Sunday, 27 September 2009

Dungeon Crawl


Yesterday we played a further installment of my D&D campaign, and my eldest boy kept a rough narrative of the events, in cartoon form.  Above, Cassander the cleric leads Derck the thief, Paxmanicus the mage, brave Sir Titus and Dorian Fingertoes the other thief back towards the Palace of Tyresius.

The party's expert thieves scale a tall tree in order to reach the top of the battlements; and fall.  Some might say that two thieves in a party of five... is two too many.

Encountering a barred door, and seeing an eye peering through a spyhole, Dorian carries out some "keyhole surgery", with a skewer.  This initiated an orgy of violence as the party stormed into what turned out to be a Kobold stronghold, through a defensive barrage of darts and crossbow bolts.

Sir Titus (above) spent most of the afternoon trapped in a net, surrounded by a pack of Kobolds who fortunately experienced considerable difficulty piercing his magic platemail armour with their clubs and spears.  In the end, he had to be cut loose by the halfling!  Once he was freed, the party made swift work of the survivng enemy.

The party successfully ethnically cleansed this area of the former palace.  Unbeknownst to the heroes, who had blithely ignored the religious symbols scrawled on the doors to their section of the dungeon, the Kobolds had long before been converted to the lawful worship of St Cuthbert by a saintly Dwarven priest.  Above, a kobold warrior bids farewell to his family and marches off to his doom.

The party (above) were very (briefly) troubled by the realisation that they had sacked a Lawful Neutral temple, and slaughtered both priest and congregation.  There was some discussion about whether it would be safe to donate the holy books to the Temple of St Cuthbert in Hommlet; "We found them in a sacked temple."  And whether they'd get much money for them.

Later, during the night, a red apparition of a hag materialised and chased Sir Titus hither and thither around the room.  Sir Titus, who had decided (after due consideration) to spurn her advances, was saved by a barrage of holy water phials.

This week we had only four players, which seemed to help; the adventure rolled along very swiftly.  Hopefully we'll play again next week.

Saturday, 26 September 2009

Brasidas


Brasidas was a very effective Spartan General in the Pelopponesian war, whe opened a "second front" for the Spartans in Thrace, and who fell, fighting in the front rank of his victory at Amphipholis.  Foundry minis, beautifully painted by Nick.

If I have time, I hope to be able to photograph the finished Thureophoroi tomorrow.

Friday, 25 September 2009

Supernumeraries


Here are a couple of supernumeraries from my Greek army, ably painted by Nick Speller. The first is a porter from BTD, which is one of my favourite miniatures (perhaps even my overall favourite). I wish they did some more because it would be great to have a baggage train of similar minis.

The flautists help my Spartans to keep time as they sweep to the attack, and IIRC they are by Eureka miniatures.

Thursday, 24 September 2009

King Agesilaus


Wikipedia describes of Agesilaus II, (Greek Ἀγησίλαος) (444 BC – 360 BC) as a king of Sparta, of the Eurypontid dynasty, who ruled from approximately 400 BC to 360 BC.  During most of this time he was, in Plutarch's words, "as good as thought commander and king of all Greece," and was for the whole of it greatly identified with his country's deeds and fortunes.  Agesilaus conducted an interesting campaign in Persia, which presaged Alexander's later conquest, and was concurrent with Epaminondas of Thebes. 

Today's Spartan, like yesterday's Alcibiades, was also excellently painted by Dave Woodward.  The advisor is a Black Tree Spartan, very ably painted by Nick Speller.

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Alcibiades

Alcibiades was a key player in the Pelopponesian war, being successively an Athenian General, military advisor to the Spartans, then the Persians and after that Athens, again.  The idea for the disastrous invasion of Syracuse, was his; but he didn't execute it.  Perhaps it might have worked under his leadership?


I believe the Alcibiades mini was painted by Dave Woodward of EVM (and it is a really lovely paint job!).  I painted a standard bearer to join him. 

Tuesday, 22 September 2009

King Agis


I'm currently retouching and basing Numidians and Thureophoroi, and won't have anything to show for a few days.  So I've decided to show a few more command stands, this time from my Greek and Spartan armies.

This is King Agis, who commanded the Spartans at Mantinea (418BC).  At this time Agis, who had earlier blotted his copybook, was under the supervision of ten advisors, called xymbouloi, whose consent was required for whatever military action he wished to take.  Whether Agis was incompetent, or whether the council were slow to make decisions isn't clear, but a gap opened in the centre of the Spartan line and they almost lost the battle.

Nick Speller painted these for me; I've only depicted three of the ten advisors.

Sunday, 20 September 2009

Just a few Numidians..


These are the majority of the Numidian and Carthaginian levies  I am painting for Zama.

Greg has very kindly painted 160 (!) minis (the ones on the tray), but unfortunately they took a bit of a pasting in the post and will need a little tender working care to get them into the field.  I retouched a dozen last night, though, and I think it'll be relatively quick; hopefully I should be able to finish about a dozen a night.  As well as these, I have 28 more unpainted infantry and 24 mostly unpainted cavalry.  Plenty to do...

BTW this is my 100th blog post- thanks very much to my readers!