Men In Boxes

Yup, the HOTT/DBA bug has finally hit me hard. Now I'm reading up on AAR's of conventions and competitions using these rules mainly to understand the mechanics of the rules as well as to ogle at all the miniature eye candy out there. I've sorted out some of my plastic orcs from the pile I'm using for 1/72 Warmaster and reallocating them to either a HOTT or DBA army. The DBA list comes from David Kuijt's War of the Rings Lists over at Fanaticus: DBA Misty Mountain Goblins represents the various goblin and orc forces in the Misty Mountains or in the North of Tolkien's Middle Earth  1x3Bd or 3/4Wb(Gen) 2x5Wb 3x5Wb or 2Wa 1x5Wb or 4Tr or 3Bw or 2Ps 5x2Ps   And my HotT list is inspired by Luke Ueda-Sarson's Middle Earth lists : HotT Orcs & Goblins   1 x Blade general - with bodyguard of large goblins with axes 3 x Riders - goblins on wolves 3 x Beasts - giant wolves 10 x Hordes - Goblin warriors I'm using these lists as reference and ins...

The bad weather finally got me. I've been fighting a bad cold for over a week and I seem to be losing. My head hurts and cant seem to focus because of blocked sinuses. And a really runny, leaking and obnoxiously red nose. Time to hit the bed...

After much mulling about, I've decided to give De Bellis Antiquitatis or DBA a try. I've been reading up on Hordes of the Things and while planning my orc army, I discovered that I could make a DBA Polybian Roman army from leftovers I had after making a 2000 pt Warmaster Ancients Republican Roman army. Don't get me wrong though, I'm a big fan of the warmaster rules and will still be making armies and gaming with them using those rules. But planning and making a warmaster army for 1/72 figures can be a bit tiring, especially since I game mostly in the field of 1500 to 2500 points -- and usually work on matched pairs of armies. My warmaster armies are made up of 40mm x 20mm bases, with 3 bases making a unit and 6 foot figures for each unit. Mounted units have 3 figures per unit. For a Republican Roman army, each 3 stand unit would cost 55 points and a minimum of ten units are needed for each 1000 point army. Doing the math, I would need 120 foot figures just to make 11...

I just received some new sets of 1/72 plastic orcs! These are labeled "Dark Alliance" and Orion. The sculpts are quite nice and more to my taste than the Caesar Miniature Orcs.  I'll be posting pix here soon. I've set aside the Warmaster army I'm working on to try making one for HotT. Here are some lists I found on the net for making a generic but still "Tolkien" in spirit Orc/goblin army: From Luke Ueda Sarson: 1 x Warband or Blades, 1 x Warband, 2 x Riders, 2 x Lurkers or 1 x Beasts, 1 x Behemoth or 2 x Beasts, 10 x Hordes From Dave Kuijt's Middle Earth DBA lists: 1x3Bd or 3/4Wb(Gen), 2x5Wb, 3x5Wb or 2Wa, 1x5Wb or 4Tr or 3Bw or 2Ps, 5x2Ps And 3 more from Dave Kuijt's post at Fanaticus: Uruk Raiding Party 1x Hero (Lurtz), 3x Wargs (Beasts, or Riders if you must), 1x Shooter, 1x Troll (or 2x Spear), 2x Blades Uruk Invasion of Rohan: 1x Hero (Lurtz) or Magician (Saruman), 2x Wargs (Beasts), 4x Spear, 1x Shooter, 3x Blades Uruk Invasio...

Recently found boxes of old Warhammer fantasy figures and figured they could be made into a HOTT army. Making the army and painting the figures will be a welcome break after a very hectic month of work. Mosty would need a bit of repainting but nothing straight from scratch. Going will be slow though since I haven't started filming at work yet. The past month has been a whirlwind of concept designs, storyboards, animatics and campaign pitches. I'm making it a point though to devote at least an hour a night to making a matched pair of armies together with a tank I'm building at the same time. My Middle Earth Orcs are on hold since they're already in the painting stage and my very much reduced free time wont leave much for painting them en masse. I do hope to finish them soon together with the other stuff that's been put on stasis.

I'm still knee deep in work, both inside and outside the office. I've also taken up a side career selling oil and acrylic paintings made by various Filipino artists. All these have left me virtually no time for miniature wargaming. My gaming table is currently loaded with a miscellany of stuff I have to sort and place in storage, mainly household stuff my wife and I want to keep. Summer in Manila is quite hot with some days being 36 degrees in the shade. Earlier this month, I moved my hobby workbench to the garage, the more to maximize the summer breeze but I havent finished sorting the paint bottles, equipment, hobby stuff and other ephemera. Maybe mid May will see me picking up the dice again. In the meantime, here're a couple of more World of warcraft minis I picked up for less than a dollar each.  I'm not sure what creatures they are but the 3rd from the left looks like a water elemental.

Slitherblade Tidehunter is another figure from the World of Warcraft miniatures game. The figure consists of a naga-like creasture preparing to strike with a trident. The sculpting is crisp and the details good enough but the spear/trident thingie is all bent and wobbly. Maybe I'll clip it off and attach a kris or some similarly exotic Asian-looking sword. Detail is quite good, this being a hefty miniature but the scales on the mini's skin surface seem a bit too juvenile in design. It's just basically a cross hatch job. It would have looked better if the sculptor payed more attention to the shape and arrangement of the scales rather than the quick cross hatch. The paint job seems decent enough with the majority of the body block-painted with no highlighting and blending -- just as expected from a CMG figure. But unlike the previous CMGs from games like Mageknight, this figure seems to have been carefully painted -- no splotches nor stray brushwor...