Perseus, Medea and Some More Argonauts

A bit of a break from 40K today as I atempt to clear a few half finished projects off my desk.  First up is my completed unit of argonauts from wargames foundry that you can see above (and the new additions below).  The most inetresting of the bunch is the angel like zetes who is the son of boreas the north wind.  The other nine are pretty standard.

And finally a couple of extra personallities from greek mythology, on the left we have the mighty Perseus holding the head of medusa, and on the left we have the targic figure of medea who helped jason win the golden fleece in colchis.

Jason, Herakles and some Argonauts

Don't worry I've not forgotten that this is supposed to be a hobby blog and today we have my latest mythical Greeks from wargames foundry.  All of which feature in the tale of the argo.  I've bought 3 of the 4 packs of argonauts that foundry do, plus a pack called 'mythical characters' that also features some more argonauts plus perseus that I wanted (although he's not done yet).  I was planning on spreading out the main characters, but in the end I gave in and did jason and herakles first.

Argus, Jason and Polydeuces

Heracles and Hylas

Atalanta and Hypsipyle

Four of the more 'ordinary' argonauts

Foundry Legendary Trojan Heroes

Another pack from foundry's tribes of legend Greek mythology range today, this time the Trojan leaders from the Trojan war.  We get Priam and his two sons Hector and Paris, plus a couple of guards.  Whilst nice models I feel the guards would have been better done as a seperate pack and another couple of Trojan heroes added to this one, Aeneas for certain and possibly Polydamas or Glaucus.  Still I'm pleased with the result.

King Priam

Hector

Paris

Royal Guards

Foundry Legendary Greek Heroes of The Trojan War

The next bunch of my foundry ancient greek figures are finished, this time the Greek leaders from the Trojan War.  There is more than a little bit of resemblance between these figures and the characters as depicted in the movie 'Troy', not that I think thats a bad thing, 'Troy' will get a lot more watches than the Illiad gets reads and makes them all more instantly reconisable.

The Heroes

Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, Leader of the Greek Army

Menelaus, King of Sparta, brother of Agamemnon, husband of Helen

Achillies, Demi-God, Leader of the Myrmidons

Ajax the Greater, King of Salamis

Wily Odysseus, King of Ithaca

Medusa, The Gorgons and Some Centaurs

I've painted the first two of my Greek mythology packs that I recently bought from wargames foundry.  They paint up nicely and I'm particulary pleased with how the Gorgons came out.  I need to find a Persesus model from somewhere now, I'm looking at possibly getting the version from reaper minis.  Although from foundry's Tribes of Legend ranges the Gorgons currently don't feature in either of the two games in the tribes of legend book.  The centaurs conversely are favoured and are featured in both games, although with only 3, at the moment I'll only be using them in ancient heroes.

The Gorgons Stheno, Euryale and of course Medusa.

Two unfortunate victims

Medusa's deadly petrifying stare!

My three armoured Centaurs

Ancient Greek Peltasts

A few more ancient Greeks today for my tribes of legend city state army.  These are Peltasts from black tree design.  They're light skirmish and missile troops, the very opposite to the Hoplites that form the core of the force.  These are the first models that I've ever bought from black tree design and I'm happy enough with them, the service was pretty good too.  They didn't come with bases, but I've mounted them on Renedra bases to match my hoplites.

My First Package From Foundry

My first ever miniatures from wargames foundry arrived this morning, and consisted of 4 packs from their Greek Mythology range that I'm planning on using with Tribes of Legend.  The order arrived well packaged and very quickly, no issuse with the service.  I ordered the greek heroes, trojan heroes, gorgons and a pack of centaurs.

My new packs of figures

They come in old style blister packs complete with a little bit of foam and contain bases, although I got a bit confused here.  The infantry comes with different bases, my greek hero and gorgon packs came with circular bases, but the trojan hero pack came with square bases, a very odd policy that I can't fathom.  The other thing is that none of the models come with spears, which is rather odd, foundry sell spears seperately, which again seems like a crazy policy, my plan is to use spare spears from my plastic hoplites on the 5 models I have that need them.

Whats in the packs

Another thing to be aware of is that I saved my self over £4 simply by ordering from http://www.foundryfantasy.com/ rather than from http://wargamesfoundry.com/ as the main foundry sites charges a flat £8! postage on any order under £80.  Still for all my whinging I like what I've bought, am looking forward to painting them and would be suprised if these are the last figures I buy from foundry.

Achillies & Ajax assembled, although I've gone with square bases.

Immortal Miniatures Ancient Greek Hoplites

I've decided to collect a city states army for the new greek mythology game 'tribes of legend' by wargames foundy.  To form the core of this new force I've gone and purchased a box of ancient hoplites from Immortal miniatures.  And I have to say that I'm rather glad that I did, this has turned out to be a quality product at a great price.  The box contains 36 (although it says 34 on the box, I'm not sure if getting two command sprues was a mistake) multipart hard plastic 28mm Greek hoplites.  It also contains a sprue of renedra bases, a sheet of sheild transfers and a little booklet describing all the different options and how you should use them to represent phalanxes from different eras.  The box is even of the right type to hold assembled and painted miniatures.  All of which I paid £16 for from an ebay seller (I'm unsure what the RRP is, but if it's around the £20 mark this is still a good deal).  Compared to the sci-fi/fantasy stuff I usually buy I'm very happy with the quailty:cost ratio here, and just the fact they seem to have thought about the whole package.

In Tribes of Legend hoplite units come as a group of 16 models, that means this box will provide me with two complete units and still leave me with a couple of spare guys.  I plan to convert one of the spares into a standard bearer so these guys can make do as a stand in pikeman unit in my warhammer dogs of war army as well as fulfilling their primary purpose.

I've painted my first unit of 16, plus a musician and one of the spare guys.  I've decided to go for a uniform look without any sheild designs, which isn't really accurate, but it's my army and I like it!  I've also painted the skin slighty darker than I usually do to try give the army a mediteranian feel.

Tribes of Legend - A Book Review

I love greek mythology, I always have, I love reading the epics and I love many of the movies based on it (and am still firmly of the opinion that clash of the titans didn't need a remake) so as soon as I heard Jake Thornton (ex white dwraf editor and author of the dwarf kings hold series, which I like rather a lot) was writing a book allowing you to wargame the 'period' I knew it was inevitable that I was going to get it.

The book is published by wargames foundry and is just over a 100 pages long, has a nice hardcover and is in full colour throughout.  It's fully illustrated with lots of photographs of the new tribes of legend range from foundry, and there are several pieces of full page full colour artwork which I think are rather good.  It's a good high quailty production product.

The book contains 3 games, a mass battle game called 'tribes of legend', a skirmish game called 'ancient heroes' and a solo game, 'trials of a demi god'.  The book also has a lot of hobby material including painting guides for most of the range of models, a guide to making rivers and a guide to the greek gods.

The first game is the game of mass battles called 'tribes of legend' from which the book takes it name.  As a mass battle fantasy game I think it falls somewhere between warhammer and kings of war, I say this due to the way units work, you remove figures until half of them are dead and then remove the rest, no two men units left wondering around.  All measurement is taken from the unit's leader which makes things nice and simple, in fact I think the movement rules are really quite elegant.  One major difference between this and the other games I've mentioned is that tribes of legend works on an alternative unit activation rather than moving all your forces at once, this is something I really approve of, and it actually makes the game feel different from warhammer/kings of war.  The game comes with army lists for city states, amazons, hillmen, satyrs and centaurs.  This is the weakness of this game, whilst 5 lists sounds quite good they only contain 3 entries each which really limits the possibilites, also the game features none of the heores or monsters from the model range.  The core rules seem solid, but the lack of army options lets it down a bit, the amazons seem espeically odd as the chariot and cavalry feature in the book but there are no rules for their use.  Still it's fun enough and I have a city state army being painted up at the moment.

Ancient Heroes is a skirmish game where you take a group of 5 heroes and try to take control of a temple against other poeples bands of heroes.  It's a small sacle skirmish game that uses a deck of cards to resolve combat.  It's really innovative and different and works really well, although it does take a while which means that this game isn't scalable, you're not going to want more than 20-30 models on the table, this isn't a bad thing though and allows you to pick up a couple of packs of figures from foundry and get gaming striaght away.  Again the weakness is the variety in choice of heroes, you can only pick man, harpy, stayr, centaur and minotaur.  None of the bigger monsters or even cyclopes (which get a detailed painting guide in the book) or gorgons can be used which I feel is a big shame.  Even with that I like this game a lot and feel it's the best part of the book.

The final game is called trials of a demi god, which is a 'solo' game that you play on your own, trying to complete the labours of herakles, its the first time I've had a go at anything like this and to be honest it didn't grab me.  Without an opponent to beat it just didn't inspire me, it also takes up quite a large page count which I feel would have been better used on expanding on the previous two games.

All the hobby sections are ratehr good and i like the fact they've bothered to suggest paint schemes for the entire range and there are a couple of more in depth painting guides that are quite good as well.  The making rivers section seems a bit random, but is making me thing about actually giving it a go, my scenary collection could really use a river.  I didn't really need or learn anything from the guide to the gods, but it does help set the scene.

So in conclusion we have a great guide to the foundry greek mythology range, which contains the core of a couple of good games and allows you to get fighting with ancient greeks straight away, it's just a shame the range hasn't been utilised in full.