Showing posts with label Squirrel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Squirrel. Show all posts

Monday, 25 March 2024

AHPC XIV: From MikeW: 28mm Polish Dragoons & WoR, Emperor's Guard Space Marines plus other bits and pieces

 Hopeflly I will not overload or wonderful minions but as we enter the last weekend of painting, I'll be putting posts into a 'Ready' status as and when I get a good batch of figures completed! Thank You Minions! 😀

Polish figures for my Siege of Vienna project

So today  have a group of Polish soldiers who would have been at the relief of the Siege of Vienna in 1683. There are two mounted figures, an light cavaltyman with a hand axe plus a drummer, who can be added into any suitable dragoon regiment as I but this together. Additionally we have a command base - again likely to be used as dismounted dragoons.

Dragoon Drummer

Dragoon Officer, armed with an axe!
 These guys have the distinctive dragoon and infantry uniforms of some of my existing collection - red trousers with blue knee length jackets, often with red braiding on the chest. Figures were all undercoated in white and then painted in much the same way as most of the others I have described this challenge.

Dragoon command on foot, Officer, Standard and Musketeer

The flag is a generic Polish banner, of the period, taken from the internet.

Another view

Next up, I have a lonely Mexican Grenadier, waiting to join his comrades in my Alamo collection. I found this lonely soul, in my drawer the other day so decided to paint him up. 

A lonely Mexican Grenadier figure found at the bottom of my drawers,
now ready to join his comrades at the Alamo!

Front view!

Next a couple of 40K Space Marines, these are for my new Emperor's Guard Chapter that I have been toying with building an army for. A few months back, as an experiment, I asked the Chat GPT AI site to generate a Space Marines Chapter for me. This is what they came up with  (see here for more details).

I'm putting this down as a test figure,
not overly happy with the way the paint has finished on this guy

Saw earlier today that a recommended undercoat for purple is green!
Will need to give that a try!

So I have done a standard Marine plus his Terminator 'Big Brother' to accompany him

Happier with this big boy, note skull on base
but may come back to this to do some more detail and weathering

Also maybe need to do something with the power fist!

Now a cheeky one pointer for a piece of terrain, a Bretonnian brazier!

Smoking brazier...

My final work for this year's challenge is a group of 31 x Perry plastic War of the Roses 28mm figures, painted to represent part if the retinue of Sir Robert Whittington, in their distinctive green and white livery.

All 31 figures as they enter the battlefield

The group includes 9 x Archers, 5 x Crossbowmen, 8 x Handgunners and 9 x Men-at-Arms, Standard Bearer & Musician etc.

The 9 x Archers, most in livery jackets

Close-up of right of line

And close-up of the left of line

All were undercoated in an 'oatmeal' colour - exact colour is hard to determine as I used hobby paints for this job! I then drybrushed the figures white and concentrated on faces and hands to get a smooth white finish. Skin had GW Darkoath Flesh applied before being highlighted with Army Painter Barbarian Flesh. All metalwork was painted with GW Leadbelcher and then the livery jackets were painted in with white and green halves.

8 x Musketeers

Another close-up

And again

I added various colours to block in leggings, sleeves etc before using a cream colour to paint in padded jackets etc, these were washed with GW Agrax Earthshade for depth and shading.

5 x Crossbowmen

The crossbow arms on these guys came from an Oathmark figure pack, I think!

Armour was washed with Nuln Oil and all other materials were give an Agrax Earthshade wash before varnishing.

Command and Men-at-Arms

Musician and a couple of extra guys

Figures were all based in my usual manner  on old US 1 cent or European 2c coins which are the same size!

Three armoured Men-at-Arms

Sir Robert Whittington with his standard and another family member

So there it is hopefully enough work to get me over the 3,000 point level - something I didn't think I'd have time for this year. Thanks to all the minions and other participants for making this another great challenge and yet again Grahame H. outscores me, the man is a painting machine!


Sunday, 10 March 2024

AHPC XIV: From Mike W - Lizardmen, 15mm Fenians, Rogue Trader Marines, 10mm Flodden, plus more...

 I'll open this week's post with my long overdue Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen Cavalry, how much better can it get than big lizards riding even bigger lizards!

Finally! The completed Mounted Lizardmen

These guys have been hard work, as there is so much detail on them and it takes time to do them justice, that and given that as ever, I sourced them from eBay and this meant that they arrived pre-assembled and thus much harder to get in to all the nooks and crannies to cover all the detail that is found on them.

Another view of the Lizardmen

This is a unit of 8 x Lizardmen, riding Cold Ones, I did a similar unit for an AHPC XIII Challenge last year and these were the older sculpts and as such were simpler to paint - according to my memory at least! After applying a cream coloured undercoat, I decided to make the riders green with a brownish yellow underbelly, the Cold Ones would be blue with a similar but lighter yellowish brown underbelly.

Lizardmen in column with a good view of the banner

I used GW Algae Green for the riders scaly upper surfaces and a mix of watered down GW Nazdreg Yellow and Bad Moon Yellow for the underbellies etc. On the Cold Ones I used the same mix as on the riders.though I tried to keep these lighter. I used Army Painter Magic Blue for their scales, all horns, teeth and claws were treated as if they were bones and as such got a wash of GW Skeleton Horde and then a drybrush of 'Linen' then White to draw out the highlights.

Close-up of two Lizardmen Riders

All straps were painted with GW Snakebite Leather and saddlery and shields were painted with AP Vampire Red before being washed with AP Soft Tone for shading and depth. There are lavish amounts of gold on these figures and this was done with Valeijo Brass and washed with AP Light Tone ink.

Two more Lizardmen riders

Then it was on to endless details of feathers, skulls, banners and then retouching other areas as I managed to splash / mark already completed areas as I did the details! For the record these figures contain 8 skulls!

Right Lizardmen Rider Champion and a companion

Standard Bearer and Musician, if you look closely you'll see the musician does not have a drum to bang!
 An unfortunate side effect for getting  figures from eBay,
I'll have to source a suitable drum to correct this on when I can....

I took another sprue for Warlord Games Epic 15mm ACW Confederates and decided to paint them up as Fenians for a potential 1866 Fenian Raid of Canada scenario. Now I'm no expert on those period but it has always plucked at my imagination - I'm a big ACW fan - and ways to use my ACW collection in different ways is always of an interest to me.

Completed Fenian Regiment, in epic 15mm

Unit in column of march heading to the right!

I think in reality these Fenian units were largely in Union Army surplus gear - so mostly blue - but also I'd expect a lot of civilian homespun materials as well. Looking for inspiration on Google turns up a few images but one of the most interesting one I found is below.

Image found here: https://heritagearmssa.com/2017/09/29/the-fenian-raids-1866-70/


I particularly liked this as it seems to show an interpretation of a Fenian unit in Green, so I decided to base my test unit on this image.

Marching to the left, the classic Harp insired, green flag is clearly visible. The other flag is green with yellow stars, both sourced from Google

Close-up of a couple of the bases,I could have used a union sprue to get most figures in kepis, but I liked the irregular feel of the confederate sprue with a lot of blanket rolls in the mix

Figures were undercoated in light grey and then GW Russ Grey (which is quite blue) was used to paint the trousers whist I used a mix of GW Algae Green & Orc Skin to do their jackets. Boots & straps were black and weapons, skin and hair was done in natural colours. All got a watered down Dark Tone wash before varnishing. Flags sourced from Google!

Another close-up 

A better view of the star covered flag

Final couple of bases

Next I have a small group of 3D printed Rogue Trader Space Marines, now sadly I'm old enough to remember when the original guys came out (maybe around 1985 at a guess) and I have a couple of these in my collection somewhere. One has gone astray over the years but I know have the other somewhere, I saw it a couple months back, I just don't know where at this exact time!

I'm pleased with how these guys came out

I had painted the originals in white armour, but having just done so many Tau in white, I wanted to have a break, so instead I have done them in a deep red with bright green eyes, lenses & laser sights. Belts were done in black and weapons in silver (as per my originals) with a few added details of red and blue wires.

Weapons are a far cry from the ubiquitous Marine Bolter on modern figures


Another view, showing the eys and helmet sensors

As with my originals I have given them a big 'M' as their unit badge - back in the day I called these my McMarines for hopefully obvious reasons!

This is pretty much the pose of one of the old metal figures I know I have somewhere

Final shot of the Marines

Next is another Flodden Scots unit, this time spearmen, so I assume these to be men supplied by a 'less well schooled' noble, rather than the fashionable pike block that I recently completed. I think in reality the move to pikes from spears was a contributory factor in the Scots loosing the battle, so I may be perverse in any scenario that I put together and give these guys better morale than the pike blocks as the spear had been a weapon of choice in Scotland for centuries - as opposed to the new fangled pike!

Scots Spear block for Flodden.

With a selection of flags to divert the eye!

The pointy end of the unit, again 2 ranks of three bases.

Anyway for painting purposes these guys were tackled in exactly the same manner as the pike block, as was their basing and organisation into a 3 x 2 base unit, again with lots of flags to distract the eye!

The unit marching to the left

and to the right!

Finally to get up to date with the bonuses and shelves that I have visited here is my Library Map, I forget to post this last week!

Points