MOAR Artillery!

Well, I had intended to post this a week ago, but I have become unreasonably busy with several jobs all landing at once. When you work as a freelance writer, the process of getting a specific job, and the steps it goes through can be staccato. This is especially true when working with an IP that is being licensed by the company your are writing for. Proposals go to the company, maybe back to you, back to the company, eventually to the IP holder for approval, back to you... the steps can be multiple. Added to this is the fact that any one of those might happen quickly, or might take time. Building a true sense of when a proposal or outline will be fleshed into a draft, and from draft to editor to final draft to editor and eventually layout can be difficult and sometimes impossible. The process may be quick, or it may take months. You can go from having no work to do to having a whole lot land at once.

This last week has seen the latter, with multiple jobs either clearing or soon to be clearing approvals and deadlines suddenly looming. I'm not complaining, I love writing for games, probably more than playing them, but jobs take precedence over blogs, as the old rhyme goes.

In any case! Artillery!

I wrote a scathing attack on Mantic's policy of basing Artillery on trifling bases a week or so ago, and my view on the topic has only grown more strident. Mantic can be sure that an angry 'Letter to the Editor' is being formulated as you read this. The so-called boffins at Mantic HQ will blister with shame when they read it, but it can't be helped; they brought it on themselves.

The more I think on it, the more apoplectic I become. I sit staring gloomily into the dying embers of the fire, a vintage cognac spoiling in my idle hand, swirled only occasionally by a fierce convulsion of fury that engulfs me when I think of the base sizes, and a cold disquiet settles on me... 50mm indeed! How hulking weapons of an epic fantasy setting are meant to be represented on 50mm square bases is anyone's guess. A random spasm over the '5' and '0' keys, driven by a force of madness that knows no bounds is the only reasonable conclusion. It is what it is. And what it is is a level of foolishness that could drive a grown man to the edge of his sanity, but I digress.

After piecing together the monumental bombard from Perry Miniatures, I managed to put together two smaller engines (picked to fit the minuscule bases Kings of War demands for such things). Both of these are from the War of the Roses range of Artillery, and are breach loading field guns.

As always with Perry Miniatures, the models are well cast and hold excellent detail. They went together quickly and without much trouble. I am a big fan of this company!

Yes, yes. I glued everything down before undercoating and painting, again. I blame the base sizes personally, the topic is chewing away at my sanity like a gerbil on a wafer. Nonetheless, they are excellent models. The top two images are of the single arc breach loading field piece. The final two images are of the double arc breach loading field piece. I am very pleased with how they came out!

Bombardment of Impracticality!

Continuing in the trend of building artillery pieces for Kings of War which, in game terms, are hugely impractical, but which, in visual terms, are absolutely sublime, this week I put together a Bombard...

The problem with Kings of War as I see it, is that despite the nice mechanics, quick play and enjoyable game experience, they have vastly underestimated the base sizes for artillery pieces. In the Kings of War rules book they declare blithely that so-called war engines and monsters should be based on 50mm squares. Bah! Obscene! The rules at this point (the second page of the rules book), are a willful desecration of all that is good in the world. Now, it does, and I say this grudgingly, improve. But that 50mm square business is like an ice-cold shard of tungsten lodged in the eye. One can't just ignore it. One can't see around it. In order to sate the insanity of this rule one needs to start looking at 6mm scale artillery. I can only think that the rules designer, one Mr Cavatore, had a moment of madness and that the thought, later, of rewriting it would force him to look that madness in the eye again and perhaps succumb, and he just couldn't do it. I can, perhaps, forgive him that.

However, I won't pretend for a moment it's ok, people have been flogged for less, but I don't intend to petition Mantic on the subject at this stage, and continuing in this vein will see us on to a blog post of unprecedented length, so... Leaving aside the madness-induced, Necronomicon-inspired, cavalier attitude toward artillery base sizes for just a moment...

Last time we touched on the subject of Artillery and Kings of War I was writing about assembling the hugely impractical but monumentally impressive Trebuchet, from Gripping Beast. This time around the artillery piece in question also required a special base, though not quite so large, and is also impractical. It is the War of the Roses era Bombard, from Perry Miniatures.

It arrived in a rather small box, and my immediate reaction was, 'What ho? The Perrys seem to have contrived to paint me a fool! I thought this bombard was impressively impractical in size!' Despite, however, the diminutive nature of the box, and the number of exclamation marks in my reaction, I turned out to have underestimated the Perrys.

Bombard, replete with crew and mantlet. No, I shouldn't have glued it all down, but my impetuosity got the better of me and once the cap was off the glue there was no turning back.

All the figures are 28mm scale, and the base is something like 60 x 210 mm. Tis a thing to be feared...

The mantlet was so agonizing to put together (it kept collapsing around me), that it very nearly suffered a Terrible Fate. I endured, and with a dozen random items to prop it in place, so did the mantlet... 

The figure at the back is simply admiring the vast worth of such an impressive instigator of impairment.

Trebuchet, bombard and single 28mm scale crossbowman for comparison.

It is a fine model, impractical yes, but a good looking piece of kit for all that. It was a clean cast and easy enough to put together, though I did scratch my head a few times to work out where all the bracing pieces went. The manlet was the only thing that caused me grief, but endurance, pure will-power and a bottle of absinthe later and it's done, the grief forgotten. Next time I'll endeavor to write about the few artillery pieces I did buy that actually fit on the insanely tiny bases demanded by the brilliant, but mad, Mr Cavatore.

Trebuchet!

Kings of War is a fantasy table-top war game from Mantic Games. I wrote about it in a previous blog post, and noted that I had thoroughly enjoyed my first game. Using a mix of Perry Miniatures boxes I had sitting around from older projects, a Fireforge box given to me by a good friend, and some other Fireforge boxes I ordered, I am slowly going through the process of assembling a Kingdoms of Men army (which is short hand for a generic human fantasy army).

One of the pieces I required was a siege engine of some sort. Not content with any old cannon (my troops look far too early-medieval for that sort of shenanigans), I settled on a trebuchet... for who on all this Earth doesn't love a trebuchet!

I poked around the web for a while, and found some fairly disappointing approximations - sure they would fit on the recommended base size - but they weren't really trebuchet material. Then I stumbled upon Gripping Beast... Oh dear Gripping Beast! The sight of this fair machine of war had me a-slaver, I had to have it - consequences (and there are consequences) be damned!

Yesterday's post brought me the sweet embrace of this mighty machine, and I spent some time last night assembling the beast. I have to say - it is wonderful. Indeed, had I been patient and bothered, I could have made it functional with little effort.

The resin pieces washed...

All the bits trimmed and laid out ready for assembly. It's worth noting that the reverse side of most of the pieces lacks any detail (in fact it's just the back of the cast resin), but it matters not a jot, for it is formidable and lovely once all together.

The instructions are fairly lacking, but I did my best to rig this machine to look like it could work. The brown string running off to the left is attached to the pin that holds the arm to the winch. I'm not sure how it's meant to be rigged, but this looks functional enough for me!

The set comes with three crew, and this fellow was holding a hammer. I removed said hammer and drilled his hands out to run the release thread through.

After cutting and rigging all the ropes, I painted them with PVA. This coil I made sure not to stick down - I can glue it once the basing is done properly.

Here we come to the key problem faced by such an enormous engine of eradication. The small square sitting on the larger one is the recommended base size for a trebuchet in Kings of War... There are rules for using larger base sizes (luckily), but I feel like I'm putting a terrain piece down. The base I used is some 21cm x 23 cm... 

Here the beast is, with some Perry 28mm archers and men-at-arms ranging in front of it...

A true behemoth...

Luckily it *just* fits onto the shelf. At this point I started wondering how'd I'd get to the club and around the place to game with... I could probably fire it from home. I think it has the range.