Well I have now reached the stage where I'm having to scramble to get figures together for my painting projects to do for this challenge. Almost all the pre built figures that I'd prepared are now done, so this batch plus some of last weeks are now being built and then painted as I go!
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| Latest batch of 28 figures |
So these guys are all based upon the old Wargames Factory Saxon Thegns set but I have 'upgraded' these by adding arms, heads & shields from my spares box of alternative Victrix, Wargames Atlantic & Gripping Beast figure parts. Basically, in my opinion, the Wargames Factory (now Warlord Games) figures were the first generation of 28mm plastic figures available on the market that were designed and manufactured using computer technology rather than human sculpting. As such the figures are not the greatest from an anatomical point of view, whilst the current figures are much, much better.
Luckily as they are all basically the same scale you can mix and match parts to give what I think is a better final figure. I particularly dislike the Wargames Factory arms and heads - hence the upgrades concentrating on these.
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| Close-up of a trio of the figures that had to stay with the Wargames Factory Arms, as I'd run out of alternatives. Limbs are all quite straight & stiff and look a bit Zombie like to me! |
This batch represents 26 Anglo-Dane warriors, one Archer and a Norman (just because I was experimenting with the spare parts!)
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| These seven all had the original arms as in the close-up above. Shields are from Gripping Beast and heads a mix of Victrix, Gripping Beast and Wargames Atlantic. |
The heads on Gripping Beast figures are designed with a neck on the figure torso being in place. On the Wargames Factory figures, the opposite is true, so I had to add a neck to each torso, before then affixing the head. luckily cutting the spare arms on sprues into thin slices, mimics a neck rather well at this scale.
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| Another view of the above figures, showing shield designs |
For the remaining figures I was able to use spare arms from the Gripping Beast Arab Heavy Cavalry boxed set, these are moulded with armoured sleeves, I think they are designed to be scale armour for an Arab flavour but when added to the mail clad torsos and a paint job they look like a passable representation of chain ail as well.
In addition to creating a number of warriors I was also able to create three Earls to help lead the forces. These were denoted by wearing a cloak
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| Three Earls, left has a Victrix a Housecarl head, centre a Victrix Norman head and right a Gripping Beast Arab Heavy Cavalry head. Cloaks are from Wargames Atlantic or Gripping Beast Irish. I know that the figure on the right might not be truly historically accurate - with a scarf around his helmet but it is what it is! |
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| Four 'specials' to go with with others. Left a fighting monk, left centre a guy who has taken an arrow to the shoulder (there were a lot of them flying around at Hastings!), next an archer - just because I could. Finally on the right another spare Norman, as his head was handy when building this figure. |
So there we are 28 more figures for the Hastings battle - when I get around to putting it on! All brought to life to fuel this challenge and it goes to show, never throw out figures you don't instantly like - especially plastics as you can so easily convert / upgrade them to something better.
