Conan of Cimmeria and his Hyborian Allies and Foes

One of the ways I try to keep my painting interest going is to mix up the kind of projects I work on.  So while the last several posts have been about Napoleonics, while I was working on those I almost always had another creative diversion in process as well.  Here are a few new elements for my Hyborian armies from the age of Conan.  Paul Potter is really the guilty party here as he had some lovely Hyborian armies for sale at Nashcon and so provided the bulk of the troops.

Many can be seen here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/648832952224598/for_sale_search/?forsalesearchtype=all&query=potter&referral_surface=direct_link&availability=available

Thanks to my daughter I have an anthology of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories that is my bedtime reading these days.  It's a good thing as I am relatively new to the stories, my only exposure to Conan being the movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In any event I now have Kushites, Shemites and Stygian armies ready for the game Hordes of the Things, by Phil and Sue Barker. 

Below is a map of the Hyborian world just to orient any strangers to the world of Conan.

All of the armies needed a few additional elements to really make them playable so I have added a few extras. 

 A Shemite priestess with her Magician acolyte

 A Kushite Shaman and his guard

 The 15mm figures of the shaman, Kushite hero and the Priestess with Magician are all from the miniature line by Crom's Anvil in the UK.

https://cromsanvil.co.uk/characters.html

 

 Kushite Hero

Conan with Valeria

This element was actually mostly Paul's work, but I added a few more bodies to the pile.

Howard must have had a thing for green jade, because he is always writing about green towers of stone rising from the jungle, invariably populated by some horrid monster or wicked sorcerer.  This particular tower was provided by Terry Webb as some swag for attending the Good, Bad, and Ugly Hordes of the Things (HotT) tournament last year.

And lastly, a stronghold for the wicked magician's of Stygia, modeled on the ancient Egyptian culture.  Have to love Amazon as I found this lovely little statue for just a few bucks.

Now that these elements are complete it is time to get these armies out of their cigar boxes and on to a battle ground!

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog.  Don't forget to follow my blog or drop me a comment if you have enjoyed this work.  Y'all stay safe out there!

Rohan, the Men of Snowbourne

In the Peter Jackson film version of the Lord of the Rings, the men of Snowbourne are late to the rallying point before the Rohirrim head out to assault the orcs of Morder besieging Minas Tirith.  The only excuse I could see is that they must be from the outer reaches of Rohan.  When I received this selection of soldiers, painted by none other than Sue (Hurklecat).  I thought immediately that they could be fashioned into Rohirrim with just a little bit of extra love.  I added just one or two figures, customized some shields and added some banners, replaced old lead spaghetti spears and then based them to match my collection.  Thus my second army of Rohan was born, this time featuring more reds than greens, a consequence of their distance from the main plains of Rohan, and also why there are more infantry, as they live in the foothills of the mountains bordering Rohan (at least that's my story and I'm sticking with it.)  The magician is meant to represent Radagast the Brown, who has emerged from seclusion to lend a hand against the evils of Isengard and Morder.

Radagast was on of the few figures I painted from scratch and is from a Ral Partha half-elf collection I believe.  I thought his armor/coat was reminiscent of feather, hence he is based with an owl and eagle.

There were two of these included in the selection and they were a bit too Roman to serve as rohirrim, particularly this on on the armored horse, so I sculpted a horsehair crest for the helmet and added a sword to help disguise his Roman heritage.

HotT Undead Halloween Army

For this year's Halloween in April HotT meet, I wanted to paint an original army, but also wanted something very simple that would not require a lot of time - hence the green or gray color scheme with a few diluted washes or dry brushed colors added for accent work.  Here the dead rise from the ground in the stronghold of the necromancer.

A pair of ghostly fliers hovering over the battlefield, their passage gathering the mists below creating a chill cloud upon which they appear to float.

Werewolves have been recruited by the necromancer for their strength and viciousness and may be the only living servants able to tolerate the presence of the necromancer. 

The hero leader of the undead horde mounts a small mist covered rise to view his army on the march.  The mist was made using polyfill, which was glued and then sprayed to help hold it in place.  The polyphil works reasonably well as a representation of mist, though when enlarged in the photographs the individual fibers become more apparent and it looses some of the effect.  On the battlefield at 15mm size it works fairly well.

The headless horseman.  His substitute pumpkin head was sculpted from green stuff.  The figure is from Splintered Light - minus his head.

The necromancer himself with a flaming sword and two of his ghastly minions.

The Barker Marker.

Knights and riders of the ghostly horde.  The bulk of the army is made from Baueda's Emishi line (proto-samurai).  As much as I love Baueda and some of their later figure lines, the Emishi were just butt-ugly.  I knew I was never going to take the time to actually paint them, so using them in this manner actually allowed me to not just melt them down for fishing weights.

The shooters

The spearmen are actually made from archers.  Many of the archer poses in this line were so awful, I decided to simply cut down the bow arm and disguise the surgery under a shield.  The spears were then placed in the right arm which was bent in the position of drawing a bow in most cases.  To disguise the transition from arrow hand to spear, I sculpted some rudimentary hands with liquid green stuff over the spear shaft so that it would appear less like the spears were floating on their bodies.  Not perfectly executed by any means, but for a super quick army presented in mass it works.

The ghastly army arrayed for battle.

Building a Light Weight 4'x4' Foldable Wargaming Board

Now that a larger board is desirable for DBA 3.0, I decided to retire my 3' boards and go for 4'x4'. To make it small enough to fit in the car I have hinged together two 2'x4' boards. The boards themselves are made of pink insulation foam board for light weight. The hinges and edges are made from black gorilla brand duct tape. The board was then painted, sprayed with adhesive and flocked. I'll do a protective over spray once I am satisfied with the flocking.

Now a 50/50 mix of white glue and water was applied to secure flowers, shrubs, rocks and larger details that might otherwise rub off. Looks pretty ugly until it dries. The initial application of flock was not very smooth, so rather than fight it, I decided to vary the flock and ground materials.

The finished board. In the first shot you can see how the thick 50/50 glue mixture mashed down the flock and darkened it. It looks a little funky in this picture in bright sun, but actually on a table and lying flat in a room the effect is quite appealing. After this thick white glue mixture was applied, the whole board was sprayed with a much more dilute white glue and water mixture.

My only concern at this point is that the shrubs and rocks will be to rough a surface for elements to lay flat.  The rocks and bushes are pretty well spread out so I suspect will not be a big deal, but I'll report back after the first game.  Now I just have to make another one so I can get out my triple sized Big Mac Attack and the Persians to put on a big battle DBA game.

Arthurian Legends Mordred Army and Castle Fortress

Here is the army arrayed for battle.  Basically this army was an excuse to use all of those old figures I had lying around, themed around a late medieval version of Mordred's forces.  I looked at old illustrations from NC Wyeth and Howard Pyle for inspiration, but also tried to operate within the confines of what I had available.

Essex billmen to protect the bowmen.  Being minions of Mordred and lazy, evil types in general, they don't bother to polish the rust off their armor

Splintered light bowmen left over from my Pict and Welsh/Robin Hood project.

Warband using mostly some of Splintered Light's excellent character figures (including Grendel) with some Old Glory Normans mixed in.

The hordes.  These were painted by David McBride as part of a huge Robin Hood prize army I was fortunate enough to win.  I spun off some of the excess to serve with Mordred.

I think these started life as part of my Welsh historical DBA army, but were really too late in appearance for that army so they ended up as the Black Knight (hero) and the knights of Mordred (Below - play as knights)

Howard Pyle describes Arthur's knights fighting a giant in his series on King Arthur so I figured Mordred had to have one.

No evil army would be complete without something that makes things go boom.  Like Saruman in the Lord of the Rings, I just figured Mordred and Morgana would have a thing for gunpowder.

Speaking of Morganna - here she is.  I had to sculpt hair and clothes for her as well as a staff, but at least I can show her to the kids now.  She is mounted on bits of Hackberry bark - a trick I learned from Paul Potter.

Not quite Sean Connery, but it will do for the green knight.  I painted his armor normally and then washed with Green ink which gives it a nice translucent green quality.

Mordred surveying the battlefield.  His base is made from a combination of Sculptamold paper mache, Hackberry bark, and dyed plaster debris.

My favorite part of the army is the Stronghold.  Paul Potter originated this idea in a camp of his design incorporating the castle and tree of woe.  I decided I wanted to minimize the scale differential between the tree and the castle, so constructed the mountain on which it sits out of styrofoam, Sculptamold paper-mache, plaster and dyed plaster debris.

I love this view of the path from the tree of woe leading up to the castle!

Look forward to trying out the army in this year's Good, Bad and Ugly tournament.