AHPC XIV: From Mike W - 28mm Dark Ages, 15mm WW2 and other items!

 I was scratching my head about what to paint this week until a friend of mine, Dave from the Wargames Club, said that he had some old 28mm Gripping Beast Dark Ages (Vikings & Saxons) figures that he no longer wanted! Great I thought and I have now completed 32 of these guys!

The completed Dark Ages figures

Dave gave me the figures on Friday evening, so I spent the weekend putting these together and then undercoating them. About 20 of these guys were still on the frame, whilst the others were partially assembled requiring finishing off. With the plastics were a few metal figures, some of which I will present in this group, the others will likely follow-up in next week's post.

The two metal figures that were part of this group

Close-up of five of the figures, all with kite shields and all with Victrix Norman Heads

I wanted to assemble some of these guys as Bretons, so I used some spare Norman Hreads (Victrix & Conquest Games) and shields to give the figures this flavour, and used Breton artwork on the shields. In my mind these Bretons would be heavily influenced by the Normans but might retain some more generic features found in many Dark Age armies of the time. 

Four more of the guys, again with kite shields

Another five, all with round shields with Breton artwork.

These figures will be added to the 'Norman' pool for an upcoming game that I'll be staging recreating The Battle of Hastings,  at the club in coming months.

Next five figures, again wit Breton shields but the guy in the middle definitely has a Viking look! To his left there is a guy with a Oathmark human head with a hood and a cloak from the bits box

Painting was pretty straight forward, undercoated in grey with a white dry-brushing over the top of this. I used GW DarkOath Flesh for skin tomes and then highlighted this with Army Painter Barbarian Flesh. A point to note here is that the Dark Oath Fresh needs to be applied over a solid white undercoat, else it can look very dark, something for me to remember next time!

Six more figures

Chainmail and steel was done in GW Leadbelcher and various colours were used to 'dress' the figures, before applying a watered down dark wash to add shading. Wood was painted in Light Yellow, washed with watered down Soft Tone ink to give shading.

Last five figures, the standard is from the spares box, not Breton but looked cool

All were finished with a matt varnish and shield artwork was applied before baseing.

Next off the production line are 40 x 15mm Afrika Korps figures, I'm not sure of the manufacturer of these but suspect that they are old Command Decision figures - they're metal and have square cut bases - unlike the older Flames of War metal figures.

I use Flames of War basing sizes so here we have 8 bases each with 5 figures

Another view of the finished figures

These were all undercoated in grey then dry-brushed white, flesh was added using Army Painter Barbarian Flesh, uniforms were a mix of greens trying to replicate the German WW2 Tropical Green colour. Riles and machine guns were done in natural colours and belts etc done with brown leather. 

On random helmets, gas mask containers & water bottles I used a sand coloured paint to help give the figures a more desert feel. All was washed with a dark tone and varnished.

Close-up of some of  the figures, all rifle or MP40 Sub-machine Guns

Another close-up of the figures

Bases were finished off with fine sand and dried grass tufts.

And a very close view

Finally this week I have some 10mm English Billmen for my Flodden Project, these have been painted up as Lord Surrey's retinue, with red hose and green and white halved jackets. I have given each of these figures a leather / quilted jack and they sport either steel helmets or caps of various colours.

Six bases of ten figures in line of march, flags sourced from the internet

In a 3 base wide, 2 bases deep formation with standards to the front.

Again I have made this billman unit double sized with six bases instead of 3, as per WarMaster standards, each base with 10 figures. These tiny guys only get three flags in the unit as there are no suitable figures to convert to standard bearers! I had to press gang some spares into service here, something I'll need to sort out as I expend these armies, as I like a lot of flags in these type of units!

Unit in formation, with standards to the rear - as I prefer them to be on tabletop

And a view looking down on the unit.

Again time was a bit of an issue this week, so I didn't get everything finished that I'd hoped. There are some 10mm Flodden Horse nearing completion for next week, along with more Warlord Epic units, maybe even some more naval stuff if I have time to do the rigging!

AHPC XII: From Mike W - Egyptian Undead Adventures - Odds & Ends

 Here is another selection of the various items I have been working on for the Egyptian Undead Adventures side show that I have continued to work on over the last few weeks, hopefully they are of interest.

More Arab Cultists, this time based upon Gripping Beast's Arab Infantry Set

Firstly more Arab Cultists, after the success of last week's batch I found three Gripping Beast chaps on the sprue and so pressed them into the Cult! The guy firing the Jezail is a Gripping Beast figure with a Perrys' Afghan Jezail and arms added, I had to cut and fill the right shoulder to make the changes fit well.

The guy on the right looks a bit like a Grimsby Trawlerman's Wife in a headscarf - but that 's still scary enough!

The guy with the sword has Perry Afghan arms added, plus some trailing head dress parts, whilst the guy carrying the Jezail has Peery Afghan arms again and a spare head form an hooded Oathmark Human, again with trailing head dress parts added. 

Alongside the Gripping Beast Recruits, I also found 3 x Wargames Atlantic Afghan figures to add to the recruit list. These figures are ever so slightly smaller that the gripping Beast figures but not so much that they look out of place. 

Three more (Wargames Atlantic) Arab Cultists

I have kept the same look and feel for these figures but opted to arm one with a modern German rifle and one with a Luger pistol, courtesy of the Warlord Games Afrika Korps set (see below). The other is stuck with just a sword

That's a total of sixteen Cultists

All were painted and based in exactly the same way as last week's figures, I've claimed 1 Squirrel Point for these 28mm Arab Cultists - as I forgot to label the previous post as such and want to keep within the Squirrel rules

Next a is a group of 6 x Afrika Korps soldiers who every knows are only in Egypt to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant, or such like! These are really test pieces as I'll build up a small force of figures that can be used in various scenarios as they come along.

Test Group of Afrika Korps, extreme left is a Perry figure, the rest are Warlord Games

As such I'd acquired a sprue of Afrika Korps figures from both Perry Miniatures and Warlord Games to compare and contrast - and hopefully allow for some kit bashing to make some unique one off figures.

Close-up of three figures, I like the action poses and the selection of heads that can be used.
Left hand and right hand guys both have cigarettes in their mouths!

Both sprues have a wide range of options but I was almost immediately drawn to the Warlord Games sprue in preference to the Perry's one. The figures were simply more dynamic in my opinion and they were noticeably larger that the Perry versions.

Prone Machine Gunner, counting half points!

What's more the Warlord Games figures are comparable in size to the Arab Cultists above, its a shame as the Perry figures are really nice but due to their smaller size not really useable for Kit Bashing!

That said I have painted up one Perry figure to show and photograph to allow all here to compare sizes etc.

All figures were undercoated white and then I used Citadel 'Tallarn Sand' for most of the uniforms, historically the Afrika Korps used a green uniform that faded quickly in the sun so I have made a nod to this by giving one of the figures a green jacket and making all soft caps green. For this I used Foundry 'Phlegm Green'.

Direct comparison of Warlord Games )right) and Perry Miniatures (Left) crouching figures.
By being smaller the Perry figures are more fiddley to build and accessories can't easily be swapped between sets.

Straps, Weapons and equipment were coloured according to historical schemes I found illustrated online, I did the helmets in Citadel 'Bubonic Brown'. I used an Army Painter 'Dark Tone' ink wash on the weapons, helmets, boots and equipment packs on their backs, whilst I washed the uniforms in Army Painter 'Light Brown'.

I then gave the figures a dry light brush of Tallern Sand to highlight the uniforms and help tone down the base green used. Matt varnish was applied to all figures and then based with fine sand and dried grass & stone tufts.