First Figures for Arab WAB Army

Testing a variety of color schemes for my new Arab army.  The goal is to have a variety of colors scattered through out the army.  All too often my figures are too similar - unity in an army is an important quality to have, but I seem to take it to extremes at times.  So far I have found little information/inspiration for painting an Arab WAB army.  Osprey has a number of tiles for the time period - I purchased Armies of the Caliphates and Saracen Faris.  Both book depicted the solders of the period in a variety of primary (if pastel) colors with soft brown leather foot ware and gear.  Darrel Hindley creates a very different view of the Arab world with a controlled pallet of white and blue - check the bottom of his Figure Painter blog page.

Of the 6 figures - I’m most satisfied with the three in the front rank.  The primary color pattern is much cleaner than the three brown figures in the back row.  I really like the red - but a whole army in red robes would look too much like some chaos death cult.  On the next set of figures, I need to revisit the brown & see if I can create a softer result.

Paint List

All figures primed white and washed with a brown ink.

Spears:  Vermin Brown (GW)

Bows:  Tan Yellow (V)

Green: Orkhide Shade (GW), Snot Green (GW), 50/50 Snot Green/Ivory (V)

Red:  Burnt Cad. Red (V), Flat Red (V), Beige Red (V)

White:  Astronomican Grey (GW), white

Blue:  Ultramarine Blue (GW), 50/50 Ultramarine Blue/Ivory

Flesh:  Medium Flesh (V), Gryphonne Sepia (GW)   (Borrowed this wash hint from Five Armies)

Brown:  assorted combinations of Calthan Brown (GW), Iyanden Darksun (GW), Bubonic Brown (GW), Ivory, Sepia and Devlan Mud (GW)

Pirate Flag

For my daughter’s 3rd birth day we threw her a pirate themed party - and that required a pirate flag. The skull and crossbones shape is a hand drawn stencil applied to a standard black plastic tablecloth using doubled sided Scotch tape. The spray paint took well to the plastic sheet, bleed thru was minor around the stencile, over spray was moderate (windy day) and the double stick tape holding the stencil easily pulled off with the paper.

As a gaming aid, I can see a lot of uses for table mats created using this method. Imperial Eagles, cammo patterns, cobble stone streets - just about anything could be cut into a stencil and sprayed onto a plastic sheet. Don’t feel like making your own - check out Litko’s selection of pre-made stencils.

WAB: Arabs and Saracens army building

I’ve taken a recent interest in Warhammer Ancient Battles. Building a list is a bit more complicated than the 40K/WFB rosters I’m used to, not only do I need to figure out a new set of rules with hundreds of army lists available - but I also need to hunt down appropriate figures for the army.

Army Selection

When creating a new army I look to balance four elements:

1. Will the army look nice? I have to enjoy the models.
2. Does it have any fun units? The army has to have several ways of playing.
3. Will the army play well? I have no time to paint up a force only to find the list is a dodo.
4. Is it affordable? I know the hobby is expensive - but there is no need to spend $600 if $300 will do.

I think a Muslim force may meet all of these goals. The units are well priced for both calvary and infantry. In the absence of any true heavy cavalry in the game, skilled horse archers will need to take care of my need to play with horses. The list has access to Elephants and flame throwing archers - how cool is that! The Arab style units with robes and turbans will allow for natural color choices and keep metallics to a minimum. I’ve also been advised that the list covers about 800 years, making it an easy army to keep in period. Finally, the list can also be allied to a Crusader force - a good way to recycle units if the list does not work out.

Arabs and Saracens 1000 points

General - composite bow, light armor, shield, Warhorse 152 pts
Arab Light Cav #6 with Thrusting Spear, Light Armor and Shield. Leader, Standard, Musician 135 pts
Turkish Light Cav #6 with Composite Bow, Leader and Musician 118 pts
Turkish Light Cav #6 with Composite Bow, Leader and Musician 118 pts
Arab Spearmen #24 with Leader, standard, musician, Thrusting Spear and Shield 183 pts
Religious Volunteers #23 with Leader, Standard, Musician, Hand weapon and Shield 153 pts
Auxilliary Infanty #7 with Javelins, Shield and Naffatun 62 pts
Arab Archers #10 with short bow, Musician and Naffatun 79 pts

Miniatures Choices

Arab/Moor forces are produced by a variety of companies, most of whom are based in the UK but have retained US distributors for those of us who like to shop in dollars and want nothing to do with customs roulette.

Perry Bros on sale at War Store : Well done figures in the Crusades - Islam army, but I’ve been advised that the figures are a true 25mm and may not fit well with other figure lines.

Musketeer Minis on sale at Little Wars: More pleasant looking figures in the Armies of the Caliphates line, price is similar to the Perry Brothers with $6 horsemen and $2.50 infantry.

Gripping Beast on sale at Old Glory 15s: This group may well be the winner. Not only are the figures recommended, but the line prices well with $4 horsemen and $1.50 infantry. One slight problem, Old Glory has the Moors product line on their web site, but not the Armies of Islam line. I may need to do a bit of mix and match if I can’t get cavalry in the US.

Artizan Designs on sale at BrigadeGames: Forgot to mention this line of Moors. The infantry are attractive, the calvary not so much. But to their credit, Artizan is one of the few to post large, clear photos of their figures. Price point is $2.50 infantry and $6.50 calvary.

One minor rant - I had trouble finding lines on the US retailers at both War Store and Old Glory 15. For reasons know only to themselves, the product lines are re-titled in the US listings, causing all sorts of confusion for a WAB rookie like me. Fortunately, both stores promptly returned emails detailing were the product was listed.

Spectre Hobbies now stocking CTF castings

Spectre Hobbies is now stocking gaming products cast by Chicago Terrain Factory. The initial release includes:

• 40mm Urban Bases
• 25mm Urban Bases
• 25mm Rune Bases
• Fallen Banner objective marker
• Alien Pod Mouth terrain piece

Look for the Chicago Terrain Factory products in the Bases category.

Quick Links: Alkemy Jungle board

Fabulous 4×4 jungle temple board created for the Alkemy game.

Drop by the Alkemy forums for 27 more pics of this board, discussion in French. Work-in-Progress shots also on Alkemy. Discussions in English by the builder on Wyrd forums.

Construction appears to be mostly foam board shaved to fit with details scribed in pencil. Statues could be aquarium pieces. Figures in relief are gaming figures. All terrain items are modular - enhancing the playability of the board.

I particularly like this board because it would be so flexible to play on. Alkemy is a medieval fantasy game, but the board would work equally well for pulp adventure or High Seas with a eastern spin.

Gamer software - anything better than free?

If there is one thing gamers like, its free stuff and the web is full of open source and advertiser supported programs to help out your gamer hobby.

Before those pictures of the new project can be posted online - the pics will need a little clean up. Paint.net is my current favorite editor to crop, size and retouch photos. Picasa can do a lot of the same and can help organize & post your photo collection. For heavy duty work GIMP is the one you want (be warned - the tool bar has enough buttons to launch the space shuttle). Or for light work, check the various online editors.

Getting ready for the weekend game? Write up your roster or track the league play at Zoho or Google Docs. Need a bit of artwork to spice up the list? Inkscape will let you create the vector drawings needed for a new look.

If you’re reading this post, chances are you already have a blog. But if you don’t and want to jump in and start your own, WordPress and Blogger are both self hosted (and nearly idiot proof) platforms. Want to go old school & write your own web site? Kompozer & Coffee Cup have free HTML editors and the web is full of free hosting sites. Don’t forget the forum, us gamers love to talk. Ever wonder why a lot of hobby stores look alike? They are all using the same shopping cart.

This post is just the tip of the iceberg. What software and services do you like to use with your gamer hobby?

Del.icio.us links from Chicago Terrain Factory

Cleaned up my bookmark collection and posted the links to Del.icio.us.  350 book marks to various terrain builders, gaming forums and figure painting gallerys along with a few links to the technology sites that I have been reading lately.  The collection is still a work in progress, I have links from several other sources that need to be integrated such as the blog list found on the Community RSS FAQ page.

Quick Links: Crate and Bottle Tutorials

Three fast tutorials for small, but interesting objects

Wooden Crates:  crates with a realistic wood grain finish made from balsa.

Or if you prefer - flat grain Wooden Crates made from plastic card.

Pic credit to Cree1978 originally posted to Privateer Press forums

Bead Bottles:  Snitchythedog was showing off some new Hirst crate pieces when everyone jumped on the cool looking bottles he included as extra detail.  KeeblerOrc followed up with pics of his own using the methods layed out by Snitchy.  The bottle solution is simply beads on a straight pin held in place with a spot of glue.

Pic credit to KeeblerOrc originally posted to Hirst Arts forums

Absolute Power!

Or at least a new PC. After 7 years, it was time to deep 6 the old Gateway and get a new computer. Through two days of playing around with the new computer, I can’t believe I waited this long. Its like moving from a Model T to a Corvette.

Dell Vostro 400

• Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 1066FSB, 8MB L2)
• 3GB memory
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600GTS 2DVI.
• 22 inch Widescreen monitor

And due to Dell’s end of the fiscal year savings it turned out to be rather affordable. FYI -If you are looking for an XP machine, check Dell small business (and no need to be a small business). They are still providing XP as an OS option in that department

February has been a very busy month, and very little of it was able to be posted to the blog. Most importantly, C. was born January 27th - giving me two little girls to chase around the house. They say adding a second child is harder to adjust to than the first - but I don’t think its true. After L. I did not pick up a figure for six months. This time I’ve been able to keep at least a hour or two per week to myself.  Cute little bug, isn’t she.

I’ve been casting up a pile of resin objective markers for Adepticon - 440 tokens needed for the tournaments and more for the convention sales. The blocks for the Hirst Seminars are about two thirds done.

Two weeks ago I took a Web design seminar as part of my MBA program. The seminar was a bit week, but it gave me a taste of HTML. Since then I have been reading up on the subject and playing around with products from Komposer and Coffee Cup. Komposer is an open source WYSIWYG HTML editor with very few frills. Coffee Cup has a large line of products including both a Visual and WYSIWYG HTML editor - both have 30 day trial downloads! The class was taught with FrontPage 2003 - a nice enough program ( for a HTML rookie) - but I have concerns about witting pages in a format that requires the web server to have proprietary software.

After far too much effort, I finally have my Legend of the High Seas book from The Warstore. Contrary to popular opinion - this store is not the best to be found on the web: shipping delays, out of stock products and a failure to send the right product will keep me from ordering again. Despite all of that, I did get a group of Foundry pirates Scurvy Swabs to add to the pirate collection. Knew they were small (actually advertised as 28mm on the foundry site)- but these figs are tiny. They will look like children on the table compared with the GW, PP and Black Scorpion figures.

March is not going to be much better for blogging than February. Expect to see more pictures of armies buried in my gaming closet. I have 4000-5000 points of WFB Chaos, so plenty more of them to see. I also have an Eldar (well painted for 2002) and Chaos Space Marine army (not so well painted from 1999) if anyone would rather see pics from those collections.

Wyrd Chronicles Ezine released

Wyrd Miniatures has released a new 46 page Ezine called Wyrd Chronicles. The magazine contains a healthy batch of background information on the Wyrd mini sets, an interview with the company founder, tips for figure bases, sculpting walk thru, as well as tantalizing pics of some upcoming releases.  The file is a bit large & not the sort of thing I normally read online - I’ll need to “borrow” the company printer tomorrow to get a hard copy for some in-depth reading.