Pictish Raiders 8

Well then, here are the final models for my Pictish Raiders force for the upcoming expansion to Dux Britanniarum. These are the Lord, his Champion and a lesser Noble. And for a little extra flavour I added a standard-bearer to accompany the Lord in battles.

L to R: Champion (GB), standard-bearer (WW), Lord (WW)
and Noble (GB).

The miniatures are from Gripping Beast and Westwind. I spent a little more time painting these models, adding some extra highlights etc, like I usually do for commanders and I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out. Unfortunately the light is really weird today, making it impossible to take decent photos (the champion's white cloak is not that flat looking for example) but these will have to do.

As usual, the shield transfers and the banner are from Little Big Men Studios.

The Lord and the standard-bearer are mounted on a custom made sabot command base for greater flexibility.

I had this one made by special order from Warbases, along with a couple of other variants as well. More about these in a later post.

And with these miniatures, this project is now finished. For now at least! I have some more stuff I want to add, some nice extras, but as I'm no real hurry these will be done in-between other projects.

When I have the time, I will take some snaps of the whole force assembled.

Now, all I have to do is wait for all this Chain of Command hysteria to die down and for Too Fat Lardies to finally publish the Raiders supplement so I can try out my new warband ...

Finally, a long overdue greeting to the new followers: Mike D, Remco de Groot, Emilio and Willie Anderson. Welcome! I hope you'll like my blog and find much inspiration here. Do make yourselves at home.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Pictish Raiders 7

This is the finished skirmish cavalry for my Pictish raiders force for Dux Britanniarum. The miniatures are a mix of Black Tree Design and Westwind.

BTD, WW, BTD, WW

In reality, I imagine the Picts would have ridden sturdy ponies, but since these horse models are a bit on the small side they look OK to me.

As usual, the shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios.

The BTD cavalry are as nice as the rest of the range, but unfortunately there's only three poses and they're all a bit static. A couple of more sculpts with more animation would have been nice.

With these skirmishers done it's just a couple of characters left before the whole force is finished. Nice!

Oh, and another thing: it seems this blog reached 10 000 total hits sometime during the last weekend, which of course is a very nice milestone. Back in April the total hits reached 5 000, which was some 15 months after I started. Well, it certainly seems the monthly hits are increasing as the next 5 000 was reached in just 4,5 months. Of course, counting hits is a fairly blunt instrument when gauging how your website is doing, but at least it gives you some indication ...

Anyway, I just want to say a big "Thank you!" to all visitors, especially if you're not a Russian spambot and also if you took the time to comment on one of the posts.

Have a great week everyone and thanks for reading!

Pictish Raiders 6

Well then. Here is the fourth and final unit of raiders for my Pictish Raiders force for the upcoming expansion to Dux Britanniarum.

GB, BTD, WW, BTD, GB, GB

The miniatures are the usual mix of Black Tree Design, Gripping Beast and Westwind, and the shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios.

Not much left now, just the skirmishing cavalry and the characters.

Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for reading!

Pictish Raiders 5

I have finished the third unit of raiders for my Pictish Raiders force for Dux Britanniarum. And finally, I did some tattoos! Very simple, but they look quite nice in my opinion (although I'm perhaps a bit biased).

Anyway, here are some more pictures:

GB, GB, GB, BTD, GB, WW

The light is a little tricky today, killing some of the highlights, and so the pictures are unfortunately not the best.

The miniatures are from Black Tree Design, Gripping Beast and Westwind. The pose of the Westwind model is maybe a bit akward, but he looks very cool with his flowing cloak and the half-hidden face.

Shield transfers, as always, from LBMS.

Just another unit of these, and then it's on to mounted skirmishers and then the characters. Should be a breeze!

Pictish Raiders 4

Here is the second unit of raiders to be finished for my Pictish Raiders force for Dux Britanniarum.

GB, BTD, GB, GB, BTD, GB

The models are a mix of Black Tree Design and Gripping Beast, and the shield transfers are as usual from the excellent Little Big Men Studios. I've been trying out some new stuff with the bases and I'm liking how they look now – a bit more interesting without being too cluttered. When all units are done, I will go back and update the bases of the first units using the same techniques.

Unfortunately I've had some problems with the wash drying uneven and patchy, as you can see in the close-ups. I think it might have something to do with the weather here in Sweden the last couple of weeks – very hot and humid. The models look good on arm's length distance though, which is how they will be viewed most of the time so I guess it's not that big a deal.

With this unit finished it's already half the army done, which is certainly good for the painting morale! I'll be off on vacation for most of next week but I aim to have another unit done before the week is over.

Have a great weekend everyone, and thanks for looking!

Pictish Raiders 3

Another week, another addition to the Pictish Raiders force. This time it's the first unit of "proper" raiders, 6 men strong.

BTD, GB, BTD, WW, BTD, GB

The models are from Black Tree Design, Gripping Beast and West Wind. The BTD models are slimmer than the other two manufacturers' but I think they match OK. Shield transfers are from Little Big Men Studios.

I took a little extra time painting these raiders, doing some patterns on their clothing as well as some extra (smallish) highlights in certain places. Nothing too fancy though, just enough to make them look less flat than with a single highlight.

Some more pictures:

And finally, a warm welcome to the new follower Grigork. I hope you'll like the blog!

Pictish Raiders 2

The Picts are still pouring down from the North: I have finished the second unit for my Pictish Raiders force. You can read more about the project in the first post. These are a small group of skirmishers armed with javelins.

From left to right: Old Glory, BTD, Westwind, BTD

This is a nice mix of miniatures: Black Tree Design, Old Glory and West Wind. The fellow of the right is a very simple conversion. He was originally armed with a sling, but I cut the sling away from his right hand along with the peg for the shield on his left hand. I then drilled out both hands, bent the right arm back a bit, to make the pose better, and finally glued the javelins in place. Nice and simple.
 
Here are some more pictures:

Finally a warm welcome to the new followers: 1/72 Figures collect & paint, Chris Stoesen, fireymonkeyboy, James Brewerton, Paul´s Bods, Thaddeus, thehermit, Wiatrog. Quite the crowd! I hope you will like the blog and find much inspiration here!

Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for reading.

Pictish Raiders 1

With the Novgorodians finished it's time for my new project: A force for the upcoming Raiders expansion to Too Fat Lardies excellent Dark Ages skirmish rules Dux Britanniarum. 

Way back in the post were I talked about my planned projects for this year I didn't want to say which force it would be, but now it's time to reveal the secret: Yes, the Picts are coming!

Naturally, the force composition is not yet official but after reading some AARs and posts on the Lardies Yahoo Group I've managed to piece together the following list:

1xLord
1xNoble
1xChampion
4x6 Raiders
4xMissiles (bow or crossbow)
4xSkirmishers (javelins)
4xSkirmish cavalry

It seems this list is more or less final – any adjustments are probably (and hopefully!) going to be minor. In any way, I should find some use for these models and so I've started painting them. Here are the first models to be finished: 4 bowmen.

The miniatures are from Black Tree Design. Now, I've read a lot of negative things about BTD – do a search for them on The Miniatures Page and you'll find all sorts of horror stories – but it happily seems these are a thing of the past: I've ordered from them a couple of times over the last year and while the shipping was a bit slow (but not unreasonable in any way) everything did turn up. The miniatures are very nice, especially the Picts. They are a bit slimmer than for example Gripping Beast but I'm not overly concerned about these things. Thus I will happily mix both manufacturers in this force, along with models from West Wind and Old Glory.

This will be a "quick and dirty" project, not quite speed-painted but near enough (as you can see in the close-ups). I've tried a somewhat new approach this time: Instead of priming them black as I usually do, I spray them with Army Painters Leather Brown spray primer. The nifty thing about this it that I can leave some parts in the primer colour (eg belts, bows and spears) and save a considerable amount of time. These archers were certainly finished in no time at all. When doing the warriors, and characters too of course, I'll spend more time on the models, doing some patterns, such as tartans and stripes, on their tunics and cloaks. As usual with Dark Ages miniatures, you can get a long way by concentrating on the core three: bases, faces and shields.

Finally some more pictures:

Thanks for looking. Have a great weekend everybody!

2013 – Half Time Report

Half of 2013 is now over and my, was that fast or what? I didn't do a half year report last year, as my hobby time was close to non-existent and consequently I began thinking about quitting the hobby. A lot has happened since then though and I'm now more into the hobby than ever.

So far this year, the biggest thing for me hobby-wise has been joining a club. I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned this before, but I'm now a member of the excellent Little Wars Stockholm along such illustrious individuals as Dalauppror. Despite a long and thorough initiation process I was voted in as a full member in February. Naturally, this had fueled my painting and gaming even more. The only downside is a danger of painting fatigue, as there are so many new cool projects I want to join in on.

In the beginning of the year I made some plans for 2013, and I thought it would be fun to check how I'm doing in the half time break.

Blogging
My goal was to update the blog at least once a week, and except for maybe the occasional slip I think I've managed to do this. I'm now pondering how to make the posts more varied, as I think the usual format of project updates once a week runs the risk of being a bit formulaic over time. I won't change the goal to two posts per week, but maybe I could manage a couple of more each month?

Games played
The plan is to play 26 games during 2013, and I'm happy to say I'm well on my way. Right now the count is 16, and it gives me a nice little "buffer" for the rest of the year. And I might need it as it's notoriously tricky to get games going during the summer months of July and August as well as in December.

The games I've played up until now breaks down like this:

• Saga 1 game
• Lion Rampant (playtests) 5 games
• Muskets&Tomahawks 4 games
• Dux Suecia 1 game
• Dux Bellorum 1 game
• Dux Britanniarum 1 game
• Hail Caesar 1 game
• A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict 2 games

Every game has been fun in its own way, but I do wish we had played some more Dux Britanniarum (and Dux Suecia) as this game continues to be one of my absolute favourites. And it's been a while since we played Muskets&Tomahawks which is a shame because our multiplayer games were really fun. But as always: Too many games, too little time.


Miniatures painted
I wasn't sure how much hobby-time I would get in 2013, and so I only had a very modest three projects planned for this year: M&T French, Lion Rampant Novgorodians and a raider force for the upcoming expansion to Dux Britanniarum. The first two are done, and I've now started on the third (more on that in a week or so).

So far I have painted 64 miniatures, including 12 cavalry models. The model count breaks down like this:

• Muskets&Tomahawks French 22
• Lion Rampant Novgorodians 42 (incl 12 cavalry)

A fairly reasonable result this far I think, for me at least. If I can double that amount until the end of the year I'll be more than happy.
 

Looking forward
When the raiders are done I will do some Reds for our A Very Moderate Swedish Conflict games. I haven't decided yet, but I'm thinking 6–8 militia types and a leader figure. A nice and quick little project.

Dux Britanniarum is a really good game and I hope I get to play it more during the rest of the year. I plan to do all the forces for the game: first a Saxon force and then the Romano-British, and eventually all the forces in the Raiders book too. But I'll only do the Saxons this year, and save the rest for later.

Then there's the Steampunk models from the Empire of the Dead Kickstarter. And I really, really want to build some new terrain – it's been far too long since I did this. And then do some bits and pieces, like markers, baggage, barrels, wagons ... And Dalauppror has mentioned a new secret joint project he'd like to do ...

What was that about only doing three projects this year again?! We shall see how much of this I've actually manage to do at the end of the year – should be interesting!

Novgorodians 9

I've completed the final 6 models for the Novgorod force for the Baltic Crusades project. Oh yes, it's always a nice feeling when a project is finished.

Here they are in all their splendour:

Another angle:

The models are all from Gripping Beast.

And finally, here is a shot of the two city militia forces as I will field them, armed with a mix of spears and missile weapons:

We had our first game featuring the Novgorodians last night – an ambush on a Swedish baggage train of sledges – and they performed surprisingly well. This was also an opportunity to take some pictures of the whole force with some nice looking terrain in the background. An AAR should eventually appear on Dalauppror's blog. Meanwhile, here is a teaser pic of the table from the Novgorodian starting table edge:

In the upper right corner, you can see the Swedish force, just visible behind the woods.

Hopefully some of the pictures will make into the finished game when it's published by Osprey sometime next year.

As a result of this project being completed, there is now a serious dent in the lead mountain. But fear not! I've already ordered more models to restore the mountain to its former glory – and then some – for future projects.

Have a great weekend everyone!