Finished: 15mm Ancient Germans

 

I should say "Finished For Now" - I still need to order and paint a few leader figures for "Infamy, Infamy!" and will need to add some more bases of infantry to make a full army for Art de la Guerre.

Light Foot for AdlG:

Skirmishers for Infamy, Infamy!:

Warriors for Infamy, Infamy!/Heavy Foot for AdlG:

There are three bases with horn-blowers that will be elite oathsworn warriors for Infamy, Infamy:

Rear rank two-figure bases for Infamy, Infamy!:

(Not quite) Naked Fanatics:

Foot Cavalry Bases for Infamy, Infamy!:

Cavalry (for both!):

Light Cavalry for AdlG:

Command Stands for AdlG:

And the figures in their storage box:

I will need to order some more figures from Lancashire Games at some point to make up a few extra heavy foot and a load of medium foot bases for AdlG; I might also order some extra javelin/spear figures to make some "levy" bases for Infamy, Infamy!.

I haven't decided what to paint next. I do have a few 28mm figures ready to go for my Judge Dredd collection, and I should probably get the Romans glued onto painting sticks ready for priming.

Paint Table Sat.. Errr...Sunday 27 September

 I didn't post during the week as there wasn't anything really worth showing. I could have posted yesterday, but as I knew I would have more to show today I decided to wait.

I finished painting the ancient German cavalry figures yesterday and this morning I varnished them and popped them off their painting sticks:

This afternoon I sorted out all of the figures (foot and mounted) and glued them onto bases:

I may have mentioned before that I will be using these for both "Infamy, Infamy!" and Art de la Guerre, which is why you will notice some odd basing. 

For "Infamy, Infamy!" the Germans have an option of "foot cavalry" where a unit of foot warriors can move with a unit of cavalry before deploying to fight. To represent those I have done some bases with one mounted and four foot figures to replace the rear rank of a cavalry unit until the foot warriors deploy.

For the foot warriors I have done eight 40mm x 30mm bases with eight figures each. They can be used for Heavy Foot in AdlG; for "Infamy, Infamy!" barbarian warrior groups are meant to be ten figures, so I have done an equal number of 40mm x 20mm bases with two figures each to put behind them and added dice cells to record casualties and fervour/shock:

I've used the command figures (and some spare foot figures) to make up a set of four command stands for AdlG. I'll be buying some individual figures from Donnington to use as leaders for "Infamy, Infamy!" - they will be mounted on individual bases.

Over the next couple of days I will be finishing the basing on these.

Paint Table Saturday 19 September

With things seemingly going so well with painting my ancient Germans, it should have been obvious that something would happen along to mess things up. And it did. The day after my last post I went down with a cold. That cleared within a couple of days but it did trigger a bout of my chronic fatigue which meant that once I had done essential things like shopping, washing up, cleaning, etc, I didn't have any energy left for painting. 

It did, however, allow me to watch this year's Tour de France and the last week has been one of the most interesting I can remember for several years, particularly today's individual time trial - congratulations to Tadez Pogaca who rode a blistering race to win the stage and add the Polka Dot (King of the Mountains) and Yellow (overall leader) jerseys to the White (best young rider) jersey, coming back from 57 seconds down in 2nd place overall to a lead of about a minute over his older compatriot, Primoz Roglic. Oh, and he will be celebrating his 22nd birthday on Monday!

But that's enough of a digression, you want to read about my painting exploits. Over the past couple of days I have been getting back into the swing of painting and have now finished painting all of the infantry and popped them off their sticks:

That leaves me with all of these to paint:

I will be making a start on these tomorrow:

There are eight slingers and twenty figures for command stands (leaders, standards and horn blowers).  If everything goes OK, I should finish painting them on Monday and I can then work on the cavalry for the rest of the week.

ps - I hate the new interface for writing blog posts.

Wednesday Workbench 02 September

After finishing the marsh terrain I decided to take the weekend off to recharge a little. On Monday I started work on my 15mm ancient Germans. In the photo below you can see the current batch of figures that I'm working on (started today):

Obviously that isn't my first batch. In fact it's the fourth batch. These are the ones I painted on Monday and Tuesday:

Yup, that's 71 figures painted in two days (plus a few minutes this morning to airbrush them with matte varnish). They are quite quick to paint, particularly as I'm only going for a basic tabletop standard (basecoats and wash). At this rate, I might have the whole army painted and based by the end of next week.

The reason I'm not basing them yet is that I want to mix up the figures on bases and can't do that until they are all painted. I also need to consider how to base them for both "Infamy, Infamy!" and Art de la Guerre.

Finished: Marsh Terrain

After many setbacks, they're finally finished!

First Batch:

Second Batch:

Comparison:

The static grass on the first batch doesn't look quite as bad as I thought. I might go back over them with the 4mm "dead" grass mix which I used on the second batch.

With those done, I think I will probably switch back to painting figures. I'll probably make a start on my ancient Germans for "Infamy, Infamy!" - that should keep me busy for a week or two.

Wednesday Workbench 26 August

I'm sure that you have been expecting me to post pics of the finished marsh terrain pieces for a couple of days, but they aren't quite finished. It took until Monday evening for the gloss Mod Podge to fully dry (I should have built it up in thin layers rather than doing a deep pour) and it had shrunk somewhat and the surface wasn't flat but followed the undulations of the texture underneath. So I decided to add a second pour (with some ink mixed in) to correct that.

Yesterday morning I checked and it had dried, but the surface was still undulating. I decided to add static grass anyway, but went a bit heavy with the first pass of green stuff which meant that there wasn't much free PVA for the second pass of "patchy" grass to stick to. Once that had dried, I still wasn't happy with the water surface and was also not happy with the flocking so I decided to start on some more pieces to replace them. I cut some more 2mm blue foam to size and glued that to MDF terrain bases and left them to cure overnight.

This morning I used the hot-wire cutter to trim and bevel the foam. I then created depressions for the water effects by rubbing the rounded handles of some scissors over the patches of the foam to compress it. The foam was then scuffed up with a scrubbing brush and the MDF underside and the foam on top were base-coated with Nutmeg Spice paint. The depressions then got painted with raw umber craft paint, with a thin wash of Army Painter Dark Tone added to darken the deepest parts.

Once the wash was dry, I mixed a few drops of olive green ink into some Vallejo water effects and added it to the depressions on the new pieces. Realising that that would also sort out the water surface problem with the original pieces, I mixed up some more, tinted with AP Strong tone wash, and added it to those.

If the water effects have dried tomorrow, I will build up the "land" parts with some acrylic caulk, add texture paste and paint it. Flocking the second batch with static grass will probably need to wait until Friday.

Paint table Saturday 22 August

Yesterday I got all the woodland/forest terrain bases base-coated and dry-brushed.

I then began work on the swamp bases. I base-coated these in a darker colour and dry-brushed them. The next step was to add some dark green-brown ink into the "pools". For some unfathomable reason I decided to spread the green ink wash (thinned down somewhat) over the ground areas. Yup, big mistake. To correct that, once it was dry I had to dr-brush them again with the base and highlight colours (after airbrushing a coat of matt varnish to seal in the ink wash). Later on I added some slightly watered down gloss Mod Podge for the water effect. Almost 24 hours later, some of the deeper pools are still drying:

As I can't really do anything more with the terrain until the Mod Podge has dried (hopefully tomorrow?) I finished prepping the last of the figures for my "Infamy, Infamy!" project this morning and this afternoon I started gluing figures onto sticks ready for priming and painting:

That's the Germans done; once they have been primed I will do the same with the Romans, the animals and the civilians.