Saga Vikings

Well, I've finally cracked and got myself a SAGA army, of course of Vikings. They ended up being painted quite quickly, and for those of you who have not been following my Facebook Page, here's the progress

The Saga Viking warband...early stage preparation as I finally get back to painting and playing...black undercoat sprayed on, using 2p coins and some Renedra bases I got in an army pack from Gripping Beast. This was taken August 20th. And why do Renedra bases cost more than 2p each ... ?

24th August - All the metal bits, and a first "colour" - in this case Coat d'arms Linen. This might be quicker than I expect... The figures are a mix of Gripping Beast and Wargames Foundry

25th August - Always interesting how much figures can change from this block painting stage to when they get inked later on.

25th August - Gloss poly varnish on the shields, in preparation for some Little Big Men transfers tomorrow - bit of bronze and gold on the jewellery, brown for the backs of shields and wooden spears and they'll be ready for Army Painter..

25th August - Ready for the shield transfers in the morning... Then the Army Painter magic by lunchtime...!

26th August - All glossed up with Army Painter (not the shields with stickers on them - they get clear poly varnish as a topcoat), and then outside to dry .. it's a nice warm day so maybe spraying matt varnish later ? The shield designs are from the LBMS "GB (Large)" and "Foundry, Artizan & BTD" ranges and really make a huge difference to the quality of the figures

26th August, almost all done.... A good weekends work.. all based with builders sand, awaiting some grass and the like on the bases.

I may add some more photos once they are totally done and on the table

It's been a while - so, some Perry Knights!

After somewhat of a hiatus I've finally gotten round to adding some more content to this site. Nothing too onerous (for me) but here are a load of photos of 28mm multi-part plastic Perry Mounted Men at Arms, which I will be using as C15/C16 Gendarmes in FoG Renaissance armies.

I was wildly impressed with these models - a phenomenal amount of thought had clearly gone into designing each sprue to have huge variations in how you could equip and assemble the horses and riders to allow you to do a variety of troop types from each sprue

The horse barding included was sufficient to do every single horse in the pack of 12

There were just 2 riders who were unarmoured and which add a bit of colour to the formation

Everything was painted in a black spray undercoat, and a drybrush of Gunmetal, with some Gold highlights to bring them up a little

Army Painter Dark Tone gave them a blackened look after the drybrushing

 Very simple Gold details really makes them look more upscale than just plain silvered metal

Ready to rumble - hopefully I will only see them from this angle when they get on table!

If Guillermo del Toro had ever seen this website...

Definitely worth seeing (but I'd skip the 3D version).

Website issues - almost fixed!

After a lot of painful manual editing, the FoGAM Wiki, and both the 10mm and 15mm Galleries are back up and running  -  although all of them still have some incomplete or untidy looking bits of formatting, so please bear with any glitches you may come across. I've also taken out loads of dubious code that had gotten onto the site (on the 12th July - so if you accessed the site in the last 7 days you might have seen some security warnings - a reminder to keep your AV solution up to date if nothing else!)

The FoGR Wiki is also now fixed!

Website problems

The Wikis and Photo Galleries on this site seem to be having some problems at the moment, and probably have been hacked with a form of malware. I've set up some redirects to try and take the site offline and redirect everything to this Blogger site (which is entirely separate so is not affected)  and will try and fix it over the next couple of days

In the meantime, in case the redirects don't cover all the ways in, it may be wisest to avoid accessing the wikis and photo galleries, as there might be something untoward hiding in there somewhere that could disagree with your PC..

Its a right Saga!

I've been painting up some 28mm Foundry Vikings to be used as in-game prizes for the Saga Tournament at Britcon 2013, the idea being these couple of units will be fed into the scenarios across the event, and someone (not necessarily the actual tourney winner) will have the chance to go home with them.

See what you think:

They are all undercoated in black, drybrushed in white (to help being out some highlights in the proper painting) then painted normally - finally a coat of Army Painter Strong Tone has been added, finished with Testors Dullcote

I just love the slightly cartoonish aspect of many of these Foundry figures !

I've semi-deliberately not finished the bases, so whoever ends up with them can make them match their existing figures.

The Beserkers are very obviously totally beserk..

Arrrr! Here be Pirates!

In one of the most extensively trailed competition writeups ever seen anywhere on the whole internet, the Buccaneer Army takes to the field at Campaign in Milton Keynes (well, where else would you expect to find Pirates eh?) for 5 games of cutlass-swinging, eyepatch-wearing, blunderbuss-shootin' Pirate-ey action of the most intense type imaginable.

See how me band o'hearties fared in combat in 5 pages, 200 pictures and several thousand words of puns, random links, irrelevant videos and three of the best episodes of Madaxeman TV ever broadcast!

Arrr!

Compare the Pirate (.com)!

Just added a lot of photos of various 15mm pirates to the site, so you can see the manufactures side by side

As a sample, in this picture you have mostly Blue Moon with additional figures from Grumpys (far right) and Peter Pig (2nd from left). The pictures are all online here and searchable by manufacturer

Bovington Tank Museum

Unbelievably, having never been before, I've now finally made it to Bovington Tank Museum!

The results are 270 photos of WW1, WW2 ad modern armour all in small, medium and as-big-as-your-screen sizes for you to gaze at adoringly, or use as inspiration for your latest small scale painting scheme.

So, if you ever wanted to know what colour the road wheels were on a PzIV, or how to paint the spade attached to the side of a Tiger I, this is the gallery for you. 

Enjoy!

The Southern League 2013 - London Round, Full Results

The London round of the Southern League 2013 covered the period of Revolution & Turmoil in the UK 1639-1688, allowing a choice of armies from Early Caroline English, Scots Covenanter, Scots Royalist, Confederate Irish, Early ECW Royalist, ECW Parliamentarian, Later ECW Royalist, New Model Army, Restoration British, Covenanting Rebels, Monmouth Rebellion

The full results and photo's are online now

PBI in Tuckton

The 15mm WW2 itch gets well and truly scratched at Stab in sunny (almost) Tuckton. A small but perfectly formed Japanese army bought on eBay and tarted up takes the stage against Russians, Americans and some more Japanese in 3 PBI battles

See how the boys do in the world of Girls und Panzer...

There Be Trophies !

Just finished off the trophies for this weekends Southern League FoG:R competition - using some spare figures and trees, and one of the Empress Miniatures Naseby Battlefield Trust Special Figures (£1 from every sale goes to the trust) This chap is the "Cromwell" figure.

Empress Miniatures Cromwell

A Redoubt Miniatures infantryman who came with 2 officers on foot, who are now Great Commanders for my 15mm armies.

No idea where this chap is from I'm afraid !

For added interest I include on each base a replica English Civil War era coin - another late night eBay purchase from Warstore Flags webstore along with the bases from JP Designs.

I'm quite pleased with them - let's hope there are some worthy winners!

A new desk lamp!

My old trusty Ikea lamp finally gave up the ghost about a week ago, with the lampshade bit basically falling off the arm as the heat of the bulb over the best part of the last decade had caused the metal to crumble!

So, a search on Amazon drew me to a lamp with a proper bulb (rather than a tiny, hot halogen one) .. which in turn allowed me to go for a daylight bulb as well. And here is the result

This the the Lloytron L1120WH - Swing Arm Hobby/Desk Lamp in White, only £26 from a seller on Amazon and delivered in a couple of days. Unlike my old lamp it comes with both a big heavy base, and also a screw-on clip thingy which I've ended up using here to fasten it to the edge of my desk, making some extra desktop space in the process. 

I then also picked up a Ecozone Biobulb, Energy-Saving Daylight Bulb, Screw Cap E27, This is a very bright 25W modern eco bulb, which is equivalent to 100w but is not as hot ! The clever bit is that it is a full spectrum daylight white bulb, so gives a very good "daylight" effect for painting - the shot above was using the "daylight" setting on the white balance on my camera. So in future you may well be seeing more pictures with natural colours...

This is a Forged in Battle Tiger I  that has been waiting to be finished since the Newbury show last year..

One of a set of three - photographed in "daylight"

And these are 2 bases of rather exuberantly painted XVII Century carbine armed cavalry from Essex, probably destined to join the "I already have too many to ever field" roster of horse as the 2 Elite bases in my always not quite successful enough Louis XIV French army.

Sunday afternoon...

The end of the saga of the Pirates doesn't mean that painting has stopped. This weekend I've been doing some finishing off, and a bit of upgrading.

First up are the Scots Highland infantry - a mix of Minifigs, Essex and Peter Pig figures to give me 2 x 8 bases of Highlanders for the upcoming Central London round of the Southern League. Here the chaps are, half Army-Painter'ed (the Dark Tone one, which is quite black - good for the grey coats they often wear) and half yet to be varnished.

I also then got tempted to "upgrade" a load of Medieval spearmen by adding a wash of Dark Tone on some fairly well travelled figures - these are mostly a Mirliton army I won at the Worlds in Rome almost a decade ago. There are also three Forged in Battle Tiger I's, and a handful of other spearmen and crossbowmen from my Teutonic army, which I've been toying with inking for several years. Still haven't done the knights though - but no hurry as they are almost unusable as an army in FoGAM

There are even 2 bases of XVII Century French horse who sneak into the bottom left of the photo. Just waiting for them to dry so I can spray varnish them in Dullcote