AHPC Submission #10 - Dogs of War Characters

Marco Colombo directs a fellow mercenary commander. 28mm figures from GW's "Dogs of War" range.

For my 10th submission to AHPC XV I was back with the Dogs of War again! No new units, but a couple of characters. Here we have the "Mercenary General" and the special character "Marco Colombo". These are old 28mm GW metal figures (although the general's horse is a mix of plastic and metal). 

Mercenary General

Ready to work! Just need to complete a contract...down payments in cash only...

Tilean mercenary armies need a Tilean mercenary general, and that is what we have here! This figure was part of the initial wave of sculpts that accompanied the release of the "Dogs of War" army book back in the day. 

You can see the insignia on the horse's barding, and just peeking out from the left breast of his overcoat.

I imagined this fellow as a tough, no-nonsense warrior, a hardened veteran. He has material success, and so shows some "bling" in the form of nice plumes and combs for his horse and helmet, and beautiful gold armour, along with a purple overcoat. He dares you to comment!

Nice purple overcoat...go ahead and ask him how he has the money for that!

At the same time, he has no specific regional or royal insignia. He has his own symbol on the barding of his mount, and on the breast of his overcoat, but nothing beyond that...after all, he is ready to be hired by anyone! No need to have a specific regional crest limiting him from business development opportunities in the Old World...

Marco Colombo

Bold Tilean explorer, Marco Colombo.

Marco Colombo is a merchant prince and notable explorer from Tilea, and he can join your mercenary army as an independent character. 

"This way to Lustria!"

This is a beautiful figure, but I found it a bit odd that the figure is an instance where the sculpt did not match up with the original rules from the army book - in the rules he is supposed to come with a warhorse, but as far as I know, GW never did sculpt a mounted version, and this fellow is the only "Marco Colombo" that I know of. 

Maps, compass and telescope in hand...a beautiful sculpt.

Even without a horse, he totally looks the part! He has a telescope, some maps and other goodies to lead/incite a Tilean mercenary army to great exploits. Chances are the mercenaries will be more keen on treasure and less worried about exploration and discovery, but Marco doesn't care - his Tilean pikemen will provide protection and help secure his trade missions, discoveries and reputations. 

That's it for today, but still a fair bit more AHPC stuff to go! Thanks for reading. 

AHPC Submission #9 - Hospitaller Banner Bearers

Some 28mm Hospitaller knights - figures from Footsore, sculpted by Paul Hicks.

It can be so easy to stop doing something and...then not get back to it! At least with posting on the blog! The 15th edition of Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge has wrapped up, but I am well behind on my posts, so I hope to rip through several of them and get caught up in short order. Up first is my ninth submission, some members of the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem - the Hospitaller Knights. These are 28mm metal castings from Footsore Miniatures, received from a Kickstarter I backed a few years ago. The figures were sculpted by the amazing Paul Hicks, and the flags are from Little Big Man Studios (now available through Victrix). 

Banner man and fellow warrior - I particularly enjoy the Knights who have some mix of cloth in their headgear...really sets the "period" for me. 

The Crusades are a period that has fascinated me for years. I love reading about this era of history, and as you might expect this interest has naturally merged with my hobby mania such that I am keen to run games set during the period. So you would think I probably have a well-organized collection for the setting, right? LOL. 

"Prepare to believe!"

Translation of my intense interest in the Crusades into hobby output has often floundered on the kinds of mental rocks that I feel would be familiar to many wargamers. Mostly I have waffled between hoping to play skirmish games like "Saga" and then suddenly wanting to do larger games like "Hail Caesar", and then struggling with how to base the figures...inducing paralysis via analysis and causing me to go paint some more 30k stuff instead :) Over the years I have managed to paint what amounts to a pair of large war bands that would work for "Saga" - not nothing, but hardly great progress.

More awesome poses from Paul Hicks...man I love his stuff...

These Footsore figures were meant to jolt me out of this stasis, but instead have been a prime example of this unfortunate tendency to revert to stasis...at first I was using the round bases to paint them - you can see some of the initial figures back in Challenge XIII. Since that time, I have come to my senses and re-based those original figures on more traditional square bases to allow for their deployment in a game like "Warhammer Ancient Battles" or "Hail Caesar". Moving houses last year didn't help with progress on this effort, but in the summer I did get a second bunch of Hospitallers based up and primed and...well, you know how the rest goes...

Love how his hood hangs over his brow...adds to a menacing air...

Another view of the mounted banner man.

But here we with AHPC XV, and I managed to make a bit more progress again! These sculpts are just amazing to paint - beautiful, proper metal sculpts created by the talented hand of Paul Hicks...what else could a hobby squirrel want?? The colour palette for these warriors is fairly basic and muted, but still fun to work with. The shields are hand-painted, not my preference, but it didn't turn out too badly. 

Stay tuned for a flurry of further Painting Challenge submissions as we head into the spring - thanks for reading!