Fantasy Side Project - The Reckoning

So just what has this £50 budget project actually cost?

err

Golden Fleece £7.50
King Aeertes and Retinue £10
Minotaurs £8.90
Children of the Hydra (Skeletons) £7
Harpies £9.50
Hydra £10
Medea (and spares) £12
Bronze Bull £4.45

Total £69.35

Postage and Packing in total £22.77 (!)

Rules £15

Err £112.12

Biggest shock is p&p - partly a bi-product of using multiple suppliers, partly not being decisive and ordering several times from the same manufacturer. More planning needed "Next Time"

Fantasy side project Part 5 - Back to the Hydra (and kids, and other supporting cast)

So having got sidetracked by the Minotaurs I needed to get back on with the main protagonists, which are clearly The Hydra, and the associated Children of the Hydra that Aeetes summons in the film.

Bullets needed to be bit as I was in definite danger of either blowing a large amount of ££££ on a big model or stalling the project, so I decided to go with the Foundry Hydra. In reality it ticks a lot of boxes, being nicely detailed, no legs, and reasonably priced. What it lacks is size, but size isn't everything. I ordered it at the same time as the "Medea" pack so didn't incur any additional postage and it cost a tenner.

It's a nice model, but a bit of a bitch to assemble - main body, tail, two neck groups and seven separate heads. There was some rather big gaps after assembly and lots of filling needed, but the end result is "not bad at all"

Next up, The Children. In the film Aeertes uses the now dead Hydra's teeth to summon some animated Skeletons to attack Jason and his select team. It is my favourite bit of the film and quite an iconic sequence - these guys go through the Argonauts in short order and Jason only escapes by jumping off a cliff into the sea. Ideally the best models for these guys would be the Wargames Factory plastic skeletons, which were pretty much modelled on the ones in the film (if a bitch to put together I'm told). Sadly since Warlord Games took over distribution these have been removed from the catalogue and are rather hard to find. What I did find however on Ebay were some of the original Citadel plastic skeletons dating from the 1980s. I replaced the shields with some Hoplite ones, and a careful rebase and a quick paint session later I had enough for 2 bases worth - and yes I know I really should only have one base of seven but I got carried away and ended up with 2 bases each with six.

Lastly there are the Harpies. I was told the old GW ones were close enough and that was wrong - they're an EXACT copy of the ones in the film - E-Bay again provided six. I've given them a very quick paint job. The guy who I bought them off had clearly been trying to model them flying, having cut the "slotta" off the base and frilled a few holes. I completed this. I know they will fall off at the most inopportune moment but so far they look quite good!

Fantasy Side Project Part 4. Commanders , Magic Users and Heroes.

Short break from the Battle of Britain and back to "The £50 Fantasy Side Project"

In S&SF Commanders and Magic Users are separate bases that run around pretty freely providing morale and combat boosts. 

Heroes are treated as units but on smaller bases, being quite flexible but somewhat vulnerable if caught on their own. 

Sadly all my Thracian Commanders are based for Impetus and therefore integral to their unit bases (as an aside I understand Impetus 2 may be switching to separate bases for Commanders also). Looking at the rules I’m probably going to need three Commanders \ Characters. Fortunately Foundry make exactly the stuff I want in their “Casting Room” range. I may get on to discussing them in a bit more depth at a later time but needless to say I ordered King Aeetes of Colchis and Guards from Foundry, £10.00 plus £4 p&p. 

I’m planning on two Magic Users. Firstly King Aeertes himself as both the overall commander and high level magic user, and his priestess daughter Medea (who betrays the Fleece due to falling for Jason – I rather doubt that will happen with my army) As I mentioned Aeetes is available from Foundry and comes in a pack with two bareheaded soldiers and two guards wearing Phrygian style caps. 

I’m planning to use one of the bare headed types as a Hero, with the other and the two in hats acting as a Commander and his bodyguard. I searched diligently for a suitable figure to represent Medea before again returning to Foundry – this time their “World of the Greeks” range that includes a pack of Mythical Characters in which there is a rather imposing looking female that will do the job. I'm not sure if she is really supposed to be Medusa but she paints up rather nicely as a dodgy Priestess. Only problem is I made that decision after placing the order for Aeetes so that''s another £10 + £4 p&p

King Aeetes is based with some spare Wargames Factory Skeletons erupting out of the ground in true Ray Harryhausen style. He is rated as a Level 3 Magic User and also Army Commander. That is going to be a bit of a disadvantage as trying to act as a Commander will cramp his Magic Use quite a bit, and vice-versa, but that's a price you pay for trying to get a backstory I suppose.

On the plus side it means he is well placed to do this sort of thing, which is cool!

Medea is on her own with only her charms to protect her. Rated as a Level 1 Magic User her 
main role is to provide support for the rather lacklustre  normal bits of the army.

Here are the Hero and Commander.

So running total now £40.85 on figures and £21.27 on postage

The Fantasy Side Project Part 3 Hydra Envy & Bullshit

At this point in the exercise I sort of got a bit carried away. 

I was looking for some monsters to flesh out the Colchis Army for Fantasy Sword & Spear. The bulk of the troops would just be re-tasked Thracians, but I would need some “proper fantasy stuff”. Clearly the first monster would have to be a Hydra, but here I ran into some problems. 

The glorious owner \ operator \ proprietor of Asgard Wargames, (known to some as “Arkwright” due to the way people are sometimes seen staggering out of the shop with a glazed look on their face grasping a carrier bag full of toys they never intended to buy until they fell under his commercial spell)  - anyway he has a really nice Games Workshop issue Hydra in his Dark Elf Army. I wanted something at least as impressive. The problem is most “modern” Hydras seem to have legs – very different to the Jason \ Greek ones.

Legs!

I also needed it to fit onto a 6 cm wide frontage if possible. Lastly I needed it to be cheap if I was going to stay anywhere near the £50 project  budget(!). Much searching through internets resulted in three possible options, none of which were ideal. Firstly there was the Steve Barber version, Which I think is too big for my use. The same can be said for the one I saw on ebay from Second City Games – too big (but beautiful) and also £30. Lastly, there was Foundry again, but their Mythos range Hydra was a bit small when compared to the others - particularly Arkwrights! I decided to give the whole Hydra thing a bit more thought and look for something else.

In this rather distracted frame of mind I saw some Reaper miniatures Minotaurs on Ebay. They were the new “Bones” plastic range, so much cheaper than metal. I impulse ordered three different ones. OK not really Colchis, or even Argonauts, but sort of Greek Myth so not too far short. Cost for all three was £8.90 plus £5.58 p&p was I ended up ordering from two different sellers. They all arrived pretty quickly so I painted them “quick & dirty” using a spray undercoat (Fur Brown) then some blocking and a heavy dose of Vallejo sepia dip \ wash. I was rather happy with the result. These are going to be based together as one unit as my Heavy Infantry types to give the army some much needed steel (err bronze)

Of course the cognoscenti will be shouting "Bull!" at this point. Yes I later realised what I really needed was a Khalkotauroi, the legendary bronze bulls of Colchis. There is supposed to be two of them. Luckily I found both Reaper and Foundry do them, so I ordered the Reaper one (again Bones plastic) as it was the cheaper. This is going to be one of my monster options. A giant fire breathing bronze bull - what can go wrong?

Added bonus being it was not exactly a challenge to paint either :-)

Total spend on miniatures is now £20.85 Rules £15, postage £13.27

The Fantasy Side Project Part 2 - The Golden Fleece

The Fleece arrived promptly from Steve Barber Models . It is a kit consisting of five parts. One resin tree , three metal branches, and the fleece itself, again in metal.

At first I was a bit disappointed. The resin Steve has used is a rather dirty grey and quite heavy type which reminded me forcibly of the bad old days. I suspect I have got used to the more modern lightweight stuff and the beautiful resin from Hawk Wargames. There was also a fair amount of flash to deal with. The branches were in metal and again there was some flash to work on. Additionally it was clear that the branches were designed to have locating pins these had either not cast properly or were missing, and the corresponding sockets on the tree were not immediately visible. This initial disappointment quickly wore off. It only took a couple of minutes work to remove the flash. I then drilled and pinned the branches into where it looked like they would fit best using some cast off bits from where I had cut down brass spears as pins and a pin vice to drill the holes. (Health & Safety warning - if you try this get a mask as the resin dust is not nice stuff) During this time it became apparent that the model was rather well detailed, particularly around the base of the tree, with lots of  subdued features - nice one Steve Barber! I finished it off by filling the gaps with Vallejo Plastic Putty - something of a first but it seemed to work well.

Painting was a breeze. A black spray (car primer) undercoat plus layers of different greys dry-brushed to represent the dead tree. I decided it would be dead as Hydra poo must be pretty toxic. Then I painted and dry-brushed the moss growth around the stump. As I was in a rush I didn't bother with the nice mushrooms at the base - I may go back and do them later just for a giggle.

At this point I realised I had cocked up a bit. The Fleece itself was cast fairly flat. I rapidly painted it with a mix of various golds and bone white for the skull. Then I remembered I had intended to model it wrapped over a branch as it is shown on the web site. That would mean bending the casting quite seriously. After an initial try I gave up and went for a more decorous draping, which at least meant I didn't wreck the paint or the detail on the Fleece.

So here's the finished Fleece in it's rather dead looking tree, just waiting for some wandering pilferer. I'm quite happy with it.

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The Fantasy Side Project Part 1

Yup yet another one!

There is a plan to put a Fantasy campaign together at Asgard WarGames, linkity link where I seem to be doing a fair % of my gaming nowadays. The players there are thinking of converting their spare Oldhammer figures to use the Sword & Spear Fantasy rules from Great Escape Games. I gather Age of Sigmar is too "skirmishy" for them, and it certainly isnt a project I ever have any chance of getting an interest in. Rather importantly, these rules use group bases rather than individual bases, and the guys at Asgard have fortuitously decided to use the same base sizes as Impetus. When I heard that, my ears pricked up – surely I could use some of my Impetus armies plus a few suitable Fantasy types to flesh them out – that seems very much like “a Cunning Plan”! This looked like another cheap project. In fact I thought, ok maybe £50? That seems reasonable. Yeah.

30.05.17 Rules ordered. £15…not sure if that’s part of the project budget, more the research – we’ll see.

So which army? Clearly I need a theme. Then I thought about the stuff I already had, and for some reason I thought of Jason & the Argonauts, or rather Colchis – the owners of the Golden Fleece. 

This looks like a good idea, its pretty iconic in the sense everyone has heard of them, or at least just about everyone of a certain age has seen the film. It has some great fantasy elements and at the same time I already have both Thracians and Scythian troops from Impetus, and they both fit the “generic foreign” and originate generally in the right area of the Mediterranean \ East to double up as Colchis and their allies, particularly when viewed through the now misted lens of childhood and Hollywood.

So first I need a Golden Fleece! I thought about making one, but there are already a couple on the market. I’ve already got the main troop types so my £50 should be safe for some special bits. Steve Barber makes one in his Greek Myth Range here so why not.....

30.06.17 Golden Fleece ordered from Steve Barber Models. Cost £7.50 plus £4.00 p&p. Does p&p count towards the budget? Not sure, but I suppose so. Total spend so far £26.00. Just over half way there…..or only £7.50 if I ignore the rules (research – clearly a different budget) and p&p (Logistics?)

More in part 2