Saxon Invasion and the Birth of a New Project!

Before embarking upon a new adventure I have been trying to close out a few small projects that have cluttered my painting desk for far too long.  First up is a finished camp for a Romano-British army complete with Saxon allies and a Saxon/British longship.  The longship is of course the ubiquitous Essex 15mm Viking longship, but it should work just as well as a small early Saxon or Romano British ship built in the Scandinavian fashion.

 Two Litko plywood bases form the bottom of the scene, with insulation foam shaped and cut with a hot wire to make the bank of the inlet.

 The oars are too close to the bank, but it was a compromise between reality and the required base size for a camp element.  I think of it as the final stroke of the oars before driving the ship onto the bank of a small river inlet.

 The water is made from Sculptamold paper mache.  The rough paper mache texture works very well mimicking the rolling current of water I thought.  The Sculptamold was then painted and gloss coated with acrylic future floor polish.

 Shield decals are by Little Big Man.

 

 The final touch was the scrub and flowering bushes on the bank which are readily available from a number of modelling companies, especially for HO scale model train enthusiasts.

Another Project Nearing Completion

 Here we have some 40mm Mindstalker figures with minor conversions for use in the new release of the Fantasy Trip, Melee and Wizard role playing game.

 The figures are perhaps a bit delicate for gaming, especially the swords, but I'm willing to risk the occasional casualty.

 This was such a fine line of figures which are unfortunately no longer in production.  I was able to get a boatload of them very inexpensively from a collector/or family member who bought out the line.  I think they were the family of the sculptor, but I wouldn't swear to it.

 Great detail all throughout the figures.  The mounted figures are truly amazing!

Bavarians - Regiment Von Kinkel

 I promised a fellow Old School Napoleonics enthusiast, Wellington Man, that I would not let a recent acquisition prevent me from continuing to work on my own Hinton Hunt/Der Kriegspieler 1/72 collection of shiny toy soldiers, so this photo is just to prove that I am still continuing to make progress on my next Battalion.

They will be a battalion from the Regiment Von Kinkel with Black facings piped red.  The Battalion is taking some time and has been delayed getting started, the reason for which you can see below.

And Finally a Massive New Project Begins 

 In these boxes is fifty years worth of devotion to the hobby.  An entire corp of both French and British 1/72 scale miniatures from the dawn of our hobby.  The trip overseas was rough on them and I have spent the last month unpacking and putting them back into top notch condition, though a little detail work yet remains to finish that task, mostly on the delicate and intricately painted foil flags.

 Though I won't have pictures of these for some time, In my next blog post I intend to share a bit of history about the creator of this amazing collection as well as some of his display photos.  Now it is my turn to honor his work by furthering the collection through the inclusion of the French Old Guard, and then on to Russia!