Out with the old...in with the new!

Gundabad War Trolls

Basing Night Is Finally Upon You

 I always dread basing, but It can be quite enjoyable if you line up enough units to make it worth while. I couldn't simply carry on painting when my shelves were beginning to scream under the weight of painted lead.

Time to draw a line in the sand and start to actually finish units rather than start new ones.

Starting a new unit is so much fun, working it out, researching colours and then finally painting it. Who cares If it's finished or not just keep moving on right and don't look back...time to pay the ferry man...Gulp.

I found this sand in an old green house in the garden when I moved house, I saw straight away its properties. Saruman tore down the garden and all the surrounding trees and building, including the old greenhouse. However, I managed to scoop up a huge bucket of the valuable grit and It is now safe under lock and key ( from my three year old) in a cabinet up stairs. It has a great range of grain sizes and plenty of small stones which look great on the bases.

 My ECW regiments finally get a trip to the beach to tip their toes in the warm sand. I plan to do these using a lot of coloured flock with just a few patches of sand/dirt showing through. the idea being to bash through them quick quickly.
 In contrast, my fantasy bases are painted and dry brushed the old time consuming way. I'm really trying to make these something a little bit different from my historical stuff, it's a bit of a labour of love.

Fantasy and Historical armies forget their petty differences for once and enjoy the trip to the beach.

Gundabad trolls

 Gundabad trolls are now painted and in the process of being based. They are smaller than the giant Mordor Trolls so I based them two to a base, four to a unit.

Beorn doesn't like them at all and takes great strides to let them know it. I know who my money is on but the dice gods are fickle things.

Heavily Armoured Gundabad troll

 For the first two I sculpted I used thin plastic card for the head blades, later I grew more confident and just used green stuff to shape the helmets.

 I printed out a page from Forge World of their Gundabad troll to help with the sculpting. It helped for this first one, the others I based on this theme and made them all different.

Creating Gundabad Trolls

 I love the look of the grim helmeted trolls from the Hobbit but didn't want to pay Forge World £60 a figure.So I bought 8 trolls for £10 off ebay ( Dark Alliance 1.72 scale). Together with a bit of green stuff I thought I would give it a go creating my own. I was quite pleased with the results. Once painted they should look just the ticket. Saved myself around £240, can't be bad.

 These dark Alliance trolls are 1.72 scale and are like 20mm. They actually match the size of the smaller trolls at the end of the  hobbit movie that I'm really pleased about, perfect for my Gundabad army and different from my larger Mordor trolls.

They will be based two to a 60 x 60mm stand, In Dragon Rampant they will have 3 hit points each, so four to a unit.

Another parliamentarian regiment of Foote

Gundabad Ogre WIP

ECW 2nd Regiment WIP

Being parliamentarians, I had to put a preacher in the back ranks.

 A unit of Musket for Pikeman's Lament.

Two blocks of musket or a unit of commanded shotte

Basing The Gundabad legion

 Centurion style captain with his colour guard of veteran blades.

 The Nick Lund Hobgoblin and the Centurion became firm friends whilst stuck on the painting lolly stick together, It made sense that they were based next to each other.

 Warlord games orcs with arms and weapons from various Perrys plastic box sets. I also had a few lesser Goblins left over from before,These were great at filling up spaces and around five sneaked in to the bases, more the merrier.

 The 'Perrys' French hundred years war plastic set came with loads of great long spears and nasty long axes, very orcy.

They marched as if a great black river had descended from the mountains and wolves were in their van.

 Three units of gundabad orcs with the large uruks at the front. You can see the size of these Beserkers now there are lesser orcs with them.

Black uruk captain.

 My guide for this Gundabad army was to use orcs that mirror the style that Angus McBride developed when illustrating the MERP rules in the eighties. A lot of figure companies have copied his style when making a range of orcs. My collection above are just a few, I'm sure I could find more if I looked. It's great for tying the army together with a general look and theme.

Above are orcs from Warlord games, Icon lotr orcs (now available from Forlorn Hope). Mark Copplestone Half-orcs too make great Gundabad orcs and bring some nasty looking swords to the spear units.
The beserkers are mostly Reaper Bones and a few metal ones too.

Creating WWII bases using Milliput and toy cars

 I sent these pictures to a friend recently to help him with some basing ideas. Well, I thought as I have them on my Desk top I might as well repost them. The full story is back on this Blog around 2008 I think.

 Once painted in dark brown 'mud' colour, I gave the tracks a wash of PVA glue to give it a wet look. The glue drys with a slight shine.

Black lava texture gel for bases

I saw this tip a little while ago while watching Robin Fitton on his 'grunts' you tube channel.

 Robin was using the gel to base up his 15mm sci-fi figures. I will see how I get on with it, so far so good. These large 80mmx60mm bases have a lot of wide open flat space to fill and this gel could be the ticket.

I will use the gel as the first layer to add some contours to the base. Next up will be a little sand and then flock...you know the drill.

More parliament horse

 More Iron sides finished to create a complete regiment of horse. As with the regiment of Foote, I have added a couple of extra figs to bulk out the unit. Four bases with 3/4 figures on for VWQ or pikeman's Lament.

 Feels great to actually finish a unit of horse with a standard etc. I have a couple of Royalist units that will soon get the same treatment, they have sat unfinished for about four years. I will (If I can) equip all my regiments with unknown standards so I can create names and characters for them. The standard above was chosen because it belonged to an unknown reg.

"Stay your hand Mr Pigotte, I know this man!"