[15mm Fantasy] Painting Log Update for April

Another update of my painting log featuring, amongst others, these Battle Valor Games Dwarian Crossbows.

[15mm Fantasy] Painting Update for March

I managed to get a few more figures painted in March than in February. Here are a few extra random photos:

Battle Valor Games Bullites - big, Ogre-sized monsters with big axes and bad attitudes.

Bullite and Battle Valor Games Dwarian Champions with Eureka Wood Elves - an indication of size.

The Battle Valor Games Dwarians I painted this month.

Dwarian Mounted Scout/Crossbows.

Dismounted Dwarian Crossbow/Skirmishers

More pictures on my modelling log.

[15mm Fantasy] Army Building - Painting Progress

The Army of the Unseelie Court - as of mid-December

My Army of the Unseelie Courts is slowly taking shape. At the moment I have more Orcs and Goblinoids painted than Dark Elves, so the army is more an Orc Army with Dark Elf allies.

My latest unit completed is a regiment of Man-Orc pike from Eureka Miniatures.

Man-Orc Pike

These are great figures and very reminiscent of Saruman's army at the battle of  Helm's Deep in the Two Towers movie.

Orc Legion with Shaman and archers plus Dark Elf troop and archers

 These Orcs are from Splintered Light Miniatures - Orcs with great axes at the rear and Orc Shaman and archers at the front. The Dark Elves are from Ral Partha Europe and are essentially the figure mix from the Blighthaven company pack (with an extra archer).

Ogres, Orcs, Goblins, and Dwarves

A pair of Ogres from Splintered Light; Goblin and Orc Archers, also from Splintered Light; an Orc Regiment from Splintered Light; three Dwarves from Splintered Light; and an Orc Shaman from Eureka Miniatures.

The Witch King leading his Orcish Hosts

From 15mm.co.uk, a Wraith Lord (or Witch-King) on his fell-beast, leading his Orc hosts.

The Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Autumn Courts

The Queen of Air and Darkness, an Elf Queen from 15mm.co.uk,

Dark Elves

And some of her subjects, from Ral Partha Europe.

Updated my Modelling Log

Splintered Light and Eureka Miniatures Orcs

Having fallen a bit behind, I finally finished updating my Modelling Log tonight - lots of 15mm Fantasy figures from Splintered Light, Eureka Miniatures, and some from 15mm.co.uk and Ral Partha Europe painted up over the last couple of months. Some of these photos you may have seen before and some, hopefully, you will not have.

[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.

[RRtK] Army Update

Foranimenagii Army

Since we came home from our Christmas break, I've been working on my Foranimenagii Army for my Orbis Terrarum Campaign. I finished the last unit this afternoon. From left to right, General (on round base), two units of arquebusiers, two units of crossbowmen, five units of Knights, a unit of Pikes, four units of spearmen, five units of crossbowmen.

This army actually needs a couple more units of Pike to finish it off.

And in other news, I picked the figure, below, up off eBay as a Walker for Captain Nemo's Company for In Her Majesty's Name. It's a Light Warjack from Warmachine.

[RRtK] 6mm Painting Progress

Last week, my first order of 6mm Irregular Miniatures Men of the West figures arrived from Eureka Miniatures in Australia. It took me a little while to work out a basing system I was happy with, but once that was done, the actual painting went pretty quick. 

I ended up using plastic card for the bases and decided to go with a 40mm frontage and a 20mm depth. Generals and heroes are mounted on washers.

Skirmisher Archers are mounted five to a base - 1 strip; Melee Infantry (billmen) are 20 to a base - 4 strips in two rows; Pike are 30 to a base - five strips plus a command strip in three rows; Heavy Cavalry (knights) are eight to a base - 2 strips, although I had to trim some of the strips to fit the 40mm frontage; Skirmisher Crossbowmen are mounted six to base - 1 strip plus a spare pikeman as a standard bearer; Light Cavalry are mounted five to a base - 1 strip.

The General is from the Champions pack which consists of one mounted and three foot Champions. I added a spare Knight as an army standard bearer (I still have to make the standards).

The three pike units look quite impressive when viewed from this angle. I was rather pleased in the amount of detail I was able to catch on this figures, including the archers' hands.

I have another order inbound from Eureka Miniatures to give me more Knights and Melee foot troops, plus some shot. Lined up to paint next are my Goblins from Baccus - though I will need to get some Goblin archers from Irregular/Eureka as Baccus doesn't make Goblin Archers. And after the Goblins in the painting cue, are the exquisite Beastmen from Microworld Games.

[RRtK] Teeny, Tiny Toy Soldiers Arrive

Yesterday, my first order of 6mm figures for my Rally Round the King project arrived  from Nic at Eureka Miniatures. I had ordered a selection from the Irregular Miniatures Men of the West range as the basis of the Valgasmaan army, and then spent a couple of hours working out how I was going to base them.

I have decided to use 40mm x 20mm plasticard bases as the frontages match other basing systems, and the plasticard is both thinner, and not likely to curl like card. At the moment, I'm intending to base the heavy infantry four strips to the base, while the pikemen will be six strips to a base (five strips of pike and a command strip). Light Horse are one strip (six figures) while the Knights will probably be two strips to a base.

So, once I had the basing worked out, I had to snip some of the strips to fit everything on the way I wanted them, and then tack-glued the figures to some painting trays. Today, I undercoated everything - I'm pretty impressed with the amount of detail that a wash of watery black undercoat brought out. 

The command strips, top right, has a pair of nicely moulded flags though, at this scale, they're probably about six inches thick. 

The Knights have Maximilian-style metal barding. The lances, apparently, are a point of weakness so I have been very careful when straightening them.

I'm looking forward to putting some colour on these guys.

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While I haven't done any more work on my campaign map, I have had some further thoughts.

The white area in the northern, snow-capped  mountains is a glacier, which is also the source of the Great River. The glacier is called the Rimebeard and is rumoured to be the hold of the Mountain Giants. The province of Jaebelitz, north of Mt Gorfang, has been over run by an army of Beastmen, who are determined to establish their own state. Foranimenagii explorers are attempting to establish a colony on new-found lands to the south of the sea. They will soon discover that these lands are not empty.