A throwback post: 10mm Hordes of the Things

 During part of the moving in process, we had a telecom worker here to fix up our LAN connections.

He saw the many Napoleonic and English Civil War minis and asked, 

  "If you were to do a battle of the five armies, could you do it?"

I spent a moment thinking about this and answered, yes, just not with the 25mm historical minis.

A recent discussion about Warmaster minis has brought back to the forefront the Hordes of the Things rules.  Along with De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) rules by WRG, Hordes of the Things (HotT) formed a core of my early miniatures gaming efforts.  Indeed I had a full six nations 'Rise of Rome' campaign set based on the six player system from DBA.  The discussion centered around using Warmaster system, which I did not buy the rules; I did buy many army box sets and loads of extras (like dragons) when Warmaster was being dumped on clearance by a local game shop in the early 2000s, I bought new at 70-90% off retail cost.

I had some vague plans to do up some Tolkien-esque armies, so the battle of the five armies would be in the realm of possibility.

Many of the army boxes are still 'on stand by' as the push to do up lots more armies faded by 2005, as my decision to go with Napoleonics and the 200th anniversary of the historical battles had been made.

So here now I shall share the finish HotT forces that I have still on hand:

 

with the Undead force, I did up a 25mm
skeleton as a giant version for the 15mm scale

 In no particular order:

A skeleton, or undead, force

complete with a necromancer

 

Five minis on a stand shows the 'horde' units that can be brought back on the table after being 'destroyed' by combat ... seemed perfect for shambling skeletons.

 

goblin force next - this is the 'camp guard'

scythed chariots

blades and a general
the camp is in the background
all the 'stones' are slate pieces from
a fireplace I built from recovered Italian
slate

wolf riders

a magic-user - front
TOAD - rear
when a magic-user fails the spell check
they become a toad 

the whole force

I had encountered a plastic measuring tool
that was commercially made
so I re-did the same general design
the points are 2" apart

the Ice Elves
(a fantasy creation in my own world)

flaming damage from an Ice Elf wizard

chariots
the crystals were to be part of a camp

spears and shooters

hero General and another wizard

still yet another Wizard

more of the crystals planned as part of the Ice Elf Camp

one of the Wizard stands was with an assistant

a comparison of 15mm (left) and 10mm (right)
I had found that the spear units were almost exactly 40mm
wide, which made them perfect for HotT/DBA
so I simply watched for if/when they went on sale
I saw early on that the rules were not popular around me
so I suspected they would eventually go on sale

Kelmyn
an imaginary force suggested by
stories of Michael Moorcock

they were 15mm Greek Hoplites that I already had
from MiniFigs

Dark Elves

archers

hero/General

General/Spears/Blades/

Riders

Riders/Heroes/General 

These Dark Elves came with a lot of different options, so I just went with what seemed possible.

Dark Humans

wizard

Hero/General with a gibbet

Riders/Hero/General

Knights

lots of Knights

the Knights have some great details

some blades units as well

 

ORKS!

or ORCS!, if you prefer 

they are riding boars!

Blades/General

with lots of other Blades around him ...

Wood Elves

Hero/General

another Hero/General

ballistae, with spears guards

shooters

This was the end of the finished armies that I took photos of ... somewhere here is another case with more troops in it ... Dwarves I think (have to look around)

In the process of sorting out these troops I also came across some 25mm treasures for fantasy and other games. 

a grouping

closeup

magic stuff

bedding

crates and barrels - good as objective markers

lots of the crates and barrels
(I have used them in Blood & Plunder games)

Another fun set of bits came to my attention as well:

the oldest set of dice I was ever gifted

my AD&D players gave me these in 1983

some fun Babylon 5 dice

then, the only colorful dice set I have

even now I can still read them at a distance

another clearance sale find

a grouping of 'add ons' for HotT forces

familiars and elementals they were called

a unicorn

Pegasus

Earth

Fire

Air

Water

 The idea being these could be 'added' to another army for a particular battle or summoned by a wizard/cleric/druid or be as a Lurker on the battlefield as a hazard for others.

One more little vignette of minis was found in this search, to be shared in a separate posting as it fits more with Pulp than HotT.

May you find the things you are looking for.

A throwback post : Fantasy battles in 25mm

 Having moved recently an inventory is ongoing, while this inventory was happening I had a request about doing some fantasy battles.  It was initially about Warmaster (another post coming soon on that), while I have used the Warmaster minis, it was not in the game rules system, I used Hordes of the Things (HotT).

a second-place painting competition finisher of mine
one that I still have

Back before I began blogging there were games set up using HotT and anyone's 25mm minis (the Warmaster ones are 10mm), to make use of these other minis I made up a set of 'sabot' bases using thin plywood, stir stix, glue and paint.

I had a lot of 25mm fantasy minis back then (including a whole Warhammer Fantasy boxed set), so we did do a number of bigger tabletop battles, by the time I started this blog in 2006, most of the fantasy stuff had been sold off.

there are about 60-80 total of these

some have the 'I.D.' tags on the back

 So after being asked about these bases again, I decided to do up this posting, as I still have the bases and multiple copies of the HotT rules. (clik link for free rules!)

I still had some minis that were fantasy, and my new house-mate has plenty of fantasy stuff!

Orc Heroes

Owlbear Behemoth

Troll Behemoth

fantasy shooters

ECW Shooters

ECW Spears

a Lurker

Hero or Command Stand

My Wizard with all the lighting going!

I even have a 'toad' for when you screw up your magic roll and your magician turns into a toad.

Any 25mm minis will work on these stands (indeed we used a bigger scale Samwise Gamgee as a behmoth in a game).

Not been used for at least a decade (having been stored away and fantasy dropping off my radar during the 200th anniversary of the Napoleonic battles), these may now get some more use?

Looking back ... looking ahead

 Another year ended only a month ago, this time it was ended in the mad rush of moving out from a somewhat cramped home and into a larger home with more families and connections in that home.

I am also noting that this year will mark the 20th anniversary of this blog.

In the process of unpacking and setting up in the new home I am also finding that many of the things I have collected up are reaching their limits.

an award I was presented in 1988

I have decided to release this award, as it has not been on any display for at least eight years.

This got me to also examining the photos of the various games that I printed out for being in frames, I am not certain that these will be put up in the new games space yet, though their fate has not been fully determined either.

There will be some books that are likely to get culled from the collection, as they are somewhat surplus now and it would be great to see them have new keepers that could use them.

While I still plan to finish off the minis I have cast and complete the games sets that I have been building (notably the ACW campaign set beyond Gettysburg), I am seeing more now that I have less time for construction and want more time for game play with what I already have.  Notably with my sons last year with some Napoleonic and ECW games that I really enjoyed.  Meaning that I am more likely to get back into some sort of a campaign game set-up, like the Campaign of Nations from 2013-18, so that the tabletop games get into action and will have some 'meaning' beyond the instant of that evening's game.

Lots of good memories of the 200th anniversary games that have been chronicled in this blog from early on in 2006 to 2015, so I suspect that there may be more reviews done of them over the course of this year.

I have had nagging interests in space games (based on the Star Fleet Battles game) and given that the interest among other players is limited, these urges might have to stand by longer.

The design and set up of the game spaces continues to take up time, along with the rest of the unpacking, and I think I might share some of the table planning thoughts here in the next week.  The building of this table will round out the new game space and put it into more likely a location for regular games - the aim being to do some game action on the table at least once a month after the construction is completed.

Not wanting to get more melancholy here, just looking for a place to get the thoughts put down before releasing many items. 

creating space

 the boxes progress has picked up speed now that the work I was doing at the old house is done and it is on the market for sale

still many boxes to go through, likely into next week, before any momentum picks up for table building

though for now there may be a game in the month of February, even if it may not be a miniatures contest

the current state of affairs, many of the
bookcase games are now out and the 15mm
ACW forces have been located

Peter & My shared spaces for games work
eventually there will be a 42" high 4'x6' table
that can be modified in the center of the spaces

the minis storage was still being 'sorted'
when this image was taken

The process will take some time and I can now forsee a possible minis game in April, unless other things get in the way.

 Hopefully your spring will be more game active than mine looks. 

litte bit of moving reality

 Having had zero time to do much more than move the boxes into the new game space, no table yet as there are building plans for that.

I have a little piece of video from the removal from the old location, so I have taken the time to post it here.

Maybe I'll get a video of the new table construction?

 

There's a rumor of a Leipzig game on the horizon, using Napoleon's Battles in 15mm (others collections), I am planning to take part, in all of the game if I can.  More about that when I know more.

Have a good end to your winter actions. 

Panorama of the spaces.

 

A panorama of the home spaces
left - Dining Room/living room
center - game space
right - Kitchen

A view of the spaces during unpacking and laying out the furnishings and preparing to put it all into use.

This photo was taken on December 31, 2025, sometime in the afternoon.

We are still in unpacking mode and plenty of boxes to go through along with many items to 're-home'.

Maybe a game might get put into action before spring?

The last view of table before moving.

The game table in its last moments before moving

Miniature towers and the terrain supplies
moments before packing up and moving it all.

 

A little RPG encounter

 During the move, our new house mate had his usual RPG night and I offered to drive, as he's less confident with driving at night (especially after doing a full shift all day).

 

the D&D crew in action

 Sadly for Peter, his character was knocked down early in the action.

the characters in action

He did manage to get healed and stand up into action.  I was a witness and new year came next.

lights display near the RPG home in the Comox Valley

 Then more moving and boxes activity was to come.