Foteviken 1134: The Last of the Cavalry

These past weeks have seen me frantically painting to meet the deadline before the trip to London and Salute. Consequently, there has been very little time for blogging or even visting other blogs.

However, now I've finally finished the last of my models for our demonstration game The Battle of Foteviken 1134. Some more cavalry, bringing the total up to 36.

Just like the other units, this one has a mix of miniatures from Black Tree Design and Gripping Beast. I had to scrape the barrel, so to speak, for this last lot and as a result they have a bit more mixed appearance than the earlier ones. And honestly, they are a bit rushed in places. Anyway, they should blend in nicely with the others.

Even though this has been a fun project, where I've had to push my painting capacity a bit which has certainly been a useful learning experience, I think I'm done with mounted models for a while now ...

At Salute, we will be at GA15, just to the right after the entrance – see the map above. If you're at the show, please come by and say hello!

Foteviken 1134: Hirdmen

Here is another batch of miniatures for our Salute demonstration game, The Battle of Foteviken 1134. Up until now, my main focus has been the cavalry, but this time I've painted up some infantry from the king's and jarl's hirds, i.e. their household warriors.

The miniatures are once again a mix of Black Tree Design and Gripping Beast. The BTD 2nd Crusade models in particular, are very nice indeed.

For this project, I've not held back on the bright colours, especially on the shields. With lots of sharp colours, there's always the danger of them clashing and/or looking too garish. However, here they are balanced by muted browns and the greyish looks of their armours. All in all, I'm rather pleased with the final look.

This model is supposed to represent the son of the Danish king, Magnus, with his personal banner bearer. Like most of his brothers-in-arms, Magnus was killed at the battle, but not before making a heroic last stand. Let's see how he fares this time ...

As always, thanks for looking!

Foteviken 1134: Flags for the Cavalry

We did some more play testing for the Foteviken 1134 project at the club a while ago and I took the opportunity to take some pictures, focusing on the finished flags for the cavalry. You've already seen a sneak peek of these in the previous post but here are some better pictures.

It was very nice to see it all starting to come together. In fact, we were so pleased with the look of our collected forces that I was promptly given the order to do another 12 mounted models. Right now I'm in the midst of painting up a big batch of hirdmen (armoured infantry), but after these I will tackle some more riders.

I'm now beginning to dread transporting all these cavalry models to Salute ...

Thanks for reading!

Project F: Early Medieval Soldiers 3

It's been a bit quiet around here lately due Real Life intervening in the form of colds, stomach bugs, work and whatnot.

However, amongst all this I have managed to keep Project F chugging along and have now finished the final batch of mounted models: 11 more to bring the total up to 24. Only Gripping Beast models this time, apart from a Black Tree Design horse thrown in for some extra variety.

I'm still working on the flags, but I didn't want to wait until these were finished until I posted this. I thought I'd take some snaps of the whole force, flags and all, and post them here later.

Now it's on to the foot soldiers!

For those of you waiting for details about Project F, hang in there – it should be any day now ...

Project F: Early Medieval Soldiers 2

Just before New Year I previewed the first miniatures for Project F – the still "secret" project set in the early medievals, master-minded by the ever industrious Dalauppror. Now it's time for the first proper batch for this project and the last miniatures to be finished in 2015.

The miniatures are a mix of mainly Gripping Beast Normans, with some Black Tree Design 2nd Crusaders used as commanders. All very nice minis.

I'm using a bit of a "speed-painting" approach to this project, utilising a 3-tone technique in the Foundry style and cutting a lot of (small) corners. I pretty happy with how this has turned out, and while the miniatures don't look too good up close they look fine from a distance.

The shields are hand-painted, and some of them look a bit rubbish but I'm hoping these won't be too noticeable when all the units are done. Yes, there are more cavalry coming ...

You'll notice there are some flags missing, and this is because I still haven't decided on a design so I'm saving these for last.

After the mounted minis were finished, I did the painting tally for 2015 and realised I was just three miniatures short of an even hundred. So I picked three foot minis that were quickly painted up.

I'm quite pleased with how they all turned out, cavalry and foot, and I'm itching to continue with this project.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend everyone!

Frostgrave Warband

Regular readers may know that although I'm first and foremost a historical gamer I occasionally like to dabble in more "exotic" periods/genres. Last year I did a smallish fantasy project over the summer, and well – this year I did too! Inspired by my mate Dalauppror's superb kit bashed warband for Frostgrave, I had a rummage through my bit box and built a warband of my own.

An old GW plastic wizard was used as the central character. At this time, I didn't have the rules yet, but after flicking through Dalauppror's book I knew there was a wizard type called soothsayer and the crystal ball in the wizard kit would be a perfect match for this school of magic. After trying a couple of different heads, I used one with a fur hat as it looked good and would fit the winter theme of Frostgrave.

For the soldiers, I went with some old Bretonnian men-at-arms as the basis. I liked their heavily armoured look, which I think also fits nicely with the winter theme. The heads, arms and weapons are from a couple of different GW kits, including the original Bretonnians, Empire militia and State Troops. It was fun trying out different poses – tiny adjustments can really make a big difference for the look and character of the model.

To make the soldiers look less uniform and more like a hardened band of mercenaries, I mixed shields from the original kit with different metal shields from Curtey's and Gripping Beast. The lion heads are overpainted transfers.

The apprentice gave me some trouble. It wasn't until I started playing around with a Gripping Beast model it all seemed to click. The model is from the Saga baggage set. He got a spare head from the GW wizard kit, a pole arm from the Bretonnian kit (it's a bit over-sized but hey, it's fantasy!) and a fur cloak for a bit of dramatic flair. I liked the look of the cloak so I went back an added one to one of the soldiers. 

Then it was just a matter of painting them up, trying to find a paint scheme that tied them all together as a force. To make them stand out, I added a bright green colour to some parts of the wizard and the apprentice.

As I said, I didn't have the Frostgrave rules when I built the models. After receiving the rules and reading up on warband creation, I discovered my warband is too large, especially kitted out like this. Oh well, it's nice to have some models for when the warband grows – and of course I can use them for other games as well. 

Thanks for reading – have a great weekend everyone!