Building the arena part 1

So I agreed to build an arena as a terrain feature for a game of Sharp Practice.

That may sound like an odd item for a 19th century black powder game, but it gets odder. This arena has a cricket pitch and a pavilion.

Oh, and it's on Mars.

There is, of course, a tale to tell regarding the game, but that can wait. First I've got to build the arena. If fact I only have to build a quarter of the arena, but that's ambitious enough!

I plotted the floor plan full size on a piece of mdf that for some reason I had previously painted blue. This enabled me to see where Matt's pavilion will fit and hopefully help to keep the dimensions accurate.m and let me see where I can split the construction. I really don't want a single piece of 24"x24" terrain taking up storage space!

The tiers of seating are divided into four areas, low and high on each side of the pavilion. I'll have a high level viewing area above the pavilion too.

The simplest place to start seems to be the lower level seating, so I cut out all of the pieces for that from my template prior to assembling any.

The steps are going to be two thicknesses of polyboard high each, which I hope will give a realistic look at 28mm. Unfortunately this means I have to cut each piece twice. It soon got a touch boring.

Once assembled I attached a piece of cork around the back to help stabilise the steps and to provide the dividing wall between the two levels of seating.

That's all so far. I'll make another of these for the other side before tackling the higher level, and leave the pavilion section and outer wall to last.

Martin Schwartz

Martin Schwartz was a mercenary from Germany who was brought to fight for the Yorkist cause against Henry VII at the battle of Stoke Field, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses.

This model of him was given away free to attendees of the Partizan show in Newark in 2013. I bought mine from eBay last year sometime.

I wanted to practice my Non-Metallic Metal technique on more than just the odd sword and I'm pretty pleased with how he came out.

I don't know who sculpted or manufactured the figure in afraid, but they do come up on eBay from time to time.

The Sanwar

The game I'm enjoying most at the moment is the second edition of Sharp Practice by Too Fat Lardies. It is designed with 19th century black powder skirmish engagements in mind where the "big men" or leaders of the troops are fundamental to the action and even have characters of their own in an rpg-light kind of way.

The game has grabbed my attention to such an extent that a game we had planned to run using Dan Mersey's The Men Who Would Be King rules is now going to be a Sharp Practice game.

We're taking it to Mars though. Matt has a lot of colonial types with a Victorian SciFi theme from Ironclad Miniatures, and I've had a hankering to buy some of their Sanwar for a while now.

So I gave in recently and purchased a few packs. The figures are wonderful! Reminiscent of the Tusken Raiders from the original Star Wars movie, these will make excellent tribal types with primitive musketry and scavenged hand weapons.

Hopefully I'll be able to provide a game write up soon as I'm itching to play. I need to work out some stats first...

http://www.ironcladminiatures.co.uk/ourshop/cat_302107-Sanwar.html

Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors

I'm off to Operation Market Larden 4 near Evesham on Saturday, a day of gaming with Too Fat Lardies hosted by Wyvern Wargamers.

Sharp Practice 2 in the morning followed by Big Chain of Command in the afternoon and a curry to round the day off. Really looking forward to it.

There's a raffle, to which attendees donate prizes; this is mine. A dozen Dark Age warriors from Gripping Beast.

Brothers?

Tom Meier goblins

I was taking some photos of these guys for a Facebook group and realised I'd never posted them here.

I must have mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Tom Meier's sculpts and these are among my favourites. They're all originals from the early eighties, so many of them bear the scars of previous battles and healing potions (superglue). 

I repainted them about two years ago with a view to proxying them for the Saxons in a game of Dux Britanniarum that still hasn't happened!

The two larger command figures are more recent sculpts, from Tom's Thunderbolt Mountain range, which for many years I was too intimidated to attempt to paint! 

I am slowly making my way through them, but I really need to be in the right mood to paint them. I won't rush them!

Adira, Dark Champion finished

(See my previous post for details regarding the figure.)

Very nice to paint, the detail is very crisp and the resin is slightly pliable, which may have averted a disaster when I dropped her!

Pretty happy with how she came out, especially the green under-lighting on the tentacle.

Adira, Dark Champion

I bumped into Annie last night, in her shop of all places! Whilst proudly showing off the new ogre female miniatures that she's had beautifully painted by Paul Cubbin, she whipped out  her newly received, hot of the press Adira, Dark Champion 28mm miniature.

Beautifully sculpted and cast in a lightweight, slightly flexible resin that captures the detail extremely well (those of you familiar with Prodos castings will know what I mean), Adira comes with a choice of arms and heads. 

Head one is largely bald with a long flowing top knot, head two has a wonderful barbute style helmet with forward pointing horns that put me in mind of an angry bull!

There is a choice of three arms, a left, a right and an odd. Left and right arms are wafting around a couple of nasty looking axes. I think these will attach in a variety of positions to get some real animation into the pose. What really sold me on this figure though. is the third arm (I use that term advisedly; Octopus tentacles are arms, not legs - see, This blog can be educational too!). 

Ok, this isn't an octopus tentacle by any means. It's a writhing mass of fleshy tendril that ends in a slavering maw. Semantics. It's a real clincher. As soon as I spotted the appendage I knew the figure had to be mine, and I'm proud to say this is the first one sold. I think they're not technically available until the Partizan show this Sunday.

Really looking forward to trying out a few poses this weekend (then I'll try some on the model!) and getting it daubed in paint. 

Watch this space...

Adira, Dark Champion will be available from Bad Squiddo Games very soon. Get yours  quickly there is a limited amount available at the moment.

https://thedicebaglady.net/female-miniatures/
www.badsquiddogames.com