A smidge more done today.

I managed to get some painting done twice, some just after breakfast, whilst waiting for the BT Engineer (more on that later) and then after the kids went to bed.

As you can see from the image above, my spear points are nowhere near the level of my jungle vines. I will attempt to do something with them. I cut the pikes down from full length to half length as did the original conquistadors. However it looked a bit naff just as a pole. I do in fact live in awe of people who can actually sculpt the figures, never mind the spear points.

Some other Fabbo news…

My tank and scary flower came… Whooppee!!!

The tank and Triffid are a nice size..

They also came with a free 28mm figure… Alternative Armies were adding a ghostly bride to everyone’s order

Some skulls completed the order from them…

But there’s more…

My Tin Soldier Aztecs came too!

And there is even MORE!!!

David from over on TIM (The Imperfect Modeller) A great blog: https://theimperfectmodeller.wordpress.com/ it is well worth a look.

Well anyway he very kindly passed on to me some 15mm minis that he had been given, so a mega big thank you to him.

I haven’t had a chance to have a proper look, but there are some pikemen, 2 cannon and crew and some mounted and command types too.

So that was the awesome part if the day, the rest was a bit frustrating… the BT Engineer who was supposed to come this morning hadn’t arrived by 19.00 tonight.

What makes it worse is that today was my last day of leave and the weather for once was nice (it’s been raining most days and blowing a hooligan …it is again!). The family could have gone out and done something but No. So I phone up BT and some oik told me it was nothing to do with them and that I would have to phone up Openreach… he gave me a number to call… which was no longer in service.

I eventually managed to get hold of them via their chat service! A nice pretendy lady (most of them are automated these days, the chat, not the ladies) told me that no Engineer had been requested from BT…. so back to them I went… A lovely real life lady tried her best to find out what was going on, but by this time it was past 20.00 and most if her colleagues had gone home. But according to her the Engineer had been requested and he had done the work…..

She is phoning me back tomorrow.

Why did I need the Engineer…. Well we got Broadband here when we moved in… sitting at roughly 0.5 mbs. We are never going to get mega speeds where we areBut over time the ageing infrastructure is starting to effect things. We now get 0.3 if we are lucky, often 0.02 if we get any at all.

BT have been next to useless. Not the engineers or most of the help staff, but BT themselves. It will cost them too much money to upgrade our little hamlet. We are however paying the same as everyone else. Their answer… Leave! We tried, however they have a monopoly on the exchange it would seem and we cannot. The one time we could have done, then the new company refused to take us on due to the crap infrastructure.

We looked into satellite Broadband, but the bandwidth options weren’t much use.

Both of my wife and I can work from home, technically but with the speeds we are getting we are forced to travel into Lerwick to work from there.

Apologies for the rant….. I am calm, I am calm, I am calm.

Anyway today’s painting was brought to you by…

Or Acapulco as I have been calling it all night. A really silly film to watch as all speech is subtitled! I reckon my paint usage has quadrupled tonight as it kept drying up before I got to use it.

A bit of a silly film, although I do like it. But as I was painting conquistadors, I thought why not.

Tomorrow I hope to be calmer and get more stuff painted….I think ‘The Road to Eldorado’ tomorrow night.

It has an Aztec kind of a twist…

I decided on a test base to see what these would look like…

The dogs need a bit of work, probably a glaze will sort them out.

The thing I notice about the swordsmen is that the sword just seems to be hovering near the hand and not grasped in it.

The rear view of the same base…

I quite enjoyed doing these. I started adding a bit of colour to the rest of them. I thought they were all identical in Morion and cuirasses. They aren’t. The pikemen are in quilted armour and the arquebusier’s are in their tunics. The crossbowmen are similarly attired to the sword and bucklers.

I actually think that these will be a little more colourful than I first thought.

Tomorrow I shall hopefully crack on with these and get a few more finished…

Only a smidge done tonight, I have been carrying on converting the byre again today.

I was going to spray them, but unfortunately half a dozen Guinea Pigs are in the shed where I would normally spray things, come to think of it a lot of 8×4 OSB sheets are in the way too.

It was down to the brush and some dark brown.

I may give them a dark wash tomorrow, but I will see how I feel when I have a look at them again.

I had a mess around with some Greenstuff the other day and made some Jungle bits to go with my Lurker MKII.

I was quite pleasantly surprised when I painted them up… the tree stump still needs a bit of a dry brush and highlighting.

To be honest I rather like how they look on the Snake base.

A few tea leaves and other herbs to act as ground cover and I think it will look rather good.

Tomorrow I will crack on with the Conquistadors. I also got an email from the lovely people at Alternative Armies to say that my order had been dispatched. I should have the Leonardo tank in a couple of days 👍.

I did some work on the horde elements last night.

Still a fair way to go on these but I am getting there.

There will be one base of commoners and two of elite types. I know it should be the other way around, but as these were samples I can’t really argue. They are going to be part of the Horde if the Things force so I am not too bothered.

Whilst perusing the Tin Soldier Website I accidentally ordered a DBA Aztec army… so much for not buying anything new!

Do I need a DBA Aztec army…. not really when I have this lot to paint up!

Black Hat Aztec army, DBM sized!

To be honest though, I am not sure about these. I got them on a whim to play a fantasyesque Conquistador campaign, that was two years ago. If I hadn’t decided on a Different HOTT army for this year’s tournament then they probably wouldn’t have seen the light of day for another two years.

Lastly I have a flyers element available if needed 😉

I found a couple of these chaps. They are actually Pendraken 10mm dragons with the tails cut off. They will do as Pterosaurs.

I have got some Magister Millitum one’s too but could only find one of the three. I would loved to have done Jungle birds, but can’t think of anyone who does a host of them.

I will crack on with these tonight. I am posting now as I have stable internet at the minute. Something that is a rare commodity at the minute.

Well as today was crap outside I did some filing and glueing this afternoon.

This morning we took the kids to see Smallfoot which they loved and as an adult I found as an enjoyable enough way to spend a couple of hours.

Anyway, what have I been up to…

The general and unit of knights (minus their lance).

Shooters, blades and beasts…

Some additions, in case I feel the urge to rethink my list. A couple of bases of spears and a small artillery piece. Which has now been rebase as I realised from the photo that it was on a 30 x 30 base instead of 40 x 40!

I found another idea for a lurker…

And luckily some of my Horde are already painted.

Okay I know these lot shouldn’t be mixed up like this, but they are the same size as the Conquistadors and I quite like them. It just so happens that I have enough for three bases worth.