Bugbears in 15mm

 

These are terrific 15mm bugbears sold by CP Models. Although originally designed by Bob Olley as 15/18mm, they're marketed as 20mm, but to my eye, they're a bit short to be 7'+ in that scale (though they would make great hobgoblins. They would also make terrific 28mm goblins (of an especially fierce and hirsute sort).

I'm going to base these together on a 40mm square, so that they can be used as brutes (doubled warband) or behemoths in Hordes of the Things or as some sort of super-heavy infantry in Fantastic Battles. As I have at least three more bases to do, they'll be able to double up to give 80mm frontages for Impetus or work as goblin 'luggits' in Kings of War with a couple of individuals on 20mm squares between two 40mm bases (thus giving a 100 x 40 footprint). And for Hobgoblin, I'll just throw a few bases together to make a unit.

I've been trying out this simple yellow skintone on a lot of 25mm goblins for D&D. I'm quite happy with it - despite being such a bright colour, it's somewhat subterranean-looking, somehow, and it just squeezes into Tolkien's 'sallow' bracket for orcs.

(Below is a scale comparison with 1/72 Dark Alliance orcs and "15mm" Battle Valor orcs - base still to be painted and matt varnish still to be applied!)

Some 15mm orcs

 I've been gradually putting together some 15mm forces on 40mm squares. The main aim of these is to play Fantastic Battles, but they'll also work for Hordes of the Things, Mayhem and other games - including Dan Mersey's Arrowstorm, which I recently bought and which looks very interesting. 

These are Battle Valor orcs. They're absolutely huge by 15mm standards and would even work as 4' tall D&D-stye goblins in 25 or 28mm. I'm aiming to paint up a few bases with some command figures on 20mm squares. That will allow four bases and four command figures to be used as a goblin regiment in Kings of War. 

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.