Dark Ages Welsh 10

Well, here it is – the final batch of models to be finished for the Dark Ages Welsh project. These are eight Teulus/elites, the Welsh lord's or king's personal companions. To be honest, when painting the first unit I was lazy, leaving out some details to save time. However, this time I was willing to put in a little extra effort and have at least a couple of these new Teulus with tartan patterns. I think they turned out pretty good and so it was definitely worth the extra time it took to finish them. (Hm, maybe I will go back and add some patterns on the finished characters at least?)

On Tuesday, I fortunately received the order from Little Big Men Studios I put in last week, which meant I didn't have to wait until January to finish off the last details like flags. This in turn means this project is now completed – woho!

I really struggled with photographing these models, as I'm depending on natural light and there aren't much of that here in Sweden at the moment (it being the winter solstice and all). But eventually I managed to take some OK close-ups:

 

The miniatures are all from Gripping Beast, and the shield transfers as well as the flag are from Little Big Men Studios.

I'm very pleased to finally have such a big (for me anyway) project finished, and within my deadline of the end of the year too. Now I need to arrange to take some pictures of the whole assembled force, but this will have to wait until January when I'm back from my Christmas holiday.

Of course, I have already started on my next project but won't tell you what it is for a while yet, not until I have some miniatures to show. For now, the only clue I'll give you is that it's something like 1300 years between the Arthurian era and the era for this new project ...

Last of all I'd like to say a warm welcome to Phil and wish you all a great weekend!

Dark Ages Welsh 9

The penultimate unit in the Dark Ages Welsh project to be finished is the mounted Combrogi. Not much to say except that painting cavalry took more time than I expected (since you're really painting two miniatures at once). Also, as I wanted to make sure the riders didn't fall off their horses, I decided to pin them in place. But oh, how I hate pinning! I just can't seem to drill the holes straight and so the riders tilt in all directions making them look like quite drunk. Which is only appropriate for a bunch of Dark Ages warriors I guess ...

Anyway, here are some pictures of the finished cavalry:

I went with very dark horse colours to set the riders off and experimented a bit with different markings to not make the mounts too uniform. Overall I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

As usual, the miniatures are all Gripping Beast and the shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios.

As you can see the standard bearer is missing his flag. I thought I had some suitable transfers in my stash but obviously not. A mistake that's now been rectified by a new order from LBMS. As I probably won't get these transfers before Christmas, I will have to wait until January to finish off those last details on the project. I'm also in the process of making some custom movement trays to use in Dux Bellorum. These should be finished in the beginning of January as well.

It's pretty close now! Just eight more miniatures and this whole thing is done. (Well, except for the banners and the movement trays that is.)

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend everyone.

Dark Ages Welsh 8

With the Vikings out of the way it is time to return to the last stage of the dark ages Welsh project. As usual I find it hard to keep my focus during the final parts of a largish project such as this, and inevitably start dabbling with my next one (or worse – start thinking up a whole new project!). But this time I'm determined to see it through to the end and not lose my focus.

To get going I decided to start with the final 8 archers. As I've already done the first 4 to use in my Anglo-Saxon force in the Dux Viking Age campaign, I kind of "knew" the miniatures and found them easier to paint.  The only hiccup occured during varnishing when I accidentally dropped one of the models. Of course his bow broke, and I had to attach a new one and then paint it and repaint the hand holding the bow. Still, it was a fairly quick repair job and it could have been worse I guess.

That's enough waffling for now, here is a picture of the finished models (as usual, click for a close-up).

The miniatures are all from Gripping Beast.

And with "the first of the last" finished it's on to the second – the cavalry.

Have a great weekend!

Vikings

Here are the finished Vikings for Saga I began a while ago. Actually they've been finished for a week or so, but today I finally managed to get some shots of them. As my previous photos on this blog haven't been very good (to say the least) I've been experimenting a bit and hopefully found a way to take better pictures. The only downside is now you can see all the mistakes much easier. Oh well ...

First off we have the hirdmen:

They are all from Crusader Miniatures and the shields are LBMS transfers.

Next up are the bondi:

These are all Artizan Designs models. I think maybe I should have glued the shields on a bit different for some of the miniatures, but I'm too lazy to go back and redo them.

Now all that remains is to get gaming with them.

Finally I'd like to say a big welcome to danmer. I hope you will like the blog!

Vikings WIP

These past weeks have been very busy with "real life" issues as the end of my paternity leave looms closer and I'm getting ready to go back to work (I still have all of December off as well though). As a result I haven't managed to take some pictures of the finished Wild West posses. What hobby time I've managed to scrape together have been spent painting some reinforcements for my Viking warband for Saga to bring the total points up to six. As I haven't had any luck with the tricky Anglo-Saxons in the league I'm playing in (four straight losses and a place firmly at the bottom of the list), for my last couple of matches I have decided to try the more straightforward Vikings.

Here are some WIP shots of the two new units: one unit of Hearthguards and one unit of Warriors. As usual – click for bigger pictures. A word of warning though: They are even more speed-painted than usual, and so look quite sloppy up close. 

Hirdmen/Hearthguards

Bondi/Warriors

Bondi/Warriors

The Hearthguards are Crusader Miniatures, and the Warriors are from Artizan Designs.

I'm working on the shields right now, and then it's the usual last steps before the models are completely done: varnishing and some tufts etc for the bases. As I want to get back to painting the Welsh I'm quite keen to get these vikings finished as soon as possible .

Before I leave you this time, please let me welcome my new followers: Barks, Captain Richard's miniature Civil War and EinarOlafson.

Many thanks for joining up, and I hope you'll enjoy reading about my various projects.

Wild West Posse 2 WIP

Here are a couple of WIP shots of the next posse for the Wild West project. Actually "WIP" is stretching it a bit as they are all but finished: they just need a quick "dusty" drybrush to dirty them down a bit, some varnishing and finally have a tuft or two added to their bases before they are done. 

As I wrote in the comments to the last post I didn't feel very motivated to paint these up. But thanks to your encouraging words, dear readers, I soldiered on and in the end they turned out quite nice I think. However, I couldn't be bothered to come up with paint schemes for them, and so I more or less copied the ones on the Foundy site. Also, there are some areas that I'm less than happy with and which I planned to go back and redo, but to be honest I will probably leave them as they are.

To the right are some close-ups of the models (click for bigger pictures). The more astute of you have of course noticed that the outlaws have been infiltrated by a sheriff!

All models are once again from Foundry, except the sheriff which is from Black Scorpion – he's a bit taller than the others, and slightly thinner, but I think he fits in quite OK.

I tried a new thing with these models which worked out pretty well: I always find it a bit boring to have the bases left to do after I've finished the models themselves. So instead of saving the bases to last, this time I started with them. It was actually a quite nice little trick to boost the painting morale, and I think I will use it in all my projects from now on.

When these are finished I will post some pictures of all the Wild West models in action. After that, it's back to the Dark Ages.

Thanks for looking!

Wild West Posse 1

First of all a warm welcome to my new followers: Anibal Invictus, DFlynSqrl, laughingferret, Philip Wright, The Angry Lurker and Ubique Matt. Don't hesitate to drop a question or comment or two!

On to today's business then: As some of you may remember I bought the big starter pack for Foundry's The Rules with No Name way back in January, with the intent to get som Legends of the Old West games going. I managed to finish the first of the two posses, apart from the bases and varnishing, sometime in March or April (can't remember exactly when). The plan was to paint up the other posse as well, before finishing off the bases and so on.

As it happened, I only got the second batch primed and the first layer of their skin painted before this whole dark ages business got in the way during the late spring. Since then they have been put aside, patiently awaiting my return. This whole time I've been determined to finish the project before the end of the year, even though I don't think I will get any games going in the immediate future as my interest in this period has dipped quite a bit to be honest.

Anyway, with the first stage of the Welsh project finished, it's now time to revisit these fellas. Finishing the first posse was easy: A couple of quick and sloppy drybrushes on the bases to make them look suitably dusty, some varnishing, some tufts and they were done. Nice and fast.

Here they are in all their righteous glory, ready to bring the outlaws to justice (i.e. the gallows). The miniatures are all Foundry – nice enough, with a lot of character for sure, but nothing that justifies their (still) exorbitant prices.

Now on to the second posse – the outlaws! I started them last week but time was short as I was away for the weekend. There's a bit more work left on this posse, and I won't get much painting done over this coming weekend either. However, hopefully they will be done before then.

Dark Ages Welsh 7

Well, today I finished the final miniatures for my Welsh starter force for Dux Britanniarum. My, that feels good! As usual it consists of: 3 units of 6 levies/pagenes, 2 units of 6 warriors/combrogi, one unit of 6 elites/teulus, one unit of 4 archers, 2 big men/lesser lords and a lord and his champion.

I couldn't resist mounting them on their movement trays and arrange them for a quick snap, although the archers are missing in the picture above. As usual, the image quality isn't the best (to say the least) but I'll try to get some better shots later. For now, here's a close-up of the lord and his champion (love that model by the way), flanked by the big men.

Actually I have a couple of more miniatures finished, and at the moment the standing for this "multi game project" is as follows (SAGA/Dux Brit/Dux Bell):

Teulu 4/6/18 – 10 done, 8 remaining
Combrogi 16/12/18 – 18 done
Combrogi, mounted 0/0/6 – 0 done, 6 remaining
Pagenes w bows 12/4/0 – 4 done, 8 remaining
Pagenes w spears 0/18/6 – 18 done


To sum it up, what remains to be painted are 8 teulus, 6 mounted combrogi and 8 archers. However, as I also want to be able to field the mounted combrogi in SAGA I will paint another 2 for a total of 8.

As I'm now getting a bit tired of the Welsh, and as a reward for myself, I will take a break from them for the rest of the month and paint some other bits and bobs I have laying around. I'll be sure to post some WIPs later.

Thanks for reading!

Anglo-Saxon Reinforcements

Last night I attended the second round of the SAGA league at Dalauppror's club. As my decision to participate came rather late last week, I found myself once again having to reprioritize the painting: From the last two Welsh miniatures in my Dux Britanniarum force to the final seven Anglo-Saxons that would bring my warband up to six points.

A few days of frantic painting saw me finishing the miniatures a couple of hours before the games would start. All in all I'm quite happy with these, but as I was in a hurry they are a bit sloppy as there were some misstakes I didn't go back and correct. Not that you could tell because of the bad photo ... The miniatures are all Gripping Beast and the excellent flags are from Little Big Men Studios.

My first game in the league (and my second game of SAGA ever) was against Ulf and his Vikings. Some crappy tactics, further worsened by abysmal dice-rolls, saw me thoroughly thrashed. In the end, after six rounds, all that remained of my force was four levies – the rest, including the Warlord, had been wiped out. The final score was something like 26-12. Ouch.

I'm still learning the game, and also find the Anglo-Saxons a bit tricky to use. But then maybe my force composition is not the best. Last night i used 2x4 hearthguards, 2x12 warriors and 1x12 levies with spears. Next time I think I will field the hearthguards as one unit of eight instead, to make them less brittle, and later on maybe swap them both for warriors and/or (missile) levies. Or maybe not! The league allows you to change faction for each game if you wish (and have the miniatures of course), and I'm close to having six points of Welsh which is rather tempting to use. Also, I have four points of Vikings, and it should be an easy thing to paint up another two units.

In next week's round I will probably face Björn and his dreaded Jomsvikings. I watched one of his games last night, and it looks like I'm in for another thrashing. Well, better to have it over with I guess!

Oh, and about the Welsh: As I said there are only two miniatures left in the Dux Britanniarum starter force, the Lord and his Champion, and they are nearly finished. All that remains are varnishing and finishing off their bases with tufts etc. I didn't make my deadline of October 8th, but they should be done by tomorrow evening which is OK by me.

Dark Ages Welsh 6

As predicted, I didn't get much work done this week because of various obligations. On top of that I have caught a cold which has further hampered my work. Despite all this I nearly managed to finish the Pagenes. What remains are highlighting their flesh, painting and attaching the shields and drybrushing the bases before varnishing.  Sorry about the more-than-usually bad picture.

I still haven't decided wether to do a simple highlight on the clothes as well, as I usually do. They now look rather grubby with just the wash (which is appropriate for a bunch of farmers I guess), and stand out against the other, more "clean looking" troops.

The plan is to have them finished by Monday night, including the bases of all the miniatures finished thus far (yes, also the Combrogi and Teulus) and then it's just the Lord and his Champion left before I tackle the Anglo-Saxon's reinforcements for SAGA. The Welsh should definitely be done by my self imposed deadline of Monday the 8th, but I'm not so sure about the Saxons ...

Join me in a week to see if I'm on my way to make that deadline or not. Have a nice weekend and thanks for reading!

Dark Ages Welsh 5

Welcome to another update for my Dark Ages Welsh project, a little later than I said but here it is. I had hoped to have the Teulus well finished by this time and started on the Pagenes. Well due to unforseen circumstances I didn't get as much painting done last week as I had planned. Nevertheless, as you can see in the picture above pretty much all that remains on the Teulus is finishing off the flag (I managed to glue it on slightly askew and will have to trim the "fringes" a bit, as well as paint the ugly white edges of course) and their bases (together with the Combrogi). Flag and shield transfers are from the excellent LBMS.

With nine Teulus finished it will leave me a couple of extras to use as Nobles in Dux Brit, and saving me from having to paint up more miniatures for now!

The levies could do with a Noble
to make them rank up properly!

I have also started on the Pagenes. They took some time to prepare – cleaning was straightforward enough, but I decided to drill out their shieldhands to attach extra javelins (and subsequently removed the small pins on their hands for attaching the shields) which was a little fiddly. What wasn't a little fiddly, but rather a lot, was the heads! Maybe it's because I'm getting a little stressed for time but this Separate Head System thing caused me a fair amount of headache. After a lot of cutting, swearing, cutting, fitting, swearing, cutting, filing, cutting (and some more swearing) I had finally attched all the heads. The miniatures have now had their javelins attached, bases sanded and are all undercoated. Today, after this photo was taken, I started painting their skin.

But wait, what lurks behind the amassed Welsh levy? Is it ... Yes, some reinforcements for my Anglo-Saxon SAGA warband.

As I have been invited to join the SAGA league down at Dalauppror's club, I need to paint another unit to bring the total points of my Anglo-Saxons up from five to the required six. I had these two warrior command packs lurking in the leadpile and decided to add them to the force. They will be split amongst the two already finished units of warriors, making it possible to field either two units of twelve or three units of eight. Actually, I have already finished one of the miniatures – the charming little tubby Champion for my Dux Brit force. One less miniature to paint then ...

Looking ahead, I honestly don't think I will make the deadline of October 1st for the Dux Brit force even though I plan to speedpaint the Pagenes (possibly even using Army Painter Quickshade). This and the next weekend will be taken up by various obligations, leaving me with not enough time for painting. Thus I have decided to push the deadline back a week, to October 8th. Good thing I haven't booked any games with them yet!

The Anglo-Saxons will be a little less prioritized but I really hope to have them finished by October 8th too. Fingers crossed ...

Well that's all for now. Welcome back next week for another update on the project. Thanks for reading!

Dark Ages Welsh 4

First I'd like to say a warm welcome to the new followers: Maxamillian Walker, Vladdd309, Whisperin' Al, Jacob T S, mallymoocow, Bill T and Northern Wargaming.

Thank you all very much! I hope you like the blog and find it inspiring.

As I wrote in last week's update, I had hoped to finish the Combrogi and have started on the Teulu by now but things didn't exactly go as planned. Instead I got lured by Dalauppror into playing a mini-campaign in Dux Britanniarum with the British and Saxons substituted for Anglo-Saxons and Vikings respectively (not that I needed much convincing!). After a quick check of my Anglo-Saxons for SAGA I found out I was missing six levies, four archers and a champion for a full starter force.

So while Dalauppror very kindly offered to lend me the levies, four of the Welsh archers promptly got bumped up to the front of the painting que along with an Anglo-Saxon champion from a command pack I never got round to painting. I thought it would be nice to have the six movement trays needed as well, but wasn't sure I could finish them on time as it was only four days until the first game. If I managed them it would be bonus, but no big deal if I didn't.

Well, as usual I seem to work best when having a strict deadline (ie a game booked) and a couple of hours before the game, I put the matt varnish on the last of the models and on the movement trays. Phew!

Notice the size difference. That's a short champion!

As an added bonus, both the archers and the movement trays are part of my Welsh project – and I had originally planned to tackle these last – so two birds with one stone and all that. Here you can see the Welsh archers and the Anglo-Saxon champion Ealdwulf, along with the movement trays. Sorry for the bad/dark photos.

Movement trays by Warbases. I might go back
and add some static grass as they do look a bit bare.

After the frenzied painting over the weekend and on Monday, work continued on the Combrogi in a more leisurely pace this week. As you can see on the picture below they are now nearly finished. I had just applied the matt varnish before this picture was taken (hence the models are a bit shiny) and all that remains are adding some tufts, static grass and/or foliage. However, I might go back later and spiff up the shields as they look a bit plain at the moment. These are after all professional warriors and not some common levies!

The 18 Combrogi very nearly finished.

I have set myself a deadline for October 1st for the Dux Brit part of the project. This leaves me with three weeks for finishing a minimum of six Teulu, 18 Pagenes and four characters (Lord, Champion and two Nobles). It's certainly doable but it's going to be tough due to that big chunk of Pagenes. As a result, I'm thinking about how to save painting time, what corners to cut, without reducing the quality (or at least without reducing it too much ...).

Anyway, thanks for reading! I will post a new update next week.

Dark Ages Welsh 3

Another week, another short update on the Welsh project.

Since last week I have managed to blockpaint all of the 18 Combrogi, add a little detail such as trimmings, tartan patterns etc and slap on some washes and start to highlight them. Hopefully I can finish them off this week and then start painting the Teulu. I think I will split these into two groups of eight men each, as batchpainting large groups is rather boring to say the least. Besides, you only need six Teulus for Dux Brit (which is what I'm primarily painting for at the moment) so I can save the other half for later.

Join me for another update in a week!

West Wind Welsh

Gripping Beast, West Wind, WW, WW, WW, GB.

As promised, here are some pictures of the West Wind's Welsh spearmen. They are quite nice, on par with Gripping Beast I'd say, but unfortunately there are only four poses in total. Of course, the eight separate heads do make them a bit more varied. As I will use these as levies/Pagenes I will not spend too much time on them, but if you wanted to you could use other West Wind heads (eg Irish or Picts and/or file away the beards) to make even more variants.

I've added some Gripping Beast miniatures for comparison (to the left and right). As you can see the West Wind miniatures are slightly bulkier, and the heads just a tad bigger, but on the table I don't think you'd notice any difference.

All in all they are great value for money, costing just under £1 each if you buy the warband pack of 20.

Here are some more close-ups (click on the pictures to see eh ... close-ups of the close-ups).

Gripping Beast, West Wind, West Wind.

West Wind, WW, WW, Gripping Beast.

Dark Ages Welsh 2

This past week saw continued work on my 3-in-1 Dark Ages Welsh project – you can read the first post for the project here, with a summary of the plan.

I have now glued sand to the bases, attached the weapons and undercoated all the models. The riders were left off their horses as I thought it would be easier to paint them, but I haven't found a good way to "hold" the miniatures (glueing them to screws didn't work out as planned). So the riders will probably be glued to the horses when it's time to paint them.

Not much to see at the moment, just a bunch of undercoated miniatures/black blobs, so no pictures this time I'm afraid.

I'm still waiting for the West Wind levys/pagenses with javelins I ordered from Caliver Books about four weeks ago, but I already have enough models prepared to keep me painting for a good while. I also placed an order with Gripping Beast for some character models to use as Nobles and a Champion in Dux Britanniarum, along with some other bits and pieces.

Yesteday evening I finally started the actual painting with the flesh on the combrogi. I still haven't decided in what order to paint the units, but I will probably concentrate on getting the miniatures for Dux Brit finished first, as most of them will also be used in the SAGA warband. Next update in a week!

Update: Added a picture to please Dalauppror. ;)

Dark Ages Welsh 1

As I said in an earlier post I've devised a cunning plan to get a force to use in three Dark Ages games: SAGA, Dux Bellorum and Dux Britanniarum. The idea was to use a Welsh 4 points starter warband for SAGA as the core, and then add the required troops for the two Duxes. For Dux Bellorum I'm using the Welsh 32 points starter army from the author's blog post here.

Each regular unit in both Duxes will be 6 miniatures, individually based and mounted on 2x3 25 mm movement trays from Warbases. The cavalry will be 3 miniatures on similar sized movement trays, but since they will be based on rectangular 25x50 mm bases, I will make the trays myself.

Now, it turned out the plan wasn't that clever after all, since the overlap between the troops used in each game wasn't exactly optimal. Anyway, here are the different miniatures needed, with amounts for each game (SAGA/Dux Brit/Dux Bell):

Teulu 4/6/18
Combrogi 16/12/18
Combrogi, mounted 0/0/6
Pagenes w bows 12/4/0
Pagenes w spears 0/18/6

In the picture above you can see the result of this weeks work: The miniatures have been cleaned and glued to their bases. All miniatures are from Gripping Beast. The only thing missing are the pagenes with spears/javelins – I have ordered some Welsh West Wind spearmen for these, as they are all barefoot (as far as I can make out anyway) and somewhat "poor looking" – and perhaps some suitable Nobles/characters.

I'm hoping to have all the weapons attached (shields will as usual be glued on when the miniatures are painted), sand glued to the bases, and all the miniatures above undercoated by the end of the coming week. Well, we'll see about that in a week won't we?

Anglo-Danish Warband

Last weekend I finally managed to finish my anglo-danish warband for SAGA and today I took the time to snap some shots of them. I'm the first to admit I'm not a very good painter. My miniatures look OK on the tabletop but terrible in close-ups were you can see all the mistakes and short cuts. You have been warned ...

The anglo-danes were painted using simple block colours and Army Painter strong tone dip. To add some depth to the models a single highlight was added to the skintones before brushing on the dip. Afterwards I also added highlights to the wood areas on the huscarls (the shafts of spears and axes, and the back of shields) to make them stand out a bit more.

Here are some closer shots of the different units. First off we have the huscarls with the mighty dane-axes.

Here is the second unit of huscarls, more traditionally armed but still sporting fabulous facial-hair.

Enough with the fancy stuff, here is the first unit of the hard working warriors.

And here is the second unit of warriors. Salt o' the earth types one and all.

Finally, the man behind it all – the mighty (and hopefully victorious) warlord. He has had his axe swapped for a bigger one – size really does matter as we all know. I spent a little more time painting him, using the traditional 3–4 layer technique (and/or some washes) instead of the dip

Figures by Gripping Beast and transfers by Little Big Men Studios.

Next up for a photoshoot are the vikings, which I actually finished before these guys. 

Oh, and if everything goes to plan, fingers crossed, I will get my first game of SAGA next weekend ...

Customer Service

So two examples of great customer service:

1. Gripping Beast. I ordered my anglo-danish warband from Maelstrom Games but discovered one of the huscarls with daneaxe was missing in the pack (I got an ordinary hurcarl instead). I could have contacted Maelstrom Games and sorted something out, but reasoning it would probably be easier I e-mailed Gripping Beast and asked if it would be possible to buy just a single miniature from them. They very kindly responded and offered to send the missing figure free of charge and it arrived within a week.

Here he is, waiting for the glue to dry on the base before I attach the axe and undercoat him.

Service such as this should of course be encouraged, and I now ponder what to order from GB ...

2. Black Scorpion. I managed to snatch up a couple of miniatures during their recent metal sale. The popularity of the sale must have caught them somewhat on guard however, because when I received the package one of the miniatures was a resin version. Obviously the metal version was sold out, but rather than refunding me a sending out my order without the miniature they included the resin version at the same price. Nice!

Here are the miniatures I ordered – all to be used in my Old West project (well, except the pirate of course) – and the resin Pat Garrett.

Viking Ulfhednar

I'm pressing on with the viking ulfhednar/berserkers. Last night I managed to get all the skin done, and then started on the shields. After that it's just the metals and they are done. Yes! Hopefully I will have time to finish them tonight. As usual I wait until all models are done before doing the bases, to keep them consistent.

 Sorry about the lousy picture. I used my mobile phone and the light's not very good today either.

If you look closely, you can see two of the final five models for the 4 points warband in the background. I had time to glue them to their bases and attach their shields. The plan is to start painting them this weekend if I can find the time.