Some Citadel Classics and Other Bits

Until this week my hobby had been left idle. No painting, no construction, nothing. But the mojo strikes when it wants and I guess we are all slaves to that in one form or another.

There was no inspiration or direction for what was finished up for this post, just grabbing random stuff and basically being happy to get them off the unpainted mountain. We start off with these three fellows, a trio of old 80’s Citadel Miniatures. Lovely sculpts and all fun to paint. 

Up first is this Sea Elf. Originally he was the officer of an elven bolt thrower kit. Don’t ask me where the other crew member is or even the bolt thrower itself! Lost to the sands of time… I really like this simple sculpt and it’s decidedly leader-like pointy pose. I decided to make him look less “human” (His ears being covered up by his tall hat and all.) by giving him this decidedly cool grey-tones skin colour. 
 

“Sea Green” elfish dress thing was appropriate I think and the white armour parts like she’ll? No, eh, it’ll do.

Grey skin? That means black hair. Obvious, no?

This next chap is from the old Norse line of figures. Foundry picked these up and still produce most of them to this very day I believe. I think he’s supposed to be some sort of noble and looks the part with his fancy horse hair helmet plume, gold necklace and fur lined jacket.

I like this bloke, his face is all stoic and heroic. Painting his  eyes was a bugger tho as they are so flippin tiny!

This shield design was an off the cuff  effort, think it works out. 

The last of these figs is another from the Norse range who was also sold as a Barbarian too later on. I deliberately kept this paint job clean and simple after originally planning out some tattoos for all that skin. But no, laziness took over and he can stay pale and weird mullet-y. 

For such a naked (with He-Man underpants), he strangely had no nipples sculpted on. So I painted them on instead. I think this was a good choice. 

This terrain piece has been sat unpainted for years so I slapped on some base coats, wash and a simple highlight. Yet to get a coat of varnish, I think it’ll look great on the table. It’s a part of a Reaper Bones set that has a dragon and heroes fighting it and there was other parts to it but… no idea where those got to. 

Semi-naked berserker posing for scale

This second terrain piece is for some natural rough/ hard terrain and is Pretty much what it looks like - rocks and clump foliage glued to an old cd. But it’ll work for games and as these two warrior-models show, sometimes cheap homemade crap can work to.

Varnish coating also needs to be done on this.

Was thinking about adding some flock but I think it would make placing minis atop troublesome so stuck with dirt. 

Last for this post is a simple build pic. Luck was with me before Xmas as my wife’s friend ordered a mini for her husband but for some reason sent it to us instead. She said keep it and so I ended up with this nifty GW Lord of the Rings Eomer set. Put him together just last night and he really does look like Karl Urban’s effort from the films. No idea when I’ll get around to painting him and I’m definitely NOT starting a new army! (He’ll find use in my dnd games eventually)

Really liking the mounted and not versions. He also had helmet and spear options to build him with but my wife liked the helm less and sword versions better so I went with that.

The Searchers - Rogues and Royalists (Royalists done and way, way more. For me.)

The Searchers are a team sent out by the local garrison to track down and contain Ma' Tuppence's gang of Rogues, The Red Toothe. Led by Ellista Shorttail, the team hopes to eradicate the bandits with the utmost prejudice. 

Fat Willum is the team's dedicated long ranged specialist. He doesn't care at all about being called fat as e'always claims he's the warmest when it's cold.

The red Fleur de Lis on a black background is the symbol of royalist troops. This symbol carries through on all the team's members. 

Ellista Shorttail, a fearsome mouse warrioress and leader of The Searchers.

Gorman Shorttail is both second to Ellista and her younger brother.  He has quested across the lands for the mythical lost  Grail of Saint Melchior the Squaloured.

This is Manfred Grimm, a massive hound and the muscle of the Searchers. Not very intelligent, but he's a very handy fellow to have in a fight.

The Searchers all together with Friar Fullmouth. 

I also got another Burrows and Badgers mini painted, originally sculpted to be a Starling, I instead felt it'd look better as my favorite bird, a Jackdaw. Originally he was slated to be a member of The Searchers, but I switched out some of the members and now he'll have to fit in elsewhere.

This CORVID-19 business has had us stuck at home so I've had loads of time to keep painting my backlog. I got the second part of the Honoured Imperium terrain set painted, the Fallen Aquila. Simple piantjob, but it'll work fine on the tabletop.

 These three Warlord Games Mastiffs were previewed a while back in PIP form and now are done. They'll work well for a number of settings I think.

My Face-to-Face role-play group are understandably unable to meet for our regular games, so we've started a game on a message board. I decided it would be fun to find and paint minis in my large fantasy figs backlog for each of our characters. Only two finished thus far though.

Gotfried, Paladin of Ragethiel, my character.

Freehanding Ragathiel's emblem on the shield  was a pig and I'm not happy with the result, but it will do .

This is Saucy Jack, a Swashbuckler.  

I also  got a Light Mortar team painted for my WW2 Dieppe Commandos army. I have a Bren Gun team on the desk for this project next.

These two are some RedBoxGames minis that I ordered a long time ago but never painted. These naked musclebound brutes I think were titled as Giantkin. Forgive the nudity.

This chap got a weapon transplant after finding his original axe was missing. This huge club was a bit in my bits box that I think originally belonged to a Marauder Miniatures Beastman.

And lastly an older Forget World Cyber Mastiff. Simple paint job and his master will be posted up next once painted. 

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy out there!

Oodles

Since my last post there were games played and less painted.

Let's start off with my first game of Saga Dark Ages Skirmish with a couple new gaming pals, Jess and Travis. Originally I had tried to make it to the shop to catch some Bolt Action gaming, but Travis had already packed up by the time I arrived, but luckily Jess had also turned up (To see the Bolt Action game as well) and thankfully had lugged along his Saga stuff too. We played a straight forward three-way-versus with my as Vikings, Travis as Welsh and Jess Anglo-Danes. It was a bloody affair that ended with me winning (Yay!) with only my Warlord and a single berserker remaining! o_0

Anglo-Danes to the top, Welsh to the right and my Vikings splitting between the two. 

On the right I sent my warlord and a unit of hearthguard to disrupt the Welsh Levy and Warriors. It worked with my berserkers running in to mop up.

Casualties amassed quickly especially when I uncharacteristically roll 6's aplenty! Travis had to leave early but his force only had 3 hearthguard left, which I duly used a wierd Viking ability to just "remove", somehow. Maybe Thor threw a lightening bolt at them from stormy skies?

Here lies the vanquished Anglo-Dane Warlord at the foot of aberserker whilst my own Warlord looks on with grim pride.

 Saga was fun and easy to pick up. I am eager to play again and have felt a little energy to paint up some more of my Jomsvikings so I can field my own minis next game. I'm aiming at having a 4-point force minimum fully painted and will expand to 6-points later on. So far I have my Warlord and 3 units of Hearthguard finished.

My hearthguard though, were down a man, so I added this fellow to my longaxes unit.

He's very proud of this burgundy dressing gown that his Mamma knitted him.

Shield in the same yellow/black that I gave the other Hearthguard.

 For my 4th point, my first warriors unit got some additions, so now they are 5 fully painted (Though minus shields as yet as I want to paint those all at the same time to give the unit a better cohesive look.

I like this mini, he stabs toes.

The pelt cloak looks to be from a highland cattle on a previous raid.

This fellow is somewhat more diminutive in stature compared to the other warriors. Must mean he's even meaner. 

Since these pics were taken, I've done some touchups, added slight pink wash to cheeks and knuckles and based them properly.

I was also lucky enough to play a game of Chain of Command in 15mm with my mate Stewart Tuesday evening. I'd gotten my individually based 15mm Brits to an at least usable state painting wise so was excited to not to have to plonk Flames of War based minis for the battle. This kept everything far easier to keep track of during the game.

We played a defensive mission where (After a lucky dice roll) I had to hold back the German advance from one short end of the table and make sure Stew's troops didn't make it to my rear-most deployment marker. I have houses to hunker down in and a pretty good setup to deploy my own troops from after the patrol phase, so felt confident that I could manage to keep him back. Then he rolled for support points, of which I got 1/2 of the dice total. 6 was the result, so I got 3 support points and decided, sod it, I've yet to try a flame thrower in this game. Stew took off table mortar support and something else that I've since forgotten. We both agreed that a tank each on top of this would make for a more interesting affair so he took a plain Panzer IV and I a Sherman V.

The white cotton marks the furthest edge of the mortar bombardment. Almost all of my troops were pinned by it for umpteen phases! >_<

 I thought I'd lose for sure. Stewart rolled amazingly to get phase after phase after phase and the offtable mortar support had 75% of my boys pinned for ages, but all of a sudden his dice rebelled and mine remembered that I had threatened binning for poor performance and so after some tasty Flame Thrower BBQing of one infantry squad and a couple lucky Piat shots at his tank, along with a good mauling of his flanking squad and I had managed to get his overall force morale down to a level that won me the game.

A sideways picture of my brave PBI mowing down a German Heer squad who were trying to run down the flank. They had though, made more saves than any squad ever up until that point. Their death signaled the end of the game with Stewart's morale level bottoming out.

I really like these rules and am happy I got to play again. I think I'll try to pick them up later this year.

Speaking of WW2, I got the ammo carrier for my Soviet LMG team painted up. He's in a pose to show him mid-way through tossing an ammo can to the soontobe painted gunner himself.

Red mittens were sent by his Mum. Aww.

Has a carbine rifle. These guns look great.

Now that I've got a growing painted Soviet WW2 army, it would be remiss of me to not have an Axis force to face against them on the tabletop. With the Easter sale on over at the Warlord Games website offering a very well sculpted resin Hetzer tank for a rather lovely $16 tag. It arrived swiftly from Warlord Games HQ and I was surprised that it was a single resin piece with only metal hatches and gun barrel to assemble and very minimal resin flash to remove. Colour me extremely impressed. It’s now scrubbed with soap and water and glued together ready for primer. Along with this, I picked up both the new Winter German Heer metal squad & HQ packs and SS-Charlemagne metal squad. These will form the backbone of my later War Polish defense force to count as those desperate German defenders who had to stand in the way of the massed Soviet attack after the Vistula-Oder Offensive in early 1945.

Hetzers featured in Europe and on the Eastern Front. I love the look of these things, a lump with a huge gun stuck to the front. The scale is spot on, after I got to see one in person at Duxford Imperial War Museum. (A trip that I'll show pictures from here in a later post.)

Lastly, my long planned and awaited Barbarian setting rpg campaign has begun. We’re now three sessions into the game and I think the players are enjoying my story thus far. It’s the first time I’ve GM’d a story of my own creation in about 10 years and I’m still nervous as all heck that the players are even into it, finding it interesting and/or challenging. Being a wargamer I have all sorts of gaming terrain that has made the table more interesting than our typical “draw on the game mat with a dry erase pen” efforts. Add in the minis I’ve been slapping paint on the past months and the visual appeal is at least winning the players over I think. J I plan to write up a more detailed post on the campaign including how the story's going and so forth up until the time of posting.

The heroes are ambushed in the woods by Goblins and Hobgoblins whilst tracking down a traitor. First proper battle in my new game and I almost killed two of the players cos my dice rolls were stupid good. I need to roll behind a GM screen from now on I think!

Will hopefully have another post up by the weekend as there'll been more painting going on this week. Cheers!