Kallistra undead: skeleton cavalry and ballistae

I'm making good progress this week with my Kallistra Hordes & Heroes undead army. Here are some pics of the most recently finished units, the skeleton cavalry and ballistae. I've also finished the giant vultures and a unit of skeleton archers, but need to finishing the basing on them.

I also had time to play my first quick game of Hordes & Heroes - between my undead and barbarians. The barbarian pretty much rolled over the undead with ease, so it'll be interesting to see how future battles go between these two. I also realised that my armies are fairly small. Using all the models I have available only amounted to about 100 pts per side, so the game didn't take me long. It was good fun though, and I like the simplicity of the rules and the ease of movement using hexes instead of measurements. I think I'll start adding more units soon so I can fight some bigger battles.

Kallistra undead: Tormented Spirits

...and I'm back.

After a slight hiatus from painting miniatures, I'm back at it again, continuing the various projects I have on the go and foolishly planning new ones which I don't really have time for. But what the heck.

Despite having lots of minis from various games to paint, I'm going to make sure I set aside a good amount of time each week to get my Kallistra 10/12mm undead army finished, so that I can actually have a game. This unit of 'Tormented spirits' was the last one I painted. I couldn't resist varying the colour on them. Might be too garish for some tastes, but not mine. I like 'em colourful, even the dead ones.

Next up will be a unit of undead horsemen. I have also started a long held ambition to collect and paint a 28mm undead army, so a few posts to follow on that.

Games Workshop: Nurgle Plaguebearers

These plaguebearers are part of a Demons of Chaos army that is one of several unfinished projects I have still ongoing. When I returned to wargaming after my long hiatus, I tried getting back into Warhammer, and planned to start a Demons army to give me something new to play with besides my old Empire and Orcs & Goblins horde. So far though I've only really flirted with 8th edition, playing maybe a half dozen or so games. Too many other games have intruded upon my time and attention since then. But I do hope to at least go back and finish painting up the other chaos miniatures I collected, even if I don't end up playing all that much Warhammer again. These plaguebearers were great fun to paint. I used a variety of yellow and green ink washes to give each of the figures a slightly different hue, but still keep within the same overall tone. The basing is admittedly very simple, but when it comes to basing I sometimes think that less is more.

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.