An Unexpected Fantasy Detour

I've had a long stretch of painting historical stuff and after recently painting the first battalion for a new Napoleonic Prussian regiment I decided to give myself a break and paint something that was less demanding. I had a bunch of Eureka Miniatures centaurs, satyrs/fauns based and undercoated so I chose to give them a coat of paint and get them off the painting table. This lead me to reviewing my Army of Faerie to see just what I had stashed away.

This little army, which I started a few years back has quietly grown and become a reasonable sized force. It is very colourful and has a fair few unusual models and figures that don't really fit anywhere else in my collection. This army isn't build for any particular set of rules. They just exist.

These are about half of the fauns that I painted. The other lot are armed with spears (but I didn't take any pics of them). I also added the unicorn. I only bought this figure a two days back but it was such an easy thing to paint that I pretty much did it in one night. After all... What self respecting faerie army doesn't have a unicorn. It's a reaper bones figure.

I also painted this figure. It is a Vulture Legion rider that I sculpted for Eureka Miniatures a few years back for their Michael Moorcock's Hawkmoon range. I don't think this figure has ever been released and, as far as I know, this is the only one that has ever been painted.

In the Moorcock books the Vulture Legion are Muscovite mercenaries from the Russian Steppe. When I sculpted them I envisioned them as sort of fantasy/Sci-fi landsknecht. When it came time to make some cavalry I decided to make them a weird mix of Cossacks and Polish winged lancers (with vulture wings).

Here he is with a few hounds from the Wargames Atlantic Dark Age Irish box.

Anyway, all this fantasy painting and I decided to put my Army of Faerie on parade.

As you can see what started as a little army has grown to a pretty decent size with plenty of weird and unusual models. They come from a variety of manufacturers which, I'm sure you'll recognize. The largest contingents come from Eureka - That's all of the fauns/satyrs, centaurs, sprites as well as some of the other weird critters.

Below are the Firvulag. If you've ever read The Many Coloured Land by Julian May, you'll have heard of these folk. In fact, it was after reading the series again that prompted my to start making this army. The sword sprites at the front are from Eureka as are some of the figures mixed in with the Northstar goblins. The big blue moon faced ogress and the big head guy on the barrel are also from Eureka.

These are the main infantry and cavalry elements. Faun spears, clubbers and skirmisher archers. Centaur spears and archers. The ogre below is a Reaper Bones figure.

The dryads are pretty recognisable from GW. In my opinion these are some of GW's best figures. They look truly nasty and formidable. I painted them up in a cherry blossom paint scheme (see below for an older photo). The treeman; I made him myself when I was operation my own miniatures company. I was casting him in resin but I still had the original pieces in a box so I decided to put him together when I started this army.

These are my generals. Thefigure in the center is called King of the Forest (I think) and is Reaper Bones. The fairy... I don't know. I had the figure for years before painting it. The goat headed champion is Reaper Bones. The faun with the big horns is Eureka.

Another shot of the Furvulag regiment. After taking these pics I realised that I left some of them in their box (it's a shame but I'm not going take any more pics for now).

The big guys in the centre are all Reaper Bones. A swamp troll, a hill troll and the jabberwock. The jabberwock is a great looking miniature but it was a real pain to make it stand up. It has long skinny legs that need to hold up a fair bit of torso, tail, head and wings. I had to do a fair bit of drilling and bracing to make it capable of standing on its own two feet.

And here's a few older photos to show some of the detail of some of the figures: