Never Mind the Billhooks - Bowmen (Nick)

Following on rapidly from my last post I'm sneaking in 'another' twelve finishes before the New Year arrives, and more War of the Roses... I'm sensing a theme here, and maybe even the faint scent of a fully painted retinue on the horizon?

My first unit of bowmen (bows) for Never Mind the Billhooks (or Archers for Lion Rampant) this time, and again plastics from the Perry Miniatures and their Wars of the Roses Infantry set:

These follow exactly the same process as the previous Billmen and Men-at-Arms, although I forgot to mention that the off-white of the padded, cotton armour and sleeves/leggings is just the white primer with Army Painter Strong Tone ink pre-shading and it seems to work quite well!

Here for good measure are a couple of group shots showing the 'bows and bills' in a combined block together and how they will mostly form up on the WotR field of battle:

Well that's it from me this year, although plenty WIP projects ready for the hope of some early finishes in 2022 including plenty more War of the Roses amongst other things.

These 24 finishes now bring the total for 2021 up to 54 figures onto the 'done' pile and that elusive milestone, at least for me, of 1 figure painted per week with a couple of extras for good measure - quite an achievement for me personally and something I hope I can repeat or even better next year... one a day maybe - we'll see!

Never Mind the Billhooks - Billmen (Nick)

More War of the Roses from me to finish of the year with a flourish.

This time my first unit of twelve billmen (bills) for Never Mind the Billhooks (or Expert Yeomen for Lion Rampant), again plastic figures from Perry Miniatures.

Nothing much more to say that wasn't covered in my previous post on the Men-at-Arms really, except this now brings my yearly total to 42 finished and off the pile of shame:

These are actually built from the Mercenaries box rather than the more usual War of the Roses Infantry box, and are converted using the pikemen arms with cutdown pikes and the alternative polearms heads from the command sprue as suggested on the box as an option.
 - I really wanted to do at least one unit like this as a bit of variety from all the others that will be built using the proper billmen arms, however the 1mm joint is very fragile even with liquid poly cement which should fuse the two parts together!

So the New Year is rapidly approaching... but I might not be done just yet?

Never Mind the Billhooks - Men-at-Arms (Nick)

Another week, and 3 more onto the finished pile... again something different, and the first Men-at-Arms from my War of the Roses collection for Never Mind the Billhooks - a freebie ruleset by Andy Callan that came with Wargames Illustrated issue #393 in September 2020.

The start of this collection was my original 'one box' attempt at a retinue for Lion Rampant as previously mentioned, and although most of that minimal force was built and primed only some was part painted.

The figures are all the excellent plastic WotR figures from Perry Miniatures, a mixture of components from the War of the Roses Infantry, Mercenaries and Foot Knights sets - as are all the figures I have built so far.

These are in fact part of a larger 12 man units for 'Billhooks' (or 2x 6 man units in Lion Rampant), but as the only ones so far wearing surcoats/livery they were singled out and painted separately - they were also used as temporary leaders at the inaugural Never Mind the Billhooks event held at Boards and Swords Hobbies in Derby at the beginning of September before they were properly finished.

The Green and Orange livery stems from my 'orange period' about 5 years ago (see my Concord C3 for Antares) when I was looking to paint things orange as a colour I rarely used - wanting, as usual, to keep my historical figures historically accurate were possible I went looking for any WotR livery using orange (especially as orange isn't a heraldic colour used on medieval knights, so I would be substituting yellow there as we have already seen)
Knowing orange and green are great contrasting colours, that is exactly what I researched to find just one Tawney/Orange livery which belonged to Lord Thomas Stanley... later to become the 1st Earl of Derby, and with this added bonus of local history the decision was made for me!

Being a Yorkist at heart we have to gloss over what Lord Stanley may or may not have done at Bosworth in 1485 to seal the fate of Richard III, however I will gladly field his forces as Yorkist much the same as he did himself mostly but with the still historical option of being temporarily Lancastrian if needs must (although I can't vouch how well he will fight on those occasions?)

The figures originally started for Lion Rampant were primed white and pre-shaded with Army Painter Strong Tone ink, before using a suitably muted orange (Macharius Solar Orange) and green (Knarloc Green) from the old Citadel Foundation paints as the main colours - with the intention of using the famed Army Painter Strong Tone 'dip' as a quick, hard wearing solution to create a pleasing finish.

Things have changed quite a bit since then and I certainly wouldn't have had 48hrs for 'dip' to dry in time for the last minute painting needed for that Billhooks 'BASH', fortunately I discovered Citadel Contrast paints (Gryph-Hound Orange & Creed Camo) that were satisfying close enough with the pre-shading muting the finish slightly and adding depth as well for a much faster finish good enough for the event.

This is now me going back to finish them properly, especially with the recent announcement of the next Billhooks 'BASH' in March and the soon to be released NMTB 2nd edition - using the previous Foundation paint colours as improved highlights where the Contrast paints conveniently indicate, in the hope I can reverse the process to blend in the figures previously started in the old paints.

That's now 30 finishes in 2021, just 5 behind Carl I believe but there are plenty more of these WotR figures to finish if nothing else so hopefully I can continue with a strong finish to the year?

Gaslands - Idris Performance Cars (Nick)

A couple more for the month of finishes, and yet another departure with my first team of cars for Gaslands Refuelled from Osprey Publishing - I say finishes, these weren't even started 24hrs before the game I'd been invited to last Thursday evening!

Both cars are 1/64 diecast toy cars from Hot Wheels - 'Flash Drive' and '24 Ours', bought many years ago when the original 'blue series' book was new... with a resurgence of interest locally (including Carl), the 'Refuelled' version was a much more recent purchase just a few weeks ago, being hardback and 3 times the page count.

Both cars were dismantled to make painting easier and all the wheels glued in place, with just the small addition of a resin minigun from Ramshackle Games and a cut-down 20mm scale American .50cal machine gun from AB Figures.

I'm not sure if I ever had a paint scheme in mind for these, but more recently I saw it as an opportunity to try the Chameleon colour shift paints from Green Stuff World - Storm Surge Green in this instance.
 - if I'm honest I don't think the surface area is large enough or sufficiently curved to show them off at their best, but it's still a nice and unusual finish which does vary between turquoise green and blue at different angles.

The addition of a white racing stripe was a last minute decision, and although not my neatest work I think it does add that something extra I felt they needed to break up the solid colour.

I had always intended these to be 'factory fresh' with just a small amount of paint chipping and weathering, but in the end I couldn't bring myself to deface the paintwork and possibly end up ruining them with the Chameleon paint being difficult to touch up if necessary - instead I will move on to another team, I doubt any others will be this shiny and chrome!

Nearly half way through December now and I'm not sure what else will see the finish line, but several projects on the go so fingers crossed?

WAB - Germanic Fanatics (Nick)

Only 3 days into December and here's another 6 moved off the pile of shame... this new regime is proving a belter so far - again these have been sat at least 6 months just needing shields attaching, varnish, and static grass - although I am starting to run out of projects that don't need a lick of paint now!

These are the first of the Fanatics for my Germanic Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB) army, more OOP figures but metal though this time from Black Tree Designs - as you can see they are mostly not wearing very much in the way of clothes, with just some Wargames Factory plastic shields bearing LBMS shield designs (again) to hide their dignity... if they have any that is:

These are much nicer figures than the Wargames Factory plastics and almost paint themselves - again using mostly ink washes with the odd Contrast Paint where a stronger colour is required, such as the died red hair (as long as they are not caught down at the river bank by marauding Romans!)
To be honest if they were currently available I would be sorely tempted to replace the whole army with this range... but alas that will have to wait until the day they are re-released, which I am assured they will be, but who knows when?

I used the Wargames Factory plastic shields again as the supplied metal shields do not have any LBMS designs to fit, and although I tried to paint a few to match, they are just no substitute for using these great looking decals across the whole army.
That said, I have also purchased some plastic shields and matching LBMS decals from Victrix to add variety in shape and size while still keeping the same overall look.

Why 6 of them you may ask when the WAB unit will surely be much bigger (28 figures I think), well I have 24 of these plus some oddments to make up the whole unit so a few easy batches like these and the whole unit will be done - but mainly because it's the size of a fanatics unit in Infamy, Infamy - so in fact that's a unit finished for now!

With 19 easy wins finished in just under a week I'm really happy so far, however as hinted at above this production rate is almost certainly due to slow somewhat as I start working on figures that are not nearly as finished as these were - still, plenty of days left in 2021 so let's see what can be accomplished?

Lion Rampant - Fierce Foot (Nick)

It's like buses... nothing for months and then 3 posts come along at once - ding, ding!

Here we have more figures that have been waiting ages for static grass and tufts etc, this time my 3rd unit for Lion Rampant and only 11 months after the last one rather than 2 1/2 years... things are improving?

Again the figures are from Curtey's Miniatures, javelin men that I intended to represent Fierce Foot - however they could easily be divided into two more units of Bidowers, or added to some WIP Foot Yeomen as a mixed unit or two.

The figures are actually supplied with small shields/bucklers but haven't decided whether I want to add them or not, so I'm calling them finished for now and will come back to them later if necessary - with shields they could even be an alternative unit of Foot Yeomen themselves.

They have been painted exactly the same way as the previous Bidowers so I won't repeat the process here except to emphasise those brighter green and yellow spot colours making an appearance again.

So a few days of not actually 'painting' and already another 13 figures moved onto the done pile... I'm sure the paint brush will be out again soon, but so far it's looking promising for a strong finish to the year - here's hoping it is.

Age of Sigmar - Crypt Ghoul (Nick)

Well we're not even into December yet and here we are, with the first finish of the new relaxed regime - just static grass added to a figure I'd been working on for a while.

This is a Crypt Ghoul from Games Workshop, the test piece from a potential Flesh Eater Courts army for Age of Sigmar:

Mostly Citadel Contrast Paints over a Black/White zenithal prime to provide extra depth and shadow, I'm hoping they prove fairly quick to churn out if I proceed and the dark red (Flesh Tearers Red) you can't quite see on the loincloth, as well as the leathery brown (Snakebite Leather), will provide great contrasting spot colours against the icy blue (Gryph-Charger Grey).

Also my first time using Green Stuff World's Coagulated Blood effect as befits the background theme of these creatures, but definitely went for the less is more approach rather than too much gore which I'm not a great fan of.

Day 365 - a year of paint-on-brush (Nick)

Saturday marked a full year of Carl & I trying to put 'paint on a brush' every day, with mixed results.

I myself, have somehow managed to put paint on a brush (and actually on to some part of a model) every day for all 365 days with only two misses which couldn't be avoided - not always much to show for it, but even hotel stays and our holiday were accompanied by a brush, a single pot of paint, and something simple like a few shield rims to paint.

Carl on the other hand, has 'fallen off the horse' on numerous occasions but managed to complete about twice as many models as me - so who is the winner I'm not sure... maybe we both are, or perhaps just our hobby in general.

I have now discussed with Carl that going forward I have decided to relax my self-imposed rule that it must be some sort of painting, and just do 'something' at my workstation every day - be it varnishing, base texture, static grass etc. or even just prepping and assembling more miniatures.
I have quite a chunk of models that are 'nearly' there from the last 12 months, but as those last stages aren't strictly painting they haven't crossed the finish line yet - the hope is this will give them that much needed push... tbh even the painting has been very minimal on many days just to put a tick in the box, and the hope is this will end up more productive and ironically probably lead to an increased volume of painting too.

 - let's see what the last month of 2021 brings and hopefully up the tally of finishes?

Pond Wars Frog (Carl)

Something a bit different this time!

This is a model from a growing group of swamp warbands I'm working on for Open Combat. This is a Frog from the Pond Wars range at Eureka Miniatures . How or why a frog is armed with a musket is not a question any sane person would ask, they should be asking where's that frog with a musket pointing it?!

Loved working on this model, loads of character and it'll be another fun little warband for Open Combat when I've finished them all. Yes there are more on the way!

Blood Bowl Goblins (Carl)

I've finally finished the final few players for my Goblin Blood Bowl team. I've still got a few extras to do like reroll models, biased Ref, mascot etc. But as far as the actual players in the pitch. They're finally finished and ready for action!

Have to admit I'm pretty pleased with how it's all come together. Looking forward to getting up to some Goblin shenanigans on the field when the league starts.

And finally, the whole team shot:

Goblin Pirate (Carl)

This one was a quick 'get it finished' job on a Black Scorpion goblin pirate model that has sat in the Work In Progress pile for ages.

I think it went through several colourways along the route to finish and ended up being a murky concoction of browns. I never really had a clear picture in my head of what I was working towards. So, in the end I just decided to go with it and finish it off no matter what state the colour combination was in - just get it done.

I've got another Black Scorpion goblin pirate in a similar position (multiple attempted and abandoned colour combinations) which I'll just get done soon too. Sometimes just not having a clear picture in head when I start a mini goes awry. What is odd is my other goblin pirates were easy and came together really well but they were very colourful so perhaps that's where I went wrong, attempting to apply more realistic colours on a Goblin's outfit!

ECW Irish Drummer (Carl)

Another addition to the Irish brigade for my English Civil War Montrose force.

This time the drummer for the Eureka Miniatures Pike block I'm putting together.

Commandante Moreno (Carl)

As soon as I saw this model by Bad Squiddo Games I knew I wanted it. Commandante Moreno is quite clearly inspired by the character of the same name from the Sharpe series of novels and TV series by Bernard Cornwell.

I'll use her in my Napoleonic games, originally bought to be a 'stand in' spy I'll likely use her as part of a British Peninsula Allied force when I've finished my French force.

Blood Bowl Goblins and Ball (Carl)

Another two Goblins for my Goblin Blood Bowl team, plus an old 3rd edition Ball.

The Hooligan is an old Blood Bowl Fan/Hooligan from (I think) 2nd edition Blood Bowl but I can't remember for sure (had them soooo long). I've got three others WiP on my painting desk that I'll be using for Re-Roll markers.

I've now just got four more regular Goblins and a Chainsaw Loonie to finish and that'll be the team complete.

I've painted the Hooligan with a slightly different base to the main team as I wanted to make the visual connection with the concept of a fan running onto the field to give someone a kicking.

ECW Irish Priest (Carl)

Another model has joined my growing band of ECW Irish for my Montrose force.

This one is another from the range by Eureka Miniatures, a priest putting the fear of God into enemy and ally alike.

Japanese Ashigaru (Carl)

I was going to wait until I'd finished another model before posting this one as it sort of goes with it, but progress has slowed a bit this week.

This is one of Eureka Miniatures Ashigaru. Reading around the subject of uniforms it seems that the Ashigaru didn't really have much in the way of uniforms so this one (and the three others I'm painting) will all be having different treatments of the cloth. The armour will be consistent across them though, so that will hopefully tie them together.