How Much Wood Can an Anglo-Dane Chop?

Hello again! I've had a very productive couple of weeks, and I've managed to finish off nearly everything for my Anglo-Danish war band. I've completed 8 Hearthguard with Dane Axes, 4 Hearthguard without and my Warlord. All I have left to finish is 12 Levies, and my Warband is finished!

I have really enjoyed painting these miniatures, and they have been a good break from the Warriors of Chaos. Once I have the levies done, I am looking forward to returning to the Chaos though. I now have a fixed date by which point I need to have my 2,500pts list fully painted and based - 18th October. I am definitely confident that I will be finished in time, and have some really wonderful models sitting in my painting queue, including a Lord of Daemonic Mount, a Warshrine and a Chariot. I've also got a Saga Warband of Scots to do too, but they can wait until later this year! :)

I've also managed to get some fairly simple conversions done on the Hearthguard with Dane Axes. I took the hands that grip onto the dane axe in the 'over the shoulder' pose and attached them to the arms that hold weapons so the axe can be held horizontally. I think it makes for a really great pose for the Hearthguard, and is really a very easy conversion to pull off!

I'm afraid this weeks pictures were taken with my my iPhone as the proper camera is on a walkabout in Scotland!

I'm actually pretty impressed with the quality of my iPhone's camera!

As usual, I really enjoyed painting the shields on these miniatures :)

This is one of the Hearthguard that has been converted as described above. For such an easy conversion, the results are impressive :)

The faces on these Gripping Beast plastics really make the models such a joy to paint. They have the same level of character as a modern GW kit.

I'm really pleased with the layering on the Warlord's cloak.

I'll try and get some better photographs in the next blogpost, when I have the other camera back.

That's all for now! I will try and get the next 12 levies done for the next post, but I would be happy to just have 6 done :)

Thanks for reading!

The Shieldwall Grows

Hello again! I've again been busier than I expected to be in these last two weeks and only have eight more models to show for it. I think I'm going to have to push back my expected finish date for the Anglo-Danes to around the middle of August, which should still give me plenty of time to paint the remaining 800pts of Warriors of Chaos I need to get done for November. And then, maybe, I can get started on my Eldar! Did I mention that I had started an Ork army as well? Plus the small matter of a Lord of Skulls to assemble and paint...

First world hobby problems aside, I have really been enjoying painting these models. The details are really crisp and clear, and I would recommend the Gripping Beast plastics to anyone looking to pick up Saga. By far my favourite part of the model is the shield; I love the level of variety they bring to the painting and the way they look when arrayed in a shieldwall. When I start my Scots, I have some exciting plans for freehand on the shields, so keep an eye out for them later this year! :)

I hope to get more than eight models done for next week, and hopefully I'll be a little less busy and get a chance to do it! Anyway, on to the pictures! :)

With these eight warriors finished, I've done all sixteen I need for my Anglo-Danish force.

Again, the details on the faces were easy to pick out.

Thanks to painting these shields, I am much less afraid of painting white than I used to be.

The shieldwall so far :)

I'm looking forward to giving these guys their first blooding this week!

I'm really loving the way these guys are turning out and looking forward to getting them finished.

That's all for now! I'll be back again in two weeks time with some Dane Axe wielding Hearthguard. And maybe I'll have something to show for my little side project that's been on the back burner for a little bit, but enough of that for now!

Thanks for reading :)

The Start of a New Saga

Hello all! As my poorly punned title suggests, I have been working on a new project these last couple of weeks. I really haven't had as much time to paint as I would like, and have only finished eight models of the sixteen I hoped to have done by today. If I want to get these guys finished by July, I'll have to pick up the pace a little!

This is actually the second time I have started an Anglo-Danish force for Saga (which is a skirmish game set in Dark Age Europe). My first army, which was finished about 1.5 years ago and built using the Wargames Factory plastics suffered from both poor models and a poor paint job. I'm really not a fan of the Wargames Factory stuff; the models are pretty low quality and the detailing isn't great. It didn't help them that I had painted the models in a hurry to below the standard I was doing even then.

The fact is that I the figures didn't at all match my current standard of painting, and I wanted to be able to play with something that reflected the quality of miniature I was able to produce. I have used the Gripping Beast plastics this time around, and the quality jump is huge. Lovely, lovely kits, and incredibly well priced too. I have found the faces incredibly easy to paint - the features are very exaggerated, and this makes it very easy to pick out pleasing highlights. I also tried something a little extra with the chainmail, using multiple drybrushes to highlight it and make it look a little more dynamic and 'real'. Hopefully it's noticeable!

I think that the shields and faces are the key elements of these models, and I think I've done a pretty good job on both! :)

To paint the chainmail, I firstly drybrushed the whole area with Boltgun Metal, followed by a drybrush of Chainmail, leaving the previous layer in the recesses. I then gave it a final drybrush of Mithril Silver across the top where the light would catch.

I think this is my favourite face of the lot.

My favourite part of my previous Anglo-Danish force was painting the shields by hand. I'm sure that transfers would look better, but I love the scope for creativity it brings!

That's all for now! Hopefully I'll be able to spend a bit more time painting over the next two weeks and complete 16 models :)

Thanks for reading! :)

The Three Riders of the Apocalypse

Hello there! Thank you to everyone who looked at my last post! It's been my post popular so far, and I'm not really sure why, but I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to have a look :)

I've spent the last two weeks working on a unit of three Skullcrushers, completing a 1,600pts Warriors of Chaos army. Since I started this blog four months ago, I've painted 69 models, which is more models than I painted in the whole of last year. I'm absolutely certain I would never have been able to paint at this rate if it wasn't for my blog, so I'm definitely glad I started it!

I now only have another 900pts left to paint for the Raze and Ruin fantasy tournament in November, and I am definitely well on course to do this! In fact, I'm going to be taking a break of 1-2 months from painting my Warriors of Chaos to work on other things; mostly an Anglo-Danish war band for Saga and finally getting some real work in on my Eldar. I aim to finish the Anglo-Danes and have a test model ready to go for my Craftworld by the end of July, which I think I can comfortably do :)

I was also able to get up to Warhammer world and take a few photos of the whole army on one of the display boards, so I've put those pictures at the end.

The full unit. I gave the Juggernauts a second glaze of Bloodletter to give them a slightly different look to the riders.

I've continued with the theme of flesh banners throughout all the units.

I'm really liking how good the technique I use to paint the armour is looking.

The details on the helmet were surprisingly easy to pick out.

This is definitely my favourite pose in the whole unit.

The juggernaut heads have a lot of character and aggression in the sculpts, and I wanted to bring that out with the painting.

Here's the full 1600pts army as it currently stands.

I've already made both these units of Warriors of Chaos 18 strong, and the Marauders now sit at 30!

I'm really happy with how cohesive the army looks.

You can see the original blog posts for all these units in the links below:

• 1600pts Warrriors of Chaos
• 1 Chaos Lord
• 12 Warriors of Chaos with shields
• 12 Warriors of Chaos with two hand weapons
• 16 Marauders of Chaos with shields
• 10 Chaos Warhounds
• 10 Marauder Horsemen
• 5 Chaos Knights
• 3 Skullcrushers (covered here)

This post has gone on for far too long, so I'll end it here :) Hopefully next week I will be able to show the first finished Saga models for my Anglo Danes, so expect something slightly different next week!

Thanks for reading :)

Gone Marauding!

Hello again! Thanks for coming to look at my 8th blog post :) The last couple of weeks I have been painting a unit of 16 Marauders of Chaos. As with the Marauder Horsemen, I have really enjoyed painting these models. It's really all down to the faces from the Horsemen kit, they add so much character and life to the models that I can't help but enjoy working on them. This made them a very easy unit to paint, and surprisingly quick too!

I think I have definitely cracked painting faces with this unit, and I am now pretty confident in my ability to do this. They are never going to win me any awards, but they are definitely good for the tabletop! :)

In other news, I started to paint my Eldar, but I really didn't like how they were turning out; I will be stripping them and starting again. I even ordered some test models! Hopefully I'll have something to show for them by the end of June :) I have also had time to build a heck of a lot of models for my Eldar, Warriors of Chaos and Saga (a dark age skirmish game), but I'm not sure anyone wants to see photos of unpainted miniatures! ;)

Anyway, I've talked too much. Pictures!

The full unit :)

I wanted to make the centre of the drum skin look more worn than the rest of the surface.

I tried something a bit different with the banner. I wanted to make it look like it was covered in writing of blood. Really not sure it worked!

This Orc head wasn't looking quite right until I gave it a really thinned wash of Nuln Oil, that really worked to make it look rotted.

I think the guy in the centre of this photo has the best done face. The first time I've ever painted eyebrows too!

I eventually plan to run a unit of 40 of these... only 24 more to go! ;)

I'm currently working on a unit of 3 Skullcrushers, and hopefully they will be finished by the next post :) Once they are done, I'll have finished 1,600pts of Warriors of Chaos, putting me well on schedule to have a finished 2,500pts army by November for Raze and Ruin (a local - fully painted - fantasy tournament). I might even take a break to work on Saga and Eldar :)

Thanks for reading :)