Thursday, 26 November 2020

Riders of Rohan

One of the finds from my Great Wargames Figure Count was my Riders of Rohan collection, they weee always my favourites from reading the books many years ago and their portrayal in the movies ignited my interest again. The figures had sat in an open box under the games table for years, they had so much dust on them I had to use an airbrush to clean them for the photos.

In typical Yarkshire Gamer style I ignored the rules and the dreaded points and just set off on my own Pelennor Fields journey. The book says 6,000 charged at the Battle, divide that by 33 (my usual figure scale) and that set a target of 184 figures.

Now 184 figures at GW shop prices is way beyond a Yarkshire Wallet, so I picked a load of stuff of flea bay for next to nowt. The Rohan Riders have a habit of breaking off the bases at the hooves so there is a lot job lot part broken or just badly painted figs out there to Hoover up.

The figures are lovely (didn't the Perrys sculpt them) and suit my painting style down to a tee, so once I got going on them I rattled through them pretty quick. I managed 90 of them before I drifted onto something else. There is a box of unpainted stuff (including a painted Eowyn) somewhere in the house if I ever decided to take the Pelennor Challenge up again.

So here is a run down of the units in the Army so far.

A 12 figure Royal Guard unit led by Theoden, the Royal Guard official figures are metal and at the time I built the Army they were rare as Rocking Horse and very pricey so I mixed a few lance armed plastics to make up the numbers. I never got round to finishing the banner on this one.

An 18 figure melee unit "The Red Shields" led by Eomer. A home printed flag on the unit which I would probably replace with a new one if I started using them again.

Another 18 figure melee unit this time with black shields led by Theodred.

The final melee unit are the Green Shield specially designed to stamp their authority on a battlefield (if you don't understand that last bit as your dad 🤣) led by an unnamed Rohan Officer leading, the Carnifex has come from some Gallic Warrior plastic box sets.

In addition to the Melee units I did two bow armed units of 12 figures (which proved rather good in the couple of games I actually played with them). The unit above with Red Shields and the one below Green.

It's definitely on the back burner the LotR project, I bought a few other figures around the time for some evil types so who knows when but one day these will rise Phoenix like from under the table.

All in all a nice find.

Tuesday, 24 November 2020

Yarkshire Gamer - November 2020 Video Wargames Update

We reach the end of yet another lockdown month, so what better than a video update on the goings on at Yarkshire Gamer.

There's lots of new stuff, some 70s buildings, including a rather famous car dealer, 28mm Italian Wars and 15mm WW2.

WIP this month is some 28mm Ancient Punic Wars Cavalry from 1st Corps, there's some new items in the games room including the rather swanky Triumph Dolomite below and a rather large purchase too.

It's been a steady month and November will see me building up to the Analogue Hobbies Winter Paint Challenge, lots of posts planned for December, I'll be releasing a feature length movie of the Great Wargames Figure Count, doing a feature on my riders of Rohan as well as a discussion piece on why the he'll have I got so many figures !

Friday, 20 November 2020

WW1 Mesopotamia Turkish Cavalry - Tiger Miniatures

A quick review post today of some more contenders in my search for 28mm Cavalry for Mesopotamia Palestine etc. Regular readers will have seen me try out a number of different companies figures over the last year or so in a search for more options for our WW1 games.

These cavalry come from a company called Tiger Miniatures, I found them on some random Google safari looking for new dealers for my lead habit, link below for details

https://www.tigerminiatures.co.uk/balkan-war-turks

The figures are for the Balkan Wars which occurred between 1912 - 13 just before our WW1 games, but there is nothing on these figures my untrained eye can see that would rule them out for Mesopotamia.

The figures are reasonably priced at £5.50 for two. Detail on the figures is reasonable, however there is not a lot of detail that could be added to what essentially is a featureless uniform. I do like the faces, lots of nice character in them. Size wise they are quite large, much bigger than the Minifigs East Ablaze Turkish Cavalry I looked at earlier this year.

The horses work well with the Yarkshire Gamer oil wipe method which is a big bonus. So the big question is whether I will get any more ?

The answer is yes, I have 6 so far so another 18 to make up a full unit of 24 is a must and the order will go out very soon. Very happy with these as another option for my Cavalry. Empress Miniatures have brought some new 28mm British Infantry suitable for the period and there is a whiff of some Cavalry too.

Next up in the Cavalry search will be some Newline Designs Indian Lancers due sometime before Xmas.

Tuesday, 17 November 2020

The Great Wargames Figure Count

This could be a long post and is definitely only for the geeks amongst you 🤔, but first a bit of background. A few months back I was interviewed on a Podcast style interview by Winston AB Rees for his Utubes channel, one of the questions he asked me was "How many wargames figures have you got", I guessed at 20,000. But it set me thinking, how many figures have I actually got !

So I counted them up, here are the results, the grand total is at the end of the post and I will put a running total on the side of the blog.

Starting with 28mm, the top photograph is my ECW Royalist collection of 581 figures.