The barn above is from Spellcrow and as with their house, it was a blast to paint. I have magnetized both buildings and will place them together, thus creating a small farm.
Something I love with the 10mm scale is that you really feel having accomplished something in an hours or two of hobbying, in contrast to the 28mm scale where everything just goes superslow. I definitely will do more buildings in the future!
Now, back to the plan. According to the Hordes of the Things (HoT) rules, I will need four pieces of terrain for my first game. The farm is the first. Next, I will get a few trees, a river stretching across the board, and finally a hill. The river and forest will count as “bad going” per HoT rules. I also ordered a cheap 60x60cm felt mat, which should be good for my first few games (I read about the advantages of polar fleece materials only after I had ordered). With all that in place, I should have a HoT compliant board!
My long-term goal is to play a game (probably against myself, although it would be great to find an opponent) in 10mm scale on a real wargaming table. I first thought it would be cool to try Oathmark in 10mm scale, but that was before I learned about all the other nice rulesets out there. For now, I aim at playing the game using the Hordes of the Things rules, which strike me as both simple and well thought-out.
In any case, as progress on my first army is going well, I have begun to think more about acquiring a table and some terrain. So to start somewhere, I bought and painted this wonderfully detailed 10mm house from Spellcrow. I was pleasantly surprised by both the price and quality. It was also really fun to paint!
The best thing about 10mm scale is how you can give your table a more realistic scale. Where buildings in 28mm are often unrealistically small, this house strikes me as pretty realistically scaled – as can be seen here:
I have one more of these buildings to finish before moving on. Already looking forward to it!
Yay! I just painted another 10mm wizard. This time it’s a wonderful miniature from Pendraken’s excellent “Dark Age Civilian Group,” who will now join my mage guild faction:
I always feel pretty happy about these models until I take photos and upload them. Then they look very sloppily painted… I guess I have to change my preferences and standards from 28mm scale if I ever want to be happy with these miniatures!
Anyway, I now also have a pretty good idea of where this army will end up: namely with four stands of spearmen, two stands of archers, two stands of cavalry, and two mounted wizards. That gives me a Hordes of the Things-compliant army – 24 points! – and also one that will work for various other games, such as Mayhem or Warmaster. Of course, I still do not have any opponents to play against…
I just had a look at the Mayhem: Fantasy Mass Battles rules. From my first read-through, they appear very interesting – simple and flexible with lots of alternatives for customization. Since I am building a few armies for 10mm scale I would like to give them army lists using the Mayhem rules. Since I do not have many miniatures yet, I’ll start with 100 crowns per army.
So, without further ado, here is the first list:
3rd Southern Expeditionary Force
A human wizard refugee city carefully expanding to secure trade routes and explore the surrounding area. No standing army; instead, a well trained and motivated city guard is called upon for diverse tasks. Republican political system, although heavily influenced by the wizard council. City is prosperous due to the construction and trading of magic objects.
Profile for city guard: Humanoid on foot gets D6 move. Good combat training for a humanoid confers D10 combat quality. Mail with padding confers D10 ballistic armor rating. Total cost: 13 crowns.
Profile for wizards: Humanoid on foot gets D6 move. While they are not trained in combat, wizards can still use magic tricks for self-defense; thus, they receive D12 combat quality. Not being armored, they get D20 ballistic armor rating. Total cost: 7 crowns.
I heard that the refugees were wizards and conjurers who fled persecution in distant lands. They came with an armada of ships and settled along the northern shore; there, they built their great city of marble, silver and iron. Merchants would sell them grain and meat in exchange for magic trinkets. The city guards were few but disciplined, always in good order, well-armed in shining mail and carrying spears and swords. On their shields are depicted a mythical “divine wave,” on whose crest their ships were saved from the ocean to dry land.
After a few evenings of sleeping children and visiting relatives, I have finished a total of 16 spearmen for my mage guild faction:
This time, I also gave them their shield insignia; next up is a banner, which will be my first serious attempt at freehand painting. I also enjoyed trying to paint shadows and lightning on models of this size – far easier and more forgiving than doing it at 28mm scale.
I am still aiming for playing Oathmark in 10mm with these miniatures, although I have been looking at Hordes of the Things and recently bought the rules for Mayhem. I have been “stuck” in the Games Workshop universe in all my life, so it is refreshing to discover popular alternative rulesets.
Now, about those (*insert profanity here*) bases: It is a complete pain trying to base metal models individually. When moving beyond these mage guild spearmen units, I have decided to use steel bases with magnetized trays, instead of neodymium magnets as bases with steel trays. The magnets were simply too powerful! Even with 8*0,5mm magnets, the models will easily snap together or push each other away. One lesson learned, many more to go…
Yes, I know that strips and shared bases (or “stands”) are the most common way to base 10mm miniatures, but I just find it unappealing to see models on the table that cannot move independently even in principle. Plus, an advantage with individual basing is that I can easily adapt my armies for different game and basing conventions. In fact, I can even play skirmish games with them! I would love to try Frostgrave in 10mm scale one day.
I just finished a unit of Copplestone City Guards for my mage guild faction. Since the spearmen will be using the shield wall special rules (found in Bane of Kings), they’ll come in at 150 points in total. Together with my wizard and apprentice, I now have completed 400 points – yay!
I have been completely blown away by the quality of these models – they basically paint themselves. What I need next is an opponent for my mage guild. Perhaps a group of orcs – even some raiding and pillaging wolf riders to take on? I have bought a nice collection of halflings, but I’m not sure if they are best suited as allies, neutrals, or enemies with respect to the mage guild. They’ll stay in the box for now.
I hope to eventually build up a small collection of models to try different things with. At the moment, I am primarily intending to try Oathmark in 10mm scale. But I am basing all the miniatures individually to easily be able to switch between different wargames and basing conventions – I am keen on trying out Hordes of the Things, for example.
As for basing the individuals, it is hard to get it to work on this scale. You need a lot of power (which means neodymium magnets) for safe transport – but you also need to keep the models apart from each other. I have switched to using 8×0,5mm neodymium magnets for my metal miniatures for now – we’ll see how that works. I might also experiment with building some hollow “GW”-style bases for them.
For my second 10mm Oathmark faction (to provide the opposition to my human mages) I’m thinking of going with elves. This raises the question of what miniatures to use – the 10mm fantasy offerings of Pendraken and Kallistra are taller than the usual 10mm scale, and so won’t fit with the rest of my models. Now, you might object, there exist 3D-printed high quality elves for Warmaster Revolution, so why not just use them? Well, I thought that – detailed as they are – their aesthetic was too far removed from the Tolkien-style roots of Oathmark. For this reason, I am looking into adapting Copplestone Castings “City Spearmen” and “City Archers. Here is my first attempt:
Not too bad, I guess? (And yes, I did try to paint a ship on that 5mm tall shield, and no, it did not work out too well…)
My biggest problem with these miniatures would be variety – there are just a few of these miniatures released by Copplestone Castings, and pewter is hard to convert at this scale. On the other hand, elves need less variety than other factions, with all the disciplined ranks standing at attention. I’ll just have to think about it.
In other news, I still struggle to provide good individual magnetized bases for these models. I have tried a number of solutions, and recently ordered some very thin Neodymium magnets (0.5mm) to base them on. Hoping that will work out, as that is my main obstacle from moving forward right now.
With two lovely but energetic children and a house in chaos I have not had much time or energy for painting 28mm zombies. So I decided to do something different and more manageable – building and painting two 1000 point armies for Oathmark in 10mm scale!
The first faction will be a human city state, run by powerful wizards. Here are my first two models, both from Copplestone Castings: an old wizard (lvl 3 spellcaster at 200 points) and his incompetent apprentice (lvl 1 spellcaster at 50 points):
The models are beautifully crafted. Although they were originally intended for Lord of the Rings, they fit in most fantasy settings. And they were a joy to paint as well – it took me just 40 minutes to finish these models, which is way better than the two or three hours per model that I usually need for 28mm scale.
Since I am scaling down the models, I also scale down the rules: changing inches for centimeters will do the job. I am also basing the models on 8mm round magnets.
With 250 points of spellcasters done, I just need another 750 points to round out this army! I am thinking that twenty spearmen and ten archers would be a good addition, but I might also consider some cavalry or a catapult.
Not much time for hobbying right now – moving to a new apartment with my partner and two children – but at least I finished assembling more zombies from Fireforge Games’ “Living Dead” range. Now it’s time for priming and painting, and then I will have a nice unit of twenty models. Hopefully I will have better luck with the leaves this time around.
I really like these Fireforge sculpts. Good detail, affordable, good options, and looks great in numbers.
Not sure where I would go next. My favorite “look” of an undead army is similar to that in the Game of Thrones series. The undead would have less dynamic posing, there would be more gradual differences between “skeletons” and “zombies”, and the whole army would function more like a mindless horde than a disciplined unit. It is not easy to achieve such a look with currently available 28mm models, however. But I have been considering a mix of GW’s new skeletons, GW’s new zombies, GW’s “Warriors of the Dead,” and Fireforge Games’ living dead range.
I recently got a miniature leaf puncher from Green Stuff World. You see my first attempt above.
The leaves are too large, so I should buy a smaller puncher in the future. Another issue is getting the leave to crumple on the ground in just the right way. I tried a lot of PVA glue and inks; didn’t work out very well. Conclusion: Leaves are hard!
I also tried pigments for rust effects. Those turned out much better, in my opinion. Especially the middle zombie’s axe. The trick was to use a lot of pigments and then carefully drop on some fixer medium on them.
