Hyrkania Royal Foot

 Got the first of the heavy Hyrkanian infantry units finished.  I think I might try and make three different "looking" units rather than replicating the same figures each time just to add some visual interest to the table even though in the game, all three units function the same way.  Here they are.

Sort of hard to see in the picture but I went with a samurai/Eastern armor type using paper to create the flat shoulder protection.  Wasn't difficult and it was easy to paint.

You can see the "samurai-looking" helmets a little better here.  Just paper wrapped around and painted to look like the segmented armor they have protecting their necks.

I wanted to go with a shield that wasn't really "historical" to give them a bit more of a fantasy flavor.

I planned to do a cavalry unit next, but I have to order some of the necessary pieces.  So I'll probably do a unit of Hyperborean heavy infantry.

Battle of Trimos: Part 1

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!

Finally Finished!

 I got distracted with some regular 28mm miniature painting, but this weekend I focused on my Conan game and finished everything.  Here is a pick of the set up from the beginning of the game, with our three heroes standing outside the opening of the orgy of the Snake Cult, ready to sneak in and steal back the princess.

This will be the starting point of the game.  The heroes need to sneak in, climb the stairs or the rock walls at the rear of the chamber to get up to the top level where the princess is located.  Right now she is in the chamber with Thulsa Doom.  The merry-makers on the lower level are busy having "fun" and eating their "stew".

A close up of the three heroes:  Subotai in the lead, Valeria behind, and the big man himself Conan brings up the rear.  I can see I need to touch-up the bases a bit!

The cult members party down while their big boy serves up the stew!

Thulsa Doom and the princess hanging out in the royal chamber overlooking their followers.  Two guards stand outside protecting them.  As you can see, I just had to add the mural on the rear wall of the chamber to my set up even though I didn't plan to do it originally.  I love how it turned out!  Very happy I changed my mind and decided to add it!

A famous scene from the movie (who knows if this will happen in the actual game!) as Subotai sneaks up the stairs to dispatch the cult member stirring the stew.

Another famous scene.  Valeria is about to take this guard by surprise and ... well, let's just say she finishes him off.

"You!"  I just had to use this pose, even though a fighting pose might have been more useful in the game.  This is just too iconic of a pose not to use!  I fleshed out his arms to give him "muscles" using cut tile spacers.  Happy with the result!

Thulsa Doom sitting atop his huge cushion with the princess at his feet.  Those two holes in the wall back there?  Couldn't be important, right?

Thulsa Doom begins his transformation into a snake!  Again, too iconic not to have in the game.

Completed his transformation, now retreating through one of the holes to safety!

This game board was a TOUGH build, but I am happy I did it.  It came out way better than I thought it would.  I also have the figures for the retreat, guards and Picts to chase the heroes after they get the princess.  They will have to fight their way past them and exit through the hallway to win the game.  At that point it will move away from the movie scene a bit, but that's okay, it will be a better game having them have to fight their way out.  I am not going to have the two main evil heroes show up in this game like they do in the movie, just lots of guards for the heroes to wade through.

I'm doing a test run of the game in a few weeks at one of my gaming friend's house and I'll try to take lots of pictures and post about it.  Then it's off to Barrage at the end of September where I'll be running three games of this scenario on Saturday.

The Sarlacc Pit!

 Finished the sarlacc pit today so I thought I would post some pictures of it.  For the game, it is more of a "terrain piece" since it doesn't move or anything, but I treated it in my mind like a big figure so I would have more fun doing it.

A while ago I did some tentacles for the LotR games I was doing that were coming out of the water so I knew that I could use a similar construction approach with the tentacles of this beast as well.  They are beads hot glued together and then some white glue is put in the joints to increase strength.  After that, I used a hot glue gun again to smooth out some of the joints to make them look less like a beaded necklace and more like a tentacle, which essentially means that I covered up the white glue with more hot glue to make the transitions between the beads less severe.  It takes a lot of hot glue to do this, and some patience, but it's worth it in the end I think.

The head is made from two very large split eggs.  I used hot glue to make beads around its mouth just to give it some visual interest even though the "real" creature from the movies doesn't really have this.  Like the tentacles, the head is glued to a thin wooden pre-cut circle shape I bought at the craft store that I think is 6 inches in diameter.  I then took a large piece of the thin craft foam, cut it in an irregular shape much larger than the wooden circle, and cut an irregular center out of it that is smaller than the wooden circle and then glued that foam to the thin wood circle.  Then I took a smaller piece of the thick craft foam, cut it into an irregular circle shape that is larger than the wooden circle but smaller than the thin craft foam, and then cut the center out in an irregular circle as well but making sure it was a bigger circle than the interior of the thin craft foam.  My hope was that once the thick foam was glued onto the thin foam it would give a bit of 3D dimension and create a "hole" effect.  This seemed to work, especially when I then painted the center as if to appear that it is going down into the throat (?) of the creature.  On the top layer of thin foam closest to the center I added toothpicks with hot glue to give the impression of the spiky things on the inside of the creature's throat (?) and then painted smaller versions on the wooden circle closer to the center as the throat (?) descends into the depths.  The tongue is thick craft foam cut to shape and then I cut the part at the back of the mouth at a 45 degree angle to allow me to really squeeze the tongue down onto the base when gluing it so that it was snug up against the mouth pieces.

Here are some shots of it.

The base is painted with the stipple brush just like I did for the flight bases for the skiffs.  It's hard to see in this picture but the throat (?) of the creature is painted with a darker layer close to the neck of the head, then a lighter layer next to that, and then the lightest layer at the top which is the thin craft foam.  I was hoping that the darker to lighter color variation would create an illusion of depth.  I am not going to lie, it was really fun to build and paint this thing.

More pics.

You can see the toothpicks better here.  Can you tell which ones are painted on and which are actually 3D toothpicks?  Not easy, even in person.

Here is the pic from the movie that I used for inspiration.  How do you think I did?

 And finally a pic with the skiff so you can get a better sense of the scale.  Watch out Luke!  Be careful!

I am pretty happy with it, it is large enough to be intimidating on the tabletop, but small enough that transport will not be an issue.

All that's left now are the figures on Jabba's barge, including the droids, Princess Leia, and Boba Fett, and the barge itself which is going to be a nightmare.  But I'm still doing good on time, still more than a month to the convention.

Barrage 2022: Part II: Skiff #1 with Heroes

 I almost had the second skiff painted when I made the first posting about this game, so all I had to do really was paint the figures.  This is the skiff that has some henchman as well as the heroes minus Leia and the droids on it.  

This skiff is exactly like the first one EXCEPT that I added a thin piece of foam on the bottom in the shape of a staple that once glued to the bottom side of the skiff allows me to slide the "plank" in and have it extend off the side of the skiff.  Since I'm not really sure how I'm going to start the game (Luke on the plank or already off the plank?) I needed to have the plank on the skiff regardless of where Luke starts the game, so I knew I was going to have to figure out a way to mount it.  However, I didn't want it to be permanently attached just so that I can have more flexibility with the skiffs and, like the tail fins, if I mounted the plank permanent I'm sure it would break off during transit.  As is usual when I do something a second or third time, I think I did a better job painting this second skiff than the first having had one "under my belt" already and I could avoid some of the mistakes I made.

I took some close ups of the figures this time as well, so I will talk about them later with their pictures.  But as you can see, this skiff has a plank for Luke.  Again, it's removable.  In all other ways, this is identical to the other skiff.  I used the same templates to cut the pieces of both of the skiffs so they share the same dimensions.  If you are interested, they are about 11.5" long and 5" wide at their widest point.

I really like how the figures came out.  Here are some heroes.

Han and Chewie obviously.  Both came out better than I thought they would.  I was able to pitch Han forward a bit so he is "leaning into" his shot.  His shirt has a flap on the front that is opened and I just constructed the flap with paper.  In all other ways he's standard milk bottle figure construction including the big bangs that I like to put on my figures, and in this case they are appropriate for Captain Solo.  Chewie was tough at first, how to make him tall without being too tall, and he had to be relatively thin.  He's a milk bottle with a barrel bead sideways glued on top, then with the standard tile spacer arms and bead head.  I added a smaller bead for his mouth given his head is sort of gorilla shaped.  The paper was tough for him but once I got started doing it in layers it worked out fine.  Very easy to paint as well.  His belt is just cut tile spacer material glued onto the body and painted to match his standard equipment.

Now we have Lando and Luke.  They are both standard milk bottle figure construction.  Lando was tricky though because I had to paint the fact before adding the mask, and that was very, very tricky.  I love his look, though, just like in the movie I think he has one of the best armor configurations in the movie.  Luke was not too tough, I had done a figure for an rpg that was holding a sword extended like this, so I knew how to get the effect.  You trim the inside of the tile spacer arm, not the outside, so that you can create a "bend" effect and have the hands meet together in front of the figure.  The lightsaber is obviously a toothpick painted with florescent paint.I had to give him a "tunic" top which has small shoulder pads and flaps that extend down below his belt. I just did it with paper.  Same for the high color of the jacket.  

Now onto some bad guys ...

These guys are not my favorite henchmen, I like the guys on the other skiff better, but I do like the guy in the middle.  He's got it out for Luke because Luke killed this guy's pet rancor.  All three of these guys are standard milk bottle figure construction, nothing new really.

Melee guy and the pilot/blaster wielding guy.  They both turned out good, but nothing new construction wise.

Both skiffs together.  Now onto the sarlacc in its pit!

Barrage 2022 Game Preparation

 <dusting off the keyboard>  Well, well, it's been a while.  Almost a year.  How time flies!  I haven't been doing much in terms of wooden figures this part year, mostly spent my time painting up a complete Heroquest game, but with Barrage coming up I need to do a wooden figures game.

 So, as usual I am trying to get a game together for the Barrage convention this year.  I had almost given up this time, if I am completely honest.  I couldn't get motivated for a particular project which I have found is very important to me in terms of getting things done.  I need to have the "I need to see this game on the table top with little wooden warriors" in my head or I don't finish the project.

I thought about doing a superhero game with Batman and Robin and some traditional villains.  I still want to do that, but the prospect of making a table full of buildings and not really knowing how I want to do them was just too daunting.

I thought about a second Conan game, in particular the "rescue" (abduction!?) of the princess from Thulsa Doom's tower basement, so that I could do two games in a row as a "campaign" (the rescue, then the one I did last year the final battle).  But again the though of how I would do the large multi-level room where the heroes steal her from was just too much to do in a couple of months.  If you haven't noticed a trend already, I enjoy doing figures ... I don't really enjoy doing terrain.

Then I thought I would just do the Lord of the Rings game again and just remake the Fellowship in the same style that I do figures now.  It's a fun game, the folks who have played them have really enjoyed them, and I love LotR.  But the idea of "remaking" figures was not that appealing to me.

As I was killing time one Sunday afternoon before my weekly evening rpg, "Return of the Jedi" was on.  I love that movie, it's my favorite of the original trilogy films.  As I was making my way through the attempted rescue of Han at Jabba's place (sorry for the spoilers!  :-)) when they got to the execution scene at the sarlacc pit it hit me ... like a ton of sand ... what a great convention game this would make!  You know how much I love co-op convention games so the players would play the heroes and droids and I would play the henchman and Boba Fett (bonus!).  With figures like the ones I do trying to make the figures look individual while using basically the same body, head, arms, and feet construction is a real challenge but is honestly the fun of it.  Jabba's henchman are all very distinctive from one another, and obviously the heroes look quite different from one another.  Plus ... no f-ing terrain to speak of except for the sarlacc pit which is really more of another figure than it is a terrain piece!  Yes!

So my 2022 Barrage Convention Game was born!  The Battle of the Great Pit of Carkoon!  And, to quote Pippin, "where are we going?"  In other words, where to start?

Breaking down the game it has the following requirements as I see them:

1)  2 Skiffs (small ships) each has a collection of henchman and one of them has all the heroes on it minus Leia and the droids.

2)  Sarlacc pit - a terrain piece but I will treat it like a figure.  I actually think this will be fun for me.

3)  Jabba's Barge - henchman, Boba Fett, plus Leia and the droids.  It also has a couple of medium-sized guns on it.  I really I don't need to do the interior of this thing for the game.  All the fighting will occur on the outside deck.  Might not need to put those iconic "sails" (protection from the suns, really) on it either as they will just get in the way of playing but I might, we'll see.  But the issue is it is HUGE and is going to be a real challenge.

4)  The Sands of Tatooine - fabric from Jo-anne's, no problem!

4)  Rules - I looked at some commercial rules but they all end up being too complicated for my taste for a convention game.  I'll just rewrite my normal fast and fun skirmish convention rules and give them a Star Wars feel.  Piece of cake.

I can do this in 2 months!  I know I can!

So off to the internet I went and found some great pages with pictures of everything I would need, including the crew for each craft.  

Part 1:  Enemy Skiff & Crew

Making the skiff I thought was going to be a nightmare, but it really turned out not to be bad once I focused on making them player/play friendly instead of trying to make them look exactly like they are in the movie.  I knew that for most of the parts of the skiff, I could use thick and thin craft foam and that turned out to be true.  The only things that are not craft foam on these skiffs is the control panel for piloting the vehicle (they are made from two wooden craft blocks, 3/4" one and then a smaller one that I'm guessing is 3/8" but I could be wrong) glued with the smaller one on top of the larger, and the kabob skewers that make up the rods of the tail fins.  Everything else is craft foam.

I had years ago made a trireme for a never-to-happen Greek and Persian Battle of Salamis game that I never did, so I knew from making the test trireme that I could use a similar construction process for the skiffs.  And it worked well I think.  Thick craft foam cut to shape and glued on top of each other gives the craft the height in places that it needs.  Then I used thin craft foam for the railings, cutting it as needed.  You can't really see it in these pictures but there is two layers of thick foam on the bottom as well first because the skiffs in the movie have a very shallow "hull" so that's what this craft foam on the bottom represents, but also these two layers on the bottom gave me something to use to literally sink the basing system I was going to use into the bottom of the skiff.  The tails of the fins and the circular pieces on the fins are also made of craft foam, the thin kind this time just like the railings.  Everything was glued with regular white glue or for the railings hot glue was used.

Constructing them did not take too long.  Painting them took forever.  To date, I have this one done with it's crew and the other one is 3/4 done but coming along well.  Here are some pictures of it with the crew figures on it with the fabric that will be used for the sands of Tatooine.

One of the trickier parts was how to attach the tail fins.  I didn't want to do it permanently because I knew in transit they would break off at some point.  So instead I used split spools glued flat side down to the floor piece of the skiff in the rear of the craft with squared off beads glued to the ends of each split spool sticking out from the side of the body of the skiff with the hole in the bead pointing in the right direction.  This allows me to slide the tail fins out and off the craft for transport, and they stay in place because of gravity, but makes it really easy to set them up once I need to do so for the game.

I took some liberties with its dimensions just to make the skiff more playable in the game.  The deck is about twice as wide as it really was relative to the size of the figure bases.  If I didn't make it wider, though, it would greatly limit movement for the figures and make for not a very fun game.  I also needed to tilt the tail fins differently than they are on the skiff in the movie so that the fins were less vertical and more flat.  If  I didn't do that, you know that ever turn at least one player or me is going to bump a tail fin as they are moving figures and knock the whole thing over.  But the length and the relative size of the front and back angled parts of the skiff are consistent with the skiff in the movie, at least as best as I can tell from photographs and some schematics I found online ... without any actual measurements in them, they were just drawings.  But helpful nonetheless!

You can see the base here a bit better.  This was another challenge, and I didn't want to purchase an aerial base from a company.  In the spirit of crafted figures, I wanted to make them using craft type supplies.  Michael's has greatly reduced their wooden craft supply section, much to my disappointment, but they do still have these thick wooden pre-cut pieces that are great for bases for the skiffs because they are so thick and heavy relative to the craft, not to mention being the perfect size.  How to get the craft to "fly"?  Again, I wanted to use existing craft stuff for the clear poles used to make the vehicle fly and thick glue sticks for a hot glue gun are perfect for this.  First, they are more or less clear.  Second, they are flexible.  This is really important because I know that I am not going to be perfect when cutting the holes in the first layer of foam that makes up the bottom hull of the skiff into which these glue sticks will be inserted to "hold" the skiff onto the base.  A little flexibility in the posts is not just ideal but it is going to be a requirement due to human error.

To make the base all I did was first use the glue stick as a guide for the hole size, I literally pushed it into the foam piece before it was glued to the bottom of the skiff which left an indentation for where the hole should be and how big) and then just cut out the holes out of the foam with a hobby knife.  So when this bottom hull piece is glued onto the next bottom hull piece the glue sticks will "slide" a ways into the bottom of the skiff itself.  Then after the holes were cut I put the foam piece on top of the wooden base and traced where the holes were on the base.  After that I glued the foam piece to the bottom of the skiff and then off to the hot glue gun which I used to attach the glue sticks to the wooden base putting them over the circles that I just traced from the foam piece template.  All that's left after that was painting the base which was easy.  I used a dark brown, burn sienna, milk chocolate brown, and a yellow ocher layered with a stipple brush and then removed any paint from the glue sticks (the acrylic pain did NOT like sticking to the glue sticks so this was easy).  Done!

Painting them was a nightmare and I wanted to do it freehand.  Painting them this way fits with the "folk art" style of the figures, so I'm glad I did it, but it took ... forever.  Painting the brown, then going back with black and repainting the lines to get them as crisp as I can freehand, etc.  But I am happy with the skiff.  It looks cool and is still playable as a mini game piece.  Onto the crew ...

This is the "escort" skiff, not the one that has the heroes on it originally (that will be my next update most likely).  So this skiff at the start of the game just has bad guys on it.  I eliminated one of them (honestly because I don't like how he looks as an alien!) but the rest of these guys are made to represent the henchman on this craft that were on it in the movie.  They of course eventually all die but not until Luke makes his way over to this second skiff craft.

They all have names, I'm not enough of a Star Wars fan to know or remember them, but these three humans are some of my favorites from this skiff.  The front guy with the diving helmet and the white jump suit is awesome.  The dude in the yellow-green jump suit is also cool (has great head wear), but my favorite hands down on this skiff is the human in the back with the sci-fi helmet and the ancient period torso armor.  I love how his pose came out.  I love how his paint job came out.  And he is just my favorite collection of armor, clothes, and weapons of all the guys on this skiff.

I am also a fan of the alien that is towards the back holding the gun down at his side.  His dark color scheme is hard to see in this picture, but he turned out cool.  The guys with the melee weapons (either a vibro-axe or a vibro-spear like this alien closest to us in this picture had) were not tough to do.  Just a collection of toothpicks, small beads, and cut pieces from tile spacers.  You can see the other human armed with the blaster at the front of the skiff in this picture.  He's the one who gets kicked by Luke in the face during the movie.

I hope you like them!  I am very happy with how things are going so far.  I think the hardest thing I have to do is going to be Jabba's barge just because it is so big, so I am saving it for last.  Next up, the skiff with the henchman and heroes on it, complete with a plank for Luke to be forced to walk.

Painted French Napoleonic Marine of the Imperial Guard

 In the last post I revisited my process for making shakos for my Napoleonic figures. Basically my original process of cutting a wooden spool in half, hollowing it out, etc. was a lot of work. Lopping the top of the pawn's head off did remove the step of hollowing out the shako, but cutting was still difficult as I was using a mitre chop saw on a round object, so it was never straight.

Using my laser cutter I was able to cut out a shako shape by essentially slicing it horizontally. With that done, I needed to paint it to see how it looked once done. I needed something with a French-style shako and a plume, so I decided on one of my favorite French Napoleonic units: the Marines of the Imperial Guard, part of the Old Guard.

Interestingly, Funcken has the cuffs as blue, while others show them as having red cuffs. I wonder if perhaps that is the difference between the campaign and parade uniforms because the image above (of the campaign uniform) also does not have the hussar-style chest lace that the parade uniform has. Nonetheless this is the uniform I am going for.

As a reminder, this is the unpainted figure.

My big question was whether I should break out the Dremel tool and sand down the shako brim, making it thinner and more distinct, or rounding out the arms and feet.

Here is the figure, painted to a tabletop standard.

Probably going to touch up the figure a little. If I made a unit of these I would add a cartridge box to the right hip, a pack and bedroll, which means painting the black cross belts, and add a musket and the sword they wore. As it stands, this one will just be a specialty figure that can fill in as a spare gunner, and engineer, or a pontonier.

The only complaint I have is the feet are too long and possibly not wide enough. From the standpoint of the shako though, if the slices don't line up perfectly – and they did not in this experiment – then you really want some sort of gap filler or you should sand. I tried painting gesso on top, but that was not thick enough to fill all of the gaps.

Overall, I am happy with the shako and will be using this process for all my hats now. I can see using it to make an Austrian-style shako, a round hat (although I would need to play with woods of different thicknesses), and others. I might even be able to pull off a WWII German helmet, but I think that will take some sanding.

Barrage! Convention Conan Game

 Spent yesterday at the Barrage wargaming convention and as always, I had a blast.  It's just a fun relatively small local gaming convention where I get to connect again with old friends (so good to see you Chris!), play games with the "regulars" from the Hawks who always play in my games (good playing again with you Rob and Norman!), and chat with my gaming heroes (thanks again for playing in my game, Zeb!).  We missed 2020 because of COVID obviously, so the last Barrage I went to in person was 2019 where I ran a Lord of the Rings game.  This year's game, as you know if you have been following this blog, was going to be Conan!

As is always the case with Barrage, I offered two games and had two great groups of players.  The organizers also gave me a table to myself so that I could leave my game set up in between the two games.  This is really not an easy thing to do, and I really, really appreciated this.  Thanks Hawks convention planners!

The game is co-op which is different than most games a minis conventions like this one, but the players in both groups embraced the necessity to use team work and seemed to enjoy the games.  Here are some pics.  Most are from the first game.  I was so tired for the second game that I didn't take very many pictures but there are a couple.

Onlookers soaking in the "weird" figures.

Speaking of "weird" figures.  We've got the two groups of riders as well as the anti-heroes Thorgrim (with maul) and Rexor (with sword).  The riders come on in turn 1, the two anti-heroes come on after turn 3.

Princess restrained so she does not flee back to Thulsa Doom!

 

After playing the test game I realized that I needed more visual interest in terms of terrain.  I added more sponge/bushes, which helped a lot, but I realized after watching the scene from the movie again the scarecrow skeletons of the long dead warriors who fought eons ago on this battlefield were very important in making the battlefield look distinctive and interesting.  So last week I threw together some skeleton terrain features (that the heroes can hide behind) including a skeleton horse cavalry figure!

A view from the player's side behind Valeria's funeral pyre.

Another view of the riders and anti-heroes from the other side at the start of the game.

First Turn:  Valeria charges off the pyre towards the riders!  You can see her next to that boulder in the upper right of the picture.

Here they come!

Brave Valeria charges into their midst!  "Get away from my man!!!"  You can see how this group used the three clumps of sharpened sticks and the one row of them (bottom of picture) to funnel the riders into one area of the boulders.  The riders can move through these obstacles but it takes several turns and really slows them down.  This keeps them from using their fast horses to ride around the side of the heroes and get to the princes!  The rider in the lower part of the picture thought about trying to ride around these pointy sticks, but later thought better of it.  It just takes too long!

Conan leaps out from behind a boulder, surprising the riders!

This was a very interesting combination during the first game.  As predicted, Conan and Valeria stand side by side trying to keep the riders at bay.  However, Akrio can be seen behind a boulder in the upper part of the picture, preparing to charge a rider from the rear by surprise.  The enemies on foot were knocked from their horses at some point and are now having to fight the heroes on foot.

The first group of players pulled Subotai back to the princes to protect her from Thulsa Dooms magical snake arrow which the heroes cannot stop from being fired.  But by having a hero next to the princess, the hero can take the shot from Thulsa Doom instead of it automatically killing the princess, causing the players to lose the game.  Subotai is making his last stand reloading as many of his spent arrows as possible from those he stuck in the ground on top of this burial mound before the battle began.  He took two wounds from the magical arrow from Thulsa Doom but saved the princess!

All four heroes surround Rexor and deal the killing blow.  Victory for the players in the first game with all heroes surviving!

This was during the second game and Conan is in trouble!  Valeria and Subotai are too far away to help, and this second group used Akiro to protect the princess so he is far away at the back edge of the board at this point in the game.  This could have been real trouble for Conan but the player rolled really well and ...

... although they made their armor saves and survived, Conan won the melee combat against four enemies and drove them back, causing them all to be shaken by the defeat!  This was a turning point in this second game with the pendulum swinging in favor of the players!

One added level of tension in this second game was that the heroes ended up having to fall back to the burial mound with the princess, which allowed the enemies to get closer to her and possibly killing her!  This is close to the climactic end of this game with three of the four heroes making their last stand at the base of the prince's burial mound.  Thorgrim is in the mix and Rexor is out of the picture towards the bottom but charging and would eventually arrive.  Akiro is still on top of the mound protecting the princess but would after saving her from Thulsa Doom's magical arrow make his way down and join the fray, casting his "Eye of Doom" spell at both Thorgrim and Rexor injuring them enough so that they could be killed off in melee combat with the heroes.

Interestingly, this game ended with the anti-heroes being killed and there was one remaining fanatical regular infantry enemy left alive, but we called the game here, there was no way he could possibly survive a melee combat against all four heroes at the same time!

Two very enjoyable games that in some ways were similar, but in others were very different.  It was easier for the horses to get past the heroes in the second game because of where the barriers were placed by the players, but they were still able to slow them down enough without a single enemy getting to the top of the princess's burial mound to try and kill her.  Both groups used great team work, which is the point of a co-op game, and I am very please with how these games went.  I hope to be able to run them again at Scrum Con this year.