Lately I´ve been mostly...

...painting ponies. And their riders. It has been a pretty slow process but today I finally got the shore riders unit to ´legal´ strenght ie. five rank&file troopers and a champion. I actually have two more rider and horse minis left unpainted but wanted to post something as soon as the unit was in playeble state. So here they are:

 In my opinion they came out pretty good. They are not copies of each other but still have an unified look in them. Also no two horse are painted the same. They all have at least some differences.

One thing that I find peculiar about shore riders is that in WFB: Armies their basic equipment is shield and spear with options to bow, javelins and light armor. To my knowledge there are no Citadel minis from that era to match that basic equipment. As you see none of my minis have spears and the champion is the only one with a shield. The troopers have bows and one of them wears something that could be light armor. Well, you can´t always go WYSIWYG.

My army didn´t have a wizard and as I finally found an appropriate model I painted him too. I do have a 90s wizard mini but I don´t like the sculpt and he has been left unpainted. But here´s the wizard that just joined my force. He is painted in the same blue and white theme as the rest of my elf force.

This particular wizard mini seems to have a beard which is strange for an elf IMO. Perhaps he is a half-elf after all?

I´ll end this post with a group photo of both the pony boys and the mage.

Ship Company completed

So here is my ship company for 3rd edition WFB. The ships companies as presented in WFB: Armies book are a bit of strange units as they have a fixed size of 10 elves. It says in the book that:"The warships and trading galleons of the Sea Elves have well armed crews. Sometimes these warrior crews may used to augment the land forces". I wonder if all elven ships have a crew of ten that can be used in this manner...

Well, I think of my Ship Company as marines who are ready to defend their ship from attackers. And if needed they can be used for boarding action too. They have good equipment and can handle both ranged and close combat.

In WFB:Armies book one warrior with long bow, hand weapon, light armor and shield is 14 points. If I include a standard bearer, musician and a LVL10 hero to lead the unit it will around 250 points for the whole package.

Next time it´ll be all about some Shore Riders. At least I hope so.

Conversions

Just a quick post about two small conversions I did yesterday. I´ve been working on a ship company and finally received the last few models for it from ebay. I wanted the unit to have a standard but did not have a ready-to-use mini for that. I don´t think there is one in the ME-32 series. Anyway, I drilled a small hole in one of the troopers left hand just behind the shield "knob" to fit a flag pole. A 4th edition era dragon rider of caledor standard bearer lost his. Some filing down of the pole and repositioning of the marine´s hand was required but after all I think it fit quite nicely.

 
Quite pleased with myself I was confident enough to try an another conversion. I removed the left hand and the horn it was holding from an elf archer musician. I then filed down the hand and fingers and removed the horns mouthpiece. Again a hole was drilled in a marine troopers shield hand. Main part of the horn was placed in the hole from below and the mouthpiece then glued on top of it.


I´m pretty happy with both. I´m not experienced converter but perhaps I´ll experiment a bit more in the future.

The poor victims who gave their best part for greater good.

Hopefully the next post will be about the completed unit in a couple of days.

What to do with these boyz´n gobbos?

I have a confession to make. I´m a total noob at painting goblinoids. The last orcs and goblins I´ve painted are perhaps a couple of 2nd edition Blood Bowl players from the beginning of 90´s. And now I have managed to get myself into this:

Yes, that is 12 goblins and 25 boyz. Looks like a beginning of an orc army. But how to paint them fast to table top quality? How would you proseed? I´m thinking about basing them with black spray. After that green skin, some metallic for armor and swords and something for loincloth and belt. Wash the whole thing with Agrax earthshade and then pick out eyes, teeth and other details. Could that work out?

A close up of gobbos. I really like the snotling duo standard bearer. Unit leader may need some cleaning up. I actually have some more gobbo archers but they are missing heads. Does anyone have some?

That´s 22 fantasy regiment boyz and a metal command group just waiting to be painted.