Kitbashed goblins

 

The GW "goblin regiment" kit isn't a triumph of the miniature-maker's art. The figures are oddly proportioned (even for goblins) and look awkward (even in the official website photos). But as I'd picked up bits and pieces of the set second hand, I thought I'd kitbash a few goblins to make a small warband.

These fellows have arms from Skaven and gnolls and gretchin and gnoblar heads. Oddly enough, I was inspired to make them by the prospect of playing some swashbuckling skirmish rules - All for One (Eureka) or Flashing Steel (Ganesha Games). Goblins might seem an odd choice for that, but I thought fairytale goblins might work quite well as adversaries for seventeenth-century musketeers or the like. 

I can see these little fiends as being responsible for all sorts of villainy of the kind that takes swashbucklers to sort out. 

I'm also thinking of using them for those skirmish games that have (or can have) highly differentiated individual roles: Havoc, Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes, Battlesworn, Frostgrave and the like. So the chap with the two swords could be a duellist in Havoc, a treasure hunter in Frostgrave and a combat master in ASoBH. Similarly, the fellow with the polearm would be a spearman in Havoc, an infantryman in Frostgrave and a long-reach fighter in ASoBH.

They need strength in numbers, of course, so I'm putting together a few more - some kitbashed like these and others just built as they come. I'm aiming for arquebusiers, archers, crossbowmen, some heavily armoured fighters, at least one wizard and some boar-mounted cavalry.

A quick kitbashed beastman and The Battlefield

 

I very much liked the look of Hekatoncheires' inventive beastman warband, and it inspired me to do a bit of kitbashing. I've kitbashed lots of beastmen before, but I thought I'd do some with a science-fantasy slant to got with our current tabletop wargaming. And I thought I'd take a tip from Hek in employing a similar colour scheme for a diverse band of creatures. 

We've played a few garden games of Brent Spivey's The Battlefield recently, and it's great. All of Brent's games are brilliant - Rogue Planet, Mayhem and Havoc are the others we've played - and they're all brimming with inventive mechanics. 

The reason we haven't played them more is that 'time to table' can be a bit daunting. Because the rules are so fresh and innovative, they tend to need a full read-through if you haven't played for a while. There are lots of acronyms and initialisms (RAT, MAD, CQ, etc.), and I wonder if the rulebooks might be more user-friendly if those were just 'Shooting', 'Melee', etc. And because Rogue Planet and Mayhem are 'create your own profile' games, there's a bit of extra time involved that can weigh against getting a family game going on a whim. 

The Battlefield, however, avoids the last of these problems as troops fall into set categories, over which a layer of customisation ('loadouts') can be applied. (Havoc is similar, but suffers from an overlong and roughly edited rulebook - a shame, as the game itself is terrific. If ever a ruleset demanded a second edition ...)

Now, the thing about all of the Spivey stable is that when you actually get the games on the table, they play intuitively and fluidly. They're full of tactical decision-making, drama and fun. Perfect games, in other words. So perhaps the trick is just to keep playing them, so that you don't forget the rules in the interim! 

One of the troop categories in The Battlefield is 'insurgents'. Perfect for a warp cult or Red Redemptionists or something similar. I'll need four lots of six, eventually: this fellow is the first.