Deadhead Reinforcements

I've added a few reinforcements to my army of the dead. These don't swell the ranks of the dead very much but they do increase their numbers a bit and also add a couple of new monsters.

I added another unit of a dozen Oathmark Revenants. These are great figures and this is my second box of 30 figures, both of which will make up 5 units of 12 figures - A nice core of solid infantry for my undead hoards.

I have no idea at all where this figure comes from. I picked it up from a friend who was selling off some stuff at my club. It was a pre-painted figure on a clear base and is made of soft plastic. I cleaned it up a bit to get rid of mould lines and gave it a quick paint job. Nothing spectacular.

He adds a nice dimension to my deadheads. I don't really have many larger models in the hoard (but I do have a dragon!) so he will definitely add to the army both visually and as a semi-big hitter.

I don't really know how giant scorpions fit into an army of the dead but they seem to appear in a few movies where the dead are doing their thing. This is a Reaper Bones model. I bought this about 12 to 18 months back and found it really hard to assemble. Only recently did I think of a way to put it together and mount it effectively.

It's a great looking figure and I gave it a very basic paint job. But it came out very effective and I'm really happy with it. As I'm typing this it makes me think: I have a few left over Oathmark Goblin Wolf Riders. I might play around with them to see if I can seat them onto this figure. If I can I might have to get a few more of these and do a bit of modelling.

And that's it for now. I've started doing some Goth cavalry which I'm going to paint up as pseudo Riders of Rohan (or something similar).

My Growing Woodland Army

 "Well it's been  long time since I rock and rolled..."

I haven't posted anything here for two months. That doesn't mean I haven't been busy because I have. What has happened is that a huge amount of my time has been taken up with music - practice, rehearsal and performance, and I just haven't had time to post anything.

During my absence I've rebased all of my fantasy figures (about 400+ figures) and painted additions to them. I just haven't posted any of my work.

Anyway... Here are the latest additions to my Faerie Army. I started this army when I first started getting back into fantasy wargaming at the very start of 2020. But I was soon side tracked by all those fantastic Oathmark figures and ended up painting a large armies of elves, orcs, undead and other stuff, and this little army got left behind.

I've recently added  some more satyrs, centaurs, and dryads. They now make up a reasonably sized little army - or at least a contingent for a larger army.

These centaurs are from Eureka Miniatures. They make a nice little light cavalry unit and match the other Eureka centaurs that I already have. They fit in well with the rest of the army. 

The dryads are from GW and I think these are great models. I pondered hard on whether to fork out the high GW cost for these and in the end I gave in because they are really nice figures. I watched a painting tutorial on you tube where a guy painted these figures up in a cherry blossom theme. I liked it so I copied it.

The fauns or satyrs are also from Eureka. I did a bunch of simple conversions to about a half dozen of them in 2020 and picked up some to paint up. Except for the guys with rams horns and the flautist, I can't remember which other ones I worked on. I still have some of them unpainted. I have enough painted up to make two 12 figure units of spears and one of archers.

And that's it for new stuff. I have plenty more recent things I could post but I'm not going to bother going into it. Instead here's some pics of my growing faerie/woodland army:

Goblins, an ent, dryads and a unit of ogres.

A better image of my ent. I made him about 10 years ago when I was sculpting my own figures. 

These are sprites or something (again form Eureka). They make up a nice little unit of light infantry. I'll use them as skirmishers with a magic missile type of attack.

My general and commanders. The moon faced ogress (Eureka), the King of the Forrest (Reaper) and a fairy from I know not where.

Big hitters: Marsh Troll, Jabberwock and Mountain Troll. All from Reaper. 

And that's it. A long time coming and not all that interesting when it finally got here. I hoping I can arrange my time a bit better to keep my posts up to date.

More Orcish Recruits

It took a bit longer than I expected with other things getting in the way, but I managed to finish what I started in my last post. I got most of the Wargames Atlantic Goblin Warband finished, as well as the Oathmark Wolf Riders. I still have 6 WGA archers to go (which are on the paint desk now) and 3 leftover wolf riders.

I did this second lot of wolf riders as archers. I was going to make a few pillion riders with the 3 leftover riders but I couldn't get two riders of fit well onto the wolves. I tried a few tricks but I just couldn't get them to sit right because all the riders have a forward leaning motion and it looked all wrong.

I can either mix the spears and bow together to make generic light cavalry or I can field them as two individual units (one with spears and the other with bows) or as one large 12 figure mixed unit. 

With the Orcs I decided to rebase the ones I did last month and put them all on to single 25mm round bases. These figures don't go together very well in my opinion. Their shoulder sockets look really odd. But they do look very nice when they're painted and that's the more important thing as far as I'm concerned

There are 25 figures here ~ 24 plus an Oathmark figure that I used to make into an Orc Hero/Leader. He's a bit of a kit-bash using an Oathmark body, wolf-rider sword arm & head, a greenstuff cloak with a fur collar and the fist holding the severed head is from the Wargames Atlantic box.

These guys have swarthy skin as opposed to the green skin of my regular Goblins. I decided that these guys are "Orcs" so I can make them a bit alternative (different stats, special ability, or something else. Maybe they can count as Veteran Troops or Elites or Guards... or whatever might work).

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So that's it for now. But, because of this single basing thing I've decided to do this for all of my fantasy troops. I've been thinking of doing this for a while and decided to go for it. I was very conflicted with the multi-basing that I did last year. I like the look of tightly packed troops in formations but it makes these troops much less versatile as far as fantasy wargaming is concerned. So, I got myself a bag full of 25mm round bases and some bags of basing materials and I'm going to start a massive rebasing project of around 300+ figures. Wish me luck and pray for my sanity!

P.S. I'm even considering doing it with my Dark Age Anglo-Saxons too!

Have a Very Orcish Christmas

Well it's Christmas Eve and here am I posting uninteresting photo's of little plastic figures. Tomorrow I'm heading to church nice and early to play Christmas Carols so I won't be having a late night of uncontrolled partying. Alackaday!

I bought a box of Wargames Atlantic Goblins. 

They're not bad figures but they do have a few issues as far as I'm concerned. First of all: they don't fit together very well. I had to drill their arm sockets to get a good fit with the arms. This was a pretty easy task but it was annoying. Secondly, there are two figures on each sprue without bases. These are supposed to be used as riders for the WgA giant spiders but it would have been nice to have a couple of bases added to the sprue. Third: there are not spears on the sprue. I used Oathmark spears cut off at the wrist and fixed them to some sword arms to make up numbers. 

On the positive side; they look great when they're painted up. There are a lot of really nice orcish heads in the box and a good selection of other weapon arms. The bows and quivers look nice but there are no hands actually drawing arrows, which is a shame. I'll have to do more kit bashing.

I painted them up with brownish skin to differentiate them from my Oathmark goblins and I like this look. I also mounted them four to a base more in line with standard heavy infantry units instead of my goblin warbands (3 to a base). I also used some extra Oathmark shields because I don't like most of the shields in the box. All in all they are a nice kit and I'll make some more soon.

Oathmark Wolf Riders

I took my time to get a box of these because I don't think they're very good. Anyway, I wanted some light cavalry for my goblins so I got a box and they came out okay. The riders are okay and I used some of the WgA goblin heads for some of them. I'm not keen on the wolves. They are far too big and they look like cartoon figures with a serious lack of detail. I mean... They're bigger than most 28mm horses! They also need a fair bit of prep before they're ready for painting. 

They come 15 to a box but I want units of 6 or 12. With the next lot that I make I think I'll mount the extra 3 figures sitting pillion behind the front rider and firing bows from the back seat.

Well that's it. It's getting late and A Christmas Carol is on the tv. 

Merry Christmas dear reader and a Happy New Year to you.

 

Ghost Riders in the Sky

I haven't been painting as much as lately so my posts here have been fewer than previous. But I've finished a few things over the past week that will be added to my army of the dead. 

I ordered a bunch of Mantic undead things a couple of months back. They took a while to get to me and when they finally did I was somewhat underwhelmed by them. Most the models are made from that horrible plastic resin and I think the rats (below) might be 3d prints.

I'll start with the best of the batch: Gargoyles. These came out better than I anticipated after a quick look at the pieces in the kit. There are two different pieces for the different body parts (legs + plinth, torso, wings and four heads, I think). I was surprised that they went together to create a few variations, especially by twisting the torsos and heads.

I painted them in very monotone greys to try and create a stone colour effect. The actual dry brush coat that I used is called medium stone, I think. There were 10 in the box but I only made these six, so I might do the remaining figures and add to their numbers.

Revenant Cavalry: I liked the look of these from what I saw online. In the flesh they really disappointed. There is far too much wrong with these figures to make them good. Putting them together was really fiddly. The horses go together to create really weird poses which just look wrong. The horses have no tails! I can understand that the tails might be the first thing to drop off an undead horse but, since we are stretching reality by considering dead horses rising from the grave it's not hard to imagine them still having tails. 

I had plans to make these into a nice looking unit but I was really uninspired by the models and didn't know what to do with them. Then I heard Johnny Cash singing Ghost Riders In The SkyI and I decided to paint them monotone ghostly green just to get them painted. They came out better than I hoped but they're still crappy models.

One thing I dislike about some undead figures is having "Undead Motifs" on the figures. Why would they have a skeleton on their standard? Did these guys know they were going to die in battle and be brought back from the dead to fight again? Is that why they used a skelly on their flag pole?

Stupid concept.

The Rats: Not much to say here. They look okay but the bases were warped and really need strong glue and clamps to get them to sit on the supplied mdf bases properly. They have some nice details. They'll go well with the giant rats and other rat bases I have to create a nice hoard of rodents.

Each base is 40x40mm.

New French Napoleonic Things

These have been sitting on the paint desk for a quite a while waiting for me to finish the final company of voltigeurs. They all sat around patiently whilst I painted numerous other things and didn't hassle me. I mean... What were they going to do? They're just plastic and metal after all!

So here's my newest French infantry regiment. I actually finished the first battalion a while back and posted some pics, but here it is again just for the sake of completion. They are a mix of Perry plastics and metals.

I also finished these generals a few months back and they needed a bit of dusting off before their photo shoot. These are Perry figures and I think they're supposed to be divisional generals. They're very nice figures. I think one is supposed to be Jerome Bonaparte but I don't know which one. As per usual, I'm going to use them for whatever I want to use them for.

I bought some plastic HaT Industry 28mm voltigeurs. They're very nice figures even if they are a little bit plain and restricted by the HaT sculpting & moulding methods. I painted a couple of them and gave them a very plain, flat paint job to see how they turned out. 

They are made from a softer plastic than other manufacturers but it isn't that soft plastic that 1:72 scale figures are made from. This material is easier to work with than other plastics and is far, far less brittle. Therefore the weapons and other uniform items are far more realistic in scale (look at the musket, swords and plumes) and they're very unlikely to break off. 

Scale-wise, they are slimmer and more realistically proportioned than most other metal or plastic figures. Next to Perry French infantry they're slim and fractionally shorter. I don't think they'd mix well in the same unit. But battalions of these little guys would look okay next to battalions of most other manufacturers (Not Front Rank though. They'd look like skinny little runts next to Front Rank).

All in all, these are pretty good figures for what they are. Nice detail. Easy to paint. They'd be easy to multi-base, and they're quite affordable too!

Αντίο φίλοι μου

A quick post to say farewell to my beloved Ancient Greek hoplites. This was the first ancient army I made and it was a labour of love. I really like this army but, as with many of the troops I make, they sit in a box, on a shelf and don't get onto the wargaming table often enough. They've had a few battles but the last time they were out was about 5 years back. I'd rather see them being used for what I made them for.

So now they're moving on but... I still have my other Greek army - Macedonian Successors with lots of pikes!

The majority of these figures are AB Miniatures with a few Xyston thrown in. The reason for this is because I could visit Eureka Miniatures each week at the time and pick the AB's up directly. They're lovely little figures.

Spartans on the right. Armoured Athenians in the centre and poorer, unarmoured hoplites on the left.

When I made this army I didn't know that you could buy shield decals for 15mm. So I painted all the shields by hand. Some of the early ones are a bit rough but I got better and, in my opinion, I did a few really good ones towards the end.

So goodbye my little hoplites. Go and defend your homes and families from the Persian's once again.