The problem with the internet

is having too much access to lots of different miniatures...

Somehow, and I have absolutely no idea how it happened (honest) I managed to put in orders to both 15mm.co.uk and Khurasan for a variety of things.

I blame reading other peoples blogs.

For a painting update - I've made a start on the bases for my Barbarian General, the 3 bases of SLM Werewolves, the 7 bases of CC Giant Wolves and the Heresy Werewolf.

Undecided at the moment what colour to do the wolves, either a mix of greys, or maybe a more creamy colour.  I feel that some research may be in order.

Or some more ordering...

Don't have anything from Rebel Minis yet.  Or Blue Moon...



EDIT - Errrrr... I might have some from Rebel Minis now...

EDIT EDIT - I might have had some Blue Moon stuff too, but I wasn't forking out $52 shipping for $21 worth of minis...

There will be blood...

...but only a wee bit.

Finished up my two test Barbarians (CC) this morning after work, got them varnished and did some small scale blood effects.

First one, done over a black undercoat.

Second over a grey undercoat.

And the pair of them together for a better comparison.

There really isn't much in it, other than the colour of the rocks on the base, which I didn't bother painting after having done the snow.  They are so small that it isn't particularly noticeable anyway.  For the curious, the reasoning behind the yellow shields is to create a reference to the lycanthropic culture, and represents the full moon.  The blue loincloth, well, for some reason, I seem to use blue on a lot of my stuff, so, partly that, and partly to tie in with the snow bases and create a sense of coldness.  It should work well when combined with the Frost Wyrm and Frost Giant I plan on adding to the force.

Both of them are pretty much done as basecoat, Devlan Mud wash, highlight with basecoat.  The blonde one had some yellow mixed into the brown for the highlight on his hair, but that was it.

I'm really happy with how the bases turned out, I get a bit of a shiver just looking at them, although, that might just be sleep deprivation.

Now, I want to forge ahead with the rest of the army, but, a small part of me thinks I should wait until I get a hold of the command packs, and then tackle them one unit at a time, probably 6 bases worth.  I could always spend the time building up more of what I have, seeing as it takes a while to let the bases dry and so on.

Deflowered.

Well, being that my blog has now been deflowered by Dunc, I guess that means I can't be quite so lax in updating it, or putting up pictures as promised...

The shaved Barbarians turned up from Copplestone yesterday, so that is something else to get started on too.

So, here they are, after much promising, my Barbarian army, which has yet to get a cool name.

First up, 8 bases of Copplestone Casting's Northlanders, a mix of axe and sword models.  I think for Mighty Armies, I had planned to use them as Heavy Infantry with the Horde and Fearless skills.  For my own ruleset, they will be both a mainstay and horde unit, and make up the general line infantry for the Barbarian list.

Next up are some Copplestone Giant Wolves from the 10mm Fantasy line, but they scale in well, as you'll see further down.  Again, for Mighty Armies they will be standard Light Cavalry, and for my own rules, probably a support unit.  The reason there isn't eight bases, is because I used a couple of them to flank my General stand.

Some Splintered Light Minis Werewolves, count as Heavy Cavalry with the Horde and Relentless rules for Mighty Armies, and probably another mainstay unit for my own rules.  I might have to get someone else to write the Werewolf rules, or, personal preference will make them unstoppable.  Interesting fact - every order I've made from Splintered Light has had a pack of Werewolves in it.

The General stand - Copplestone 15mm Barbarian Character, plus a couple of individually based ones to use as testers.  Here you can see that the Wolves scale in pretty well, although, knowing that there are 15mm ones in the works, he might be relegated to a basic hero in my own ruleset.

Finally, the Behemoth.  A gargantuan Giant Werewolf, which is actually a 28mm scale werewolf model from Heresy.  He is a Monster for Mighty Armies, I think I had him down with Horde, Relentless and Fearless, but I'm not 100% on that.  For my own rules, I will have to fudge him in somewhere, or he can just count as a Frost Giant or something similar.

All the bases are from Renedra, and have broken cork (from an Ikea placemat) to represent rocks, this is covered with filler, which I think was actually meant to be for fixing a crack in the wall, but my need was greater, as it makes great snow.

And I need to see the stuff she ordered from RPE, so that I can work out how well it scales with what I already have.

Been a good day.

Well, perhaps good isn't the right word...  Productive perhaps.


Package arrived from Copplestone Castings early this morning (ordered yesterday) and it should have meant I had all the 15mm Northlander packs to date.  Sadly, there was a mis-pick, and the beardless Northlanders were AWOl, with a pack of Barbarian Heroes in their stead.

So I emailed CC, and took the opportunity to ask about future releases whilst I was at it.

Picked up a bunch of storage trays when I was out, and spent the remainder of the afternoon sorting out all the 15mm stuff I've amassed so far, which is a fair bit, it seems to accumulate a lot quicker than 28mm does.  I also sorted out some of the files on the laptop, and organised the rules and stuff I've downloaded.  I picked up the Song of bundle and the Splintered Lands rules yesterday from Wargames Vault.

Also, got a reply from Mark saying the missing pack was going in the post today, and, regarding the next few packs, here I quote -

The Barbarian Command (3 leaders, 3 hornblowers and 4 standard bearers) and Shapechangers with Bears should be available by the end of next week, or at worst the following Monday.   There will also be a pack of wolves (a modified version of my 10mm Giant Wolves).

Which is good news indeed as it turns my ragtag horde of Barbarians into a fighting force to be reckoned with.  It also means I am going to have to come up with some command model rules too...  The extra Heroes pack might just find itself turned into a Splintered Lands warband as I'd already based the two tester models on round bases anyway.


In other news, I managed to persuade the missus to make a small Demonworld order from RPE, just so that I can gauge the scale of the minis and see how compatible they are with the Splintered Light and Copplestone stuff, basically got all of the smaller packs of Beastmen, which, should they prove too small, still be enough for a full Mighty Armies force.

Oh yeah, and Splintered Light is running a 20% off sale until the end of the year.  Roll on payday, I feel the need to amass a few more Cave Imps, Satyrs and Dark Elves.  And no doubt a bunch of other stuff too...

Incoming Part II.

Well, the one highlight of spending almost the entire day yesterday awake, was that my Splintered Light order arrived!

There was much rejoicing, opening of little jiffy bags, and drooling over gorgeous little miniatures.  And a couple of huge ones too...


So, my goodie pile looked a bit like this -

A mountain giant, greater wyvern, (both are massive models, they dwarf the fire dragon I already have) a bunch of undead stuff like zombies, ghouls, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, bolt throwers, werewolves, the Orc & Goblin and Wolf Clan armies, the Druids Children Faithful and Rebel warbands, some Splintered Lands Satyrs and Minotaurs, as well as a bunch of stuff David had kindly thrown in, in return for some DDM models I'd sent him.  The haul for them was - samples of the Dark and Wood Elf lines, which will definitely be a future purchase, a host of Splintered Lands foxes, some Goblin werewolves, a bunch of models from the Archer collection, a giant wolf, and a few other various things.

Overall, I'm ever so slightly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff, and I'm at a bit of a loss as to where to make a start.  I really love the Satyrs, so they are a distinct possibility as a starting point, although, I don't know whether to base them up as units, or do them individually for skirmish purposes and pick up a copy of the Splintered Lands rulebook.  I feel a rewatch of the Chronicles of Narnia coming on...

I will definitely pick more of them up, probably in the New Year, so I guess it doesn't really matter too much at the moment, and I am also planning on getting those additions to my Cave Imp force (which I really need to finish the Lizards for...) and yeah, so much stuff...  Dark Elves, Wood Elves (love the new Centaur greens) some more Undead stuff - cavalry, chariots, more infantry...


Maybe it might be easier to just pull out a bag at random and start there...

On a roll.

Well, this morning I managed to texture the bases for 4 stands of Northlander Barbarians, 1 stand of Werewolves (SLM), 6 stands of Giant Wolves and 2 Heroes.

I emailed the guys at Ral Partha asking for a timeline for the remaining beastmen figures for Demonworld, and when they were planning on adding the Thain spirit wolf things, and got a speedy reply saying they would bump them up the schedule and, fingers crossed, they should all be available by mid-December.   Roll on Christmas!

So, it looks like I may just have to give in to temptation and pick up those remaining Copplestone packs, although, I was trying to hold out for the new ones that were promised in the newsletter.  Command models, beyond general and wizard aren't required for Mighty Armies, but I plan on adding in some rules for them to my own ruleset, which continues to remain nameless.

Nothing to see here.

Well, still no pictures...  I'm going to try and get up the town on Wednesday to see about getting a custom backdrop printed out for my light-box, so, in the meantime I've been building up more stuff.  So far, I've added another 4 bases of Northlanders and 6 bases of Giant Wolves to my Copplestone Barbarian army, as well as two individually round based Hero models to use as test pieces for a paint scheme, and the General stand, Magician stand, and a base of Gnogres to my Splintered Light Gnomes.

In other news, the payday gaming splurge hasn't happened yet...  Although it is getting hard to resist.  Ral Partha have just added more codes to the Demonworld line, the most interesting (to me at least) being the Beastmen with Great Weapons.  Resolve slowly crumbling.  If only the Thain wolf spirit head type things and Isthak Giant Beastmen were out, they'd be ordered already.  Still waiting on the Splintered Light order showing up, so it's kinda pointless ordering anything else from them until I know what I've got, and, by way of the Mighty Armies forum, I was drawn into looking at Rebel Minis, and quite like the Scourge models from their 15mm Sci-Fi line.  And the Martian Walker...

And RPE have just released a bunch of new Elves as well.  Good stuff, keep busy boys, and get those Wolves out soon.


Willpower.  Fading.  Fast.

More goodies.

Well the order from Tin Soldier got sorted out quickly, and the stuff from Magister Militum turned up too.  I've been a bit lax with this as I had a bunch of stuff on the 'to-do' list for other things...

The Demons from MM are pretty sweet, and don't suffer from the monopose problem I'm beginning to suspect is the norm for 10/15mm stuff.  The large Fire Elemental should work as a good giant type model should I choose to use the Balrog as my General.

I've been building a light box to try and get better/more consistent quality pictures, so, once I've sorted out the  backdrop, I really am hoping to get some more images up.

• The Werewolf/Barbarian list is fully assembled and bases textured, want some shots of that pre-primer.  
• I've started cleaning up my Splintered Light Gnomes and sanding the bases, so they will probably be next in line.  Still waiting on my order showing up (it has been shipped, but International postage times are a PITA), so Orcs & Goblins, Undead or Wolf Clan Humans might overtake them.  I suspect the Undead will get priority, as I reckon I can get them done pretty quickly based on the same colour scheme as my 28mm stuff.
• Still managing to hold out on that big Demonworld order from Ral Partha Europe.  Partly because I don't want to waste the 10% discount on a tiny order, partly because I'm waiting for them to release the Ogre-sized Beastmen (4204) and the Wolf Heads (4521) from the Thain line.
• I might just bite the bullet and order the 3 newest packs of Copplestone 15mm Fantasy - beardless Northlanders, Trolls and Heroes.  The Shaman type figure will look good flanked by a pair of spirit wolf heads and should be a quick and easy addition to the army.  Actually, I could probably do with more sword and axe weilding guys too...

So, that is pretty much where I am in relation to figures.  I've started going through some of the notes I made about rules, and I've started typing some of the mess up, basically because it is easier to amend, and read.

Once again, pictures soon.  I hope.

Incoming.

Well, the order from Tin Soldier UK arrived today, small issue with a couple of missing figures, but well impressed with the speed of delivery.

The Balrog is pretty cool, and should fit in with the Demons I have on order, giving me either a good General or Monster type figure.  The Orc Triceratops is sweet, the howdah is a bit rough, but easily fixed and the Aztecs are nice too.  Not too keen on the fact that they seem to be monopose, but I guess I can work with it.

I'll see if I can get some decent pictures of them when I grab a shot of the Barbarians.