Into the year 2024

 Last year was not as active for hobby activities as I had hoped for. I´ll try my best to do at least a little bit better during 2024. To start off I finished two little minis that I´ve had for a while,

First one is this elf beastmaster war boar. Brown fur with drybrushed higlights.

Black snout, legs and hooves. Bone for tusks and a metal nose ring. Pretty simple.

All six boars I have as a group.

And finally their masters,

The second miniature finished is this Mithril Miniatures M202 Ioreth the healer.

Her face and fingers was almost to small for me to paint.

She will be yet another addition to my ever growing high elf baggage train.

Not sure if just a cup of water will do much good for that fallen elf warrior.

Baggage train group shot

 This is something I´ve been planning for a while but only now on my short vacation got around doing. That is digging out all my high elf baggage train models for a group shot and posting it here. To be honest finding everyone was a bit of a challenge. I have quite a few model cases and did not remember where most of the elves were in. Rummaging through different foam filled bags and boxes I came around miniatures I had somewhat forgotten I had. And eventually found all the elves I was looking for.

Let´s begin with a bird eye view of everyone. Four carts or wagons, sixteen individuals, a few animals, barrels, boxes and few smaller supply items.

In the left back corner an elf weapon smith can be seen holding a new part for a bolt thrower. In front of him a is a pair of merchants leading their horse away from an unlimbered cart.

An artist is about to start a new painting depicting a wounded wardancer. Next to them two youngsters are playing with their wooden swords.

A group of camp followers is spending their time reading and listening to music.

An elf lady is getting some food from a cart while a kid is threatening a goose with his bow.

Here we can see some hay being moved while another cart is getting loaded.

The hay foraging is closely watched by the army´s quartermaster. These elves are army regulars as can be told by their blue and white clothes (my high elves wear those colors). The civilian camp followers have much less uniform clothing.

As I have an elf casualty model lurking somewhere I plan on adding him and a healer of some sort to this group. And I got a tip on a nice elf bowyer model that I intend to buy in near future. So expect to see more of this baggage train in the future.

More camp followers

 As of lately I´ve been mostly painting epic scale eldar but have managed to put some paint on other stuff too. Here´s two more camp followers for high elf baggage train.

The chap on the left is a Lammings miniatures peasant with pitch fork. I chopped off the original head and replaced it with one from the old Warhammer fantasy regiments elf. I also repositioned his hands a bit.  I´ve had that other miniature for years and simply can´t remember which manufacturer made it. He represents an elf quartermaster. Here checking his files to be sure there´s enough hay collected for the army´s horses.

Another baggage train posting

March went by without me posting a thing. Let´s make april a bit more active month. To be honest I´ve been slowly painting a thing or two but nothing  that I felt was worth showing. My perivous posting motivated me to order some stuff from Midlam Miniatures. Here are the ones I got to build up my high elf baggage train / camp followers.

So it´s two youngsters playing and a cart with driver. As you propably

notice I swapped the drivers original head for a 80´s Fantasy regiment

elf head for him to fit in better with the rest of the camp followers.

Those new chaps will be joining this group I started a few years back.

I might have to rebase these to make them look the same.

BTW I you know good 25mm scale models for elf civilians let me know in the comments. I plan on making this group even bigger.

Baggade train upgrade

 In between painting other things I wanted to upgrade my elves baggage train a bit. It´s just a hay cart and some winged livestock this time but I´m hoping to add a few more items in the future.

Cart, goose, chicken and rooster.

Same stuff but from a bit different view.

Happy Orctober 2020

 My most modest contribution for this year´s Orctober are these two orcs brawling over a bottle of booze. Both have sat undercoated on my paiting table for too long and now I sort of forced myself into splashing some color on them.

Both are from the C15 / ORC5 / 0508 Orc Villagers series. They will join the orc

baggage train with some of the models I´ve painted earlier.

The bottle is a very crude green stuff thingie I came up with. 

To be honest I did not enjoy painting these that much. The details are somewhat shoddy and the face of that knocked-out one is just a complete mess in my opinion.

Orctober 2018 - Final tally

The green month is almost over and as I don´t think I´ll have time to do more painting I´m going to sum it up here and now. 2017 my only greenish thing painted was a troll so I think I did a bit better this year.

Bolt thrower #1. Skinny and sinewy orcs with very little clothing, armor and equipment.

Bolt thrower #2. Thick and muscular orcs with more of everything.

Two camp followers. An orc villager with scimitar and a bag of loot and a half orc slave.

And of course a Group Picture.

Happy orctober aka an orc and a half

So it´s the green month again. I think I didn´t get a single green skin painted last year for orctober so this time I´m taking an early start. Just two models here and one of them isn´t completely green but Now the game is on and I´m sure I´ll be able to post more orcy things later.

The proper green skin is this bolt thrower crew orc. Very quick and simple to paint. Base colors, wash and higlights. Expect to meet the other crew members and their warmachine later this month.

Second half-orc slave for baggage train. Where his half-brother has light green skin and human eyes this chap got himself a more human toned skin but red eyes.

The two slaves together. With the first one´s chains I propably overdid the rust effect a bit and tried to go a tad easier with the second one.

And as last the Vanhaa Vasarointia orctober opening act together.

One for the gob mob and one for the baggage train

That fast food selling goblin made me dig through one of the many boxes that hold my unpainted miniatures as I remembered having something that would fit the green skin baggage train. And actually found two of the shackles carrying guys. They are from the C27 Slave ogre & Half-orc handlers set. But I see them as half orc slaves doing those jobs too dirty for their pure blooded cousins.

The other model in the pictures is a C12 goblin. Just wanted to show that back in those days goblins came in many shapes and sizes. I mean he is one Big gobbo as he stands almost as tall as the half orc.

Looked for light green skin, dark hair and human eyes with that half orc. Clothes are pretty plain and dirty. The shackles he is carrying are brown-red with rust.I have another one of these models and might give him a more human skin but red goblinoid eyes.

The goblin wears studded leather armor on a mail shirt. I was not sure what that thing on his sword arm is but I imagined being a arm band of some sort.

Next in line are some elf war hounds, an orc villager or two and perhaps high elf kith. Stay tuned!

Squig´n chips

2nd model of my very slowly growing orcs & golins baggage train is this goblin fast food merchant. Not exactly an oldhammer model by it´s age but has the right feel in it, doesn´t it?

Holding one of his mechadise in his hand this goblin is carrying a lot of bag. Apparently filled with more commercial goods.

 You can see a couple of snouts sticking out from that bag under his left arm. Poor little buggers.

 Can´t really tell what the creatures on sale are - some sort of squigs perhaps. But as Traject0ry pointed out they sure do look a lot like the shingouz from Valerian and Laureline.

Orcy pastry

A short while ago I spotted this TTG Tabletop Games Fantasy MP35 "Orc eating a Pie" model on ebay. And I knew I had to get him. Not because he is that good a sculpt but because he reminded me that I do not have a baggage train for my O&G army. So it was decided - he´ll be the first of the camp followers. I only need 14 more and three carts/wagons.

He has taken a bite alright with those bit teeth of his.

Nice raspberry glazing there on top. I think that´s a bag

he´s holding in his other hand.

I tried to make the pie look like a lemon and raspberry cheesecake. A favorite of all orcs for sure. Inspiration came from this blog.

Elf parade

In my previous posting I mentioned the Finnish independence day and the military parade that is an essential part of celebrations. Going through my even older text I noticed that almost exactly one year ago I painted the first model in the blue and white theme that was then chosen for my high elf army. That me made think - let´s see how my army looks today. Elves! Get ready for a parade!

Here´s everyone. Not exactly in a parade formation rather than just arranged on a bookshelf to fit in one picture.

Backrow: Baggare train, Guards, Shore riders with Scouts behind them, a Wizard, a Spectre

Middle row: Merchant company, Archers

Front row: Two Marine bolt batteries, Ship company, Wardancers

That roughly 120 models painted during last 12 months if you count in the war machines and carts too. I´m pleasantly suprised with myself.

Here´s a closer shot of the left wing. The merchant company was the first unit I completed. I had quite a lot of those 4th edition archers and spearmen left and it was nice to practise painting after many years not touching your brushes.

The right wing. Pretty much everything here is old school citadel. A lot of Jes Goodwin sculpts here.

In my opinion the army has a naval expeditionary force feel in it. It´s an infantry strong army with just a small unit of light cavalry in support. Just like something you could expect to land from elven warships and merchant galleys.

I´m hoping to expand my army so that it would eventually have at least one unit of every unit type presented in the WFB: Armies book. That means that I will have to paint a dragon rider, a unit of silver helms, a unit of warrior, kith unit and a chariot. I have a dragon and it´s rider in WIP state and it would be finished quite fast if I took the bull by horns and just painted it. One day...

For kiths I would like to get some rural looking archers. Armed with longbows the kiths could add some firepower to my army with lower points value than the normal +1 missile elite archers. I did buy a chariot a few months ago and I think I will take it on the painting table some day during next spring. As I love Jes Goodwin sculps I will try to get my hands on some more hand weapon armed elf warriors and create a warrior out of them.

First year behind!

I started this blog on 2.12.2016 so today it´s been running for a year and a day and this is my 49th text so far. Initially I wrote in Finnish but changed to English to reach wider audience. I my first ever posting I set myself three goals:

1. builf myself a playable high elf army 
2. play some 3rd ed WFB with it and 
3. blog about the aforementioned things

I feel that I´ve succeeded with all three. My high elf force is certainly playable as I´ve had three matches with it so far. And I´ve been pretty active with this blog I think.

Quite a lot of elves have been painted during a year. I really haven´t counted them but there a several dozens. My personal favorites are the baggage train and the ship company.

The baggage train was really fun to put together. It took me ages to get the suiteble minis as there are not that many choises available for elf civilians. But I´m very pleased with the result. Especially happy I´m with the painter and his model.

This is the ship company. The unit has a fixed size of ten models which limits it´s usefulness on gaming table but I like it in any case. Rank and file are Citadel ME-32 Noldor deep elf variants. The musician and standard bearer are conversions using bits from 90´s high elf archers and dragon princes. Well armed and armored they look like marines from an elven warship.

After six months of blogging I had 2849 views and 5 followers. At that point I set myself a goal of 10000 views and 10 followers by this day. Today I have just below 9000 views and 12 followers so one of those goals was met while the other was not.

The most popular posting so far has been this battle report of a game between my elves and some dwarves. My favorite posting is the Baggage train compendium as I´ve become a big fan of that area of WFB Oldhammering.

What next? This year is ending soon so I´ll set my sights for year 2017. So during next year I want to play at least as many games of WFB as I did this year (3). I have an elf chariot that I want to complete. And I´ll paint enough greenskins for a 1500 points O&G force. And I´ll continue blogging about my oldhammer activities.

Baggage train - Finally completed

My high elf baggage train has been in WIP status for some time but today I finally had chance to finish it. The main reason for not getting it ready earlier was me not being satisfied with the wagon I had planned to use. It was just too big compared to smallish 80´s elves. So I went back to ebay and got one that in my opinion looks better.

So here is everyone - ten elves, two carts and a horse plus some supplies. The base is some grass mat mounted on cardboard. There´s a sheet of "rubber steel" just undet the grass mat and every mini has a small magnet on the bottom to make them stand better. The base is 6"x8" to match the size of a 2000 point army´s baggage train.

Two elf ladies and a minstrel. They are from the Turnkey Miniatures´ elf villagers set.

An artist and his model. The artist is from Marauder´s MM62 series and his model is a Citadel ELF5 wounded wardancer.

The merchant couple. The male in the foreground is pre slotta C08 high elf wizard and his wife a pre slotta C08 high elf thief. They are walking their horse away from the supply cart.

Another cart and some supplies. The elves are again from the Turnkey Miniatures´ elf villagers set.

As far as I know this is the only completed high elf baggage train around the internet at the moment. Please let me know if there is another somewhere.

Elf baggage train WIP part 3

A quick update on my high elf baggage train. All the characters are completed now and next I´m going to take care of wagons/carts. And the base/moving tray thing for the whole camp. But here´s a group photo of everyone:

From left to right. An elf horse and a merchant couple. They are a pre slotta mage and a female thief. In the middle six minis from Keyhole miniatures elf villagers series. And on the far right a wardancer and an artists.

A closer look at the merchant couple. The male figure is oroginally posed to look like he is casting a spell but I tried to me it seem like he is pulling the horse from it´s reins. The female thief was slightly reposed to make it look like she is helping her husband with the horse.

This is perhaps my favourite part of the whole group of camp followers. I wanted to include the wounded wardancer but his expression and pose are so aggressive that he seemed a little bit out of space among the civilians. Then I say this artist mini and came up with the idea that the wardancer is modeling for the painter. So now I have Thom of Elfland starting his latest painting The Wounded Wardancer.





Hope you enjoyed reading!

Baggage train compendium

As mentioned in an earlier posting baggage trains bring a lot of realism to a WFB army. Using the WFB: Armies lists as a guideline there are nine armies that can include a baggage train to their composition. For this posting I´ve done some googling and tried to find sites about the baggage trains people have used for each of those armies. I hope that wargamers who concider getting a group of camp followers and carts can get inspirations out of these.

I´ve only included sites with pictures and therefore these is more stuff for some armies than others. Some are just single pictures among other material so please scroll down if you don´t see what you were looking for right away.

Updates:

26.10.2016 - Added a pic and couple of links to Dark elf part

6.12.2016 - Added a pic and a link to Dwarf part

High elf



For high elves I´m going to have use my own army as an example as I was unable to find any other pictures of a high elf baggage train. The reason might be that high elves are one of the rarest if not the rarest 3rd edition WFB armies around.

A cart and five camp follower. Enough for a 1000 point army.

I´m  going to expand this with another cart and more civilians

to make it suitable for 2000 points.

Elf lady and some supplies. 

A minstrel and a reading elf woman.





Chaos

Mouse, the author of the Tales From the Big Board blog has created a very atmospheric baggae train for his chaos army. You can see it here and here. I really like the way Mouse has connected some of the minis with the art of Albrecht Durer and Pieter Bruegel. It´s a very oldhammer chaos entirety.

And be sure to check out this thread for inspirational material. So many cool ideas.

Both Carnival of Chaos Plague Cart and Cabaret of Chaos Pleasure (and Pain) Wagon would fit any Nurgle or Slaanesh army.

The lost and the very damned blog has this chaos warband with some civilian followers.

edit. After publishing found this chaos baggage train from Hammer & Banner blog.



Bretonnia

There is very little to be found directly connected to bretonnian baggage trains. Google brough up just this one page that has a nice scratch build wagon for a bretonnian army.

This baggage train is for Saga but it uses old bretonnian trebuchet crew minis and has a very bretonnian spirit in it as a whole. They really look like scruffy peasant following on the trails of the army itself.

And another one for Saga that would go well with bretonnia or empire.

Marauder miniatures´ MM62 Citizens range has a lot of nice models for bretonnian (or empire) camp followers.

Chris´ miniature woes presents a wide range of painted Dark age/Fantasy villagers that could be used both for bretonnia and empire.

Xin´s lair has these painted Gripping Beast civilians that would fit any human baggage train.

Paul´s Pods has this huge Medieval army with a large baggage train.

Dark elf

So far I have not been able to find a single picture of a dark elf baggage train - painted or unpainted. Any link would be appreciated.

Update 26.10.2016

Dieselmonkey sent a couple of pictures of his WIP dark elf baggage train to Oldhammer forum and gave me permission to publish them here. Here´s the group photo. 

Check out rest of the pictures here. And Dieselmonkeys wonderful dark elf force here.

Dwarf

I don´t think there´s model that says dwarf baggage train better than Bugman´s cart. There are many dwarf baggage trains to be found around the internet. Perhaps it´s because there are quite a lot of suitable models for camp followers for a dwarf army.

Here´s one project with a bear drawn beer wagon.

Another fine example at the stuff of legends site.

Cookie's Chuck Wagon from the Tales From the Big Board blog. And the same baggage train with 2nd cart and more camp followers.

A dwarf baggage train can been seen in this battle report.

Jon´s wargames minis has a Battle for skull pass wagon as a center piece for a baggage train.

This tired dwarf on a pony would go nicely with Bugman´s cart.

 This baggage train is by Thomas Foss. Be sure to visit his blog.

Empire

Citadel has produced a set for empire baggage train. Here´s a painted example of one.

The hoodling hole blog has a supply wagon acting as a unit filled in a halberdier unit. It has a very empire feel in it.

This forum thread is mostly about dwarves but scrolling down you can find a nice example of a painted empire wagon and camp followers.

My opinion is that most of the models presented in the bretonnia part would work perfectly for empire with a different paint job. Little less shabbyness and little more uniformity and there you have your empire civilians.

Orcs & goblins



Captives, slaver, drunks - Oldenhammer in Toronto blog has it all. This orc baggage train really captures the spirit of orc baggage train.

Another fine example - bear wagon, drunks, severed head. Sword & Dorkery blog brings you very orky set.

And once again we go to Tales From the Big Board blog for Flo's Field Kitchen and JackJaw's Junkwagon. Just wonderful stuff!

edit. A super cool additions from Hammer & Banner blog here, here and here.



Slann

Goblin Lee´s huge slann army has a baggage train that was in WIP state. Nice conversions of both slann and lobotomized human slaves. As Lee states they really bring character and completeness to his army.

Note that slann baggage trains do not include wagons but have twice the number of camp followers than other armies.

Wood elf

Last but not least we have wood elves and the Oldenhammer in Toronto blog that got me into this baggaga train thing. Using pack horses instead of wagons is a good idea and fits the theme of a wood elf army better than heavy carts. Nice conversion of a javelin throwing elf warrior there.

Well, that concludes this rather long posting. I hope that you did find the links listed here useful.

Until next time!

p.s. Please let me know if there´s a dead link. Or if I´m linking to your site and you want the link removed. Or if you want me to get your site included.