I managed to get these a bit further forward this evening…
They are nearly there, the ninja still need work, and then I can start on the rest of them including 10 Oni hounds, six ashigaru and six samurai, not to forget the skeletons, witches and some giant spiders with human heads!
Now while I was moving things around I found a problem with my seven samurai… can you spot it?
I decided to get the Battle Valour minis stuck onto their bases this evening. I have the half dozen Oni who will become something for my monster hunters to hunt down. I may get some of the other beasties that Battle Valour have.
I was going to get some of the buildings done tonight, but it never happened. Hopefully I will get some more done tomorrow evening.
On the home front, my wife got a message to call her boss this morning, even though she has a meeting with him tomorrow. As you can imagine we were fearing the worst, but thankfully he asked her to come back to work starting onWednesday. She will still be working from home, but the problem we have now is how to get the kids work done from their school.
I didn’t get in until 21:00 tonight so didn’t get as much done as I wanted, but apart from a bit of touching up, (including highlighting the shield rims) and getting the bases done then I reckon these are pretty much finished (I know John is desperate to hear the news of their finishing 🤣).
I would have potentially got more done this evening if I hadn’t chucked some of the scabbards away. I was tidying up and binned what I thought were spares only to find I had missed them off the command base… I swore 🤬. Luckily the dog had stolen the butter and cleaned it out as the bits fell into the tub. This meant I didn’t have to empty the whole bin bag.
There is a bit of contrast on the shield faces, but it would seem that Contrast paint doesn’t work as well on bleached bone as it does over white.
Hopefully a bit more of a sensible finish time tomorrow night so I can get the Aztecs sprayed and these finished off. Once I decide on a vegetation style I will get everything flocked together.
I think I am going to go with a Samurai Army next, with the potential for a couple of clans for Ronin in 25mm (well after the Conquistadors are done – the Aztecs and Scalians need someone to fight).
So after my wibble the other day I cracked on again tonight…
I managed to pretty much get the bits and bobs done. The cavalry are observing progress… Regarding the blue things, I thought they were bits of sprue… evidently not. They seem to be some sort of scabbard so I painted them up even though only the orange one actually has a sword. They will add a bit of interest to the spear armed troops. I will get them all glued onto the minis tomorrow.
I will get the Aztecs sprayed tomorrow too.
I have been having a mooch at the Tin Soldier website again. They also do 25mm Samurai… but I must resist and keep with the 15mm, however the 25’s would make a nice skirmish force for the Ronin rules 🤔.
I am getting a Little tired of this lot just about now.
I don’t know why but I really can’t be bothered with these right now… Probably because I wasn’t too struck on them to begin with. I really had to force myself to do anything on them today, but I managed something, probably 20 minutes in total.
The mounts got a dark eye added and the same colour to the mouth of the riders straps were painted in and the leader had his gold armour painted.
I need to do the shields and quivers, but I reckon I will not be going overboard on highlighting etc. I want them done and out of the way.
We bought a cheap caravan yesterday, so I will be able to enthrall you all with more photos of Shetland (other Island Archipelagos are available).
So I managed to get a bit more done on these…
Still a fair bit to go but getting there.
spears need their shields doing and bows need their quivers, still some strapping to paint up, but a lot further on than a couple of days ago.
Not really much done tonight, or it looks like not much. The time was taken to paint in the white, let it dry and then paint over with the Contrast Paint.
I also repainted the underbelly of the mounts then gave them a blast with a green/yellow.
I am having an early night tonight so will have to carry on with these tomorrow.
Tonight I spent ages trying to work out what colours to paint the riders.
In the end I looked at what contrast paint colours I had, in the end it was down to Blue, green or yellow… obviously yellow won 😉. The command mini with the sword is done in orange to mark him out as a leader. I will need to tidy up the skin on them with white to get the yellow to cover over the green splodges.
Because I want these out of the way I am pretty much throwing the paint on. Problem is I can see where the green was and it is bugging me, otherwise I reckon it would have been left the way it was.
Shortly after taking the above photo I decided that they looked boring, so made changes to the command bases.
I used the Black Hat back banners to make the standards and also to give the leader a back banner too.
I will get them painted white when I tidy up things.
I eventually got the last statue sprayed.
I really do need to get the printer dialled back in. The lines on this are really obvious. The printer sat for about two months so it might need a bit of TLC to get it back on track again.
Friday tomorrow so hopefully I can get these lizards finished over the weekend.
I managed to get the mounts painted green, again I just blasted some Contrast paint on them.
I do like this green colour, I am thinking of doing the mounts a different colour to the other two types I painted previously. It will need to be something that goes well with the green.
To be honest I was getting a bit bored by the green in the end. I will repaint the bellies on the mounts in a light grey and then get a yellow colour on there to add a bit of differentiation.
I hope to get the riders painted tomorrow too.
So tonight I decided to put these together… sixteen miniatures – legs, body and tail.. how hard could that be… A bloody nightmare actually.
The legs are fastened to the mount so the body goes onto the little peg…yeah right. The peg is, firstly too long and secondly too wide. So I trimmed them down. Get the body ready…..
the body’s cavity to shove the peg in was blocked with pewter!
The other issue is that the leg bit is flat and the body part is domed, so without any major surgery there is a ruddy great gap.
The tail then affixes to the bum… this went surprisingly smoothly, however I did cut the peg down and widen the hole.
Eventually after a lot of swearing and super glueing myself to miniature Lizardmen I got there!
I am used to removing flash, mould lines and vent excess but this lot took things to a whole new level. The thing it reminds me of is when you buy stuff off Ebay and it turns out it is a collection of recasts.
As I got them from the only seller in the Uk (well I think he is… and he lives on Shetland to boot 😉) and I know him personally then this is not the case. I reckon they will paint up fine once the superglue has cured properly. I actually wanted them sprayed tonight, but tomorrow will have to do.
Battle Valour Games do a whole host of races, but because of the problems with these and then the big beastie, it has kind of put me off. I could ask Martin to have a look at some of the others, but right now I want these and the Aztecs finished…
Regarding Aztecs, my couple of packs very quickly turned into five…or possibly six.
Command, peasant slingers x2, peasant with hand weapons x 1, jaguar captain and eagle captain one of each…oh yeah six!
I also asked if they would send me some samples of their Samurai range 😱.
I must be off my rocker, as if I haven’t got enough to paint.
Tomorrow the kids come back from the holidays. I thought I would take a photo out of the office window…
I reckon there might be worse views out there.
Bogenwald 