Fred's 2012 Painting Diary

[fred.]

Peter, not sure that I would describe myself as either expert or professional, but thank you for the kind words. As the British Armour models are in the painting comp, I'll not post any more photos of them until tomorrow.

As photos are well liked, I've taken a bunch tonight, unfortunately a few are a bit blurry, but they give the right idea.

Cavalry Casualty Markers
Following comments that these looked a bit like rocking horses, I've added some green paint to disguise the "rocker" a bit more



Anglo Danes for Saga

4 points of Hearthguard with Warlord, mostly Gripping Beast plastics, with 4 metal Dane Axe armed figures (28mm sorry )


Two 8 figure units of warriors and a 12 figure unit of Levy Archers, with a second warlord figure


Home made Saga dice, the Green Anglo Dane dice are made with stickers, the white Viking ones are painted as the runes are nice and simple

[fred.]

Plastic Cavalry from Conquest miniatures. The left hand figures are Normans, the right hand ones are conversions to make Anglo Saxons. Only with a basic spray under coat at this stage


Late Era Romans
At last some Pendraken Figures !!!!

Some Ballista from the Imperial range that Leon was good enough to supply without crews, and some slight conversions of Late Roman light infantry and archers to make crews


Wagons
In my last order I got a bunch of different wagons to be used as generic wagons when required

Left to right they are
German WWII 4 wheel wagon (GR35)
Seven Year War wagon (long and thin)
Medieval Wagon (high sided)
ECW Tumbral Cart  (surprisingly large)

Dogs of War Birdmen
These are a conversion using GW Empire figures and Pendraken Wings (from the Barbarian Birdmen). A blob of greenstuff makes it much easier to get a good join

[fred.]

Warmaster High Elves

A couple more units of High Elves, to give me 8 archers and 8 spearmen - which make 4 archer and 4 spear units in Hail Caesar, bases need finishing on these



Warmaster Empire

Next up on the painting table, are half-a-dozen Empire units. The knights should paint up very quickly, black spray, silver dry brush, brown base, horse legs, and then shields and plumes, this lot will probably have a red based colour scheme

[fred.]

Scratch Built Castle Walls

I've been constructing some castle walls from blue foam. These are the first 3 sections.


They are based on custom cut MDF bases from Minibits - and the walls deliberately overhang the bases, with the idea that the towers will be on large bases, to create an interlinking effect.


Side view - the battlements are cut from some thiner pieces of blue foam, and PVA glued to the top. In the base of the wall I have inserted a couple of 1p coins to give a bit of weight and stability. The wall is attached to the base with a couple of flat headed nails to try to give some grip.


A poor picture of the press mould for the walls, made from greenstuff. It gives a fairly crude pattern, so I have scribed some extra brickwork into the walls by hand.

[Blaker]

Lots of good stuff Fred!  Keep those pix coming   

[Techno]

Lots of good stuff Fred!  Keep those pix coming   

Ditto !!
Cheers - Phil

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Fred - Really good work sir.
A lot of city walls had an earth bank sloped behind the wall for extra stability, might that work with yours?
I notice you say Fantasy for Hail Caesar (or Hail Cheesy as it's known round our way), I'm just doing the same, how are you finding it? Any hints on list building?

[fred.]

Thanks All.

Lemmy - the bank at the back of the wall is a really good idea, I will give that a go.

Hail Caesar has been my main rule set for over a year now, my main oppo Steve and I have been playing it loads, but we can't get the rest of our gaming group interested in playing with Fantasy armies, they have a slight interest in playing with Ancient armies. We have worked up army lists for quite a lot of the Warmaster armies, and a few Lord of the Rings based ones. Steve has posted these on the Hail Caesar Yahoo group. The army lists are based on WM, with the odd WHFB unit added for a bit of extra colour, it seems easier to add special units to Hail Caesar than WM. The WM magic and flyers rules have ported across almost directly. I enjoy HC more than WM, it seems to remove most of the fiddly bits of WM while leaving the command uncertainties.

[fred.]

Warmaster

Got several Empire units spray painted the other night, knights in black, infantry in white.
Given the knights a couple of dry brushes, firstly with oily steel and then a lighter coat of mithral silver. Done a dark red base coat on lances and plumes of one unit, I think they will have a red and white colour scheme. The second unit will be red and yellow. I am trying to paint pairs of WM units so they can be used together in HC, but still be distinguishable as single units in WM.



Made a start on 1 unit of halberdiers painted half the figures with red parts - I'm going for a Landschenck look with the Empire infantry.

Close up shot of 1 stand - mainly to see how it comes out, with just a desk light and hand held camera.

Possibly a bit dark - but these figures have had a black wash over the white

Finished the basing on the 2 units of elves - they just need a spray of matt varnish, and the elven horde will be even larger

[fred.]

Friday - played another Hail Caesar Fantasy game, this time trying out Lizardmen for a first time, vs Empire who don't often get an outing. The Lizardmen looked rather like Elves as we wanted to get a feel for the army before buying figures. It was a very different game than usual. I went with a infantry heavy left and centre, with Cold One cavalry on the right. Empire started with Cavalry on both flanks and infantry on hills in the centre. The lizards advanced quickly through the wooded terrain. the Empire left flank cavalry plunged in towards the my centre. Steve's unfamiliarity with the army showed here and he attacked with his medium cavalry supported by knights, rather than leading with the knights.  The centre turned in to a fight of skirmshers around a wood. My infantry continued their advance screened by skirmishers and swept away the left. The Lizardmen proved a very different army, and will certainly get another outing, while I consider figure options.

Did a bit more painting of the Empire knights, one unit is nearly done, just need to decide on the flag design. The first halberdier unit is coming along. After the game I had a bit of a sort through of my Empire figures to determine what colour units I should paint next.

[jchaos79]

That is quite impressive, I miss this threat unitil now. Love your birdmen from DoWar army!

Congratulation for your painting diary Fred

[fred.]

Thanks jchaos

More Empire painting - First unit of Red and White knights is now based - even though flag and shields aren't finished

Red Halberdiers are getting there, clothes, skin, spear shafts and armour all done, need to do assorted browns for hair, beards and small bags. Need to choose a colour for the tassels on the pikes, maybe blue.

Second unit of red knights has had a bit of dark red added to flags, shields and about half the plumes. These will have a red and blue scheme.

Green halberdiers - half the figures have had green clothing done.

[fred.]

Much progress on Red and Blue knights, red highlighted with scarlet, blue painted and given a gentle highlight, figures based and given a dilute ink wash to shade.

Finally received an order of some Late Roman buildings from the baggage train, including a rather nice watch tower. Should go a treat with my Pendraken Roman figures.

[fred.]

Warmaster Empire

Two units of knights finished, based and sprayed with matt varnish. The two units of halberdiers are painted and glued to bases, need to finish bases and varnish the figures.



Next up some Pendraken figures (at last I hear Leon say!), some Elves and some Wagons

[Techno]

Stop it Fred !
You're making me jealous !
Wonderful stuff !
Cheers - Phil

[fred.]

Glued sand to bases of the Empire Halberdiers, and gave them a coat of future.

Started worked on my assorted Pendraken wagons, found some appropriate sized bases, and glued horses, sand and wagons to the bases. Did a bit of basic painting on the tumbrel wagons and the horses.

The aim with these is to have generic wagons, so I haven't put figures on the bases.

[fred.]

Pendraken High Elves

Pendraken figures 2 posts in a row! Wooo!!



I got a bunch of PD High Elves off eBay along with GW Elves, I'd previously had a test pack of High Elf spears but had found them a bit big and never finished them, but after seeing more of the range and the figures painted I rather like them now. And have bought various extras to fill out the ranks - though having counted up tonight, I've no idea what units I thought I was building.

Spears 4 bases painted, 39 single figures which will make 5 bases - which would give 3 WM units, but I really need 4 so they can be used for HC as well
Swords 2 bases - no extras??? I need about 32 to make 4 more bases.
Bows - 3 bases painted, 20 single figures which will make 3 more bases, so the right number for 2 WM units
Cavalry - 4 bases painted, 8 new figures which will make 2 WM units or 1 HC unit.


The ebay figures fit with the white and bright blue scheme of my Elves, but need a bit of tidying up and shading. And most importantly they needed re-basing, I'm not sure what glue the original owner had used (perhaps Uhu) but it had caused the plastic bases to warp! After a quick chill in the freezer and then a dip in hot water most of the figures came off easily. Rebased them tonight.

I sprayed the new Pendraken figures black and the weekend - so everything is ready for painting now. I only need to do about 12 spearmen to have 2 units ready, which is cool.

[fred.]

That's a really poor photo - and the painted figures with the nice flags aren't even my work  

[fred.]

Pendraken High Elf Cavalry

Have now got most of the colours blocked in on the Cavalry, even though the figures have a lot of white, I choose black undercoat to try to match with the painted figures I bought. But perhaps it would have been easier to black line white based coated figures 



Also got the spearmen's shields painted blue over the weekend - need to decide on a couple more shield logos

[jchaos79]

Really nice, for the shields of the elves go to japanese ideograms. I made one unit with the ideograme of Joy and it works really good.

If the ideogram is dificult you can always simplify it