, a pair of snipers, and a rather nifty spotter drone.  Most of the ones I've seen painted up are done to resemble vultures, which is probably what the sculptor was shooting for.  I decided to be different, and went for a parrot-inspired scheme.

They wear light hardsuit armor and carry what were probably energy weapons of some kind.  In Stargrunt terms, I'd give them d8 armor and FP3 personal weapons with a d8 impact die, on the assumption that alien-tech zap guns should be fairly effective.

The aforementioned snipers, which i think were sold in a three-pack with the drone.  For Stargrunt, treat as laser sniper rifles, and the drone lets you treat the target as being one range band closer or cancels one die shift for cover.  It counts as part of the 3-model unit, has d8 armor, and is destroyed outright if damaged.

Think these were all the standard infantry sculpts.

The "shell" backplates could be personal shield generators of some kind if you wanted them to a bit tougher than they look at first glance.  If taking that approach, add +1 to their armor checks, giving a result from 2-9.  The  spotter drones would have this built in as well.

Here's the leader and special weapon sculpts, as well as another look at the snipers and drone.  The specials are stock plasma guns per the Stargrunt rules.

Always assumed the servo-arm thing on the leaders was some kind of target designator or fancy sensor array, or both.  I'd let leaders act as forward observers for calling in artillery, orbital bombardment, or missile strikes from off-table support elements.

Scale shot with a Tomorrow's War fig from Groud Zero Games.  As you can see, the Harook are pretty tall but slender even in their armor.

Good luck finding these for sale at this point, but maybe they'll get rescued from oblivion some day.  One can always hope - and maybe we'll get that invite to the interstellar community yet.  :)