More Dwarves and a Not-Galadriel

It's taken a while, mostly due to lack of mojo, but I have finally finished my first full unit for 2023, a second shield wall of Dwarf warriors from Conqueror Models. 

The dwarves are all in a more aggressive stance with this unit.

For this unit's banner I went with a green field and a white mountain goat. I think anvils and crossed axes are just a rather tired cliché now. 

For the decoration at the hems, I've found that there is less room between the edge of the mail and the hem of the tunic from the older Vendel sculpts, so it was more frustrating to try and do a simple design with these figures. I did manage to make the captain's tunic more elaborate though.

I've also incorporated more runes onto the shields to make them look more Dwarfy. Maybe they have talismanic significance, maybe it's just their way of marking their shield. The runes are just made up. I thought about being cute and using JRRT's runes to have them spell something rude if I lined them up the correct way, but that'd get old fast.

The big N with the axe/hammer through it is actually inspired by the badge for 'Nemesis', the bad guy in the rather bad superhero movie Samaritan starring Sylvester Stallone. 

I also put some paint on this medieval female character from Pulp Figures' new 1066 range. In history she was Isobel de Conches, daughter of Simon de Montfort, who lead her husband's knights in battle. It is a nice pack with Isobel mounted and armed, on foot armed, and on foot in court dress. I've painted the courtly dressed figure all in white as a not-Galadriel to help my Elves with some extra magic and leadership. I also wanted to practice my white.

The backdrops are free downloads from Jon Hodgson that I printed out and glued to some foam core.

Forth Eorlingas!

I have finished the second box of Gripping Beast plastic Goths at last! Took me 18 days to paint 6 cavalry. Ok I did prep my game for Lard Eh 3, make some autumn trees and record a podcast plus assemble 2 Sarissa churches (they aren't done, so I haven't shown you yet) in there, but still. 

I based these ones on singles to add to my previously completed figures so that I could form the 6 figure squadrons into even ranks of 3.

This gets me to 1x mounted hero, 4x squadrons of heavy cavalry and 2x squadrons of lights, plus 3x shieldwall foot units and archers. At Lard Eh I bought a them a shield maiden as well, so there's a 2nd hero once she's painted.

That should keep the orcs busy. 

Rohirrim Light Riders

I imagine the Rohirrim were mustered by feudal obligation based upon wealth. A man with a certain wealth in herds would be obliged to appear for the muster with a horse, or horses. Bow for the poorest of the herdsmen, then perhaps spear and shield, then arming themself with a mail hauberk for the richest. Those without any herds of their own beyond perhaps a few pigs would serve on foot with bow or spear and shield.

Being a cavalry based army, light cavalry would be essential for scouting, flank security, raiding, and pursuit.

I looked around at various kits. The Gripping Beast Late Roman light cavalry could get me horse archers and spear armed light cavalry, but the tunics were obviously Late Roman with the embroidered patches. 

The Gripping Beast Dark Ages cavalry, essentially an unarmoured version of the Gothic heavy cavalry I already use, don't have any option for bows.

Then the Oathmark range added a Human Cavalry set. 15 figures with options to equip all with spear and shield, or bow, or hand weapons. So I added a box to my order for Lion Rampant 2 to maximize the postage. If I liked them I'd get a second box to do up as unarmoured Riders with spear and shield.

The horse poses seem odd at first, but they've grown on me, or I've gotten accustomed to them. The tiny pads on the points of contact make them hard to balance. I'm guessing that the designer assumed everyone would just glue them to the 25mm x 50mm rectangular bases provided. I ended up using superglue to affix them to the nails I like to use during painting, which was problematic when it came time to remove them.

3 horse poses. 2 of them have their hind quarters raised, which was odd at first.

Lots of parts; legs, torso, left arm, right arm, head, quiver, belt pouch and optional knife. I also cut axes from hands and hung them from a few saddles. One figure started giving me problems while I was lining up the arrow over the hand holding the bow, with parts sticking and moving around on me. I'm afraid I turned the air blue around Mikey's delicate ears with all my F-Bombs. The faces are on the soft side, and a few look rather gormless, so I tried using a spare Gripping Beast head.

Built a neck out of sprue to use this spare Gripping Beast head for some variety.

For painting I used a limited pallete; 2 light browns, 2 greys, a light green and the muted yellow is Vallejo "IJA Uniform", but it looks like the soft colour you'd get from natural dyes. I just alternated the colours on the pants and tunics. The brown ink is doing a lot of the heavy work to be honest.

The set comes with 15 very nice 25mm x 50mm plastic bases, but I don't see horse archers being all ranked up no matter what the Oathmark rules say. I initially thought about the 3-2-1 basing popular in Lion Rampant circles, which looks quite good and is effective, but I didn't like how crowded 3 figures were on my large round base.

Too crowded!

Better

Here's how I imagine them spending most of their working days, protecting their herds of horses or sheep from predators or orc raiders.

Offensive Orcs for Orctober

Finishing some orcs seemed appropriate for Hallowe'en. The 2nd dozen of my order of 3d printed Orcs from Spain are done and ready to bash on the Mad Padre's elves. Being equipped with assorted polearms I'm classing these boys as "Offensive Heavy Foot" for Dragon Rampant.

Again they painted up fast as I let the ink wash do a lot of the work for me.

As I painted these I was again struck by the level of detail and the natural poses, which are both a strength and a curse.

Better angle on some shields

With this second mob I used a burnt umber brown ink wash to give me a darker skin tone. I also splashed it over their grey tunics, so the brown ink pulled a mossy greenish tone out of the grey which I think is kinda cool and helps with the grungy look.

2nd group on L. 1st group of R.

Here they all are together ready to bring down the world of Men.

The tufts are self adhesive and from the nice folks at Shadow's Edge Miniatures. They have quite a good range and quality. Packs are enormous so good value too.

Orctoberfest!

Due to rain and illness I've had a couple of days mostly to myself to spend painting. What with the excitement of getting my 3D printed orcs with polearms from Knucklebones Miniatures (on Patreon and Facebook), these lads jumped to the front of the line. 

They painted up very quickly too, despite all of the details!

To be fair, they were a nice palette cleanser after months of Napoleonics.

The detail as you can see is really quite wonderful.

After gluing to washers and priming I gave them a liberal coating of runny burnt umber. Then I dry brushed the armour before blocking in skin, leather straps and tunics (if they had one). The tunics and shields were black with grey dry brushing. There's lots of lovely sword cuts to the shields to show these are hard boys.

The skin is cashmere tan blocked in over the burnt umber base coat, then given a sepia ink wash. The armour is bolt gun metal with a sepia wash and then chainmail highlights.

The boots are honey brown with chocolate brown straps, and sometimes metal plates, all given a sepia wash.

The studded leather hanging from this fellow's helmet was quite a challenge, especially in the recess between shoulder and halberd shaft.

These are all one piece prints. You couldn't get poses like this with one piece castings in metal, let alone plastic,

The second unit is undercoated, but I'll finish the last of my Bavarians (I'm in the home stretch with them) for Oktoberfest, before doing the second dozen Orcs for Orctoberfest!

I will try to get them on the table for a game of Dragon Rampant this weekend if time allows.