More Conquest Games Archers

Last week I was able to finish off 6 more Conquest Games' plastic Medieval archers.

After assembling and painting the previous 6 I had a better idea of how to proceed with these ones.

I was able to achieve a more natural posing but the head/torso issues are still there.

Some of the heads are really nice pieces of sculpting. Conquest has managed to get the facial features nicely pronounced without being exaggerated. They are easy to paint; you can achieve a nice result without being Da Vinci.

Here is all 12, equaling 1 point of Levies in Saga:

Flemish Mercenaries for Saga

 Having had these plastic Normans laying around for almost 10 years I figured  the AHPC was a good time to put them together and get them painted.

In Saga, Normans on foot don't get much benefit from the Battleboard abilities unless they are armed with missile weapons. Although they cannot gain advantage from the Battleboard Flemish mercenaries are a solid defensive unit; for those that are interested, their rules can be found here.

Four of the Flemings were constructed straight from the components of the Conquest Games Norman Infantry box set. Very straight forward:

For the other four I used some components from Conquest Games Medieval Archers box set. The two below were made using the bodies in mail from the Archers box. The one on the left also has a head from that kit whereas the one on the right has a head from the Norman Infantry kit.

Arms with spears and shields from the Norman Infantry set.

My preference would have been for all the Flemings to be in mail but I ran out of bodies so attired and had to make use of  two in padded jacks.

Both of these figures have heads from the Medieval Archers kit; arms with weapons and shields from the Norman Infantry set as per usual.

All shields were hand painted. Although most of them turned out OK, a couple of them did not. I think in the future, unless it is a dead simple design, I will be using transfers as I did with my Taifa kingdoms miniatures. 

Crossbowmen For Saga

 As part of my Analogue Painting Challenge one of my goals is to finish off a couple Saga warbands. To that end I have painted up some Crusader Miniatures Crossbowmen for my Normans.

They are actually from Crusader's El Cid range but are suitable for Normans.

I found the figures alright to paint. I quite like the faces though the detail on a couple of the left hand eyes was a bit obscured.

In Saga terms these 8 figures count as one point of warriors. Once the archers are finished that will give me two units to take advantage of some of those shooty abilities.

On Your Mark...

  I have spent the bulk of my hobby time since my last entry preparing for my rookie season of the Analogue Painting Challenge which gets underway tomorrow. The advised points goal for rookies is 300 pts (equals 60 28mm figures); I am pretty confident that I should make it but I have a couple of projects I want to pursue outside the challenge so I wanted a fairly low bar. This lot should take me to my goal:

It includes:

• the dock sections and boats from GW's Lake-town House Multipack
• 8 Crusader Norman Crossbowmen
• 8 Flemish Mercenaries made from Conquest Games' Norman Infantry
• 6 Conquest Games Norman Archers
• 8 Crusader Dark Ages Irish
• 6 Brigade Games Cowboys and Gunslingers
• 4 Blackstone Fortress characters
• 21 Blackstone Fortress baddies
• 3 mounted ECW characters from Warlord Games
• 3 ECW infantry from (2 Perry's, 1 WG)
• 1 Renedra North American Store

If I manage to get through that I have two bins of odds and sodds primed and ready to go including more ECW, Samurai, Anglo Saxons, 15mm Carthaginians, 3rd edition Genestealers, 3rd edition Stormtroopers and some 6mm GHQ Soviets.

I did get distracted from painting prep by some trees. On a recent shopping trip to London Drugs (a Canadian retail pharmacy chain) I came across some Lemax Butternut Trees in their seasonal section.

These are twisted wire trees set in resin bases. If you don't dig the bases the trees come out with a bit of prying. I was content to leave them in. For winter scenes they are perfect as is, but I wanted to make use of all those wire branches to get a nice canopy so I pulled them apart.

 After that I got a bit ahead of myself and I gave the canopy a bit of primer as I wanted grey branches. I had to go back and add some 3M Stripping Pad material to the canopy, prime again, and followed that with some Rustoleum Chalked Ultra Matte spray (Cocoa Bean) on the trunk, obligatory drybrush and wash.

Then I started the process of adding Scenic Express SuperLeaf:

In the end it was a little more work then I anticipated, but not as much as making the trees from scratch.

The trees were about $12 each, which works out to about $3.50 less per tree than Woodland Scenics premade large deciduous trees that I have (not the Premium Trees). On the one hand these trees are about an inch shorter than the WS trees and you have to add a canopy if you are not going to use them as winter trees; and twisted wire trunks are not everyone's up of tea. On the other hand the trunks are painted (if I had been more careful I could have avoided painting the trunks) and my method for adding the canopy presents a nicer, open canopy than the opaque canopy created by the clump foliage that comes on the WS trees.

Refurbished ECW From Ebay

 This past June I found a Canadian selling some second hand ECW figures on ebay. It's pretty rare to see such a thing. Although not a steal, the price was OK, and I knew I would have to tune them up a bit to fit them into my collection. It proved to be a little more work that I thought but in the end acceptable. 

The figures were from a mix of manufacturers; the picture below gives you an idea of the painting on the minis and the different ranges. Whoever painted many of the figures did very little to clean up the castings before starting; lots of mould lines and bits of flashing were painted over.

I believe we are looking at (from L to R) Old Glory, Old Glory again, Renegade(?), Redoubt (?), Perry. 

I think the bulk of the musketeers in this wing are either Old Glory or Redoubt, with a couple of Perrys  in the front rank and possibly one or two in the rear rank:

The rear rank of this wing is mostly Perry:

The pikemen are mostly Perry; I am unsure of the command figures :

One of the pike bases is made up of new figures. Just for shits and giggles I decided to put figures from 4 different manufacturers on one  40 mm base; we have - from left to right- 1st Corp, Avanpost, Perry and Warlord Games.

The large size of the 1st Corps figure and distinctive sculpting of the face makes it stand out when compared to the others at close range. The Avanpost figure is resin with sharp, fine detail but is quite fragile (I broke his scabbard when assembling him). I loved painting the smooth finish of the resin. I think that perhaps the Perry moulds are getting a little tired; the casting was a little rough in spots with flash, some minor pitting and, what I can only describe as, lead 'lint'.

However, at gaming distance the large size of the 1st Corps figure, the poor prep from the previous painter and any other minor issues are not even noticeable. 

Normans For Saga

 I got a bit side tracked here- for this post I am rolling back the timeframe a few hundred years from the English Civil Wars to the 11th century.

 Many moons ago I picked up some Conquest Games plastic Normans in part because 28mm plastic kits for historical war games was just starting and I went a little crazy (I still have several boxes for various periods I probably will never get around to playing).  Most of the Conquest Normans got some conversion work and ended up recruited into some petty kingdom in Al Andalus during the Taifa  period. Some of the leftovers are presented here.

The mounted Norman Knights kit was Conquests first plastic set and at about a decade old suffers from some of the faults common to early plastic kits- obscured detail, stiff posing- but still holds up well. In Saga terms these four horsemen are a unit of Hearthguard.

Conquests Medieval Archers kit is an improvement in sculpting from both their Norman Knights and Norman Infantry box sets. These 6 are a half unit of levy archers (the other 6 still under construction).

The only big problem for this kit is Conquest's head design. The head has a "foot" at the bottom of the neck where it is meant top be glued onto the torso. You get a good solid gluing surface but it looks weird as it only fits naturally if looking directly ahead, and not if you want the head looking in the direction the archer is shooting in. Some head /torso combos work better than others.

I had another set of Renedra's wattle fencing which I took the opportunity to paint up; very handy stuff to dress up the medieval or renaissance war games table.

Now back to tidying up that ebay purchase of ECW figures...

King's Lifeguard of Foot, pt 2

 After a long delay, I have finally completed the King's Lifeguard of Foot:

I started the regiment by putting together the pike block back in January of last year; it has seen duty in a variety of other regiments, and will continue to do so while we carry on with our campaign in the south-west.

Subsequently distracted by other projects and building other regiments the wings of shot have now been completed. 

The majority of the shot are Warlord Games plastic but one wing contains 4 musketeers marching from the 1st Corps. range.

Although taller and with distinctively larger features, they do not look out of place with the Warlord figures on the table top. Also in the back row is a figure that I picked up second hand- no idea the make (third figure from the right in the picture below).

Although described as being outfitted in red jackets and monteros I added a little variety in the head wear. With this regiment completed I will be putting together a grey coated regiment from figures I acquired through an eBay purchase...