Silvan Elf Company (7th)

Another Elf company joins the army to protect the borders of Mirkwood.

This heroic leader figure is from Reaper Miniatures, while most of the others are from the Oathmark range.

This company has a few more greens in than normal, just to make them stand out a bit.

Holding back the tide...

The other base has quite a range of figures, mostly Oathmark again but also a few unknown makes.

Looking at these photos I might make a few tweaks and add a couple more spearmen to the rear ranks. Swordsmen are good but they don't really say shieldwall like a row of ash spears.
 

Rebased Royalists

New commander planned out and awaiting some paint. All these troopers are from Dixon.

Here they are in all their dashing glory.

Here is the next unit ready for the paint que. Unlike the previous unit, I have gone for mostly helmeted troopers this time. I think when I first painted the first lot, my main reference was the film Cromwell. Things have moved on a lot from then, great film though and the one responsible for me getting into history. Looks like things have gone full circle here.

 

Northern Horse WIP

These veteran Royalist horse received a little extra love today in the form of campaign booty. As well as improving the character of the figures, the bundles also help to balance out the models too. The Essex troopers don't have the big buff coats of the Renegade sculpts, so a little bit more at the rear of the saddle looks good I think.

These are hard, well travelled squadrons of horse and have collected a fair few things on their way down south.

The Northern horse have always captured my imagination for some reason. So it's good to be creating them after all these years.

I bashed through these simple green stuff sculpts as I had a lot to do. They should look the part when painted and will certainly make the unit look different.

I swapped out the bendy lead flag pole for a brush bristle too, now this figure is a lot more serviceable than before.
 

Update: So after saying I was going to take it slow, I've ended up putting together quite a few troopers.

It's good to put a load together at once as it makes it easier for adding the greenstuff pouches and blankets. Painting wise though not so good as a sight like this is enough to freeze the project in its tracks. So after everything is dry and undercoated, I will put it away out of sight, accept for the four I'm going to paint.

This morning I dug out some old Foundry figures I bought in 1998. These too have been given bigger mounts and have now joined the Royalist ranks.

There's enough cavaliers here to last me a while. 

Here is a Foundry trooper on a new mount. It's nice to mix a few three bar pot helmets in with all of the others.

The units are now given their black undercoat.

Update: 

So a day has passed and I've managed to get some paint on the new unit. 

I do like this commander with his iron broad brimmed hat. The plastic horses look good too and add some nice variety to the ranks.

I found another good paint for buff and that is Tamiya desert yellow. It's always good to have a few colours that are subtly different for buff.

So far the first four have been painted and given a brush with Dark tone Army paint from the tin. The Dark tone drys over night more or less, which is a real advantage over the other shades.

I'm really enjoying this little project again after a couple of years away from it.

A bit of wheel lock reference, I just wanted to see if they had brass fittings.