Easterlings Debut at the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Tournament

The Easterlings were painted for an army to play in Terry Webb's Good Bad and Ugly HotT tournament held recently in Nashville as well as Coventry? England.  The theme was Lord of the Rings so I did my best to honor Tolkien's description of these servants of Sauron.  Fortunately or unfortunately his descriptions leaves a lot of room for interpretation.  

 

Tolkien mentions wain riders and brazen plates for armor as well as a formidable group of axemen.  Sauron being fond of mechanization, well at least Saruman was, I thought the inclusion of a massive ballista would be appropriate.

The Rider General in his Chariot is pictured below.  I tried to give the army that consists of figures from various manufacturers a unifying color them.  Red equipment and clothing with bronze armor and olive green cloth as an under layer.

Donnington Sarmations as the knight and rider elements.

 

Testudo Celts as the shooters and hordes.

 

Khurusan Tang Chinese with Ji Halbards serve as the axemen.  The halbards were originally extraordinarily long so I cut off the blades and remounted them on shorter wire poles.  That took a lot of precision drilling!

 

The Testudo Celts given alternative weapons and shields to make them look less Celt-like and more of a fantasy Asian look.

Lastly some shots of the stronghold, meant to represent one of the fortresses of Mordor.  This was originally a small aquarium piece that I won at last years Good Bad and Ugly tournament.  I fashioned a more elaborate base for it and added the pointy crenelations and rivets on the turrets.  I gave the castle fots of washes, the last of which were various shades of green to try and give it a sickly pale color reminiscent of Minas Morgul in the Jackson films.

 

Of course no fortress of Mordor would be complete without the severed heads and discarded equipment of the enemy.  At the bottom right is a shield of Gondor, and just for Terry Webb who painted the Riders of Rohan, a shield from a defeated warrior of Rohan top left in the background.

Many thanks to Terry Webb for organizing the tournament and to all the players and sponsors who made it such a wonderful event.

 

WIP - work in progress

Buildings for a 10mm DBACW army which is slowly taking shape.  Maybe I misread the rules, but it seems like you need 30 or so elements per side, which is a lot of painting when you are putting 7 10mm infantry figures on a base!

Couple of Barker markers for 15 and 25mm games

These are some plastic Indians that I picked up from All the King's Men a couple of years ago.  I'm painting up a dozen for their 54mm American Revolution game.  The indians are slowly coming together, but will make a nice addition to the regular British and Hessian infantry.

I'm still working on my WWII skills.  These are a tad too green I think, but for 30 hard plastic figures from Wargames Factory for $20 how could I say no.  Most of these figures are really quite good and the Russians are even better!

Yet another Barker Marker in progress.  This one was a tongue in cheek present from my daughter, but I must say I am having a blast with it!

Ken at All the King's Men was selling these at Nashcon, but since our gaming shop happens to be right next door to a cigar shop I decided to make my own.  It was a fair amount of work and given Ken's very reasonable prices I would recommend just buying them from him, but I was able to customize my box a bit which was nice.

And lastly I have a HotT army for Terry Webb's Good Bad and Ugly tournament coming up in November.  This year we have a Lord of the Rings theme, so this is meant to represent an Easterling army.  The Cavalry are Donnington Sarmations, the axemen and artillery are Khurasan Tang Chinese, and the wain rider and hordes are Testudo Celts.  Surprisingly they work well together.  I painted them with a limited palette to help the cohesive look of the army and am hopeful once the basing is done they will be an even more impressive looking army.

 

Early Hebrew 15mm DBA Army

Here we have pictures of a DBA Early Hebrew army made with Vexilia or Venexia 15mm Figures - I always get them confused.  Though the army looks pretty good and did win a painting award at the 2013 Nashcon DBA tourney (2nd place - Terry Webb won a much deserved 1st place prize), their performance in the biblical themed tourney was lackluster at best, or at least my generalship of them was!

The Generals chariot was painted to be an electrum plated chariot.  Probably the Hebrews would not have had the resources for such a luxury, but I figured if the Assyrian king could have one, why not David.

The Philistine / Sea Peoples Allies

Warband and optional Auxilia General

Vikings Finished!

 Here they are all finished up and ready to hit the mail.  After spending all the time sprucing these guys up I almost wish I could keep them, but I have my own collection of Vikings to paint from the old Ral Partha line.  I hope they turn out as nice as these.

28mm Essex Vikings in the Snow WIP

Just thought I would post some pictures of a viking DBA army I have been working on.  These are repaints of some Essex Vikings that I am selling for a friend.  They are almost done with the exception of the shields which need shading, highlighting and designs, as well as some work on the faces and a few miscellaneous tweeks.  I'm hoping to get $350 for these so if anyone is interested please let me know.