Welsh Warlord

This week I took a break from the "modern" Swedes and painted up a mounted warlord for my Welsh army. I've had this Gripping Beast miniature for a while and thought I'd paint it up as a quick diversion. I do love me some dark ages!

It's a great, dynamic sculpt – and a one piece casting which was nice for a change. I deliberately kept his clothing very plain, without any patterns or frills as I thought it would only clutter up the model. Instead I spent a little extra time on the base.

Seeing the close-ups you notice all the sloppy mistakes you've made which can be a bit disheartening, but it's also useful as you can identify which parts of your painting you need to improve.

Painting this warlord up made me think about adding some mounted teulus to give the army that extra punch. This will be a project for the future though, as I've got enough on my plate as it is right now.

I'd also like to say a long overdue welcome to all the new followers: Alex Yakaitis, Mateusz Żbikowsk, qazbnm, John Shoemark, Chris, Flo, Mi7, GranTurismo Driver, Itinerant, Rens van Vliet, Black Powder, JP and commissarmoody.

Apparently, if you don't have an avatar you get pushed to the last page in the list of followers – this has unfortunately caused me to fail to notice a couple of you even if you have been a follower for a while. I'm terribly sorry for taking such a long time to welcome you!

Have a great week everyone!

Dark Ages Welsh

While I had the background for photographing the French already set up, I took the opportunity to finally take some pictures of my Welsh army. This was the first time I had them all lined up together, and the first time most of them were out of the cupboard since finishing them back in December. I really should get some games with them!

The thinking behind this force was to make a three-in-one army that could be used for Saga, Dux Britanniarum and Dux Bellorum – more about that in an earlier post.

The center is made up of the lord's hard-fighting Teulus. As always, the champion is in the front taunting the enemy in the traditional way ...

On the left we have the Combrogi, ready to rain a deadly hail of javelins at the enemy.

And a unit of bow armed skirmishers to harass the enemy even more.

The less experienced Pagenes are placed in the back, were they can hurl javelins at the enemy without getting in the way of the real fighters.

More Pagenes. It seems I've forgotten to make enough square movement trays so the Pagenes was mounted on my new skirmishing trays for this photo op.

Some mounted Combrogi make up the right flank, along with mounted skirmishers.

All miniatures are from Gripping Beast, except the Pagenes who are from West Wind.

Finally, let me say a big welcome to the new followers Alfons Cànovas, Andrew Saunders and BrummyLad. I hope you'll find something of interest here, please drop a comment if you have any questions about any of my projects.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Home Made Cavalry Trays

No update on the FIW project this week as I've been down with a nasty stomach flu for a couple of days, unable to do anything but crawl around on the bathroom floor begging for mercy. Yesterday I finally managed to crawl out of there and do some prep work on the indians though. Hopefully there'll be some pictures next week.

Instead here are some shots of the cavalry movement trays I made for the Welsh Dark Ages army. Nothing spectacular, and I've already shown the models a while back, but it's a nice feeling when that little part of the project left to do is finally done. (All miniatures by Gripping Beast and flag and shields by Little Big Men Studios.)

The base is 2 mm mdf, custom cut by Warbases to match their regular 2 by 3 movement trays I use for infantry. I then glued down some strips of pine wood from the local hobby shop and finished them off in my usual basing style. (In the end it probably would have been both cheaper and easier to just let Warbases do the whole job, but what would be the fun in that?)

As there were an uneven number of models to fill the trays, I made an extra "filler" base. This way I can use the big base as light/skirmishing horse.

Photographing these made me realise I've forgotten to take some pictures of the whole army, like I promised back when it was finished. Oh well ...

Have a great weekend everyone!

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!

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!

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?