Analogue Painting Challenge: 28mm Vikings

I did finish the Vikings yesterday and the pics have been up on Curt's blog for a day now, so I can post them here. Do check out Curt's blog - the entries by my fellow Ronin are well worth the effort of looking through.

I was quite pleased about four things:
1) I hadn't realised that hand-painted shields get a bonus point, so I was getting 6 points a figure instead of 5 giving me a total of 120 points for that entry.
2) I am currently in 11th place with 236 points (but will drop down the rankings during the week)
3) I am ahead of Ray (currently languishing in 19th place with 120 points), but I expect that the dastard is secretly painting up a massive entry of several hundred figures
4) It's only 1/6 of the way into the Challenge and I'm already over 1/4 of the way to my target. I'd thought that aiming for 800 points over the three months was stretching myself, but it doesn't appear to be so.

So, with the Vikings done, what have I been up to?

28mm Gripping Beast Saxons

These are now assembled, based and primed. I took a different approach to the basing this time and did it after priming the figures (with Vallejo white polyurethane primer) and the metal washers they are based on. Rather than brushing slightly-thinned PVA over the entire base and then dipping it into sand/gravel mix I brushed spots and smears of thicker PVA onto the bases then shook coarse grey ballast over the figures, shook off the excess and left them to dry for a while. Then I brushed thinner PVA into the gaps and covered the bases with medium grey ballast, shook off the excess and left them to dry again. Once I thought the glue had dried, I went over with an even thinner coat of PVA to seal the ballast and left them to dry again. Finally I went over the basing with primer. They are now sitting at the back of my painting area to allow the primer (and underlying PVA) to fully harden.

The next step will be to give them a black/brown wash before painting to provide some pre-shading.

15mm Late 30YW Horse

Thinking that I could probably do with a break from 28mm (not to mention assembly of plastics) I've decided that after the Saxons are done, my next unit for the Challenge will be the remaining cavalry from my 30YW leadpile. When I got the figures out to start prepping them, I remembered that I also had 6 mounted standard bearers sitting in the leadpile without any obvious use. "Hmmm, what if I mixed them in with the rest? That would give me 10 bases, 8 of them with standard bearers. I can always order some extra figures to make up a 3rd regiment later."

So, this evening I have prepped 30 horses and riders - at the moment they are soaking in warm soapy water. I'll probably rinse them before going to bed and put them out to dry overnight.

Preparing for a FoG:AM Doubles Tournament

A clubmate and I are taking part in the Godendag doubles tournament at Usk in a couple of weeks time. the theme for the FoG:AM competition is "Rise and Fall of Rome" so we are taking Early Alans. Today was the last date for submitting army lists, so I was putting the finishing touches to ours.

We'll be trying it out tomorrow night at the club, which will also be a good chance to check out the differences between V1 and V2 of FoG (Godendag is using the V2 rules). The camera is packed and with 2 of us playing on each side, there's no excuse for not taking any photos nor writing a turn-by-turn record for writing the AAR.



Oh, you want pics of the Vikings? Go on then:

Challenge Entry #3 - Gripping Beast 28mm Vikings

Here they are in all their glory. All parts got at least basecoat and wash, some parts got highlights as well. The shield designs were hand-painted and I noticed when looking at the photos that some need some touching up, which I'll do at some point. I decided to seal them with neat Klear rather than my usual Klear/ink mix.

The bases got a basecoat of Khaki Grey, followed by a wash of Burnt Umber. I then dry-brushed with Khaki Grey, Iraqi Sand and finally with Sky Grey. I think it looks effective. I decided against using any tufts for these figures, but did use two different mixes of flock - Moorland and Meadow Grass.

All Together:

Blackshields:

Blueshields:

Greenshields:

Redshields:

Yellowshields:

And for anyone who thinks pink is a girly colour, this gent doesn't agree with you!

Hope you like them!