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!

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. 

Slow and steady

Getting closer to that complete-some-projects goal!
Lately, I've gotten the mounted serjeants for the Lion Rampant force completed. They couldn't fit in my lightbox all 6 at a time, so 2 pictures it is:

In-game, these are going to be a group of young sons of well-off families from a hansestadt, who nonetheless aren't noble. As far as I can tell, it was fairly usual for rich families to do this. I assume it's been good networking, the LinkedIn of the medieval era. That's why the obviously noble commander is riding with them: Clearly, they aren't as bad as the usual rabble (they have money, after all), but they might still need some stiffening from a proper, noble, commander. He's taken his squire with him, they're the ones with blue lances.

I usually loathe painting cavalry models, so it's a testament to the Perry brothers sculpting that these were actually decently fun to paint. Not something I'm looking forward to doing again, but not as bad as cavalry usually is. Dunno what it is about cav, but it's not my thing.

Also gotten started on the tiny skaven warband. It's basically going to be 10 stormvermin and a character in the lead, unless I fall into the trap of scope-creep.

I might tweak the red a bit, it's slightly flat I think.

And finally, I got some infinity done - the female wildcat. The guy with the spitfire snuck into the shot as well:

Sadly, I can't get the link team completed with the last Wildcat. The model I got might have a mismatched arm, and I'm going to wait until I get hold of the Corregidor box to see if there's something I can do about it.

Thanks for reading!

Reverend Healer and a quick WiP

Last time I visited my FLGS, I was massively flattered to have them ask to display my starter minis in their cabinet for a while. I couldn't really refuse of course, so I had to toss some paint at the much-neglected Reverend Healer. She's never really gotten done since I don't seem to be able to fit her into my lists.

I'm well pleased with the result, especially since I did it in a relatively (for me) short time.

The model seemed to grow on me while painting, and I think I might actually try fielding her once or twice.
I've also managed to get a photo setup that I think works. As I think I've mentioned, when I graduated my GF gave me a nice new painting lamp as a graduation gift. It's also handy for photos, it seems, so I might well start putting some older minis up once in a while, as I dig them out in the normal course of things.

Next model, most likely a Wildcat since I'm in the mood for shiny red and white right now:

And after her, we'll be right back to the historicals - I've got some more mounted serjeants that need paint.

As always, thanks for looking and feel free to leave a comment.

More Lion Rampant and a touch of Infinity

Well, more Lion Rampant tonight!

I've had my first game, last friday actually, and it's a heap of fun. Activations keep the game a bit unpredictable, but no more than you would expect from a chaotic situation with an angry nobleman screaming at unruly peasants from across a muddy field, combat is quick and fun, and the terrain my friend set up is gorgeous. He wrote up a battle report here showing what went on better than I can write up here, so go check it out: http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=80214.0

The end result was my forces beaten on points, barely, but with most of the villainous Danes either killed or sent running from the field, and his commander being bested in personal combat with my own leader and sent packing on his panicked horse.

It gave me a fair bit of impetus painting-wise, so I've been working almost solely on Lion Rampant units since.

First off, I completed the unit of Bidowers I've been working on. These are skirmishing archers, moving faster than other units and unhindered by terrain, but with terrible armour. They're good for picking off a few models off other units before engaging them in hand-to-hand, especially since units get 12 combat dice until they're half strength, then they get 6. This makes picking off that crucial 7th or 4th model vitally important once there's been a bit of attrition, and also good for forcing unpleasant morale tests, since they're modified by the total number of models lost so far.

 The models, of course, are the old Perry Brettonnian plastics from the old, old WHFB starter. I think the fact that I'm using Perry sculpts is part of the reason I'm enjoying this project so much - something about the style and models, also on the newer metals, are very reminiscent of back when I started the hobby. It's a nice trip down memory lane, even with better models.

These pikemen are going to be foot serjeants in-game. Serjeants were typically citizenry with decent equipement but reservists rather than professional soldiers. Still, with the minor conflicts endemic in 14th century German, it's not unlikely that a fair number of these were fairly hard-bitten vets even without being professional soldiers, at least as I see it.

The unit will number 12 models when it's done, and I'm having a ball painting them. I've even gotten 2 painted in the time between taking these pics and posting them... Although I won't be painting more infantry than that right now since I've run out of bases.

The last Lion Rampant for tonight is the Mounted Serjeants. The army will include a unit of 6 of these, and the chap in the middle on the black horse is going to be my leader. Background-wise he's going to be a minor lord from the Welf family who's taken charge of a combined force of his own / Welf family troops and reinforcements from Brunswick-Lüneburg. Their lances will be done later, when I can do the entire unit at a time.

This puts the completed tally for the Lion Rampant project, with the two foot serjeants not shown, at 19 models painted, out of 49. (Unless it grows, which it probably will to be honest. It's a fun game.)

It wouldn't be a proper update without a bit of infinity, and I've gotten the first Knight of Santiago done:

The pictures haven't turned out that well - it's a difficult model to photograph - but I'm really pleased with this one. It shows that I've changed the way I paint blue from the legs to the torso, but it's still one of my favorite infinity models I've painted, right after the Mobile Brigada, Father Knight and Crusader.
Tally for the PanO: 1 model, the other KoS missing, then that's a wrap!

As always, comments and such is most welcome, and thank you for reading.

Summer projects

So. Thesis defended last week, I'm now officially done with uni, and a cand.it!

This means that right now, there's only two things on the schedule: 

Hobby and job-hunting. I won't bother people here about the last one, but I'm hoping to use the time untill I find a job to finish some projects, and, knowing me, starting about twice as many new ones. I've been thinking that maybe if I run a log of sorts here, checking stuff off, it'll help me stay focused instead of running off and doing other stuff at the drop of a hat. This post might be a bit wordy, but I promise there'll be pictures at the end of it. 

My projects for the summer will thus be, in no particular order: 

Ariadna: I want to get the stuff I've got painted before I consider getting more. This will be 4 Loup Garous, a female Chasseur, a female Paracommando, and a group of Antipodes with their controller I got as a graduation present from myself. (very thoughtful of me, I think) I love the models, and their sheer size:

Bear in mind that the lady is a tall woman, compared to the other models in the game she'd be pushing 2 meters I think.

Nomads: Same story. I've got a female Wildcat basecoated, 2 more Wildcats who're plain metal, a remote in a box somewhere, and I've yet to finish the Reverend Healer from the starter set, to my shame. 

PanO: I've gotten most of my first Knight of Santiago finished:

I mainly need to do details and adjust a bit on him now, so I've only got a single KoS left before everything PanO is painted. I'll admit that the legs aren't that good tho, so if I find the time and motivation I might redo the highlights there. 

JSA: Only got the starter plus a Keisotsu HMG and ML for a small intro force, but they're based now.

I've got Shinobu Kitsune as well, plus a ML Hac Tao, but those are lower priority painting projects.

Lion Rampant: As usual, a mate of mine, Mikkel, has convinced me to start another project. Historical 28mm Germans from about 1349, yay! This'll be a small force, 6 foot knights, 12 pikemen, 12 crossbowmen, 12 polearm-wielders, 6 mounted serjeants and 6 bidowers, skirmishing archers that I can swap in when I feel like using the pikemen as foot yeomen instead of serjeants. This should be a fun little project. He was kind enough to give me most of the stuff, so I'll have to find a way to pay him back. I'll be using Perry metals for this (except for the archers, who will be the old Perry plastic bowmen from the Bret starter), and so far they've been absolutely amazing to paint. I don't think a Perry sculpt has even disappointed me.

A bit of background: (Mikkel's a historian, and could probably give a much better account of this than I can) Valdemar Atterdag, king of Denmark, went to German in 1349 to support a friend of his, Louis IV of Bayern, whose claim to the margraviate of Brandenburg was challenged by an imposter also called Waldemar (but with a W). Only problem, the imposter had the backing of Charles IV, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. HRE politics can be slightly confusing, especially for a non-historian like me, so there might be some holes there. As far as I can tell, the two armies -Danish/Bayern versus HRE/German - had a bit of a punch-up, and then everyone more or less parted on decent terms, so not the WORST war in the Medieval period. Valdemar and Louis won, by the way, with Louis being reinstated as elector of Brandenburg although he had to make certain concessions.

Progress so far:

These chaps, the 6 to the right, are the foot knights of Charles IV, as well as his standard-bearer. I've gone for a bit of a mix of heraldry, and the fellow in the Bavarian colours will have a red band added, marking him out as a second son of a minor Bavarian family (I think) who has been sent to serve the Emperor, hopefully die gloriously and stop being a disappointment at home. I've dubbed him Von Baldrick. (I painted him before I realised that Louis, my opponent, was not just the margreve of Brandenburg but also the duke of Bayern, and there's absolutely no way I'm redoing those diamonds after getting them painted, so second son he is.)

The standard-bearer is in the colours of the empire, yellow and black. I'm trying to find the best way to add the imperial standard to the pole, but that'll come. Some of them still lack heraldry, but that'll come.

The rest of the army will be in the colours of the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the house of Este, who ruled there. From what I can gather, they were heavily involved with the Hanse-Stadte, and they never lacked for reasons to fight with Denmark so their inclusion should be fairly uncontroversial. This means blue/white and blue/red/yellow colours, but mainly blue/white.

Now, all I lack is 6 mounted serjeants, 12 pike-wielding foot-serjeants, 6 bidowers, 12 crossbowmen and 12 polearm-wielding foot serjeants. They're proving VERY fun to paint tho, it's wet my appetite for historical models a fair bit. I'm also really looking forward to trying out the Lion Rampant rules.

SAGA: Had a game last week when I dug out my old vikings. Good fun, and I'll be doing a bit here I think. Luckily I just need a single unit of hearthguard, 4 models, to make a decent 6 point force, so I might soon be placing an order from Gripping Beast for those, a rulebook and some dice. There might also be a small battlereport, if I can get the pictures to look ok.

Skellies & Skaven: A while back, Simon/Maelstrom sent me a load of models in a gift exchange. I'll be making a small force of skellies to use as general baddies and a small necromancer warband from them, as well as a few Skaven. It'll mainly be a fun little GS and paint project, with no specific build or aim in mind. 

Lastly, I've gotten into X-Wing as well, but luckily that's not going to intrude in the painting queue, being prepainted.

It's a fair bit to be sure, but I've been hobby-deprived while writing the thesis and I need to get back into it. When I get home tonight I'll be diving right in, I hope! I'm allowing myself one new project for every two finished, and I hope to finance it by selling off some of my old DA now that the new codex is out.

TL;DR: I'm busy and feel free to hurl abuse if I stray from the plans over the next while.

Spetsnaz

Spetsnaz is (practically) done!

Looking back, I can see spots where I might go back and tidy a bit before varnishing him, like his left arm and some of the transitions on the right metal armguard. Still, decently pleased with him, particularly the eye glow. I'm getting better there, I think. Might have the courage to go back over the PanO stuff and do their eyes red sometime soon.

Still mucking about with the Keisotsu, too:

Plenty of work to do yet, but he's slowly getting there I think. Still working on ways to integrate that orange into the scheme.

Had a moments weakness a few days ago, so now I own a box of Antipodes. They'll probs be the next Ariadna project, unless Margot or the female Chasseur manage to insert themselves in the painting queue.