Pirates of Treasure Island

In August this year, there was a kickstarter campaign for releasing a range of 28mm pirates of Treasure Island. I'm not only going to say that these are really nice miniatures. But I have also been waiting for almost ten years for them to be released.

Mr. O'Brien from the
Pirates of Treasure Island range

It was back in December 2008 when I first blogged about this range of pirates. At the time, Legends of the High Seas was slowing growing to become my skirmish game of choice after having played Mordheim for many many years. Wargames Foundry and Black Scorpion Miniatures were the pirate manufacturers of the time.

Through a Polish forum I got to know sculptor Flis Wojtek, who had been working for Black Tree Design and Warlord Games. He had shared photos of greens of a lot of characterful pirate miniatures that were supposed to be released through Black Hat Miniatures. However, that never happened, until ...

Personalized Movement Gauge from LITKO

While I was browsing the LITKO website recently I came across their offer for personalized movement gauges. With its lengths of 1/2", 1", 3" and 6" this is a very handy tool, not only for Age of Sigmar. The surface can be customized with your own logo and text. The gauge will be very useful in our games of Dogs Ahoy. I would have liked to use the free space for a summary of the turn order or some other quick reference notes. However, since the rules are still work in progress I chose not to and only went with the Dogs Ahoy logo.

Two movement gauges from LITKO with the Dogs Ahoy logo

Since I was ordering anyway, I chose to also get some flame markers. There are a few scenarios in Dogs Ahoy where crews set a ship or building on fire and these work quite nicely.

Spanish Fort by Slug Industries

The Spanish Fort by Slug Industries is a terrain piece modeled after the actual Fort Matanzas and successfully funded via a Kickstarter campaign earlier this year. In this article I take a closer look at the model and present my painted version as well as some gaming ideas for the fort.

Night Watchmen

After I have been gathering a number of highwaymen and other 17th-18th century scoundrel over the last years it is time to bring some appropriate opponents for these criminals to the table. I always found night watchmen to be equally stylish and characterful and here they are at last!

Night Watchmen are a great faction for 17th to 18th century games. Be it highwaymen, pirates or other criminals, watchmen are a great group of non-player models that players need to avoid during their nightly operations. For missions at daytime they can serve as guards or militia. Because of this, I found it all the more surprising that there are almost no suitable models available. While collecting highwaymen and robbers is relatively easy - mostly thanks to the excellent range from Outpost Wargames Services - this is not the case for night watchmen. The one true night watch model that I had known for some time is Squire Mortimer Bush from Foundry's Smugglers set (CIV007) from the 18th Century Civilians range. This is very much the prototype of what I was looking for: A model in a greatcoat, wearing a tricorne and carrying a lantern.

Longboats from Games of War and Firelock Games

In this blog post I take a look at the longboats from Games of War and Firelock Games.

Longboats from Games of War

As I had already bought some of the other boats (tenders and jolly boats) from Games of War as well as their bigger ships (such as the Cutter) I knew what to expect in terms of quality and detail. To my mind, their boats and ships are unmatched when it comes to the lightweight resin and the high level of detail and textures. Painting up the three longboats was easy and straightforward.

Three longboats from Games of War

Walls from Empress Miniatures

To complement my Caribbean pirate town I recently painted up a set of walls that I ordered together with the Spanish Church from Empress Miniatures.

Simple walls like these can be used in a variety of settings. With the pantile roof of the gateway these walls fit nicely into a Caribbean piratical setting. Empress offers all the various sections and posts individually so you can order the pieces that best suit your specific needs. I went for nine wall sections, four corner posts and four intermediate posts.

British Unrated Cutter from Games of War

The British Unrated Cutter "Fly" 1763 from Games of War is the latest addition to my shipyard. In this blog post I describe the painting and building process of the vessel, its sails and other accessories.