Saxon Thegns

These eight were completed over the weekend. They join the already done Saxon Lord, his two sons and son in law and will make up the two 6-man Thegn units for my Anglo-Saxons.

Elite warriors ready to tackle the Northmen menace!

Kind of happy to see this type forward progress on my Dark Ages project and (including the 3 vikings I'd also done earlier this month) 15x 28mm figs painted in 30 days isn't bad at all for this slow hobbyist.

These three are members of the Lord's personal guard.

Decided to give them Burgundy & White shields to better differentiate the two Thegn units on the tabletop.

1st Unit including the Lord's sons.

The other 5 were painted up to match the Son-in-Law's shield colour and make up the 2nd unit.

Shield colours to match the Son-in-Law. The simple freehand designs were variations I came up with from actual designs featured in internet searches.

I've also been working on some of my Confederate Cavalry and managed to get four stands painted, just need to be based - which I'll get done when all eight stands are complete.

Fiddly as hell to paint and fething terrible sculpts. No wonder they were so cheap. Still, don't look so bad with a lick of paint on them.

As the first month of the 6MMRPC comes to a close, I realised it would be an extra motivator to keep better track every month of my painting progress. So unlike last year, this time around I've decided to post up my Draxian (TM) progress charts in my end of month posts. Hopefully seeing all those boxes change to GREEN will keep me spurned on to victory!

The Thegns featured above! 1/4 of the way done on this project!

Shite-load of stuff yet to be done on this project. Good thing there's no rush to see it completed.

Only 3 minis finished on this one, but I started a further two last night and might well get another done by the end of this 4th July weekend. 

So in the 1st month of the Challenge, that's 16x 28mm (Including my fantasy Zulu warrior) figures painted, my 15mm Confederate Cavalry 3/4 done and some exhaust glows added to my Armada Star Destroyers. Not bad methinks.

Keeping it in the family (Part 1 - WIP)

These three are part of the two Anglo-Saxon Thegn (Elite troops) units that are in my Saxons list. The actual models themselves got me inspired with some backstory ideas and so the armour & cloaked warrior is to be the Saxon Lord's son-in-law and leader of the second Thegn units and the other two are the Lord's two sons. To this end, so that they all keyed in with the family idea I made sure to make the mustard-yellow cloths with red/green accents a tie-in. I'm not sure it's historically correct, but it works for my roleplay-oriented mindset. Story matters more than detail after all.

The figures are from the Saxon Command range by Black Tree Designs. The original sculpt for the middle mini had no weapon at all, just his left hand with typical peg on it for a shield - I guess being a commander, he only needs to protect himself and lets his boys do the fighting? As I wanted him to match up with the rest of the spear armed Thegns, I drilled out his fist and stuck a cut-down spear so it looks as though he switched out for a bit in order to properly direct his unit. It'll look cool in the end, promise.

*I'm having trouble researching online for a proper 900 AD-ish Anglo-Saxon banner or flag. I think by that time they had moved past the elaborate dragon looking designs? Any suggestions are welcome on this.*

Still basing and bits to tidy up a bunch of stuff on these and think up some names for each for fun. I won't be putting in a super amount of energy into them (As with following minis for this project) as it's going to take too long to get through the whole lot.

Jarl Ikea! (A very sensible, no-frills sort of Viking.)

Not much done over the long Memorial Day weekend due to health crap (again), but I did finish up the Viking Lord (From this day forth to be known as "Jarl Ikea" - thankyou Zzzzzz) and decided to spritz up my Star Wars: Armada Victory Star Destroyers a little too.

First up the Jarl himself. I looked up "Viking tunics" on Google and found some handy results to help make sure that what I painted didn't just look ridiculously incorrect. I'd already decided to make him a blondie and wanted a colour that would contrast well with his hair/beard. The green I chose was Vallejo Dark German Camo Green or something for those interested. The edging was a simplified knot/swirl taken from a far more complicated design I found, but knew my crappy free-hand skills were in no way up to the task of emulating. I think it'll do though. 

Last minute I slapped on a watered down red wash to his skin as I wanted to try to give him a "fresh-off-the-long-boat" look, with exposed skin all pink from the North Sea winds. I also painted his beard darker than his hair because really, there's not too many of us manly men who's beard matches exactly to the mop on our heads. (Assuming that one can still grow a mop.)

I also attempted to paint a simple wood grain on the shield and axe haft. I think it looks okay, though perhaps could have used a less bright tan.

In this picture you can see his scabbard is empty. I like this as it gave options as to what to do with this part of the model - add a sword to his right hand (It was sans weapon out of the box), fashion a sword grip and pommel to fit in the scabbard, etc. 

I instead left it empty and decided he had been in battle already, bending his sword over some Saxon's shield edge beyond repair and so discarded it upon the ground. 

During my googling, I read that Viking shield designs were not all that complicated in the main. This will be great going forward once I start painting up the regular rank and file. But I wanted my Lord to stand out some and so searched about for a cool design to slap on his shield. The result is a crow type icon (Originally found on a blue shield in Google images) that I think translated okay on my mini. 

This hovel is mine! 

I'm now working on the Saxon Lord with a completely different colour pallette. Updates on him to come.

Here's a quick picture of the Victory Class Star Destroyers for Armada. I picked up the 2nd one last week and added some mid-grey to random panels on one of them to help differentiate between the two. I also tried to get creative and add some depth to the engine glows for both. I think they both look far more interesting in general now. 

Getting back into a groove

So my painting mojo is slowly eking back into my system. To encourage this shyest of all mojos, I sat and worked some more on stuff to help it bloom into full-on Painting-Mojo-Uber-Extreme-X!!!

*warning - severe caffeine overload*

I grabbed the Lord fig for my Vikings warband and got to work. Still loads to do, but the base colours are in with washes and somehow, not-crap eyes to boot. The Tunic will be getting some decorative stuff along the edges and his beard will be closer to very light blonde to stand out more. Also the stock picture on the Gripping Beast website has him holding a puny sword over his shoulder (As his scabbard is sculpted empty of blade), but I said to hell with that nonsense. This is my Viking Lord! He needs some sort of impressive looking weapon! So he gets the Dane-style long-hafted axe. I've a bent and broken sword to glue to his base to answer for where his actual sword got to. 

Viking Lord "No-name-as-yet", pointing to where the mead-hall may well be.

Will be researching a cool design for the shield that won't tax my rubbish freehand skills too badly. ;)

He has no name, but I'm certainly open to any naming suggestions and will reward the best name with a firm manly internet handshake.

*terms and conditions of this "competition" can and will probably be changed on a whim*

I also got my dismounted Confederate cavalry troopers painted and ready for some basing flock (Waiting for this to arrive in the post). Simple paint jobs that I'll showcase once they are done-done with better pictures, but I like them so far. Two wee conversions/fixes were the standard bearer had his horribly bent banner pole removed and ground out and a length of paperclip added instead. (He's actually an infantry figure, but will match okay seeing as his mounted version looks similar.) Secondly the Officer mini had green-stuff feathers added to his hat and it's brim bent up to match the mounted version. Think the standard bearer (Easily the nicest sculpt of the unit) is actually a Union chap by Blue Moon *hoorah for interchangeable uniforms at this scale!* and the regular troopers are Alliance (?), but the Officer's manufacturer is anyone's guess. 

Apologies for the crap picture, but you get the idea.

Preparation for the Challenge

As with the last 6MMRPC, I plan to use (And actually follow through updating as I go.) some handy Draxian charts to keep track of my individual projects. There may or may not be one or two more of these to follow dependent on how much stuff I get completed during these next six months.

#1. The remaining Motor Platoon and it's trucks along with the Light Mortar stand of the 1st Motor Platoon and the trucks for the HMG platoon of my Flames of War desert still need finishing.

#2. After playing a small game with them (And having a blast), I realised I would really like to play my British Cromwells fully painted perhaps at a future tourney. They will be Welsh Guards Armoured Recce.

The Cromwells are all to the right of this pic. The rest of the contents of the shelves are sundry Flames of War models, some fantasy daemons, old 40K sculpts I don't want to get rid of and a Reaper Bones dragon that I'm very excited to get started on!

#3. So yeah, Dark Ages and my primary paint focus, my Jomsvikings. These really can be used as regular vikings too. I still need to order some archers but otherwise am happy playing smaller games of Lion Rampant for now.

Gripping Beast Jomsvikings from their old "6-Point" army boxed set. All metal and no doubles of sculpts - lovely.

#4. Vikings gotta raid, right? And who better than dirty Anglo-Saxons? These are mostly the contents of the Gripping Beast plastic Dark Ages Warriors boxed set with metal Thegn sculpts by Black Tree Design.

Lighting for this pic was horrid, but as it's just to show the unpainted models, it'll do. Yes, washers for bases.

Not a bad list for starters eh? Lots more (Of course) in the pile that needs my attention, including these (That will be getting lots of mates to support later this year.) ACW cavalry and some RedBoxGames Barbarians that I Kickstarted. And of course the many many random rpg minis that are sat waiting for me to get to.

Getting ready to utter a Rebel Yell!