The Barons War – Fantasy Skirmish arrived
Earlier this year the Barons War range was extended by a fantasy range, crowd financed via Kickstarter. The duo of Andy Hobday and Paul Hicks cooperated on various projects in the past, some as direct parts of Footsore, and after some back and forth with various names, the Barons War range is a Warhost product, by HobdayandHicks.
The delivery was a bit behind schedule (really just slightly, it was intended to ship in November and now was 2-3 weeks later), which isn't a huge issue for me, but due to the changes in GPSR they had a bit of hurry to deliver the packages to send out the European packages before the mid of december. This isn't the first time I backed a Kickstarter campaign where the two were involved, as I participated with Gangs of Rome, Barons War and treated myself to a custom sculpt with Outremer.
For this campaign, they went for a new interesting packaging, with printed boxes and beautiful artwork by Peter Dennis (who we will discuss further below again) and that certainly upgrades the value of the set.
Gangs of Rome – Kickstarter Delivery
Last year in March 2023 we backed the Gangs of Rome 2 campaign by Footsore Miniatures. The goal was to fund the new rulebook (200 pages, full A4) and a plastic kit for Citizens of Rome, which would be a colaboration with Wargames Atlantic. If you don't know what Gangs of Rome is, it is skirmish set in the Roman Empire, between rivaling gangs, who can rally support from the other citizens of Rome, which is the reason why you don't only have models for the gangs themself but for the various types of citizens as well.
We did a review on the old Gangs of Rome starter set, Blood on the Aventine, which was round package, but this time I was in just for the miniatures in addition for Gladiator combat and scenic background for my romans. Anyhow, this week the items arrived, quite on schedule as shipping of the items was set for late January 2024.
IOSS worked, which was issue sometimes in the past, as larger orders weren't split and to be absolutely sure I stayed on a lower pledge with just the miniatures. The models themself are single cast metal miniatures and sculpted by the talented hands of Paul Hicks, just like the civilian mobs or even more civilian mobs, we covered in the past.
Mortal Gods – The other Hades Zealots
Having already shown the first three Zealots painted in the review of the Hades Zealots, the next three are now to follow. While the first group looks a little more civilized, the second group gives a rather tough impression, as if it wasn't the first time that they had already taken up arms.
As previously mentioned, I had to replace the axe on the Zealot with a dagger, as the gluing point and the axe handle were simply too small to reattach the original. However, this does not harm the mini itself for the time being, as the look is not changed too much.
Mortal Gods – Plataians for demo games
After showing the Thebans for my upcoming demo table for Mortal Gods in my last article, today I can present the counterpart from Plataiai (pronounced Plataiah), the long-term vassal of Athens. As I had planned, I followed the setup of the Thebans one-to-one in order to be able to offer a balanced game experience for the demo games.
Visually, I wanted to create a clear distinction to the Thebans and yet show the connection to Athens. So I chose a grey-blue color as the base for the tunics (Sombre Grey from Vallejo Game Colors) and a more pronounced shade of blue as a spot color (Regal Blue from Army Painter).
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:
Mortal Gods – Veteran Archer
As a little exercise for the centaurs, I painted the veteran archer for my Corinthians. For the color scheme, I stuck to my old yellow and black scheme, even though the ancient Greeks didn't really have anything like a dress code.
I admit, this plays into my hands a bit, as I'd like to play my Corinthians according to Athenian rules for a change. They have the nice side effect that their archers fall into the "medium armor" category and can therefore receive an order from veteran hoplites, which equals an additional activation.
Mortal Gods – Mystical Fountain
Those who are active in the german speaking tabletop forum Tabletopwelt.de will surely remember my ordeal with this fountain, but for all those who might not be able to speak german, I would like to summarize this little adventure again.
Since I was done with my Mortal Gods army, I had the ambitious idea to create a gaming table for Mortal Gods and what do you need for that? Right - a decent amount of terrain and preferably in keeping with the theme of the game. So I bought some nice fountains at Sarissa Precision, which were available in a pack of two, and assembled the more greek style one. In September 2022 I started to customize it a little bit.
Mortal Gods – State of the Game
It's been almost four years since Mortal Gods was released by Footsore Miniatures, at the time still called War Banner. Even after all this time, the game can still be called an exotic one without a guilty conscience, offering an interesting mix of small units and heroes. Thus, it falls right into the niche between a skirmisher and a squad-based game.
If you also have a soft spot for greek mythology or simply enjoy movies and video games in this genre, you'll also be very well served by the Mythic expansion. After I started to build up some armies at the beginning of the Corona Pandemic and have already written about 30 articles about this game, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take a look at the upcoming development and to show some interesting armies from the community. And who better to do that than the great strategist Andy Hobday himself?
So it’s been four years by now and the game has slowly but steadily gained fans. What will be the next step in the evolution of Mortal Gods?
Andy: The next evolution 2nd Edition of Mortal Gods. The idea is to pull everything together into a single rulebook.
At this point, I would express the desire for mini-scenarios, such as "Capture the sheep" or a small build-up campaign, which focuses on the step by step building of an army.
A greek seer, by Sebastian Steudtner
Mortal Gods – Medusa
After recently looking at models from the Army of Hades and the Army of Zeus, in this review we come to probably the most elite faction in Mortal Gods Mythic, the Army of Hera, with Medusa.
The model is one of the larger models from Footsore Miniatures and is accordingly cast not in pewter, but in resin. Right at the beginning I saw one of my biggest criticisms corrected - the packaging is a solid plastic blister in which the model is protected from major damage, especially when shipped with other models.
Mortal Gods – Civilized Centaurs
Footsore Miniatures sent me one of the centaurs for Mortal Gods Mythic before and I was so excited about the model that I also requested the rest of the three civilized centaurs modeled by Trish Carden. The models, like the Zealots, come in a card-backed bag.
All centaurs come with an oval base made of MDF wood and equipment sprue, on which there is a quiver with a bow, a single quiver and two swords. The model itself consists of the horse part, the human torso and possibly an arm and a shield.
Like us on Facebook
Follow me on Instagram
Categories
- events (186)
- fantasy (501)
- General (155)
- historical (585)
- Little Big Adventures (4)
- offtopic (5)
- reviews (449)
- science fiction (554)
- showroom (96)
- work-in-progress (369)
