Mortal Gods – Thebans for demo games

During one of the usual painting sessions on Discord with the Wolpertinger, I came up with the idea of making a demo table for Mortal Gods that could be played at various events in the coming year. Since I liked James Cameron's audio book series "The Long War", I had the idea of using Thebes and Plataea as factions for a few mini-scenarios. Since Gregor, from Games 'n Dice, had sent me some decals and helmets for Thebans, I decided to start with them.

I had a few basic ideas when planning out the game factions:

• The demo should explain the basic mechanics, i.e. movement, melee combat, ranged attacks and hero actions
• I wanted to keep it simple so as not to overload new players with too many rules
• The test games should not last long, which would ensure the fun factor and there would be the possibility of plenty of test games

This resulted in a group of peripoloi (light hoplites), a troop of slingers and a hero for each faction.

At TTW Maltreff 2, which took place at the end of November 2023, I learned to paint models a little faster to a good, gaming standard. The skin and tunic were an experiment that was successful, although for a long time I had the impression that I was doing nothing more than repainting the two-component primer on the white tunics.

As I had a mishap with the decals, I was forced to paint the Herculean mace as a freehand. The procedure is actually quite simple: you paint a straight line, then two more to the left and right of it and let them run towards the tip. The space in between is then painted black. I didn't even try to paint the stylized rivets round, but simply painted triangles on them. Then I put dots in the original shield color at the height of the rivets, which came close enough to the decal.

The slingers were quite quick to paint as they are basically just skin and tunic. Here I tried out a technique for the hair that I hadn't dared to use before. I managed to create the illusion of shine on the hair by accentuating it twice over a fairly large area and only painting specific stripes on the third coat.

Leolyn, from Weiss Blaue Strategen, showed me how I could create the impression of fabric on the tunics by applying lines quickly, which worked quite well.

Thebes

Where do the Thebans stand? Mortal Gods takes place around 430 BC, the Persians have been defeated and the Athenians think they are a big fish who want to unite all of Greece under one hegemony. The Thebans, who historically have always had a grudge against the Athenians, sided with the Peloponnesian League under the leadership of Sparta.

Thebes had already waged war against Athens around 500 BC and got a punch in the face. The resulting antipathy even went so far that they sided with the Persians in the Persian Wars, in which, as is well known, they got another smack on the nose in the end. The city-state based in Boeotia also had ongoing disputes with the Plataeans, who they repeatedly tried to annex and who were also a vassal of Athens.

As the birthplace of Heracles, the Thebans were also a pretty proud bunch who liked to stand out from the other Greeks. As you can see, as neighbors, the Thebans could be quite annoying.

Now that the squad has been painted for the test games, I hope to see you at the various events and play a test round with you (I'll show you the planned calendar of events for this year in an upcoming article).

So, I'm off to paint a few Plataeans - greetings from the Chaosbunker

Dino