A Mystery Dwarf

 Well, the mystery is "where did he come from?"

He's been sitting around in a little zip-top bag in a drawer of odds and ends and unpainted figures for absolutely ages.

He's a nice crisp 28mm resin cast and I'm pretty sure that he arrived chez moi as a freebie in an order from somewhere, but I really cannot remember when that was and which company I'd ordered from.

Anyway, I've not been doing much painting because I was away on holiday in Brittany for the first half of July and my little office/hobby room has been too hot for painting for most of the time since I've been back in the UK.

I have had the chance to start work on some sword-wielding North Star 28mm Mousquetaires and opponents from their 1672 range, mostly the opponents only, if truth be told. I've pretty much just blocked in the main colours on those, but I found time to finish off this little chap in between waiting for the paint to dry on the stabby guys.

I'm really rather pleased now he's turned out. I wasn't sure about a colour scheme for Dwarves for ages, but decided on a muted blue/grey palette, on the basis that in a tunnel or underground chamber muted blues and greys would make an adventurer harder to spot.

Of course, up close on a cropped image taken on a DSLR with a 25.7 megapixel APS-C sensor you'll spot loads of small errors that are near-invisible to the naked eye. In reality, as The Who once sang "It all looks fine to the naked eye but it don't really happen that way at all". You can't really tell from the photo, but he's standing in front of a Jon Hodgson tunnel entrance backdrop

Anyway, back to Shorty. He is obviously a Dwarf of high social standing, lots of nice armour, fancy breastplate etc so maybe he is a famous warrior or some kind of Lord. Who knows? He would be great in D&D.

The last two infantry units for my Midgard Warhammer Empire army

Finally! These are the last two units for my army. First up; a unit of Handgunners; 

I went back to a basic yellow and black colour scheme for these and gave them some kind of NCO whose job is to control the volley firing and reloading drills.

Next are my only other infantry missile troops, some Crossbowmen;

I've used a blue and yellow palette for these because I see them as being Tilean mercenary crossbowmen. 

The backdrop is another Jon Hodgson one.

The Foot contingent of my army is now complete; two groups of Ogres and eight of human footsoldiers, plus various leaders. 

I have assembled twelve armoured cavalry over the last few days, six heavy armoured Lancers to represent Imperial Knights and six armoured Pistoleers. I've got to finish off their horses, because a lot of the horse tack for these Wargames Atlantic Renaissance Heavy Cavalry comes as extra pieces to glue onto the horses. I'll hopefully be able to undercoat them, but I'm not planning on painting them until after my holiday.

Two more Midgard Empire units

I'm getting these finished at last. Once again, these are based on Wargames Atlantic conquistadors.

Below are two units of Warhammer Fantasy Empire spearmen (I'm not sure why the Empire never had pikes);

These are predominantly in the Averland state colours of yellow and black, but both units have a splash of a third colour, red in the top picture and green and red in the lower one. The flag in the upper picture comes from a Warhammer Wiki page and the backdrop is from a Jon Hodgson backdrop book. The first group are clearly better armoured, perhaps they are the guards of some rich lord?

Anyway, I now just have two groups of ranged troops (handgunners and crossbows) to complete and then it will be time to start sticking some Horse together.

Finished some foot units for my Midgard project

 I've been working on this Warhammer Empire project, using Wargames Atlantic conquisadors for ages but I keep losing enthusiasm for it. Anyway, I've finally finished 32 figures as four units of foot troops. Scroll down to see them all.

Above are eight double-handed swordsmen, known as Greatswords in Warhammer Fantasy. Next is a unit of Halberdiers.

Below are two groups of Sword and Buckler men, playing the role of Empire Swordsmen.

Although my original plan was an army representing Averland in yellow and black, I decided to add some extra colour to some of the troops, basically because I was bored with just yellow and black. Black, yellow and red still works for Averland, but the red and blue colour scheme gives me the opportunity to add troops from elsewhere in the Warhammer Empire, in this case from Altdorf. The predominantly red and yellow uniforms could represent Talabecland, or maybe are just a variant of Averland's yellow and black but with a more dominant red component representing the colours of a local lord. It doesn't really matter too much. I've got some blue, yellow and white figures on the go as well. Maybe from Nordland or perhaps Tilean mercenaries?

Overall, it gives me a nice colourful army.

I've also got to work on my cavalry next. These will also be Wargames Atlantic and will be a mixture of armoured types with lances or pistols and lighter horse with lances and swords.

May update; no new painting

Well, it's been too hot to paint in my little room/office and when I've tried the paint has started to dry out in my palette. Instead, I've taken some photos of flowers with my new (actually secondhand) camera body.

I've always been happy with my choice of Pentax cameras and my K70 was and is no exception, but I've long cast envious eyes on the top of the APS-C range Pentax K3 Mk III as a possible next step upgrade. When Ricoh (the owners of the Pentax brand) announced that it would be discontinuing the K3 range (apart from the somewhat specialist K3 Mk III Monochrome) I knew that I'd have to get one before they were all gone. Brand new, the body alone is eye-wateringly expensive but knowing that, I'd been saving up monthly to get the readies for a good quality secondhand body for quite a while.

Luckily, I was able to get one three weeks ago, and these are the first shots I've taken with it. The camera body is heavier than the K70 but it is of a sturdy pro-spec construction and despite the huge range of parameters and options you can tweak it is remarkably intuitive if you are a Pentax regular user (I've been using Pentax kit for decades). Even so, it pays to really read through the user manual to fully understand what everything does. I think that the multiple focus point options come out well in the last picture of a bee on Pyracantha blossoms, a difficult shot from both a contrast and focal point selection perspective.

I'm pleased with the results so far and looking forward to giving the new kit a proper workout over the coming months.

The future of digital SLRs, certainly Pentax ones sold by Ricoh seems in question. Maybe their next step will be to go mirrorless rather than persist with actual pentaprism cameras? Who knows? In any case, I've now got an absolute gem of a camera and I've got my K70 as a more than adequate backup too. I suspect that both cameras will outlast me!

Two more figures from Bad Squiddo

I forgot to post these earlier, so here they are. Scroll down to see both of them.

This is Jeanne d'Arc. She comes in two versions, mounted and on foot. I only have the latter. Both versions come with a nice paper banner and a metal spear to put the banner on. 

Actually, you get two flags, in case you mess up the first! The flag artwork is Martin Whitmore.

The second figure is a fantasy one.

She is a spellcaster, described as an Arcane Witch on the website. As you can see, she is hovering above the ground, buoyed up by her magical powers.

Tieflings

 Yes, Tieflings. Six of them in total. Scroll down to see them all. These ones are from Bad Squiddo.

I decided that a bold colour palette was the way to go for these lovely figures. Above we have a Fighter of some sort, possibly even a Paladin and a spellcaster with a grimoire under her arm and a mystical McGuffin in her hand, maybe a Warlock or Wizard.

Next are two more Fighters. I decided to tie all the more martial Tieflings together with the colour of their clothes, making them kind of swaggering and dandified swashbucklers. The one on the right has some kind of small pet creature on her wrist.

The last two seem to be rather useful additions to any band of dungeon adventurers; another spellcaster and a rogue. I will say that these two are my favourites of the six. I could see the spellcaster working as a Druid, Sorcerer or a Wizard and the Rogue speaks for herself. I mean, everyone likes a sneaky thief with assassin-type skills, surely?

The backdrops are, as usual from Jon Hodgson's terrific books available from Bad Squiddo or Handiwork Games.