Mid month progress

As I've been busy this month with trying to find somewhere to live, I've been very slack with the blogging.

I have done some painting though, which includes the first batch of Sword Dancer cavalry for my Very British Civil War force. And here they are:

I used German WW2 forage caps with the peaks cut off to approximate the caps that the real life Sword Dancers wear. Although they all have matching uniforms, their kit is deliberately mismatched - so belts, gloves, blankets etc are all different. The idea is that they've scrounged what they needed wherever they could - including the standard bearer who's sitting on the Union Flag that his flagpole originally had on it.

Next stop, more Normans!

March Round Up

Well, March is over and I met all my targets and more besides!

Ha! April Fool! I actually suck.

My targets for April were to paint my Sword Dancer cavalry for Very British Civil War, build some Sword Dancer infantry, and paint a unit for Saga.

As I've already posted, I did the unit for Saga:

I also painted Alan the horse:

I put together the Sword Dancer infantry (I like how these have come out, especially the sniper! More on them in future I think.):

But despite starting them, I didn't get the Sword Dancer cavalry done:

I just didn't get into doing these. I'll try again for April I think, but at the moment I'm mostly in a Saga frame of mind. I'm keen to get my Normans done, before they take to the field in the club Saga campaign.

I did do a wildcard piece though - the warlord for my Normans. This is the William the Bastard model from Gripping Beast, and it's a great miniature. Really easy to paint too, the details stand out nicely. Just needs the base edging doing, the rest of the model was still wet when I took the photo so I left that off.

 

And, just as a little extra piece, I did this casualty marker (needs some ink to finish it off though):

I didn't get as much time as I normally have for painting this month. With a baby on the way in September, and as of last weekend an offer on our house meaning we need to find a new one, that's not going to improve for April.

So, I need some new targets. Since they need to be simple, I'll go for just finishing off the Sword Dancer cavalry, and painting another unit of Normans - hearthguard this time. 

Horseplay

Hurrah and hurray! I have done some more painting, and shall now reveal the results to you, in this mind-blowing update. 


Here we go.


Drumroll please...






























It's a horse.

His name is Alan. His voice sounds scratchy, because he's a little horse.

Now, some of you are probably thinking "Matt, you appear to have lost all sense of proportion, and, dare I say, decency. There's not really any justification in writing an entire blog post around the painting of a single horse, even one as admittedly majestic as that one". I suppose I should therefore try to justify myself a little.


The Conquest plastic Norman Knights box, for reasons known to its manufacturer but not to me, comes with 15 knights but only a dozen horses. So, if you can locate more horses you can make more knights, which is what I did and rambled about in a previous post.


But then! You come across the second problem, which is that Saga units need either 4 or 8 models. So 15 ain't that useful, because it's one shy of two units of warriors, or four (count 'em!) units of hearthguard. 


So, knowing I'm not the only WFC member to have this box, I've found a source of another spare rider in Kelly, and I was supplied with an extra horse by the very generous Aneurin (who is also gratifyingly gracious in defeat at Blood Bowl. Good job really, since everyone beat him).  


Kelly is a man of many impressive qualities, but sadly, remembering stuff isn't among them, and so far I haven't received the spare rider, and was facing the unappetising prospect of being a warrior short once I actually fight someone in the club Saga campaign.


Since I had the horse already, I'm enjoying painting Normans and I wanted to have units ready to use, I've decided to go for an unmounted horse in the unit until I get and paint the knight to ride him. So Alan will have his glory, even if it comes with the dubious honour of being the first model removed as a casualty in every game.


Ok, that's probably the most I've ever written about a single model, and it turns out to be an unmounted horse. Since you, the reader, are probably feeling a bit cheated at this point, you can have a gratuitous picture of the Norman warband so far...

Can you spot Alan hiding at the back?

Charge!

I've done a little work towards my target, so I have six more Normans ready.

I'm posting this through the blogger iPhone app, so I have no idea how it'll turn out. Hope it makes sense...

Project X!

In the last post I mentioned that there was an extra VBCW unit that I painted last month but didn't include in my February summary for fear of tipping off those dastardly BUF bully boys.

Since it's now been used in anger, the cat is out of the bag and I can reveal for your delectation the Heightened Altitude Marksman's Mount for Extended Range (H.A.M.M.E.R. for short)!

 

VBCW as a "period" is all about very localised forces and the weapons and equipment they can cobble together or build themselves. The Swallownest Socialist Brigade (my new faction and the allies of the Handsworth Volunteers) had a sniper in their ranks but were frustrated by the need to have him infiltrate an area and wait there for a suitable target - what would happen if they had to attack quickly?

Luckily, they had an old Model A ford, some timber, some scrap metal and a can do attitude, and so were able to knock together the H.A.M.M.E.R!

Having added armour (including a spare roof from a Kerr & King FOW objective I bought 3 years ago - never throw anything away) I was able to conceal the fact that the model that forms the basis of this "entirely safe" mobile watchtower is really a little too small to be the right scale.

I've got a couple more vehicles to put together as well, so as usual, watch this space...

February's Painting Results

Another month has been and gone! Let's have a look at what I managed to get painted then...

To refresh your memory (or if you didn't read the previous posts, to just tell you), my targets for this month were to paint the first unit for my Saga Normans, and to paint the first bits of my Very British Civil War force, the Handsworth Volunteers. In keeping with my resolutions, I also needed to complete a wild card of some sort.

As I've reported in previous posts, I got the Normans and Volunteers done without too much trouble:

This left me some time to move onto wildcards, but not a lot - I lost a week to a last minute work trip abroad (not that I can complain too much about a free trip to 25 degree sunshine in February!) but I had a definite plan for what I wanted to do, and I stuck to it.

At the moment, I'm very keen on the British Civil War idea, and I picked up some extra pieces for this at Vapnartak. This included a few Great War Miniatures packs, so I started painting those. I'm intending to use these mostly as a new faction for VBCW, allied to the Handsworth Volunteers, called the Swallownest Socialist Briade. There'll be more on them in another post, but for now here are the models I got painted:

Death from afar in the form of a sniper

18-Pounder Artillery Piece - that should show those fascists a thing or two!

Artillery Crew at the ready

Spiritual support in the form of a chaplain

Officer with a shotgun - this model will probably lead the Swallownest Socialists

A Tommy with a football!

I also did some minor conversions to create a unit of cavalry for the Handsworth boys...

Ready for the charge

These are some Perry French Dragoons, which I also got from Vapnartak at the bring and buy tables (the chap selling them had them listed for £10. I asked if they were complete, and he said they were except for the bases. He didn't let me say the words "that's ok, I'll be using different bases anyway" before he lowered the price to £8...).

To try to match the Handsworth Sword Dancers' uniforms a bit better I cut the hilt guards off the swords, and used some heads with German WW2 forage caps, having cut the peaks off the caps. It's a fairly simple change but I'm hoping that with the painting done it won't be too obvious.

With all the VBCW I've done so far there's a bit more I'd like to do to really finish them off, but I wanted to get them ready for a game on Thursday so I'm happy that they can be used for that now.

There's also another VBCW unit I've done this month but I'm not showing here - this will be a surprise on the table on Thursday night...

As March is about to start I also need targets for that.  Seems best to keep with what I'm interested in at the moment, which is Saga and VBCW. So, targets are to paint the Sword Dancer cavalry, build some Sword Dancer infantry, and paint another unit of Normans. As always there should be another wild card as well!

A quick Norman update

Not too much to report, but in amongst other jobs I managed to grab enough time to base the Normans from my last post. They still need some flock and varnish, but I thought it worthy of a quick photo:

Charge!

As with my Anglo-Danes, I'm using colour coding on the bases to tell the different unit types apart. These are warriors, so have the edges of the bases marked in blue. By using the same colour scheme as I did for that force, I'll be able to use Anglo-Dane models as proxies until I get all of the proper Normans done - which is likely to be necessary with the WFC Saga campaign kicking off very soon...