End of April Roundup

Time flies when you're having fun, and also when you've got too much to do!

We've reached the end of another month, so as usual it's time to have a look at how I did and think about what I want to do next.

Here's the haul in full:

My target was to finish the Sword Dancer cavalry and another unit of Normans. As I posted last time, I've done that already, although I had an accident with the Sword Dancers and had to repair them, but they're ready to go now.

The Norman knights took me a while to do for some reason. Not sure why, I just never really got into painting them.

As my wildcard I painted the unit of Norman crossbows I got a discount on during the Spring Tide event. I found these much easier going, and I've now inked them too. They're ready for varnish but that's going to wait until we get some dry weather, I'm afraid of the dreaded White Foggy Varnish Thing of Doom that occurs when you spray varnish and there's too much water in the air.

Then, since I'd got a bit more time, I went back to this model that I got as a freebie at Triples last year. Once he's painted he'll give me three warlords on foot for my Anglo Danes, so I can use the Godwinson brothers. At least I think it's the Godwinsons. Unfortunately I'm a bit thick and left my rules at Andy's last night, so I can't check. Whoops.

Targets for next month then. Where do I go from here? Well, I'm not going to have loads of time. I know I always say that, but it's always true! The wife and I found out this month that our upcoming baby will be a girl, due in September :D. With the new arrival we'll need more space, so we're selling our house and buying a new one, we now have offers accepted at both sides. Just to complicate things further I'm away all next week on a bizarre and slightly terrifying stag do - 9 men on a canal barge in Norfolk. I hope everyone packs deodorant. And, because all that's a bit much to afford, remaining free time will be spent on eBaying off some of my less useful models and anything else that sits still too long.

So all of those things will be targets to start with, but you good people don't really care about any of that, you want hobby results! You hard taskmasters you. Alright then, to please you I'm going to aim for another unit of Norman knights, plus... something Flashbang related (Flashbang being the close quarters skirmish game I wrote but still need to prepare more models, terrain and rules for). Not sure what, but I'll give updates when I know what I'm doing. Oh, and I'll varnish the crossbows too, if it ever stops raining!

The Norman Conquest (of my desk at least)

Yes, I know, I know. I've been terribly slack at keeping the blog up to date recently. It really is a very poor show. Still, real life things seem to be going very well at the moment and I've been able to do a little painting, so, having finally got around to taking some photos, I thought I'd get a post up and share them with you.

Man the new Blogger photo upload thing sucks! I'm really not sure what they thought they were doing with it, but now I only seem to be able to upload a single photo at a time (although the message says "your photos are being uploaded"!) and although it's nice that I can pick settings before I add the photo, I can't pick Extra Large and I don't get a progress bar. When you change your UI, you're meant to make it better, not worse...

Anyway, rant over, let's have a look at some models.

If you remember, the target for April was to get a unit done for Saga, and the Sword Dancer cavalry for VBCW. You won't see any of the Sword Dancers in this post I'm afraid. They were all painted, and I managed to take advantage of the twelve minutes this month when the rain stopped to get them varnished. They were sat on a bit of card outside being sprayed, and a gust of wind flipped the card over, dashing the brave Sword Dancers onto the flagstones below. It was carnage, and some repairs are needed before they're photo ready.

But I didn't break my hearthguard! I'm following the same basic colour scheme with these as with my Anglo Danes - muted-ish colours generally, simple geometric shields, and colour coded bases to tell the unit types apart.

These models are from the Gripping Beast set I won for "best painted" at the Winter is Coming event we ran at Wargamers Free Company a while ago. They're really nice, but they came with metal spears and I've copied Andy's technique for replacing them with florist's wire.

Speaking of Winter is Coming, this month I also took part in Spring Tide, the latest WFC Saga event. This was ably run by JP, and through the genius of his final scenario I was able to rack up loads of kills, winning myself a copy of the new Northern Fury add on!

While we were there we got an extra discount at Wargames Emporium, and I took advantage to get myself the eight Norman crossbowmen you see here - currently painted and needing some ink.

With all the dark ages models I try to make each model an individual and mix up the colours as much as I can - especially for a skirmish game this just seems right to me. The crossbows form my "wild card" for the month and I've really enjoyed doing them, even though they're quite simple - I think I'm just in a Saga mood at the moment. I'm playing aggressively in the club campaign so having these to take my Norman force up to a sensible 5 points (without using unmounted melee troops which Normans can't do much with) will come in handy!

Just need to ink these and fix up the broken Sword Dancers, and I'm done for April...

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...