Skull & Crown Killer Rabbits

Well you can file this under "models I may never use in a game but painted because they are super-cool."  They're "Killer Rabbits" from Skull & Crown. Once the subject of a popular Kickstarter campaign, the range is based on some pretty freaky medieval manuscript illustrations.

Here's a cavalryrabbit mounted on a lion (!)

The set I bought came with a couple of lapine musicians (piper and hornist) a leader-type with a stick, and a rabbit I converted into a standard-bearer, with handpainted flag, naturally.

There are a few sword-armed rabbits too, including one with a wicked zweihander. I painted the middle rabbit's shield with their carrot heraldry. 

The other has a bronze buckler.

There are some bow- and crossbow-armed rabbits too. How they manage to wield these weapons without opposable thumbs must be known only to the medieval monk artists.

The last bunch have clubs and spears.

These models are just so cool and were pretty fun to paint, even if it did take some time. The challenge will be finding a game to use them in. Fantasy skirmish of some kind, most likely - Otherworld Miniature Skirmish? Or maybe even Forbidden Psalm - but these little guys seem altogether too wholesome for that!

Forbidden Psalm Game! Plus Skull & Crown Skeletons!

WARNING: POST CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF SELF-HARM, HORROR, DEATH, GORE, COARSE LANGUAGE, NUDITY, SOME OF THE OLD ULTRA-VIOLENCE, AND SMOKING. 

So on Thursday Conscript Mike F. and some of the lads came over for our first crack at Forbidden Psalm, the super-grim tabletop game inspired by the Swedish RPG Mork Borg. Mike's been painting like a madman and I was really looking forward to getting a game on the table. We played the first scenario from the book - "Corpse Scavenging." Six corpses were laid out on the table and the two opposing warbands had to search them for treasure and "black fungus", a particular goodie that the Mad Wizard Vriprix would pay handsomely for. Above is Humfrid about to search a corpse. Mike had painted them and they were... horrifying.

Here's two members of Mike's warband trying to search another corpse. This one resisted all attempts to search it - seearchers had to make a Treasure Roll to successfully search, and these guys failed A LOT. Worse still, a model takes 1hp damage when they fail a search roll!

On turn 2 the Disembowelled Ghouls start to appear - these are pretty tough monsters and did for two of my warband. In the background you can see my erstwhile leader, Ulfnar, and great axe-man Karl (RIP).

Ulfnar and Mike's leader put each other out of action - we each used the Omen card that allowed maximum damage from one attack. Wow!

Karl here about to get put out of action by a skeleton summoned by Mike's scroll-user. He'd summoned him to menace my scroll-user, Astrid, but she used her own scroll to immunize herself from attacks by monsters.

This combat went on awhile - my rogue, Nils (second from right) snuck into Mike's deployment zone to mess things up. Unfortunately a Disembowelled Ghoul followed. (They are controlled by an AI formula).

Games run for six turns at most and at the end, I had three men down (one was killed) and I think Mike lost one. I got more fungus so a few more gold pieces from the Wizard. It was a fun game but took longer to play through than I'd anticipated - I felt bad that Frederick, Hugh, John and Dave didn't get to play also, but I think they had a good time kibbitzing. In any case maybe we'll play the four-player variant next time.

I'd painted this horror for Forbidden Psalm - it's the cover model for the game book - the Corpse Collector. Absolutely repulsive.

This model is a 3D print I got on Etsy, I think it came from Greece (!). This was before Mike tipped me to the guy in Quebec that's printing this stuff.

This'll give you an idea of the size of the model. In retrospect I probably should have gotten the next bigger one!

These bony dudes came in a recent order from Skull & Crown. They're super-cool obviously.

Dude carrying a brazier, he'll be the standard bearer if I ever build a unit of these guys.

The unit champion here, of course.

Skelly blowing a trumpet. Not sure how this works exactly but meh, fantasy.

I love this dude toting a huge basket of skulls and bones! Skull & Crown make some superb models and you'll see some more on the blog soon.

Well that's it for now, I hope you weren't too scarred by the Forbidden Psalm stuff :-)

More Guns of/for August - French WW1 Dragoons and MGs in 12mm

12mm French dragoons for early WW1 - figures by Kallistra.

The WW1 painting in 12mm continues! Here we have some 12mm size French Dragoons - mounted and dismounted. The figures are metal castings from the excellent folks at Kallistra. They are based for the game "1914" by Great Escape Games, and these four bases would represent a regiment of dragoons in that game. 

Bit more of a close up...

Great Escape offers a lovely line of figures in support of their "1914" rules, but I was excited to add some variety via Kallistra's admirably complete figure range. I am very keen to game the early phases of the Great War, and particularly keen to deploy cavalry units, and especially excited to paint up French cavalry for the setting. Why? Well, for me, these cavalry units really underline that unique historical moment in the late summer of 1914... 

Love the lances!

What do I mean by that? Well, the exact moment in history when cavalry was supplanted on the battlefield if open to debate. Really, in a lot of ways, the bloody and totally pointless slaughter of the French cavalry by the Prussians in 1870 should have put an end to the view of cavalry as a battle-winning thing, but the cavalry arm was such a prestigious institution of the various armed forces in Europe. Thus it fell to the opening phases of WW1 to become, in many ways, a last gasp for cavalry attempting to play "decisive", battle-winning arm on the battlefield. To be clear, I am not arguing that things were totally over for cavalry after this point. After all, cavalry formations played an important roles in several battles later in the same war. There were cavalry units in WW2. Heck, special forces types rode on horses in Afghanistan in the 21st century. 

Dismounted unit, skirmish poses all around.

So there is no question cavalry continued to play a major military role after the opening phases of WW1. But I think those opening battles in 1914 did put, at last, an end to the idea that a field battle could/would/should be won at scale by a cavalry charge in anything other than exceptional circumstances. You can just tell by how the cavalry arms of the nations in 1914 kept their formal dress for battle - in some cases, quite formal - that these institutions were simply not going to let go of the belief that, at the end of it all, even with all the rifles and the artillery and the machine-guns, they would deliver decisive victory with a charge. 

Officer on the front base.

France in 1914 is a great example of this (second, perhaps, to the Austro-Hungarian military establishment of the time). At the outset of hostilities in August 1914 the French Cuirassiers and Dragoons have their glorious uniforms, and all that this entails, and I just love painting them up. Huge helmets, with long horse-hair tails from the comb, the beautiful dark blue tunics and red trousers...just glorious! And they have whacky lances too! Of course, with the right amount of cran, this lot is sure to send the enemy reeling!

Hotchkiss MGs

Hotckiss MGs...Kallistra crew on the left, Great Escape Games sculpt on the right.

To go along with the dragoons, I painted a pair of Hotchkiss MGs for my "1914" collection. The "1914" rules call for the MG elements to be mounted on 25mm square bases, and so with these you get a sense of the slight difference between the figures from Great Escape Games and those from Kallistra. The Great Escape Games casting is chunkier, and there is only room for the single figure running the MG. The slighter Kallistra figures, on the other hand, allow for the gunner to be joined by a crew mate. 

A bit of extra character comes with the ability to squeeze an extra crewman on the base.

I rather prefer the look of the Kallistra castings, as these early MGs were heavy affairs that required quite a few crew to haul them around and get them into action. It's just two crew, but at least it implies a crew! 

The Great Escape Games castings are chunkier fellows...I do love how they have their packs on, though!

That's all for now - watch for more early WW1 painting - and, just other random painting - to appear soon, I hope! Thanks for reading.

Froztgrave Warband

 Progress has slowed down a bit during the summer, as it usually does. I finally finished a warband for Frostgrave to compete against the evil one I finished a few months ago. This group of miniatures is from a few different companies including, Die Hard Miniatures, North Star, Reaper, Otherworld and Hasslefree Miniatures. 

Avoid hasslefree! They were once a dependable company, but they’ve recently collapsed due to ongoing illness and an inability to carry out the day to day business. 

A wizard and his apprentice 

Expendable warriors

Barbarian, Khajiit, Dwarf and Knight

Reaper

Hasslefree

Reaper

Otherworld 

Die Hard

Hasslefree

Reaper

That’s it for now. Thanks for visiting!

Guns of/for August - Early WW1 French Artillery in 12mm

12mm French 75mm guns for the early WW1 period. Metal castings by Kallistra.

Back in 2021 I started an early-war WW1 project, inspired by the "1914" rules from Great Escape Games. In painted up a decent-sized German force for the game, but only barely started on some French opponents. Well, the French are now getting some reinforcements, and I thought it best to start with a "bang" - painting up a pair of French 75mm guns. 

Most of the figures I have been painting so far for this project have come from Great Escape Games, but while I love their infantry and cavalry, I find, for whatever reason, the guns they have sculpted to be rather over-sized for the scale. The German field guns from their range look huge, and so I took a pass on their equivalent French offering, and opted instead to paint some figures from Kallistra's awesome 12mm WW1 range.

Great little sculpts from Kallistra - and the gun is excellent. 

Kallistra's WW1 range is admirably complete - right down to offering horse-holding figures for your dismounted cavalry, and even artillery limbers for those gaming types who are truly deranged and would paint such things! While I do have quite a few infantry figures from Great Escape Games, I do find myself turning more and more to Kallistra to expand the collection for this project...my only criticism is that they do not have infantry carrying their packs - and I find those packs have a lot of character, so would be awesome to see from Kallistra, but that is a very, very small bone to pick and overall I really, really recommend them.

Ready for direct fire support in August of 1914!

These guns and crew are based on 50mm squares for the "1914" rules, which will have the players still seeking to deploy these deadly weapons on a direct-firing basis. The French will need them as they enact Plan XVII, seeking to liberate Alsace and Lorraine in August of 1914...

Stay tuned for more WW1 stuff through the summer, in honour of "The Guns of August" - thanks for reading, hope you are having a great day!