Random bits and pieces

 With 2 full armies in the paint queue, I finally got around to tidying up some of the odds and sods that had been cluttering my paint table for, well, in some cases, many years!

The ends results are eclectic, and not all done in Contrast Paints either (to make a nice change!) 

First up, some dynamic falling knights from Donnington's 100YW range, based up as exuberant hit markers 

Next, and the main batch, some 28mm metal knight figures of unknown (ie unpainted on a Bring & Buy) origin.  

I've used waterslide transfer paper and my home printer to make the symbols for the heraldry so that's why they look so precise - my painting hasn't suddenly improved !

Irritatingly a bit of ink wash seems to have congealed on this guy's shield.

They are done up as Spanish Knights, with Castile and Leon heraldry 

And a few other cities and statelets too

I really like these figures - they came with separate hands to mix and match weaponry

One unit is in non-Spanish colours

I've had this guy hanging around for ages, but drilled out his hand and added a Valencian flag 

More weirdly, these are some sort of random armoured horsemen on what I am pretty sure are old Essex Han Chinese chariot horses, painted up as African Kingdoms mounted warriors or cataphracts

The padding really helps create a bright and unusual looking unit. 

I did also add some cotton as  horse-hair style pennants to differentiate the Elite from the Average ones. 

More random stuff to come soon!

Refurbished Hittites

The epic task of selling off our late clubmate Clive's collection (on behalf of his family) was not 100% succesful. A rather battered looking Hittite army, presumably bought for DBM or DBMM, resolutely refused to tempt any of the people I offered it to - presumably the near total lack of chariot wheels and crew, and the 50%+ lack of even chariot bodies to accompany the vast numbers of horses was somehow off-putting!

Rather than consign it to the recycling pile however, I decided to take it on as a project, and contacted the nice folks at Essex as I know they have sold separate components in the past. 

They were happy to supply me with horseless chariots and crew, so after a lot of soaking-off of the robust original bases, a full rebasing, and the addition of some new, fully wheeled-up chariots the army has now become a pretty decent ADLG Hittite/Ugaritic force  

This is a pure-play Essex chariot, mounted on a 40mm round base to act as a General 

Both of these are the original Lancashire Games chariot bodies, some with wheels scrounged from the bits box (possibly stolen from unused Napoleonic gun carriages...) and a mix of the Essex and original Lancashire crew

Essex chariot bodies, painted in a simple GW Contrast red with white trim, with Lancashire horses and Lancashire crew 

This may well have been the only "original" chariot from the Lancashire range to survive, with even their own wheels !

Lancashire crew, Essex chariot body, Lancashire horses 

There were hundreds of these slingers from the Lancashire Makedonian range, all based as LI, which makes me suspect it was a DBMM army. They unfortunately suffer from the occasional Lancashire Games issue of very weak ankles, so I'm not sure how long they will survive. ADLG doesn't use many slingers, so I used a load of the spare ones to base up in blocks of 7-8 to use as Levy

These bowmen are very nice figures, and have robust ankles too.  I can see them making appearances in other Biblical armies as well.

I suspect these may be Essex refugees who snuck into the army - based up as Javelinmen, with a lone slinger hidden in the middle of the pack to bulk out the 8 of these figures to two bases of ADLG-appropriate numbers

These are the main body of infantry - using some bowmen to again boost numbers. The simple paint job the original painter did looks very effective, but is really just some easy-to-do dots - very effective for the effort!

The army list has some Elite bow units with Pavise, so having also found these pavises hanging around it seemed an ideal opportunity to use them.

The figures are mostly from the Lancashire Games range, and you can see a load more pictures of this army online in my 15mm figure gallery 

A Viking Battle Shed

 With a podcast and a load of painting all at the "finishing touches" stage, I thought I'd sneak out a few photos of Forged in Battle's Viking War Shed, which I picked up as the prize at the WAR 1-dayer competition earlier in the year. 

OK, technically it's a WE-F55 Meade Hall but I'm sure they may have also kept the odd lawnmower and set of garden tools in there too.

The model is a 2-part resin structure, with the roof being separate to the base. There is no internal detail so the roof just gets glued on after placing the posts around the sides.

The pillars and gable ends are separate metal pieces which need to be glued into holes in the base - some of which I had to drill out to take the lug on the metal beam. This was very easy to do with a pin vise, as the resin drills out easily enough.  

Some of the beams then needed snipping down a bit at the top as well to fit under the roof, and a couple needed building up with filler to join up with the roof once it was glued in place too. 

I painted it in a black Gesso undercoat, with many layers of different drybrushed browns and (eventually) pale grey and bleached bone.

Here it is with some 15mm 2 Dragons figures for scale.

I think it has come out as a very nice little building - useful for that Village next to the Waterway that the Vikings, Rus and Saxon types all like to have to narrow the table down so their shieldwall can't get outflanked!