This morning I was off to my Union Branch meeting. Well I thought I had better show willing as I have changed unions. I came home replaces a few more bits of floorboards and sliced some shields for the Knights.
After lunch my good lady and I hurtled off to the South end of the island to visit Jarlshof. This is a Historic Environment Scotland site. It shows that a settlement has been there since the Neolithic…some 4000 years.
The name Jarlshof was basically made up by Sir Walter Scott. He had visited Shetland around about 1814. His book ‘The Pirate’ has a location, which was basically the ruined 16th Century Manor house, which he named… you guessed it Jarlshof…the house of the Jarl.
In reality in 1814 the only bits to be seen was the ruin. In the late 1800’s a massive storm rolled in and eroded the sea front and voilà…dwellings appeared from under the sand.
On ‘Out and About in Shetland’ I am uploading a number of videos… they are taking FOR EVERRRR!
This evening I got the part painted foot soldiers finished…
Now with these I did cut a few corners. I didn’t bother doing every strap and piece of rope. But they are done and that is what I am wanting. I don’t think I have any other Gallian’s undercoated.
Tomorrow I think I will blast on with the Part finished skeletons i found when looking for my big Sharpie.
Well keeping to my word I did more painting this evening…
As I splurged too much AP plate metal out I also hunted the shelves for anything that needed doing metallic.
This pair are nearly done, I still have at least a couple of knights like these to do, the Joan of Arc type as well as all the foot. Probably Goblins after that as they are undercoated.
So as you know a while a go I wrote a post about the kids in the Geek Club writing to companies that I have spent a lot of money in and they basically ignored the kids.
Anyway before the summer I wrote to The Army Painter on behalf of the kids. I got a nice email back saying I should apply for a sponsorship (I cannot remember the full name). It said give as many details as I could, which I did. Basically five kids in my little school club. It said on the form that they have loads of such requests and to be honest I really thought we were maybe a bit small.
After the summer break I got an email from Peder saying they were going to send us some paints and some brushes. They duly arrived and the kids loved them. Obviously as a teacher you never miss an opportunity to get kids writing. Today we got a lovely email from Peder thanking us for the lovely letters and addressed all of the kids by name. He even said he was sending us some more paint. So according to me and the Geek Club, Peder is a totally Top bloke and The Army Painter are a totally Top Company.
I just wanted to share a positive story…
I am really happy with the Speedpaints 2.0 and after getting the set for my birthday I am probably going to try the metallics and some other colours have caught my eye.
Here is my Speedpaint knight from a couple of weeks ago.
Well for a while anyway. I have decided to just halt printing for a while as I really have a bucketful of crap to paint.
I decided to make a start, by doing a smidge on the Gallians’s
I was just thinking today on what I need to paint and the light bulb came on. Stop printing and get painting. I will need to print some more stuff for the Geek Club, but to be honest I am really going to try and burn through some of my backlog.
Off the top of my head I have the following :
36 Goblin infantry plus a dozen cavalry
30 odd 15mm samurai and Koreans
About six knights and associated foot
Two full Mordheim Gangs, Sisters of Sigmar and a human group.
All the Vietnam gear
All the ironclads
À table full of buildings
24 skeleton infantry and a dozen cavalry
Oh yeah and the Gladiators.
To be honest this is what I can think of straight off. I am 100% sure there is more… this is only the printed stuff… I am not even thinking about the metal miniatures!
I really, really must kickstart my arse into painting again. I have new paint and brushes… I have pretty things to paint so perhaps I need to put them all together.
So as you may or may not know, I have horses and used to do reenactment riding… here I am….
So as you might understand I sort of know one end of a horse from the other. So I was a bit perturbed when I got sent this picture of one of GW’s mounted blokeys from the Cities of Sigmar range. The lad who sent it was all excited about it… my first thought was WTF is that. Now I know it is fantasy, and I know it technically may not be a horse but seriously that head!
I actually wondered if it was an optical illusion, but if it is it affects all of the range and also from different angles…It also has super long legs. Disclaimer here… the rest of the miniature is really nice… I just don’t get what went so wrong with the Shetland Pony head on the Shire horse body… GW horses, although stylized were pretty good from what I remember. Second Disclaimer… if I tried this it wouldn’t look like a horse, but I am not trying to sell things.
This evening I printed off a horse and rider from Highland Miniatures…
This is one of the Knights I painted earlier on…
And a couple more
Appropriately sized heads.
So was I ever going to buy into Cities of Sigmar… nope… this is not GW bashing … well okay it technically is, but the foot soldiers and even the dogs are really nice, it is actually just the mounts that I have an issue with.
I really want somebody to come on and say woah Steve, they ain’t horses they are the lesser headed Quaga as bred by Sigmar himself. If they do I will happily apologise.
I recognise the skill in what someone produced, I really just wish they had looked at a photograph of a horse in Gothic Plate.
I am now the proud owner of a school of dubious gladiators.
So from left to right we sort of have a dimachearus with his two swords, they are meant to be sicas but, I had gladius handy.
Next is a guy with an axe…. Errr there is no known reference to an axe wielding gladiator… there is a gladiator in the Galleria Borghese in Rome that is sometimes confusing as part of it is missing and a foot is behind a guy with a gladius… when you look at a picture it kind of does look a bit like an axe at first glance, in a poor light and the wish to see an axe!
An axe if you want to see one
Next up is a quasi hoplomacus with his spear and round shield.
Next up a thraex with his sica and parmulata (small shield). These shields were usually rectangular. The sica’s curved blade was designed to reach beyond a scutum and do damage to the shoulder of the opponent.
Next in the front is the murmillo. Outside of a retiarius this is probably the most iconic of the gladiators. Think gladiator and most people think of him. Generally he would fight the thraex and hoplomachus.
Front right is a bit of a sort of weird retiarius. I say weird as his trident isn’t as it has four prongs. I also stuck the arms on the wrong body so this one has ocrea (greaves) on his legs. This guy would generally fight the secutor. And not the murmillo as was originally thought. They did pair up and indeed in one bout a retiarius was purported to be on a raised platform with a pile or rocks. A ladder was at each end with a murmillo at the bottom. I cannot remember where this came from, so it definitely isn’t gospel.
At the back I made another sort of retiarius, with a spear this time. I cut the spear point off the original end and gave it a different look to the other one.
As for footwear, on the whole they didn’t wear any. Some confusion comes from the mosaics where leg wraps come down to the foot.
I am going to have a fiddle about and see what other types I can make. A laquerius should be easy enough spear and a lasso instead of a net and trident. A bestiarius or venatore should be easy enough to too. And as for a poor noxxi – some poor dude with just a sword, if he was lucky fighting one of the types above. I might be able to do an eques… all I need is a horse and an ancient rider. Add gladiator arms an helmet and voila!
So last night after having another failure I decided that enough was enough and that i Would relevel the bed. Good job I checked as although the front bolt was well and truly solid, thse side one was decidedly loose.
So I took out the resin, did a tank clean, which I had never done before and relevelled the plate. I gave some 40mm Gladiators another go. Yesterday I got two bodies and nothing else, today I got everything.
I am doing a reprint of the pair I printed the other day.
Today’s print on the left, yesterday’s on the right
Hopefully I will get everything printed on that one too. Everything seems to have printed properly.
Today i did battle with the rotten floorboards in the lounge… i won, but it was a close run thing… This is the joys of a 200 year old house that has no foundations and everything sits directly on the ground (the floor is about 6 inches above the soil). After feeling quite proud of myself, I found some more that need replacing… i must admit i did say the off naughty word, especially as I had just nailed the replacements down. if i had noticed earlier my life would have been easier as i could have used the spaces i had made to eaily remove the extra bits…
While the kids at Geek club were painting some awesome gladiators I decided to have a go at some zombies.
Will they win any prizes…. Nahhh. Did I do all three in forty minutes…Yeahh.
I shall actually paint the child’s T-shirt a different colour as it is hard enough keeping a white one clean on an alive kid, never mind an undead brain chomping one.
I do actually like simplified models… I am really not keen on models with tons of fiddly bits… I would much prefer to paint a mono-pose ork from the nineties than a modern GW one. Obviously this is personal preference and ‘Each to their Own’ as they say.
Bogenwald 