Friday 1 May 2020

Progress in April - the leadpile diminishes

Lockdown has actually slowed down my painting output, odd isn't it.  I suspect it is because while still working, I'm now doing this from home every day and not just three days a week.  That means I have more freetime and things I would have been putting off are getting moved up the priority list which means that figure painting is being moved down!  The good news is that I haven't bought any more figures so the leadpile is still diminishing.

The photos are pretty poor I'm afraid its really sunny here today and my phone camera doesn't seem to cope well with contrast.

As well as the 6mm stuff, I also painted a couple of old castings in 25mm (or possibly 28mm) that have been sitting in the lead pile for a couple of decades or more.  I think they are Grenadier fantasy figures from the 1980's or 90's but I'm not sure.  They don't feature on the leadpile statistics as they aren't part of the 6mm pile.  I'm not sure how I am going to texture the bases yet.  I might try something different from my usual sand and flock approach.  These are big beasts at 30mm from the soles of their feet to their eyeline.  I have an idea in mind to use these to throw a spanner into the works for any French and Indian Wars skirmish games I might host in the future.

Not sure what these are but they will be fine as Sasquatch
During April I managed to complete 11 elements based for DBx or ADLG totalling 60 cavalry figures and 56 foot figures all in glorious 6mm-arama.  This is made up of two Late Roman Auxilia Palatina bases, 2 Sassanid LMI Javelinmen bases, 2 Gothic heavy cavalry (Roman Foederati), and 4 Late Roman Heavy Cavalry (Equites).  On top of which my resin pile is slightly smaller too.  I have completed 3 Dark Age buildings and a Roman villa.  The buildings are a mix of Levan and 2D6 and are as always lovely sculpts.

Auxilia Palatina with home made transfers on the shields
I have used Moorish Infantry for the Daylami LMI as they are Ax(Fast) in DBA and Light Medium Infantry in ADLG so a less well regimented look seemed right.  There are only 12 figures per base compared to 16 for DBA Solid Auxilia or the ADLG Medium Infantry Sword which also helps distinguish them.
Daylami Javelinmen for the Ssassanids.  
The Roman Equites are part of the revamp of my Late Imperial Romans they are Baccus late Imperial Roman Heavy cavalry.  To be honest apart from the lack of cloaks they seem almost identical to the Goth heavy Cavalry.  If need more I may try the earlier period Heavy Cavalry instead just for some variety.

Roman Equites
The Goth heavy cavalry are the first ones I have actually painted as Goths.  All the previous ones to cross the painting table have become Strathclyde Welsh noble cavalry.  I have some Goth medium cavalry in the queue and likewise those will be the first of those to be actual Goths too.  I really like the Gothic range from Baccus, nice sculpts and capable of being proxies for a huge range of other armies as they are generic Dark Age migration period barbarians.  My only historical quibble is that none of the foot have the strange, stepped shoulder, coffin shields, although that would stop them being such useful proxies.


Gothic Heavy Cavalry.  Lets claim it was at dawn and they riding out of the sunrise...or something!
The buildings are a Leven Roman Villa which has been sitting around for a year or more a small viking hut also from leven and two thatched 2D6 dark age buildings.  These work well with the leven anglo-saxon and viking range but seem a bit big compared to the leven Roman villa, still tey are never going to be side by side on the table so it's all fine, and both are simply lovely sculpts.

More Urban sprawl.  I remember when this was all rural drop terrain
The leadpile is still ahead by 265 6mm figures compared by the start of the year, but I have actually painted more cavalry than I bought so I'm ahead there by 19 figures.  Still not going to run out of figures anytime soon though, although I may need to give Irregular Miniatures some of my money for some castings that Baccus don't do, or at least don't sell in small enough numbers for what I need.It's not going to be much of an order mostly foot command figures, but you know how it is once I start to look at the online catalog almost anything could happen!


4 comments:

  1. Progress is still progress ! Love those 6mm DBx stands. 👍🏻

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    1. Really easy process similar to the baccus method I suspect. I use 2mm MDF bases and glue a label to the rear with PVA. Then glue the figures down with Bostick, and sprinkle some block paving sand before the bostick dries. That helps with the tricky to reach areas. Then with apply PVA to the uncovered unlabelled areas and sprinkle more sand. The once that has dried apply the flock of your choice in patches again with PVA. I'm pretty liberal with the PVA so the sand sort of settles into it. The block paving sand is cheap as chips and was a nice variety of grain sizes and colours.

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  2. Home made shield transfers? How the heck do you make them matey?

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    1. JBM - I did a post in March about my method. It's at https://elenderilsblog.blogspot.com/2020/03/making-transfers-decals-for-6mm-late.html Not to difficult and I only used the Paint program that comes with Windows. A specialist program would probably give better results.

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