Painted up for me courtesy of Chris Mcgreevy. A GW oldhammer Red Redemption cultist, a Wyvern from Reaper Miniatures and a Barrow Warden from Reaper’s budget Bones line.
Over the past couple of years we’ve developed a bit of a Corehammer tradition that we like to call The Oath Of Moment. At the dawn of each new year we take stock of our respective piles of shame. With sober and unclouded eyes the participants in this cleansing ritual swear a solemn vow to make a significant dent in reducing said pile. More often than not these well intentioned boasts of change and progress fall to the wayside by March but for some amongst our number these Oath’s have motivated some serious hobby development.
Back in 2013 I promised to get a few thousand points of Space Wolves painted to a tabletop standard in order to participate in the Dark Throne 40K tournament we hosted. On that ocassion my stubborn diligence paid off and despite getting a good hiding, the Sons Of Fenris at least looked good whilst doing so. However the Dark Elf challenge I set myself the year before got absolutely nowhere. Like not even out of the fucking shoebox in which they festered. Fortunes of war and all that.
I’m no painter but I had fun doing this Wizard from Midlam Miniatures
In 2015 I had pretty much abandoned tabletop wargames in favour of D&D and paying other more talented people (sellbrushes as we like to call them) to paint the required miniatures for me.I got to play the games I wanted with beautifully painted miniatures. With the burden of painting delegated elsewhere, I could concentrate on writing the adventure for my players. I am a pretty lousy wargamer and a mediocre painter but I have a fairly decent line in bullshit and can weave a tale when I want so D&D is a better fit for my natural talents.
However 2016 is a fresh year and having gotten my teeth into Frostgrave I found myself more inspired to paint and create than I had done in the past 18 months. So I figured I should act upon that enthusiasm and set myself a realistic Oath Of Moment challenge this year. I don’t forsee any massive tabletop battles in my immediate future so rather than get too big for my boots and attempt an army that I’ll inevitably get pissed off with painting after a few weeks I thought i’d try for something multi functional.
Frostgrave Bowman with a few headswaps led by a Wildling Spearwife. Painted up by Ben from Midgard Games
My preference of late has definitely been toward skirmish levels games. I like that the games don’t take all afternoon and require a mode modest miniature count. Sure it’s not quite the same spectacle as having legions of toy soldiers lined up on the battlefield, but I’m more of a scrappy guy anyway. As mentioned previously Frostgrave is my current drug of choice but my attention has also been drawn to the likes of Dragon Rampant and Songs Of Blades and Heroes. Guerilla Tabletop’s Ash Barker also suggested I check out Otherworlds Skirmish rules set too. I like what I’m seeing, very old school D&D flavour, yes we’ll have some of that.
So with those game options in mind I am going to take a crack at putting together a vintage Dark Elf raiding party, an old school Undead horde and assorted gribblies. These are all things that i have knocking around upstairs in the attic so in keeping with the rules of the challenge I won’t have to cough up any dough for actual miniatures (though if anyone has the old Nightmare Legion Regiment Of Reknown up for grabs, lets talk).
Foundry Elves once again painted by Ben Midgard
The Dark Elves will serve double duty as a warband for Frostgrave and are also required as raiders for part of my current D&D campaign. The aesthetic I’d like to achieve with those is inspired very much by the illustrations of Dark Elves in the old Fighting Fantasy books. I also love the depiction of the Elves in Guillarmo Del Toro’s Hellboy 2, particularly the colour pallete. So essentially some combination of those two interpretations. One of my commission guy, Ben over at Midgard Games, painted these Elves from Wargames Foundry up to those specifications. I’ll be using those as a colour template for the regular troops. The models are a mixture of suitable old GW Dark Elves, some Otherworld Drow and more of those glorious Elves from Wargames Foundry, possibly my favourite elf models ever. The sculpter really captured the cold arrogance and cruelty that gives these guys and girls an almost Unseelie Court feel.
The undead horde are once again multi purpose. I’ll be needing a graveyard full of skellies for a D&D setting in the not too distant future and I have always had a boner for the way the undead were portrayed in the early Warhammer editions. Somewhere between Ray Harryhausen and John Blanche is the vibe I’m going for there and I have a bunch of old GW sprues, some Mantic and Wargames Factory skellies and a couple of metal character models to utilise. Quite excited about building a swarm of mouldering, hateful dead crawling out of dank tombs and frozen barrows to wage war upon the living.
A Herne The Hunter inspired character from Reaper for my Frostgrave/Dragon Rampant forces. Great paint job from Chris Hird at Wasteland Miniatures
I’m setting myself the very reasonable goal of having these two projects knocked out by around June. I’ll try and post updates at least once a month. I bet I eat shit on this project like I always do but the gods love a tryer. Joining me in the Oath Of Moment challenge this year (so far) are Brinton and Tanya with possibly a few more to follow and we’ll be posting their bold promises over the next couple of days. Onward!