mogsymakes

Midgard Moot 2025

Here follows a brief account of Midgard Moot 2025, a day dedicated to playing Midgard Heroic Battles in a variety of settings. I’ll leave it to others to fill in the details of great deeds and heroic toy soldier action, but suffice to say that I was delighted with how it ran. Whoops and cheers could be heard emanating from the games at regular intervals which is always a good sign!

After a few unavoidable absences, we had 30 players and seven game hosts attending, running two themed campaigns and five hosted games. Richard Clarke of Too Fat Lardies/ Reisswitz Press also attended to film the proceedings, though it is rumoured that the presence of chocolate Hob Nobs was also a motivating factor.

Here’s a quick run down of the games that were on offer.

Hosted games

Italian Wars 28 mm

Bringing a historical scrap loosely based on the 1495 Battle of Forrnovo, John Savage pulled off another spectacular game. Both games were very close, with a French and Italian victory apiece, and frankly it was just a treat to look at.

Battlefield of Degsastan 15 mm

Matt Moran stepped in at the last minute to run this epic early medieval clash from 603 AD between the kingdoms of Northumbria and Dal Riada. Using Wiglaf and Forged in Battle minis, the game used an 8 cm Spear Throw and was played on a 3 x 4’ board.

The Old World 28mm

Jeremy Short put on a wonderful fantasy game set in the Old World using his stunning Warhammer collection from the 1990s.

The Old World about to run, though BASH manager Ian is busy taking pizza orders and trying to deter Dave from ordering a Hawaiian!

Teutoberger Wald 9 AD

This game, based on the infamous loss of three Roman legions in Germania, was run by Mike Wilkins. One player was so enamoured with the period that they booked to play on this all day!

Lord of the Rings 28mm

Matt Slade is well known for hosting brilliant games at both shows and Lardy Events. This was no exception as he ran a clash between Rohan and Isengard.

Themed Campaigns

Middle-Earth: Of Eorl And Cirion

This campaign, organised by Dave Hunter, took place 500 years before the events of the Lord of the Rings, with Gondorians and Eotheod (Rohan types) fighting off an Orcish invasion. Much fun was had in the initial two games before all the forces combined for a big 3 vs 2 battle to decide the campaign.

“Rings of Power campaign next time? HAHAHAHA!”

Arthurian Britain: Warlords of Dumnonia

Returning to my roots, this campaign was somewhat inspired by Bernard Cornwell as the Saxons under Aelle mounted an invasion of Arthur’s Dumnonia.

After some initial hard-fought battles across fords and hillsides, the Saxons were beaten back and then destroyed in a series of last stands. Heroic stuff!

Awards

While by no means a competition, there were a number of small awards presented at the event for mighty feats that had been spotted by game hosts during the event.

Food for Ravens – Paul Welsh . Not many players can manage rolling three double Ravens in the course of a day, but Paul broke the stats and did just that! 🙂

Food for Ravens – Lee Sanders. I’m informed that the Orc known only as ‘Numnacka’ perished early on in the battle with the Rohirrim with an unparalleled display of dice rolling. No wonder Tolkien didn’t mention him.

Battle Smiter – Andy Hawes. Not content with stunning the Saxons in the Arthurian campaign with his beautifully painted Britons, Andy’s commander gamely accepted a single combat in the first game and was gone in 60 seconds.

Battle Smiter – Jamie Tattersall. I’m told that the Swiss brought a cute and cuddly bear along to the Italian Wars game which didn’t survive its encounter with Jamie and his French. Shame!

Get In! – Pete Harris. Pete showed admirable fighting spirit during the Battle of Degsastan and also succeeded in rolling a 6 for his Hero’s ‘Today We Fight To Win’ Trait, thereby ensuring victory and a place in the chronicles.

Get In! – Neil Shuck. As well as smiling all day long (and well into the evening at the curry house ), Neil hurled himself into the spirit of the game and was noted for charging everything in the Old World battle.

Hold Fast – Ian Hemingway’s Hero Cormac single-handedly held off an entire wing of the Northumbrian force during the Battle of Degsastan. Heroic!

I Foretell Mighty Deeds – Paul Bedford. In another display of heroic defence (or statistical improbability), Paul’s Romans managed a jaw-dropping 18 out of 24 hits on a unit of German warriors during the Teutoberger Wald game. Auf Wiedersehen!

Mightiest Host – randomly drawn from the other game hosts (easier than trying to pick a favourite), Jeremy Short took home this prestigious trophy and is apparently now equal with John Savage on major title wins!

Massive thanks to Gripping Beast and Warbases who both chipped in generously with prizes to accompany the awards. A huge thank you also to Boards And Swords Hobbies who provided a great venue and looked after us impeccably during the day.

Cheers to everyone who came and especially our game hosts who put on such a great show for the players. Discussions are already underway about running Midgard Moot 2 next year. Watch this space!

Not at Salute ’25

I’m not at Salute 2025 tomorrow but if you’re there, go and check out:

Too Fat Lardies (TM 12, at the back of the hall) who will of course be stocking copies of Midgard Heroic Battles, token sets and have a great range of games running in the Lard Zone.

Wargames Illustrated (TL 02) who will be carrying the latest WI including a Midgard article and scenario for Irish Mythology. It’s so new and shiny that even I haven’t seen the finished copy yet!

Warbases (TE 08) who will hopefully have their Midgard Raven dice as well as their usual range of MDF goodness.

Midgard Heroic Battles will be at other shows later in the year, though – we’ll be at Partizan (Newark Showground, May 18th) with a large 28mm Arthurian Mount Badon game. Later in the year, I’m very excited to be heading to Colours (September 6th) with a reprise of the mighty Battle of Five Armies. See you there!

Irish Myth Overload!

It’s been another busy week! I managed to make time to get my recently finished Jim FitzPatrick minis from Lucid Eye photographed in front of some of the latest Jon Hodgson Backdrops, and I’m delighted with the results. You can read the full article here: https://mogsymakes.net/irish-myth-lucid-eyes-official-jim-fitzpatrick-miniatures/

I also forwarded the photos over to Jim FitzPatrick himself, who sent a lovely reply which has made my day. To hear from one of the artistic greats of my teenage years is an absolute privilege!

Sticking with the Irish theme, I also had confirmation from Wargames Illustrated magazine that my article about Irish mythology and a Midgard Heroic Battles scenario for the Second Battle of Moy Tura will appear in WI 450, due out in April at the Salute show (sadly I can’t be there in person this year).

And just by coincidence, I managed to fix up a chat with Gerry from On Table Top in Northern Ireland about Midgard and my plans for this year. As soon as I hear, I’ll let you know when the video will be out. Cheers!

Midgard Heroic Battles at Hammerhead 2025: March 1st

I’m delighted to say that the Midgard Heroic Battles rules will be showcased at the Hammerhead Show next weekend (March 1st, Newark Showground, UK).

Please note that this is only half the map of Hammerhead! For full details, see the Hammerhead website.

Hot off the back of winning two industry awards (Wargames Illustrated Best New Wargames Rules and On Table Top Best Miniatures Game 2024), you can find our games either side of the Wargames Illustrated stand.

Matt Slade and friends will be running a Lord of the Rings ‘Scouring of the Westfold’ game on GB23, using super-sized 28mm Units with a 24 cm Spear Throw. Matt has been digging into his extensive Lord of the Rings collection for this and has even been incited to paint up more from the lead pile.

Morris & Chums will be running two games on table GB25 (number of Chums permitting).

6mm Siege of Troy. Background by Jon Hodgson Backdrops, used with kind permission.

On GB25 you’ll find two of the games that featured in the rulebook, the Siege of Troy in glorious 6mm and Against the Frost Giants in 28mm, featuring the return of the Rainbow Bridge.

Against the Frost Giants in 28mm; background by Jon Hodgson Backdrops, used with kind permission

Come and play Achilles, Hector, Loki, Freya or Thor in some heroic battle action!

Freya (a Bad Squiddo mini) leads the charge!

In terms of traders, top Midgard supporters Warbases and Gripping Beast will also be in attendance alongside other opportunities to buy the book and stock up on your tabletop goodies. Baccus 6mm (providers of most of the Trojan War minis seen in the game) will also be present, as well as Coritani/ Magnetic Displays, suppliers of all my magnetic sabot basing materials. I can foresee money changing hands!

Hope to see you there!

Revisiting the 1980s: RR3 Grom’s Goblin Guard

My finished Grom’s Goblin Guard (original Citadel Miniatures, 1984) photographed in front of a Jon Hodgson Backdrop (as are all the shots in this article)

I’m not generally given to nostalgia, and I’ve tried to avoid the Oldhammer tendency of gamers of my age to go and re-buy their teenage collections of Citadel Miniatures from Ebay, but I crumbled when I saw these! In two separate lots in 2023/4, I picked up the original models for Grom and 15 of his goblin guard, one of the very first Regiments of Renown (RR3) issued in 1984.

In 1984, I was a whole 12 years old. Having just started playing Warhammer with the first edition boxed set (when it was billed as ‘the mass fantasy battle roleplaying game’!) and being a big fan of goblins, I had to get these. Over a couple of years, I managed to get hold of the whole regiment (4 boxes with the different command models) and painted them in glorious Humbrol enamels.

A rare photo of our 1980s game replaying the Siege of Middenheim. Alongside the plethora of Dave Andrews card buildings, original Mighty Fortress and generous use of expanded polystyrene found in a skip, my original Grom’s Goblin Guard are just visible to the left of the balsa wood siege towers.

They saw action in numerous games of Warhammer 1st and 2nd edition on the family table tennis table (fortunately a useful dark green colour) and saw action in the Blood Bath at Rorke’s Drift campaign and our own version of the siege of Middenheim before being sold off during a house move in adult life.

Nevertheless, these little chaps had made an impact. The monopose Perry-sculpted models were nothing compared to what was to follow but if there was a set that encapsulated the best bits of my early gaming days, this was probably it.

Hard as it is to believe in these days of Games Workshop PLC, when Citadel released new models back in the 80s, they didn’t all have rules, and codexes were in the distant future. Some models were released for non-Warhammer systems (e.g. the fab Dungeons and Dragons range) or without a games system at all (such as the much-loved Lord of the Rings models, or the Michael Moorcock minis). Absolute anarchy!

If I recall correctly (and I may be wrong), they were introduced with a little black and white booklet which came with the ‘Forces of Fantasy’ supplement for 1st edition, and then received updated statlines for the 2nd edition in the Spring 1985 Citadel Journal. I loved the little back stories that the studio writers had put together for each regiment and this was definitely an influence on my early creativity.

Anyway, back to the plot! Having got hold of some original models, what was I going to do with them? There was a part of me that wanted to relive my Humbrol enamels days, basing on a 20mm square of mounting board with Tetrion filler and bright green paint, but I decided against it. Although my original orc and goblin army was sold off many years ago, I’ve more recently collected a more Tolkien-based orc force for my games of Midgard Heroic Battles set in Middle-earth, so I decided to go for a colour scheme to match. After trying out a test model, I got down to work on the whole unit.

After cleaning up the minimal flash on these ancient goblins, each one had a black undercoat which was followed by a dry brush of gunmetal for the armour base. I tidied this up with some black acrylic and painted the skin in traditional layers. Colours used included a variety of khaki tones – always good for orc flesh. I don’t usually bother with eyes, but these had quite bulbous ones which were’t too hard to pick out with a dark red and yellow highlight in the centre.

I tried to vary the skin tones, helmet colours and fur tunics as I went along to give some variety to the miniatures. Taking inspiration from Tony Ackland’s original artwork, I also added some shield designs to some but not all of the models.

I hadn’t been able to get hold of an original standard bearer model and decided that I didn’t really fancy selling a kidney some of the prices being asked on ebay, so I made a snap decision to do a conversion instead. This consisted of drilling out a trooper’s hand and adding a greenstuff standard.

To create the bones seen in the original Dave Andrews art and on the mini, I robbed a couple of femurs from a plastic skeleton kit by Wargames Atlantic. WA have also recently produced a werewolf kit which had a perfect clawed hand to place on the top of the pole, which gave me a nice chance to mix old and new in the same unit!

With all the models finished, I decided to base them as a single group on a 120 x 60 mm unit base (using my favourite 2mm MDF round cornered bases from Warbases, as usual). This would allow me to arrange them in a diorama fashion and offer them some protection from handling.

To add some undulation to the base, some of the back rankers were raised up on a piece of 5mm foamboard to give the impression of standing on higher ground.

With everyone glued down, I then used my usual basing paste (see my Wargames Atlantic orcs article for details) before dry brushing and adding tufts, static grass and some grit.

The final touch was an original Citadel plastic shield, painted up as one belonging to Bugman’s Dwarf Rangers, another Regiment of Renown who had history with Grom and his friends!

Photos have been taken using Jon Hodgson Backdrops. I’m not sure which is my favourite, but it’s great to have some 1980s goblins back on the table!

Now, back to the present…

Orcs and Prizes…26.1.25

Bit of a brief update on another eventful week!

The Midgard Heroic Battles page on the website has undergone some reorganisation this week, collecting all of the videos, Force lists etc and placing them onto their own pages. Hopefully this has reduced the clutter a bit! It’s not quite finished yet and I have plans to streamline the rest of the site, but it’s a start.

I’ve just finished some rather nice Wargames Atlantic orcs – my first 3D prints from this company. See the full article here: https://mogsymakes.net/wargames-atlantic-digital-orcs/

Midgard Moot tickets went on sale last weekend and now around 2/3 have gone, though there’s still spaces in all three events. Full details here: https://mogsymakes.net/midgard-moot-26th-april-2025/

The biggest news of the week, however, was the announcement that Midgard had won Best New Wargames Rules 2024 in the Wargames Illustrated Awards! Delighted and slightly stunned, especially looking at some of the competition! Thanks to everyone who voted and has supported the game.

Midgard Moot – 26th April 2025

After a lot of running about behind the scenes, details are now up for the Midgard Moot event at Boards And Swords Hobbies (Derby, UK) on Saturday 26th April 2025. Come and play some Midgard in a variety of settings, hosted games and themed campaigns. We have games set in Ancient Germania, Middle-earth, Harfleur 14515 and many others. Click here for all the details.

Please note that bookings don’t open until Sun 19th Jan.

The Frost Giant’s Daughters? Hornblower 15mm Shield Maidens

Hornblower 15mm miniatures; painting and scenery by me; background from Jon Hodgson Backdrops (A3 Winter Book)

These marvellous little minis came to my attention last year when Oz sculptor Mathias started posting works in progress on his Instagram account (@macefaceminiatures). 15mm isn’t my main scale, but I’d enjoyed putting together some Wiglaf and Forged in Battle minis for a recent project and was willing to have a look. Nick at Northstar passed on some samples which, I regret to say, sat on the painting table half finished as I got distracted with real life and other such stuff.

The Christmas holidays were a chance to get these finished off and based, and I’m glad I did. The sculpts have more than a nod of Copplestone about them and match well with his work on the Barbarica and Wiglaf ranges.

I confess that I was slightly intimidated by Steve Dean’s superb paint jobs on these exact minis and decided to focus on what I do, which is putting together units to get onto the gaming table. I opted to go for something along the lines of a ‘slap chop’ approach – using Contrasts/ Speedpaints to add colour over a pre-shaded base layer.

After a quick clean up, mine were sprayed black and then dry-brushed with mid grey and white acrylics to provide a graduated base. This didn’t work quite as well as when I’ve used it on 28mm minis, as some areas (especially faces) were so small that they didn’t pick up much of the grey/ white paint. This resulted in a bit of fixing up later on, where I did some manual highlights onto these areas with traditional acrylics.

I failed to take step by step photos, but the sequence was:

Black undercoat followed by grey and white dry brush.
‘Colouring in’ main areas with GW Contrasts/ Army Painter Sppedpaints: Skin (AP Crusader Skin); Hair (GW Nazdreg Yellow); Leather/ Boots (GW Snakebite Leather, GW Gore Grunta Fur, GW Gagarak’s Sewer); Horns (GW Skeleton Horde); Spears/ Bows (GW Snakebite Leather); Helmets/ Armour/ Blades (AP Broadsword Silver).
Clothing – blue was the theme here! (All GW Contrasts: I used a whole mixture of Talassar Blue, Ultramarines Blue, Celestium Blue, Gryph Charger Grey, with a few leaders with Luxion Purple).
This was followed by some light dry brushing with Vallejo Iraqi Sand to bring up detail and touching up darker areas with various acrylics as described above. It wasn’t an exact science! Some clothing had trimmings painted on, and I highlighted and added some runic designs to the banners.
Shields were painted acrylic black – I wanted a contrast with the bold blue clothing.
Following a coat of spray varnish (Winsor and Newton Professional Matt), I added the metallic highlights. Army Painter Shining Silver was used to dot in rivets on the shields, as well as to highlight all the iron and steel. The few areas of bronze/ gold were done with my usual technique: Vallejo Brass base, wash of brown ink, highlight with Vallejo Gold.

I’m planning to use these for Midgard Heroic Battles; 80mm x 40mm bases worked very well indeed for my 15mm early medieval collection, and has become a common standard amongst 15mm players, so I went the same way with these.

The bases are 2mm round-cornered MDF from Warbases, with the heroes being based on a 20mm and 25mm circles. Frosty bases were the order of the day using Gamer’s Grass winter and beige tufts and some Woodland Scenics snow scatter.

This also gave me the excuse to use the new Winter Book from Jon Hodgson Backdrops for the photo shoot! These are the A3 versions which gave me more options on the wide shots. I’m absolutely thrilled with how good these are (though I need to raise my photography game this year!)

Having got these finished, I can now work on the next project, though I hear that some Shield Maiden cavalry are just around the corner, so there may be more to come very soon!

You can find the Hornblower 15mm range at Northstar, along with the Gamer’s Grass tufts.

End of 2024 – Happy New Year

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for following the ups and downs of Mogsymakes.net over the last 12 months. It’s been a huge year for me…Midgard Heroic Battles finally came out in November after five years of preparation and the response has been fantastic. I’ve also gone back to partial self-employment alongside my day job in order to support Midgard and my writing/creative work. There have been many enjoyable shows and unforgettable games en route – thank you for your company if you’ve been involved in any of these!

I’ve just been tidying up some loose ends during the Betwixtmas period and finally got my Second Punic Wars lists completed for Midgard. These are available for free download on the main Midgard Heroic Battles page along with all the other official lists so far. While there will probably be more of these in 2025, I shall be concentrating my writing energies on the campaign system and future supplements.

Nick of Medieval Wargamer has been continuing to enjoy the rules and filmed a battle report using his stunning Scottish – English Wars collection using one a forthcoming scenario from the campaign supplement, which you can watch here.

There’s been a decent amount of coverage of Midgard in the wargames press (some of it written by me) so it was a pleasure to get the latest Wargames Illustrated 445 with a very favourable independent write up from the team there focusing on what they enjoyed about the rules.

The Wargames Illustrated Awards poll runs until Jan 31st 2025 and Midgard has been nominated for Best New Rules, so please do put in a vote if you have enjoyed them.

Should you be in the area, I’ll be at Boards and Swords Hobbies (Derby, UK) with some of the play test team during the day on Saturday 4th January, running introductory games of Midgard from 10am. No need to book, just drop in.

Thank you for your support and a happy new year to you all!

Cheers

James

Wars of the Roses, events and other Midgard news 20.12.24

I seem to have played two games of Wars of the Roses using Midgard this week, commanding the Lancastrians on both occasions! The first was a Battle of Wakefield 1460 game, which you can read a full picture report with orders of battle here.

The other was a visit to Boards and Swords Hobbies in Derby, where I introduced some new players to the game and laid some plans for our first Midgard event, due to be held there on Saturday 26th April 2025. Ian from BASH has also persuaded me and some chums to run Midgard games on Saturday 4th January – just drop in if you’d like to try the rules.

The Midgard Heroic Battles rulebook has been sent for a reprint, which is fab news less than a month after release.

Warbases have expanded their range of Midgard-related products with some custom raven dice and Killing Zone templates; thanks again chaps! (Please note that Warbases are now taking a well-earned break so you won’t be able to get these now till Jan 2025).

Lard Magazine 2024 has also made its appearance, being a PDF annual magazine from Too Fat Lardies. This year’s issue includes a scenario from John ‘What a Yorkshire Cowboy’ Savage based on the Fords of Isen from Middle-earth, as well as an article by myself on my thoughts for Midgard events.