Reptiliads!

Recently, I found quite a nice surprise mixed in with some old gaming material - a bag of old Rafm Reptiliads minis. These fantasy reptile minis are 25mm, and date back to 1983. They were originally purchased and painted by my friend Ben, who used them in his epic Morrow Project RPG campaign. The Morrow Project is a RPG occurring in a post-apocalyptic society, and these Reptiliads were some of the antagonists. Long after the game finished, I traded Ben these minis, and a large boxful of anime-style models from the 1980's, for a good-sized stack of ACW books that I had no place to store.


Here are some pics:


The Reptiliad force. The back row are pikemen or halberdiers, I believe. The front row has a command group, with the general on the left, a shaman (third from left), and 2 bident troops (?). Also shown are the assorted bits - pikes, halberds, standards, etc.


They are in decent shape after being in a plastic bag stuffed in a box for 12 or so years! I do plan to strip and repaint them. A couple of the troops, especially two of the pikemen, are missing limbs so that will be a project in itself to recreate them.



And some support troops:


These are gilla-worms, the lower caste of Reptiliad society. They are used as skirmish troops, and some of them are mounted, the equivalent of light cavalry.



And the best part:



War Turtle! I really do like this mini, and it (the whole group actually) bring back some great gaming memories.

Eventually, I want to do an Impetus army with these minis. Some of the minis are still available, the gilla-worms and the war turtle (!) especially. Unfortunately, Rafm remastered the Reptiliads in 1999, and the new ones are much larger, to fit in the the 28-30mm crowd. Since this is a long-term project, I have the time to track down some of the older Reptiliad minis; there might even be a local game store with some old stock still hanging on the wall...


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Taeklonn and his GT award

As I had originally mentioned before - link - my son won an award at the 2009 ConquestNW GT.  I finally found some more pics here .  Also, issue 351 of White Dwarf will have an article about the tournament.  I'll be parting with $9US to get a copy, my first in maybe 5 years.  The price sure went up since then!

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Fantasy Impetus?

(hmmm - Blogger dissolved my original typing here, so here goes another try...)

Seems like there are several groups working on a fantasy version of Impetus - there are several posts on a fantasy version at the Impetus forums; here is another site in Italian about fantasy Impetus; and AONeil has started one at his web site.

I have a few ideas also, especially towards using Tékumel as the background.  One would be a simple addition to the roll for unit damage if the affected unit has steel armor.  Steel armor is a big improvement on Tékumel, since the planet tends to be metal-poor.

I do want to keep the modifications for my version of fantasy Impetus to a minimum, though.

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A list of Initial purchases...

The first part of the plan - rules - is now complete with the arrival of proper charts for my copy of GQ3 - FAI, so now I can progress to the next step - minis!



For this encounter of July 1915 in the Baltic (I have yet to find a 'title' for this battle, you know - 'Battle of Jutland' or similar), here are the German ships I will need and the vendor:



Prinz Adalbert (Panzerschiffe)
Roon (Panzerschiffe)
Augsburg (Panzerschiffe)
Lubeck (GHQ)
Albatross (?)
7 DD (?)

Mostly Panzerschiffe for now. Panzerschiffe makes nice but simple minis; I will dress them up a bit with masts and such. Lubeck, according to my sources, is a Bremen-class light cruiser, of which Leipzig (and Lubeck) are members, and GHQ makes a Leipzig mini. I have yet to determine the classes of the destroyers involved. Also, I believe there is another armored cruiser paired with Prinz Adalbert; I will check my books for that. The mini will most likely come from Panzerschiffe. The mine-layer Albatross is a puzzle, as no manufacturer makes one in 1/2400. I will wade through the pics on the Panzerschiffe site until I find one that is close.

And, the Russian list:



Rurik (GHQ)
Admiral Makarov (GHQ)
Bayan (GHQ)
Bogatyr (GHQ)
Oleg (GHQ)
Novik (?)


It was my intention from the start to use GHQ products if I could, and GHQ makes most of the ships involved. Adm. Makarov will need a bit of converting - she is in the same class as Bayan but has a single pole mast. Novik is not available in 1/2400, so a proxy will be needed.

Yet another brief Update

Sorry but I have not had much time for real posts, but at least this one has pics, this time...

Just a pic of my work table:

This is a close-up showing the base color I'm using for my Empire Greatswords - Reaper Pro Paints Steel Plate for the metallic portions.  Also shown are some Empire Handgunners and a few spearmen of the Legion of Ever-Present Glory.

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Naval Gaming news - 16 March 2009

Old Glory Shipyard has released three fleet sets in 1/2400 for Warhammer Historical's new rules set Trafalgar (or any sailing ship game)

Litko has a set of templates for Trafalgar in Jim's Product Lab

Steel Dreadnought Games has released a new WW1 naval set - Naval Thunder: Clash of Dreadnoughts

brief Update

This is just a quick near meaningless post for now...

I'm still working on the Tékumel rules situation.  As I'm getting a bit antsy to get some real progress on this, I might actually have something more concrete on my rules choice 'soon'.  I have boiled down the magic style (mostly from Warfare on Tékumel) to a point that will make it easy to plug into any system.

Wonders of wonders, I have put a little paint on some Empire minis.  No pics, but maybe soon.

Also, I am thinking about changing the layout of this blog, as I find the narrow body style to be odd in the age of wide-screen monitors.

More later!

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