Getting Medieval on the Summer

Due to an organisational cockup, my two delightful children have ended up having to attend nursery more than we intended over the summer. This means that I had an unexpected free day.

And, my word, I put the time to good use (apart from having a nap).

First, I completed the last unit of Neville serjeants at arms:

Secondly, I finished off a Witch King of Angmar I found kicking around in the lead pile. The trick here is how to paint black interestingly - I used what I'd learnt from Doc Holliday to highlight but then decided to cool it down. I created a glaze using Vallejo Transparent Blue and a lot of water. This lowered the temperature of the grey without giving it a noticeable coloured tint (this, believe it or not, is a trick I learnt from Photoshop). Finally, the most impressive thing about the Lord of the Rings movies was the verisimilitude; in keeping with this, I've always made a point of weathering my LotR minitures as much as possible, so here we get dust and mud splatters to ensure that the Lord of the Nine is grounded in reality.

Finally, I put together something I'm looking forward to painting immensely. A incredibly talented chap named Vermis on the Lead Adventure forum has sculpted a Victorian Villain, the Man Who Grins.

The sources - both Conrad Veidt and the Joker - are obvious; as is the inspiration for the Victorian Vigilante:

These will be my reward for finishing the Wars of the Roses retinues. I'm intending to use them for In Her Majesty's Name.

Last thing is just a bit of a brag; at the trawl round a car boot sale at the weekend, I picked up Memoir '44, a board/wargame with a very good reputation, unplayed for a tenner. Expect a review as soon as I can find someone to play it with me.

On the boardgame front, tomorrow night I will be playing Rex which I've been looking forward to for some time, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Lion Stirring

Having finished the course of antibiotics - marvellous things except the damnable restriction on scotch - and sundry other items provided by the apothecary I was able to resume work on the wee chaps.

As you can see, this is the Neville Longbowmen with all basecoats and shading. Still left to do is highlighting and then the white which is, of course, the last thing to be done. 

After this will be a short break - either a wee blast of Victoriana or possibly some Vikingr. Good manly hirsute fun in either case. 

A new arrival was the storage solution for my retinues - and more besides. I have a couple of KR Multicases containing a variety of half finished armies about the place and I really can't recommend them enough. For around £27 we have here a single case that will hold both Lion Rampant retinues, two SAGA war bands and two INHN companies. That's great value and convenience by anyone's standard. 

Hopefully an update at the weekend to show a finished unit. In the meantime, I leave my fellow history fans with this little gem:

Chin up chaps.