Lake Town Shields

 I dug out my old sketch book from last year where I penned some shield ideas. These should come in handy pretty soon.

Lake Men Take A Dip

Colours blocked in and given a quick highlight. Weathering the clothes is also worth doing at this point as it really pays off with the dip technique.

After giving these guys a highlight I dipped them in strong tone, well I brushed it on. I bought a new ton of strong tin after my last one went a bit weird, mind you it was about twelve years old.

I’ve really enjoyed cracking through this lot, doing simple block painting then dipping is actually very quick and rewarding.

The dip loved this figure from Victrix with his detailed jerkin.

I have seven more to do then the men of Esgaroth can take the fight to the enemy. I even dipped the Bard character even though he was already shaded, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

 Still not sure about the flag design, I kind of winged it and I’m not sure it works.

Men of Lake Town

We I’ve been messing around with more human sprue in order to create the fighters of Esgaroth.  

I had been collecting Viking figures up with the idea of doing this project for a couple of years, however, to get really close to what I imagine, plastic kits were needed. The Oathmark human set is actually a pretty good start. I had over looked this set at first but on second look, they make good Lake men. To this set other plastic sets were added from Fireforge, Gripping Beast and Frostgrave.

Rather than too many helmets I have gone for more bare heads and soft head ware. A kind of a militia look with armoured guys sprinkled in.

Peter Jackson’s Bard...

This standard comes from the Fireforge Northmen set. A single sprue off eBay was a good find. It also had some good commend arms on there too.

Green stuff was added to give a bit more of a fantasy feel. Lots of fur trims and cloaks help with the Lake Town look.

I recently just found these Frostgrave sprues today, these gave me great pointed helmets which could act as the town guard. I have made four of these and they will be peppered in the bases to give them a bit of backbone.

I imagined the men of Esgaroth to resemble Jomsvikings in a way. Slight cold weather clothing with lots of furs.

I really liked this figure when he was out together. The great head came from a Victrix Viking sprue. I thought he would make a good Bard. 

I slept on this idea and in the morning I decided it was still a good plan. In the end I swooped out his axe for a long sword also I put a bow and quiver on his back. Hopefully this we make him look like the hero from the book, I quite like the fact he’s not in heavy armour. 

The new and up dated Bard the bowman. The great bow on his back certainly makes him stand out on the battlefield.

Bard mid surgery. Losing the axe was a tough decision but a sword is better for a hero. Also, the men of Lake Town were said to be armed with long swords. The body and arms came from a Fire forge box set.

The  town guard will look good mixed in with the rabble. These experienced fighters are very welcome in the ranks of fishermen and boatmen of Lake Town.
 

Wolf Riders arrive on the horizon

I may be having great fun making and painting  up Boyne infantry but the call of the wild beckons me once more. I did make a start on a unit of Wolf riders a few months ago but the house move put everything on hold, now I’m settled, it’s time to dig them out again.

I’m not a fan of the plastic Oathmark wolves and so started looking around for other options. In the end I came back to my old Grenadier sculpts from the Eighties. I have very fond memories of these figures and some are still covered in my enamel paint from when I was about fourteen years old.

 

Since the sculpts came out, there was another range released, still sculpted by Nick Lund but this time the figures were slightly larger. This new set was released in the early Nineties and is very useful, as the larger wolves can be used for bigger mounts of the leaders.

I bought the larger Wolf off eBay last week and it’s very interesting, it’s obviously based on one of the originals from the Eighties, but has been beefed up. This was a nice find and will become the leaders mount.

The sculpts are very nice I think and sum up the essence of wolves very well. The long snout and long fore legs with big paws are better than a lot of more recent sculpts I think and have a lot of character.

 The only slight negative aspect maybe is they are laden with equipment. The Wargs of  Tolkien let the goblins ride on their backs as a kind of mutual arrangement and would definitely not allow equipment to be packed onto them. However, maybe they quite like the idea of having a bit of extra armour on them...anyway, they are definitely the best large Wolf mounts around at the moment that I have found. The bonus being a lot of them are free, being figures from my childhood.

A unit of twelve should be enough and due to the size of the wolves, they will probably be classed as an assault unit rather than a scouting one. 
 

The ECW Massive!

The Trained Bands March up stairs to join the army of Parliament.

It’s always hard to know when to stop on a project like this, I thought five regiments were going to be it, but then I pushed myself to complete another. Now this should be a more rounded force of two brigades of three units. This should look better and make for longer games.

There are still a few things I could add, being early Parliamentarian, I could do a unit of curassier to give some real backbone to the army. Also I have some nice iron side cavalry from a few ranges which need to be painted, but as for infantry I think this will do for the time being. 

We’re going to need a bigger boat.

It’s time to start thinking about the Royalist forces now. I plan to do a couple of things different with those.

 As many people know the Royalist forces struggled to procure firearms early in the war, until they captured Bristol with it gun making capabilities. This reflected in the formations of the early war having more pikemen than their Parliamentarian brethren. 

So to emulate this I’m going to create units with less musket and slightly more pikes to a regiment. Not many, but at least two regiments to give a Royalist flavour to the army. 

So a bigger pike block in the middle with less guns at either side, this will have a slight rule tweak in Victory without Quarter, having a melee of 7D6 but a shoot of 5D6. The advantage in close combat but disadvantage at distance should give a real Royalist character to the units. 

Another nice regiment to do  is a unit of nearly all pikes. This could be a newly raised raw regiment hastily equipped. This would look good on the field and be also be  interesting  to play. It would have a melee of 8D6 but a very poor shoot of 4D6.

 Just some early ideas, but basically playing with the fact that units in Victory without Quarter have 6D6 melee and 6D6 shooting, borrowing from one stat and giving to the other will create off set units, this should lead to some real period character in games.
 

Green stuff day

I’ve been itching to use this old pencil for green stuff for ages, so decided to give it a go on this goblin. I think I will paint as a dark leather colour. I suppose it could be troll skin, so a greyish colour might be good. 

This is a good effect, although I’m not quite sure what’s it meant to be... maybe troll hide or a pelt from a long dead fell thing, found at the bottom of  a crevasse. There are fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world...

I broke out the green stuff to do a few more cuffs on a new regiment, these days though I always line up a few extra figures that can be worked on, as I always have more green stuff than needed. So these goblins got a bit of extra love.
 

Basing Night

Trelawney’s Regiment get their ground cover. I went for a dark, boggy ground for this lot. So lots of patches of dark soil with brown grasses. I think it looks the part and certainly looks different to my ECW bases.

Hard going marching through this lot.

My parliamentarian general rides along the muddy road in search of a better view. He doesn’t stop for directions or advice, how can you make decisions if you can’t see the enemy’s disposition! He’s off to find a good vantage point.