Kallistra undead: Skeleton warriors

I made a start to my 10mm undead army this week. Like my barbarians, all the minis I have so far are from Kallistra, and very nice they are too. First up is this unit of skeleton warriors. Excuse the pun, but these were dead easy to paint. I wanted to avoid using bright colours and instead keep the skeletons looking like they have been lying in the ground for a long time. I'd normally undercoat small miniatures in black, but for these guys I used a white undercoat, which I then washed with GW's Nuln Oil. I then drybrushed the bones using a skeleton bone colour. The shields and weapons are all done in muted browns, which I applied using very thinned down paint. This was followed by some more dark brown ink washes, and finally a quick pass with a dry brush of skeleton bone colour. The blue areas you see were done with a wash of GW's Drakenhof Nightshade and white drybrush.

All in all, the unit took less than 2 hours, which is great going for me, since I'm not a very fast painter by any means. I'm hoping my other undead units will be just as quick and easy to paint :-)

Kallistra Barbarians: Mammoths

I haven't had an awful lot to show for this month so far, but here's another little addition I finished today for my 10mm barbarians. More loveliness from Kallistra. These mammoths will look fantastic riding into battle alongside the rest of the units, and I'm sure I'll add more of them in future. The models actually come with four riders a piece, but I struggled a bit to get them all to fit on. Perhaps the extra riders are included to give you some options of which ones to choose, or maybe I just wasn't squeezing them all in tightly enough. Either way, three riders per mammoth looks plenty to me.

I still have a couple more blisters of barbarians to paint - a command pack and some birdmen, but I've now started on my 10mm skeleton army, so I hope to show some pics of those soon.

Finished: Celtic chariot

Among the other minis I picked up at Claymore was this Celtic chariot from 1st Corps, which I really like. As with my Early Imperial Romans, my Celtic army is still pretty small, but I'm adding models to it as and when I can. No doubt I'll want more chariots before long, but this was a good one to start with.

Before starting, I looked at the well known Celtic chariot illustration by Angus Mcbride, and used the figures in that as reference for the clothes. They're not identical, but the colour scheme is very similar. I'm pretty sure there was an actual miniature made of that painting by Angus McBride, but can't quite remember which company produced it. (Warlord, maybe?)

The only thing I didn't like about this mini was the chunky spear that came with it, so I swapped it for a spare one I had from Foundry, which I think looks more realistic. I'm fairly happy with the paint job, especially the horses, which have never been my strong point. It would be a nice touch to add reins to the the horses and chariot driver, but I'm not sure yet what I'd use. Some thin wire, perhaps? I deliberately kept the base uncluttered for this mini, but I'll probably go back and add one or two small tufts just to break up the ground a bit. All in all, a good bit of painting so far for the week, and the first dent made in the Claymore lead pile.

Claymore 2014

Real life has been a bit busy these past couple of weeks, so not quite as much time to paint and blog, but I did recently finish this unit of horse riders for my 10/12mm barbarian army. I decided to base them with the short edge forwards so that I could also use them more easily for Warmaster if and when I get round to using it.

My hobby highlight of the past fortnight was definitely the trip to Claymore last weekend. I came away with my wallet scarily lighter and my backpack a lot heavier, but more importantly my enthusiasm for all things wargaming and miniature painting was well and truly stoked up. Amongst the various traders whose stands I visited, was Kallistra, where I bought some more of their Hordes & Heroes barbarians, as well as some skeletons for the new army I plan to start soon. I also picked up a couple of boxes of their Hexon terrain, which I really like, and will blog more about in future posts.

I'll show some of the rest of my lead haul from Claymore later, but for now here are a couple more pics of my barbarians for you to enjoy. I've been a bit inconsisten with my choice of basing materials for these, but hopefully the whole army will still visually hang together reasonably well.