Vampires Don't Like It Up 'Em!

I've not played 7TV for ages, and I've had everything painted and ready for running the Vlad's Army feature pack for a similar time.

So, when Matt became available for a game at short notice, I suggested we take a trip to wartime Britain and visit the stoic defenders of Walmington-On-Sea as they confront something that will send chills down all of their spines.

And I'm not talking about Private Fraser.

Cue the music and title sequence...

Vlad's Army merges a classic British sitcom, Dad's Army (although other names are used, I'll be ignoring them for clarity), which is about the bumbling and ineffectual members of a small town's Home Guard unit, and the nightmarish horrors of Weird World War II.

A natural fit, I'm sure you'll agree. 

In the three game campaign, the Home Guard try to contend with an undead infiltration force which is intent on disrupting the defences prior to a potential German invasion.

In the first scenario, the Battle of Godfrey's Cottage, a Home Guard patrol sets out to investigate a possibly enemy landing near the home of Private Godfrey and his two sisters.

Due to the amount of other people who show up in the game, I can only assume there was some kind of parish council meeting taking place.

The Home Guard must protect the civilians and drive off the undead invaders, which seem intent on slaying or converting all that they encounter.

The Home Guard patrol dispatched to the enemy landing site included the following personnel:

• Sergeant Wilson
• Corporal Jones
• Private Pike
• Private Godfrey
• 5 Home Guard Reservists

They spread out along the road and advanced cautiously towards the unknown threat.

Meanwhile, the vampiric minions and their local turncoat allies included:

• 3 Nachtjager Kommando Vampires
• 3 Half-Blood Turncoats
• 3 Wolves
• 6 Totganger Zombies

It's not clear why the Germans had disguised their glider as a Spitfire with American markings. Possibly it was to sow confusion. However, it's more likely to do with the limited budget available to the BBC props department in the early seventies.

Upon arriving at the cottage were met by Godfrey's sister Cissy, who volunteered as a nurse at the local hospital, rushing out to greet them.

She informed them of the aircraft that had come down and the odd shapes seen loping through the fog before pointing out that her guests at the parish council meeting had scattered and were probably lost in the darkness.

"Would you mind awfully rounding them up and dealing with whatever is out there?"

With that, and without Captain Mainwaring around, Sergeant Wilson politely asked his men to commence the search. Pike and a detachment spread out and explored the garden, the rest of the men stayed back to protect Cissy and Corporal Jones ran off into the trees shouting, "Don't panic!"

Meanwhile, by the glider, the Vicar had fallen into the clutches of some of the vampiric minions, namely a group of half-blood fifth columnists who had rushed out to greet their masters' arrival.

"I must say, I'm very disappointed to see you here Mrs Von Gruber, I shan't be asking you to organise the jumble sale again."

The Vicar's life was saved when the dulcet tones of Jones' less than stealthy search technique drifted through the night air.

He and another captive were quickly bound and gagged as the forces of darkness moved out towards the cottage.

The Verger was found cowering behind some plant pots. When questioned he said, "the Vicar's going to be very unhappy if he's not rescued."

"Why?' said Mr Jenkins, the tailor.

"They're going to eat him."

As the Nachtjager and it's minions reached the fence rifle and SMG fire pierced the night and a Half-Blood and a Wolf were brought down.

But the Nachtjager Kommando inhumanky shrugged off bullets and swooped towards one of the Reservists, ripping out Jenkins' throat as the Verger looked on, aghast.

Almost immediately, Jenkins rose up again, an unhealthy parlour to his skin and a fell light in his eyes.

"Excuse me, sir," said Sergeant Wilson, calmly, from behind the Verger, "if you wouldn't mind following me," and led the terrified man to the fence, where an ad hoc firing line had been assembled.

Wilson gave the order and gunfire ripped into the Nachtjager and Jenkins, and the poor tailor died for a second time that night.

Meanwhile, Corporal Jones, who had been giving a good account of himself, found himself surrounded. Contrary to his own advice, he did panic and ran off into the trees to escape death. 

Reviewers have since commented that it seemed implausible the Jones would survive such an encounter, however, it has been pointed out that Jones was a fan favourite, but also that Clive Dunn was still in contract.

With the undead on the advance, Wilson ordered the retreat in order to protect the Verger, Cissy and Godfrey's other sister, Dolly, who he had slowly retrieved from the cottage, along with his trust cricket bat 

"You took your time in there, Godfrey."

"Did I? I must have dozed off."

Suddenly, something strange can over the Verger. His breath became raspy and he leapt for Sergeant Wilson, trying wrap his hands round the throat of the Chief Clerk of the Bank.

"Do you think that's wise? Is this about the refused loan for church roof?"

The Verger's attack was brought to a halt with a loud think, when Godfrey, of all people, struck him on the back of the head with his cricket bat.

"Godfrey! That was a bit heavy handed, wasn't it?"

"Well, sir, my sister Dolly was telling me that he'd been rather rude about her buns."

Another Nachtjager had crept up on the Home Guard, using the cottage as cover. However, its clever ruse was countered in a shower of glass as Pike ran into the cottage and emptied his SMG through the window.

"Don't tell mum, Uncle Arthur."

Having learned from the fates of their fellows, more of the vampiric host were creeping up through the trees.

A wolf burst out of the undergrowth, but was surrounded and brought down by the men working together.

Meanwhile, Mr Norris, the Headmaster of St Gavin's School, was found hiding in the shed and met a grisly fate.

Shortly afterwards he had joined the enemy forces as a mindless slave, a fate which would have amused many of the boys.

Realising that they would be unable to rescue anyone else, Wilson gave the order to leave.

However, he was grabbed at the last minute by the undead Norris and was unable to retreat as the last of the Nachtjager closed in.

Sergeant Wilson smiled wryly as the creature looked over him. It's beastial arm lashed out and sent him sprawling, but his life was saved as another volley of gunfire drive the creature off.

The Battle of Godfrey's Cottage was over.

At the end of everything, two of Matt's vampires and both of my co-stars (Wilson and Jones) had been taken out of action, but the vampiric cast had been axed meaning that the tally of victory points was 3-2 and the Home Guard had won something of a pyrrhic victory.

This scenario was a bit of a tough ask for Matt as his close combat force had to advance across open ground against rifle-armed soldiers. Also, without any stars or co-stars he had a bit of an issue with not being able to activate his whole cast.

The action now moves into the centre of Walmington-On-Sea, where Captain Mainwaring will be trying to interrupt the enemy's travel plans.

Flying Horror: A Tale of 4 Armies

The commitment to delve to the bottom of the bits box throws up some fairly problematic situations along the lines of: how the hell am I going to use those?

When the problem facing me was a veritable bucketload of monopose plastic bats, I feel I may have come up with a pretty good answer.

The old plastic swarm kit, which I believe was initially made for Warhammer Quest, was simultaneously great and terrible.

Whilst it successfully provided an affordable way to add swarms of Bats, Rats, Spiders and Snotlings to your armies, it was a very rare individual who wanted all of them. On top of that, the uniform monopose nature of the sculpts somewhat undermined the concept of a swarm.

Alternatively the models could easily be scattered around an army as base decoration quite easily. Well, apart from the bats, which sat upon chunky flight stands that looked like they'd been impaled.

Therefore, when it cam to making use of my truckload of them, the first thing to go was the stands.

I had a good look at different manufacturers' bat swarms and opted for simply gluing them together in clumps to give the impression of a confusing swarm.

I used plastic glue for this to form a longer, stronger bond, but the time it took to dry did present some issues with things falling off during construction (largely because I was a bit impatient). The trickiest element was getting a strong enough bond on the base bat to build from.

When it came to painting I opted for keeping it really simple. Going for a Grey Seer undercoat, Black Templar contrast drybrushed with Eshin Grey and Administratum Grey.

Although I'm fully aware that bats aren't black and this makes them a bit cartoony, I'm completely happy with this as the Vampire Counts army, not to mention the whole Warhammer world, have always been more than a bit cartoony.

The teeth and tongue were picked out in white and pink respectively and given a coat of Skeleton Horde contrast paint, whilst the eyes were dotted white and washed in Hexwraith Flame for added spookiness.

I've made sure the unit ranks up because I didn't check the army list before making them; in Warhammer: The Old World Bat Swarms are skirmishers, but this hasn't always been the case. However, my careful construction will at least help with storage.

I've always liked Bat Swarms in my Vampire Counts army as they make for a good blocking unit, protecting the flanks of my cavalry, as they can keep up with them.

All in all, I'm really pleased in how these have turned out. Very few things in my hobby please me more than making a 200 point unit for this army game out of things I had no intention of ever using.

Call me petty, but I consider these things as a degree of compensation for what Games Workshop  did to my Undead in 1999. It's what Cheaphammer is actually all about.

#neverforgetthesundering

I still have a load of the metal Bat Swarms knocking about, but they ended up being based separately for more generic fantasy skirmish games, and I'm not sure I'm going to bother to bring them back over to this army. Much as I like swarms, I'm not sure I need even this many.

Beyond that, I genuinely only have a couple of character models to go and my Vampire Counts will be done to the point of no backlog.

To top things off, I think Bat Swarms were the only models I hadn't done for the Vlad's Army feature pack for 7TV, so you can expect an imminent start on that.

The terrain piece I've done was actually bought last week to be carved up and used as a base to pin the bats too until I decided to just stick them together.

It's a Renedra kit and I took the opportunity to play with how I do stone using something I saw on a video. After a base of Grey Seer and Black Templar (I don't have any black spray) I sponged on some Administratum Grey followed by Grey Seer on the edges and corners.

I them proceeded to wash it with three colours at once: Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade and Seraphim Sepia. I did different colours in different bits and merged then whilst they were wet, which has ended up giving a much more mottled and natural look than a flat colour with a single wash.

I'm really pleased with this and will probably pick up the other kits in this set of ruins to do the same with.

A really successful 24 hours. 21 models off the Lead Mountain, but I'm only counting them as 7 models painted given that it was all so simple.

Acquired: -12 
Painted: 144
Lead Mountain: 831

Zomtober: A Zombie By Any Other Name...

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm returning to participating in the annual Zomtober blogging event in which participants paint at least on zombie or survivor each week during the month of October.

I'm hoping to do more that just a single model or even single post each week if I can and so this might just be my first submission of the week.

I've been known to stretch the definition of what qualifies as a zombie previously and so I thought that this year I'd back up my claims  with the Oxford English Dictionary, which reads thusly:

zombie
/ˈzɒmbi/
noun
noun: zombie; plural noun: zombies

1.

• a corpse said to be revived by witchcraft, especially in certain African and Caribbean religions.

• (in popular fiction) a person or reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature capable of movement but not of rational thought, which feeds on human flesh."a world overrun by zombies"

INFORMAL

• a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings.

PHILOSOPHY

• a hypothetical being that responds to stimulus as a person would but that does not experience consciousness.

• a computer controlled by another person without the owner's knowledge and used for sending spam or other illegal or illicit activities.

2.

• a cocktail consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice.

As you can see, there's a fairly large amount of leeway on what exactly constitutes a zombie. So let's get on with the excuses.

So you'll have noticed that this large bat-like creature is a vampire, not a zombie. However, I would argue that a vampire qualifies as "a reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature...which feeds on human [blood]."

No?

Okay, this one isn't a zombie, even though he's dead.

The miniature is from Crooked Dice and is one of the villainous co-stars in the Vlad's Army feature pack, which I'm going to get round to playing at some point, I think I have almost everything I need, although I might need to rebase some bats.

In terms of painting I kept things incredibly simple, just using Wyldwood contrast paint over Grey Seer and then giving it a gentle drybrush to highlight.

You might notice that the base is a little Venetian for the English countryside, and that's because I intend to give him a second life in my procured strigoi force in Carnevale as a monstrous Stryzga, which I believe is a vampire that has been fed only on lunatics and other vampires.

These next miniatures have been cobbled together using bits from various Frostgrave sprues after it dawned on me that I could use the sprues I had to create a few more models for my Freedom Force project.

I'm quite pleased with my ingenuity to be honest.

They were painted simply with Kantor Blue or Emperor's Children drybrushed over a black base and the skin was done simply with Skeleton Horde contrast paint.

They are actually my attempt at Dark Men, the mind controlled and disfigured minions of Shadow. The come in two varieties, Purple and Blue. Purple Dark Men have the power to disappear and attack from the shadows whilst Blue Dark Men add lightning bolts to the mix.

Do they count as zombies?

Well, due to being mind controlled they are not capable of rational thought; their shambling gait and pallid skin makes them appear lifeless; the attack as a horde and they live amidst a subterranean ruined (almost apocalyptic) version of Patriot City created by Shadow.

So they are sort of zombies. Metaphorical zombies? Zombie-like?

Well, they at least look enough like zombies to be used as such, so I'm saying they count.

I still might try to get a proper zombie done before the weekend as insurance. Not that the zombie police will be round if I don't.

Acquired: 83
Painted: 235
Lead Mountain: 450

The Old Guard

In a startling display of efficiency, I 've finished almost all of the models that I bought at Vapnartak a couple of weeks ago. That just leaves a single second hand dreadnought to do.

This time it's eight Home Guard I purchased from Wargames Foundry to fill the ranks of my ad hoc VBCW/Operation Sea Lion Bolt Action force, turn my Dad's Army miniatures into a couple of useable units and fill out the extras needed for the Vlad's Army 7TV feature pack scenarios.

The models are metal, as would be expected from Wargames Foundry, and were all single piece castings except for the chap on the left of the above picture, whose hand holding the rifle was separate. This was a bit of a swine to position as the connection was not very clean or well lined up.

Sadly, this was a bit of a recurring theme, as there was an awful lot of flash to clean up and some of the models are a bit messy in places. The chap in the centre with the Molotov cocktail below has an ugly mould line running down the left side of his face. 

I'm not sure whether this is because this sculpts, and therefore their moulds are old, or I've just come to expect a higher standard from dealing with newer miniatures and different materials recently. However, based on these and the police, I will probably pause for thought before buying more from Wargames Foundry.

Having said that, the sculpts are characterful. The rifles are a bit stunted (and in one case slightly warped), but the faces are, for the most part, older men. Receding hairlines, glasses and overgrown moustaches abound to really make they miniatures fit the role they are meant to play.

A couple of the group are clearly meant to represent characters from Dad's Army, specifically Walker and Pike, and so I took care to make sure that they are recognisably different from the Warlord versions, giving the not-Walker grey hair, and ensuring that not-Pike's scarf is more generic.

Although I was a little bit critical of the casting of the Warlord models, based on a direct comparison I recommend them over Foundry if you are keen on picking up the Warmington-On-Sea militia.

In terms of painting, they were all done very simply in the same way as the Warlord models and they do go together really well. They now have a date with some supernatural agents of the Third Reich in the first episode of Vlad's Army, just as soon as I rebase a load of bats...again.

I'm pleased to be making such quick progress, as I was worried I'd undone my hard work at the start of the year. I've also started to sweat less about being exactly right with the Lead Mountain totals as I keep finding new miniatures or getting rid of things I won't use . the figure is roughly right and is going down, so it's all good.

Acquired: -4
Painted: 60
Lead Mountain: 521

Who Do You Think You Are Kidding?

A few weeks ago I painted up most of the Nazi/Undead invasion forces for the Vlad's Army feature pack for 7TV.

Today it's the turn of the stalwart defenders of good old Blighty: the Home Guard of...'Walsingham-on-Sea"?

I had originally intended on using a cobbled together force from my VBCW/Operation Sealion army for Vlad's Army, but back in the summer at the 7TV Fantasy day, I was surprised to receive on of the 'Most Sporting' awards, and my prize was a Dad's Army box for Bolt Action from Warlord Games.

Given that the defenders of Walsingham-on-Sea are less than loosely based on Captain Mainwaring & Co. I figured I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth and would do this properly.

The box contains 18 metal miniatures of the main characters both in and out of uniform, along with a few additional characters from the show.

The sculpts are very characterful and some of the facial expressions are excellent. I particularly like the gormless looking Private Godfrey.

Despite the character they have, I often find the casting of Warlord Games metal miniatures to be a bit rough, requiring more clean up than other manufacturers I use for Bolt Action (Artizan or Crusader for example).

Thus was particularly true for Corporal Jones, who needed some hefty chunks of flash removing.

This set also represents the first time I've painted WW2 British, and so I had to actually do some research rather than just slapping on what I had available.

I used a base of Vallejo English Uniform, with Khaki for the webbing and Ushabti Bone for the packs and gaiters. A coat of Agrax Earthshade later I highlighted up the webbing, packs and gaiters for contrast. Helmets were done with US Dark Green, with lighter green highlights on the leaves.

Vallejo always seems to be my go to brand for painting WW2.

Although intended for Vlad's Army in the short term, this unit can also feature in Bolt Action should I ever return to Operation Sealion. They will serve adequately as Old Soldiers in a Home Guard list, or even as the actual characters, as there are special unit rules for the cast.

As mentioned earlier, the box also contains duplicate sculpts of the main characters before they received their official kit.

Although not needed for Vlad's Army, it seemed a shame not to get them painted at the same time, and they can easily work as LDV (Local Defence Volunteers) in Bolt Action.

I believe their outfits and equpment are based on the Dad's Army TV movie which charts the formation of the unit.

As such, the painting was a bit more fiddly that for the models in uniform, especially Jones' apron, the LDV armbands and Pike's scarf (although that is on both versions of the stupid boy).

Again, these are a characterful bunch, but I'm disappointed in Walker. Not only does he have quite a nondescript pose, he also has a distorted face.

Additionally he's not armed with the shotgun he arrives at the first training session with, much to Mainwaring's chagrin. It feels like a missed opportunity, especially as LDV units can include a couple of shotguns.

Naturally, wherever the Home Guard go, Warden Hodges will be there to annoy them, and so he also has sculpts both in and out of uniform.

Given that he's unarmed in both poses, he is likely to feature in Vlad's Army as one of the civilians that are destined to be bitten by a vampire or rescued by the Home Guard.

It's not clear which fate Hodges would dislike more.

Finally, to round out the set, we have the Vicar and the Verger. Not only are these characters likely to feature as civilians in Vlad's Army, but the clergy can be useful in a range of settings, meaning that they have the potential to be the most used miniatures in the set.

They turned out a bit shiny even after a coat of matt varnish. Not sure why.

And that's it. 18 painted but I also bought another 14 miniatures from Wargames Emporium, taking advantage of them selling individual sprues. You'll see some of them pop up soon.

Acquired: 144

Painted: 166