American War of Independence - Hessians

 These lovely fellows have been on my desk mocking me for at least a year and I am so pleased to have finally finished them.  They are 54mm AWI figure from "All the King's Men".  I got in some games this past weekend using the ATKM rules at Nashcon and had a blast.  The owner, Ken Cliffe, provided most of the figures and hosted an incredibly entertaining and stunningly gorgeous game.  Of course it helps that my side scored a decisive victory!

The flag for the Hessian Lieb regiment was copied directly from the internet and printed on linen paper.  The source was an 18th century period painting of the regiment; here a link:

 http://www.vondonop.org/uniformleib.html

 The officer, complete with crop with which to beat his subordinates into submission.  I chose to black line all of the fiddly detail with an ink liner which took some time.

Speaking of taking some time, what was I thinking when I decided to give these chaps blue ticked overalls.  I would stripe one or two pair a night, but that was all I could handle at one sitting.

Odds and Ends

 Here we have a recently finished Baueda 25mm WWII piece from their skirmish line.  I just painted it on a lark to see what they were like.  The display piece was fun and I enjoyed the painting process.  The figure is a bit "Heroically scaled" for my taste, but well sculpted.

I have yet to play the skirmish game, but a friend has a bunch painted up so I'll give it a go before too long.

I used a snow product from Noch to detail the base.  It is great for a light dusting of snow, but I'm not sure if it would work well to represent deep snow.

Mindstalkers

Here we have a 40mm figure for the game Mindstalkers.  Scalecreep miniatures currently has the whole line of superb minis on clearance at 75% off.  I've never played the game itself and suspect it is a bit dead, but with figures like these I may just make up my own rules for a fun skirmish fantasy game.

I painted these miniatures a couple of years ago and didn't realize until I had taken these pictures how dusty they had gotten.  Live and learn!

The Pavise design is that of lady luck.  I tried to give it a two-dimensional Medieval look and was somewhat pleased with the result, though freehand painting has never been my forte.

Spartans Finished!

The Spartan Phalanx in all of its manly glory.  In addition to these there are psiloi, Auxilia and a Horde element which can be seen in previous posts.  They come as a starter set from Gorgon Studios.  The price seemed very reasonable and they are top notch figures.

A less birdseye view which lends them a more ferocious aspect.

I love basing psiloi.  There is so much empty space on a base that you can do creative things.  On these I have painted up tree bark as striated rock, a trick I learned from my friend Paul P.

Spartans!

 This lovely collection of figures is produced by Gorgon Miniatures as their Spartan line.  The figures are very well done and in my mind slightly superior to the Foundry Greek line in that the sculpting quality seems as good, but the Hoplons are sligtly larger, thus more appropriately sized.  Above is a group of psiloi.

 Here we have the javelinmen or Auxilia.  I found these to be extremely nice sculpts and am somewhat conflicted as these are for a commission so I don't get to keep them.  Oh well!

 I based five light infantry on a stand to be a horde element for DBA armies.  Only the Early Spartans get a horde element, but these could really be from this period.  I have decorated the shields of the Hoplites with the lambda, which would probably be more appropriate for the later period, but had enough figures for a horde so I thought what the heck.

These are the heavier Auxilia and based as 4 to a stand.

The army will have two command elements for future expansion which are shown here and below.  You just have to love the transverse crests!

 Some fun detail work on the shield.

 A small sampling of the hopllites - there will be 48 in all, half of which are painted, but I won't base them until they are all painted so I can mix them in and base the army at one time.  The shields have Little Big Men decals which are pretty easy to work with.  The spears were a problem, as I was not happy with the ones I purchased, so have used some plastic spears, and a lot of my own wire spears with custom sculpted butt spikes.  This was a pain to do but I was quite pleased with the end result.

The hoplite on the right above has a plastic spear, the rest are armed with my custom made ones.  The two hoplites below have custom made spears as well.  As you can see from those below I have given them a variety of linen and leather armor.

That's it for now.  I'm off to paint more Hoplites!

Persian Immortals

Just finished up some Persian Immortals, or possibly Persian Kardaces depending on how you read the sources. Herodotus describes them as having hoplons with no blazon and polished to a mirror like brightness. In any event they will give my Persian army some much needed strength.

25mm Clan Wars figures for HotT

I was fortunate enough recently to get a large lot of Clan Wars figures. I had never seen these figures before, but once I did, I knew I had to possess them. I ended up selling most of them, but kept enough to make a nice sized HotT army in 28/30mm. I recently painted a couple of hero figures to use as Behemoths in my 15mm samurai DBA / HotT army and as a test for the army to follow. Above and below are pictures of a Crab Clan hero with the head of some unfortunate beastie.

The sculpting and animation on these figures is wonderful, but they are intricately detailed which meant I had to get over my fear of painting them and just do it. I'm still working out how to paint these in an efficient manner, but it will be slow going I am afraid.

I like playing Behemoths in Hordes of the Things so I painted a couple of them.

Here's the backside of the Lion Clan Hero. I tried to use color on him that is mostly reminiscent of a lion - except the pants of course.

No Clan Wars army would be complete without a dragon so here is the Fire Dragon. This is an early production run of this monstrous beast and is all metal. The current production of them by Valiant enterprises is resin, but this guy is a massive hunk of pewter.

A side view for scale. He truly is massive!

Here are the rest of the figures waiting to be painted. I added sashimono to most of the spear and swordsmen. There is also a nice collection of magicians, monks, heroes, beasts, retainers for the stronghold and even some cavalry.

Love the lion mask on this guy!

Han Dynasty and Warring States Chinese

The impetus for building this army came from a purchase of a fantasy Chinese army which I realized could serve as the core of a historical force as well. Some of these are the only painted miniatures I have ever purchased, and the painter had a style similar to my own, but really lavished attention on them so I just couldn't resist.

This camp was made utilizing one of the two dragons that came with the painted army. The trees are a model railroading product called sea moss, and the lions are part of an aquarium decoration.

Here are two other fantasy elements, a magician and a hero. The magician stand came with the fantasy army, but the hero was my own addition. There is also another dragon like the one in the camp scene, only painted primarily red.

The camp scene above is for the historic DBA warring States or Han Dynasty army. The rice paddy was made by using long grass and another railroad product called scenic water. I had several water products to choose from, but I think my favorite turned out to be one made by Vallejo paints.

I had intended to create more rice shoots, but the process was so tedious I decided to pretend the field had not been completely planted yet.

Han Dynasty General by Essex. I was very pleased with how this element came out, and particularly liked the gold silk robe of the general.

Here's a better view of the riders in the chariot.

The light horse. Most of these were my additions, but two in the back row came with the original army. The Han Dynasty army has two options, one that is a mixed force and one that is primarily mounted, hence all the additional light horse and cavalry elements.

A Total of five cavalry elements were needed as an addition to make all of the necessary cavalry.

These marvelously painted chariots came with the original army. Bless the gentleman who did all the work on the diamond pattern horse blankets!

The Dagger axe men will play as spears.

A few of the warring States period armies call for warband. These are supposed to be fanatic swordsmen for the most part with the job of collecting trophy heads.

Crossbowmen formed the backbone of a lot of chinese armies. Two of these came with the painted army, but I had to add a couple more to cover all of the historic DBA options.

Last of all are a 3 blade stand and some psiloi. I never could figure out the code for the Essex halbard men. I believe large Halbards like these were used, but most heavy infantry relied on the dagger axe.