AHPC XIV: From Mike W - More Tau and Orcs plus lots of Odds and Ends. Squirrell, Skulls

 This week has been one focused on building and preparing more figures for the painting production line, as such I have a handful of Tau, a group of Savage Orcs and a smattering of other periods and scales to keep the paint flowing whilst the glues, undercoating and basing materials dry!

I have concentrated on getting my Tau Commander completed this week, accompanied by a few Tau Troopers. I'm also being cheeky and painting up a few female Tau Ge'Vesa to enable me to flit from my current Library location (Maritime) to go straight to the SciFi selves and claim the Sci-Fi Bonus, then on wards to other shelves!

I guess I should therefore start with a Tau Gue'Vesa for Lady Sarah's Trolly. This female human fighter is with the Tau as a Ge'Vesa helper. She is depicted as unarmored, carrying a rather large Combi-Weapon and dressed in her underarmour trousers and vest.

Female Gue'Vesa in  underarmour carrying a Tau Combi Weapon

Rear view, showing ceremonial sword and Tau inspired hair braids

From her waist hangs a ceremonial Tau Sword and you may note that her hair is styled with a typical Tau 'pig tail' or braid at the back.

The figure is based upon a Warlord Games Zombie Gang Biker model with Tau accoutrements from GW.

Now on to the main course - for which I will claim the Sci-Fi bonus, the Tau Army Commander. This is a again a large power suit and painted in my army's colours of white and orange with black lowlights and sky blue lenses and digital displays etc.

Front view, with three weapons systems and a force shield deployed on the suit's hard points.

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The figure was again from eBay and so painted as built, the base incldes a skull for my Skulls tally and some basic battlefield scatter that came with the model when purchased.

Side view, showing shoulder monted combi-weapon and a plasma gun 

The other side, showing sholder mounted shield and a Fusion Blaster weapon.

And the rear view, the 'figure is flying using the suit's onboard propulsion units,
a clear view of the base finish can be seen in this shot. 

 To accompany the commander I have completed a couple of Tau Troopers.

Two Tau troopers with hand grenades.

Another view...

More Tau under construction!

This batch of Warhammer Fantasy / Old World Savage Orcs fortuatously landed on my doormat last week, saving me the problem of trying to source and build additional Ocs for my ongoing Orc Army project. The batch cosists of 10 x Savage Orc plus a War Boss, between them a measley +2 skullls when oainted.

The whole gang, painted and based!

These guys arrived partially undercoated and requiring some basic first aide to fix figures to bases, limbs to bodies and hands & weapons to arms. This was achieved pretty quickly and then the batch was undercoated in black before getting a heavy dry-brushing of grey then white to highlight.

Close-up of theree Orc warriors, notice the focus on mouths, bone items and bright lizardskin clothing

I used GW 'Goregrunta Fur' to paint all the wooden items (spears, shields & handles) followed by GW Leadbelcher to do all the metal work. Not surprisingly I used GW 'Snakebite Leather' to do all leather work and GW 'Skeleton Horde' to all the bone items, before then applying Army Painter 'Orc Flesh' - logically enough - to the flesh areas!

Another three guys, again a lot of bones and teeth!

I generally try to work from light to dark when painting these guys but it doesn't always work out that way - I often miss items and have to go back out of sequence, or I make errors and have to fix painting messes after the event! Anyway after all the base colours are in place I then set about highlighting all the figures with lighter versions of the base colours as well as adding in the all important details to catch everyone's eyes and save them looking at the rest of the model to closely!

These two Orcs, had whip hands added and will be treated as Discipline Masters to keep the unit in line during battle.

As ever with Orcs the eye catching detail is usually their mouths and impressive teeth plus any gold bling. As these are savage Orcs, they don't appear to have much in the way of gold bling, so instead I have concentrated on their bone items, treating these items as if they were skeletons and trying to do a good job on these!

Two more Orcs, with Lizardman loincloths

As noted some of the figures had no weapon hands, I managed to replace all but two of these from the spares box, with Savage Ork items. However, two of the figures had to have other replacement hands - I landed on a pair of hands holding whips (from the Grot Herder kits), my rational being these guys would be Discipline Masters within these Savage Orc units.

The War Boss, on a tiles base, just to help him
look bigger and stand out on the tabletop

The War Boss has a huge Axe and a lot of teeth! He is on a slightly different base, that give him some extra height. I did think of replacing this but n the end decided that the flagstone base helps to single him out as a leader, so the base it came on stayed in place....

Next on my list of completed models are some10mm Scots, from the  Pendraken Flodden Range. I'm not convinced that the Scots had many hand gunners at Flodden but these models were included in an army pack I purchased from a Games Show many years ago and its high time I started painting them,especially as I'm scrambling to ready other figures.

The completed unit of Hand Gunners, based to use Warmaster rules

I undercoated these guys in white then applied GW Snakebite Leather all over, before again picking out faces and hands in white. Skin was painted using GW Darkoath Flesh,which in turn had a highlight of Army Painter Barbarian Flesh.

The unit in column of march,                                  I've long fancied doing a Flodden game, now might be the time!

Trousers were picked out in blue, brown or grey at random, with most in blue. Jackets were left as brown leather but sleeves were mostly painted with GW Slaughter Red, with some left as grey. Muskets were painted using GW Goregrunter Fur, metallics were added with GX Air Leadbelcher and socks were painted grey, before a watered down wash of brown ink to tie everything together.

Another view!

Based using my patent brown gloop and fine sand before adding a mix of self adhesive tufts to finish them off. 

And next for Flodden?! Trying to prompt myself to do a unit of Scots Archers next!
If I show the picture I feel more inclined to get the job done... maybe.

                                         

Next we have a base of Warlord Games 15mm Epic ECW Scots Covenanter dismounted dragoons. Just five of these guys to the base, all in Hodden Grey with blue bonnets!

5 x Scots Dragoons in Epic 15mm scale

Another view, the don't look that great close-up but do the job en-masse!

Another quickie, with a base of  20 x Warlord Epic ACW Rebel 15mm figures, these are late war troops and painted up as an Alabama regiment, likely operating in the western theatre of the war. 

Head on, view of the figures.

Side view, with the Alabama (nofficial) state flag and regimental banner.

The other side view - unfortunately one rifle snapped off on the
back rank and has dissapeard into the carpet!

A quick return to an unfinished batch fom last week - namely three more 20mm British WW2 infantry, these guys got seperated from their comrades on the painting prodction line and ths I didn't have time to finish them off ready for last week's post.

Left to right - Bren Gunner, Greade Thrower and Rifleman

These guys were painted in exactly the same manner as last week's batch - just a week behind ther comrades.

These guys were dressed in a variety of kit - battledress, shirt & sleeves etc, to reflect the theatre of operations

Again all the figures were based for the Italy / Greece theatre of war.

Next on the Historical side are some Warlord Games (I'm pretty sure) 28mm US Infantry, they were painted using the Warlord Games painting guide found here.

The completed US Infantry men, Normandy '44

So undercoated in white before Khaki jackets and gaiters, US Green for trousers and Dark Gree (actually Russian Green) for helmets - all Valijho paints. Guns were GW Goregrunta Fur and Leadbealcher and the skin was done in the same manner as noted for other figures here - GW Darkoath Flesh followed by highlights in Army Painter Barbarian Flesh.

Close-up on a Captain, Lieutenannt, riflemen and a BAR gunner.

I used a watered down GW Agrax Earthshade to blend all the colours together before highlighting the khaki items with the base colour agiain.

and an NCO and three more riflemen

Bases were the usual fine sand and electrostatic grass combination on MDF discs.

Probably more familiar to the British and Astralian/Kiwi readers I have just completed two characters from the 1960s TV show Captain Scarlett. Namely these guys are Captain Blue and Captain Scarlet, from the TV series Catptain Scarlett.

Captain Blue, aka Adam Svenson a former astonaught
and Captain Scarlett's right hand man

Captain Ochre, aka Richard Fraser
a British former policeman

These Captains were special operatives of an organisation known as Spectrum who were engaged in a deadly conflict with an alien race called the Mysterons.

The two painted models

Captain Blue

Captain Ochre

I believe that these are old board game pieces that fit really well into 28mm scale, although both basically the same figure they have been painted in different colours to accompany a Captain Scarlett figure I did back in AHPC XIII.

Finally a quickie - a Classic Empire Archer, undercoated in white, I decided on a blue and yellow livery.

The classic Empire Archer

And the rear view

AHPC XIV: From GrahameH - Cold War US Battlegroup

 Its not been a great start to the challenge this year, as I had to work through Christmas and things have only just slowed down. 

Nevertheless, I have managed to do some painting. This year I decided not to go so mad as I did last year, as I knew work was going to be an issue and I am half way through sorting out and rebasing my Italian Wars armies and finishing off my Napoleonic Poles. However, I thought I would try and complete something different this year and decided to finish off some of my Cold War Battlegroups (BGs). 

I use Rapid Fires "Able Archer" rules, which contain some small Battlegroups that are ideal if you only have a 6' X 4' table. After all these years of painting large armies I have decided I should really only paint what will fit on the table (yeah right). I had already painted most of the infantry for these BGs so it was just a matter of painting the vehicles. So if I was disciplined and didn't go off at a tangent it shouldn't take me too long 😟😟.

I chose the date of 1984 for my BGs, that way I could avoid the NATO camouflage. Totally forgot about the US MEDRC camouflage. As NATO was considering changing their camouflage scheme at this time newer US vehicles were left green, hence the green M1s and Bradleys. The models are either Battlefront or Army Bits. 

US Battlegroup 

This BG consists of 

7 X M1s. There are three more of these than the BG requires as the rules allow you to add a Tank Coy and remove a infantry coy to make the BG an armoured BG. 

4 X M113 for the infantry coys. The infantry figures were painted a while ago. These represent HQ Coy and 3 infantry coys.

4 X M113ish  in the support role. L to R 2 X M901 with TOW, M113 ACAV and a M106 with 120mm mortar. 

The HQ M577

The second half of the US BG. 

5 X Bradleys. These take the place of the M113s for a later 1984 BG.

The Artillery Battery

2 X M109 and a M981 FIST-V Forward Observer

AA Battery - 2 X Vulcans

M60 Bridging Unit

Armoured Recovery Vehicle 

MLRS

So that is it for this BG. 29 X 15mm vehicles = 232pts