March was Cavalry month for me! I repainted one of the few survivors from the teenage army to be my Battle Standard Bearer, and accompanied him with the corrupted knights that represent the old Count's bodyguard.
The models are Citadel Reiksguard Knights, with slight conversions to some of the heads, on Fireforge horses.
The banner, originally based on the one held by this Wight Lord in the Warhammer Armies book, just needed a bit of neatening, but the model got a repaint and a not-so-shiny new horse.
I also completed a unit of 6 Skeleton Horsemen (one I started as a test model in December), with a Doom Rider banner based on Dieter Helsnicht's.
Finally, I painted up a Skeleton Chariot, with a Zombie Banner from the army book:
Total points for this month: 563
Undead Battle Standard, steed 89 5 Wights, spears, shields, heavy armour, skeleton steeds, standard 264 5 Skeleton Horsemen, shields, spears, standard 132 Undead Chariot, scythed wheels 78
I finished month 3 in extremis with my crossbowmen.
I'm glad they are finished but I don't have much infantry left to finish the challenge.
Led by a merchant specialized in fur trading and textile, he's a bit of a coward. When the Baron called to arms the different guilds, the textile guild answered with some crossbowmen.
He just wanted to stay behind and avoid the big fights.
He brought some tilean mercenaries and a couple of hunters in order to protect his interests.
The merchant boss
Here he's surrounded by a happy street performer who joined the company to bring music and monkey dancing. On the other side, the Bounty hunter with no name protects the back of the merchant as long as he s getting paid.
Perfect tileans dogs of war, the middle one went full Braganza's style. The gamekeeper is a specialized hunter using traps.
Hunters and soldiers challenged themselves in taking down the most ennemies in battle.
The classic mercenaries with crossbows. They're all pretty good soldiers with good equipments and weapons.
Pointwise:
18 men with a musician so it's 190 points.
That's it for the 3rd month, a bunch of shooters ready to march for the Baron (only when needed).
For my next month, i'll go for my wildcard month:
Cannons and wizard.
Here we go, thank you for reading me. I hope you enjoyed the miniatures.
Well we're at the half-way mark and I'm not completely sick of painting beards yet, so I guess that's something :)
I stuck to the plan again this month and painted a regiment, war machine and character. With those complete I had some time left so went for a few extra bits - crossbow dwarves, sappers and another hero.
25 Norse Dwarves - Hand Weapons, Light Armour and Shields, Command and level 10 Hero - 387 points
Organ Gun - 99 points
12 Crossbow Dwarves - Light Armour and Crossbows with a level 5 Hero - 209 Points
6 Sappers (3 teams of 2) - 90 points
Level 10 Dwarf Wizard - 118 points
Level 20 Dwarf Hero - Heavy Armour and 2 Handed Weapon - 174 points
I made good progress this month and feel like I'm on track to finish everything in the initial challenge by the end of June. However work is looking busy for next month and we have house renovations ongoing so I guess we'll see!
Well, a bit of a break from all those pointy spears of January, and the hellscape of the archers in February - and now on to the interesting stuff for half way through the Challenge!
Naturally, I painted the leader in January, so as to give me a buffer month, but as luck would have it I have been super productive hobby-wise (and less said about the housework and paperwork the better).
So productive in fact, that I can post my big guys right next to their littlest gobbo leader, as I managed to paint them all!
Speaking of paint, here's the Warlord, resplendent on his cuddly spider 👇
Inspiration taken from the classic GW scheme, with those yellow stripes on the spider, but I switched up the black body for a slightly more colourful purple.
Everything is pinned - including the back banner pole
I kinda struggled a bit with the goblin itself, but he's done enough for me to be happy! I just need to find a shield somewhere amongst the bitz...
The banner is paper, and drawn on with a technical pen, then coloured with paint. I put a layer of PVA glue over it, but unfortunately got the kind that dries a creamy colour, so I re-did everything again. It wasn't so bad really as you could still see the underneath - it was just a bit foggy. Man, I hate painting banners.
On to something a bit bigger. I'm really very pleased with this guy - the remixed Cloud Giant from Drew Day Williams/Satyr Studio. (The original, by the way, is still produced - here).
The skin is painted using a Zorn palette, which was something I was experimenting with just before Christmas. Basically a Zorn palette is 4 colours. Black, Red, White and Yellow Ochre. It does yield some nice skin tone. Here he is with a nice, digitally added, blue faded background 👇
I did toy with the idea of a dedicated orc and goblin symbol for the shield, but went for the fleur-de-lis as I thought it was easy to center on the shield. Plus it's a little more generic I guess...
I should have pushed myself a little bit, and added a few more tattoos, but bottled it and stuck with that blue banding on the arm.
He came with the MDF square base, which I have pinned him to with the shortest of pins! Every bit helps though.
Little bit of mottling on the back skin there, just below the tattoo. Mostly it was because of an errant blob of paint, and I've just tried to make it A Thing, rather than try to cover it up.
And, flushed with a feeling of accomplishment for painting such large surface area, I went straight into painting the ogres...
I thought the theme of yellow pouches would fit with the yellow pouches on the goblins. Some coin for services, if you will.
And I broke up the big shirt space with some patterning. Mostly because I find painting larger areas of cloth quite hard - you don't have to paint cloth if you paint a pattern 🤔. And secondly because I thought it would be cool!
The lumberjack! There's a few missing squares on his shirt, but I think the effect is still good 🙂
And over to the party loving ogre!
He loves a cocktail with a small umbrella in it...
I switched up the pouch to blue, because I thought it would read better next to the yellow Hawaiian shirt. Red trousers for that bright party vibe 👊
Here they are together. Again, I'm super pleased with how they came out!
And to make up my model count, I painted up my Shaman. I think though, if I was to do him again I'd probably paint the skull wings on the staff a bit more yellow, and probably redo the blade of the sword a fade from black to red..
I do like the animal print on his loincloth and shirt though! Who knows what that sword is about. S'probably magic yo...
And then, I thought I'd best repaint the base rims of my previously painted Orc Lord and his Squig, so that they too can be part of the army!
And that's me done for March. On to more rank and file for next month :)
I was keeping secretly this amazing box from Ral Partha, "the Draconians". It is an old treasure I have seen in my childhood many times, and I never succeed to get it.
Fortunately, I put my hairy hands on a box in a second hand store at a fair price (35€), I was going to achieve a goal I had since my childhood, how fantastic !
I wanted to do something new, with different colours. I am tired of painting everything in pink :) So I imagined them as kin of a Red Drake.
In game, I will play them as furies. I might create my own rules, to make a regiment of renom, I will see.
Here they come, the Astharogh's offsrping :
I finished them early, so I decided to paint another regiment. I worked on my ungors/lesser beastmen/chaos thugs. Those miniatures are from Metal. Magic's range.
I was truly and pleasantly surprised by the quality of these figurines. The sculpting is fine—not too detailed, yet full of creativity—and very realistic. I had so much fun painting them. I hope you will enjoy them too !!
Beware the chaos leprechaun !!!
And of course, I want to share you the music that has been with me all month long, and that inspired me so much, the infamous and almighty French Black Metal band, Blessed in Sin ! "Par le sang du Christ"
Look at this album cover, isn't it all about Slaanesh beastmen and minotaurs ???
