Dahn was finished this evening. He has, in the past lost the barrel of his rifle. I added another from a GW plastic empire sprue.
He is an elderly Orc from the hills of Albion. There is probably no better shot in the whole army. He has been known to drop enemy troops at miraculous ranges or through the tiniest gaps. He knows how to get the best out of his Bakur rifle. Keeping everything covered in best brown paper when not in use.
Although his accuracy and skill is beyond compare he will often be heard uttering the phrase ‘can’t see the face, can’t kill the elf’ although not as fast as his comrades he more than makes up for it in his shooting abilities.
Tomorrow evening another member of the rifles (or as they are more correctly named ‘The 105th Loyal Sharpshooters’) will get finished off. Not sure which one yet, but I have four to choose from.
As I decided to listen to this then in respect for John Tams (who played Hagman in Sharpe) tomorrow I think I will have to do Private Hagsmun, an old poacher from the hills of Albion. The ‘best shot’ in the army.
As you might guess…. Not men at all, but elite Orcs of the 105th rifles…
Did a bit of tidying up but as I was so cold I called it an early night.
This set was my first ever Flintloque figures, I picked them up at a convention, York I think. I took them home and got them painted pretty quickly and really liked them… a few more purchases and then no one else was interested. I hung onto them for an age, but then the vast majority went the journey in a bring and buy.
Scroll forwards a lot of years and look what is back on my table. I think I have beaten my original levels of miniatures… back then there wasn’t the range that there is now.
So anyway above we have…
Captain Reckhardt Sharke
Sergeant Padrig Harpy
Private Hagsmun
Private Arris
Private Tunge
Young Private Purkinnz
In the set came nine Ferach… (French Elves). Some of them below, they were finished a year ago!
My good mate Wiggy got me back into these. I have three of these boxed sets, I bought one, he bought me one for Christmas and then I got a pile of stuff off eBay and that had a box in too.
I can use any amount of Ferach but the heroes of the 105th can’t really be used more than once.
Hopefully tomorrow night I will be warmer than tonight (the joys of living in an ancient house) and I will get a pile more done on the orcs.
He was a great mini to paint, I do like the Civilians in the Flintloque range. My intention is to get them all, his wife Lady Anna is definitely high on my list if I can find her.
So far I have the Trolkin civilians, Valon as well as the dwarf civilians. Elf ladies and males, most of the Orc civilians, various priests and the odd one or two I have forgotten..
A couple more images of Sir Willorcby…
The basing materials is from Luke’s APS. I decided to give it a bash and I am pleased with it. It does what it says on the tin… PVA then dunk or sprinkle the base with the contents and voila all done and dusted. I went for the Patchy Plains, but I think I may get some of the other base ready pots for the various different theatres…
Tomorrow I may Crack on with the heroes of the rifles…
Sir Willorcby is one of a pair, now no longer available… sadly lady Anna didn’t arrive with him as he came from eBay.
I am still on the hunt for the good lady, but she hasn’t appeared yet.
Regarding his Lordship…. he has a strange appendage that may be a belt buckle or perhaps a strange necktie… I will contact Alternative Armies to see if they can remember.
This young lady came free with my Alternative Armies order. I ordered bits and bobs to finish my 15mm HOTT army and she was in the box. Part of this month’s Azazel’s community challenge was to paint heroes.
So she is my heroine (or anti heroine) for the dark Tzar…
As she is a ghost, she was probably the easiest mini I have ever painted… light white undercoat, a couple of thin coats of white to try and keep the grey tint.
This was followed by a watered down green wash. When dry I used a red wash on the petals and a green wash on the stems.
A quick base of Patchy plains and voila…all done.
I used Greenstuff to reach from the base edge to the top of the mini base which was quite high.
Huzzah, all done apart from a green wash and highlight on the grass on the bugler’s base.
They have come a long way from the bare metal of the Schilling pack!
My plan was to try really hard with the faces and apart from the squinty eyed bugler I am happy with the result. I don’t mind the face, it’s the Mad Eye Moody look that I am not too happy about.
After I pushed through the ‘oh blimey they look naff’ stage of the painting I am really pleased with them. The do look rather spiffy in their blue jackets.
This is them alongside the other three dwarves from the pack.
The only thing missing from the skirmish pack are the two ogres.
I decided two was a bit of an odd number and reinforced them with some friends and actually made them an odd number…. I must apologise for the really naff teacher joke there! 🙄🙄🙄
The two from the pack are the two on the left.
It took around 6 months or so, but I got them all painted eventually.
The big question is what next?
Flintloque maybe the Ostarian or undead hussars
French and Indian Wars – two units of thirty one of woodland Indians and the other of militia.
Or maybe change scale again and sort out my 10mm Mongol horde.
Oh yeah and finish the gloves on the dwarf Officer above!
On a non painting level, I survived the exam, I spent so long thinking about the legislation etc that I forgot about the day to day simple stuff. If truth be told, the whole exam thing wasn’t that brilliant. It was a closed book exam however, that is not real life, in reality we would look up what we needed. All It did was freak out a good number on the course for no good reason. I did point this out on my feedback., Course Excellent- Exam … pants!
Did I pass, Who knows… but I think I did enough to not fail 🤔
I have been in training all day and revising all night for an exam tomorrow morning. frankly I am now knackered… however I did want to progress my dwarves. So I gave their little hands and faces a wash as well as their beards and muskets.
Hopefully I will sleep better than last night! Tomorrow I should be carrying on with the RPG (it was cancelled on Tuesday). I am not sure how much I will get done but even if I take the flesh tone back up as the first level of highlight then something has been achieved.
I managed a fair bit of base coating tonight as well as some highlighting of packs and pouches (not that you can really tell from this photo). For idiotic reasons known only to myself I painted the beards first then tried to paint in the flesh tone! The officer has grey hands still as he shall be wearing gloves.
These seem to be taking forever, I know that, in the grand scheme of things, they are not, but to me they are dragging on. Probably more my state of mind than reality.
Anyway onto the exploding custard powder. This is because as I found a 30 year old photograph today. It shows an experiment we devised whilst working on the Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales.
A group of us were sitting around in the hostel when we learned of an explosion in a custard powder factory. Discussion ensued as to how and why custard powder could explode, being inert as it is. Coal dust yes as we knew coal was flammable. A bit of head scratching later we came to the conclusion that it would have to be as a fine powder in the air. Queue hunt in the larder for the out of date tin of the required ingredient.
Not the actual Custard Powder used in the experiment
Having explored the properties of said ingredient we needed a way to turn the powder into a fine mist. Blowing on a spoonful sort of worked but not properly, then again who would want to volunteer to blow onto the powder to make it explode!
A bit more of head scratching took place and the Edward came up with the ideal solution….
A bike pump!
Sadly it did not work as we wished…back to the drawing board!
It was then that someone (the name now lost to the track of time) came up with the solution.
Dismantle the bike pump, add deadly ingredient, reassemble and then fire custard powder over a naked flame.
We set up our experiment in the hostel and I was just about to hit the plunger, when Edward came to the conclusion that inside, may not be the best place to attempt our initial trial.
Not an actual picture of Edward!
So after much grumbling and muttering we took our experiment outside and placed it on the mini skip. I took a number of photos that evening. Only one survives in my collection.
Here we have Edward taking his turn at the Custard Powder Bike pump.
Edward letting rip with the Minfordd Hostel Custard Powder flame thrower
We all agreed afterward that perhaps he may have been correct in his conviction that this was an experiment best conducted out of doors! Strangely enough over the course if the evening we ran out of custard powder, not to mention flour and any other substance we could locate.
I managed to get a bit done on the uniformed dwarves
I would have got further tonight, but my delightful dog somehow knocked a box of figures down and meant my poor Werewolves had to have another touch up!
I managed to get the pack, cartridge boxes, straps and other pouch painted. Still, as can be seen from the photo above, there is a long way to go!
I was having a mooch in the shed (after safely transferring the werewolves into it) and decided to see what else needed painting. I found Dog artillery and cavalry that I had forgotten all about!
As for my paint jiggler… one of my biggest issues with Army Painter paints is that no matter how much you shake them they still don’t mix properly. They all have an agitator in to help with the process.
I eventually decided to bite the bullet and purchase a tool to do the job for me.
I would have preferred a more manly design on it, but it does jiggle the paint.
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I decided that my ‘oak Brown’ being an absolute swine to mix would be my test paint, that and the fact that I wanted to use it for the packs on my Dwarves.
The following is a before and after view of the paint.
It really has made a difference.
I suppose the only fly in the ointment is that the jiggler came in at £25.00. To be fair it had free postage but that was about as cheap as it could be. Time will tell if it has been £25 well spent.
I doubt I will get anything done on my dwarves tomorrow night as my daughter and I are off playing a Star Trek RPG.
Bogenwald 