Elves! But not the Santa's Little Helpers variety

There are twelve in total, all metal Oathmark 28mm ones. Scroll down to see them all.

Above are two heavily-armoured High Elf warriors, a herald and a fearsome fighter with a two-handed sword.

Below, we have a hero with a mighty two-handed mace and an Elven King with a two-handed sword, probably one of those legendary blades forged by Elven smiths at the Dawn of Time.

Next up, another mighty Even warrior and an Elf Cleric.

Next a wise and puissant Elven Mage and his trusty companion, an Elf Ranger

Below are two female Elven warriors, a herald and heroic swordswoman.

And finally, two more Elf Rangers, ever alert to evil beings who might threaten the Elven homelands.

The scenery is all 3D printed stuff and the backdrops are, as usual, from one of my Jon Hodgson backdrop books.

I don't usually do WIP posts but here is one today

I'm working on a fantasy army for Midgard using Wargames Atlantic Conquistadors. 

This chap below will be its general.

He is kitbashed from a Perry War of the Roses horse and horse armour, a Wargames Atlantic Renaissance mounted body and arms and a Warlord Games Landsknecht head. Since taking this picture, I have cleaned up the blemishes from where things were attached to sprues and he's ready for undercoating.

The fantasy army in question will be based upon a Warhammer Empire Averland force, so I think that the inspiration for the general is fairly obvious. In case you aren't familiar with Warhammer Fantasy, the original is this guy below;

He is the Elector Count of Averland, Marius Leitdorf. My figure is going to keep the black armour and red and yellow sleeves and also the metallic blue horse armour, but I'm definitely not painting suns on it.

I'm hoping he will look pretty good once completed. I'll probably undercoat him later today.

I'm still painting up the first few groups of his infantry, but none are near completion yet.

Egyptian ruins, plus a fountain.

 First, the fountain;

This is another 3D print from Dungeon Scenes. The murky green water has been given a coat of acrylic gloss varnish. I allowed the green paint to go up the walls of the fountain, hoping to create the effect of algal growth. I think it looks OK. The 28mm guy is for scale only.

Next a number of resin pieces from The Square, who can be found at many trade shows. These are all based up for desert-based gaming;

Spot the 28mm guy, he's looking pretty small against these pieces.

These were easy enough to paint; base coat spray, dry-brushing in lighter colours, a wash here and there to bring out the details, a few bits of Gamers' Grass and lots of sandy ballast. Job done.

Hopefully these will get plenty of fantasy, pulp, VSF and eldritch horror use.

I'm going to have to get back to painting actual minis now. Sadly, the painting mojo is still hiding somewhere.

It's been over a month since my last post.

"Well, why is that?" you might ask, and the simple answer is The Dreaded Painter's Block. It isn't that I've done no painting at all, it is just that I keep losing interest and leaving things half done.

However, I have found a way to actually complete a few things, by painting things that are simple and have very few stages from undercoating to completion and here are some of them;

Firstly, above are eight Skeleton Warriors.  I actually really like painting Skellies. They are a quick win, which is why I dug these out from a box of odds and ends and got working on them. I hoped that they would kickstart me into doing a few more things, and they have. Below are a few more quick wins, a giant snake and two small dinosaurs;

I'm working on the basis that one day I'll need a giant snake and a couple of small dinos.

I bought all the above from Bad Squiddo. Annie occasionally goes through her stock and sells off odds and ends that she no longer wants to keep in the catalogue as sale items. It is worth checking regularly to see what she has in her Bargain Bin. Remember though that once these things are gone, they probably won't be restocked.

I've got a few other things nearing completion, so they will be another post.

Spanish Unit For The Silver Bayonet

I haven't posted anything for over three weeks, but I have been busy, mostly working on Napoleonic Spanish types. First up, is my Spanish unit for The Silver Bayonet, a set of rules for Gothic Horror during the Napoleonic Wars. There are eight figures in total.

These four above are the more "regular" troops, an Artilleryman, an Officer, an Infantryman and a Sapper. Below are four "irregular" types, a Guerrilla, a Veteran Hunter, a Champion of the Faith and a Swordsman. All these eight labels have specific meanings within the rules.

The figures are from the official range of figures produced by North Star and I have to say that they are excellent sculpts with lots of character and nice details. I decided when painting them that I wasn't going to get too bothered over making them specific to any particular Spanish units of the period. After all, it is basically a fantasy game, although some of these could be used in historical Peninsular War games, probably as characters or specialists for Sharp Practice, although they are quite chunky and on the large size compared with Perry figures, for example.

Anyway, I now finally have a force to use for games of The Silver Bayonet. I'll have to find time to paint up the French and British sets at some point.

If you suffer from arachnophobia ..................

 ........................ look away now! Lots and lots of spiders.

These are Wargames Atlantic's giant spiders with the sci fi add-ons of face visors, big guns and robotic legs (well, not all the legs). To give some idea of their size, they are based on 4cm circular MDF bases. I shall definitely be using these as Greater Xenomorphs for Xenos Rampant and they could also be used in lots of other settings.

In addition to the 12 giant spiders that are in the set, you also get 12 smaller spiders on the sprues. I've painted 10 of them to use as a Swarm in Xenos Rampant but they could obviously pop up anywhere.

I used some spare 3cm circular plastic bases which I didn't use when I made up 10 Space Marines recently. Waste not, want not, I say. These don't have any weapons, well apart from their teeth and poison stings.

I decided on a brown palette for all the spiders because I wanted them to look like an alien menace from a semi-arid environment. They were undercoated in Army Painter Leather Brown spray primer, drybrushed with Vallejo Orange Brown and then the little details were painted in. I gave the giant ones bronze weapons with green on the biological-looking parts, and I used red on the eyepieces of their face masks. The ones with visible eyes had them painted black, the same as on the smaller arachnids. Finally, they were given a wash of Winsor & Newton Peat Brown drawing ink.

All the tufts on the bases are from Gamer's Grass.

North Star Frostgrave Necromancer and Apprentice

Back in February, Nick Eyre at North Star announced a painting competition. The objective was to paint the new Frostgrave Necromancer figure. Of course, I had to give it a go. I bought the figure, who comes with a nice (well, nice if you exclude all the necromancy stuff) apprentice. They arrived, I prepped and undercoated them and then I caught Covid and didn't feel much like painting for a few weeks. Finally, I got back to painting and today I finally finished them and even got them varnished, because it stopped raining and the sun came out. Here are my finished efforts; Necromancer front and back, ditto for the apprentice and then both of them together.

He is a pretty dynamic figure and, being a resin cast is beautifully crisp. I decided to do a fairly simple base to portray a blasted heath with clumps of dead grass. The tufts are by Gamer's Grass. Overall, I think he looks OK.

Here is his evil sidekick. He clearly graduated from pulling the wings off of flies a few years ago.

Annoyingly, I noticed a stray piece of ballast on the strap of his bag after uploading the photo. It is gone now, but doesn't really matter because it is the main man who matters for the competition, which I am not expecting to win anyway. It is the taking part that matters.

I think they have come out reasonably well. Certainly good enough for gaming purposes, which is the reason I paint things in the first place.

Here they are together;

Wizards and Apprentices

 Over the last week, I've managed to finish off two wizards and a pair of sorcerer's apprentices. First the apprentices;

The one on the left appears to have been inspired by a certain literary schoolboy wizard who has become a star of the silver screen and the older one on the right looks as though he might take a darker path if given the chance. On the other hand, he could just be harbouring Hamlet tendencies.

Like the wizards below, the apprentices are by Mark Copplestone and they are really nice minis. The wizards, however, are even better, really superb sculpts.

The taller, more threatening-looking wizard definitely has a strong resemblance to a very famous Grey Wizard, variously known as Olórin, Tharkûn, Incánus, Mithrandir, Stormcrow, Láthspell and, to most of us, Gandalf. In the Fellowship of the Ring, when confronting the Balrog in the deep places of Moria, Gandalf described himself as "a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor". He is probably even more famous than the schoolboy wizard above, well he certainly ought to be. 

His companion is a charming figure, a wise old chap with a book of spells, clearly about to wreak havoc upon some unruly and dangerous opponents, or maybe just lecturing a class of apprentices at Wizard School. Perhaps he is one of the Istari of Middle Earth, most likely one of the two Blue Wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who Tolkien also called Morinehtar and Rómestámo elsewhere in his Unfinished Tales. Who knows? These two wizards are only mentioned in passing in the Lord of the Rings books, suggesting that they travelled far into the unknown East of Middle Earth.

Of course, all four figures have a lot of possibilities; Frostgrave, Rangers of Shadowdeep, Saga Age of Magic, Dragon Rampant, 7TV Fantasy etc

And the skies clear for long enough to get things varnished ...............

......... with no fear of fogging! Here are the first few (page down to see them all).

I've been sitting on a number of painted items from the Frostgrave Maze of Malcor supplement. Firstly, the Wraith of Malcor;

He is supposed to be accompanied by his Advisory Council, but I can see both him and his Council working for many different scenarios in other sets of rules;

I really should have photographed them all together. Maybe I'll do that for a later post.

Next, a bizarre thing called a Collegium Porter, perhaps a distant relative of Rincewind's Luggage?

I have to say that I really like this piece. I mean, who doesn't like a bit of angry animated furniture?

The last item from The Maze of Malcor ended up being painted as something entirely different. He was supposed to be a Coal Man, but I thought that he would be more useful as a generic Stone Troll;

I really like this model and I am really happy with the way he has turned out, especially with the tufts of vegetation growing out from various crevices and crannies.

I've got more things to photograph, but they can wait for another day.

More Maze of Malcor - a Bog Man

This is one of the creatures from the Maze of Malcor Bestiary. 

According to the rules, a Bog Man is a kind of Undead creature found in bogs and marshes. They have no skeleton and are basically a human-shaped bag of flesh filled with mud and marsh gas.

I painted this one to look like he'd been rotting away in some smelly quicksand environment before emerging to do whatever it is that Bog Men do. My main aim was to make him look smelly and decomposing. I think I succeeded.

The figure is from the official North Star range of Frostgrave figures. 

Maze of Malcor - Four Wizard Shades and a Banshee

Ages ago, when it was first announced I bought the Frostgrave Maze of Malcor book and the associated range of figures from North Star. Sadly, our then-current Frostgrave campaign at the club came to an end and we all decided on a break from Frostgrave. I never painted up any of the figures, well not until now.

In the book, the Wizard Shades are portrayed as incorporeal but with a normal appearance. I decided that I wanted them to look more "ghostly".

As you can see, I've used a greenish palette for these figures, making them, hopefully, look a bit more like generic ghostly apparitions, or maybe even statues. Who knows? They could come in useful for all sorts of games with horror-based, gothic or supernatural settings.

I took a slightly different approach with the Banshee, giving her a reddish tinge to her flesh and hair. I wanted to make her look a bit different to the other apparitions. I'm not sure that I'm totally happy with the outcome, but she will have to do.

I'd be interested to see what others think about these.

7TV Fantasy - eleven more figures, the rest of Vanozza's crew

Having recently posted a couple of Vanozza's most trusted lieutenants, it is time to reveal the rest of her crew of rogues, freebooters and outcasts.

All the figures above are originally figures from the North Star range of Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, as are the next three. The figure on the left in blue was supposed to be a Storm Warden but, as she was cast with what looks like a quiver of arrows, I decided to give her a bow. This was cut from the Frostgrave Cultist plastic sprue. The hand is a bit chunky, but hey ho, it looks OK from a distance. The figure in the middle was originally a Heritor, but she looks good as some kind of renegade from a warship's complement of Marines.

The archer on the right and these next three are Ghost Archipelago female crew figures.

The last five figures are a mixture. I think the archer at the back was a free offering from a Wargames Foundry order ages ago. I am not sure what he is supposed to be, and the snake woman with the sword and buckler combo  at the bottom right is from Bad Squiddo. The other three are Ghost Archipelago figures, a tribal islander, a Drichean warrior and a snake man warrior.

I am a big fan of the Ghost Archipelago range, not because I play the game, but because the range offers up a lovely variety of figures that can be used for all manner of different things.

Anyway, I think that this crew is a pretty nice varied set of desperadoes to fight alongside Vanozza, her giant iguana, and her trusted officers Marozia and Theodora.

7TV Fantasy - a couple of pirates for Vanozza's crew.

At the end of September I introduced Vanozza the Fearless, Pirate Queen of the Perilous Islands. Here are the two most important members of her crew.

On the left is Marozia, a one-eyed former soldier (she served disguised as a man), who is the First Mate of Vanozza's flagship, The Grinning Skull. She still wears the uniform of the Marines of Albion, the unit in which she served for several years before deciding that freelancing would be more profitable.

Her companion is Theodora, who was born far away in the fabled lands of the Southern Deserts, where women are the equals of men and who was once a captain in the army of the City of Ulthar until she was captured in battle and enslaved by the Lizard People of the Great Desert. She managed to escape from captivity and became a freebooter on a pirate galley that sailed the waters of the Narrow Sea, eventually making her way to the Perilous Islands where she joined Vanozza's crew. She is now her trusted comrade and commander of the raiding parties that pillage the ports and inland villages of the Slave Coast.

Like Vanozza, these two are Bad Squiddo minis with all the crisp detail that makes Annie's figures such a pleasure to paint.

Resin McGuffins that I forgot I had

These were part of the Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago Nickstarter that North Star ran ages ago, in 2017, I think. I bought mine from Bad Squiddo, because Annie had extra figures that I liked.

To be honest, I've never got round to playing the game, it had minimal interest at the club so I just packed all the figures away. I've used a few of the figures for my 7TV Fantasy project but I'd completely forgotten these little tokens. There are all between 2.5cm and 3.5cm in diameter and have some nice little details. The thing on the left is a weird skull, but I stupidly posed it the wrong way round.

 

7TV Fantasy - four adventurers from the Frozen Northlands

Here are four more good characters for the cast of Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom, my imaginary TV fantasy series of the 1960s and 70s;

These are Anastasia and Irina, twin sisters from the icy land of Novgorod. The sisters are adventurers with some special skills. Anastasia, on the left has some skill with the mystical arts as well as being a redoubtable swordswoman and Irina is a skilled thief and also rumoured to be a dangerous assassin. Exiled from their homelands following their father's unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the autocratic rule of Sviatoslav, the ruling Prince of Novgorod, the sisters swiftly found employment amongst the quarrelsome dukes and margraves of the Great Empire of Sigismondo before fleeing from imperial justice and finding refuge in the Enchanted Kingdom, where they now ply their trade for discerning patrons. 

They are always accompanied by their two faithful oathsworn retainers, Ivar and Sveyn, formerly warriors in the army of their late father, the Boyar of the Western Hills, who now act as protectors of the sisters. 

Ivar is a fearsome fighter with his bardiche, a great two-handed poleaxe and Sveyn is a formidable swordsman. The two warriors are feared and hated by the Goblins of the Mountains and they are also sworn enemies of all Undead things.

These four figures are all from the North Star Frostgrave range of miniatures and they were huge fun to paint.

More 7TV Fantasy villains

In my original post about my 7TV Fantasy project, I referred to three "goblin" brothers (derived heavily from Tolkien's Orcs), Gomba, Banda and Munga, who were regular baddies for hire. Here they are;

These are metal Goblins champions from the North Star Oathmark range and to my eyes they definitely have the classic look of Tolkien's Mordor about them. Of course, I had to give them green skin, a nod to the days of the original Warhammer Fantasy game, but apart from that, they could easily be part of the band of Orcs who captured Frodo after his and Sam's encounter with Shelob and took him to the tower of Cirith Ungol.

Anyway, they are, from left to right Gomba, Banda and Munga, three cunning and wicked goblins who will work for anyone who will pay them, as well as operating as bandits and slaver traders in their own right.

Back to 7TV Fantasy - two more villainous characters

After the diversion into 1/10 scale painting, it is good to get back to the 28mm fantasy stuff.  These two are definitely villains;

Both are actually Frostgrave figures from North Star, but I am using them as two of the major bad guys from my imaginary Anglo-Italian TV series, Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom. I have already alluded to the Guild of Torturers and these two brutal-looking characters are leading members of the Guild.

On the left is Hengist the Executioner and the figure on the right is his regular associate, Landulf the Pitiless, a torturer by trade but willing to do anything illegal for money.

I decided on a dark minimal colour palette for these and I think it works pretty well. I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't mistake these two for friendly assistance under many circumstances, although if you were willing to pay them enough gold they might do you a good turn.

7TV Fantasy - Vanozza the Fearless, a Pirate Queen

In my introductory post, I mentioned Vanozza the Fearless, a pirate captain, and here she is;

She is a Bad Squiddo figure, originally intended to complement the release of Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago, but although I bought the rules and some minis, I've never actually played the game. As you can see, she has a pet, a very grumpy Giant Iguana. I like this figure a lot and I've given her a back story to fit in with my imaginary TV series, Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom. 

Vanozza was the illegitimate child of a one of the great Lords of the Enchanted Kingdom and his concubine. From an early age she rebelled against her father and ran away from home many times. Eventually, she was sent away to live with a community of priestesses on an island off the southern coast. She was captured by a fleet of slavers who had raided the island of the priestesses, carrying off valuable treasures and many captives. The teenage Vanozza was sold to a sea captain, who was later killed by pirates. Vanozza joined the pirate crew and rose through the ranks because of her almost insane fearlessness, her aggressive attitude and her ability to read and write (much valued by the largely-illiterate pirate crew).

Over the years, Vanozza became the Captain of her own ship and now commands a fleet of six large ships and three smaller sloops. From her fortress in the Perilous Islands, she raids far and wide. Because she wages an unceasing war against the Slavers, many of the rulers and governors of the islands and coastal communities see her as their protector and pay her a tribute to defend them and not plunder their shipping.

I am working on her crew, and I'll post them later in the week.

7TV Fantasy - A pair of Jesters for Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom

Here is something a bit different, a pair of Jesters from Bad Squiddo Games;

I have always loved these two, but never really had a handy niche in which to fit them. Now, with 7TV Fantasy, I can use them, or maybe just the guy on top as a Fool.

And here they are from behind;

There is so much wonderful detail in this sculpt and bags of character in the two jesters. They were an absolute joy to paint, superb crisp casting and no cleaning up required before priming them.

So, to fit them into the context of my background story, Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom, I'll need their story.

These two are Antonio (the agile juggler) and Decimo (the sturdy support), two travelling tumblers and jesters who have been known to attach themselves to parties of adventurers when funds become short and belts need tightening. Antonio and Decimo, it is said, used to be Official Jesters at the Court of the Great Emperor Sigismondo who left under a large and threatening cloud when certain valuable portable items went missing from the Imperial Jewellery Collection. These items were stored in a sealed and guarded chamber but somehow disappeared one night. The mission was said to have been impossible but the presence of a rope left by an open skylight showed that the thief had been lowered down into the chamber, leaving in the same way. Anyway, the jewels were gone, as were "Ant and Dec" as they are known to many.

7TV Fantasy - Seven Elves for Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom

Here are some more fantasy figures for my 7TV fantasy project, once again characters from that legendary TV series "Tales From The Enchanted Kingdom". These are Grey Elves of the Great Forest.

First here is Oberon, Lord of the Elves, a great Paladin and Artemisia, Lady of the Grey Elves, a mighty Sorceress.

Next, here are three great Elven heroes, Achates, Pallas and Anchises. They appeared in the very first episode of the first series but were not given names until their next appearance several episodes later.  

These are the only other Elvish characters who were ever named in the programme. On the left is Juturna and on the right is Ascanius the Herald.

Their names were taken from the Aeneid, presumably because that work was no longer covered by copyright and therefore unlikely to incur any angry letters from lawyers, which was a problem that bedevilled the series throughout its existence.

These figures are all Oathmark Elves, available from Northstar.

I decided to give their weapons and armour a light blue effect, to represent their otherworldly magical properties. I think it has come out rather nicely. The design on the shield is a hand-painted tree. It is OK, but could have been better.