Friday, April 23, 2021

Boatmen of Lake Town

It’s nice to see the Lake Town men stand toe to toe with these orcs and actually look down at them, I suppose I too used to painting my Dwarf army.

Creating the army of Lake Town got me thinking about the bigger picture, who are these guys and what do they all do in the town. 

We have the Town guard and the warriors passing through, the merchants and traders, but I thought we had better have some boatmen and fishermen too.

These were easy to create by using the shabby looking bodies from the Frost grave soldiers box set and some suitable heads. The nasty looking boat hooks were created by mixing plastic spears and Warlord Games orc weapons. 

I also thought to give them a character all of their own by painting them very dark in blacks and greys.

 Ropes are another touch that gave them a boating feel and these were taken again from the Frost Grave soldier sprue. So that sprue really came in handy for these river folk with all its little detail pieces.

The sorry looking boatman above was created using the head and body from a Oathmark human but the arms and axe from a Perry box set.

Lake Town shields!

I searched eBay for suitable shields as well as raiding my on collection of spares. I managed to find some great ones on line including highly detailed Viking ones, perfect I thought. I even found a pack that were battle damaged, again these were great for an army that had just survived a dragon attack.
For the shields I thought a round Viking type was a good place to start. This isn’t a professional army so lots of variety in shapes and materials. Some wicker, but mostly rough wooden planks held by metal and hide braces. Very crude looking shields compared to those of the Elves and Dwarves. Also different sizes can help to break up uniformity, so some are no more than bucklers while others are very large kite shields. A real rag tag bunch this lot. I thought the roughness of the planked shield would give the army the perfect feel for Lake Town, with a few high quality ones mixed in. There’s even a few old Dwarf ones from times long ago when Dale was at its height.
To speed up painting literally an army of shields I thought I would spray them all brown to help get things moving. This will act as a base colour for dry brushing.
Anyone fancy a biscuit?
 These have just been painted with Army Painter and are still sticky wet. 

Here we see a lower member of lake town society, the humble boatman. However, can he survive the hordes of  hell with just a boat hook and a length of rope... only time will tell.
 

So here we are, a few hours have past since I started this post and we have our first shielded warriors.
Hooded archers, these will be in units of ten for Oathmark, well twelve with my basing.

These shots of WIP give a good idea of what the finished bases will look like.
So some more time has passed and we have some more progress. I’m touching up the face flesh colour and putting an edge on the weapons with silver paint, but apart from that they are looking okay.








Thursday, April 22, 2021

A New Bard

After some thought I decided to look at Reaper Miniatures for another suitable Bard figure. This ranger caught my eye, he has all the right gear and a nice studded jerkin to boot. I think this new sculpt will become Bard, the other guy could make a good archer captain.

Reaper is very good for finding personality figures and I always find myself flicking through their ranges for gold nuggets. Both my orc and Dwarf leaders come from Reaper.


 

Jump forward in time a few days and here they both are painted. I think I might go with the new metal guy, he just seems a little more heroic. 
One thing is for sure, those poor Lake Town men are going to need some strong leadership in the fight to come.

Saturday, April 17, 2021

Lake Town update.


Well the good denizens of Lake Town continue to be painted in small groups of three at a time. I’m not sure if it’s because it’s a new tin of Army Painter, but my first batches still aren’t dry. So to up the anti, I placed them outside to get some wind between their legs. It was nice to take a look at them in the day light and see a lot of the strong colours haven’t been too dulled.

Although I took pictures of them in the sun I didn’t leave them too long there and quickly moved into the shade. I’m not sure if extreme sun light effects drying varnish... but I didn’t want to risk it after all the hard work.






These have been shut up in the shed so it’s nice to get them out in the light and take a good look at the dip. It seems to be looking okay, any mistakes can be touched up before I matt varnish them.



Mob rule.

An eastern warrior reflects the trading that went on in Lake Town.



These two archers are fresh today! They join the ranks of the other toffee apples out in the breeze.
‘Well hello there” Ben Kenobi drops by to help with the defences.

 

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Archers of Lake Town WIP


 
I have also dug out a few old citadel figures that seem to fit the Esgaroth look. The metal guy above is an old citadel fighter, his studded leather jerkin fits right in, as does his long sword.
I thought the men of Esgaroth should have a unit of bowmen in the battle. Luckily there are enough bow arms on the various plastic kits to put together a small force. I think a good force for Lake Town would be two units of 20 soldiers and 10 archers for the Oathmark rules.
I thought I would try something different for these new guys, fancy edges on the hoods. These were easy to do and looked good, they will help add variety to the units. 

I think the trick to getting better at using this green stuff is all about pushing yourself and actually, these little additions were no problem at all.


Frost grave soldier arms with bows added some nice longer bows into the mix. The Frost grave set also adds some nice extra bits and bobs to the Lake Town look, like coils of rope etc.
Oathmark plastic body mixed with a Fire forge Scandinavian set. I think this guy will be a guard of the banner bearer.

Frost grave soldiers again but with Oathmark bow arms.

Pole arm from Fire forge set, this is handy because the Oathmark set doesn’t come with any two handed weapons.