DBx madness at Nashcon

NASHCON 2009

This year's Nashcon started with a bang, of musketry that is. We got the games rolling with a DBN demo game that I wung together at the last minute to try and help fill the Friday afternoon slot. I was going to play a test game, but folks kept stopping by and watching, so I just stepped aside and turned over the game to some willing volunteers. After that it was off to the races with a DBA campaign game run by Bob Kelso Friday night, an afternoon of DBx open gaming Saturday, culminating with the 2009 open DBA tournament.

The French columns supported by lancers prepare to assault the allied line in a "Road to Waterloo" scenarion based very loosely on Quatre Bras. The game was played with 25mm DBN rules on a 3x6 table.

Brunswick Avante Garde take position in a village to the front of the allied line.

The Snoopy Blimp overview of the action. Terry Webb (in the hat) is helping to coach the players through the rules.


The French Lancers charge into the Dutch, trying to break their lines before the rapidly approaching Brunswickers can turn and oppose them.

Friday night featured an eight player campaign game based on the first crusade. Bob Kelso hosted the game and provided all of the miniatures and terrain. Bob knew the period very well and kept things moving along at a fast clip all night.

Crusaders and Saracens about to clash!

Dave Cliffel was the eventual winner of the campaign and received a cash prize to spend in the dealer area. Bill Banks came in a close second and received an Essex DBA core army as his reward.

Here we see a shot of another DBN game, this time in 15mm. Glenn Little coached players through DBN during the DBx clinic and open gaming session. Glenn's French look to be taking advantage of my Prussians and Saxons due to the absence of their normal general (me).

Terry Webb and Chris Ward face off in a large Boxer Rebellion game put together by Paul Potter and using the Humberside extension of the DBA rules. Chris Ward went on to win one of two door prizes, an essex DBA core army. I actually won the other drawing and choose the artillery bastion terrain piece from Murray Terrain that I had been coveting.

Though I wasn't present for their innaugural battle, I did eventually get to sit down and take command of the orcs as they fought to crush the elf host. Unfortunately the orcs succumbed to the skill of the elven general, but managed to take a good many of them to the great beyond, before fleeing the field of battle. You can see more photos of the HotT games at: http://s292.photobucket.com/albums/mm4/photocrinch/

Nahtan Clairday, a relative newcomer to DBA, borrowed my HYW English for the tournament and managed to shoot his way into the top spot and win the DBA open. Ed Dillon can be seen in the background brushing the rust off of his game.

Terry Webb played his Feudal French and in the back Paul Potter can be seen setting up his powerful Navareese army.

The champions: (L-R) Bob Kelso in 3rd place playing a Qara Khitan army with 75 points, Nathan Clairday with the HYW English squeeked in to 1st place by one point with 76 total points, Joe Collins playing the Alexandrian Macedonians entered the final round as the only undefeated player, but fell to Paul Potter's Navareese and ended up placing 4th with 72 points. Paul placed second with 75 points. All four players received either an Essex Core army or an army pack from Splintered Light Miniatures. The participants and their armies were:

Terry Webb - Feudal French
Ed Dillon - Anglo Normans
Paul Potter - Navarese
Nathan Clairday - HYW English
Glenn Little - Early Polish
Bob Kelso - Qara-Khitan
Gray Strick - Mongols
Dave Cliffel - Turks
Jamie Gentry - LIR
Chris Ward - Marian Romans
Mark Leitheiser - Phyrric
Joe Collins - Alexandrian Macedonian

A special thank you to our most generous sponsors: Baxter Key at Wargames, David McBride at Splintered Light Miniatures, and Barry Scarlett from Murray Terrain.

Elves and Orcs Ready to Rumble

Ever since I saw these figures back in the early eighties I've always wanted an army of Orcs and Elves sculpted by Tom Meier for Ral Partha. Thanks to the magic of Ebay, I have finally acquired enough figures to make that dream a reality. I have based them for the DBA variant HotT (Hordes of the Things). Though I have enough figures now to make the requisite 24 point armies, the Elves far outnumber the Orcs, but not to worry. Waiting in the wings are about 40-50 more Goblins which I will mount up as shooters and hordes.

This Dragon is one of the few figures in the army not sculpted by Tom. I believe this one was sculpted by Julie Guthrie, but if anyone knows better please let me hear from you. I will most likely play this element as an aerial hero or as a flyer, not as a dragon.

Here we have the Lord of the Nazgul with a wolf rider escort. The wolf riders are sculpted by Tom Meier, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Nazgul was as well, but I'm not really sure. Once again please let me hear from you if you if you know the sculptor

Here are two elements of wolf riders which I will probably play as beasts. These figures are still commercially available, but I found out later that Mr. Meier still owns the copyright to these figures and they are being produced without his consent. They are clearly old molds, as some of the detail of the chainmail on the riders is virtually non-existant now.


These ferocious fellas will represent the general's element of Uruk Hai and will be played as a warband element. The drummer in the front was one I painted way back in the day, and there is no telling how many repaints and bases he has been on, hence the rather grity appearance of his drum.

Uruk Hai shooters. The bow strings are made from horse hair that I stole from an old violin bow.

The main body of Uruks will be played as warband. Once again some of these figures are still commercially available, but apparently without license to be sold. The spearmen are not available and I was thrilled to find an unopened pack of six on Ebay a while back. I have painted them in bronze armor, and being Orcs who are not to concerned with cleanliness, I have given the bronze a green cast from lack of polishing.

The Elven Host

Once again a dragon sculpted by Julie Guthrie with an elf rider sculpted by Tom Meier. I'm thinking aerial hero for this one.

The much feared Elf archers. Most of these are an older paint job, but serviceable. I did add the horse hair bow strings and touched them up a bit.

The Elven knights. You can see here the evolution of my painting style. The blue riders are underoated in black and the armor drybrushed. The Green riders are primed white, and then the armor and other details are given a wash and then highlighted in places. I much prefer the white undercoat and washes as they help keep the colors bright, while still giving good definition to the wonderfully sculpted detail.

The elven horse archers will play as riders. These are once again a mix of old and new paint jobs. I did some touch up work on the older figures, but I imagine it is still fairly obvious which ones were painted a long time ago.

The Elf spearmen are a mixture of figure types. In front are mainly sea elves I believe, and in the back row are converted Halbardiers. I like the halbardier figures, but I just had too many of them and they looked great as pikemen or spearmen, so out came the clippers.

Here are some of the Halbardiers as they were meant to be. The central unit comes from a pack labelled as Starbrow's select. Though I love Mr. Meier's work, these I'm afraid were not one of his best efforts. Some archers came with the pack as well and they are among my least favorite. The last stand is a mix of halbardiers and short spear, which I will play as a blade stand. I just didn't have enough of either figure type to make a homogeneous stand, so though not my favorite stand, it'll do. As of yet, neither of these armies has made an appearance on the field of battle, but Nashcon is coming up in a couple of weeks and I'm sure they will make an appearance there.

Ral Partha Elf Chariot and companions

I first saw this elf chariot sculpted by Tom Meier back in the 80's. I couldn't afford it back then so it rekindled my youthful wishes to field an elf army when I picked this model up. I have slowly amassed all the figures necessary for a 25mm HoTT army which is painted for the most part. I'll post more pictures when it is done, but here are some quick shots for now:

There is so much detail sculpted onto these marvelously showy horses, that I must admit that I stared at them for months before I could summon up the courage to paint them. They actually turned out to be fairly easy to paint. I used one of my daughters horse books to come up with the color scheme for them, which I thought ended up complementing the blues of the chariot quite nicely.

The Hero and his trumpeter. Once again these were very detailed sculpts, but they were deceptively easy to paint, despite the fact that I kept finding new details of the models as I painted. Mr. Meier really has a fine eye for detail.

The horses: I just love all the accouterments.

A group of four archers that will serve as a command element if I ever decide I want a shooter as a general. The strings of the bows are made from horse hair that I stole from my violin bow.

A close up of some elf cavalry that will serve as knights. I've got one more element of these which I think I will paint in a predominantly green color scheme. I'm working on some horse archers as well which will make up three elements of riders. With any luck I'll have these ready for Nashcon which is held every year at the end of may.

HoTT Wax Tournament - Narnians Triumphant!

Robin Hood Update - Figures Rebased and Ready

The Robin Hood HotT army was this year's HotT Wax tournament prize painted and provided by David McBride at Splintered Light Miniatures. I wanted to rebase them just so they would be consistent with my own style, especially since I wanted to add a couple of Hero elements which you can see above. These are Essex miniatures and represent Richard the Lion Heart and Ivanhoe. They can be played as heroes or knights. I also wanted to rearrange the character figures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian etc. In the process of rebasing I decided to darken the skin tones a bit just to fit my personal taste.

The Characters - Friar Tuck on the left will play as a cleric, Robin Hood with Maid Marian and some of his merry men will play as a hero element, and Little John, Alan-a-Dale, and will Scarlett will either play as a hero element or as a lurker.

The merry men - seven elements of shooters.

The peasantry - eight elements of warband.

These are great figures in wonderful dynamic poses. It took a bit of doing, but I rearranged the figures so that none of the staves were sticking off the ends of the stands.

A typical shooter stand. Once again Splintered light has provided some great dynamic figures.

A closer shot of Robin Hood with Maid Marian. I wanted to use some gold in her outfit to distinguish her as being of noble birth and a bit out of place with the woodsmen. She even has some gold braided through her hair, at least that is what it is supposed to look like.

THE VICTORS

The Narnians emerged victorious from the field of battle in Columbus Ohio. HoTT Wax was a blast, with twenty participants all sporting some magnificent armies. With a lot of help from the die, I took first place and came back to Nashville with a nicely painted Robin Hood army courtesy of Splintered Light Miniatures and David McBride. The die gods were giving me good Karma for making the long drive with Terry Webb and Paul Potter. Many thanks to David Zecchini for all his efforts to put Hott Wax together for us!

hopefully the final iteration of the Narnian army! I had enough elements to pick and choose from this fairly massive army that I was able to pick a winning combination. My tournament army consisted of 1 hero, 1 beast, 1 flyer, 2 behemoths, 2 knights, 1 rider, 2 warband, 2 spears, and 3 shooters for a 36 AP army.


A view of the Narnian host from lower down. I opted not to use the magician, or paint Aslan as a god element due to the vagaries of fate from which these elements can suffer.

I fielded both of these behemoths and they played a crucial role in almost all my victories. I finished them just hours before we had to leave, and I was extremely glad to have pushed to get them done. These are wonderful Splintered Light castings.

To the victor goes the spoils, which in this case was a wonderful Robin Hood army painted by none other than the proprietor of Splintered light. Thanks David!

Maid Marian and Robin Hood with some of his gang. I may remount this as a Hero stand, but I'll have to think about that for a while.

Will Scarlet, Little john and the Minstrel Alan a Dell.

Of course no army with Robin Hood would be complete without Friar Tuck! Great fun at HoTT Wax. Thanks again for all who played and put this wonderful tournament together.

Narnian's ready for HoTT Wax

My friends and I have decided to make a road trip up to Columbus Ohio to join the fun at HoTT Wax. The powers that be have decided we will be using 36 Army points instead of the usual 24, which has inspired me to actually finish painting the rest of the wonderful Splintered Light figures I got at last year's Nashcon in May. I have added several elements of satyrs and a flyer. I'm also currently painting a couple of elements of minotaurs which I will play as behemoths if I can get them finished before Friday. Here are the results of my efforts:

Here we have the satyr warband. The figures are a tad large and might have fit on a 20mm deep base, but as I had to use a deeper 20mm base for the elements of 4 spear, I decided to go with a deeper 30mm base to make it more apparent that these were warband and not 3 blade.

The warband general. I'll probably play him as a regular element and have my hero stand or centaurs be the general's element.

Here we have 2 elements of satyr shooters and a spear. These will mix well with their faun brethren to give me three elements of spear and three elements of shooters, which I hope will be enough. The spears are a great all around element, but they are slow in comparison to the rest of the army, so they may get left in the box if I have enough Army points to do so.


This is one of the smallish Ral Partha griffins from the 1980's and as such, he mixes well with the Splintered Light miniatures which tend to be a bit on the big side. I'm not a frequent HoTT player, so learning how to use this guy to my best advantage will be a challenge. I figure I've got five hours in a car with an expert HoTT player, so I hope to pick his brain for some strategic hints. Looking forward to seeing everyone at HoTT Wax.

Pet Pictures

I saw the Alte Fritz's beautiful pups on his site this week, and since he opened the can of worms, I couldn't resist posting some pictures of my own furry beasts.

Here we have Snuggers, the most affectionate cat the world has ever known. We put up with a cat from hell for eighteen years, so I think divine Karma graced us after that experience with her. She is known for her instapurr and bisquit making ability.

This is Tucker, our first born. She's fifteen, or perhaps sixteen years old, so is starting to lose some of her pep, but not so much that she won't get out and enjoy the rare snowfalls we get.

I remember when our children were first born, how Tucker became their surrogate mother. She was very affectionate and protective of them, despite their hair pulling. She was the designated foot washer, and everytime she saw my newborn son's toes, she inspected them and then washed them throughly! She's slowing down, but still loves her daily walks and a scratch behind the ears.

New Year's Morning Visitors

My daughter spotted these monsters in the back yard, and after I convinced myself they weren't a product of too much champagne last night, I managed to grab a few pictures. My guard dog Tucker, whose idea of guarding the house is to present her belly to any stranger that appears if she can manage to get out of her bed, summoned the energy to chase these hens out of the yard. Fortunately they landed next door and were gracious enough to let me photograph them.

How do you tell a hen from a tom anyway?

Mmmmmm, if only I'd grabbed my bow instead of the camera..... Not that I'd know what to do with it if I had. Besides, it's New Years Day. May they live long and prosper.