KenR - 28mm Prussian Landwehr - 161 points

 

These just missed the finish line last week, a little break from the Italian Wars sees me add another unit to my long term Plancenoit Project.

This is the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Neumark Landwehr forming part of the 13th Brigade of the 4th Corps at Waterloo. This is the 8th unit so far for that group, Prussian Brigades are not for the faint hearted !

The figures are of course 28mm and are from the Perry Miniatures metal range, a lot more expensive than plastics but the available options are shockingly bad compared to these, so I'd rather spend the extra brass on quality (in figures not tabletop performance 😉)

So the vital statistics are 32 figure unit on 4 x 8 figure bases, each base is 60 x 60 mm. 32 figures at 5 pts each give me 160 more plus one for the flag.

This is likely the last Napoleonic unit of the Challenge, I really want to get the Swiss Pike done before we close and I still have 96 to do, so that's priority. Last of the Spanish Cavalry next.

Nice looking Landwehr unit Ken, they have a suitably shabby campaign appearance to them.  My understanding is that by 1815 some Landwehr units had ben in the field long enough to become decent quality infantry.  I also remember hearing that a Landwehr unit was the first Prussian unit on the field at Waterloo.

Harry V - 28mm Carthaginian Cavalry (130 pts)

Hi All, 

More progress on the Carthaginian front. For this post I have 12 Carthaginian cavalry from Aventine Miniatures in 28mm. These are a mix of packs, some sold as Carthaginian cavalry, others as successor cavalry. 

 

These figures will be my last unit of ethnic Carthaginian cavalry for the army. 

I am generally a pretty big fan of aventine miniatures but these cavalry will definitely look quite small next to their Victrix brothers I did for my first entry. Most of the rest of the cavalry for this project will be Victrix, so hopefully they don't look too out of scale when massed together. 

Some of these cavalry I have actually been holding onto since around 2018 when I first got back into miniatures and had originally wanted to do a Carthage project, so it was nice to finally get these completed and onto the table top. 

The basing on these figures is a little sparse, I actually was shocked to realize I was basically out of nice tufts! However I am reasonably happy with the basing, and think it gives a decent enough dry North African feel. 

First the foot and now the horse.  These aer wonderful Harry, love the bright colours on the cloaks.  I think that your bases look perfect for North African or Sicilian scrub.  I am bumping points a bit for the size and quality of your pots today.

From AndrewG: More fantasy town guards and their adversaries (75 points)

 

In between historical figure painting I’ve continued to chip away at various skirmish projects including more town guards and their potential adversaries. This post has a bit of everything in that regard.

We begin with the first half of my second Guards of Traitor's Toll detachment. This patrol is painted in the livery of Lady Merron, but despite its simple appearance, for some reason this batch of figures caused me no end of headaches. The first three went fine, but when I had finished the last two, I realized I had accidentally reversed their livery quarters. Oh well, somewhere in Traitor’s Toll a clothing stores quartermaster is getting jacked up by their superior for choosing a dodgy lowest bidder.

I then decided I wanted to give my crossbowman a pavise shield, which I sourced from a plastic Perry miniatures set. The contours of the shield and back simply wouldn’t match and every time I glued it on, I’d come back a few minutes later to find it had fallen off. Time to use the “special” glue. Needless to say it'll never come off now, unlike the next guy.

 

Having sorted that out, I painted the guy with the torch. Of interest, this is the first time I’ve ever painted flames – I found a tutorial on the interwebs and followed it, and it seemed to come out nicely. Impressed with myself and feeling a false sense of security, while admiring my finished work I dropped the figure and his head snapped off and rolled away somewhere (still yet to be found). So, more repairs...

 

Having had enough of the guards, I flipped over to my Cult of the Double Scar dudes and finished off a leader and a necromancer, thinking that I could also use this growing warband for Frostgrave. Again, some very nice plastic sculpts from Northstar and easily kit bashed together from both the Cultists and Wizards sprues.

A lot of games need peasants or levy troops, so I put together a few of the Wargames Atlantic plastic medieval peasants from their Baron’s War line. Overall, they’re okay, but I’m not sure I like them all that much. The legs and torsos come separate, and the heads are not really universal to all the bodies, certain ones go best with certain torsos. Also, the weapons are oversized and can appear a bit goofy. Nevertheless, they’ll fit into skirmish games well enough.

I've no idea what that is but it looks like it would hurt

Don't get between him and his chickens 

Last but not least, I had this D&D plastic wolf/beast/dog that someone gave to me a while ago just sitting around on the workbench, so I decided to finish it off and add it to my slowly growing collection of Frostgrave adversaries. Nothing fancy, just a few overcoats and dry brushes of greys and some glowing blue eyes.

 

Thus, for this lot I’ll claim:

13x 28mm figures = 65 points

1x 28mm large animal = 10 points

Total: 75 points

I like these guys a lot Andrew.  Your town guard looms very much the part, but maybe avoid that tailor next time.  Your baddies are my faves however, especially the necromancer types.  Well done.

From SylvainR: 28mm Big and Huge Monsters for D&D (200 points)

 

Our little reference heroine in a horde of big monsters, hard to spot like Waldo, can be found in the red circle. 

Because I was so close to complete a big project, I put the pedal to the medal last week and was able to finish the last of my D&D miniatures. There are lots of pictures in this post and I would forgive you if you want to skip to the end to see the photo of the whole D&D project finished. But let's get the ball rolling...

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Batch 1: an owlbear, a winged gorilla, a unicorn and a cockatrice. Since the unicorn doesn't have a rider, let's count it for 5 points. Let's count all the monsters here for 5 points each for the sake of simplicity. You will note that the owlbear is drooping, touching the ground with its arm, but the miniature was supposed to be standing on one leg. That's what happens with vinyl; the effect of gravity makes the models, especially big ones, droop over time. I used gloss varnish on the big eyes of the owlbear, increasing its "cuteness" by a factor of 10!

 

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Batch 2: a bulette (or "land shark"), a slaad, a war troll and a gorgon (or "brass bull"). Let's count the tall guys as 54mm figurines (10 points) and the 4 legged ones as 28mm cavalry without riders (5 points). I decided to paint the land shark as if it were construction equipment, kind of yellowish. For the gorgon, I used "patina" wash to enhance the brass look. I used the same recipe for the brass dragon that you will see later on.

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Batch 3: two ugly ogres (one is two-headed), a stone golem (or "earth elemental") and a treant (or "ent" or "wood spirit"). Let's count them all as 54mm figurines (10 points). I glued some flock on the stone golem and the treant to simulate moss. 

 

  

 

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Batch 4: a griffon, a wyvern (or "jabberwocky"), a black dragon and a chimera. Let's count them as 54mm models for 10 points each. I decided to use blue hues for the "feathery" parts of the griffon and I think it turned out OK. Again, the weak vinyl is causing the model to droop heavily. Eventually, I might have to add a little nail for support, as I did for my river troll. For the jabberwocky, I wanted to achieve a "weird" look with raspberry and pink colors while highlighting the teeth and claws with coral white.

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Batch 5: the heavies, a silver dragon, a gold dragon and a brass dragon. I would like to count them as 28mm vehicles for 20 points each. Note that, because dragons are known to cause devastation, I created bases with scorched earth and burned tree trunks.  It also helps emphasize the dragons themselves since there is nothing else to look at. No, I haven't become lazy with my bases (sweating heavily). For the brass dragon, I used the "patina" recipe trialed on the gorgon. It creates the effect that the dragon seems quite ancient.

 

 

 

 

 

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The completion of the 3 dragons also means that I have finished my D&D project. I want to thank again JeremyM for the great exchange of models, a few years ago. Above, you can see the whole collection of heroes, NPCs and monsters, most of them were featured on the painting challenge over the last few years.

 

Before I sign off, I just want to showcase a model from the collection that is special to me because it was a retirement gift from the bargaining team of which I was part. We were negotiating a new contract for our colleagues but my retirement day came before we could reach a final agreement with the administration of the university. My team knew that painting miniatures was my hobby and that I was a D&D player, so they bought me a "Nightwalker" from Wizkids. On the box, over the name of the miniature, they put a sticker stating: "Human Resources" (because we were negotiating with HR for the new contract). Ha ha! Very funny! Anyway, I wanted to paint this huge demon in a unique way, as if it was from a "negative" universe. The painting scheme looks weird and if you look at the base, it seems dirty, but a "negative" image reveals the expected normal colors and shading for the demon and the base. Just another fun way for me to spend my retirement... 

 

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Points claimed: 

Batch 1:  4x 28mm foot @ 5 points = 20 points

Batch 2:  2x 28mm foot @ 5 points + 2x 54mm foot @ 10 points = 30 points

Batch 3:  4x 54mm foot @ 10 points = 40 points

Batch 4:  4x 54mm foot @ 10 points = 40 points

Batch 5:  3x 28mm vehicle @ 20 points = 60 points

TOTAL: 190 points

 

Thanks for reading!

 

 Wow Sylvain, you must have most of the whole Monsters Manual by now.  What a fantastic collection of DnD foes.  Love those dragons, excellent work on the metallic tones.  I also love hoe batch one appears to be taking some demented aerobics class "give me 300 reps".  I also love the HR figures, although I've found that HR can sometimes be tamed and become an ally if you approach them properly.  I in a generous mood so I've round you up to an even 200.