Friday, 28 August 2015

Back to Infinity, plus some space mayans

Alright, I got the Domaru done just in time for the monthly paint challenge over on the infinity forums. Well pleased with him too:

This leaves me just 8 models short of completing the JSA I've got. 5 Keisotsu Butai in a link team, a Kempeitai, an Oniwaban and Oniwaban Shinobu Kitsune.
I'm getting better with loaded brush blending too, I think the rest of the JSA is going to be easier to do with this technique. White is heaps easier, I find.

I've been pulled into a small Dark Age force as well, as I said last time, and the first one's gotten a basic paintjob now:
Still got 2 warriors and the captain to go, but they should be done soonish.
They're fun to paint, I'll give them that, but ye gods the assembly... Probably the fiddliest models I've worked with so far.

Lastly, the club I go to is running a frostgrave campaign, so I've gotten on board with that too, with this being the start of a little warband:
And a few guys in WiP:

And that's what I've gotten done lately. Comments and criticism welcome as always!





Wednesday, 19 August 2015

A finished project? Surely not...

Yes, the title is correct - I have actually finished a project!
I think the last time I could say that was in.. 2010 or something, when I managed to complete a bunch of Russians for SOTR.
It is, of course, the Lion Rampant army, and completed is a bit of a misnomer as they still need some varnish and some grass on the bases, but that's going to have to wait until I find my spray varnish. I can't be bothered brush-varnishing these, there's far too many of them.

List-wise, it's 6 foot knights, 6 mounted serjeants, 12 foot serjeants with polearms, 12 foot serjeants with pikes, 12 crossbowmen and a unit of 6 bidowers, skirmishing archers. They represent the forces of Graf Wihelm, a minor noble of a German family, trying to stop the nefarious Danes under my friend Mikkel from burning and looting everything in the Brandenburg region. It's a bit much for my little photo-tent to handle, so this is going to be a bit of a photo-dump. 


These guys have been my command group for the first few battles we've had, as the chap on the left waving his sword about seemed like a good commander. I've since realised that it'd be more realistic if they more or less had the same colours throughout the unit, as a group of this size would apparently be from the same house, or the retinue of a knight or noble wearing his colours. My opponent, Mikkel, is a historian, and I'm inclined to believe more or less anything he says on the matter.
Of course, the logical solution is to expand the army with more units.







The mounted serjeants got split up, they were too big for a single pic. In-game, they function as the personal guard of my commander, Graf Wilhelm. He's the fellow in the knightly armour with the blue lance, and the other blue lance is his squire. Neither are keen to be mistaken for the commoners they lead, that simply wouldn't do. 



 
These are the foot serjeants with polearms. I'm actually on the fence about them, as they've been quite ineffective in game. Their polearms give them 4+ in attack value instead of 5+, but they lose schiltron which is very useful for static defense, and it costs 2 points. Maybe I need to use them differently.
In-game, they're the household troops of graf Wilhelm, hence the more regimented colours and better equipment.


These are also foot serjeants, but I'm thinking I'll field them as foot yeomen instead - they're visibly poorer equipped compared to the guys above and are posed statically, so it'd make sense for them to be town militia I think.





I'd been looking forward to fielding these when I got them done! They're meant to be Italian mercenaries, lead by the disgraced nobleman Luigi, and sadly they've been very mercenary-ish on the field - very reluctant to fight, and they spent most of the last game we had in a discussion about their pay before they finally passed an activation towards the end of the game. 


Lastly, the bidowers. Obviously, they're the old, old Perry Warhammer sculpts, but they actually fit in nicely I think, since the rest of the army is Perry sculpts too barring some of the crossbowmen. They're superfluous in the list too, so they're simply there for a bit of variety. 

But yeah, that's an army completed. Feels strange... 

Not to worry, there's plenty to do still. I've started a Domaru for the JSA, I think my white is improving a bit:




Aaaaand I've been nagged by a friend to start a Dark Age warband, so here's some Kukulkani:

They're getting a quick and dirty paintjob tho. Nothing fancy.
Comments and your thoughts are most welcome as always!










Thursday, 6 August 2015

Plodding along

Things are moving slowly here, but they're moving at least.

The Lion Rampant army is slowly getting there, but I'm afraid it's quite difficult to grab pics of large units so that the models are actually visible. You'll have to make do with some rather smaller pics until I get a hold of Mikkel soonish and get everything set up for a battle.


I've almost got the crossbowmen painted as well, meaning that I've only got a single 12-man unit of foot sergeants with polearms left!
This means I'm close to being actually done with an army, which is pretty unusual for me. I'm still trying to come to terms with it really, but at least there's plenty more to work on.

The skaven is slowly coming along too, I've got 3 in the alcohol to get rid of some paint on them, and I'm playing about with a warlord for them. Recently, I saw the Painting Budda painting videos they did with the AoS starter, and the loaded brush technique they've used looked very interesting. Luckily I had a Skaven warlord lying about that I was going to paint anyway, and he makes a decent testing model.



Results aren't perfect and while I think he's looking decent there's a lot of work in mastering that technique. Nonetheless, I think there's a lot of promise in it, when I get it to work it works beautifully and gives a nice smooth blend with very little effort.

Next update should include a lot of crossbowmen and hopefully an infinity model or two. I miss working on sci-fi.