From SimonG: Latest HYW Men At Arms

Continuing to wrap up my French 1420s army here are two stands of Front Rank men at arms.

These are well cast, chunky, characterful and attractive miniatures but a restricted range of poses. You cannot mix them on the same stand as Perrys (which are much slighter in build) but alongside them on the table they are fine.

The heraldry is all fantasy but freehand (so these are not meant to be any specific individuals). The dolphin 🐬 (if that's what it is) is my favourite!

I've got one more stand of mounted MAA plus a lone banner bearer and then the French are done and it's on to the English. For the latter with all their white armour I think I'll go a little lighter on the grimy wash -- all of the French have ended up rather mucky looking (as one would after a few hours fighting in a muddy field!) so it will be nice to emphasise the contrast. On the English side the archers will all be dirty and rough!

From StuartL - Here Be Dragon (singular).

As penance for failing to post anything last week, I have managed to get a second submission ready for this week. As the title of the post implies, I have painted a dragon. I prepped the model for the winter challenge, but couldn't find time to work it in to my plan for Challenge Island, so it has been sat in my to do pile demanding some attention for nearly 6 months now.

As any fan of Dungeons and Dragons well knows, evil dragons come in various colours (red, green, black etc.) while good dragons are a variety of different hues of metal. A while ago I painted a red dragon, so this time I figured I would do one of the good guys and eventually settled on a Brass dragon. (The fur on the spine is bronze and the thick line of scales running down the flanks is gold).

The model was initially painted in an orange-ish brown colour. The wings were quickly drybrushed and the teeth and claws painted, then everything got a wash of brown. After that, all of the scales were painted, one by one. It took a while, but I feel the overall effect was pretty good.

And just to provide a sense of scale, here is a 28mm mini alongside. The dragon measures 10" long from nose to tail and the raised wings reach over 6" off the ground. I have heavily backed all of the Reaper Bones kickstarters, simply because there are so many cool minis like this one and they are incredibly cheap. I believe that this dragon was priced at US$15 during a previous kickstarter. While some of the mold lines are a bit difficult to remove and the material is a bit bendy at times, the big pieces like dragons, demons and giants are fantastic value for money.

For unofficial scoring, I'm going to add 20 points for this fine specimen. Even though it's a huge mini, there weren't that many technical bits, just a lot of simple brushwork. This puts my tally up to 779.5 points.

From PeteF: New Bases for Old Soldiers, the Flocking Continues

British Flags courtesy of Napflag

The nice thing about the Quarantine Challenge is that I can show off my dad's old Minifigs and Hinchcliffe as I get them table ready for Quatres Bras in 2021, 2022? sometime in the future. A substantial part of the army has made it to the states on various trips over the last few years. All I have to do is put the little fellas on bases and make them look nice and they'll be ready for my wargaming friends to enjoy as soon as we can get together over a cold beer.

This has been another few days of intense flocking - so much so that supplies are running low and I may need to take advantage of my FLGS's new curbside pickup service. Here are the Kings Dragoon Guards, Dutch Light Dragoons, a KGL battalion and two British Line battalions along with some command and some Frenchies.

I went all in with this lot giving them a coating of crushed cat litter which largely hides the integral bases and provides some rocks (with no need for painting/highlighting) before 2 colours of fine brown grit to simulate mud, a blend of turf flock and then tufts and static grass. I did debate whether I wanted to do new school bases with old school figures - would it clash and take away from the 1980s vibe? but I'm happy with the results.

Dutch cavalry standard fabricated from a picture found on the internet

This has been a good week for my Minifigs addiction collection as I was able to pick up a bunch of Old Guard and some great coated infantry for a very reasonable price on EBay. I was hoping to get even more from the same seller as he's breaking up a substantial collection - unfortunately it looks like others have found him and I'm too cheap to pay much more than 50 cents a figure. I'll have to lie in wait until next time - in the meantime I have plenty of Minfigs to be getting on with.

From MattT, A couple of conversions. VBCW

Converted a couple of models for this weeks post.

The first one was really simple but i am very happy with the result. Its a pulp figures sailor with a simple arm swap from a warlord plastic frame. I think the final figure has a Steve McQueen vibe to him.

Also converted the Warlord BUF mortar. Its a model that i love, but it looked a bit too facist. One model had a head swap, the loader was a bit more involved where i just keep his arms. Doner parts came from the Pulp Figures Savage Seas range. This range has been a real gold mine for me and provided the spotter and ammo carrier.

Group shot

Stay Safe, Matt.

From TamsinP: 28mm Wars Of The Roses Mounted Men At Arms

I told you that you wouldn't have long to wait for my next batch of figures and here they are - some tin cans on tin cans. Admittedly i did suggest that I might post these yesterday, but I decided to finish painting the next batch before doing the final stages of basing on these.

The ALDG list allows up to one base of "Royal Bodyguards" (elite heavy knights) and two bases of "Mounted Men at Arms (heavy knights). As mentioned in my previous post, I have enough figures for two standard or three small armies so have done two bases for each, although there's nothing to say that the "Royal Bodyguards" bases can't be fielded as "Mounted Men at Arms". Besides, I had enough figures to do four bases!


Royal Bodyguards:

Mounted Men At Arms:

The remaining elements - the Currours (heavy cavalry) and commanders - are now on bases and may even be ready to post tomorrow, but Friday is perhaps more realistic. Or I might split them over two posts, one tomorrow and one on Friday.

From TomF - AWI Mounted Officer and Movement Trays

Sorry for the long delay in posting another entry.  The academic semester in the US is done and I've now got more time to paint.

Just a quick thanks to all of the participants that have posted entries over the last two weeks.  They were much appreciated distractions from work.

I did manage to paint a mounted officer for my Sharpe Practice American War of Independence (AWI) force during the last two weeks.  It is a Perry metal miniature from the mounted American officers pack which I've painted as a British officer.


I attempted to do some layering on the horse and officer's coat which don't show up all that great in the picture.

The other project I finished over the past two weeks was the construction of movement trays for three AWI British infantry units.  I also flocked the bases of the miniatures and movement trays.  All the miniatures are Warlord plastics; most were painted over the winter.

Thanks for viewing.  Stay safe.

From TimG - BAOR Blowpipe AAGM teams

As part of my current project to finish various Cold War bits I have here are a couple of British Army of the Rhine Blowpipe teams. In my NBC game they represent platoon-size units. The figures are GHQ and were painted last week. The Landrovers are Heroics and Ros models which I  painted in the early 1980s!
Both Landies are 109 LWB Series threes - a standard pickup body on the left and a FFR (fitted for radio) hardtop on the right.