Pic Plentiful

I've now emptied my camera onto the computer, so this is the first of at least 3 posts, all with glorious pictures.  Some I'd forgotten I'd even taken, so you'll get a 3mm rubber tree tutorial out of this eventually. 

First though, I'd like to say Blogger's new editor is really bloody annoying.  I was using the old one as long as possible, but they're making that harder to do.  But I'll persevere. 

This post is less coherent than the follow-ups will be, as it doesn't really have a theme, it's all the oddities.  First up is a re-purposed Blarney castle from a music box I found in a local thrift shop.  It's about 6mm, so I did it up as an evil Warhammer Chaos or Vampire Count lair, with some warpstone showing through the walls and up on top.  Perhaps it was hit by a falling warpstone meteor.

My now 2yo nephew helped paint the green at the base, so I've begun his training.  The glare is from a glossy coat of sealant, I'm dulling it with Dullcote for the table. 

I've previously posted some of the Creatology wooden puzzles that I'm using as cheap terrain, and have finally finished a few.  These are the same building, but converted to different scales, on the left is 28mm, intended for fantasy or the like, and is meant to be a fortified stone house.

On the right is a 15mm stone church, intended for Solomon Kane or other settings.  The cross is a spare bit from one of the other wooden puzzles.  Both were spray painted with a textured paint, then the roofs added and painted later.

I recently took advantage of Black Cat Bases' September sale, and amongst the things I picked up were three planets for space gaming.  This is the one I'm going to do up as an Earth-like planet.  I've just started the land masses, and need to figure out how to give them some life so they don't look like one flat colour.  Once I get the land and oceans done, I intend to paint some cloud cover over everything.

The other two planets will be an ice world, like some of Jupiter's moons, and a Mars-like red planet.  I think I need to order some more planets though, as I have lots more ideas for colour schemes.

Finally, from JR Miniatures, this is a 10mm tower that is slated for use in my Imaro (African fantasy) setting.  I need to do a final drybrush of the roof, but it's otherwise done. 

Next up will be a ton of 6mm terrain and scenics pics.

6mm Dollar Store Finds & 2mm Cities

Here are some more photos of what I've been up to. First we have four scenic pieces I found in the pet supply section of a Dollar store (Pound store for my UK friends):


Most of these will be for 6mm, but I think the bridge/tower combo might be better as 2mm, or could be used for both. The bit under the bridge is kinda dumb, to lay down a river beneath it will mean the river goes up and down a hump. I'm also thinking I should buy a second Aztec temple and spray paint it a sandy colour to use for 10mm Africa. I may even just do it for this one - since I don't have a single Aztec or Aztec-like fantasy culture in my plans! (well, maybe Warhammer's lizardmen)


Based on an idea I saw on The Miniatures Page, I've started putting together some 6mm sci-fi city buildings from cheap trophy stands available from a local craft superstore (Michael's). I've glued the matching pieces together, I just have to sand them, then glue them together as towers. I noticed last night the craft store has different shapes available now, but I'll wait for their next 25% off everything coupon before I buy more.


I'm also working on some 2mm cities to use either as representational scenics for Aeronef (based on CDs) or as edge-of-the-table pieces for Land Ironclads, Kull, Imaro, and my 18th/19th century historical projects. The latter aren't meant to be fought on, rather as the obejctive behind a defender.  I'm basing them on 2 12"x6" flooring tiles, and they're meant to be a bit closer to true 2mm scale than those on the CDs, which will be more like 0.5mm.

For the CD-cities, I'm doing several for my take on Victorian Venus (basically Space 1889's Mars), Ottoman-esque, and a generally European city or two (should work for North America as well). I may do an Aeronef NY, but bigger and on a tile, using my mini Statue of Liberty. For the bigger 2mm cities, I'm doing a bigger version of a Venuvian city, Victorian Mars (Wells' idea of Mars), a general European one, 18th century India, Valusia (Kull), one of the Giant-Kings' cities (also Kull), and an African-esque city (Imaro).

Then as a special project, I'm doing a "New London", aka Sky City, for Aeronef. Here are some early shots of the basics. Each CD is supported on a heavy bolt, glued to the cap of a toothpaste tube (Sensodyne makes great caps for 2mm scenics), which in turn is glued to the centre of the CD. The three CD's were then joined with popsicle/craft sticks underneath, which will be painted as monstrous girders.


One CD will be the industrical area, one the rich/administrative area with parks and the like, and the other the main city. I have anchors planned, as well as bridges, a telegraph line cable, aeronef docking and repair stations, factories, skyscrapers, etc.

In my universe, it will roam the Atlantic, as sort of a floating place of business for the British Empire (also a backup capital, if the Germans/French/Russians/Turks invade England!).  To defend itself, I'll be picking up some British turrets from Brigade this summer.

New Dossouye Novel by Charles Saunders

The next installment in the adventures of Dossouye, that war-bull riding heroine of Charles Saunders, is now available at Lulu. This is a full novel, rather than the collection of short stories of the first installment (also available at Lulu).

Here's the sweet cover art:Although technically her world is different than Imaro's, I'm going by the 1970's map and keeping them together for my 2mm and 10mm fantasy Africa projects. 2mm is my mass battles project using Advanced Legendary Battles, 10mm is my skirmish project using Eureka's cool figures (including war-bulls!). I just need Eureka to come up with more stuff (rhino riders, etc.).

I ordered my copy of Dossouye II last week, it should be here today or tomorrow. I'll let you know what I think. Charles' website is: here

Christmas in July

This morning, while contemplating getting out of bed or having another 9 minutes of sleep, I heard the outer front door slamming, suggesting a parcel being placed between the doors! Bounding downstairs, I found a small, but heavy, package with Royal Mail markings - my latest Irregular order had arrived!

Risking being late for work, I spent some time fondling the new arrivals at the breakfast table. This order was my biggest yet, and was all over the map in terms of projects (hence the ridiculous label list for this post). Actually it was so big and spread out, I can't even remember exactly all of what I ordered until I cross-check the codes with the master list.

But, some early comments and plans...

VSF in Space - I like the Iron Stars rules, but have never been jiggy with the miniatures; to be honest, I've always liked the look of the Battlefleet Gothic ships for VSF. But not their prices. So I picked up the Heirs of Manacus (and expansion) and Heirs of Uranus fleets - look good! There's a new maker of ships in plastic (via Shapeways) of Gothic ships, hopefully that can be a third fleet for my VSF in space ideas.

Star Wars in 2mm - I got a bunch of the basic WWI/WWII infantry and MG/missile stands for troops, and some of the 2mm sci-fi support weapon stands too. I picked up the two and four legged walkers, and I think I'm going to prefer the Ground Zero Games/Germy walkers. Irregular's two-legged walkers look good, but are bigger than the GZG AT-AT clones, so they wouldn't match up (would be ok as AT-ST's on their own though). So I think the Irregular walkers will join the land ironclads I also ordered for some Land Ironclads gaming (they'd look good bronzed up).

WWI in the Air - I picked up the 1/300 WWI aircraft Irregular makes that no one else does, and some others that were just cheaper. This is a case where I can't remember just what that was though, although the Taubes were pretty obvious!

WWI on Land - Picked up some 2mm WWI tanks, either for a future If the Lord Spares Us project, or to trick up for Land Ironclads.

WWII on Land - To supplement my GHQ and CinC stuff, I picked up a fire engine as background fluff, and the steam train, it looks pretty sweet. I also got the doors, windows, roofs, stairs scenics pack, to try making some of my own buildings.

19th Century - Picked up more artillery for my fictional setting, but also for...

18th Century Imagi-Nations/SYW in India - I'd like to do the SYW in India (maybe in Europe too) in 2mm, so I picked up British and French SYW army packs to get me started. Also picked up additional artillery pieces, the army packs tend to be a bit short on that. I plan on using the King of the Battlefield rules, though I also picked up the new pdf of Might and Reason recently too, more for bigger 18th Century battles in Europe though, not India.

Kull and Imaro - Finally, I ordered a ton of codes to get further ahead on my 2mm fantasy projects. Lots of elephants and war mammoths, and infantry. Will have to make another larger order (e.g. 70+ of some codes, times two or three figures per code...) later this year. I messed up my polar war chariot order though, forgot the wolf chariots are single items, so only ordered 3, when I need 6 (see my There's no basing like sno' basing post for the start of the stands). Some of the elephants (the non-Howdah) ones are going to be converted to gunkwu's, I'll see how that goes, it's going to involve a fair bit of chopping.

Anyway, happy, happy!

July's order will be some more Splintered Light Miniatures (they're having a sale), some Calvacade samurai dwarves (another sale), and an order from an architectural model supplier, for 2-6mm civilian stuff (cars, small trains for targets, transport trucks).

Sphinx Jr.

For Steelonsand, here's a couple of shots of the nearly done Sphinx Jr. (aka Sphinx for 2mm). I've also included a shot of the pyramids that came with the set, however, the fact the Sphinx towers over them suggests they aren't quite Cheopian in scale, so I've declared them to be Cushite (or Kushite) funeral pyramids, rather than Egyptian or pseudo-Egyptian colossai. Both will be background scenery for fantasy or alt-historical games.

They came from a Safari Toob pack, the rest of the goodies in the pack will make 25/28mm scenery pieces - various statues and sarcophagi. The sphinx and pyramids were a bit of a bugger because while painted, the paint job had picked up a stain that wouldn't wash off, almost like they'd been covered in chewing gum. The rest of the toys don't need any work, but I had to prime and re-paint these, which did let me do them a bit differently.

As always, clicking on the photos brings up a larger image; the first sphinx picture in particular gives a good close-up.

This shows off sphinx jr. relative to the pyramids, and you can see in the background some of my elephant grass project. The taller grass is for 1/72 gaming, the shorter stuff for 3mm. Some 2mm riders are in the foreground for scale.

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!

Savanna Tiles

I've been distracted lately working up the background for a fictional 18th century India setting (these are called Imagi-Nations in the wargaming community), but I do have a couple of posts for today that have been backlogged for a bit. I'm still getting painting in.

So first up, since I haven't found anyone who makes mats that match an African savanna (deserts and drylands are no problem to find, just nothing with a touch of yellow), I've been tinkering with my own idea.

On the left is the original vinyl floor tile - I'm going to use some of these for smaller scale (skirmish) desert or Martian tiles - and on the right is after a couple of light coats of yellow spray paint. As we speak I'm misting green over it, then another mist of yellow, to see what I get. Twenty-four of these will give me a 6x4 playing area for battles in Nyumbani or colonial skirmishes.

Here's my test tile with my kraal on it.

If I don't end up doing a full set, this at least gives me something to base some scenic pieces on.

And now we dance...

After wrapping up my last post I got the delightful news that the long-awaited (as in it was completed in its original form about 25 years ago) fourth book of the Imaro series is now available from Lulu!

It's called The Naama War, so obivously it's going to become the most important "historical reference" for my Imaro project. Luckily I don't think I've gotten too far ahead of the game with my war lions and izingogo, but I am going to move to other projects until I get and read the book. I do have the figures for an initial war bull unit from Dossouye's universe, so when I need a fix I'll work on that.

Anyway, with Mr. Saunders' permission, here are the covers from all the Imaro books in their various incarnations. Dossouye's down at the bottom for good measure as well.

This is the new cover, has a sort of superhero feel to it. The dude on the right is Bohu, sort of Darth Vader to the Erriten's Emperor, if you need a quick cultural analogy. While he's not an Erriten (but could be a Naaman), I did at least get the colours right - skin tone and sorcerous green - on my Erriten.

Nightshade edition Imaro.

Nightshade edition Quest for Cush - I think this is my favourite cover of the new editions. And not just for the lady!

Lulu edition of Trail of Bohu. I think this is the only one that really gets his age right, he's in his early 20's here. He looks older in all the others.

This is the original DAW cover, after the Tarzan reference had to be removed. Kind of weird, between the Miles Davis hair and the lizardman that doesn't make an appearance in any story that I remember (which may say more about my memory than anything).

DAW edition. We finally see Pomphis, but this doesn't portray him accurately - he was a very civilized pygmy! One with a fair bit of flair. On the other hand, it does give us something to work with for Imaro other than a loincloth. This is what I generally imagine his workaday dress to be, after his time with the bandits.

Naturally any book cover with a guy riding a rhino at full speed will be one of my favourite book covers of all time. And we have the zebra cavalry in the background. Both units will be on my table shortly! (Although unless the new edition deleted this, he doesn't ride a rhino in this book! Bloody cover artists)

Warrior woman Dossouye. Hopefully there's another book of her adventures coming out in 2010, maybe with her war bull on the cover.

Giant Kings and Killer Baboons

Finally wrapped up some figures for Kull and Imaro this evening, as well as some other odds and ends (the latter for another post). For the stands of izingogo (hordes of killer baboon-men) I took pictures at each painting step as a bit of a how-to. Photos are still a challenge, had to take about 4 for every one used here, and the erriten is still a crappy photo. The one that got the colours right wasn't in focus, and the one that was in (marginal) focus doesn't show the colours properly!

You can click on the photos to see a larger image, and I'd recommend doing that for some of them if you're going through the step-by-step painting section.

Forces of Naama (Imaro)

Mr. Erriten. Not entirely satisified with the final result. The paint job was ok (despite this photo), but the body shape doesn't quite work out, he looks kind of like a muppet gone wrong. He'll do for now, till I figure something else out.

Ten bases of izingogo after getting the base painting done (moon yellow - green wash - cadmium yellow drybrush). Some dirt areas added as well. Don't need to be too careful here, the figures are getting their first coat of paint next.

These figures, by the way, are IKF8 Goblin/Orc Infantry Warband with the standards cut off, shields removed, and the bases cut up into varying shapes. Cutting the bases in half made getting rid of the standards much easier, which was my first objective, but once I got into it, I went from just turning each base into two bases to multiple semi-randomly shaped bases. The one exception was the lead stand (with the standard intact).

Once I got through slicing off the shields the results were kind of hit and miss, some still looked like figures, some looked liked boulders. I even turned a few stumps of the standards into figures. So the smaller bases I think help hide this by breaking things up.

All the figures have gotten a thorough coat of dark chocolate brown. Found some interesting shapes once I got them under the magnifying light. Little tail or leg appendages here or there. Painted some, left others as base colours.

A view of the horde after the first coat of paint.

Next I drybrushed "Mississippi Mud" over them, it's a kind of grey-brown, lighter than the dark chocolate. If you look at some baboon pictures, they have that same sort of greyish tinge to them. I wanted to add a third colour around their heads, so I made sure I drybrushed around the sides too, otherwise just the head would pick up this colour, and then I'd end up painting over it in the next step.

So my drybrushing was first directly overhead both north-south and east-west, then I went in at the sides, north-south and east-west again.

The drybrushed horde.

Finally I added nutmeg brown "faces" to them, although the actual splotch was sometimes to the front of their head, sometimes their top, depending on what I thought of each individual. If I could kind of see a face I'd hit that, otherwise I'd go more for the top. The idea was for an overall effect from the third colour.

I considered drybrushing another lighter brown over everything, but I was happy with things to this point, and my experience has been that I always go one step to far.

The horde effect after the "faces" were added.

You'll note I'd added some foliage earlier without mentioning it, and then I had some "rocks" which were either figures that got trashed during shield removal or more stumps of standards. For the bigger ones I was trying for sort of an Ayer's Rock colouration, but got things a bit too bright. I think I should have gone for a wine red-brown rather than Georgian Clay.

Since I've started hitting the figures (but not the bases) with a coat of Future to prevent Dullcote from muddying things up, I'll leave these rocks uncoated and hope Dullcote tones them down a level.

The final horde ready to take on those Cushite war lions!

The dreaded five-snake banner of Naama. Funny thing is I can't remember if I made up the banner or if it's actually canon...

Giant Kings of Acheron (Kull)

You saw these guys after priming in an earlier post. The two sorcerers (left and middle) are done, the general needs to have his aides painted up, as well as the boulders behind him. These are all IKF2 Giants, with two different hand weapons on the right, and the one on the left (jr. sorcerer) had his snipped off.

Their flesh is actually supposed to be very pale, which may be why I had trouble getting their faces to come out in the photos. The legs are actually flesh, not leggings, if you want an idea of what the colour is supposed to be.

The giant kings' nobility are the sorcerers, so they get finer duds. The shields were snipped off and the remains turned into sorcerer supply bags. The younger sorcerer has his hand visibly on his hip, the other has his behind his bag. The one on the right also has his fireball ready to go.

The giant king's general, wearing more practical armour and with his scepter of authority. His aides didn't get painted at the same time because I hadn't thought through their uniforms...

I have a hybrid giant-king general in his chariot on the table too, but ran into the same problem - after painting him, I didn't have a plan for the rest of the chariot!

Finding Findings and Other Adventures in the Local Craft Megastore

First off, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. I didn't anything on my Xmas list that had a direct bearing on my miniatures hobby, but I did get some nice fringe benefits. First and foremost would be the first in the three part series of Conan audiobooks from Tantor Media. This matches up with the Del Rey edition that restores the original Weird Tales text to Howard's work, and presents them in the order written, rather than in a highly debatable biographical chronology.

I've gone and ordered the two follow-up CD sets, and the Kull set is due out this week. I've been listening to the first set while painting up some 2mm pieces for Kull and Imaro.

I also used some Xmas money to pick up the first volume of the reprinted Kull comics. Besides being able to enjoy Kull in yet another format, I hope to get some inspiration for terrain and scenics.

On that note, while I was blitzing through my bits box last week to photograph odds and ends I'd found (or torn out of stereos), I also took some pictures of some things I've picked up at the local craft megastore, which in my case is Michael's. I know the chain is throughout North America, not sure about the UK or elsewhere. Anyway, it has a lot of stuff that can be adapted to our purposes, and they often have 15 or 20% off your whole purchase or 40-50% off a single item coupons in the local paper. I make use of the bigger discounts for high end items (air brush, cork board, spray primer, gorilla glue), and the smaller but broader coupons for things like these...

These are in the jewelry/bead section, I recommend walking around with a list (of anything) in your hand so it looks like you're a caring, thoughful significant other doing some shopping for the other half. When really you're thinking how great these would look as strange towers or momuments (left and right packets), or VSF ray guns (left and right again, particularly the right), or sand-buried pillars (middle).

Just tonight I went to hit their Boxing Week sale, and while apparently some other wargamers in Peterborough scored all the Christmas trees, I did pick up a packet of findings that will be perfect for the stone tower of Great Zimbabwe, or it's living Nyumbani parallel.

(Side Note: also picked up some really cheap cork board, it was all half price, and some Christmas decorations that are basically disco balls in two or three different small sizes - great space ship material, including at least one Death Star)

Off in the woodcraft section there is a display rack of these. The one on the left could be huts, domed roofs, temples, etc. The ones on the right are definitely huts of greater or lesser dimensions. I've used the smaller ones already in my other African kraal (not pictured here but up in the photo section of the 2mm Yahoo Group).

These are more for larger buildings, or more domed roofs. The one on the left is half a sphere, the other two are straight-sided, sort of yurt-like.

Beyond traditional shapes, these pieces could be used for fantasy scenes or buildings, from giant mushrooms in larger scales (say 28mm) to the strange architecture of Valusia.

And then even stranger structures could be done with these bits. I'll cut off the peg at the bottom before using, but these could be wizard or elven towers (they remind me of the description of the elven cities in the Dragonlance series). Or sci-fi control towers, or laser towers.

The Story So Far, Part II - 2mm Fantasy with Kull and Imaro

I'm back to catching up with some of my other 2mm plans. I've been a fantasy fan since I read The Hobbit when I was 8 or so, and the Chronicles of Narnia about the same time, or earlier. If I'm remembering things right, I picked up one book or the other because it looked like the other one.

I kept reading on, eventually working around to the literary Conan when I picked up the odd old Lancer paperback while haunting used bookstores. I'd seen the movies as a teenager, but didn't make the jump to the books for a long time. While a fan of the Lancer books, I didn't become a hardcore fan until I hit a motherlode of Robert E. Howard books in a used bookstore in a small town. Someone must have unloaded their entire (incomplete) collection, about 14 books. Less than half were Lancer Conans, the rest were anthologies (e.g. Pigeons From Hell) or other character collections - Tigers of the Sea (Cormac Mac Art), Bran Mak Morn, 3 x Solomon Kane, and...King Kull.

After scoring all this for about $30 (Canadian, probably about $20 US at the time) I worked my way through them. While they were all great - see my short story list in the sidebar to see the impression they made - Kull and his Thurian Age emerged as my favourite. There's something lurking in the atmosphere of the stories that I find really striking, and the shortness of the series leaves only hints for our imagination to wonder at, so I've fleshed out more of the world for my own entertainment purposes, with some help from Dale Rippke's book The Hyborian Heresies. I'll post more about my Thurian extrapolations later.

Through Howard's characters I developed a hankering for sword and sorcery over epic fantasy, and asking around on discussion forums for suggestions of other authors to give me a fix, Charles Saunders and the Imaro series came up.

Before I actually read any of the Imaro books, I'd been on Dale Rippke's now-deceased website that detailed several S&S heroes, from which I scooped up lots of detail on Conan and Kull. He also had an Imaro page, and I printed off the material from there too, including a gazateer, glossary, timeline, and a great 1970's map of Nyumbani, Imaro's continent. It seemed kind of cool, but I wasn't able to round up the books at the time.

A few years later, with Imaro still coming up as a good read, I was able to secure the Nightshade editions of the first two books, and in the last 20 months I've bought the two books Mr. Saunders has published through Lulu, with more to come. The books lived up to their advance billing, it's a fascinating setting completely different than what we've been used to in fantasy for the last century.

So with these two settings and characters, I wanted to immerse myself in them with some gaming opportunities. One way will be "big battle" wargaming in miniature, detailed here, and down the road I hope to add skirmish gaming (bigger mini's though!).

I was originally going to do these in 6mm, but no one has anything remotely matching some of the oddities in either series, particularly Imaro. Kull's oddities are more of my own making, although Frank Frazetta gets blamed for the polar bear-drawn chariots!

2mm will be an easier, but not easy, to convert, particularly for someone of my limited sculpting/detailing/painting skills. The gunkwu (arsinoitherium) will be the biggest challenge, I think it's going to have to be an Indian elephant mod. Most of the rest of the odd mounts (Cape buffalo, rhinos) will be based on Irregular's IK9 (Orc Wolfriders), with the eland-like mounts and terror bird riders (Kull's Kaa-U) will be straight cavalry mods. After all that, zebra-riders will be a breeze!

So like everyone in the hobby, I always have lots to do! These are the Imaro and Kull works in progress, except for the ships in the bottom right, that's another project (well...actually they're for naval Thurian Age gaming). Missing from the picture are about 14 more bases of Lemurian archers, stored in another box.

These photos turned out a bit pants, I need to figure out how to do these better. Anyway, this is Kull, Brule, Kelkor, and the Red Guard, which I've postulated is a subset of the Red Slayers, Valusia's mounted elite. The main body of figures are Irregular's Winged Hussars (RBG15) from the Renaissance line, Kull and Brule are the Barbarian General figure (ABG11).

Across the Lost Lands lies Old Acheron, the forgotten home of the Giant-Kings, pale giants commanding powerful magic. These are 2mm "giants" (IKF2), which leaves them bigger than they should be (assuming a 9' tall "giant-king", they should be 3mm); however, I'm taking a gamer's license with these, since if they did appear on the battlefield, they'd be like Tiger tanks - big in everyone's mind.

The centre and left figures will be sorcerers, the one on the right will be a general, with his messengers/aides beside him on horseback. His 'club' will be painted up as a sceptre, the sorcerer in the middle will have his 'club' become a bolt of flame/lightning.

The Picts' contribution to the Royal Army of Valusia, these are proper troops as opposed to mercenaries. This is the command stand.

Almost nothing is known in the canon about Thule, other than they are a northern nation and part of the Seven Empires. I'll go into them more in future posts, but included in their armies are the fearsome Imperial War Mammoths. This is just one stand, I only ordered three of them as a test (dumb test, I already knew they were cool...). If you look closely, you should be able to see their footprints in the snow, hopefully I can pull this off nicely when I paint the base up.

So that's it for Kull for now, I couldn't get good pics this time around of the reindeer chariots of Thule or the Acheronian war chariots (think Assyria).

On to Imaro!

My only completed unit, five stands of Cushite war lions and their handlers. There haven't been any large battles in the Imaro series to say if this is how they'd be used, but it seems like a good counter to the izingogo of Naama. An older version of the Nyumbani Wikipedia page had details about trained/magical black lions as well, used in ancient times to counter the azuth (saber-toothed ape-bull hybrids!), and while this has since disappeared, Mr. Saunders has said that they are still valid, so that will be a future war lion unit - I figure things are going to get bad enough for Cush and her allies to pull out all the stops.

"Huge, ungainly bodies writhed in arcane ecstasy beneath voluminous robes of iridescent cloth. The heads of the Erriten, human in proportion and thus absurdly small atop the sorcerers' gargantuan bodies..."

"The bodies thus revealed were horrible to behold: an unholy agglomeration of columnar legs; long, sticklike arms; and bloated torsos covered with tentacles that glowed with a green light that matched the bolts blazing from the spheres." (both quotes from the prologue to Imaro: The Trail of Bohu)

So that's the description of the Erriten, the chief earthly villains of Nyumbani, and this is my effort to build one - and for this I'm sure I will only need one, they're that BAD. The figure is actually an Irregular 2mm ent (IKF3) with a small piece of spare pewter put on his "head" to give him a new, "absurdly small" head. I've also tried to cut down the thickness of the limbs a bit. The iridescent cloth and writhing tentacles are going to have to depend on my paint job, although the "leaves" of the ent will give them texture.