Category: Dark Ages/Early Medieval
Viking Personalities
Footsore Miniatures sells some of the best sculpts in the business, if you ask me, so when they announced their Black Friday sale I was quick to pounce. I’m buying considerably fewer these days, but these I had to have.
These six models are meant as characters for my (Anglo-)Viking army. Morcar & Edwin are featured unaltered. Their lovely poses made me pick them.
Then there’s king Alfred and his bannerman. I replaced Alfred’s head with a Viking one from Victrix – a fairly straightforward conversion, and I think he now looks the part of a Nordic nobleman.
Finally, we have Merlin and Lancelot. Merlin is unaltered, and will stand in as a shaman of sorts. Lancelot got the short end of the stick – another head swap for a Victrix one and a hand axe are enough to make him look like a tough dreng.
I won’t go into too much detail on how I painted these as everything was fairly straightforward, much like my other dark age models. I took care to add some freehanding to all of them – really basic stuff like single or double lines on their tunics or cloaks in the main, but I find it immediately makes them more interesting to look at.
That’s it for this update! No more Dark Age models for a bit now, as I have switched back to Ancients for my sword & board fix. More Space Hulk to come very soon!
Irish Mounted Warlord
Time for an historical update, after all that 40k nonsense!
I’m building up my Irish warband towards a size suitable for WAB, and to that end I placed an order with Footsore Miniatures during Black Friday last year. Of course I couldn’t pass up their excellent mounted warlord model, which I have the pleasure of showing you today.
The sculpt comes in one piece, with just the weapon hand (if you choose to arm it with a club) and the shield as separate pieces. Nice and simple! After cleaning up the model – never a chore with Footsore’s exceptionally clean casts – I undercoated it mournfang brown and washed it black to get most of the horse done. I then highlighted the horse with mournfang brown and skrag brown, avoiding the horse’s legs, mane, tail and nose. I debated adding some socks to the horse, what do you readers think?
Then on to the rider, who was handled in the same manner as the rest of his warband in terms of quality and colour choice, although I did use a splash of red to set him apart. So does the gold detailing. The cloak is a thunderhawk blue basecoat – one of my favourite GW colours – washed with coelia greenshade and highlighted back up with the base colour + white.
Apart from this lovely chap, there are plenty of Irish on the way – in fact, I am nearly through my first box of Wargames Atlantic plastics, all painted up and based! More on those in a future blog post, perhaps even in a review format. Also in the works are a couple more Viking characters. Surely, the dark ages are a fascinating subject these days…
Alexander Nevsky
It’s been a fair while since I spent this much time on a single model, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking:
Excellent model by Fireforge Games, although I noticed some roughness on the top half of the sword – which I hid with some blood effects by GW. I also wasn’t too enamoured by the moulded base consisting of a roughly rectangular rock, so I used some putty to work the rock into the base a bit more.
Apart from that, it was just painted as usual. I’m quite proud of the paintjob although the much-enlarged pictures on the blog bring every mistake and inaccuracy of the brush to the fore.
That’s all I have to say! Stay tuned as more Landsknecht/Empire are on the way.
From Russia With Love
Here we go with another small project: medieval Russians.
The reasons for collecting the army are manifold – I”ve never collected an Eastern Medieval army, my friend Flor has a large Teutonic Order to field against them, and my other wargaming compatriot Pascal just happened to offload two boxes of Fireforge plastic Russian infantry last year!
After many swervings through different historical rulesets I think I’ve settled on WAB as my go-to framework for composing armies. In this case I’ve chosen to build up this project as a Western Russian army from WAB: Age of Chivalry, mostly because it was the Western Russian states that came into contact with the Teutonic Order and because it has a lighter emphasis on the cavalry arm.
One issue with the plastic Russian infantry from Fireforge with regards to my own project, though, is that they are rather too well-armoured and well-equipped to make for convincing city guards – the bulk of the Russian army. Fireforge do sell bow- and spear-armed city guards, but these are single-pose resins which can look a bit samey in a big regiment, not to mention the cost when compared to plastics. All of which means I have had to be slightly more creative with assembling these models – let’s take a look.
This smallish 12-strong unit is all I have right now – I’m an inveterate batch painter so even my test models come in batches!
In WAB: Age of Chivalry, many units can have a mix of archers and melee troops, with the former usually standing at the back. With some well-timed reforming when enemies approach, this means you have a unit that can do a bit of both.
Experienced Dark Age hobbyists will undoubtedly spot the Gripping Beast plastics I used. For these archers I used the two bodies on those frames that don’t have their left arm in front of their stomachs, and clipped off the left hands to replace them with the bow hands from the Fireforge Russian plastics. I also added the quivers from that set. Lastly, for the right arms, I mostly used a few different arms from a stray Wargames Factory Bondi set, which allowed me to create a few poses where the archers are grabbing an arrow from the quiver, and one who actually does have an arrow in his hand – sourced from a GW Skeleton set. Bitz boxes galore!
For the unit leader and bannerman, I did use the Fireforge Russians in their entirety – although I used a slightly longer banner pole taken from their Templar Knights set as it’s slightly longer than the supplied spears, and a resin banner from their Russian command set.
For the rest of the infantry, the other three Gripping Beast body types were used, with a mix of the Gripping Beast handweapons and some taken from the Fireforge set as you can see on this warrior on the left, and the GB musician’s horn also came in handy as the Fireforge set doesn’t have a musician option – an unfortunate omission for WAB players! The shields and heads on these warriors were also taken from the Fireforge set, and these two parts were really critical for the Russian city guard theme to come together!
Putting those Russian armoured heads on plain dark age warriors meant I had to take out the modelling putty, and as it has been ages, the result is far from perfect. I had to make do with 15-year-old Milliput – not even the fine version! – to add some mail coifs to these models.
Painting-wise I’ll be brief – I used three different reds plus a few other colours, with the red being a focal colour for this regiment. I’ll probably do a second city guard unit with a different scheme to get the point across that they’re from another city, and I’d also like to do more heraldic types of tunics with split or quartered schemes. The reason I didn’t do it on these models is that I made the mistake of undercoating them black which meant I didn’t want to go in with fifty coats of white for that kind of scheme. Lessons learned! I did add some different kinds of patterning to many of the models, which took me right back to Viking times!
Lastly, I really like how the bases came out – it’s sand painted dark brown, drybrushed white, with some arid-looking static grass and snow effects from Vallejo. It fits the bill for Lake Peipus and surrounds!
What’s next for this army? Well, I have all these Russian plastics, so I’ll probably be making a largish unit of dismounted Druzhina from them. The excellent Alexander Nevsky model from Fireforge is also on the painting desk. Sadly, the rest of the unit will have to wait until later this year, as I am out of Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors to complete this unit.
I hope you liked reading this article as much as I liked writing it. See you next time, tovarich!
Hospitaller Characters
It’s the end of 2017, and another project has come to a close – huzzah! These hospitallers were actually among the first of my historical projects, being started up all the way back in – I think – 2012 with a box of plastic knights from Fireforge. I grew disenchanted with the models after having painted up just half the box’ contents, and the cavalry wing of the army has been neglected far too long, until this year. The rest of the cavalry will have to bide its time until it can appear on the blog, though, as the matter at hand is rather more interesting!
First up, we have the supreme commanders of the army – the grandmaster and a priestly fellow! Notice how I have tried to make them stand out a bit by using the idiosyncrasies of the figures – which are actually from Gripping Beast’s Teutonic range – such as the hair, the mitre, and so on. Colourwise I have added yellow to the palette, as white and yellow are papal colours. Stoving in Saracen skulls, approved by every pope since 1098!
Next up, these are two battle standard bearing types, predominantly to be used in WAB. As you can see I have used some leftover plastic bits from Fireforge kits to add some flair to these Gripping Beast models.
Finally, here are four other seneschal models. Most of these are from the Gripping Beast crusader command set, with one other stray Teuton (the one with the fur, of course!) added in. These have also all been modified to carry leftover weapons from Fireforge kits, as there is certainly a scale and style difference between the two manufacturers.
As well as painting dragging on for years on this project, rolling dice in anger with them is long overdue! So, to that end, my friend Flor is coming over with his Teutonic Order soon and we’ll duke it out using the WAB rules to see whether black with white accessories or white with black accessories is best. Groovy, baby!
Hengist and Horsa
It would seem all I’m painting lately are dark age-themed models, but that really isn’t the case. It’s just that I really like painting them and then showing them off. The two models below are for my friend Alex’ warband so I’ll be passing them on in a few days, and as I really like these Footsore Miniatures sculpts I thought I’d show them here first.
Both were completed over the course of a day, I can’t really time them. I started out with a drybrush of all the metallics, then blocked in all the colours, washed them with the appropriate GW washes, then highlighted everything at least once.
As you can see these models carry enough fur to make those PETA nutjobs cringe, which is precisely why I lavished extra attention on them! You can’t really see in the pictures as they’re a bit overexposed, but I managed to create a lovely gradient towards the edges of the furs, all the while keeping the textured effect intact.
Dark Age models lend themselves particularly well to some freehand patterning, so I opted for some simple lines and dags on these two fellows. I think they’d be a bit too plain looking otherwise.
That’s it for now! As far as Footsore Miniatures are concerned: in my experience they’re the best Dark Age models currently available. I’ve recently painted a small Irish warband of theirs (just awaiting a flag for the standard bearer) which was equally well-sculpted and cleanly cast. Their ranges are still showing large gap but they seem to be filling these at a fair pace. Do give them a try if you haven’t already!
Franks of a Different Stripe
More Franks were painted over the course of the last few weeks, but as you’ll see they’re nothing like the previous lot. These are Carolingian Franks from Gripping Beast, and they’re a commission from my friend Alex.
First up, the Warlord. He’s the more colourful of the lot, and I gave him a white horse to stand out that much more.
Two points of mounted Hearthguard. These were also done rather colourfully. I had a good time mixing and matching colours on different garments to make each model unique.
A point of mounted Warriors. For these lower-ranked guys I opted for simple, neutral colours on their garments but then made the shields stand out. 
Finally, two points of foot Warriors. As with their mounted comrades I used neutral tones on the garments, and as you can see from their bases I used four different undercoat sprays which would form the base of the models’ tunics. That certainly sped up the painting process!
I’ve just completed painting the last of these models this morning and I’ll be handing them over tomorrow evening. I’m glad to be shot of them, as that means I can focus on my own lead pile again!
Some Late Roman Addenda
Who knows, I might even manage to finish a project this year! Incredible! These Late Romans have been on my plate for a little over a year now and I’m actually close to completing them. They’re a relatively small force, but I think they’re among the better-looking of my projects, what with those shields. It’s a double update today, with some artillery which I finished in late January on the one hand, and the companion cavalry on the other. Let’s take a look.
First off, these two scorpiones. I could have based these a little bit smaller, but as I’ll mostly be playing Sword & Spear with them they do have the mandatory 12cm frontage. I wish Gripping Beast did more than one set of poses for the crew, as it looks a bit strange this way, but otherwise they’re just fine.
Next up is this ballista. They came with a third crew member, but as the model in question is a fairly imperious looking chap I decided early last year to press him into service as one of my commanders. Still, even with just these two lads to man the thing I think it looks fine.
Finally we have these companions, which were an absolute breeze to paint up really. I started off from an AP fur brown undercoat spray which was mostly useful on the horses. The rest of the models were handled in the usual fashion, with the one exception being their golden shield rims and their purple helmet plumes, just to get the imperial theme across.
I originally didn’t plan on taking any cavalry beyond the mandatory clibinarii and some assorted horse archers, but when my gaming compatriot Eddy Maes decided to pass his bag of unused Late Roman lead around I couldn’t resist a good rummage! Once again Eddy, my sincere thanks for selling these on to me for a great price.
The one thing I’m lacking for the project in terms of models are dracones. I’ve prepared some long spears (stupidly long in this case) in the hands of the standard bearers to receive these later, but it’s holding back the completion of many a unit. Hopefully I’ll be able to track some down at Salute this year, which will be my first foray into that great convention!
Hope you liked this update, and until next time!
More Unarmoured Late Romans
A quick update to show you some progress – I haven’t had much time to photograph models lately!
Models by Gripping Beast.
These Gripping Beast sculpts are always a joy to paint, with their deep detail and chunky faces. Their shields are also a big canvas on which paint some of those lovely shield designs which I shamelessly stole from Little Big Men – if you don’t feel like freehanding these, order from them as I hear they’re great.
On to some cavalry now! Either some companions or some horse archers, I’m not too sure yet. First off though, some more 6mm WSS. Stay tuned!
Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016!
End of year means yours truly takes stock to consider the past year of brushwork and how to continue doing what one does best – painting some models! I’ll cover each of my projects one by one and ramble a bit. No pictures of models in this one, so if you’re the kind of fellow who looks at shinies without reading the context – check back later! Here goes.
- Napoleonic French: I’ve added a squadron of Chasseurs and one of Cuirassiers, two line battalions and a couple of vignette models over the course of the year. It’s my first historical project, and it’s still going strong. Next year I’d like to get at least two further line battalions ready for duty, paint up more cavalry as well as horse artillery. There’s also Napoleon’s Berlin Carriage…
- Vikings: My second project, and one that could almost be considered finished, were it not for the fact that I continue to collect and paint Northmen for the sheer joy of it. I’ve actually sold off a portion of my Viking army this year – mainly duplicates and plastics – and I might continue to do so, just to keep the collection fresh. In 2016 I have no immediate plans to purchase or paint new Vikings.
- Flemings/Crusaders: I’m fairly satisfied with my collection, so much of the past year was spent filling in some gaps; priests and pilgrims, a bishop, etc. What I did paint a lot of were Maltese crosses, with a decent number of sergeants and foot knights being added to the army. In 2016 I’d like to get some more cavalry done for the army, but it’s fairly low priority.
- WW2: My Fallschirmjaegers and Red Devils both received a decent amount of attention this year, with a couple of big cats for the former and a big gun for the latter. More bodies, especially officers, for both sides as well. I have plenty of models on the lead pile to carry over to 2016 and I will certainly be adding further to both projects!
- Late Romans/Arthurians: I’m deliberately keeping this army fairly small – I’ve painted up most of the infantry this year, and I just need to finish basing one last unarmoured unit to be done. Cavalry wise I have a unit of companions and of horse archers to be handled, and then a small selection of artillery. I’d like to handle all of these in 2016 and finally finish a project for once!
- Dacians and Sarmatians: These were sidelined in 2015, with just one falx unit being completed. I purchased some cavalry at Crisis last year but still haven’t gotten round to them, and I also received some Foundry foot archers from a gaming compatriot which have yet to be handled. In 2016 I’ll try and finish them, but interest is currently low.
- TYW Dutchmen: Well, shit. Nothing whatsoever was painted for this project in 2015. Better get going again or it’s Ebay time!
- 6mm WSS Catalans: No loving for them in 2015, but just before writing these words I dug them out of the lead pile to recommence work on these imps, so how’s that for progress? I have just one foot and one horse regiment done, and my projected force will count four of the former and eight of the latter, plus artillery and commanders. At the moment I have everything but the commanders in my possession, so whils I’d like to finish the project this year I’ll have to figure out how to get a hold of more Baccus stuff. I don’t think I saw them at Crisis ’15…
- ACW: Painted a couple of ACW units in 2014, but lost interest in 2015 completely – I guess all those Prussian uniforms put me off Union blue! Perhaps I’ll pick up the trail again in 2016, as I did see good progress on the Black Powder supplement for the ACW. Who knows?
- Fantasy & Sci-fi: As you might have noticed on the blog recently, Frostgrave has grabbed me firmly and won’t be letting go in 2016! I’ve dug out many old Warhammer models and made some additional non-GW purchases to complement them, and I’ll continue doing so in the foreseeable future. On the 40k side of things, 2015 saw – shock and horror – a new project in the form of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but this has fallen by the wayside a bit. I just find assembling these newer models so bloody tedious, as even the infantry models don’t go together without having to look at an assembly leaflet and match numbered parts. Still, I’d like to pick up where I left off in 2016.
- 12mm Great War models: These were a fairly cheap purchase at Warcon ’15 of which I have painted just a third of the models. They’re great sculpts, certainly, but the scale is difficult – neither my tried techniques for 28mm nor those for 6mm work well. I’ll probably get these finished in 2016, maybe buy officers for both sides, then shelve them.
- Scenery: I built a couple of items in 2015 but didn’t finish them off and, as a result, didn’t show them on the blog. I’d like to collect and build even more, but with the small apartment we’ve moved to I don’t really have the room to store an expansive collection. Choices, choices… So my pledge for 2016 will be to finish and preserve what I currently have.
- Commissions: 2015 was a busy year with a lot of Prussians (I reckon around 200 of them?) and some Arabs thrown in for good measure. As always, I’m stating now that 2016 will of necessity be a year of fewer commissions and more personal work; we’ll see how long I’ll keep that up!
So that’s the main overview of my futile attempt at coherently outlining my painting work in 2016. As ever, stuff gets dumped due to waning interest or laziness, new purchases are made because I am a wargaming magpie who likes shinies, and whole projects get shelved for a year or more because I have the attention span of a toddler in a liquor cabinet. Nothing is set in stone!
Still, despite moving house and breaking my elbow, my year of miniature painting was successful. The figure below will tell you just how successful:
855
That’s how many figures I painted, with each cavalry model and vehicle counting as a single model, and artillery pieces having the gun and each free-standing crewman count as a single model as well; and this across all scales. I was going for 600, so that’s not too shabby, eh? For next year I’m upping my goal to 700, but as I did last year I’m counting in the 255 surplus models from 2015. I’m devious like that.
abrushwithbattles 