I'm not sure if anyone comes here anymore but a couple of years I relaunched this site as Goaterdammerung which you can find at http://goatmajor.org.uk . I'm still not very frequent at updating but you'll find progress on my newer projects including 42mm Toy Soldiers and 28mm WW2. Let me know if you make it there !

Shiny Goodness

As a break from the normal stuff, I've been painting some 42mm toy soldiers. They are from the Little Britons range produced by Spencer Smith Miniatures and were bought on a whim last year at Partizan. It's been an interesting experience trying out the traditional toy soldier painting style, and I can see myself buying a few more in future.....

Progress Update

At the moment I'm concentrating on getting my 28mm WW2 forces ready for a game of Chain of Command. So most progress has been with the scenery and figures for my British and Germans. I expect this will take most of January to complete, but I'm hoping to get at least one game in over the Christmas period. 

When I've not been in the mood for painting then I have been starting to assemble a couple of my Necron Ghost Arks. I can imagine that these are a bit of a beast to paint though, so it may be February/March before I get round to them

Progress (or lack of)

I have attempted to put all my existing projects onto a kanban board. This idea came from listening to the excellent 40k podcast The Independent Characters

Just typing in the data has made me realise several things.....

- I have more projects underway than I realised
- I have way too many things that are bought and awaiting progress
- There really is no point buying anything new at the moment
- I am not far from finishing my favourite project (AWI Guilford Courthouse in 10mm Pendraken)
- And yet I am still planning and contemplating more!

Bonkers

So, I've made my planning process public. Lets see how long it lasts.....

-

Ogre Corsairs of the Araby Coast

Ogre's are a little side project -mainly bought to provide opposition to George's Lizardmen. My main criteria for selecting them is that you don't need many to put an army together in theory leaving me some time in the year to paint some proper figures (10mm AWI of course). Tonight i'm going to have my first game of Warhammer Fantasy for over 20 years. I suspect it's changed a bit!

So here we are - the first completed unit of the Ogre Corsairs of the Araby Coast

Adventures in Byzarbia

It's been a long time since my last post - that's mostly because I have been in panic painting mode for 3 months getting ready for the WD3 Forum game that took place over the first weekend in May. Once again the event was great fun.

This year we played another scenario from the imaginary 18th Century world devised by Henry Hyde of Battlegames fame. This time we were in the desert lands of Byzarbia, where Henry once again played God, umpire and general mischief maker in a huge battle over a 30' table with more than 3000 28mm figures. Over the course of the weekend we saw sandstorms, mirages, camel mounted artillery, elephants, pigs, flaming pigs (the same pigs), warships, exploding warships (the same warships), pirates, drunken pirates (the same pirates), flamethrowers, naptha grenades and a lot of quicksand.

I was once again the caretaker of the forces of Prunkland, the Austrian-ish nation that Henry has played himself for many years. This year my forces represented those of The Prunkländische Ostindische Kompanie, comprising a mixture of European troops, sepoy style local forces and a rioting mob. Oh... and the aforementioned special weapons squad of naptha flamethrowers and grenades, something I managed to keep secret until the day of the battle. For a full unbiased account of the battle you can check out my WD3 forum post here. There is also an excellent account of events from the other end of the battlefield in the Another Slight Diversion blog by Andy McMaster. For a video (!) account of the battle keep an eye out on Henry's YouTube channel - the trailer is already online with a longer film due soon.

So far I haven't got round to putting up any blog photos of my forces on parade, so the purpose of this entry is to put that right. So without further ado here are the gallant forces of The Prunkländische Ostindische Kompanie.

The 1st Prunkländische Ostindische Kompanie Sepoy Regiment of Foot (and their Officers):

(Flag by Henry Hyde)

The von Schiffman Marines:

(Flags by Henry Hyde)

The von Pereztrov Hussars:

The Brothers of the Cleansing Flame - Naptha Squad!

Oberst von Hauptzeige and his Staff Officers:

And last, but certainly not least, the rioting mob:

The Dreadfleet sails at last

Well, 3 months after it arrived on my doorstep, I have finally managed to finish painting all the parts for Dreadfleet. Well, almost. I haven't varnished them yet but nearly done. ...

The Grand Alliance

The Dreadfleet

For those who don't know, Dreadfleet is a limited edition game of pirate ships published by Games Workshop and set in the world of Warhammer Fantasy.

A small fleet of 'good' pirates are hunting down a small fleet of 'bad' pirates in an obscure part of the the oceans of the Old World. As you would expect, the components are of very high quality and the sculpting is quite amazing. 

 It would be quite possible to play the game with the ships clipped together and not a bit of glue or paint in sight. But it would be a tragedy not to paint the lovely miniatures in this set. 

In some ways the ships are always 

going to look good when painted because the sculptors have done given you so much straight out of the box. I found it quite a slog though - because each ship is so individual so there is no real opportunity to get a production line going.

This is not a mass combat game - each ship is very individual with its own distinct character. Personally I find it impossible to resist a game that includes a giant mechanical kraken or a ship constructed from a hollowed out giant fish and crewed by zombie Skaven ! The vampire vessel is distinctly weird though - made up of the hulls of wrecked ships with a giant stone castle perched on top. You don't so much need to suspend disbelief but rather to nail it very firmly to the ceiling.

Heldenhammer

We've only had time for one proper play of the game. This was the introductory scenario which saw the mighty Heldenhammer pitted against the nefarious Bloody Reaver vampire ship. This inevitably resulted in a victory for the baddies (i.e. my son George) but with plenty of action along the way. The game makes a lot of use of random events to add a lot of fun to the game (having your rudder jammed when trying to navigate around all those little islands is quite a challenge!). I'll probably report on some battles on my twitter account so be sure to follow me to find out how many times my son George sinks my battleship!

Bloody Reaver

The remaining ships in the Dreadfleet...

Black Kraken

Skabrus

And the brave ships of the Grand Alliance......

Seadrake

Grimnir's Thunder

Swordfysh

Flaming Scimitar

League of Augsburg French (Pendraken 10mm)

This summer I was hoping to get loads of figures painted. In the end I managed two battalions and its now October !

These figures are from my new project - a French army in 10mm for the War of the League of Augsburg. I've started collecting these mainly because the figures in the new range by Pendraken are simply fantastic (they are sculpted by the amazingly talented Clibinarium who also created their AWI range). The detail is superb - some of the figures even clearly having eyeballs. In 10mm! Its just not fair on us painters !

This was a figure inspired project, so I quickly realised that I didn't actually know anything about the period at all. With help from a certain Mr Essex Boy from the WD3 forum I got into some basic background reading. The most enjoyable being the useful Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough (David Chandler). This is a very good introduction to the tactics of the period and well worth a look. There is also a very useful webpage and forum at the League of Augsburg website. Here also you can purchase a set of rules for the war - Beneath The Lily Banners 2nd Edition. They are a bit pricy, but well produced, colourful and very readable. I haven't had a chance to play them yet but they seem like fun.

The Pendraken figures come in packs with a variety of poses. Initially I was going to mix the poses on all my stands - but this made the battalions look very irregular and rag-tag. Conversely I wasn't too keen on completely identical regiments. So I have compromised with having each base having the same figures front rank and different ones in the rear rank. I think it looks ok but i'm not entirely convinced - I may well have to experiment still more.

I have targeted my collection at the large starter army from the rulebook. This requires nine foot battalions and oodles of horse. Luckily the horse figures haven't been released yet so I have some time to get the other seven done. That's of course if I don't get distracted by AWI, 40k, Napoleonics, Space Hulk or ....sigh... Dreadfleet......