It has been a while since I have done a large scale wargame with my wooden warriors. I have clearly moved into doing these more detailed figures that I've been using for rpgs and skirmish games, like the Conan series. I still want to do a game of the raid on the tower where the trio gets the big ruby and kills the huge snake, but the challenge has been in finding something big enough but round enough that I can use for the tower (or I should say the various levels of the tower). Still working on that, the forms used to pour concrete pillars look promising, but they are really hard to cut. But enough of that, I did want to also do a larger scale wargame again using my "new" more detailed figures.
I of course tried this with the Dark Ages guys I did years ago, but it was just too hard to paint them already attached to the base, and how they were attached altered their appearance significantly, causing them to lose a lot of height. I was never satisfied with them. And, I'm just going to be honest, I've never been able to bring myself to base the larger scale figures as multiples on a base. I just prefer them to be individually based.
I also know that I probably don't want, or even need, to do a project that is historical, unless it is in a new area that I don't have the older figures already done for. There is just little reason to do Biblicals, or frankly anything up to about 100 BC because I for the most part already have those guys done in the older format. Why do Macedonians and Persians again in these larger, more detailed figures? I've already got a ton of the older ones done and they work just fine.
I've always been enthralled with Don Featherstone's book "War Games". I love the rules, I love the pictures, I love the philosophy of gaming, and most of all, I love the Battle of Trimsos from Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign that is detailed in the book, pitting the Hyperboreans against the Hyrkanians. And hey, isn't this just an extension of the Conan games I'm already doing, just larger scale battles instead of skirmishes? Sure it is!
So that is the next project, doing my version of the Battle of Trimsos, using my more recent versions of the wooden warriors mounted individually. This also obviously lets me use these figures in skirmish games, and they are based in a way that is consistent with these older rules that while they may not be the most historically accurate rules in the world, they are certainly fun and great for convention games which is what I am after.
Rather than using the rules as they are presented in "War Games", as they are a bit confusing in places (the morale rules are frankly a hot mess), I went even further back and used Featherstone's "Lost Tales" book and the Ancients rules from it as a starting point, added in a simple command and control mechanism, but kept the movement, combat, and other core elements of the game. The rules are done, I obviously need to playtest them, but I can't do that before I have figures to use. So off to the crafting/painting table!
There are a total of 17 units in Tony's game, but I never liked that the Hyperboreans had one more war engine unit, so I decided to go with 8 units a side. The first unit I decided to do was the Hyperborean Thurn Archers unit. After doing a little reserach, the more contemporary way of looking at the Hyperboreans in the Hyboria world is as a mixture of primarily Russian/Slavic medieval units with a little Viking flavor added in. This is nice because at the level of detail that I do my figures, they could be used for Medieval/Late Dark Ages Russians as well. The archer figures tend to be a little more tricky than the heavy infantry guys, and since I am "fresh" in terms of my motivation to do this project, I thought it would be good to start with them.
In the game the infantry units are 20 figures in size with usually a leader figure and a standard bearer. These are really "place holder" figures in the game as they are there just to signify whether or not the command and control elements of the unit are still alive. So this unit is 20 actual archers plus the leader and standard bearer figure.
Here are the Hyperborean Thurn Archers!
There is not a whole lot new construction wise except that I decided to do the heads differently in yet another attempt to do the mail coif. The helmet is a larger split bead, head is a smaller split bead, and the mail coif is paper. I am really happy with the way they turned out, and they were not difficult to do!
Off to a good start! Onto the next unit, which will by the Hyrkanian 1st Imperial Foot Guards!
