Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Krautian Dwarves and a Paint Jiggler

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.

Error
This video doesn’t exist

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.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Finklestein Dwarves

I managed to get these three fine fellows finished.

They are awesome figures and a joy to paint.

I don’t know why, but this one reminds me of a retired naval captain

The other two are both wearing the same coats, Maybe a couple of hunters…brothers? Or am I going to deeply into this lol!

And this one has to be my favourite of all three. I like him so much you can see him twice 😉

Tomorrow I will try and get these chaps further forward.

I have to workout the colours of their packs and blankets. I will use Prussian troops to decide on the necessary colours.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 1 Comment

Cardboard Heroes

Tonight I was working Late (ish) on converting the old byre (I took this photo earlier in the day).

Then after tea and a bath, followed by a family DVD night I had no chance to paint anything.

Instead my daughter and I had a look through our RPG bag.

Behold… our figure storage for all of our heroes, baddies and NPC’s

This little lot holds around 60 ‘figures’ and could quite easily hold around 500 more!

They are all card from the very talented Okum Arts. I used to use plastic and metal figures and these took up time to paint and space to store. One day I had an epiphany and I started hunting for flats. Eventually, after a fair bit of searching on RPGNow. I found a style I really liked. They were bright and colourful and a little bit cartoony.

To my mind David Okum was the artist I was looking for. The good thing about the card minis is that one can print as many as you like.

So let’s have a look at our heroes first.

A ranger, a wood elf of Mirkwood and a couple of hobbits from the Shire

These four have battled many foes around Bree.

Some of them are below:

Orcs and Wargs

Goblins

Another thing I like about these is that the colours can be changed to add a bit of variety. These are green and grey, but there are about four different shades to choose from.

Civilians – with the layering option weapons can be removed, really handy if you want unarmed characters to stand out.

There are lots of races to choose from, I think I pretty much bought them all

Occasionally I need a troll or four!

I seem to have misplaced my ents, which is a bit of a pain as they are really good too.

As you might have guessed I like my Tolkein and the Roleplaying game that hits the spot in my mind is…

Moving away from the RPG side of things…. to

One of the other things I bought from Okum Arts was an awesome winter game called Snowball wars. This fun little game has everything you need apart from dice to allow you to print and play. We haul it out every winter and the kids all gang up on me.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get something painted.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 2 Comments

Krautian Dwarves II

And one is finished…

I did a bit more on them all but decided to crack on and finish at least one of them.

The rest of them still have a long way to go.

I am quite pleased with the Blue highlights on most of them apart from second on the right, it looks a bit weird. I will try and remember to sort it out tomorrow, as he is the one that had only one unpainted epaulette I don’t rate my chances of remembering to tone down a highlight.

The highlight on the black isn’t showing up very well in these photos. I didn’t want it to be in your face, but maybe this isn’t in your face enough. I went for a blue-grey colour which can be seen on the boots of the second from the left.

As I said yesterday, I really like these figures, and if truth be known I prefer the civilians over the uniformed ones. But to be honest it might be that the one I finished was really quick to paint up!

I think that, although I really like the dwarves, I won’t be getting many more as I have so much other Flintloque stuff to paint up that I would never get to them.

Off the top of my head I have the following:

Ferach

30 infantry and 6 cavalry

Orc

30 infantry plus 2 sets of Sharke’s rifles

Witchlands

30 infantry and 12 cavalry

Not to mention various random specials, individuals and a box of dark elves I haven’t got a clue what to do with. I have a niggling feeling that I am missing stuff from the above lists.

I suppose I could flog off some of the above especially the orcs. I already have one of the rifles sets painted so I really don’t need any more. I have 25 orc Militia which, to be honest, I only bought so that I could get a couple of figures that were no longer available.

And finally….

I succumbed again!

My excuse, I keep trying to convince myself, is that they are for my little boy. These are now starting to get a bit more pricey. £7.99 for three figures and a pot of gun metal paint. Now if I was desperate to collect space Marines then the value would be much better.

I will probably get the next issue to get the half dozen pox walkers and then call it a day unless something awesome appears.

Posted on by maenoferren22

Dwarves of Krautia

I managed to slap some paint on these.

Not a lot – but enough to be able to say I have made a start on them.

They really are lovely figures that are full of character. I will hopefully get on with them tomorrow evening. I was too knackered tonight to get much further.

I am going to darken down the blue a bit with a dark blue wash and then highlight it back up again. I just think it is a bit bright for a base coat.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 7 Comments

Back to the Sudan

On a course and I had to do homework… I mean Actual homework in a homework book.

Now I don’t want to be rude, but to be honest I checked twice in case I had been given a child’s spelling book in error.

We did a full day of training I then popped back to the office and ended up popping in for an hour and a half. This meant I had to go shopping later than expected, with the knock on effect that I haven’t had time to get anything painted tonight!

So tonight we have some of the terrain I use in my Sudan games.

These are 6mm buildings that work well to represent villages etc. The trees are imported palms from China. Cheap as chips, this is a small selection. The headless statue is a Hirst Arts one from some 28mm Egyptian stuff ain’t had spare.

The following hill was originally designed for my 6mm road wars stuff but to be honest it works for 10mm too.

Please ignore the pale splodge at the top of the slope. Some idiot dropped cream coloured paint on it.

Finally some figures. These are all 15mm. These were designed to act as characters during a battle. I should mention here that. I rather enjoy Science Versus Pluck. A set of rules in which everyone plays on the Anglo Egyptian side against an umpire.

In those rules if things get somewhat sticky for the brave souls it can lead to hand to hand combat. The larger figures are then placed on the side and the mini combat takes place. These are all Peter Pig miniatures. I decided on the 15mm as 28mm just sort of looked wrong.

Here we have a reporter in the foreground with various officers and sergeants further back. The reporter is there as one player didn’t want a combative role and was happy to send reports back from the column.

I also bought some cavalry as players can be cavalry or mounted infantry officers.

Finally the above need someone to spoil their day.

A selection of the chaps that poor Lieutenant Trapper is evidently about to meet, for what is probably an exceedingly short time.

Posted on by maenoferren22

Finger Knitting and Flintloque Dwarves

My little boy (7) was taught to finger knit by some older girls in school.

He taught me when I got home. The results are below. I think he was quite a good teacher!

In the background we can see some of the dwarves.

First up are the Krautian dwarves.

Think Napoleonic Prussians, but dwarven one’s. I have to look up the uniforms, but I think dark blue tunic with grey breeches. Black shako, gaiters and cartridge box. White equipment straps and a brown haversack.

The other three are either dwarves from the confederation of Finklestine or some form of civilian militia. I have already painted up the two ogres that came with this schilling pack.

One of them has a sword, the other two seem to be unarmed, however they both have large satchels that could contain anything.

I am still in a dither as to whether I should paint these or crack on and finish my French and Indian Wars stuff first…

We shall have to see what tomorrow brings, but as these are already on bases and the mould lines removed…🤔🤔🤔

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 4 Comments

Enemy Spotted…Battalion Will Form Square!

Now for the other side of the coin.

The Dervish

Before we go any further I suppose I should say why the Soudan and not Zulu or any other colonial game.

I suppose it was down to choice of forces with regards to the Zulu War. Basically the Impi..that’s it…..with a handful of rifles. North West Frontier and the Khyber pass, great selection of troop types but it is rather hilly in that neck of the woods and that would mean a rather large set of terrain, yeah I know they have valleys and the like, but the pass without the hills is just not the Khyber pass – if that makes sense.

The Boer War has never really interested me. Now the Boxer Rebellion, I was really interested in that conflict, however, at the time Pendraken wasn’t doing the Boxer Rebellion. Yeah I know there are other manufacturers out there but I like the Pendraken stuff and there I stayed.

I loved the four feathers from when I was a kid. Both the 1939 and the 1978 one. I haven’t seen the 2002 version.

My late father used to quote Kipling at times:

So ’ere ’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan;

 You ’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;

An’ ’ere ’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ’ayrick ’ead of ’air—

You big black boundin’ beggar—for you broke a British square!

And let’s not forget…

The sand of the desert is sodden red,

Red with the wreck of the square that broke,

The Gatling’s jammed and the colonel’s dead,

And the regiment blind with the dust and smoke.

We all know they didn’t have a Gatling gun with them but a Gardner gun, which incidentally scans perfectly in the poem!

Anyway enough of the waffle…

First up the mounted troops

Once again these are a mix of Sudanese forces and those from the North West Frontier. I added the latter to add a bit of variety to the force.

Next the camelry

Beja on the right and river Arabs on the left.

Command bases.

From my reading a lot of the Emir’s rode into battle and had a pretty high casualty rate as it was obvious who was in charge.

Now for the infantry

Beja first and river Arabs second

To be honest though they look better from my perspective:

Maybe not better, but at least more colourful😉

Rifles next:

And of course the captured artillery

Oh and the Museum piece

This was a GW empire cannon from the Warmaster range. I gave it a crew and it fitted in well as an archaic weapon.

Finally I decided to make the Mahdi himself.

This is what my Dervish force looks like in full

I really do like the Pendraken range for both sides of this conflict.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 5 Comments

Further into the Sudan

Tonight I took some more photos of the Anglo Egyptian forces.

The infantry are quite numerous and only a selection have been shown here and the previous post.

first up the mounted troops.

Mounted infantry to the left with both the mounted and dismounted troops

And the hussars… before they realised the lance was preferable to the sabre when some sneaky chap lies down to hamstring your horse as it hurtles past.

Not to mention the obligatory spare figures to act as scouts and messengers.

Next up the Egyptian troops.

First some repurposed WW1 Askari that were already painted. These are my Sudanese. In the earlier campaigns they were dressed as Egyptian infantry. This way they are obvious on the table.

Next some Egyptian infantry

And finally some Bashi Bazouks – actually ACW zouaves. I ordered these and painted them before I found Pendraken actually did Some proper figures.

Next are some civilians with their camels.

Royal Artillery with some large ordinance and a Gatling gun…they decided to leave the mountain guns behind.

Some cuirassiers who wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Middle Age. Baker’s force had a unit of these, but armed with sabres and not spears. I use these for either side as required.

And finally for this evening….

Camels

Some of these have appeared in earlier photos. I just ran them around the back of the camera to make it look like I had more 😉. I actually think I am missing some of the pack camels, they may be in the box with the Mongols.

Tomorrow, if I don’t manage to get any painting done, I will show the Ansar.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Foray into the Sudan

I was having a mooch in the shed this evening and came across these fine fellows.

Chaps of the Guards camel corps. Dismounted to the fore and mounted at the rear (guarding the baggage camels). The individual figures act as scouts or messengers etc. I know that by the time of the conflict the colours were left at home but that didn’t stop me converting a standard bearer 👍

Next up we have the fine fellows of her majesty’s Royal Navy.

Royal Marines in the centre with matelots either side. Someone allowed them to hand haul a Gatling gun with them. Beresford can be seen mounted with the colours.

Then we move onto the mixed battalions.

Highlanders form the rear and sides whilst The Durham’s form the front. Pack camels hide in the centre of the square. Amazing beasts camels…they need a pint of water a month😂😂😂.

Finally in this bunch (my IPad ran out of charge) are the Guards troops (yeah I know they didn’t wear the red jacket…but I like them plus it makes them easy to recognise mid game 😉.

The one thing not shown are the hussars and mounted infantry, further British infantry and artillery,Egyptian battalions, Bashi Bazouks and the civilians….oh and lots and lots of camels.

These are all Pendraken. I may still get some Sikh infantry to add in the Indian battalions.

Tomorrow I will photograph the rest. Today was hectic and I didn’t get anything done painting wise. Cinema with the youngest then my eldest’s play this evening. My middle child is off gallivanting on Orkney for her 10th birthday shenanigans.