5.5 Assyrians

Robin has put up an article about his Assyrians for our Tale of 5.5 Gamers. Check it out here: 5.5 Assyrians

Assault on Black Reach

My friend Robin and I are painting up some of the figures from the Assault on Black Reach. Robin painted the Orks and I painted the marines. His Orks are better. These are for The Last Square for use in Assault on Black Reach demo games and for promoting the game before its release.

Terminators:

Tactical Squad:
Nobz: Deffkoptas: Warboss:

Hittite Scale Comparision

Here is a comparison of figures I plan to use for my Hittites and their Allies. Click on the image for a better view. The picture is crooked because of less then skillful use of a camera. The scale card in back is not angeled and all the bases are of equal height. The measurements on the card start from the top of the bases.

For the Hittites, New Line Designs, Miniature Design Studio (MDS), and Old Glory are all of similiar size. Now I generally like O.G. but the New Line and MDS figures are generally nicer. O.G. spearmen are ok, as seen in the picture, but the O.G. archers and slingers are about half as good as the O.G. spearmen and are not shown.

Both the New Line and MDS Hittites are great. What is even better is that style wise they are also close, but their outfits are different. This means I can get the 'varied look of empire' I want for the Hittites.

On to the allies, the Wargames Foundry biblical is nice, but starts to look small compared to everybody else. Both the New Line and Castaway arts figures are both very good and scale well together. These will make good allies but I will be limitting them to chariot troops in the Hittite army. I included them here as it is useful for the scale comparision.

For allied infantry I will be going with Lukka and Pheonicians. Again, the MDS Sea People figure is nice. The O.G. Sea Peoples figure is also not to bad and is only slightly taller. The only problem is the O.G. figure hit the gym more. They will still both make an appearence in my force. I will use the O.G. Sea People figures for Lukka and the MDS Sea People figures for Pheonicians.

As soon as I finish building them, I will do a similiar review with chariots.

Manufacturers Websites
Castaway Arts
Miniature Design Studio
Newline Designs
Old Glory
Wargames Foundry

Blood Bowl Humans

I've taken some stuff off my workbench to give myself some more room for my Hittites. In this case, it is my converted GW Blood Bowl team. They are called the Averland Avengers. The team is an old one, but I was touching them up after noticing some damage.

First up are the linemen:

These are converted Empire spearmen from the single pose unit days.

Next up are the Catchers and Blitzers:

The Catchers are from the multi-pose empire troops that came out in the 90's. The Blitzers are some extra Old Glory ren. pikemen I had sitting around.

Finally, I've got my two passers:

The Passer without the ball is another 90's spearmen. The other Passer is made from the Empire General that came with the 6th ed. Warhammer Fantasy Set.

5.5 Hittites - Primed and Ready

Ok, the 1st 500 points of Hittites have been cleaned, based, and primed. I primed the chariots and crew black. The horses, and everyone else has been primed white. Bascially for historicals, if the figure is mostly armor or a thing, I prime black. Otherwise I prime white. For non-historicals I prime with whatever color covers most of the model i.e. Dark Angels I prime green.

5.5 Hittites - The First 500 Points Part II

I need to make a small change to my 500 point army. Why? Here is the skinnie: I own WAB 1.0. The rest of the guys have 1.5. There isn't much a difference between the two, but 1.5 does include an errata, some additional army lists, and rules for 500 point games. Since that is what we are going to game wise for the first month it makes sense to use those rules. The problem is, my army is illegal with those rules. I have have 6 light chariots (two units of 3) and I am only allowed 3 light chariots total.

So, to fix that, I will be dropping the 3 3-man chariots and including a unit 12 Lukka. I will also be upgrading one of chariot warriors to a field commander for free due to the changed incentives.

A Tale of 5.5 Gamers Part IIa

Since we decided to adopt using the 500 point rules from WAB 1.5, we can change the bonus for the 1st month. This is because the 500 point rules expands on the options for generals in small forces. This works out well as characters capable of being generals varied wildly from army to army in terms of cost.

Month 1: If a player does not have a character capable of being general, a player may choose to upgrade one model to be the force leader (i.e. general) following the rules for 500 point WAB 1.5.

5.5 Hittites - The First 500 Points

The goal I am striving for with my Hittite army is to crush my opposition under the hooves and wheels of my chariots. Actually, I get the most satisfaction out of seeing a well painted army on the table top. I do enjoy playing and the 'research' is fun as well, but if I have to choose playability, historical accuracy, or aesthetics I choose aesthetics. Now this doesn’t mean I’ll have an elephant in my Hittite army. What it does mean is if I had to choose between two Hittite chariots the deciding factor will be which one I think looks better, not which one is more ‘historically’ correct. On to the playability aspect, well I insist on having chariots in my Sumerian army. That should say it all.

Now let us move on with the Hittites. Building a 500 point WAB army is rather tough. It is hard getting everything one wants in a 1000 point army and it is impossible for me to do so with 500 points. But I need to start somewhere. Normally, I start with the general but at 500 points, generals exceed the limit on characters. No big deal though thanks to the Tale painting incentives. So instead I move on to the chariots. When I think of Hittites, I think chariots. The list allows you to have a lot, historically they were considered to go heavy on chariots, and chariots look good on the table. So, for fun, I will go with a squadron of 3 3-man chariots and a Squadron of 3 2-man chariots. I will also grab a unit of 9 Syrian/Hurrian chariot runners.

One might ask, “Hurrian runners! What about Hittite runners?” Here is the deal. I said it was hard to build a 500 point WAB list. I wanted Hittite chariot runners but I couldn’t afford them. Then I hit upon the idea, I’ll start my 500 point force as an army of Arzawa and my free general will be Madduwatta! “Where and who?” one might easy ask. Well follow the links or read Collapse of the Bronze Age: The Story of Greece, Troy, Israel, Egypt, and the Peoples of the Sea. Basically Madduwatta was an upstart Anatolian who, though not a great general, seemed to stick around for awhile and give the Hittites headaches. He was a vassal, neighbor, and enemy (not necessarily in that order) of the Hittites. And to make this work with my project, I’m going on the principle that people of Arzawa dressed and fought similarly to the Hittites.

So back to my idea, with Madduwatta and Arzawa in mind I eventually plan to build a 1000 point Arzawa army and 2000 point Hittite army. They both can be combined for the occasional 3000 point WAB game. Why do that? Well, I have a bunch of Old Glory Hittites that I don’t like so much. I like O.G.s Egyptians but not their Hittites. I would sell them, but who would buy them? Plus, it is hard for me to let go of minis. Anyway, the second part of my Arzawa idea was to delegate the O.G. Hittites to the army of Arzawa and make use of other manufactures for my Hitties proper.

But I digress, and that will all be worked out later. After the chariot runners, I selected a 16 man group of Hittite spearmen and a 12 man group of Hittite archers. All totaled up that will give me 500 points of Hittites without a general. Add in the free general, selected as a Vassal King (perfect for Madduwatta) and I have a legal 640 WAB army. And to show off my army in unpainted glory, I’ve added a picture below:

1. Newline Designs Light Chariots


2. Newline Designs Hittite King


3. Old Glory Spearmen


4. Old Glory Archers


5. Old Glory Chariots


6. Foundry Northern European Bronze Age Javelins

The Newline figures will become part of my proper Hittite army. The Old Glory figures will be for my Arzawa force and the Foundry Bronze Age javelins will be useful for a number of Bronze Age armies including my Northern European one. Altogether they work will for my 500 'Hittite' point force.

A Tale of 5.5 Gamers Part II

We will be playing some of our Tale games on our regular game night. Not everyone in our group wants to buy or paint a ton of new figures. But they still want to play. So Chad and Tom will be working on extra units for the New Kingdom Egyptians loaner army. Others also already have painted units for their army. They will be allowed to use those as well.

But, what we are doing is as much about building up a cool new army as playing. So, as an incentive for people to start painting new figures, people who do paint up a batch of 500 points each month will get a bonus to their army for game.

Month 1: Free Army General
Month 2: Free 50 point unit of Allies
Month 3-4: To be determined

Also, part of the fun of Tale is reading about the process people make when building an army and seeing it come together. To that end, everybody who writes reports will get one unit of 12 skirmishers painted for them at the end of the tale series.