I decided on a small contingent of one of the Holy orders. Comprising knights, mounted sergeants, foot sergeants and crossbows.
Onto the non religious types
The sergeants have the same livery as the knights. So one knight may have a mounted sergeant and a couple of foot sergeants in the same colours.
The general in charge of operations.
The force is also supported by a small group of peasants armed with a random selection of agricultural tools.
It seemed like a really good idea to paint twenty seven different liveries across the knights, although it was tricky it really does give a pleasing and colourful force.
I decided to purchase the Mongols to fight this lot, which is why I went for the colours on the religious orders.
Apologies for some of the photos as they are a bit on the dark side.
Still in Aberdeen so more pictures of previously painted stuff.
A small force of scary stuff.
Vampire commanders, one of the three bat clouds, the other two are sitting in the 15mm early German box. This became a quasi fantasy force with both werewolves and giant bats.
Skeletons both cavalry and infantry with their own command. Ghosts in the background
Zombies with big scary skeletons and mummies in the background
I increase my undead force by including the beggar army to act as thralls
They have their own command (at the back)
They do have a mounted force
As well as a small force of missile troops.
As with the barbarians, these are based up for GW’s Warmaster. I intend to rebase the cavalry to a 30 x 40mm base giving me two bases worth.
Other things I found when I was having a mooch around in my boxes.
Samurai Apes, these are part finished and the following need even more work
I have a whole host of the blue ones at the same stage of painting. I may have to get them finished now that I have found them. The above is pretty much the full range apart from bow armed tiger riders. They really could do with some additions. Some form of peasants as well as some monks and ninja just to name a few.
He Gods the plane journey down to Aberdeen was like the drop-ship scene from Aliens! First time I have ever actually left my seat on take off. 😱
Anyway as I am away from home, I won’t be able to paint anything. So instead I photographed my barbarians from Pendraken.
I based these up for GW’s Warmaster rules which is why the cavalry etc are on 20x40mm bases long ways. My plan is to now rebase the cavalry troops to 30x40mm bases.
So what do we have in the horde?
A general mounted on a mammoth. I have around three others without the howdah. These are my heavy hitters, you don’t get many things heavier and hittier than an enraged pachyderm. The rest of these ended up in my Palaeolithic mammoth hunting box.
Bison riders next, these will become two units of three riders.
I wanted a wild feel to this force, so the next lot are my bison stampede troops… the warriors chase the spare bison towards the enemy lines!
There is also a pack of wolves that can be utilised too.
Some heroes and sub generals to lead the force
Some allied muscle in the form of some trolls
And not to mention some hairy chaps with big sticks. There are twelve bases of warriors armed with hand weapons and three bases of missile armed troops. My missing or imagined Caucasian Amazon’s added to this force!
Finally we have a giant eagle that is useful for various things.
There are another two knocking around somewhere else!
They are really hard hitting with some flexibility of troop types. Their relative lack of missile troops makes them vulnerable at long range, however their main protagonists are an undead/thrall force who thankfully don’t have many missile troops either, their ability to get back up again after you knock them down makes them a little more tricky to beat.
I wanted these finished tonight and managed to do so.
Well when I say finished, I suddenly noticed all of the glaring errors in the photo above. If nothing else, the saddle on the sitting camel needs a wash and a highlight.
I was right about the bases being finished would help distinguish the figures, but I think I am going to repaint all of the spears etc something like a bone colour to give a better contrast.
The camels look like this:
And the infantry like this:
I really do think I need the lighter colour on the spears etc more for aesthetic’s than anything else. The other thing I need to paint is the bier that the queen is sitting on. I evidently totally forgot to paint it.
These certainly aren’t going to win any prizes but they are done in two evenings. So success on that front.
I had a look for my other Amazon’s and this is all I found!
I am totally perplexed as to where the rest have gone.
I am now beginning to wonder whether or not I imagined painting up an army, either that or I painted them up for somebody else.
Tomorrow I am off to Aberdeen on the first flight off Island, this means a wake up at 05.00… I am seriously not looking forward to that!
The figures are all done, However the bases need finishing.
I decided to paint the bases brown, which has actually meant the figures have sort of become lost.
I reckon that once I get some flock on then it should brighten the bases up and show of the figures a bit better.
I decided on a red and white planked shield look, but to be honest I don’t know whether it is too much or not.
Tomorrow I will get the bases finished off. I just remembered how I did this method in the past. Get the sand onto the bases before painting…isn’t hindsight a great thing 🙄.
This was simply because there were less of them and also they were less detailed than the Mongols. I decided that I needed to ease myself into painting 10mm again as it has been about three years or so since I did.
These were base coated black…
Foundry Bay brown (b) was put on as a heavy dry brush. After that a lighter dry brush of Bay brown (c). The difference can be seen in the photo below.
I mixed up the lighter Bay brown with some GW Cadian flesh. I think I overdid the light drybrush as they came out a bit lighter than I wanted.
The two slaves carrying the queen are meant to be a lighter skin tone. My first set of these are Caucasian with blonde hair, I wanted this lot to be different. They have obviously captured some of the hated white hair tribe….
I finished tonight’s session by painting all the hair black. Tomorrow I will hopefully crack on with the weapons and camels.
Once the weapons are done I reckon they will look a lot better. That and getting something onto the bases to hide the black.
I am wanting these all finished before I fly down to Aberdeen on Tuesday morning.
I have decided to have another go at 10mm figures.
Do I choose a half dozen figures.., errrr No!
Here are the cavalry,
There are:
26 bases of light cavalry
6 bases of medium cavalry
10 bases of heavy cavalry
There are also foot troops and civilians to go, but as I started feeling a bit weird with the superglue fumes I thought I had better stop!
These must have been sat in a box for five years. I got them from Pendraken the year they came out.
Someone very kindly gave me the suggestion to carry on with my French and Indian Wars stuff. I was going to and then sat and thought about it. My whole force was to be for skirmish gaming. I already have 45 painted woodland Indians do I really need another thirty? Same with the militia, I have some painted up already… how many do I actually need?
When painting 10mm figures I paint them on the base. Firstly it gives me something to hold onto and secondly it seems to be quicker. I tried painting them on strips, but Nick an old time regular on the Pendraken forum gave me the idea and I have gone that way since then.
They will never win any painting prizes, but it does get an army on the table relatively quickly.
I may actually start on my Amazon warriors.. these are on the whole naked ladies. With some of them on camels. A lot easier to paint methinks!
I do think that the sculptor needed to get out in the fresh air more and meet some actual ladies and not just Dolly Parton.
I have got one army pack already painted along with the barbarians. This will boost the fantasy horde.
They will probably need rebasing as I based them for Warmaster, but since then I have played Hordes of the Things more.
Also in the box were my plains Indians as well as a pile of Colonial British and Egyptian cavalry. Let’s not forget this chap! He is around 20 years old and one of these days I will get him painted.
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.
Bogenwald 