Blood and Plunder – Dugthefug1644

These Front Rank Figurines were great to paint. Lots of detail. I like the mix of match cords and flintlocks to show the adhoc way they have been equipped. Weapons seem quite chunky compared to other ranges, but otherwise fit in well with my collection. Because they stand a little taller than my plastic Warlord Games minis they also scale better against the official Firelock Games minis.

These were fun to paint. The only thing uniting them is the prevalence of red. For my English I am hoping to make the common colour blue. (apart from the very red coats of militia). I think my sea dogs run the risk of looking very similar to these Marineros.

These will be taller than most of my minis, but I think that the strong sailor type troops would look more imposing than the underfed local conscripted militia anyway.

This model was awesome to create, but it highlights how getting wysiwyg replications of the official line can be quite tough. As an English forlorn hope miniature you need a brace of pistols, a musket, grenades and a melee weapon. Even after using a cavalry pistol in holster, a cavalry musket, greenstuff bag and grenade he still isn’t wysiwyg. I think the teddy bear stuffing strand fuse smoke has come out really well and does identify him, but I am still considering improvements to add the correct weapons, without ruining what I have done so far.

Another Blood and Plunder mini painted above and I have to say I enjoyed it. I think that the ill formed cutlass is not actually as distracting as I thought it would be. The details are fairly soft, but then I have been spoilt with 40k miniatures this year. The latest highend plastics were always going fair well in comparison. The unveiling on Blood and Plunder week that Firelock Games are headed for multi-part plastics is great news. I just hope they drop the scale compared to the metal miniatures by just a millimetre or two so that the occasional 28mm bigger heroic sized kits might be able to kit bash across ranges. If they become a larger end 32mm kit it will still be cool, but slightly unfortunate for those of us that like our conversions.

One of the reasons I bought the blister of marineros was so I could see how best to merge any conversions I might build into the unit, without them just being bland generic seamen.

The wysiwyg rule required for proxies is a challenge. I bought some spare metal pistols from Essex Miniatures, but the scale is a little off. Slightly larger than the Blood and Plunder guns even when the B&P minis are a large scale. Some of my models so far don’t really have an available sling, holster or bag to rest a spare gun on. Sometimes you even need to represent a brace of pistols and this has been awkward. I am considering just laying smoking pistols or arquebuses on the base, to allow the pose on my conversions to go uncluttered by the extra weapons.

I found that the WotSS Warlord Games Sprue did give me a close approximation to the clothing and design of the Front Rank Figurines minis I had bought, but the Front Rank minis were far more heroic scale. I realised early on that I would not be able to use the same hats as the Front Rank guys because the scale difference would be so obvious and stark. I chose to use more heroic scale heads with no hat to add to the militia, poorly equipped style I was aiming for. I will add some more variety in the red of their coats as I continue, again to try and add more variety.

I think some of the heat on Facebook pages was that I had been posting links from Wargames Foundry and Perry Miniatures looking for alternative ranges that still stayed in era.

I found that a lot of them fall into two camps. Either too far forward in history, where tricorn hats and the general look is totally off, or they are 7 years war minis and again don’t look generic enough to fit into Blood and Plunder. For the English militia though I did settle on some Front Rank Figurines English that looked pretty similar in design to the official minis.

I got a mix of late 17th century matchlock musketeers and flintlock musketeers because I wanted that mix to show off that transition period and to imply that these are not the well oiled professional soldiers of the later European armies in the period.

I also bought a sprue of Warlord Games Wars of the Spanish Succession English minis. They come up far more true scale, but with some basing shenanigans I made them a touch taller and they fit in OK. Will show some of these off shortly.

Perhaps I was being sensitive in a Facebook forum, never a good place to be sensitive, but being called a “cheap ass” and accused of stalling the growth or threatening the survival of the game was a bit harsh. Two or three people chose to single me out for comment because I was asking whether anyone was using ship sized templates to act out naval battles. The most impressive ships can be around £100, some smaller less impressive ships can be cheaper, around the £20-50, but I was likely to need two ships and wanted to see if anyone else had used templates to get used to the naval warfare rules.

I wrote this in reply.

“I think you grow a fan base and interest by having the game played and by being open to as many people as possible. I don’t think sharing ideas about making the entry point cheaper is condemning the company to lower sales. Even though I have mainly been converting miniatures from other ranges for my armies, I have bought firelock miniatures, the rules, official markers and if I enjoy playing it I am sure more purchases will inevitably be made. For the game to be enjoyed to it’s fullest you probably do need ships, but I am not sure we need to have a dig at people for not joining the game from the same budget and angle that you have.”

Yes it was wordy, yes it was a bit precious, but it was how I felt at the time.

Looking back I realise that the people were only voicing their opinion, were only being supportive of their hobby, but still feel that there needn’t have been actual insults or digs used to express that.

I still don’t think that people having proxies for both budget’s sake and for variety’s sake is wrong. Big or small companies, young or old, benefit from games being played in clubs and homes everywhere. The best way to succeed is to have as many ways into your game / hobby as possible. I think Firelock Games have found a good balance. I don’t think their prices are extortionate, I don’t think this hobby is ever going to be a cheap one, but you don’t want to alienate or cut routes into the game that aren’t currently able to invest as heavily as your best customers. Those individuals will appreciate it and over a longer period of time could eventually be a better customer than the guys or girls that do a mega Kickstarter splash of cash and you never sell a thing to them ever again. Third party minis are sometimes people’s only option and shouldn’t be condemned for it, especially seeing as I was told recently that the official organised play rules actually accept third party models. They only require a wysiwyg approach, so your opponent knows exactly what class of troops they are facing.

From hunting around and getting feedback from the community this company sells ships at a reasonable price, but that was sometime ago and I would check around for reviews to be confident you are getting what you want and what you paid for.

http://www.gamesofwar.co.uk/ships

I bought some small blank dice and d10s.
I found the dice faces online for the token / marker icons.
Saved some money, but they are not as nice as the etched marker dice faces of the official ones.
I felt I needed more because I intend to take my two conversion armies to the club and play my son and others. The original set of official dice I bought would probably not be enough to cover both forces once you are over 3 or four units each.
If you are guaranteed a large group of friends willing to play and commit to the game you might be able to make even more savings by buying less dice and only buying one faction of minis etc. As I knew I was always collecting two factions I felt it necessary to make savings in this way.

I bought the rules, I bought the official token dice, I even got the faction specific cards. This one is an obvious extravagance because this game works with a normal set of playing cards.

Even worse, when playing on a budget, I invested in the data cards; when all the data on them is laid out in the rule book. I decided that having gaming aids like that would make any first games with new opponents look and play that much better.