Greek mythology.

If you like ancient Greek history, like me, you might also like Greek mythology. You know, Jason and the Argonauts, the siege and fall of Troy (Homeros version), and more.
I used Greek mythology as theme for my first warband for Dragon Rampant, the newest rulesset by Dan Mersey (published by Osprey).
I have yet to play my first game, but you need a painted warband for that! So here are pictures of my Centaurs.
Light spearmen or javeliners:

The heavies, armoured and dangerous:

And maybe the even more dangerous female archers:

Add a few heroes / leaders and the warband is ready for battle!

All of the above are from Wargames Foundry's Greek mythology range.
I have to add that 6 of the above miniatures were painted some time ago, and even had a few pictures of them in my blog. To mu own surprise almost two year ago.

While on the theme of Greek mythology, I also build and painted up a unit of Amazones.

These are plastics from Wargames Factory. While fairly easy to paint, they were a bit of a pain to put together, some realy fiddly parts to put on the correct place. of the models. I have parts for 36 more of them (I bought two boxes of these), but I'm not shure when that will happen...

Next up is something I have ment to do since january, so about time I started on them!
I will call it "the Nassau Project", and consists of painting the 3 battalions of the 2nd Nassau-Usingen Regiment. Each 36 figures strong, plus a casualty per battalion. And Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar and staff.

Work has just started on the flank companies, as you can see on the last picture.
Now try and keep FOCUS!

Barbarians! Celts! Gauls!

Here is the next part of my painting backlog. This time about the Celtic/Galatian/Barbarians.
not a lot of figures painted for these, only a few small skirmish units. But they are needed just as much as any other part of the army!

These braves are armed with slings. Miniatures are from a few manufacturers, I think Wargames Foundry (old Perry range) and the ex-Newline range (now SHQ).

The second unit is armed with javelins and have a small shield. Miniatures are a mix of Wargames Foundry and Old Glory. Some of them have there hair dyed with white chalk to scare the enemy.

They were a quick paint job, using washes to get some depth in the colours.

There is also a fantasy part in my barbarian army. So here is the heavy siege artillery!

I bought this model a very long time ago (10 years ago?) in a sale. I believe it is made by Scotia Grendel. The crew are plastic left-overs from Wargames Factory Gallic chariots.

Next time the blog will report on new recruits for my hellenistic armies. It might be better to work on one project at a time, but that is so difficult for me. I recently bought Dan Mersey's Dragon Rampant fantasy rulesset, and now I want to have at least one army (well, max 60 figs) painted as soon as possible. I have loads of suitable unpainted figures, and finaly I might even start working on my non-GW Lord of the Rings figures. But I also have Greek mythology figures, and the rules are also usable for this setting.
Some hard decisions to make. If I only had the time to paint (and game) them all...

Let the beast go!

I have neglected my blog for some time, but hey, I'm back now! I promised a fantasy update, so here it is. Pictures of my latest painted miniatures. 

As you can see, I painted a big rhino, crewed with some barbarians. It is a great model, originaly sculpted by the highly talented Mr Copplestone. Or at least I think he did. I bought this beauty from Mirliton, in Italy, but I believe it was first sold under Grenadier, probably late 80's or early 90's. It is probably the largest model I have ever painted, and most certainly the heaviest. It weights just under 1 kilo!

Here are more pictures. All pictures are clickable, for bigger size.

Except the big beastie, I also have aquired a small but nice unit of barbarians on foot. As it is fantasy, the weapons are extremely big. As they should be!
Also sculpts from Mr. Copplestone.

Especialy the giant has lots of details. I don't think the picture does justice to him.

On top of that, I also painted the last plastic Gallic warriors I had. Only twelve of them, but now I can turn the 36 men unit into two 24 men units.
Most of them are Wargames Factory, with a few Warlord models. I didn't had enough heads for the Warlords, but had lots of spares from WF. They did not fit properly, so I filed off the neck joints, and now it is hard to see what I've done.

I now have 120 Gallic foot warriors and 3 chariots. Time for some cavalry maybe?

Next saturday is also Crisis weekend in Antwerp.
If you'v never heard if it, check http://www.tsoa.be/crisis_general.html
See you there?

Chariots!

I did some work on my Gallic/barbarian army. Three fast moving chariots. They are from Wargames Factory, made in hard plastic. They are a lot cheaper then, for example Warlord Games or Wargames Foundry. For their price, they are certainly good enough, especialy if you need many of them. They also paint up very quickly.

But do check for yourself.

There are some problems though. For example, the necks of the horses don't fit perfectly, which is visible if you know where to look. And I had to cut off one leg of the sitting driver and glue it back on in a different possition. It did not fit over the pole. Shields are decals from the WF foot unit box.

Well, on to the next unit, which will be more Gallic foot. Who knows, I might build a real army of them by the end of the year!

In a world, where my plastic army soldiers beat the s*** out of your plastic army men...*

First of all, a belated merry Xmas.
And of course also a happy new year!

My last painting for the year is done now. I did pretty well for my standards. I managed to paint 180 miniatures, all in 28mm! I know some people do three, four or more times that much figures in a year, but for me this is great. I just checked, and its my best year in painting since 2006.
I think this has much to do with internet. When I look back, I did over 200 miniatures a year before 2006, not counting the 15mm, of which there were also at least 100 or more each year. I'll try if I can reach that number once more next year.

But that's history and future plans, on to what I painted now.
A 36 figure unit or PLASTIC Celts. Yes, you are reading correct: PLASTIC.
It is the first time since the plastic revolution in 28mm wargaming, now several years ago that I constructed and painted plastic.  At first I thought it was very time consuming to put them together. Most are from Wargames Factory, and they have separate legs, a body, a right arm, weapon, a shield and a head. The left arm is part of the body. But that is a lot of glueing before you can start painting!
There are also a few Warlord Games Celts in the unit. these are easier to build (lesser parts), but you have to be carefull: not all bodies fit all legs. Which I found out after a few mistakes...
I also had not enough Warlord heads, so had to file of a few WF necks, to make them fit on the WG bodies.

I also had rub-on shield decals, which were part of the WF boxed set. They look very nice, but are a real pain to fit. I had to retouch every shield, and even pull of a few because they sticked only partly or on the wrong place.

But look for yourself, and tell me what you think of them. The pictures are not that great, but I must say that I like how the miniatures came out.

I also painted three more miniatures, which should fit in with them. the warband will be used as proper Celts, but also as fantasy Celts. So I also painted a hero, a huge Foundry model called Slaine, a witch (I think from Reaper?) and an army standard bearer (plastic Warlord Games).

I think more plastic will follow in 2014, but I'm not shure when excactly.
For those who wonder what happened with the two "Off to War" parts, well we did play the battle in our clubhouse! We got lots of attention from other club members, who had not seen shuch a big battle before. But more of this in the next blog message.

Keep gaming &painting!

*The title of this blog message is used (without permission...) from Pat Lowinger from the Southern California Warhammer Radio, now the Historical Wargames Podcast. His podcast (http://www.historicalwargames.org/) is one of the four I regularly listen to when painting.
The others are View from the Veranda, Meeples and Miniatures and Ancient Warfare Magazine.
Thanks for making them, and keep me inspired!