By Saint Lazarus!

As often seems to be the case, I’ve been tempted by a new project. The lines of thought that lead me to it are too long to write out here, but largely it was excitement at Wargames Illustrated’s Assassins and Templars, rediscovering Assassin’s Creed, and then spiralling out into wanting to Wargames the Third Crusade because that’s just how these things go when you start to do a bit of reading. In the short term though, I bought myself a copy of Outremer Blood and Faith, and set about painting up a mini to whet my whistle.

During my reading and watching of various YouTube videos (largely along the lines of ‘Teutonic Knights: did they really wear such fantastic helmets?’), I came across the Knights of the Order of St Lazarus, and figured that would make for an ideal first figure. They are (mostly) knights with leprosy, charging into battle hoping to die honourably because that way is a fast pass into heaven - they are the Dwarf Slayers of the medieval period! 

So, here is my first mini for Outremer:

White really is a pickle to paint isn’t it. For this guy I highlighted up to pure white from a very light grey, but I wonder if white with a grey wash/glaze then highlighted back up to white wouldn’t be easier? 

My brief internet research suggested that leprous knights often wore masks, so I converted one for my mini - it’s a cut and carefully shaved down Frostgrave cultists head, transplanted onto a mail coif wearing Fireforge head:

I even highlighted the mask properly rather than just drybrushing it! Ugh, looking at my shonky freehanded cross on his shield in this extreme close up doesn’t make me happy, rest assured it looks much better at arms length! 

And here’s a picture of the back too, as always to prove that I painted it. Not a lot to look at, mostly white. 

I wasn’t sure what colour the ring around his head should be - is it supposed to be fabric, as some pictures suggest? It’s not sculpted like that, so I left it metal in the end…

While I was digging in my Game of Thrones box for historical sprues to convert my knight, I also came across a metal monk, and figured Crusaders could probably do with some pilgrim monks to fight over. 

It’s a fairly quick and dirty paint job - I went a bit too heavy on a drybrush and tried to knock it back with glazes, but with the end of the year looming and the Tally still… looking like it does there came a point where done was good enough and this was it.

No idea who made the mini originally - I feel like it came from Forlorn Hope some time ago, so is probably originally a Grenadier sculpt?

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

38 vs 255 = -217

14 minis to do before the end of the year to hit the challenge of averaging a mini a week, that’s doable right? I may or may not have dug out some minis to prep that only need very simple paint jobs…

What’s next then? Well, before I paint anything else, Tim the Necromancer has managed to squeeze in one more game…

Man at Arms, the updatening

Having played a decent amount of Frostgrave recently, I had gotten it into my head that my Man at Arms mini was borrowed from the retinue of Tim’s Mortal Enemy, who in turn just borrowed some minis from my Game of Thrones Starks. As he’d been fairly pivotal to my success recently, I set about updating his model, as I felt bad that he was a proxy (and sooner or later Tim’s Mortal Enemy is likely to reappear, and would need him back). 

So last night, I dug out a bunch of sprues and set about rebuilding him. I tried to match the pose and equipment, just updating his shield initially, but then I also decided to give him a nice kettle helm, because they’re cool:

Like the original, he’s a Fireforge body with Gripping Beast Viking arms. I had originally planned to give him a shield from the Frostgrave Cultists sprue, as he’s in the employ of a Necromancer, but they were much smaller than I remembered so he got a Fireforge shield instead. Also, I’m not sure if you can see it or not, but there was a slight casting defect on his groin, which I fixed with green stuff.

He’s even got a scabbard and pouch, just like the original mini.

Then I made the mistake of reading my own blog trying to work out why I had initially grabbed a mini from the Mortal Enemy warband rather than making a new one, and realised… I didn’t. The Wolf shield carrying Man at Arms was in Tim’s gang first, and is even narratively relevant to the campaign, as it turns out Tim hired him on the spot when he saw Tim leaving his sorceress mistress’ bedroom tucking something into his pocket. I’d apparently just forgotten this! In my defence, due to my intermittent gaming time it’s been over a year since the Mortal Enemy actually made an appearance on the table…

So I guess he becomes either the first mini of a Barons War project, or maybe the first House Bolton trooper in my ASOIAF project (which admittedly I do want to add to for the first time in at least a decade, to make some usable forces). Or perhaps both, when he gets to the painting table.

In other news, I also cracked the plastic on the boards in Sedition Wars, to see whether they might be useful for a possible 2026 project:

Of men and monsters…

 The next two finished miniatures are both for Frostgrave:

This knight is the first finished mini for my Frostgrave warband, ready for some solo play after Rangers of Shadow Deep (as I’m planning to play through the solo campaign from the Frostgrave Folio). He’s mostly Fireforge bits, with a couple of accessories from the bits box to make him look a little more like he’s got enough supplies to last him ranging round a frozen city (although admittedly it’s only a pouch and a knife, so he probably can’t go too long before he needs to nip home for lunch):

As my warband is a Necromancer’s, I’d initially planned to make my Knight look a bit more evil, with a wild looking bare head and maybe a club or savage mace rather than a sword, but my daughter decided that he needed a helmet to protect his head, and who am I to argue with a 6 year old? A purple and black colour scheme make him look a little sinister though, so it’s all to the good…

(He’s a little dinky, coming from historical sprues, but not so much that it’s so jarring that I’d not use him).

The other mini is my Alchemical Monstrosity, for the first scenario in the Dark Alchemy solo campaign. As it’s a creature that’s a hideous combination of several creatures fused together with a whipping tentacle attack, I ventured into my bits box for the parts to make my own back in the distant past of mid-January…

Proof that you should never throw anything away, I’d kept these tentacles that I removed from a Horrorclix figure at least a decade ago (it’s pre-blog I think, it’s the chap in the straight jacket above the letter ‘e’ in Lead in the banner at the top of the page!):

I knew I had the perfect body, some sort of shifter from Mage Knight Dungeons. I couldn’t find the one I’d previously stripped, so I had to dig through boxes to find another (I found the stripped one in parts this week while looking for something else, coincidentally, which I’ll probably not need a second of but that’s the way it goes sometimes)

With copious scraping and some drilling and pinning, I had a very serviceable monster, that is incredibly difficult to photograph as it’s not really got a single best angle:

Then, ten months later I finished painting it! I’d originally put it on the back burner while I prioritised getting things finished for RoSD, but now we’re at the end of the year I’m painting whatever I can get my hands on as and when they take my fancy!

I went for very different skin tones on each area of the mini to try and really sell that it’s multiple creatures blended together, and where the detail is a little soft on the face went with bleeding eyes rather than trying to paint them in to add to the ‘flailing in its suffering rather than necessarily malicious’ vibe:

As well as the Alchemical Monstrosity for Frostgrave, it might also pull double duty as Possessed monster for The Silver Bayonet and as a … something horrible for D&D!

Finishing these two brings the Tally to:

37 vs 23 = +14

And I realise as I’m typing this, let’s me cross another thing off of the Challenge:

• Finish something old
• Finish a piece of terrain
• Finish some scatter terrain (3/3)
• Prep all of the monkeys in the monkey box
• Paint all of the miniatures in a boxed game
• Play a game with fully painted miniatures
• Finish a complete skirmish force for a project (at least 16 miniatures, unless it's for a much smaller scale game like Frostgrave)
• Repaint something (either a miniature that I have previously painted, or one that was received painted

• Convert a miniature and show WIP pics

• Finish the last member of the Nextwave team
• Complete the classes project (and when I do that, start a project to have painted miniatures to represent all of the Races in the Players Handbook)
• Add at least 3 entries to the Monstrous Alphabet Project (2/3)
• Average at least a miniature a week by the end of the year (so, paint 52 miniatures)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive!

House Stark marches to war in the New Year!

Having chipped away little by little, I've managed to get the 5 House Stark conversions that I'd previously posted finished:

Which brings my Stark forces to 13 minis total - I should really finish up statting up the various troop choices so that I can paint to a points limit or force organization of some sort rather than just what I fancy building at any particular time!

Tally:

5 vs 0 = +5

New year, new Starks!

Trying to stick to the plans of the year before last, here's a wip pic of some House Stark troop conversions I've been working on:

The archers are mostly from the new Perry Agincourt sprues, whilst the rest are a mix of Fireforge and Gripping Beast bits to get the look I was after. My possible favourite of the bunch would maybe have to be the mace wielding chap, as he looks almost sad that he's about to have to brain someone...

House Stark musters for war!

I know, you're as surprised as I am, I finished painting some miniatures!

My first 8 finished miniatures for the Stark forces for the A Song of Ice and Fire project - a mix of Perry, Gripping Beast and Fireforge bits to get the look I was after (much more rugged than my Lannister troops!) and a Wargames Foundry champion to lead them (from their Baron Wars range, originally a Citadel sculpt iirc). And yes, the chaps in the back rank have the Wolf's head shields that I previously made a one part push mould for:

As my 'knight' miniature (knight in inverted commas, as the Northmen don't have knights per se as the Southern types do, if we're going to get mega nerdy) had a large blank shield, I took this opportunity to try using a waterslide decal for the first time. Ever. I know, it's kind of weird to be this old and have never used a waterslide decal before, but what can I say, I've never really needed to before and kind of shied away from trying them for fear of ruining a paint-job right at the end...

Filled with the spirit of experimentation and adventure, I did a quick bit of internet research and soon settled on making my chap some unknown son of House Cerwyn, and dug out the necessary bits and bobs:

I was originally going to use an axe decal from the Bretonnian Men-at-Arms sheet, but when borrowing a pot of gloss varnish to prepare the shield from Uncle Johnny, he offered me these, which were better (I think) than the ones that I'd originally planned on using.

A quick coat of gloss to prepare the surface, some poking with a wet paintbrush and minute adjustments where the decal split where I had perhaps over-zealously trimmed it, and a touch up with paint (and an application of static grass, it seems, as I forgot to take an 'after' photo at the time) later, we have a chap holding a suitably emblazoned shield:

Huzzah!

These chaps take the tally to:

13 vs 16 = -3

That sweet zero is so close now, I might even reach it! I suppose I should probably sort out some stats and point values for the ASOIAF project soon, so that I can start painting towards playable skirmish warbands rather than my current approach of 'a little bit of this, a little bit of that'...

In other news, Uncle Johnny gave me some random GW sprues (from 1998, if the tab on them is to be believed) that he thought would come in handy with conversions for the ASOIAF project, that I'd never seen before:

Has anyone come across these before, and know what they are?