King Leonidas and Champions
Champion, musician and standard
The notorious shieldwall
Casualty, or just taking a nap?
I have recently realised that if I ever want to wargame a period with the Illustrious Wargamer Opponent, or in fact with any other wargaming friends, it is best to have both sides of combat prepared myself. No longer do I rely on friends who assure me they are going to buy their own army for a system I suggest and get it painted up. If I want to wargame, it is much easier to have it all prepared. So, regular readers may remember I have also purchased Vikings back in September. Now, all us longbeards know, the only way to finish batch painting is to only paint the characters as a reward for painting the rank and file. Paint one unit, then allow yourself one special character. I have a bag of 24 Black Tree designs Vikings and ten or so Footsore miniatures Vikings all unfinished. I'm not going to apologise though, I have painted my characters.
Olaf the Bald
Warlord
Odin the Allfather
I really like the Footsore miniatures range but they are tricky. A lot of the miniatures come with a seperate axe in a hand with a built in pin. The model then has both hands sculpted as well, I am guessing so you can choose to add your own choice of alternative weapon. This does mean however, that you have to snip a hand off the model then drill a pin hole in the wrist. I would not recommend these models to a beginner modeller. They are lovely sculpts though, I shall post pics of the rest when finished.
Continuing the self indulgence of painting individual models instead of any units that would be much more useful for wargaming, I have painted the two Giants in Miniature I bought at Colours. (The Illustrious Opponent has however been muttering about writing some Victorian Era Lost World dino-hunting rules, so at least one of these may come in handy after all.)
Alan Quartermaine
"Flash" Harry
Sometimes you have to remind yourself that you do this hobby for fun, try not to let it be a chore to get things painted and if you want to paint something that you probably will never put on a gaming table ever, do it anyway. I am probably never going to find a use for the next model I will show you, but it was fun to paint, plus I feel I must tell you it was a joy to paint a resin model that took paint easily, without having to be scrubbed in soapy water first!
Chibi Raging Annie from Bad Squiddo games. Sometimes you just want to paint a pink tutu.
Finally I finished another project I have had a while, well I thought it was finished a long time ago, the models in fact were in my glass cabinet. My four year old son was spinning on the chair in front of the cabinet, looking at the contents when he suddenly exclaimed, "Daddy, you've painted Captain America's shield wrong! It should be a white star in blue, you've painted a blue star in white! Silly Daddy!"
He then ran out the room, retrieved his toy Cap shield from his room and ran back in to show me how it should be done. Three things crossed my mind at this point. One, I am so proud to have raised a son that already has that level of knowledge in Superheroes that he can immediately work out something is wrong. Two, I immediately had to take said model out of the glass cabinet and fix the heinous error straight away. Three, I am horrified I got it wrong in the first place, what was I thinking? I should hang my head in shame. It is the second Captain America model I have painted in 28mm and I got the first one right!
The completist in me does want to finish the Avengers team by finding a Hawkeye to paint but as Knight Models have lost the Marvel licence I'm loath to pay twenty quid on Ebay for one model. Then where does it end, I'd need to find Vision, then possibly Black Panther...
