Piles of minis!

I have uncovered a mother-lode of old minis!


Some of these minis have not seen the light of day since the change of address BEFORE the last one (over 2 years ago). A lot of these were purchased in the 90's from one of my favorite game stores - Fantastic Games & Toys in Lynnwood, WA, USA. And there is quite a mix of manufacturers represented:

Foundry - a single Great Orc on the left
Harlequin - lots of orcs from their LoTR line which predates the movies by some years
Games Workshop - black orcs, savage orcs, and goblins (and some unfinished Kroot for conversions!)
Old Glory - orcs and HYW crossbowmen
Ral Partha - an ettin, half-giant with huge sword, VOR Growlers
RAFM - Gilla worms, a war turtle
Wizards of the Coast - half-orc assassin, and some gnomes hiding on the right
Grenadier - wolves and giant rats
Mithril - a giant eagle

and more!

Many of these are in sad shape, but a new lick of paint and proper bases will go a long way into rehabilitating them. I have found that I am missing most of the shields for the Harlequin orcs, though.


In the back of the pic above you see some of my Eureka Legion of Ever Present Glory troops. Yes, they are finally nearing completion:


They are mounted on 7/8" steel washers. A little bit of spackle hides the cast bases on the washers. Soon the bases will be painted and flocked - a clear overcoat will finish them off.


One of the neat-o finds in the top pic was a bunch of Old Glory crossbowmen from their Hundred Years War series. The minis shown in the top pic have had their old square bases removed in preparation for new round bases. Since there are so many - 30 (an entire bag) - I am going to divide them up for painting/gaming purposes. Roughly half have chainmail, the other half do not so that is the starting point. Unarmored minis will be more akin to a militia, I'm thinking, and probably will not be painted in a uniform fashion, while the armored minis will be somewhat uniform.

One high point of many OG products is the variety in the sculpts. In the 30 crossbowmen I have, only 6 are the same; the rest vary in one form or another.




Now, many of the stances are similar - I believe this bag had 6 different stances - there are many individual differences, especially in the heads and faces. With all of these minis being utilized for skirmish gaming, the variety is a nice touch.

(BTW, the mini in the bottom pic on the far left seems to be the only one repeated in the entire bag - there are 6 of that pose)


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Navwar, continued...

Unfortunately, I've been distracted and have yet to work with my new Navwar ships - no painting, no pics, and they are still in the bags. I have discovered that I forgot to place Augsberg on the order sheet and instead received one of my alternates - a Wittelbach-class predreadnought. I guess that means that I'll need to place another order, soon!

Navwar order

The ships from Navwar have arrived - faxed the order in last Monday and delivered on Saturday - very fast service! Pics later on...

First set of minis...

I finally have some pics ready to post. Some of these are a bit dodgy - I need to refine my method just a bit of these small ships.

First up, the Germans:


These are the WTJ versions of Prinz Heinrich and Lübeck.



A very close-up overview of Prinz Heinrich.

The WTJ castings are very nice - not much flash, just a small amount there on Prinz Heinrich's fore funnel.


And some Russian ships:


The cruisers Oleg and Bogatyr.

And a close-up:


Nice. I really like the detail on the ship's boats.


And a broadside view. Note the detail on the casemate guns. There is a bit of a mold line along the waterline; some careful filing will take care of that.


Last but not least, Bayan:

Empire Outriders, part 5

Just a little bit of evidence that I actually am making some progress on the Empire project:


This is my first-ever attempt at painting horses, so bear with me.

The plan is to paint the horse, along with some of the tack, in basic colors and then give it a good wash of dark brown. Almost like 'the dip', without the dipping. Then, I will come back and touch up the horse, adding socks and various other marks, and voila - done! Hope so, at least.

I did initially plan to paint the horses in different colors, but the paint I selected is rather ancient and needed a lot of dilution. With a lot of paint on the palette, I just kept on painting... There is a slight variation in the colors, but not much.

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Wargames Factory Ancient Germans

Recently, I placed an order with The Warstore for some paints to use with my WW1 naval project (see my other blog), and The Warstore was offering a special - a free set of the brand-new 28mm plastic Ancient Germans from Wargames Factory. It is hard for me to pass up free minis whether they are lead, plastic, or even in the genres I collect - these at least are very close to the Celt/Rome project time and scale-wise, so I asked for a set to be included with my order.

(My order with The Warstore arrived quite quickly, no hassles at all - thanks Neil!)

Here is a pic of one side of the sprues:


I think these look pretty good. I'm not too impressed with the way most of the bodies are leaning heavily to one side, but that is just my observation...

And, the other side of the sprues:


Lots of extra weapons on these sprues - one of the great bonuses of plastics. There are spears and swords for all six 'bodies', shields, bows and quivers, ceremonial dagger, round-headed club, and what appears to be a tree branch!

Some close-ups of the heads:



Eight different heads for the six bodies. It is a bit odd that the faces are not aligned in the same fashion on the sprue; I'm not an expert on injection molding so what do I know?

I rather like these minis. They are the first Wargames Factory minis in my collection - they might not be the last. I have a feeling that they will be used with my wife's Celts, but for now they will go into the unpainted minis pile...


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Action off Götland, part 5

The paints have arrived, and the Navwar order faxed off! I also have some pics of the WTJ ships stored in the camera, which I'll try to post later.

High Seas Fleet links

Here are a pair of links to web sites that have some good information on the German navy circa WW1:

Imperial German Navy deployment 1914

Hochseeflotte Ships


The Hochseeflotte page has several links to ship specs, histories, and some pics.

Fall back, and regroup...

(Yes, yet another sad story...)

So, what I am trying to do is get myself back on track with completing some of those pesky projects that I want to have finished enough to play with, as that is the ultimate goal - PLAYING GAMES! Sometimes I have to remind myself of that, because it is so easy to get distracted by all of the new and shiny minis out there - and so many seem to be coming out recently, of all genres and scales. This means that I have finally sorted things out (yeah, right):

1. Scale - 25/28mm is it. I have been off tangentially into different scales, but these were not a true waste of time/money. I really needed to show myself what the other scales were like and not just ponder them. 10mm just went right out; that was easy. 6mm, despite the glorious pageantry of masses of troops, is out also. The bigger minis are just more fun for me to paint (The magic word - fun), although I will try to finish off some strips of the 6mm EPG guys for Kokigami's sake.

2. Rules - Still my Achilles' heel. Whatever the rules I use, the minis will be singly-mounted for flexibility. I want to have skirmish-style battles, and massed battles. Element basing is nifty, but I do not believe it will work for me.

3. Genres - I just can not stay with one period of gaming, unlike my friend Chirine. But, I do want to have a way of using disparate forces together, either allied or opposed. This harks back to a time, while I was in Spokane, when my now-departed friend George ran his New World campaign... Imagine European countries sending off expeditions to the new world during the great Age of Exploration, only to find, not North America, but the mystical City State from Judge's Guild (now long OOP). George had a smorgasbord of countries represented - Romans, Greeks, samurai, lizardmen, orcs, etc. with the injection of 16th century Europeans as well. I want to have a facsimile of this, all under the aegis of one rules system. The other factor in this is that my wife, Feawin, is wanting to set up a Celtic army, both historical (as in Ancient British) and magical. I'll be collecting a Roman force to oppose it.




So, what does this really mean? The Roman/Celt project is slated to begin next year, and the other armies will revolve around this. I will be painting up what I currently have waiting on (or under) the painting table, namely Empire and Tsolyanu forces, and I'll continue poking around for the 'right' rules set.



Just had to get that off my chest - I feel better already! Thanks for reading!


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Still kicking

Sorry for the long delay - I'm actually making a bit of progress, but no pics to prove it.

I'm dabbling in painting the horses for my Empire outriders.

I have cleaned and primed a unit of Legion of Ever Present Glory bowmen.

But, no pics! Now that the weather has cooled down here, I might be able to open up the blinds and set up the camera. Morning sun is great for pics but can really make a room warm...


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Action off Götland, part 4

Slowly but surely, progress is being made. My first order from WTJ has arrived, and they are beautiful ships indeed. No pics yet; it is just too hot here to mess around in our hobby area but I will take some soon.

I have also sent off for an order of new paints. I am going to try something a bit different this time. Normally, I will purchase specific colors, as I do not like to blend my own shades. But, this time I am going to try it, so the paints I ordered are more basic colors, neutral greys and pure white. I will need to keep track of the recipes of the paints for specific navies as I will never remember them outright.

I am hoping that I can finalize my Navwar order this week; when it arrives I will have everything together for my first scenarios...