The Lavender Order Recruits Again

Hello again.

One of my particular trends when buying figures or working through projects is that I do not like the "generic" approach. You know the sort of thing. If I change the flags and ignore the button colour, then those redcoats there will do for British one day, Swiss the next, something imaginary the day after that, and so on. If that is your bag, then so be it, all power to you and so forth, but it is not for me. I imagine such things are more prevalent in smaller scales, where one red coat looks much like another from anything more than a foot away, but I cannot say I have done any research on the matter.

I know it costs me more money to buy extra figures and more time to paint them as a result of having those extras, but I like distinction between my troops and  "Burrows & Badgers" is no different. I see people posting their warbands on Facebook and the like, but I often do not see a theme.

"I want a badger with my highland types!" screams Poster A, even though his highland types all look like Rob Roy and his badger is wearing full gothic plate.

"I am going to include this Victorian dandy in my band of bloodthirsty pirates," whispers Poster B, even though he looks like he has just walked out of the Old Curiosity Shop and the corsairs from some disease-ridden, tropical hellhole.

However, my Order of the Lavender Garden is growing apace as Oathsworn release more suitable figures, one of which is the subject of this piece. My Lavender Order, as I abbreviate it, has a number of branches, the most prevalent being the military arm and the witch hunting arm. In my head, the military arm also takes care of law and order in the better parts of the land. The good news is, so long as I maintain my preferred context, I can mix and match the figures between both, allied as they are and all dressed in some way in the purple and white livery of the order.

So, without further ado, I give you a "Mouse with Crossbow", at once both a member of the town watch, a soldier of the Order of the Lavender Garden and a hanger on for some zealous type looking for a magic user somewhere near you sometime soon. As I have chosen the figures for the various parts of the order with some care to avoid glaring fashion or other faux pas, he will fit with all three quite handily. So I saved a bit of cash and some painting time after all!

G

The mouse with no name, ready to defend the poor and defenceless in honour of the Royalist cause. Or burn and pillage a village in honour of someone's ego...

His mace looks a bit like an incense burner, but I still would not want a smack over the head with it.

And, in addition to the purple and white livery, the purple lily emblem also ties the Order's members together nicely. Judging by the various scuffs and scratches on his helmet, he is either a veteran of many a fight or has inherited his headgear from a particularly unlucky and/ or unfortunate predecessor...

What is red, ...

...doesn't suffer fools gladly, has an incendiary love interest, has horns he has to keep filed down to stumps and is supposed to be a secret?

HELLBOY, of course!!!

Hello again.

As part of my frenzy of boxed game purchasing, I simply could not resist something I found lying around in the "Board in Brum" shop in sunny Walsall recently.

This is a side on view of the box, which is seven inches deep!

A cornucopia of content.

 I was "lucky" enough to find an open example of the game at the aforementioned "Board in Brum", which meant I could examine the contents. There are over 120 figures in the box!!! These range from a couple of different versions of Hellboy himself to his various companions to Nazia to monsters of different sorts and even a turkey! I can only assume that is for some sort of Christmas game based in the old cartoon series, "Stop the Pigeon!", (i.e. "Stop the Turkey!") but I may be wrong. That is all in addition to the bits of scenery, cards for the game, floor plans and the like. All the figures come in storage trays too, which means they are all self-contained within the box and I do not have to buy extra boxes or files to keep things in, just remember where each figure goes!



Floor plans and such for various scenarios within the game.

The uppermost tray of figures contains our heroes, the five, large gribblies, Rasputin (!), a couple of Lamias and some other bits.

Oodles top ogle at!!!

 


Our prime hero in three guises, including Hellboy kid with ice cream!

The five chief gribblies - ape monster, tentacle horror, large grub, fanged amphibian and dragon

Our prime hero's friends.

And a novel little set of busts of the main protagonists.

I have not played the game yet, but I am impressed by the variety and quantity of the contents. There is a little bit of flash to remove, but I look forward to eventually getting some of these figures painted and trying things out. I especially like the fact that several of the figures are useable in other games - Nazis are Nazis, right? And those Lamia figures are crying out to oppose some errant Greek hero in some fabled land as he quests for an artefact to save his home city state from a gorgon or kraken or some such. Did I also mention there are harpies in the set? And how about getting Hellboy trapped in a time loop following some nefarious enemy scheme that sees him taking on Martian tripods, a resurrected terracotta army, a zombie plague or whatever? The game was not cheap, at a little over the £100 mark, but WOW! There is also a Batman game out now, so I must keep saving. My favourite superhero and all that.

And, to top it all, "Hellboy 2; The Golden Army" is on TV tonight, and I am in need of a way to avoid that utter drivel that is the Eurovision Song "Contest". Sky One at 2115hrs anyone?

G