Lion Rampant - bidowers (Nick)

Ah, so the Dark Ages miniatures mentioned at the close of my last post slipped by the wayside for one reason or another and Plan B was put into action for the games at Salute - thanks to Carl for some last minute beg & borrow on that one! (don't worry they are on their way, just not finished... yet!)

Instead I finally finished my first proper unit for Lion Rampant, well two units really as they will mostly be used as bidowers which are taken in units of six.

These guys have been waiting something ridiculous like two years for the bases to get done, and although I desperately want to go back and add highlights and more detail in the faces, I guess it's better to finish some more units to this standard first!

The miniatures are all medieval slingers from Curteys Miniatures, primed with various green and brown sprays from Army Painter, Plastic Soldier Company and even and old can of Russian Green from Miniature Paints for the main tunic colours.  Then matching colours and a few alternative 'spot' colours were used throughout to hopefully create a muted, rag-tag but cohesive appearance.

If you look carefully you might notice the odd instance of a brighter green and yellow, these are my chosen livery colours which you should seen popping up in every unit.

After picking out the hands and faces with Dwarf Flesh, a liberal wash of Vallejo's Sepia Shade 'Dipping Formula' was applied and that was it apart from the long awaited basing.

The bases themselves are deliberately fussy to convey the impression of scrub and undergrowth were these skirmishing troops are most likely to be found, taking advantage of whatever cover and broken ground they can find.

Even though I only had to finish the bases on these 12 (and I may come back to them later), I'm calling them done for now which bumps my yearly total up to 46 completed so far... not that many as we are now into May, but at least I get to keep these ones and it all counts as off the lead mountain!

EXTERMINATE! ...Dr Who Daleks & Cybermen (Nick)

Having finally picked up a paint brush for the first time in over 4 months!!  I'm following Carl's new mantra of posting any easy wins that I can count as 'finished' and no longer on the painting pile.
...whether I manage 365 minis in 365 days remains to be seen, but anything is progress so I won't worry about it too much.

This time I've got the miniatures from the Warlord Games boxed game EXTERMINATE! The Miniatures Game for Doctor Who, featuring those classic enemies and monsters/bad guys - Daleks and Cybermen.

Not really my miniatures as such, these are painted to be used for demo games but they are still off my pile of WIP miniatures so one of those 'easy wins'.

The miniatures are well detailed and crisply moulded and designed to be a good push-fit, although I glued them to be sure.
I tried something a bit different with these and primed them with Army Painter 'Anti-shine' straight over the pre-coloured gold (Daleks) and silver (Cybermen) plastic!  Although nominally a clear matt varnish, like all matt varnishes it has a slight grainy texture which would then hold the washes to follow and show the original colour underneath without any need to use a coloured primer or basecoat.

Here they all are in that 'primed' state:

After the 'primer' and ink wash, it was a simple case of a few highlights before adding details, and they painted up really well - all I needed to do before returning them to Warlord was a few details I'd missed on the Daleks and finish the bases properly on the Cybermen - this was another departure from what I'm used to as I tried the 'Agrellan Earth' texture paint from Games Workshop to create a cracked earth finish similar to the quarry side of the 2-sided battle mat included in the game - after a reddish wash, quick drybrush and sparing application of suitable tufts I have to say I really like the end result!



So with those cheeky little Cybermen Transmats in there that's 34 miniatures finished and off the 'Lead' mountain for 2018, although I'm not sure yet what will be next ...if nothing else I've got some Dark Ages minis needed in time for Salute in just 5 weeks!