Little Tiny Rampant

[steve_pickstock]

This week has been very disjointed - model-making wise - I have been waiting for stuff to arrive and getting on with bits and pieces. In terms of the playing area I started glueing/sticking mats and stuff together, and I made what I am calling the bridge rig. The idea behind that is that it's a physical blueprint for a) when I lay out the bridges on the river tiles, and b) I can model the bridges to a consistent form so any bridge will fit any gap - and stay in place (more on that when I get to it.

So one of the things I was waiting for was these guys.

Bear in mind that these models are 10mm scale. I found them on an eBay seller I use and decided that I wanted them. I think they are incredible, not just for 10mm but for any scale, but they did give me an idea, in terms of Dragon Rampant.

I already had a Witch King from Copplestone Castings

I ordered two sets of these Nazgul to bring the total to nine.

Which brings me to a little anecdote that says as much about wargaming as it does about not doing the background reading.

I was in a Games Workshop shop in Warrington (I think), near where I live.
There were quite a lot of people in the shop and I think it must have been in the early 2000's because the Peter Jackson films were out, and GW had released the game and figures to match.
The conversation at the till went something like this:
Manager: "No, you can't have more than nine Black Riders."
Youth who had obviously decided that he wanted an army of Black Riders: "Why not?"
M: "Have you read the book?"
Y: "What book?"
There was a stunned silence from everyone over the age of eighteen at that, followed by laughter, which contained equal measures of amusement, sympathy and scorn.

Anyway, the riders arrived and were painted up - 2 coats of AK paint marker Rubber Black and bob's your nazgul!
I based them up as 4's (Elite Rider units are normally 6 figures)



In theory I could do this as an army on its own. Tooled up so that they fit the description in the book - they're quite powerful but quite expensive points wise.
As straight-out-of-the-book Elite Riders they are subject to Wild Charge, which reflects the impetuous nature of noble cavalry. However I gave them the added option of Level Headed, which reflects what Tolkien would have said was Cunning Mind - reflecting the control that both Sauron and the Witch King exerted.
I added Cause Fear, Venomous Weapons - the Morghul darts and blades, and allowed the Riders themselves to have Mounted Missile skills, and the Witch King himself was given some spells as a Wizardling.

The problem with using all three units is that it reflects the youth from the Warrington GW shop. There is no direct relationship between the size of units in the table and the actual size of real units in DR, so I am not sure whether this is too much like too many Nazgul. And besides that 45pts for all three units is BIG for a Dragon Rampant army. The other side will be wall-to-wall across the table.
What I will probably do is use the Witch King, and one of the bases of Riders which will represent the other 8, which even then will be 30pts, but there won't be some many units on the other side of the table.

This last picture shows the Strength point trackers I made.

20mm bases from Renedra, with Evergreen frames, which hold 5mm dice. they're fiddly but the dice are securely held and they don't dominate board as they would if they were bigger.

Comments and thought are always welcome, thanks for looking in.

[Ochoin]

Your usual, interesting post, Steve. Your "army" of Black Riders is problematic.

I really like 'Lion/Dragon Rampant' but I've found the points' restrictions make a Fantasy army difficult to effectively create. In my last game, for instance, using a 35 point Evil army, the only figure with any magical ability was my Necromancer ('Spell caster"). So, trolls, half-orcs etc were just misshapen but really normal troops.

To give them "Fear" or any other magical abilities cuts into the numbers of units you can field, quite dramatically. And even with "super" troops, numbers generally win.

Of course, one of the strengths of DR/LR is the relative speed of a game. So using armies with north of 40 points makes for a much longer game - not always desirable.

So, as you've found, it's a bit of an exercise in juggling.

I really like the dice holders BTW.

donal

[steve_pickstock]

I was reading an article in Wargames Illustrated about the second edition of DR today. Dan Mersey explained his thinking about it.
Initially the rules were constrained by the Osprey blue book format and they were designed to be simple and flexible to allow players - as I explain to people - to use anything and everything in a game. And they do, especially the guys I play with, the sights I have seen!
The new edition being much bigger has allowed him to expand the rules - he says it's like a director's cut.
Now I think DR is pretty good as it is, there are frustrations, but I think that, rather than try and change things to eliminate the frustrations, it's better to learn to work with them. Clausewitz called them 'frictions', the things that generals have to deal with.
The second edition of Lion Rampant enabled some changes that made the game better, that we adopted - like being able to try to activate all the units on your side in a turn instead of your turn ending with the first failed activation.
Dan Mersey also said that in the original game armies were supposed to be about 24 points, but players prefer 30+ point games - we've been playing that for a couple of years now. a 30-40 point game is just about right for one of our evening sessions.
My copy of 2nd edition is on pre-order for next month, I'm looking forwards to the seeing the other changes.

[steve_pickstock]

Just when I said in the other thread that I wasn't doing much this week except for tidying up - this happens!

I'd found the files for this online for free, and my friend printed it for me. He delivered it last night at the wargames club.





It is, of course, a 10mm version of Games Workshop's Fortified Manor House. Theirs is a 28mm model and one of my favourites, so as soon as I saw it I knew I had to have one for the 10mm board.

Still a little clean up to do on it, and I may replace the gate - the print software placed a support right across the front of the gate so it's marked from the removal, but I think this will look great!

[Santi Pérez]

That fortified manor house looks great, Steve.

Santi.

[MABO]

Riders and fortification are really nice, Steve.

[steve_pickstock]

very brief update on this project. Made a 'rocky crag' for the manor house to sit on. I cut it out of a chunk of EVA foam (it's more durable than polystyrene). I stuck a piece of magnetic sheet to the top, and steel paper under the Manor House, the two stick together nicely, but I can take them apart for storage and also if I want to use the Manor House elsewhere on its own.












The base will be mounted on card and covered in filler, and that will allow me to model the rocks, and also a path up to the gate - marked in blue on one picture.

So much going on at the moment - not getting a good run at anything at the moment, so quite happy how this has worked.

Thanks for looking in.

[Ochoin]

A very sweet piece of modelling. I'll ask to see the finished product when the time comes.

donald

[Santi Pérez]

...I stuck a piece of magnetic sheet to the top, and steel paper under the Manor House, the two stick together nicely, but I can take them apart for storage and also if I want to use the Manor House elsewhere on its own...

The Manor House once painted looks great once painted, Steve. And the way you have used to place it on the rocky crag is very imaginative.

Santi.

[steve_pickstock]

The Manor House once painted looks great once painted, Steve. And the way you have used to place it on the rocky crag is very imaginative.

Santi.

Thanks.

[steve_pickstock]

Carrying on with these I suppose that these pictures could be posted in a number of my threads, I mean they're supposed to be English Civil War buildings, but instead of being 12mm they're designed to be around 10mm in scale and they have been created using AI. But I'll put them in here.

These started off as a bit of an experiment.
I asked Perchance AI – a free system that is very easy to use – to create a number of images; first 17thC English cottages. I wanted something to base some models on, either to build them myself or something … 25 images later I switch the prompt around to ask it for town houses from the same period. Perchance just kept churning the images out.
Here are some of them
Cottages


And town houses



So these aren't actually real buildings just what Perchance thought they'd look like.

Next I fed the images into Meshy AI and asked it to give me printable files for the buildings. These files were then given to my friend who printed them for me and we have :-
Cottages
Cottage 1


Cottage 2
#url=https://ibb.co/2Yh42xZw][/url]


Townhouses
Townhouse 002

Townhouse 005

Townhouse 021



Perchance AI is a free to use system, and Meshy is a subscription system.

I think these are freakin' cool! They've got character and that is so important to me.
Of course they now have to be cleaned up, some remedial work will be needed, and they will need to be given bases. I see the two cottages as getting bases that reflect the fact that they are rural buildings. One of the outbuildings of Cottage 002 is ruinous and will need to be modelled as such.
The townhouses, particularly the back of 021 will need some work, and I think I will need to use some N gauge embossed brick sheet styrene.
And that brings me to a question for you all – is this – using AI to create the picture and then convert them to file for printing, is it cheating?
I posted these same images on a Facebook terrain group and someone asked, 'where is the craft?'. My immediate answer was that the next bit is where the craft comes in, the modelling and painting. But I wanted to ask what the problem was.
So I used two systems to create the models, what is the difference between that and me going online and purchasing them from a producer? One opinion seems to be that I should be giving someone money for these to be legitimate, yet I wouldn't be doing that if I had scratch-built them and the one I did scratch-build are rubbish compared with these.
Am I doing someone out of a livelihood? Scratch-building again. Even the fact that the original images aren't real buildings isn't an issue, they're close enough, and they're the same sort of generic structure I would be making if I was building them out of styrene or cardboard.
I think a lot of it is animus against AI, and I can understand that people worry how it will affect them and their jobs, but I also don't think it's an issue here either, it's not like I'm claiming these are something else, that they're counterfeit in some way. They're just generic cottages and townhouses for wargaming.

Anyway - rant over - I cleaned the buildings up, removed the supports from the printing process and put them with some figures to see how they look.

First with some Warlord Games ECW foot figures.




The buildings look a little small next to these, but I think that this is okay. Buildings in wargames tend to be a bit of a trade-off between figure scale and ground scale. If you put 1/72nd scale buildings down next to 1/72 scale figures the buildings tend to dominate. That's okay if you're doing a skirmish game where 1:1 is what you're aiming at, but if your figure scale is, for example, 1:50, a building in the same scale is overwhelming. So these - roughly 1:144th scale buildings - will do for 'epic' scale ECW games.

Now with the Rampant games the figure scale is far more flexible so these pictures show the new buildings with Wargames Atlantic orcs and the Nazgul figures I bought off eBay - they appear to be looking for hobbits - going mob-handed for the job.





Last of all while all of the above has been going on I've been picking away at the manor house.


I need to add some more - a little bridge over the ditch, some 'rock' under two buttresses that just hang out in mid-air, and a lot more green.

Hope you've enjoyed this. I am very pleased with the buildings - it started out as an exercise in 'let-us-see-what-happens-if-I-do-this', and actually is a viable way to do buildings for wargaming.

[MABO]

This is like a lecture! Very interesting, showing new perspectives of creativity! The houses you created using AI are very well executed. I am thinking what might be possible...