Painting Challenge Submission 3 - More Byzantine Cavalry

28mm metal Byzantines from Gripping Beast.

The submissions to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge continue! The Conscripts are out in force, and you have already seen a lot of great submissions from Dallas and Mike shared here as well. Hopefully Byron will share some of his amazing projects too. For my part, I am bit disappointed at my slow pace thus far. I find my move to a new house, even though it took place in September, still causes a lot of disruption to my usual hobby pace as I struggle to locate bits, get figures base coated etc. etc. and just can't get the hobby motor running smoothly, as it were...my points target seems a touch fanciful at this point...

That said, some figures are still getting painted, and I return to you with more efforts in the 28mm Byzantine area. There are eight figures here, all metal castings from Gripping Beast's line of Thematic Byzantine troops. There are three more Kataphractoi (super heavy cavalry), four Hippo-Toxotai (mounted archers) and a lone figure to serve as a Byzantine commander/character. As with my previous Byzantine entry, these figures are all based individually to provide some flexibility in terms rules/gaming approaches.

I love LMBS designs, but I do wish they could be normal waterslide transfers instead of the convoluted, multi-layer exercise. This entire sheet of decals failed, as the various layers would not come apart. Cue the hobby fury!

All of the figures - save the commander - are carrying shields, and most, but not all, of those shields have decals from LBMS. I find these products indispensable, as painting and managing shields is one of my greatest hobby foes! Shields, generally speaking, are a large mental barrier to painting these kinds of figures - only heraldry is worse. But as much as I love the LBMS transfers, I do find them frustrating...there was some manner of defect in the pack of decals for the bucklers on the arms of the mounted archers, and I found myself needing to try and duplicate the established pattern myself with freehand painting...which SUCKS. I'm sure there are reasons for the design of these products, but I just wish there were some more options for shields out there involving plain old waterslide transfers, as opposed to this incredibly fiddly and complex process of peeling layers etc. of the LBMS products.

For all that, like I said, they are indispensable...I just ordered more!

Byzantine commander/general/warlord.

Lovely sculpt from Gripping Beast, lots of fun to paint.

Anyway, enough complaining, and on to the figures. For starters, the commander/character figure is a lovely sculpt...again, it has a lot of character and I really enjoy that about many of the metal figures from Gripping Beast. He has a haughty air, as one would expect of some senior Byzantine officer/nobleman. I put a touch of purple into his clothing...not to make him an Emperor, but someone "in the family" (and is thus at least likely plotting to become Emperor).  He is not on a flashy command base, but as I intend to have him available for Warhammer Ancient Battles, he will need to have his base able to mix with others - so a standard size mounted base for him.  

Kataphractoi cavalry, ready to wreck some sh*t in the name of God and the Byzantine Empire!

The long kontarion (big spears) are steel spears from Wargames Foundry.

Thankfully there were no problems with these three shields.

The three Kataphracts are similar to the ones I painted a few weeks ago. I really enjoy these particular Gripping Beast castings, they have a lot of character.  Two of the riders are armed with Kontarion, the long spears seen with "eastern" heavy cavalry such as the Byzantines, Sassanids (and others). The other rider is brandishing his heavy mace. These figures are so fun to paint!

Mounted archers, a critical component of Byzantine cavalry units.

Again, lovely character and detail on these metal castings from Gripping Beast.

The four mounted archers, with half-barding on their horses, will join the the Kataphracts. Byzantine cavalry (and many others) often mixed archers in with their heavy cavalry into powerful combined formations. Thus the Kataphracts could shower their enemies with arrows even as they approached them, and then slash/smash and crash them to bits at contact. While I often feel like archers are second-fiddle to their mail-clad and fully barded Kataphract colleagues, the archers were essential troops for the Byzantine army, and very skilled. To be able to ride and shoot, and do it as part of a disciplined cavalry formation, took considerable practice, skill and a lot of training...even without all of the armour of their Kataphract bretheren, the mounted archers and half-barded horses represented a significant investment of resources for the Byzantine armies. The archers were key troops.

All together, the Kataphracts (including the archers) I have painted so far in the Challenge can comprise a 15-figure unit to use in games of Warhammer Ancient Battles, and thanks to the individual basing, they can make use of a special wedge formation, and I have ranked up the full unit together for a couple of pictures. 

Wedge formation for Warhammer Ancient Battles!

I look forward to having these fellows counter-charge Dallas' Normans someday!

Of course, this group can be split up as well, to skirmish in games such as "Lion Rampant", which I look forward to trying sometime soon as well.

Stay sane everyone - thanks for reading. 

Star Wars Legion - Reinforcements

In addition to painting the odd figure here and there myself, I have been augmenting my Star Wars Legion collection with various figures that I have purchased or commissioned.

Arguably, the television show The Mandalorian has almost single-handedly revived the Star Wars franchise. Certainly, it's my favourite piece of Star Wars media in the last 20 years or so, with the possible exception of the film Rogue One. My first entry is the titular character, Din Djarin and his adoptive son, Grogu.

Before Christmas, UK Facebook user Jonathan Corps held a fundraiser for The Fairy Godbrothers charity (they send sick children to Disneyland and such), selling several 3D printed Mando and Child figures that he had painted. He left the bases empty for the buyers to place terrain to suit. It's a lovely, delicate print (see Baby Yoda's cute little fingers), and Jonathan painted it in striking fashion. I just added some acrylic garnet gel medium and painted the groundwork to match the rest of my collection.

The next several entries are from the Polish commission painting service, Minis for War. 

Jyn Urso is one of the main characters from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The model is a decent likeness of actress Felicity Jones. Minis for War have really shown the character's grit and determination.

  

Also from Rogue One, I commissioned a second squad of Pathfinders, so I can field two squads with two different heavy weapon options. I like especially how the alien squad leaders were rendered. in game terms, my two Pathfinder squads have good synergy with Jyn, infiltrating near the enemy.

I recently painted the LE Luke Skywalker. He will be a great commander for these Rebel Veterans. At my request, they based them in a more desert scheme, instead of winter groundwork (like when the troop type first appeared on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back). The figures remind me of coalition forces serving in the Middle East (with an alien twist).

First seen in Empire is this Rebel Veteran Mark II medium repeating blaster. Very dangerous looking, and a welcome addition to my Rebel forces, who don't have a lot in the way of heavy weapons and war machines.

   

Also first appearing in Rogue One are these imperial Shoretroopers. They have also appeared in The Mandalorian; they seem to be a type of garrison troop. Their groundwork is suitable for Scarif, Tatooine, and other sandy places. I like the details Minis for War did on the armour. 

To support the Shoretrooper squad is this last Minis for War commission, a DF-90 mortar. In the Star Wars Legion tournament meta, for awhile Shoretrooper squads and mortars were the "go to" choice to fill up one's Imperial "Corps" unit slots (i.e., the mandatory rank and file troopers, as opposed to elites or heavy support); this was due to a peculiarity of the rules that has since been rectified in a (free) revision via downloadable PDF. I do love my Stormtroopers.

 

First appearing in Rogue One, but also appearing in Star Wars Rebels, and as part of Moff Gideon's forces in The Mandalorian, are these Death Troopers. Like their movie counterparts, in the game these troops shoot straight and hit hard. The central figure with the raised fist is a named character from Rebels, a female Death Trooper named DT-F16.  I obtained these on eBay from  UK modeler "protechpainting". 

What's better than a squad of Death Troopers? Two squads of Death Troopers! I got these from eBay painter "sweathoger". With their starship decking bases, they go with the Darth Vader that SteveB painted for me. I will field them with the alternative figure to DT-F16, the model with the DLT-19 repeating blaster (which looks a LOT like a WWII German MG 34 dressed up for sci fi).

At the time of writing this article I have 114 painted Star Wars Legion figures, walkers, and speeder bikes. lots of choice for the scenarios I am writing, in the hopes of playing face to face games again in the hopefully not-too-distant future. Stay safe!

From the Challenge: 1/50 Solido Panther in Winter Camo

This was my entry for the "Golem's Haunt", which calls for something "bolted together"... ha!

The story behind this model is that I ordered myself a Christmas present at the start of December - some 28mm WW2 Winter Germans from Offensive Miniatures. Of course my present hasn't arrived yet, but I thought I would start to work on the project anyway, and got cracking on this Solido Panther.

The only thing I had to do on the model was to add the pintle-mounted MG42, as it was missing. Yes, I know that the pintle mount should be attached to the cupola and not to the turret top, but there was already a hold drilled in the turret top so I thought I'd take advantage... the machinegun came from the very handy Bolt Action weapon sprue included in their boxes of plastic Germans, and the pintle mount itself is wire bent to shape and secured with superglue. One of the things I always liked about Solido tanks is their chunky metal tracks, and how easy they are to remove and paint separately. This model's were no exception.

Winter camo followed my usual method with a bit of a twist - instead of stippling on the Rakarth Flesh and White Scar, I applied it in more of a top-to-bottom brushing style. Maybe this makes it look more like field-applied whitewash. However I think I maybe should have lightened up the dunkelgelb basecoat a bit more before applying the camo. I also sponged on some weathering on the sharp edges and dirtied up the lower hull.

So there it is - one winter big cat waiting for its accompanying infantry. Hopefully they arrive soon, after all it's only been a month and the parcel HAS had to travel all of 850km [rolleyes]

Stay healthy everyone!

From the Challenge: Greyscale "26mm" Foundry WW1 German

Greyscale... this is something I've never done before. I think I first became aware of the concept from an article in Wargames Illustrated, years ago. It was a convention report from Crisis I think, that included pics of an amazing 28mm "Nosferatu" game, with the models and terrain all done in greyscale. It looked amazing, but didn't really appeal to me for "everyday" painting or gaming - owing mainly to the need to use specific greyscale terrain as well!

Of course, many dedicated hobbyists paint entire projects in greyscale, including our own host Mr. Curt! So I decided to give it a try for the Chambers of Darkness room on level 1 of the Dungeon.

This, of course, is a "26mm" Dave Andrews sculpt from the old Foundry Great War range - "GW44 Sergeant pointing" to be exact. He painted up very quickly indeed but I have to say he hasn't instilled any burning desire in me to paint more greyscale models... however I will happily donate him as a Challenge prize to anyone who achieves their points goal and wants him. I figure there must be some of you out there who have greyscale Great War armies and maybe someone can use him :-)

Cheers and stay healthy! 

From the Challenge: 28mm "Evil Lord"

Another model from Midlam Miniatures' Metal Magic back catalogue... a very scary Evil Lord sculpted by Josef Ochmann.

At first I painted him with the "shoulder dragon" as part of his armour, but later reconsidered... I think he looks rather menacing with his pet dragon perched on his shoulder like a Tonkinese cat.  

Herr Ochmann put some great detail into the faces of these MM sculpts and I've got a few more in the pipeline. I particularly like his range of female adventurers and I've got a few of those lined up for the Lady Sarah challenges.

Stay safe!
 

A Company of Gondor

The latest unit off the workbench is a company of Gondorian infantry from the Game Workshop Lord of the Rings range consisting of eight swordsmen, eight spearmen, eight bowmen, a captain and a standard bearer. The captain and standard bearer are metal castings, while the rest are plastic from the Warriors of Minas Tirath boxed set. 

The plastic warriors were a bit of a rescue operation. When I purchased them off of eBay they had already been assembled and given a coat of silver paint over just about everything. No ground work had been done, and there were still a lot of visible mold lines and rough spots where the parts had been attached to the sprue. 

The figures were cleaned up, mold lines filed off, ground work added, and primed matt black with a rattle can. The theme of the ground work was inspired by scenes from the Lord of the Rings movies of the heavy fighting among the ruins of Osgiliath - lots of rubble, broken stone work, etc. This was done using scraps of 3mm polystyrene, bits of sprue, sand, and pieces cut from bread bag plastic clips.

Just a small portion of the faces show within the helmet, so they were painted Vallejo medium flesh, followed by a brown wash to bring out the detail. The figures are wearing predominantly plate armour, so I painted them gunmetal grey followed by a drybrushing of silver. The trickiest part was painting the white tree of Gondor on the shields. While there is a raised design, it is very subtle, and it needs just the right amount of paint on the brush to avoid blotching silver on the background. 

The captain and standard bearer were somewhat easier to paint as the detail was in higher relief on the shield and the standard. Otherwise, they got the same treatment as the rest of the figures in the company.

A scene from the movie "The Two Towers" - Warriors of Minas Tirith amid the ruined city of Osgiliath. It provided the inspiration for the thematic ground work that I applied to bases.

 

This is another project that has been hanging around for a while at a back corner of my workbench where it was literally gathering dust. They are now ready for the fight to reclaim Osgiliath or defend the walls of Minas Tirith from the hordes of Mordor.

Painting Challenge Submission 2 - General Wolfe and the Louisbourg Grenadiers

New forces for the Quebec 1759 Project - General Wolfe and the Louisbourg Grenadiers.

Happy New Year folks! Last year I unveiled another project - painting forces for the Siege of Quebec and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 28mm. Progress on this project is...let's just say it is moving at a "stately pace", but there has been some painting happening and I'm pleased to share recent results with this second submission to Curt's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. Here is a command base for General James Wolfe, commander of the British forces on that fateful day in September outside Quebec, and the "Louisbourg Grenadiers", another unit for my collection of British forces for the battle. All of the figures are 28mm metal castings from Wargames Foundry, save for the figure of Wolfe himself, which is a 28mm metal figure from Warlord Games.

The Louisbourg Grenadiers

The "Louisbourg Grenadiers" - figures from Wargames Foundry.

The "Louisbourg Grenadiers" were a provisional converged battalion comprising the detached grenadier companies from the 22nd Foot, 40th Foot and 45th Foot regiments of the British army. The name comes from the French fortress of Louisbourg (on Cape Breton in Canada), which the British had captured previous to mounting their campaign against Quebec, and I believe all three of the regiments saw service in that action. 

Beautiful sculpts from Wargames Foundry - note cast details on the mitres - this is a huge help.

The converged unit went on to see heavy action during the Siege of Quebec in the summer/autumn of 1759, and were prominent in the right of the British line during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham outside the city in September. Wolfe counted on the grenadiers to be a reliable strike force for his army.

The left of the grenadier line...also a shot of General Wolfe leading the unit...

To represent this unit on the gaming table, I opted for miniatures from Wargames Foundry's Seven Years War range - not only do they include grenadiers in firing poses, but the Foundry range also offers a number of officer and musician poses for the grenadier units that you cannot find in Warlord's current French and Indian War figure range. The Foundry figures have two other advantages - the details on the mitres are cast on to the figures, giving me at least a fighting chance of creating a consistent - if vague - representation of the insane and intricate symbols the grenadiers wore on their head gear. The second advantage is that Foundry still offers free shipping at a reasonable order level!

View of the rear detail on the figures...those hefty Wargames Foundry figures are crowded on to the bases...

Painting these figures was certainly a bit of a headache, and the finer points of detail are clearly beyond my brush skills. But the excellent quality castings from Foundry allow the opportunity to give a nice, consistent "look" from a couple feet away, which is what I generally aim for with my painting.

Two of the Regiments - the 22nd and the 40th - wore "buff" facings. "Buff" is a colour I struggle to get right, as I'm...not really what sure what colour it is bloody supposed to be - not quite white, not quite tan...who knows...anyways, I muddled around with different combos of flesh-tones and faded khakis from GWs range to get something I was happy with. The 45th, with dark green facings, was a little easier...I opted to paint the musicians in the colours of the 45th, as the green gave a better chance to show off the bonkers details of the reverse uniforms worn by drummers/fifers during that era. Being a provisional unit, I understand (from much smarter people) that there was no colour party for the Louisbourg Grenadiers, so there are only musicians and no flags here with this unit.

The right of the British line takes shape...small but growing collection for this project.

The Foundry castings are lovely - but I was struck by how beefy and tall these miniatures are...I know grenadiers were supposed to be tall lads, but wow! They barely fit on their 50mm square bases...certainly they would not mix well with Warlord Games figures, but as they are on their own unit, it's not an issue. Not so much when it came to General Wolfe...

General James Wolfe

General Wolfe - figure from Warlord Games. The grenadiers behind him are castings from Wargames Foundry.

In any game it is nice to have small bases to represent command figures for the forces on the table. In the era of the Seven Years War, these bases often host officers wearing the finest 18th century garb - big hats, big cuffs, fancy gloves, beautiful horse furniture, and well-dressed flunkies to carry out commands, pass messages, reassure their boss, recite poetry etc.

But the Siege of Quebec was no such campaign. Not only was the North American theatre of operations particularly merciless in terms of what the weather and terrain would do to such nice clothing - if you could even it get it there - but the snipers and warriors among the enemy would be sure to mark you out and finish any snappily-dressed officers in short order! Along the St. Lawrence in the summer of 1759, less was more...

Add to this the reports of Wolfe's character...as I read accounts of him, he struck me as a spartan man. Brave, disciplined, a "military thinker" for the era, but also not much for politics or the finer things of noble birth and rank. Hardly a revolutionary, but he seemed genuine in his care for the soldiers under his command, and in turn was well-liked by the rank and file troops who served under him. He was not the sort to demand fancy outfits on campaign, least of all during the 1759 campaign in the hearts of what was then still called "New France".

Monument to the battle at Quebec city - the Wolfe-Montcalm monument.

In the book "Death or Glory", which recounts in detail the Siege of Quebec, there are many excerpts from Wolfe's diaries and family memoirs, as well as those of his colleagues from the 1759 campaign. The James Wolfe emerging from those accounts is a bit of...well, he seems like a bit of a brittle, indecisive, mopey, passive agressive tw@t. He couldn't stand the navy (and hey, we've all been there, right?) even though the Royal Navy was critical to the ultimate success of the Quebec campaign. As the siege wore on, there was much friction with his senior officers, and Wolfe himself seemed to despair and waffle, looking for opportunities to approach the city which just were not there. He ordered raids that devastated the colony of New France, burning crops and villages up and down the valley, but the few military assaults attempted against Montcalm's defences around the Beauport shore were abject failures. Cartoons drawn by officers mocking Wolfe as a man obsessed with how to properly dig latrines, but unable to give orders decisively, still survive. As the siege wore on that summer, Wolfe eventually fell ill, and despair in the memoirs seems palpable.

And somehow, out of all of this, he led a daring - I would even say "nutter-adjacent" - against-the-odds assault across the St. Lawrence (with, again, critical assistance from the Royal Navy), one that took the French garrison by surprise and prompted a small European-style field engagement on the Plains of Abraham. The risks to the British in this engagement were huge - the army landed, but was badly exposed in the rear even as it faced the fortified walls of Quebec City and the massing of Montcalm's available forces. Really, this British force should have been badly beaten, even slaughtered.

The Death of General Wolfe - by Benjamin West, painted in 1770.

And yet... whatever issues he had, whatever sickness lingered, whatever the friction with his colleagues, Wolfe overcame the odds. He and his officers led the battle wisely. Wolfe himself led from the front - and paid with his life. Shot several times, he is said to have died on the battlefield just as reports of the French defeat arrived that day. Instantly, he became a military hero of the 18th century. His death commemorated in a portrait (which itself has a whole story, given that the scene in the portrait is not exactly "real"), there are schools and streets and all sorts of things named after him in Canada and elsewhere (or, I should say, there are for now).

The British command base for this hobby project needed to have a General Wolfe, and I opted to use the figure from Warlord Games to represent him. As there were really no "flunkies" in the 18th century sense present on the battlefield that day, I decided to put two grenadiers from the 22nd Foot on the base with him. Wolfe is said to have died in the arms of a grenadier from the 22nd Foot, and he was leading/directing the Louisbourg Grenadiers himself that day, so I thought it would be a way to put a bit more of a "crowd" on to the base of a senior officer and still make sense in the context of the setting. 

I believe that the real General Wolfe was a taller fellow for his time...but those Wargames Foundry grenadiers are huge, so I played a bit of silly bugger with the base to hide the difference.

The Warlord Games depiction of Wolfe is a lovely sculpt...complete with the arm band as he mourned the death of his father. But compared to the giant grenadiers from Foundry, the casting is very thin and very short. Thin is OK...poor Wolfe was puking his guts out for a couple weeks prior to the battle anyway.  But the height difference was a bit crazy, and so to compensate a I modeled a small "rise" into the base for Wolfe's figure to stand on - and I used a ton of ground work and grass to obfuscate the difference...

Thanks everyone - I hope you are all getting a chance to relax over the holidays - all the best in 2021!