25mm Wargames Foundry - Animated Scarecrows

 That's right, Wargames Foundry. I own a bunch of this stuff for my Sleepy Hollow and witch hunting stuff. Hard to believe what was once state-of-the-art are now simply, quaint. Anyway, painted up, they are perfectly serviceable. 

The minions of the Pumpkin King, or the Headless Horsmean (or whoever), are divided along two styles: first, all the pumpkin headed things from the Wars of Ozz range, Reaper, West Wind, and other odds and ends. I still have the Headless Horseman - several different models, and the mounted pumpkin heads. The latter are the animated Scarecrows: I've not yet decided what effects or abilities they will have, or even if they will differ appreciably, but this is the second tranche of scarecrows with some from West Wind comprising the third.

Followers of this blog, know I make a ton of mistakes and then try to fix them without redoing the whole thing. Sometimes this works, other times, my ministrations are marginal.Here I was trying out a zenithal prime for a slap-chop and left way too much black on the front of the models. Some additional dry brushing helped but again, I have to paint over speed paints because the results just looks terrible. 

Here's the result: 

I spent some time and energy this year punching out leaves in construction paper from Green Stuff Games and was relatively happy with them. Bur when applied, I find some of them, in particular the yellow and orange are so candy colored that they stood out in very unrealistic ways. 

So I glue down a patch of real leaf material - the material has no actual leaf shapes in it but are cut, or crumbled, from real dried leaves of some kind. On top of these I glue down the distinctive leaf shaped parts. But as you can see they appear to be standing in bowls of Fruity Pebbles. Delicious, but quite inappropriate. 

The fix is to apply Citadel Contrast Ratling Grime over the colored ones to help them blend in, which has been done above.

Group shot! These were all painted at the same time - the second tranche of scarecrow minis: the six Foundry, two from Ral Partha, and a Reaper, (Fellclaw, the Scarecrow Guardian, posted here.) The first tranche were the Harvesters from the Wars of Ozz range seen here.

As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858

25mm Old Glory - Russian Storage Shed

More battlefield litter in the shape of outbuildings for the 1812 campaign. This one is part of the "Early Russian Buildings" range, but appears to have a metal roof which seems unlikely until maybe a WW2 setting. In any event, this was a quick and satisfying project. 

The roof was some done via wet blending with a dark gray and rust to give it a nice weathered patina. Then I spotted on some unmodified silver to show the roof was beautiful metal at one point. The touches that make it really come alive to me is some thinned down Algae Green Speedpaint in the crevasses, then thinned Brownish Decay Speedpaint along the foundations and in other spots here and there. 

A very angry Perry Peasant (for scale) rushes out to meet the invaders.

 

Here it is betwixt the two Renedra Timbered Outbuildings bringing the uninhabitable structures up to three.

As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858
 

28mm Renedra - Timber Outbuilding (Updated 12/31/24)

 A quick idea, that actually was relatively quick! I borrowed some techniques from YouTuber's Sword & Brushes for this one.

I started from a different spot as this was primed in dark brown. I just painted the wood in a cream color followed by Speedpaint Gravelord Gray. Highlights were just drybrushed grays.

I then used Speedpaint, a diluted Algae Green to suggest light mossy patches in the likely spots. Then I darkened the bottom edges with thinned down Speedpaint Brownish Decay.

For the roof - I basecoated in another cream color followed by Speedpaint Pallid Bone. To define the tiered structure I thinned down Army Painter Bootstrap Brown and dabbed that between each later. In the deeper spots I used thinned down Army Painter Brigadine Brown- just enough to stain some of the straw patches. Then the entire roof was drybrushed with Army Painter Ancient Stone. A final highlight of Army Painter Ice Yellow was drybrushed over the edges and ends.

All in all, it came out nicely. It doesn't really match my other wooden structures for Russia but it is an "outbuilding." It could also be used for Medieval/Fantasy stuff on its own though it is a little bit small. Still, lovely piece.

 12/31/24 Edit - I found the other one, then assembled, primed and painted it to join it's companion. 

Erm, assembly could have gone better, but one will likely never notice the gap here. In any event, I wanted to capture the base coats - this was over a black prime.

I employed the same techniques as above. The outcomes were so close, even I can't tell them apart!

At the same time I did an Old Glory Russian Storage Shed in the center. That's two Russian Farm Buildings from Pegasus Hobbies in the background.

As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858

15mm Minifigs -Taureg Camelry

 Time for some Old School colonials!

My Legion forces can use more mounted opponents, and the camels suggested to me that they would readily take some speed paints. There may well be photos of these out there somewhere to provide ideas about the colors these warriors would have worn but I never found anything of much use. The models themselves also turned out to be quite fiddly and I'd be surprised if many of these enjoy active combat theses days.

First, I bought these decades ago and, as you can see, they are quite a mess our of the blister. The lead in the lances is very, very soft. So soft, I'm not even sure the little wrists and hands would satisfactorily accept drilling and then the pins for replacement. Also, nearly every camel had those big chunks of flash and evidence of mold shifting were evident on most of them. Still, the figures are very cool, but I don't expect them to endure a lot of play without problems. They are doomed to die you might say.

The other issue is that they don't sit right at all in the saddle and lean way back. Absolutely unusable in that pose. Just a mess in the execution of figure design. I could kind of get them to work if I cut the pommels off but they still needed propping up in the back. In the end, I left the pommels alone and put a pillow of epoxy for them to sit upon. It bled around the outsides here and there so I just painted them as if it was more robes. Many would have just said these are not worth the effort. And for many years I felt the same.

 

 

I used Contrast or Speed Paints for nearly everything but the bases and some freehand work on the shields and flags. Here I did them with a dark blue with black turbans, saddle cloths and decorations, all in red. There's a common image of a shield pattern but it is on a trapezoidal shaped shield. I intend to use these for Sword in the Desert so I will have to mark casualties on the spearmen. I don't track wounds on natives because I use these rules for engagements far larger than they are intended for. I also don't intend to use this mat for any of these games.

One thing about the difficulty in finding information about the "uniforms," it often means no one can prove I did them wrong very easily.

For these, I did the turbans and the saddle blankets in Ratling Grime, some Murder Scene for the decoration on the reigns and camel necks, then a mix of reds, purples, and tans for the robes.

As pictured, these 12 man units are comprised of 6 spears, 3 rifles and a musician, flag and officer. I could easily make a 15 man unit of 12 spears and command along with a 9 man unit of rifles and they interchange easily. I don't particularly bother with trying to strictly build units to the rules. These tribes, and the legion itself, used what they could get. 

 
All in all, and once based, I think they are a nice, colorful entry to the collection and will force the Legion to either race to their objectives are take some turns to drive them off. The delicate lances bend like a bread tie so not sure how long they will last but it's easy enough to grab these without touching them if one is careful. 

I still have 2 more platoons of Legion and some Spahis to do for the French as well as horse mounted Tauregs and the Bedouin half of the camelry so there'll be many more mounted figs to come at some point. I do enjoy doing 15mm because they paint up very quickly. I'm continually disappointed in how speed paints look on some of these but my earliest Bedouins were done all in washes so they kind of match. 

You can see all of French Foreign Legion pieces here.

As always, thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858

28mm Oathmark - Orcs - Slap Chop!

 

When combined with the 10 archers posted here, this is the whole pack of Orcs, plus the King, Wizard, Drummer and Champions - basically everything they make.

For the first time, I used Little Big Men Studios transfers to what, I think, great effect! I was really nervous about using them but YouTube was a tremendous confidence booster.

 I also did a little experiment, using different Speed/Contrast paints for the skin to mix up the complexions. Ironically, Orc Flesh from Army Painter was my least favorite, and one I won't use again for orcs.

I'm using speed paints to do parts on other models usually shoes or small bags, or to basecoat certain areas. But for these I used the slap chop technique 100% apart from the bases. 

 I undercoat in black, heavy dry brush in a "Craft Mark" Tan, followed by a lighter white drybrush focusing on the tops. 

Then I sorted them out by pose. Later, when doing heads, for example I would group them by head, then by weapons. It's just easier to do an assembly line with as few surprises as possible.

I love assembling multi-part plastics trying to make as many cool poses as possible. I didn't always succeed at this but there are some great ones that came out of this. You'll note that I did the shields separately to make sure using the transfers was as easy as possible. More on that later but it dies yield an important consideration: for newcomers, pay special attention to the shield arms and raise them higher than you might expect to give room to the shields when they come. I didn't have room to position all the shields properly on some models because of the angles. Luckily, it was easy to not make it obvious that some shields are being held in a way totally unsuitable for warfare. On to the skin experiments! 

I divided the unit up into a bunch of front, mid and rear ranks to ensure the complexions roughly mixed no matter how the unit was assembled for combat. Creed Camo was one of the better colors.

This was my least favorite color - too GW for these more serious looking orcs.

This was another color I liked - ironically, it is not the color I associate with GW/Citadel orcs

This one also was pretty good, but a tad dark.

Let me know in the comments which color you prefer.

Next I begin to lay down some color themes. I wanted to do variations of purple -some blue, some red, to offset the dark greens of the skins - consult your color wheel.

Some of these colors came out really opaque so I, following a suggestion from S. Fung, very lightly drybrushed that tan again over the lot. This worked great to bring some contrast between highlights and shadows. It also conveys a sort of dirty, wear and tear on much of the cloth. All the skin also got a light touch of pale green intended for zombies - Vallejo Game Color Dead Flesh.

On to armor and small details!

Another consideration for the new folks is to be careful how you position your banner bearers arm. I made the position and pole look great without considering the flow of the banner itself. There is NO figure that can accommodate that flag in their space, So this banner will always have to be positioned on the end of the unit to my eternal disappointment.

  I actually did the shields before I finished the figures because I wanted to see how hard it would be; what if I screwed them up and had to start over? Build new shields? Use different ones? Salvage the old ones? Not to worry, the process was simple and easy. 

Step 1: Mount the shields to a flat surface. These are warped wooden odds and ends from Hobby Lobby. Mounted with blue-tac, then hand primed. Airbrush or rattle can would be perfectly acceptable. I did the backs first in black, then after that dried, I flipped and did the front, I probably should have done some planking on the back in dark browns, but it didn't occur to me until many were quite visible after mounting.

Step 2: Fine details followed by a wash over the metal bits.

Step 3: Per instructions, I painted the surface white to allow the transparent transfer details to show through. Another tip: the white can be done without worrying about edges or especially around the boss. The reason is that the holes on the transfer are slightly bigger than the boss so it shifts around leaving crescents of bright white to show after the transfers are applied. had I left them black it would have save me a lot of tricky touch up work. I went too far along the edges too.

Here I had touched up some, but not all of the shields using some dark browns on the darker shields and then I used matching colors with Contrast paints to cover the white edges on the others later but before putting them on the figures.

I picked all the bigger shields to show off as much of the beautiful transfer art as possible. These are really beautiful (in an orcish sort of way).

Apart from the scale mail and the armored plates, I used NO metallics for the chain mail. That is simply the highlight colors underneath a Basilicanum Gray. In Monty Python's Holy Grail, they don't wear metal by a thick wool shaped into what resembles a chain mail! Looks good on film and pretty good on these guys too!

Basing: a three color triad, a base and two highlights of increasing lightness.

Another shot at some shields.

The Champions

Wizard, King and Drummer

I obviously chickened out on trying some freehand on the shields to match the transfers. A man has got to know his limits.

In Afghanistan, certain elder tribesmen have beards dyed red, so I did this guy, the only one with hair showing, in a magenta.

The banner was pretty easy too being only one sided. Applied to white paper, I cut it out then primed the back in black. After it was affixed to the pole indicated folds with a pair of grays -deliberately not going for fancy here.

Love the way this reddish brown (on left) came out great. that's Army Painter Speedpaint Dusk Red with the tan drybrush to finish.

It was figures like this one where I felt painting the back of the shield was warranted. I did that, on this one and others, after this photo session. 

More good shields!

This guy is my favorite of the unit. At the assembly phase, when going through the available heads after the archers, I mistakenly added the ONE leather helmet in the whole unit. I didn't catch it until they were already primed.

This is that Army Painter Speedpaint Dusk Red under the tan drybrush - looks better in person of course.

The archer champion slunk away to join his unit and though I have Dwarves primed and pre-highlighted for another slap chop venture, I may do the Human Light Infantry first. Or maybe Napoleonics?

 Thanks for looking - questions, comments and followers are welcome and encouraged! I'm doing more and more on Facebook so follow my page there too! https://www.facebook.com/One-of-My-Men-Became-Restless-100659928063858