Musings, Brief

January is usually one of my hell-months for work, so the few hours I'm home are usually spent catching up on sleep, even Saturdays. But I have been getting in a few hours this past week to move along on a Pictish mounted warband (while listening to vol. 2 of the Conan audiobooks) and reading Imaro IV - The Naama War (hey, that rhymes!).

So far my reading of Imaro IV has uncovered three gameable land battles; a couple of others were just massacres, and another was a fantasy naval battle that is a whole 'nother genre of gaming I'm trying to avoid. I won't divulge too much about the battles yet, because I know a lot of us are reading the book as I speak and don't want to spoil things.

But in terms of miniatures, there hasn't been any "oops" in what I've planned, or more fortunately, painted! One modification is needed for the skin colour of regular Naamans, I need to figure out just what to use for "dark amber". I also will need to check into Irregular's 6mm Zulus for some figures for Shingane the Great Elephant and his Twins; he isn't really that tall, but like the giant-kings of Acheron, has that effect on the battlefield.

One neat new unit to come up with will be velociraptor-riding Naaman light cavalry. I was going to have to do something similar anyway for the Kaa-U terror bird riders of Kull's Thurian Age and for tauntauns for Star Wars. After several seconds of intensive study of pictures of tauntaun riders, ostrich jockeys, and Warhammer dark elf cavalry (thanks, Google Images), my plan is to use cavalry figures, then cut off the forelegs in a descending curve to get bipeds out of them. Then for the tails for the raptors and tauntauns, I'll add using clay.

I've been thinking about using clay for mods for the gunkwu (a much scarier conversion) and Imaro IV has reminded me I should be thinking about it for the rhino-riders too (horns covered in steel) rather than relying on the paint job. Some research has shown I can bake Sculpey on the miniatures, but the idea of putting metal into the oven doesn't sit easy. So I may try DAS, although I wish it came in smaller amounts, opening a brick-sized bag to add a couple dozen 2mm rhino horns and raptor tails seems a bit out of...well, scale.

My final musing for this week, also on conversions, came to me while on one endless drive or another this week, and I think I have a way to do antlers for reindeer (the Thules use reindeer for both chariots and mounts). More after a test!