[15mmFantasySkirmish] Some painting progress

In spite of not being able to paint for any length of time, I've managed to get through a number of 15mm Fantasy figures over the last couple of weeks.

Orcs on Fell Beasts - Eureka Miniatures

These three Orcs on Fell Beasts are from Eureka Miniatures - from left to right, Chieftain, trooper, Shaman. The Chieftain has a mouthful of enlarged canines, which haven't come out very clearly, and has three heads attached to his saddle. The Shaman is very similar to the dismounted Shaman from the same range, and seems to be making some sort of arcane gesture. He has a couple of skulls attached to his saddle. The Fell Beasts remind me of large hyenas, or hyaenodons. Excellent figures and I need to get a few more, and some Orcs on foot as dismounted members of the troop.

Skeleton Warriors - HoTT Fantasy from 15mm.co.uk

Skeleton "Horde of the Dead"

Close up on the Skellies

The skeleton warriors from 15mm.co.uk - now rebranded as "Horde of the Dead" in 15mm.co.uk's reorganization - I painted quickly. Black undercoat, cheap white craft paint, Devlin mud wash. Then a dry brush of Screaming Skull and/or Bleached Bone and a final wash of Babadab. The shields were done with watery Vallejo colours to give the appearance of weathering. For basing, a post by Mark on the Winter of '79 blog where he talked about the visual effect of group basing in a skirmish game inspired me to dig out some old Flames of War bases for my skellies. I wanted a sort of "blasted heath" or "cursed Earth" look so went with my usual PVA and sand texture, black undercoat, and then a coat of red/brown craft paint (I'm really starting to like craft paint for covering big areas). I then touched up any large grains of sand with Codex Grey (or whatever it's called these days) and added some gravel from the foot path across the street. Finally, finished things off with some of my "dead" flock.

Wood Elves from Ral Partha Europe's Blight Haven range.

The Wood Elves from Ral Partha Europe's Blight Haven range are a nice selection of personalities for a warband. I played around all my shades of green to make the members of the warband both uniform and individual. The most elaborate paint scheme was for the Mage. Only two of the Elves had shields. I ordered a small selection of Veni Vidi Vici shield transfers from Spirit Games and, when these arrived, I selected the Star and Tower as suitable Wood Elvish badges. These worked very well, I thought.

I'm happy with my initial results. Now to paint some Adventurers.

[15mmFantasySkirmish] Oops, another diversion

Around the tail end of January, I succumbed to the siren call of 15mm Fantasy.

A few years ago, I had thought about getting into 15mm Fantasy as I've always had a hankering to play something Tolkien-ish, and even bought some Irregular Miniatures Orcs. These, I was rather disappointed with, especially as I then discovered Eureka Miniatures own, very Lord-of-the-Rings-movie-ish, Orcs from their own 18mm Fantasy range. The project, and the Irregular Orcs, ended up tossed in the back of Lead Mountain.

Recently, I've seen such excellent work in 15mm on the G+ 15mm Fantasy Miniatures group that I decided to revisit the scale and genre for myself. I ordered four warbands from Ral Partha Europe's Blight Haven range - Wood Elves, Dwarves, Dark Elf Ronin and Human Mercenary Warband.

While these were winging their way from Old Blighty to West Auckland, I recalled that amongst the Irregular Orcs I had put away were two trolls. I dug them out and painted them up.

Irregular Trolls

Back view

There is a certain asymmetry about these figures that is both annoyingly crude, and vaguely LoTR-movie-like.

Since the RPE figures have arrived, I have started painting the Wood Elves, and have undercoated the Dwarves. They are very nice figures and I'm very pleased with them.

A couple of weeks of work-madness has stalled the project but, on Friday, two little orders from Splinted Light and 15mm.co.uk arrived.

Cleaning up and basing new figures

I spent an hour this evening cleaning up and basing my new arrivals.

HoTT Griffin from 15mm.co.uk with Splintered Light Orcs and Goblins.

From Splintered Light, I received some very nice Orcs and Goblins, as well as a set of Adventurers. From 15mm.co.uk's HoTT range, I received a Griffin and a party pack of skeleton warriors.

HoTT Skeleton Warriors from 15mm.co.uk

I'm really looking forward to painting these guys up.

For Skirmish rules, I'm currently looking at Swordplay from Two Hour Wargames, as well as beta tests for Dungeon Crawl from Two Hour Wargames and Splintered Light's David McBride's Fantasy Skirmish Rules.