Early Saxon Reference

Just some quick reference pictures taken from the inter-net. Researching new eras is really fun and can be full of surprises. I am amazed at the range of colours used and the bright spear shafts will be a nice touch to my rather drab army.

Arthur takes a break

The Warlord Arthur takes a break and enjoys a squirrel lunch, times are hard...

Making Early Saxons from Old

 West Wind Saxon heads really come into their own when trying to re age these figures.

 Since taking these pictures I have sculpted furs and cloaks. Nothing says early Saxons more than a cloak and some fur on the shoulders. I think it sets them apart from the later look, something tells me I will be going crazy with the green stuff.

 Here are some of my old painted Essex minis, the bare headed ones are fine but the nasal helmet guys will have to be changed.

A large base with around twelve figures on it, I intend to use Footsore miniatures for the leaders and command as they are some of the best sculpts on the market. My old Saxon figures will back these up.

Sutton WHO?

Early Saxons

This new year I have been playing around with getting a base of Early Saxons painted up for Dux Bellorum. I have around a hundred old Saxon figures from Essex Miniatures I painted back in 1998. A lot of these figures are for a late Saxon ( Hastings) range but can be easily used for early stuff too. I have bought some extra heads from west wind productions and I'm in the middle of cutting off the nasal helmets and replacing them with earlier designs. Single heads are great for conversion work and West wind do a nice range, they will come into their own now there are lots of plastic ranges to play around with.
 Anyway, I thought I would give you all a heads up as I have been sitting on these old Saxon figures for a while with no chance of using them. I did use them once many years ago in the Roman campaign as Germans, but that was the only time.

I'm not going to stress out about painting another army with these guys, I've given myself the task of doing one base (one war band). This way I won't start feeling bad when other projects start to mount up. I see this as a very long on going project I can dip in and out of when the mood takes me. It's nice to revamp the old figures and get them into units I will use.

One of the main pulls for this project is the chance to do a large unit on a single 120mm x 80mm base. I had planned to do the units on the standard 120 x 60 bases but looking at them it didn't give me enough space. I'll do one and we'll see how it turns out.

Merry Christmas everyone! Here’s to the next one!

I hope you get what you want 😋

The Terror Of Lead Rot!

 A couple of weeks ago I read someone talking about the horror of lead rot, I myself had never heard of it and in a naïve way thought it might be an American thing to do with their leads etc. Anyway, this blog post stayed with me and started to haunt my darkest dreams. So, after a few days of worrying I thought I would check for this made up terror and to my horror It had found my collection. While I had been sleeping, Chaos had crept in to the upstairs bedroom and started to decay my Dark elf army right under my nose. I was horrified and quickly searched the Inter net for more information on this figure curse.

 I mean lead rotting...rotting, who has ever heard of such a thing? Well it turns out quite a lot of people actually and most of them tend to be the professional collectors of larger scales of lead soldiers. I have gathered a small army of notes and remedies from the net and I will let you know more once I have tried some. What a horror!

Anyway, let me tell you a small bit of what I have learnt over the last couple of days.

There are two factors to Lead rot, firstly moisture and the second is air tight boxes. If you put your old figures in air tight boxes then any moisture trapped in there will start to react with some of the alloys in the lead and it will start to 'rust'. This only affects old figures made during the eighties for us fantasy heads and it's due to the huge boom in fantasy figures back then. The Nottingham lead belt companies struggled with the massive demand and with high lead costs started to mix their lead with other alloys. It's these 'other' alloys that cause the problem. One company's gain is another mans lose...be it many decades later. I have some Pure gum spirits of turpentine and some Highly refined medicinal mineral oil on order, once these two are added together in a 50/50 mix it should stop the rot. Luckily I only have a few figures that are beyond repair and the others are just starting so I'm hoping this elixir will stop it in it's tracks. I will report later on this.

 Here we see the Dark elf collection has rejected the infected and is attempting to push them off the cliff to save the greater good. Lead rot is not contagious so don't worry it won't spread, but once you find it in your collection, change things or the rest will soon succumb.

 The infected cry out for mercy but the mob are too scared and are in no mood to listen. ( note the wizard that has had his hand and staff rotted off)

 This was the reason for the out break, I had stored them here in a plastic box that with other boxes stacked on top, made an airtight seal. Some of the bottom figures had crumbled, leaving piles of lead dust, the odd hand and weapon too. It was sad for me as I had always been quite proud of my old collection and to see them ruined was a bad moment.

 This picture shows my knee jerk reaction as I read more info on the net, I placed the collection in a cardboard box wrapped in tissue paper. To stop them sliding around and wearing away I placed small wooden boxes in there. On further reading I changed this again, as some woods can give of gases that can start the rotting process. Where will it end???

 Below is the final choice for safe figure collecting. Acid free Really useful boxes. I have ordered some Silica gel sachets to spread around to soak up any moisture and the large box should stop any build up of gasses. Well that's my scary journey so far and it's not quite over yet. However, after learning all this stuff I do feel like a better figure collector and I have gone up two experience levels at least. Also the story is bad but not as terrible as it could have been, yes I lost a few figures but the bulk can be saved and the main horde will be survive through their sacrifice.

IRONMITTEN TIP#466: If you have old Citadel collections or anything from the lead boom in the Eighties and they are up in the loft where temperatures can be extreme. Get up there quick and check them over. Otherwise you could be the proud owner of a box of poisonous dust instead. Also be careful not to put them in anything air tight...let them breathe.

I have also put a  rubber anti-slid mesh on the bottom of the box, again to allow air to circulate better. After this I rushed to my other ancient old Eighties collections and although much better, there was a slight hint of rot so these too will be dipped in the elixir, just in case

. The good news is that around 1990 the Nottingham companies changed their lead formula and the later mixes do not rot...thank god eh.

Iron Hills dwarf

Dwarves of the Iron Hills

 Well here they finally are, the tough veterans of the Dwarf and Orc wars, the warriors from the Iron Hills. They are mostly old Asgard figures with a few citadel and Alterative Armies figures mixed in for variety.

 They are the closest figures I have found that match the description of the Iron Hills army. They even have packs on their packs, I think they are designed to be adventurers with supplies etc. They are described in the Hobbit as having mattocks, so I have swopped out a few axes for plastic GW dwarf hammers I bought off eBay.
 In GW terms they are used single handed but once these large hammer/mattocks are put on a two handed shaft they look a lot more feasible.

 Orc raiders bite off more that they can chew with an angry company of Dwarves.

 The Dwarves are master smiths so I concentrated on the armour more than I normally do. It was given a wash of blue ink, then purple ink in the corners. After this it was gloss varnished to make it shine. Hopefully It gives the impression of craftsmanship beyond the range of men, well that was the idea anyway.

 I tried to use lots of different metal colours and shades to enhance their metal working ability. The Orcs just have dirty, rust covered armour so this should contrast nicely.

The Dwarves square up to trolls...I have based them as if they were a kind of shield wall. This lot are running forward in an attack but my next company will be in a proper shield wall with large troll spears with hand weapons behind.

Neblos 4

 The blue weed really loves the vapor given off by the recycling vents, I must get out there and burn It back sometime...

Scatter basing 15mm sci-fi.

 After watching years of the Terrain Tutor on You tube, I thought it was time to use some of his wisdom with my own terrain. I base very quickly and the I didn't like the idea of painting sand on this larger scenic base. I flock whenever I can and thought these big sci-fi bases are a good place to try new techniques.

 So I laid out all of the flock tubs in a row and sprinkled the various shades on one after the other onto the wet wood glue in the areas I wanted them to be. I was happy with the result and it was fun to do.

 I kept the green areas around the structures where weeds would grow and placed dirt patches in the worn areas near doorways etc. Fun stuff and very quick and instant.

 Can't really tell the difference from painted sand with all of the grit under the flock and static grass tufts. I might try it next on some of the vehicles and it might be fun to try my ACW bases with this technique.

Sci-fi Jungle Fever

 A giant seed pod, this fruit stone has been in my stone box for years. I had scoped up the stones from the garden and the fruit stone was in them, glad to see it finally be of use.

 These plastic flowers were found in a garden centre, all I did was pull them off a larger stem and they were good to go. They look more like an alien woodland rather than a jungle. I stuck round pebbles on them to add to the effect.

 The bases were flocked using different colours and lots of blue grass again.

 Don't breath in...get that mask on trooper!

A Sand Titan smashes through the Yong yong trees in search of prey.