A Hobby Heavy Weekend

Every once in awhile, the stars align and a weekend arrives with sufficient hobby time to do multiple activities.

I started the weekend off by finishing up a couple of new additions for my Tanitians (aka "not Carthaginians"). Up first is a unit leader and an ordinary swordsperson:

The figure on the left, who will function as a leader figure in rules that have them, is by Classic Toy Soldiers (CTS), from their Carthaginians box. The fellow on the right is from HaT, Spanish Infantry I believe it's called.

The CTS figure appears to be Spanish infantry as well - albeit substantially taller. In fact, I believe the HaT figures from the Spanish infantry box are undersized (compared even to the HaT Carthaginians).

Another CTS figure will serve as the army commander:

His shield design was copied from an Eldritch horror font set. Size-wise he fits in perfectly with the HaT Carthaginians.

Finally, for the Tanitians, a figure I'm most happy about. She started out as an SCS Direct mermaid figure and will now serve as a Tanitian warrior-priestess (in Fistful of Lead:Bigger Battles, she'd be a hero figure):

I lopped off her tailfin, and then a bit of PVA coated tissue covered her mer-person lower extremeties. Some tin-foil folded on itself many times and glued over the mermaid's sad little wand (or was it a dagger?), formed her sword. I *may* paint some tentacles coming up over skirt, but then again, I may not.

At this point, I am five of the black-figure pottery figures from completing my originally planned Tanitian force.

Because I am a man of extremes, I tried my hand at some 2mm figures as well:

I think it's pretty clear they are Austrians, late war, circa 1917-1918. Close-up (below) you can see how the paint was sort of hit-or-miss on my part, but the figures, at least the prone ones, are clearly there. Some of the other poses confuse me as to what they represent.

The base is the 20th Century infantry base from Irregular Miniatures. They are, to borrow a phrase, "cheap as chips." They also paint very quickly. It took maybe 5 minutes from base coat to flock to do these two bases and I could have done a good dozen or so in barely any more time.

 I have in mind to do a divisional level game set in Italy, in WWI (obviously).  However, 2mm may not be the ideal choice, as much as I like them. Everything looks fine in bright light, but by and large, I like dim lights and that makes the figures nearly impossible to see against the base. I also really want to do a Granny Grate army (I did some tests a decade a go that I was quite pleased with but I had not project in mind at the time and so painted some generic British red-coats), so I'll try that next.

Early Sunday morning, I finished the last three of my Marine Iguana inspired Lizard Warriors:

This gives me a complete unit of ten. By my original plans, I need only complete the shaman and the force will be complete (I do have a few other figures to paint though to act as handlers for the Spinosaurus, but they are not necessary).

Finally, all work and no play blah blah blah.  On Sunday, I was invited by Cloud Captain to join him and a friend for a game of Age of Fantasy out at Hobby Town.  It was a battle of Greeks (28mm) vs Ogres (Cloud Captain's 54mm barbarians for our planned Venus games and a frost dragon). 

Cloud Captain shared command of his ogres with me, so that I could learn the rules.

Greek general attacks the frost dragon.

My favorite picture - this fellow held on to the end, bravely, but futilely, swinging his weapon above his head at the ogres on the hill.

Although we ogres lost, it was great fun and a rare non-solo game for me. The rules are straightforward and I would say by the end of turn 2 that I had a decent enough grasp on them. 

You can pretty much map army ideas to existing concepts (apparently, if you support the patreon, you get access to a points calculator for full customization). My Tanitians, for example, map well to the Dark Elves (and I plan to field them as such), while the lizards are clearly Saurians.

I hope to get a solo game in soon using the rules.The rules would certainly work for battles among the various native Venusian factions. Incorporating the Europeans with their rifles and Gatlings may require a small amount of effort to do so.