Koyote

The mercenary units: Cretan Archers Tarentine Cavalry Balearic Slingers Mercenary Hoplites Ligurians Psioli Samnites Thueophoroi Aside form Legandary Warlords (2 per faction), the only Legendary Unit is the War Pigs. "Also called hogs of war, flaming pigs were used by several belligerents in the Ancient period, primarily to scare elephants. Covered in wooden spikes and pitch, oil or tar, they were set alight and guided as much as possible in the direction of the enemy. The Romans used them even before the Punic Wars, during Pyrrhus' Italian epic." It's a Mercenary Levy unit comprised of one pig-keeper and 8 pigs (Armor 3/3 Aggression 1/3). Unit's move is never reduced by terrain. Once per turn it can be activated to make a free, range 6" shooting attack that generates no fatigue. Remove 2 pigs from the unit. You roll no dice. Instead, if the target is infantry it suffers 1 automatic hit, if mounted 2 automatic hits, if elephant 3 automatic hits. Target also suffers a fatigue. Poor piggies.

Republic of Rome -Can be led by a Consul or Tribune. The Consul is a standard warlord. The Tribune is charismatic politico, not an experienced general. His aggression is only 2. He doesn't have the Pride rule. His Bodyguard range is 6", but when the Tribune is eliminated, all friendly units gain one fatigue. His We Obey rule allows him to activate 2 units within 4". HG and warriors initially deployed in units of 8 models with no equipment option are considered "Maniples". Certain advanced abilities give extra bonuses to Maniples. This faction can field elephants. Graeculi (Greeks) -3 different varieties (Epirote, Syracusan, or Italiotes), each of which has its own rules for warband composition. Graeculi have rules for phalanxes and make the most use of sarissas. The Syracusan Warlord has an ability called Tyrant, that permits it to, once per turn, perform a rest activation that grants a friendly unit within 4" Resilience (1). If the Tyrant is eliminated, all friendly units gain 1 fatigue. The Epirote can field elephants.. Iberians -Have only one defensive ability, so they have to rely on maneuvering and terrain. Don't have the Activation Pool basic ability. Instead they have the Guerrilla ability and Guerrilla makers. Each time the Iberian player’s opponent resolves an activation with one of their units, the Iberian player can spend 2 Guerrilla markers to activate an Iberian unit. The Iberian player gains Guerrilla markers by using advanced abilities. No elephants and no chariots. Gauls -Many of the Gaul's advanced abilities can be boosted by adding a Fervour token to a unit. You don't have to earn Fervour tokens, you simply add them to a unit when you elect to boost an ability. Once a unit has three Fervour tokens on it cannot use any advanced abilities, so you have to be judicious in your use of them and find ways to remove them from your units. Chariots but no elephants. Carthaginians -Your Warlord, HG, warriors (with no equipment), chariots, and elephants are Citizens. You can also field warriors (which can have no equipment, bows, or mounted) as Contingent. Levy are neither. Many of the advanced abilities have different effects, depending upon whether a unit is Citizen or Contingent. Carthaginians can field heavy chariots or elephants, but not both. Numidians - Have no Hearthguard. Historically, the Numidians relied on mercenaries to serve as their shock troops. The lack of HG is balanced by being able to recruit lots of elephants. They are a force reliant on cavalry and shooting.

I finally broke down and ordered Age of Hannibal. It has rules for elephants, sarissas (i.e. pikes), flaming pigs, new types of chariots, and optional rules for very large scale battles (12+ points per side. There are only 6 factions, but still there's enough variation and rules for optional builds to keep it interesting. Age of Hannibal includes optional rules for Ruses, which allow you to personalize your warband by modifying its composition and/or granting specific advantages or chances to deal treacherous blows to your enemies. I've read online that Age of Hannibal is the first book in a series of 3 books for the Ancient World. I've also heard that the 4 new sets of dice released with AoH will be used in all 3 of the Ancient World books. I LOVE the fact that Victrix has most of the kits you'll need to play any of the Age of Hannibal factions. https://www.victrixlimited.com/collections/ancients I think I will start with the Iberian faction. It's peculiar rules and battle board will make it a tricky faction to master. They are also one of the only factions that cannot take elephants. 😞 If I don't like the Iberian's play style or if I simply want to give elephants a try, it will be easy to switch them to Carthaginians. The Age of Hannibal rules for the Carthaginians incorporate the fact that the Carthaginians always used a large number of mercenaries in their land armies. They do this by dividing units into Citizen (Carthaginian) and Contingent (non-Carthaginian) units. Even their battleboard has rules addressing these two components. After conquering Iberia, the Carthaginian armies in Europe included large numbers of Iberian mercenaries, so switching my Iberians to Carthaginians will, at minimum, require me to change my Warlord and HG for Carthaginians. The rest can remain Iberian models.

I saw these pics on Facebook, posted by Mario Ruf. It's SAGA Age of Magic, done right.

I finished painting my Rad Zombies. TNT Rad Zombie aren't supernatural, Night of the Living Dead zombies, but are rather humans infected with a peculiar form of radiation sickness that makes them zombie-like. With this in mind I purchased Pig Iron Productions' Infected models and painted their flesh with a mix of GW's Rakarth Flesh and Kislev Flesh with greenish grey shading. The tones and the shading are a bit subtle, so they did't come across in the photo very well. TNT's fluff states that "[l]egend has it that most rad zombies are Last Americans irradiated during the Great Fall." As such, I am comfortable using the model in the mini-skirt and the model in the blue hospital gown. The latter is open in the back so clearly rad zombies have no sense of modesty. My TNT table represents an ruins of a downtown neighborhood where once stood some the city's oldest buildings, like Seattle's Pioneer Square. In keeping with this, I picture the footbridges over my toxic river as something you would see in city park designed by the American landscape architect, Fredrick Olmsted. Any wooden bridges would have burned up in the nuclear firestorm or rotted away over time. Conversely, since stone structures built in early 20th century were built to last, I can envision some of them surviving the centuries, more or less, intact. The design of TT Combat's Stretto Bridge match my vision for these bridges. I was a bit concerned that the arch wouldn't be wide enough, but you can see it crosses the narrow sections of the river with room to spare, and the abutments lie flat on the table. It's a good thing too, because I bought 3-pack. 🙂

Ish, where's your report on the new edition? Don't make me go all 'Rankin/Bass Lord-of-the-Lash' on you.

Well, dammit, get to it!

Ish, how's the new edition?

Blaster Magazine is a quarterly periodical written by coalition of 5 indi-game designers. They include the authors of TNT, Frostgrave, and Gaslands. Through Blaster, the game designers as able to provide fun one-off projects and new rules for their existing games. In advance of both volumes 1 and 2, the authors have streamed a Zoom chat where they discuss what they've been working on and what to expect from the upcoming issue. In the most recent Zoom chat Joseph A. McCullough, the author of Frostgrave announced that his contribution to Blaster volume 2 will include Cthulhu mythos rules for Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, and Rangers of Shadow Deep. These rules include creatures of the Cthulhu mythos, insanity rules, and new scenarios. In Blaster volume 3, he is going to explore mythos magic and how to incorporate it into all of those games. Very cool.

On Saturday, my 'Battlefield in a Box' Toxic River arrived in the mail. I don't own any of GF9's river sets, so I can't compare the quality of the toxic river pieces to GF9's other products, but these pieces have some good weight to them and they look and feel fairly durable. The paint job is quite good and the each piece has a matte finish, which even though it's supposed to be "goo", I prefer. The set is bit spendy, but the shipping was free, it arrived fairly quickly, and the set includes enough river pieces to make a six feet of river. Overall, I feel like I got my money's worth. Now it's time to get to work on some post-apoc bridges.

Much of my "hobby time" has been consumed other projects, but I finally got back to my painting table long enough to put some paint on the Terror Turkey. The model is made by Bear's Head Miniatures. Bear's Head named it a Terror Turkey, but to me it looks like a Cenozoic era Terror Bird with the tail of a Mesozoic microraptor. I changed the model's tail so it looks more like it's namesake. I emphasized the turkey aspect even more by using photos of wild turkeys to serve as a rough guide for how I painted it. Ruleswise, the Terror Turkey will be a Mutant Horror with the Big and Crushing Claws mutations. the latter is intended to replicate the attack caused by its massive beak. I suppose I could replace Crushing Claws with the Wings mutation, but it's wings are pretty wimpy, so my Terror Turkey will be a flightless avian. Terror Turkey (Mutant Horror)

Eight Rad Zombies and three Irradiators ready for primer and paint.

These look amazing. They also sell tar pits/pools and a river of tar.

One more critter checked off the Dangerous Creatures table. Similar I used a very simple technique to knock these models out rather quickly. This time, rather than using Contrast paints, I used multiple coats of washes: GW's Drakenhof Nightshade for the body and a Nuln Oil for the wings. Big Skeeters

That f’ing Moon-Moon ruins everything. 😉

More progress. Greater Mutant Scorpion (aka my GW Contrast paint fail) Trog King \ Wastewolves (the middle wolf looks way too happy) Plague Carrier My TNT critter to-do list is shrinking. 🙂

Watch out all you Eloi, my Trogs are ready to hit the streets of post-apocalypse Seattle. Also on the wasteland menu for today is a side order of Toxic Jelly. Nine more wasteland creatures done, many more to go. 🙂

It Came From The Wastes! is the newest TNT supplement. Inspired by low budget monster movies, this supplement provides rules rules for battling really big wasteland beasties. LINKY

As I paint the six Trogs and the Trog King, I take breaks to assemble and prep other models for paint. The Whizkid's Ooze arrived in the mail yesterday. Getting them off their bases was a chore. I had to saw through the very bottom of each model to free them from their original bases. I attached each model to its new base with a tiny dab of super glue, and then added scattered bones and texture to the bases. Now that the texture is dry, I am going to pop the models off of their bases. This will allow me to quickly primer and paint each base. Once the bases are done, I will reattach the models, brush gloss varnish onto the Ooze, and call it good.

For the last few days its been too hot to paint, so I've been using my nightly 2-3 hours of hobby time to assemble and prep models for painting. Last night I worked on my Wastewolves, These models are OOP Dire Wolves from Redbox Games. I mounted them on 32mm rounds and used bits from Green Stuff World's Dump Yard Plates and resin bottles and cans from Tabletop Art's Beverage Bottles and Cans set, to add a wasteland feel to the bases. I still need to glue sand to the bases to add texture.

It's funny that you mention rotating the model. I had the same idea and had experimented with it for a bit. Problem is, the bones take up too much space, so repositioning the model in this way left the model shoved to the front of the base with a big (mostly) empty area behind it. You can have a model near the front of a base if there is scenery on the base behind the model that is the model's height or taller. To make the bones/remains on the ground gimmick work, I would have to put the model on a much larger base with room enough both in front of and behind the model for basing details. Adding some skin/hide to the animal skull and rib cage is a great idea. I hadn't thought about the scarf or even about connecting the model to the current pandemic. Clever. Being an anti-masker or someone who doesn't take communicable diseases seriously would seem to fit Plague Carrier's M.O..

You broke the seal on this forum. Prior to your post, nobody had posted in the Bellingham Warhamsters sub-forum in 176 days (a week shy of 6 months).

My original idea for a Plague Carrier was to use a converted GW plague bearer (I have a few left over from my Mordheim Carnival of Chaos project), but after digging through my many boxes and bags of unused minis, I happened upon the minis from the Black Crab Miniatures 2: Necropolis Scum Kickstarter. These miniatures were inspired by the drawings of Black Crab Art artist, Moritz. I haven't had the occasion to use any of these wonderfully morose and wretched miniatures, but using one to represent the bringer of plague and death to a post-apocalyptic wasteland seems quite fitting. The mini is 28mm scale, but its a tad large, so I mounted it on a 32mm round. This gave me room to put a sizeable pile of bones on the base to further emphasis the idea that this fellow is the bringer of death. I added to the model a satchel containing a severed arm and foot (from the Mantic Games ghoul sprue) to add a bit more creepiness to this model.

I already have one of the Psychic Husk models made by World's End Publishing, the company that makes TNT. However, 'Dangerous' creatures appear in packs of 3, so I need two more and I'd like some variety. I haven't spent any time looking for them yet, but I imagine there are ghost or spirit models that would work. Instead of painting them ghost-like, I'd paint them like a corporeal model with pale skin and black eye sockets.