Dressing the Line

 With the other two bases finished, I took the opportunity to get them all together and add some battle debris. Broken shields and weapons and spears stuck in the ground.
This warrior has thrown down his heavy shield and unslung his short bow.

 These bits and bobs help to tell little stories in each base and add to the drama. I’ve just noticed there is a spot where the ground mix didn’t get to around the feet of the Dwarf with the spear, must fix that.

 I wanted to give the impression that the shield wall was hard pressed and under a lot of pressure, I think the extra details help with that illusion. The base below is one of the new ones with a wild charge getting started.

I also added shields etc to the back ranks to fill out the bases.

Family Reunion

 Digging through a box of figures yesterday I found an old Grenadier Orc that I had painted back in 1986 or so. Well, I thought time to draft you into the army my son!
It was only when I brought him down stairs to the painting table I realised I had bought some orcs from EBay that matched him exactly. In fact I think the sculpt had been cut up to create the other as from the head down to the belt were identical. Well not being one to break up a family, this lot will be based together on the same base. The range is an old Grenadier box set I think.

 I will rebase him, but I did have to stop and take a trip down memory lane as I studied his base. Back then rather than painting hordes of figures, I would spend hours on just one. This one is based on a piece of cardboard cut from an art pad. Polly filler was then used for the grass and pricked with a needle to create grass, then painted. Boy, now I just wash and go with new improved ground mix from Luke’s APS.

I used to spend hours and days on just one character at a time, glad to say those days are long behind me but it was quite moving looking at the way I used to work as a teenager.

Early Saxon Reference 2

 I took these beautiful images from a Dark ages Facebook page for reference latter on with painting. Thank you Jack Sarge for posting them.

First Wargame, well, kind of.

 The little chap enjoyed his game with my old Britain’s figures, so I thought I would get him his own.  A big bucket of soldiers from Amazon was just the ticket!
I chose the Americans and He chose everything else, including all my heavy weapons. He loved them!

ECW Army so Far

 It’s a lovely moment when you can take all your newly based stuff upstairs and combine it with your old stuff. The parliamentarian force isn’t too far off being finished now. The quick Dip Army Painter route is definitely the way forward with big armies like this.

 In my head I planned for four Foote Regiments to make up a starter force, just need to finish the red regiment and I’ll be there.

Dux Bellorum Saxons

 Remember these guys, well they finally made it to the flocking stage. Like the ECW forces, I based these as if on a rough field so hit them with the layers of brown flock. I was hoping the long green grass will make up for the lack of base detail. Although saying that, I did sprinkle a few pinches of rough sand onto the glued base before the flock, this did give it some stoney detail. This seemed to work well so next time I will add a little more.

I want my units in Dux Bellurom to be quite large so I increased the base size to a whopping 120x80mm. This should give enough room for nice dioramas and cavalry formations. I love this era and it’s nice to have burning away on the back burner.

 I still need to touch up the banner a remove the grass from the figures, but now they are done and can make room for others.

 

Flocking ECW

 It’s nice to know someone appreciates the lush, long 6mm grass. It was a bit of a slog to get all these done, but it was worth it. I found the bigger the base the more the flock box struggled with the flocking. However with time and patience (not to mention a few shocks) we got there in the end.

Getting there...

Another day of basing

 This time I started earlier in the day while the little chap was watching TV,  rather than nod off, I thought I would activate and tackle those projects that have been waiting to be completed. The ECW regiments were long over due, time to get the Flock box out again.

 As I want these units to be nice and quick and not too taxing, I’m going for a few layers of flock to base them. Dark earth, light earth, 2mm static grass then a longer mix of 4/6mm static grass. Maybe some flower tufts thrown in here and there too. Nice and quick with no painting going on.