Time Flies When You're Busy

So I've been AWOL for uhhhh two weeks? or thereabouts. Apologies, mea culpa, etc etc. Life happened, as it often does, and I had a combination of small holidays (a long weekend in Ynys Mon, and another around Abertawe) as well as various Stuff that meant I didn't get any painting done really. On the plus side, I popped into the Games Workshop in Abertawe, and got some paints to help me with the ECW Parliamentarian cavalry commission, which I started to do again. Today I looked at the rather folorn Song of Ice and Fire Here's The Ruckus warband that I'd been doing what seems like years ago, and started working on Ser Geraint Blondel's retainers. These fellows are interesting in that the billmen aren't wearing livery coats, so the only model with the House livery on is the longbowman. I might put some little badges on the billmen though.

The billmen look rather uniform, don't they? I quite like it

I also took some time to use a nice new Contrast paint (Aggaros Dunes) on the second regiment of ECW horse:

24 of the 36 cavalry troopers have had their buff coats and gloves done now

The ECW commission has a deadline (October) so I'm really going to try to focus on them as much as I can over the next few weeks. I'd like to get them done and sent back to the commissioner as soon as I can now that it's cooled down enough to paint again.

In other news I also spent a little money and got some Really Useful Boxes, Warmag sticky-backed ferrous sheet, and several hundred 5x2mm magnets which will be arriving on Saturday - I sense a few pleasant hours gluing magnets to bases in order to safely store an army or two. If this works the way I hope it will, I'll be doing that to everything, painted or not, so that I can have a properly, safely, sensibly, stored collection.

For The King! No, Not That One - Or That One - No, Not Him Either...

When there's five kings in circulation, sometimes your battle cries can get a bit confusing. Today I worked on the Joffrey-aligned Retinue, cracking out the standard bearer and one of the three characters before doing some basic work on some of the retainers. The standard bearer has a bigger, but similar, banner to House Chulain - but with the addition of the coat of arms of Joffrey I Baratheon. These guys are loyalists, you see, owing fealty to House Lannister.

The banner of House Brock, with their words: "Fidelitas Ante Omnis", or "Loyalty Above All"

The sigil of House Brock is, as you would expect, a badger. Note that both men are carrying war axes - a brutal weapon with the ability to spin it round and use the hammer edge to cave in armour plate

Dexter Hill, a noble bastard, who is a mercenary commander bringing his Free Spear to the service of the king for gold and the promise of knighthood, and House Brock's master-at-arms Harlow the Red, named after his hair colour

The Lannister lion and the Baratheon stag joined by marriage, stamping their domination on Westeros

Retainers from House Brock - the one on the left actually has half-plate on his legs which I didn't notice, so I'm going to have to go over that! I decided to give them all painted helmets just for style points

I have definitely got "the bug" as they say, and have been eyeing up the Perry Miniatures' range of late 15th Century Irish to make an Iron Islander raiding force, and the early 15th Century stuff to make a bunch of Northmen - they're referred to in the books as generally poorer and slightly less well equipped, so it makes sense for them to be wearing earlier styles of armour. That would cover four of the five kings - King Renly, King Joffrey, King in the North Robb and King Balon of the Isles and the North - leaving only King Stannis needing representation. Stannis is an interesting one because his core supporter's forces would probably look quite similar to those of his brother Renly and nephew Joffrey, but his army is largely drawn from the Stormlands, which are - particularly in the south - influenced by the Dornish, and bolstered by Lyseni pirates and mercenaries so I might use a mix of Italian and Swiss figures for the Stannis Retinue.

Painting Points:
Today: 2
This Week: 5
2025: 386 

The Sun Shines On Us!

One of the things I'm enjoying about this little Ruckus project in the Song of Ice and Fire setting is coming up with all the House Words - "Aim True", "Green Grows The Wood" and now "The Sun Shines On Us". House Merryweather (properly Chulain-Merryweather) has an interesting and quite colourful coat of arms which was an interesting challenge to put on the longbowman, but I think the end result is quite solid. 

Emmaline Merryweather (second from right) with her retainers - the longbowman's coat is a less fancy version of hers, with only one each of the sigils

This angle shows you the green colour of Merryweather...

...and this angle shows you the red and black of House Chulain

I couldn't fit Emmaline's whole name on her base, so Merryweather it is!

With the completion of Merryweather and her retainers, the whole Renly-aligned retinue of Ser Chulain is complete:

Left to right - House Chulain-Merryweather, House Chulain, House Greenwood. Five longbowmen, four billmen, three minor nobles, a standard bearer and a herald

 Next up, of course, are the dastardly Lannister/Baratheon forces loyal to King Joffrey I Baratheon:

These were originally being painted by an old friend of mine many years ago, so I'll be painting over a bunch of this I think. I don't have a herald for the loyalists, but I do have a standard bearer so I might do a banner that combines Joffrey's arms with the arm of the captain's House Banefort. 

Painting Points:
Today: 3
This Week: 3
2025: 384 

 

 

The Cousin's Men

 Medieval (and fantasy medieval) family trees can get quite labyrinthine. In my little Baratheon-aligned band there are two distinct Houses - Greenwood and Chulain - and a third, which has a coat of arms that combines Chulain with another, that of Merryweather. The Chulain-Merryweather family is represented by a cousin of Ser Padraig, Emmaline Merryweather. Emmaline is a calm and well-respected soldier, whose father is Padraig's uncle. She is an educated woman who is the only heir to the Chulain-Merryweather family, but also the only person able enough to fight and represent her family in the field in Renly's army.

On the left, the Chulain-Merryweather levy; on the right, the Greenwood levy

Like Ser Boros, Emmaline has a small retinue of a longbowman and two billmen, all wearing the quite intricate red, black, and green colours of her family. Unlike Ser Boros, she has a full suit of plate with a full-face helm and sabatons, and uses a sword to great effect alongside her men-at-arms. 

Emmaline Merryweather (who I painted years ago): I'm really quite proud of that surcoat!

Still not quite finished yet but I am getting there - a push tomorrow should see the Greenwood trio done, and then I reckon I can get the other levy sorted by Monday.

 

Ser Greenwood And His Men

Ser Boros Greenwood is the younger brother of Ser Jona Greenwood, lord of House Greenwood, and retainer of House Chulain. Ser Boros has come, with some of his levy, to fight alongside House Chulain in the army of Renly I Baratheon, rightful King of the Andals &c &c.

Ser Boros (second from left) and his immediate retinue

Ser Boros's retinue consists of a longbowman and two billmen, giving a little ranged capacity and some close quarters punch to back him up. He himself wears a suit of plate armour, although, because his House is poorer than most, he lacks sabatons and has a cheaper open-face helm. He favours a warhammer - it is blunt and unsophisticated, like him. 

The yellow is an interesting challenge to paint, and I'm not totally sure the yellow and black brigandine is entirely accurate - it would probably be a plain leather colour - but sod it, I want them to be recognisably part of Ser Boros' little band on the tabletop, and that's as good a method as any.

What A Ruckus

I am nothing if not a massive hobby butterfly. It took about 2.3 seconds of a group chat with my friends C, D, and H, to become convinced to repurpose figures linked to my old attempt at making a conversion for Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game to play games set in the A Song Of Ice And Fire world (based much more on the books and the Wars of the Roses than the TV series) for the relatively new skirmish game from Mike Peters, Never Mind The Billhooks: Here's The Ruckus (for which there's a lot of free downloads on the Wargames Illustrated website).

A quick rummage in my Pile of Opportunity turned up enough Perry Miniatures' plastics (and a couple of metals) to create a Baratheon-aligned warband and a Lannister-aligned one. The Baratheon-aligned force is meant to represent troops whose lord has backed Renly Baratheon for the Iron Throne, so there's less yellow than one might think. 

A slightly larger than necessary Ruckus warband - the standard bearer and herald/musician is probably entirely un-necessary, but looks very cool

That photo's a bit misleading - the standard bearer was painted today! The others were all either finished already or had their metalwork done today. And speaking of the standard bearer, Sally Strongarm:

Perry Miniatures plastic (wo)man-at-arms with a paper flag

House Chulain's words, 'Verum Petere' - 'Aim True'. It still needs the edges touching up, but it looks really good!

The effect of full harness is quite striking - that's a lot of shiny metal! 

Another view of the banner and the stripy stick

 
The banner started out as me drawing a traditional paper flag, then I remember I was sitting next to my partner, P, who is an illustrator and artist and uses Clip Studio Paint and other strange and arcane tools to do good drawing stuff... which resulted in this:

 

The original version can be seen in the bottom left - everything else is me showing P what I wanted!

And this is the end result! It's so good!

This should - I hope - be a nice quick project, which I can do alongside the ECW cavalry and the spaceship commissions. The end result should be two small Ruckus warbands, one aligned to Renly Baratheon and one aligned to his nephew, Joffrey Baratheon. Ahh medieval civil wars...

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 5
2025: 374

Rally The Horse

I spent a bit of time today working on the English Civil War commission, blocking out the horses and starting on the saddlecloths. I need to finish those, then do the leather, trousers, sashes, and details on the standard bearer and musician before whacking them all with Agrax Earthshade and then picking out the metal. I'm hoping to do this by the end of the weekend and then make headway on the other two units.

In other news, I also dug out the last remaining Necrons - five more Immortals and five Pariahs - undercoated them and started painting their metal basecoat. I need to do a bit of work on the barrels of the heavy gauss blasters carried by the Immortals, but I reckon I can get the Immortals and Pariahs finished up tomorrow.

 Also, not this coming weekend but the one after, I'm going to Death Unto Darkness, the 40K LARP, as my Sister of Battle Superior. A friend of mine, M, gave me a 3D-printed bolt pistol a while ago and I've given it some paint to match my chainsword, and a name, because you have to name your wargear.

I'm looking forwards to pointing this at people and yelling "SANCTIC BOLT" at them like the huge nerd I am.

 

Respect Your Elders...

...Or else! I have started working on the Venerable Dreadnought, doing a couple of layers of drybrushed highlights to the armour plate, and getting the gold and bone elements to a point where they can be highlighted and detailed. I suspect much of the work on it will be on the right arm, which has got quite a lot of detail on it in the form of the wolf skin, shield, and so on. I also managed to get the latest ISS Vanguard lander finished as well, which is great! Oh, and I've started on the Parliamentarian cavalry. They're meant to be for Second Newbury (1644), and with three units I'm probably going to try to make them at least slightly resemble some of the regiments of horse that were at that battle - obviously Cromwell's lot, then maybe Waller's and Sir John Norwich's. Not sure how quite yet, a little research required here I think.

A lander - this is not a great photo sadly but the big blue canopy is pretty cool. That said I'm actually tempted to redo it to the gold canopy... I'll see what the commissioner wants

A better photo thankfully. It's a funky little ship!

Looking at this made me realise I'd missed a bit on the other side which I have now fixed. Success?

The reason I might change the colour of the canopy to gold is because the engine glow is blue as well...

The dreadnought! Stompy and angry

Warlord Games' Parliamentarian cavalry - the buff coats and plate are basically the same across both armies and all cavalry regiments! The sashes tended to change colour and I'm going to do these ones with orange sashes

So a lot of work in progress, and one completed mini. Not a bad outcome for the day.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 4
2025: 349

What's Painting Without Mistakes

While I was happily working on the details and highlights of the Long Fangs, and going back and forth into the commission ships, I realised something odd about the Iron Priest and the Long Fang Sergeant. The Sergeant's armour seemed a bit... lighter. I picked them up and compared them and realised, to my horror, that the Long Fang Sergeant had not just had one highlight of blue-grey, but two or maybe even three! So I'm going to have to go back into the Iron Priest and the Rune Priest as well as the Long Fangs and add some more highlights to their armour. Pants. Oh well. That rather took the wind out of my sails for painting today, but it wasn't a total loss:

With the Long Fangs now pretty close to about a third done, they may well get finished off in the next few days. The commission spaceship will definitely be done tomorrow, and then I can move on to another one. 

I might actually step away from the Space Wolves for a while. They haven't really captured my desire to paint them so once the Long Fangs are done and the various Priests have had their extra highlights, I'll probably put them on the back burner for a bit and move onto something else. Not entirely sure what, though.

Back At It

I essentially took yesterday off from painting, but today saw me pick up the paintbrush again. I highlighted the Long Fang's armour plate, then applied a base of Khorne Red to relevant areas and blocked in the gold too. Then, to make things a little different, I did some of the white on the next couple of commission pieces from the ISS Vanguard ships:

 Not a huge amount of work, but enough to shake the cobwebs off and move in the right direction, anyway. This weekend is likely to be hugely busy so I'm hoping to use some of tomorrow to get at least one more of the commission ships done, and the Long Fangs to about the half way mark or so.

Tortoising It

It's a bit like flooring it, but when your top speed is about 2mph or something like that. Which may be slandering tortoises, I don't actually know how fast they are. Anyway! Tonight I made some significant progress on the Space Wolf Iron Priest, and am about half way done with one of the commission pieces, the Faust:

I really like how the orange has turned out on the spaceship, and am looking forwards to doing things like adding the cockpit glass, engine glow, and the like. As for the Iron Priest, it just needs a few details sorting out like a highlight on the bolter, the Cult Mechanicus emblems finishing off, and so on. The most detailed bit is actually the loincloth and belt area, which needs some care and attention I think. Both should be done tomorrow.

Dabbling In Oddities

A while ago C sent me a load of sprues and some random unpainted figures, two of which - a Votan ranger type and a Primaris Scout - I thought I'd have a little play around with. I did some basecoats and gave them a coat of Agrax Earthshade to prep them for some highlighting and details, and then (at last!) restarted work on the commission spaceships. Nothing huge - I just put the main basecoat block of orange onto one of the ISS Vanguard landers, the Faust. 

 Tomorrow I think I'll finish off the two random miniatures, and try and finish off the Faust and make more progress on the other landers. I'd really like to get the commission stuff done in the next few days, but that might not happen.

A Bit Of Downtime

So yesterday I didn't do anything, and today I just didn't feel particularly like painting very much at all. I did however slap some basic colours onto one of the drop pods:

These are definitely going to need two things: a masking tape job to ensure a nice straight line between the bone and green, and another coat of bone and olive green before the Nuln Oil wash!

I'm going to Warhammer World on Friday with my long-time friend and opponent S to play a couple of games of 6th Edition Warhammer Fantasy, so tomorrow I'm hoping to make some more headway on the commission ships and maybe some of the Space Wolves too. But we'll see.

A Little Here, A Little There

I've not been in a particularly painterish mood today, but I did make a start on the commission work I have, which involved looking up the artwork for the boardgame ISS Vanguard and trying to identify how to paint the funny little spacecraft models. I've got the base coats down on three of them, and started to do the basecoat orange on a fourth:

Once I put in a solid few hours' work I reckon I can get these looking nice and slick and ready for play. I think for durability I'll put a coat of gloss and then a coat of matt varnish on at the end, because they're going to be handled a fair bit I should expect. 

So not a lot to report back on today, but a start's a start and once I get properly going they'll be sorted in no time.

Undercoating, Base Coating...

... my goodness, a lot of coating has been going on today. I undercoated most of the commission pieces, except for one ship which I need to mask before doing so, and both (now assembled) drop pods. Then I went through all the Space Wolves and gave them their base coats of metal and blue-grey, before whacking a Nuln Oil wash over them all. While I was doing that I also slapped on some Ironbreaker to one of the drop pods, trying to identify which bits need to be metal and which need to be painted green and bone.

The next step with the Space Wolves will be to give them their highlight layer of The Fang, before starting to work on the details (and there's a lot of details). Once I get to the detail section I'll probably work on no more than four or five at a time, and I may well focus on them one at a time too - it depends how I'm feeling on any given day, and how much progress I make on the commission too.

Dreadnought for scale

 The drop pods are big, and I suspect will greedily eat up all my remaining Ironbreaker and at least a pot of Nuln Oil, but they should be relatively quick to paint (I hope). The internal sections that aren't metal will be a standard olive drab, the external sections will be green, bone, and heat-resistant black. Then I'm going to dirty the bejeezus out of them because these things are fired from orbiting space craft like a shell and then scream into the atmosphere of a planet to slam into the ground at the sort of speed that would kill a normal person and disgorge, in their case, Dreadnoughts. They're not going to look very pristine after all that, frankly.

Drop Pod Assault

Tonight I only had time for a little bit of hobbying, so I cleaned up one of the two 3D-printed Dreadnought Drop Pods I picked up last weekend and built it. It's a really simple little kit and it went together very nicely indeed. Then I slapped on some more blue-grey, finishing the main base coat for the Long Fangs and starting on the Grey Hunters:

The doors go down...

...and up!

In the foreground you can see a commission that I got today

 On top of the Space Wolves I'm going to be working on some miniatures from the board game ISS Vanguard that I have been commissioned to do. So things will progress slowly for the next little while, but slowly wins the race and all that.

Tomorrow I'm going to wash and assemble the next drop pod, and undercoat those and the commission pieces as well as do more basecoating on the Space Wolves.

Surprise! Another Marienburger

And you thought I'd finished them! Well, so did I, but I was rummaging in the tray as I put them away and realised that there was, actually, another Swordsman nearly finished that I'd started a long time ago. So I picked him up and finished him off tonight. After that, I applied Nuln Oil to the Space Wolf Venerable Dreadnought, and a coat of The Fang to the Long Fangs... and a highlight layer of it to the Iron Priest. So I have, at last, started to make headway on the Space Wolves. 

I really like the expression I managed to give him - he looks a bit apprehensive, a bit nervous, like he's less of a veteran than the others

A redhead!

Because he was part painted a while ago, his yellow stockings look different to the rest of the warband's yellow clothes, which I'm quite glad about honestly - a little less uniformity

The text on the shield is meant to say 'Marienburg' but of course I can't paint that small!

With the Marienburgers now finished (for the time being), let us turn to the 41st Millenium:

 As you can see I didn't quite manage to get the base grey down on all the Long Fangs, but it's a start! I'm torn between tackling a unit at a time, or going through the whole lot at once as a big batch. I think I might start with the "big batch" option and then, when I start losing the plot, break them down into smaller groups. I still need to work out how I'm going to sort out the howling wolf that's supposed to be painted onto their left shoulder pad on top of the white sun, or if I have useable transfers. I'll have to have a rummage.

Painting Points:
Today: 1
This Week: 7
2025: 326

Mystery Mechs And Marienburg

A little painting tonight in the cooler evening hours after a quite busy and exhausting day saw me undercoat and base coat the 3D printed Battlemechs I collected at the weekend, as well as doing some tidying up on the Marienburg Captain readying for the last little push tomorrow. Yes, I know, Space Wolves, etc etc, but I have been thoroughly distracted by these Battlemechs even though they don't even have bases yet:

 
The Bull Shark (stuck to the paint pot) is in my friend C's Davion mercs/Guards colours of olive green with the right leg in red and white; the remaining 'mechs are in the British Racing Green of my personal mercenary outfit, MacLeod's Light Horse. The Stalker is a modified variant -3H, with ten LRM-5s and four medium lasers... and maximum armour. The Black Knight is a stock BL-6-KNT, and the Orions are... mysteries. They appear to have SRM-4s in the left torso instead of LRM-15s, and a laser of some description instead of the SRM-4. They have a cannon in the right torso, and one has two medium lasers and the other has what could be four medium lasers? Or two medium lasers and two small lasers? It's not clear. More research required there I think.

Anyway, tomorrow will also be a long day for a variety of reasons but I'm aiming to get the Marienburg Captain finished and the Bull Shark nearly done at the very least.

Fight For The Right To Wear Loud Clothes

I must say I'm really enjoying painting these Marienburgers; they're very colourful and yet quite a simple palette. Today P and I went to visit P's friend R, and we all hung out in her workshop room painting. R does a lot of gunpla, and 3d prints stuff like "a Reaver Titan" or "a statuette of an anime character" and has a lot of funky things like airbrushes, and similar tools. She's very skilled and certainly a better painter than I am! At any rate while we were doing that I managed to finish the second Marksman and one of the Swordsmen, leaving the Captain, one Youngblood, and the last Swordsman.

I gave the Swordsman a grey beard because I figure he's a gnarled old veteran who's seen some things - hence the skull on his belt!

Unlike the other Marksman, this one's handgun stock hasn't been painted. Like the Swordsman, he carries a skull. Why? Why not

I like the way the feathers turned out, even if they could maybe be a slightly different colour to the clothes

The Swordsman has a gold earring; the Marksman a votive paper wrapped round his sword. Both are lucky charms in a way

Not only that but I finally picked up the 3D prints I'd got R to make for me at the end of last year (!) - two Dreadnought Drop Pods for my Deathwing army, a bunch of Battlefleet Gothic Imperial ships just because, and some Battlemechs:

 

I think the Stalker might be a bit small, or the Black Knight a bit too big, but whatever - it's Battletech! I do need to source some hex bases though...

And then, after all that, we had a very nice little game of Tokaido which R won handily (I came dead last):

At rear, some of R's 3D printed anime statuettes painted entirely by her

All in all, a very nice and quite productive day really.

Painting Points:
Today: 2
This Week: 6
2025: 317