Friday 25 December 2020

The Wild Hunt

I finally painted this Copplestone Santa Claus.
Here he is leading the Wild Hunt:

 

Tuesday 1 December 2020

Brigand army

 I'm currently in quarantaine and for the first time since April I'm finding time and inspiration to paint.

I remembered I had some Spartacus miniatures. I got these on a whim years ago, only because they were conversions of Copplestone's Foundy romans and numidians. They're out of production now and anyway pretty dire castings. I tried to paint them as dark ages Scots or Irish with robbed bronze armour, to fit the other brigands.




The ancient german Witch fits in perfectly. Maybe she will be the necromancer to raise their allies from death.

My Chaos warriors got their leader. This is a Salute limited edition St. George miniature. A Copplestone sculpt so I had to fit him in somehow. He's bigger than the usual 28mm. More sized like a Grenadier barbarian, so that's what he is: an enormous barbarian warrior who got himself some fancy armour.

It's starting to be a nice little Oathmark army:


Hillmen Brigands against Uruk Hai
 

I also painted the Oathmark sorceror. A young Sauron, during the Second Age known as Annatar.
He looks more like Elric really, an albino elf wizard.

Thursday 26 November 2020

Bronze-Age brigands

I tried out a new techniche to paint old bronze.

These are a couple of the few Foundry ancient germans with helmets. They are evil brigands and grave-robbers. While situated in a dark ages setting I suppose the old Roman and celtic helmets and armour were taken from ancient burial mounds.
Allied with ghouls and possibly even revenant peat-bog bodies. I imagine them nasty bastards a bit like the barbarians in Moorcock's Corum.

Same thing with the beastman. The helmet, shoulderplates and jewelry are beaten bronze while the chainmail and axe are rusty iron, in ancient celtic fashion.



 

Saturday 14 November 2020

Evil Undead

Amazingly a new post, first time since March.

Didn't do too much but enough to post. 

I finished my Dark Ages chaos warriors. Half of the group I did years ago, when Frostgrave came out. These are nine warriors in 11th century armour. Adding a leader it will be a perfect unit for Oathmark. Possibly chaos armour, grown into the bodies of these damned knights.

The idea is that in a setting with a 5th century dark age technological level, elves and dwarves have better armour. Resembling Norman armour more or less. At which point Chaos Warriors in magical chaos armour may have their entire body covered in chainmail.


 With a new Oathmark supplement released covering the Undead I dug up some old stuff and painted some new things.

And old Grenadier zombie barbarian makes a great Revenant King


But there's also old Slough Feg, an old Fantasy Forge miniature. It was supposed to be part of a Slaìne range that never got released. Available from North Star.


This morning I painted some maniac ghouls. All Citadel contrast paints as they are test models. I absolutely love the concept of ghouls. Insane, degenerate inbred cannibals. The concept of degenerate men seems to have been a trend in the early 20th century.

Lovecrafts ghouls, Edgar Rice Burroughs' apemen of Opar, Tolkien's orcs, Robert E. Howard's Bran Mok Morn Picts, Morlocks... In the end it seems they're all tapping from the same concept or metaphore implying moral degeneration leads to physical degeneration. Or uglyness and physical impurity is a sign of moral decline.

Something like that. In any case there aren't any ghoul miniatures that I really like. Believe me I've searched everywhere. So in the end I decided to settle with naked human fanatics. I'm a rather childish guy and the idea of hordes of naked men makes me laugh. These are test figures. For a full unit I will use Foundry naked Spartan hoplites, tribal africans and ancient germans. I tried to paint these as sickly and disgusting as possible.




Sunday 29 March 2020

Wights and Wraiths

I rebased these Undead for Oathmark on 25mm square bases (Renedra bases that come in the plastic goblin and elf box sets).
Figures are Grenadier Miniatures (Mirliton), by both Nick Lund and Bob Naismith, and painted as the Deadmen of Dunharrow.

Two Frostgrave wraiths painted as Ringwraiths. The winter costume implies they come from Angmar certainly.  


These orcs are 20mm. figures originally by Rebel Minis. I bought them years ago when the dollar was low and intercontinental postage from the US was still affordable.
I really like the old MERP vibe, straight from the Angus McBride paintings.

Sunday 15 March 2020

Grenadier Orcs and Goblins

The country has been shut down.  Coronavirus lockdown. Curfew. Were not supposed to go outside if not for a good reason. Most shops are closed apart from those that provide basic needs.

So what better to do than paint some old Nick Lund orcs and goblins I've been keeping in boxes for  like thirty years?
 
A Gundabad Orc banner bearer. Black undercoat, a second white 'zenithal' spray and GW contrast paint.

A Gundabad goblin king or chieftain with bodyguard. Interesting how Grenadier orcs differed from goblins in appearance but not necessarily in size.



Wednesday 4 March 2020

Grenadier Barbarians Starter Army

I had the chance to buy this wonderful original Grenadier box set. The Barbarians Starter Army.

I had seen the photograph of the back of the box before, in the unreleased Fantasy Warriors Campaign rules.
The interesting thing about this box are the uncatalogued characters that are included.
The Barbarian Giant with a head- and weapon variant (which was briefly re-released by Forlorn Hope some years ago) and a command group, still available through Battlefront Miniatures and Mirliton.
The box has no product code. The only thing that can be said at this moment is that the box has this colourprint wrap, similar to the Barbarian Battle Giant and the Killzone game box.
Grenadier UK at the time was investing in a better, glossy presentation of some products, just after the release of Fantasy Warriors. 
I don't know if starter army boxes for other races were released.  
It actually never occurred to me that the giant and characters were not catalogued at all. 
The inscriptions in the base say 1991, a year after the other barbarians. The musician/herald has a varation as cavalry while the banner bearer has a variation with a seperate, slightly different, banner pole.
I also  have a  variation of the barbarian King with a round 'character' base.

 


 

The entire set, a mix of miniatures from the blister packs. I have no idea if the contents were random warriors and archers or if every box was the same:


Thursday 27 February 2020

Dwarves

A quick post, mostly to link the pictures elsewhere.
 
The recent Oathmark dwarves go very well with the old plastic Fantasy Warriors dwarves.
The new Renedra moving trays are pretty cool too. I'm resurrecting my old Ancient Germans project with it.



In the meantime I've been doing very little. Real Life and all that.  

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.