War Griffon completed!

Well, not completely done - I still need to sand and flock the base.  And it turns out I (repeatedly) forgot to paint the little chinstrap on the rider's helmet.  But this is otherwise varnished and everything.



I got this figure maybe 2-3 years ago. The rider's sword arm (a separate piece) was missing, and repeated attempts to source a cheap donor model to part out for a spare gauntlet-with-weapon were not successful. More recently I've been hankering to play Dragon Rampant again, but with larger armies ("big battle" style such as we have been doing with Pikeman's Lament and Lion Rampant) and using some of the scenarios from our historical games (such as our Middlewich game).

I'm not really a big fan of the Empire and Bretonnia lines by GW, with the exception of a few select items (this griffon rider, GW's older flagellants, some of the older Empire Knights), but I do like Black Tree Design's "Helsinians" line (formerly made by Harlequin) - mainly because they have a look to them that is not Empire/Bretonnian (although their 'Averaign' line, by contrast, looks very Bretonnian).  I have enough figs from the Helsinian line to make three units of foot, plus a unit of flagellants/fanatics, and also the old GW Empire War Altar model, so that should make a good core army.

War Griffon

I managed to block paint and dry-brush this over the course of the weekend - a nice distraction from the never-ending Italian Wars painting slog!



Quite pleased with the feathers although the picture isn't quite perfect.



I'll probably use a dark-brown-only wash on this fella (my new preferred wash is a dark-brown/black mix which gives a nice ink effect).

The human rider is done too.

LizardRat War

I swear I've either been painting this army on and off forever or finished painting it forever ago, but as the fall wargaming season lurks upon us I finally played a game of Dragon Rampant, Dan Mersey's fantasy spin-off of Lion Rampant.  I was running a Ratpeople army of figures by Games Workshop, Black Tree Design, and Reaper Miniatures.  Gabe was running Lizardmen from a similar field of manufacturers.

We started off playing the 'hunt-for-crystals' scenario but using sheep instead of crystals, but quickly realized that my preference for 4'x3' play-spaces caused that objective to be accomplished with absolutely no one getting in combat at all - not even any harsh language!

So we just added the 'Bloodbath' scenario objectives on and kept playing.

My big moment then finally arrived! My summoner conjured the demon Orcus to appear on the battlefield!  I had not told Gabe that I had purchased or painted this model so that was a fun surprise!

Less fun but also a shock to both of us was that greater warbeasts like Orcus and a hydra can kill each other really fast or weaken each other really quick!  The hydra dispatched Orcus back to the helldimensions, but some determined ratpeople managed to eventually slay the hydra.

Many slayed figures later, Gabe cakewalked to the win, having achieved the bloodbath objective and several self-imposed objectives as well. Me? Well the ratpeople stole more sheep so that's something!