Army Review: 28mm Normans

After that brief interruption for new shinies, today I return to the series of Army Reviews and move onto my 28mm collections. There aren't as many of these, both in numbers of armies and numbers of figures.

I'm kicking off the 28mm with my Saga Normans:

Warriors

Warriors with crossbows

More Warriors

Mounted Warriors/Hearthguard

Hearthguard

Levy archers

Warlords and standard bearers

The Dux

I really should tart him up with some trim on his tunic and saddlecloth

All the figures here are from Conquest Games - mostly plastics but some metals (archers, crossbowmen and the Dux).

As I very rarely play Saga these days, I'm actually thinking about rebasing one or more of the armies for ADLG. I haven't decided which yet though.. One possibility is to keep the metal figures here for Saga and rebase the plastics for ADLG. Of course, then I'd have to buy some metal Normans for the warriors and hearthguard...

Challenge Day 52 - Whatever Happened To....

....Leon Trotsky?

He got an icepick

That made his ears burn

Whatever happened to dear old Lenny?

The Great Elmyra and Sancho Panza?

Whatever happened to the heroes?

Whatever happened to the heroes?

Well, Curt posted them here on Sunday: Heroes Bonus Theme Round

Voting is a bit different this time after the last round was subjected to ballot stuffing during the last day. Rather than using a handy little poll widget, you need to enter your votes as a comment, so it is a good idea to open the page twice - one to view the entries, the other to place your votes in the comments box.


My entry was the hero of the eponymous Egil's Saga, a rather nice Viking warlord from Gripping Beast. You can read a brief summary of his life as the accompanying text for my entry.

Here are a couple of pics to whet your appetite:

I went a bit OTT compared to my normal standard painting this figure. The cloak got 4 highlights and 2 blending washes over the base colour; the wolfskin got 3 highlights and 2 washes; flesh  and hair got 2 highlights and a wash; everything else got at least one highlight and wash.

Challenge Day 35 - Paint Table Saturday

Sofie has been doing a "Paint Table Saturday" thing over on her blog and encouraging other bloggers to do the same. So, here goes my first entry:

So, what are all these? 

The back left group are some 28mm Vikings from Gripping Beast - Egil Skalagrimsson and four berserkers. Egil (and maybe the berserkers as well) will be my entry for the Hero/Heroic Group bonus theme in the Analogue Painting Challenge over on Curt's blog. Eventually they will be used for Saga.

Back right are some 15mm PyRats from Rebel Minis. Another fun unit for my FoG:R Pirate Buccaneer army.

In the foreground are some 30 Years War casualty figures from Donnington Miniatures and grave markers from Timecast - these will be my entry for the casualties bonus theme . I will be tufting and flocking the bases after doing this post, taking pics and sending the pics to Curt (4 weeks early! Woohoo!). I will be using these as cohesion markers for FoG:R - bases with 1 figure for disrupted units, bases with 2 figures for fragmented units and grave markers for broken units. With 16 disrupted, 8 fragmented and 6 broken I should just about have enough given the way things normally go for me!


What's Next?

Once all these are finished, I will begin work in earnest on my Pirate Buccaneer army. I'll be painting the figures in batches, then once they are all done mixing them up for basing. This means it will be a few weeks before I am ready to submit them to the Challenge, but it will be a whopping big entry when it does get submitted - lots of lovely points!

Challenge Day 06

Today was the last day at work before Christmas. Knowing that most people would be off (so I'd have less work to do than normal, but still needed to be there until late afternoon, just in case) I decided to take the berserkers in with me, to take advantage of the quiet and get a start on painting them.

I'm quite pleased with the results so far - flesh is done to 3 layers and the wolfskins have received their basecoats followed by a wash of black-brown. I also basecoated the shafts of the spear and axes.

The wolfskin basecoats were done by mixing different browns with light grey. Tomorrow I'll be highlighting them with various weights of drybrushing and hopefully getting the rest of the details done.

On the way home I picked up a parcel from the local Royal Mail depot. It was an order I'd placed with EM4 Miniatures. I'd ordered a bunch of skull & crossbones dice to use when fielding my pirate army (once it's painted, of course - hopefully it will be completed by the end of the Challenge), some improved dice for use with the Ludus Gladiatorus game, and a couple of EM4's Kolinsky sable brushes to try as an alternative to the W&N Series 7 brushes I currently use but which are a pain in the neck to get replacements of.

There was also this:

I'll be using the coins (plastic ones sprayed gold, bought off Amazon a while back) as tokens to mark deteriorating cohesion levels during games. The treasure chest will be used to hold them until they are needed.

In other news, my Seleucid cavalry have been posted on Curt's blog and have netted me 48 points to start off my Challenge campaign. Here's the linky thing.

Pics of Anne's Cleavage (And Some Updates)

OK, to be more accurate, pics of cleavage painted by Anne! 

This lovely young lady was a gift she sent me via Fran. I would have received it a few weeks ago if I'd been able to make it to BlogCon. I'm pleased as punch to add such a wonderfully painted figure to my collection.

She also sent me this figure from Reaper, which looks as though it will be great fun to paint.


And now for the updates....

15mm Swiss Halberdiers

I finished prepping these during my lunch break on Thursday and primed them with gesso this afternoon.

28mm Berserkers

I prepped these yesterday and primed them this afternoon with Vellejo black surface primer.

28mm Mordheim(?) Figures

I received these two figures in a prize draw on someone's blog several months ago (or did someone gift them to me?). Anyway, these were prepped at the same time as the berserkers and primed with Vallejo white surface primer this afternoon.

NSL Fleet

Last night I got one batch of ships prepped, washed and assembled. I spray primed them this evening. The other batch got washed today and are now on long flight pegs ready for priming tomorrow.

Batch 1

2 Helgoland heavy cruisers; 4 Danzig class escort cruisers

2 Frankfurt class escort cruisers; 3 Nibelung class corvettes

Batch 2

2 Rommel class attack cruisers; 2 Kiel class light cruisers; 4 Emden class light cruisers; 2 Pola class frigates

I'm going to try to prep and prime the rest of the fleet this week. I'll probably go for a pretty basic dark grey colour scheme for these, with some panels picked out in a military green.


15mm Sci Fi - Heavy Grav Tanks and APCs

I've clearly had a busy afternoon and evening. As well as everything else, I also got round to finishing these vehicles from Critical Mass Games. They are from the ARC Fleet range. The bases were tufted and flocked, the vehicles sprayed with matt varnish and then glued to the bases. I'm quite pleased with how they've come out. After taking the photos, I added some magnetic sheet to the bases for storage and transport.

Grav APCs

Heavy Grav Tanks

Tipped to show the detailing of the  anti-grav units

Well, that's an awful lot of photos for one post, but they do show an awful lot of work that I've managed to get done since Wednesday.

Norman Dux

I don't think I mentioned it in my posts earlier this week, but I've been painting up my Norman Dux from Conquest Games since finishing Simon's Spetsnaz. By the way, I handed them over to him on Thursday night at the club and he was mightily pleased with them.

Anyway, back to the Dux. I went for a full-on 3 (or more) layer approach for most of this and finished painting him last night. Then I made the mistake of doing a Klear/ink coat which has obscured some of the highlights and shading. IT still looks good though. Today I've sprayed with matt varnish, then used brush-on satin varnish on the horse flesh and some of the metalwork. Then I finished off the basing with tufts and flocking.

So, some pics.

I had planned to go to Warfare in Reading yesterday or today. Yesterday I was still tired (very busy week at work) so intended to go today instead. Unfortunately I seem to have picked up a cold which kicked in late last night. I was no better this morning, so no Warfare for me. There were a few things I had wanted to pick up, so I'll just have to order them online.

Next up on the painting table will be the Seleucid elephants, followed by the Xystophoroi cavalry.