As you can see they brought a couple of little friends with them. Not exactly a dread hunting pack. Where someone else might have bears or wolves they have a pair of foxes. Wolves I have plenty of. Foxes…two!
The one thing that kind of bugged me with these were the way the bits were fastened to the sprue.
Bugged is maybe too strong a word, luckily I have sharp cutters and files. Trying to get these off with a knife would have been an absolute sod. It literally is 25% of the base of the arm. There were others just as bad.
So maybe I will get to start painting stuff again sometime. I have forced myself off the console and onto the kitchen table to get back into things again. The backlog is starting to pile up. I was going to say ‘again’ there, but higher is probably a better description.
So as I had convinced myself that these were indeed Mantic miniatures I decided to search for Mantic troops using various ideas as to what they might be. Eventually Barbarians threw up an image I was looking for…
“The humans of the Northern Alliance come mostly from the northern clans who have sworn allegiance to Talannar, but they can come from many disparate lands. Of these, some are remnants of eastern tribes desolated by Varangur raids. Others are refugees of wars to the south or exiles from the numerous Kingdoms of Men. Whatever their heritage, each has found a home as part of the Alliance and will fight to their last breath to protect it.”
Evidently these are still available, so not sure why Google couldn’t work out what they were.
I had 10 in the sealed bag, the box for sale seems to have 20. So I am not sure whether they did smaller amounts or it was a standard system of packing.
Well this evening I decided to do a few more townsfolk for Traitor’s Toll.
So from left to right we have… A lady with sickle and wheat (not quite sure why… Maybe a window box or something) a fishmonger, some raggedy arsed man with a sack, a dude holding out a snake (the mind boggles… Maybe he is doing an act where he shoves it down his trousers) and finally we have a young lady playing a flute.
Now there are only five unique bodies in the set, but with plenty of heads and arms then really no two should look alike, same body, different figures.
Because they looked so different in the photo I actually had to check that it was the same body. In fact there are a couple of aprons as well as the mantels that can oomph them up even more.
Well after whining about not having the right magnets I decided to splash out and purchase some 3×1 mm ones to fit the holes I have. As I was ordering them I decided to get five parsecs from home as my son is more interested in sci fi than fantasy.
I have a Stargrave box of miniatures as well as a pile of other stuff so we should be able to get going over the Christmas break.
As I said in an earlier post I have decided to downsize the collection. Anything with no interest is going the journey.
So off the top of my head… Staying are the 15mm armies I have, ditto with the 10mm and 6mm.
I will keep my hundred years war and Celts in 28mm as well as the stuff for Five Leagues and The sci-fi stuff for playing with James.
My bookshelves and boardgames are also going to get a radical cut. I live in a tiny house and don’t have the room for a shit load of stuff.
I have asked for a book on the Italian Wars for Christmas. No miniatures this time, well not exactly true I ordered three frames of cultists to become baddies for Five Leagues etc.
So starting soon I will be offering stuff to Thule gamers and thence to eBay. Wish me luck. Some of this stuff I have had for 30 years.
Well I got going again this evening and slapped more paint on the Brotherhood… Nearly got them finished…
I very cleverly painted a halved shield, was really proud of it then realised I had reversed them. Evidently I never learn as that is exactly what I did with my full size shield…so tomorrow I will try again!
This evening I managed a little bit of snipping and glueing. These are the four remaining miniatures from the peasant levy sprue.
They will be useful in either Traitor’s Toll or Five Leagues. Not exactly a huge amount, but more than I had this morning.
The sprue still has a load of arms, heads and weapon options remaining. I have some 3D printable WA miniatures so I will have to see if any bodies will be useful.
In other news I am up to 30 hours next week in my phased return to work and am heading off down to Manchester in a couple of weeks for some training.
Well I eventually got around to making my brotherhood… Aka my force for Five leagues from the Borderlands.
So here are the six of them… From left to right:
Starting with the heroes:
Bragollach the mystic. Rowan the frontiersman, Sir Percival Fanhard, knight and leader. Nellas the Fey ranger. We have two followers as well…
Caedric the former soldier. A loyal retainer to Fanhard and finally Oswyn an outcast drifter.
So the Brotherhood are on a ship heading to Blackwater Landing: the initial starting point. Now I could have started them in the port but I decided to do a travel roll. So on the journey across the sea they met a physician named Eldrin Marrowell. They got on famously and as he was going to start a practice in Blackwater it seemed a great start. Unfortunately he was worried that his previous employer was unhappy with him leaving. Sure enough as they come down the gangplank a group of what seems like very organised Robbers demand the Brotherhood hand over Eldrin. He asks them for aid and when Fanhard refuses to hand him over weapons are drawn. Not exactly the best start in a new town
After much angst about how to find a suitable ranger cloak for Nellas I decided to have a go at making one for myself. I got the idea from Peachy’s YouTube channel.
Basically the idea is that you use masking tape… It’s not bad for a first attempt.
I had better get some stuff painted so I can find out if the Brotherhood can save Eldrin.
Cor, look at me. Three posts in three days… Today I got a package in the post.
Well I wanted a few extra bits and bobs to bulk out the Traitor’s Toll types and also to make a force for Five Leagues from the Borderlands.
So I went for a sprue of Foot Knights, one of Foot Sergeants and another of Peasants. The Fourth sprue is extra weapons for the Sergeants. Mainly pole arms and pointy sticks.
As I was kicked off the Console I decided to build a selection of the knights…
One of these will become the leader of the Borderlands forces. When I rolled up the troops one of them had a full set of armour.
The only sort of issue I have with these is that the guards set are in plate armour while these are in mail.
Back into work for four hours tomorrow. I will try and do the foot sergeants when I get back.
Well today I did another painting, had a go at some hills…
I then decided to start making some of the Wargames Atlantic miniatures…
These did make me swear a bit as although they are meant to be multi part/pose they were annoyingly fiddly and didn’t quite go together as well as I would have liked.
The heads don’t always fit the neck and there are huge hands that don’t seem to have an opposite partner. Maybe I should have checked out the assembly guides on the website.
So my phased return is 12 hours this week, based over 3 days. Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Next week I am up to 15 hours so I am trying to get some hobby stuff in when I can.
Fifteen miniatures done for tomorrow’s Geek Club. We always start on the same one to help me show them what to do.
I do have another nine that got undercoated this evening. Unfortunately some of the bases hadn’t cured properly so I will blast them with the light tomorrow.
Not to be recommended… this evening I decided that I really needed to paint something. I managed to get so far before giving up as I was coughing my guts up throughout…
Hopefully the cough will have gone by tomorrow and I can carry on.
Bogenwald 