From Codsticker: Bloody Miniatures - The King's Men and The Parliament Men (40 pts)

In a break from my established pattern of featuring 4 Bloody Miniatures, here I present 8! The last two packs from wave 3 released in April 2022; BM 015 All The King's Men:

And BM 016 the Parliament Men:

As you would expect the King's Men includes  a young dandy, who probably spends a lot more time posing with his sword than swinging it in anger:

As well as an older Gentlemen who prefers to observe the martial goings on with a nice goblet of claret:

Not everyone is some genteel poseur; there is also a staunch monarchist who has, perhaps, served with Prince Rupert on the continent:

 

And the seasoned veteran; a swordsman by trade:

Pack BM 016, The Parliament Men, are not foppish. They are dressed in sensible attire, suitable for the seriousness of their task. Here we have a hard-nosed urban merchant, tired of paying his majesty's tax, especially that offensive Ship Money!

 

An agent of Parliament, probably a puritan judging by his stern countenance:

A battle-worn and committed officer of foot, willing to follow his general all over the three kingdoms:

This east Anglian farmer would prefer to stay home but someone has to save the King from his papist advisors and their conspiring ways:

That is 8 28 mm minis, at 5 points apiece, is a total of 40 points. If  I can manage a couple of entries a month featuring 8 figures I may be able to make up for my slow start.

Great work here mate. Again loving the work you are putting into these models. Each having its own character here, and still fitting into the genre so easily. Will be quite the sight with them all laid out on the table I am sure!

40 pts for you!

Kyle

From Guy B: [Chamber of Darkness] Fifty shades of Scots grey? [230 points]

I have an odd disability for an editor - I'm mildly dyslexic. It means I have to be careful and generally read through things twice. So when I read the Chamber of Darkness initially, I thought "Great! I can get some Covenanter Scots painted!"...

The miniatures are a mixture of Warlord plastics and Perry Miniatures. I have some Foundry as well to mix in which will break up any uniformity with the Warlord poses. 

The command wasn't ready in time, so I'll probably post these later. 

The pikes are a mixture of metal and plastic, the Warlord ones tend to break but as pikes are in short supply, I'm still using them. 

So I did paint... a lot of them. 41 completed, with some shotte and command half finished. That was until a friend of mine suggested I read the challenge again and see what it actually said! So it meant using a grey scale only... Oh dear!!!!

So I decided to paint some rocks as well, so I met the criteria... these are 3D printed with Mr Smoother applied, to remove most of the graininess. The rocks are all greyscale, and even involved various Vallejo greys! Challenge completed, sort of!

I attempted to speckle one of the rocks to make it look realistic. This was quite laborious but the finished rock looks good (better on the table than in photography). If I paint any more, I'll add the odd bit of lichen in greens and browns.

So I estimate 205 points for the 41 Scots and 5 points for the rocks, plus a 20 point challenge bonus equals 230 points!

From ByronM: 15mm Thirty Years War Swedish force (288 Points)

I had plans for doing so much this year, yet due to struggles with getting my head around painting 15mm I just never got into it this year.  Now finally at the end, once I started basing them up and looking at them from tabletop distances, I am actually really happy with them, and realized that my issue was that I was looking at them individually and close up while painting them, expecting 28mm style looks, when really, its all about the bulked up / ranked up look....  I really should have based some up way earlier, and I could have gotten past the mind lock and painted more!!!

Anyway, on with the show....

These figures are a mix of Wargammer LLC (makes of By Fire and Sword), Khurasan, and Blue Moon.  I honestly do not know which are which anymore as they all just went into a pile to be painted.  All of them are very good though, with Blue Moon being the roughest, but at the price they offer for bags of 50 I really can not complain.  The Khurasan and Wargammer LLC figs are both super clean and easy to work with.

I made a choice while working on the Swedish force that a good section of them was going to be King Gustav II Adolf's personal force and therefore they would be in the regular uniforms of blue coats and yellow sashes.  While normally during the 30 year war, no one was in any sort of regular uniform, in theory Gustav's personal / elite guard was.  Probably not in any real numbers and even though they were uniforms they were probably not as regular looking as I have done them, so I expect some would be historians to have issue with the uniformity, but it's my force, so my choice!

I discussed my basing choices last time I posted some 30 years war figures, but I also made a choice to cut some bases with some rounded edges to use for my leaders bases since then.  This is so that I can tell them apart from the normal troops when I use these figures with Pike & Shot, but still use them attached to units in By Fire and Sword.  This can be seen on King Gustav II's base.

I painted a pile of Cavalry to go along with the King, after all, even though he was known to charge in recklessly, but never alone, so three units of cavalry should be enough to support him.

As most of you know by now, I am not a fan of painting horses, but I think these came out well with a few different shades mixed in.

I also needed Musketeers to help out with the force, so painted two units of them as a start.  Many more are to come in the near future but this gave me something more to post at least.

Again, probably way to uniform in colour, but I wanted the Swedish force to look like a force compared to the coming Holy Roman Empire army that I am working on where everyone is wearing something different.

Last up in this post is what started it all for me with the Thirty Years War, pikemen!  Here are 4 more units of pikemen to add to my Swedish force.  Most of them are without armour, but one is an armoured unit.

As you can see, I also took Curt's advice and got some standards to start adding into the units.

Now that I am in the right mind set for painting 15mm, it's almost too late for the challenge.  Sigh...

I will get at least a few more done before the end, but it looks like I will have a lot to carry over to next years challenge. Which unfortunately means that I am likely to miss my points goal for the year.  I ALWAYS go for 1500 to make sure I can meet it, this year I looked at everything I had to paint and decided I could go higher....  bad call.  I would have made 1500, but will miss my 2k target.  Oh well, live and learn, right?

******

For points:

Cav: 30 x 4 points = 120
Infantry: 84 x 2 points = 168
Total: 288

__________________________________________________________________

With the Snowlord calling sauve qui peut, what is a good minion to do but pitch in and stem the tide? And here we have the future foreign regiments (at least the German ones) of the King of France!

The Army of the King of Sweden has always been one that has fascinated me, ever since the heady days of my youth, finding Trevor Dupuy's The Military Life of Gustavus Adolphus: Father of Modern War in the kid's section of my local library. And who can forget the illustrated Great Commanders and their Battles?

I fully sympathize with the pain of switching to 15mm. I tried painting a DBA army pre-challenge for a tournament and was stopped dead in my tracks, for much the same reason. I also sympathize with the not meeting your target fears. I'd love to paint 1500 points in three months; I feel I did quite well passing my lowly 200 quota.

But these are beautiful, Byron. Keep up the good work!

288 points in the spreadsheet!

HerrRobert, Friday Follies Phantasmical, Over