Post by jeffgeorge on Jan 6, 2017 16:21:57 GMT -9
In the Gaming forum, I asked for recommendations for miniature wargame rules, and as usual, the community has responded with a ton of great suggestions. Just to show you that your comments were not entirely in vain, I wanted to start a thread to show what I'm doing in that genre.
First Dwarven Regiment
This unit is intended to be a Ironclad regiment from the Kings of War Dwarf Armies list. Ironclads are your basic infantry units, with 20 troops with one-handed axe and shield. As you can see, this particular unit has the Throwing Mastiff option, which in Kings of War is a once-per-battle pack of war dogs that make a single frenzied attack against on enemy unit.
The miniatures used to make the unit are all modded from Okumarts Darkfast Dungeon sets. I used the male and female dwarves from the core set of figures that comes with the game, and the male and female dwarves that come in the "Dungeon Explorers" add-on set. I added a cape to the Dungeon Explorers, and recolored their leather armor as iron scale armor. For all figures, I modified the colors to all-red uniforms, and re-skinned the shields to a matching red-and-gold heraldic pattern. (I used to know enough about heraldry to describe that device properly, but I lost that knowledge somewhere in the last 25 years...hmmm...) So that I can print out armies easily, I assembled the entire army on a single sheet, with 5 of each of the four figures, each figure with a different hair color (white, blond, red, brown, black), and half the figures flipped left-to-right.
The banner I created by extending the axe-haft of one of the male dwarves, and adding a free-handed banner. To distinguish between units without just numbering them, I added appropriately dwarfy emblems to the banners. This is the first regiment, so it has a one anvil. The second regiment has two crossed hammers, the third regiment has three axes, the fourth has four diamonds, and the fifth has five rings (Five golden rings--ba-dum-bum-bum!). The standard bearers are on a separate sheet, along with the mastiffs and the one figure from the set of 20 that didn't fit on the main army sheet.
The mastiff is modded from a dog in one of the Darkfast Dungeon sets (maybe its a bonus figure in the Dungeon Explorers? I don't recall...). The original dog is not really a proper mastiff, but I gave it mastiff-like paint-job and I'm hoping no one will look too closely.
The base isn't perfect; it's more a proof-of-concept. My intent was to produce a base that looked like rough terrain, rather than a grassy field. I drew and colored the stones by hand, but really struggled with the design of the underlying dirt. Leaving it solid brown or beige didn't look finished enough, but any texture or other variation I tried to generate with GIMP filters came out looking...just wrong. I finally went searching for free ground textures, and found a couple I could live with--a dirt texture with scattered weeds for the top surface, and a soil texture for the sides to look like cutaway earth. Without the textures, the base is essentially a Dungeons of Olde field tile, adjusted to the Kings of War regiment size of 100mm x 80mm.
Next Steps
The next phase for this project will be redoing the base tile. Now that I know what I'm doing, I'll start by generating the textures large enough to handle the biggest legal Kings of War unit, which is a Large Cavalry unit, at 300mm x 200mm. Then it will be (relatively) simple to crop that down for smaller units. I'll also want to add a layer indicating where the cuts should go for the bases of the units to slot into. The figures aren't glued into the base--they fit snugly into slots cut into the top of the base, but can be removed for storage or transport.
After that's done, I'll need to keep building my armies. I spent two or three days working on the first dwarven army, but I learned a lot about how recolor efficiently while still getting good results. I also learned to save early and often, when a wrong click cost me about four hours' work the first day... In any case, I've already got a good supply of elven paper minis that I can mod for this purpose, and I'm planning to do a force of Okum's Goblins and Ogres, which have always looked like they go together to me.
As I finish more units, I'll post them to this thread.
First Dwarven Regiment
This unit is intended to be a Ironclad regiment from the Kings of War Dwarf Armies list. Ironclads are your basic infantry units, with 20 troops with one-handed axe and shield. As you can see, this particular unit has the Throwing Mastiff option, which in Kings of War is a once-per-battle pack of war dogs that make a single frenzied attack against on enemy unit.
The miniatures used to make the unit are all modded from Okumarts Darkfast Dungeon sets. I used the male and female dwarves from the core set of figures that comes with the game, and the male and female dwarves that come in the "Dungeon Explorers" add-on set. I added a cape to the Dungeon Explorers, and recolored their leather armor as iron scale armor. For all figures, I modified the colors to all-red uniforms, and re-skinned the shields to a matching red-and-gold heraldic pattern. (I used to know enough about heraldry to describe that device properly, but I lost that knowledge somewhere in the last 25 years...hmmm...) So that I can print out armies easily, I assembled the entire army on a single sheet, with 5 of each of the four figures, each figure with a different hair color (white, blond, red, brown, black), and half the figures flipped left-to-right.
The banner I created by extending the axe-haft of one of the male dwarves, and adding a free-handed banner. To distinguish between units without just numbering them, I added appropriately dwarfy emblems to the banners. This is the first regiment, so it has a one anvil. The second regiment has two crossed hammers, the third regiment has three axes, the fourth has four diamonds, and the fifth has five rings (Five golden rings--ba-dum-bum-bum!). The standard bearers are on a separate sheet, along with the mastiffs and the one figure from the set of 20 that didn't fit on the main army sheet.
The mastiff is modded from a dog in one of the Darkfast Dungeon sets (maybe its a bonus figure in the Dungeon Explorers? I don't recall...). The original dog is not really a proper mastiff, but I gave it mastiff-like paint-job and I'm hoping no one will look too closely.
The base isn't perfect; it's more a proof-of-concept. My intent was to produce a base that looked like rough terrain, rather than a grassy field. I drew and colored the stones by hand, but really struggled with the design of the underlying dirt. Leaving it solid brown or beige didn't look finished enough, but any texture or other variation I tried to generate with GIMP filters came out looking...just wrong. I finally went searching for free ground textures, and found a couple I could live with--a dirt texture with scattered weeds for the top surface, and a soil texture for the sides to look like cutaway earth. Without the textures, the base is essentially a Dungeons of Olde field tile, adjusted to the Kings of War regiment size of 100mm x 80mm.
Next Steps
The next phase for this project will be redoing the base tile. Now that I know what I'm doing, I'll start by generating the textures large enough to handle the biggest legal Kings of War unit, which is a Large Cavalry unit, at 300mm x 200mm. Then it will be (relatively) simple to crop that down for smaller units. I'll also want to add a layer indicating where the cuts should go for the bases of the units to slot into. The figures aren't glued into the base--they fit snugly into slots cut into the top of the base, but can be removed for storage or transport.
After that's done, I'll need to keep building my armies. I spent two or three days working on the first dwarven army, but I learned a lot about how recolor efficiently while still getting good results. I also learned to save early and often, when a wrong click cost me about four hours' work the first day... In any case, I've already got a good supply of elven paper minis that I can mod for this purpose, and I'm planning to do a force of Okum's Goblins and Ogres, which have always looked like they go together to me.
As I finish more units, I'll post them to this thread.