From Mike W: More 28mm 17th Century Saxons, Old School Fantasy and more (130 Points)

One of the cool things about this challenge is that it has encouraged me to delve deep into the backlog of figures, vehicles and other stuff that make up my own 'Lead Mountain'. On inspection - I'd probably liken it to the 9 levels of Dante's Inferno !   Not so much a Lead Mountain but a pit of lead and plastic with a smattering of resin and some MDF floaters on top!

Raw, constructed but unpainted figures

Anyway, somewhere down at level 7 (That of Mindless Violence) I found some very old Games Workshop multi-pose Goblins. If memory serves me well these were the latest offering for Warhammer back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In my opinion the best Goblin figures that came out of Games Workshop - with so many options to model and add character to the figures...

So here are a group of 10 such Greenskins, rescued form the pit! Along side these were a unit of 30 odd nearly finished Goblins - these won't feature here - as they only needed basing and a wash of ink to finish. A long ago abandoned project, that I'll now finally complete,thanks to the challenge. I also found dozens of unpainted Night Goblins and an unpainted Wolf Rider and a Forest Goblin Spider Rider unit  - these may feature in next week's post!

So these figures were painted in pretty much my usual way, I wanted to paint these figures to match the existing unit I'd just rediscovered, the rest of  the unit is basically in black, grey and various brown shades. So I undercoated white but the painted all areas that would have armour, black, so that steel metallic paint could be dry-brushed on.

First Group of 5 Figures

Skin was painted a medium green and then when all the other colours blocked in I gave the skin a green wash to add highlights and the rest of the figure a Nun Oil wash to make them look suitably grubby, as I'd imagine a Goblin to be!

I like to paint the detail in the mouth area of my Games Workshop Greenskins, they usually have large open mouths, bristling with teeth - so deep red wash in the mouth and dry-brush the teeth white. I know Goblin dentistry isn't likely to be good enough to guarantee white teeth, but from an artistic point of view it helps attract the eye!

Second Group of 5 Figures

Shields were painted separately and added with superglue after the basic painting job completed.

Figures based as normal with sand and electrostatic grass....

Looks like other submissions have scored GW Goblins as 28mm figures, so here goes...

Calculations: 10 x 28mm foot figure @ 5 Points ea = 50 Points

Raw Figure

Finished Figure - front

Next up is a 28mm plastic Viking, the body is an old Wargames Factory item (now available from Warlord Games) the arms and shield from a Gripping Beast figure. All constructed and glue to a UK 2 pence piece for my Saga Viking Army.

Finished Figure - back

Not much to add on the panting front - all done as per usual and described in previous posts.

Calculations: 1 x 28mm foot figures @ 5 Points ea = 5 Points

12 figures Saxon Pike and Command Block

To avoid delays I split my 28mm Saxon Infantry regiment into 2 groups. First the Pike block and
command stand and second the musketeers. Well this worked well and I got the first group finished and was able to do quite some work on the more complex musketeer group.

The pike block is made up of 8 figures, whilst the command stand is of 4 figures. All except the drummer boy are from the North Star 1672 range, the drummer is from the Warfare Miniatures range, which are slightly smaller that the 1672 figures when placed next to each other. This worked well as I wanted to give the impression of a smaller, scrawny youth banging the drum for this regiment.

Robel's regiment had dark green facings and pewter buttons in 1700, so I have back dated this to the Siege of Austria period. As previously noted this is a liberty but there is very little documentation of what was actually worn in this period, when uniforms were still only just becoming established. It is possible the Saxons actually wore grey coats at this time but converted over to red coats by 1700.

And Again from the Right!

However, I again opted for Saxon Red for the coats and I also decided to have the weapon shafts painted green for this regiment as well, indicating that they had just come out of garrison duty to take to the field. After the first engagements,weapon shafts would get broken and replaced with shafts hewn from locally source trees by carpenters following the camp.

These guys have opted to discard their armour, maybe on the long march from Saxony to Vienna,again this was a transitional period where armour was being phased out,along with the whole concept of the pikeman as bayonets were stating to be introduced.

Once again the figures painted and based as has previously been described and the flags are from Warfare Miniatures. Hopefully the Musketeers will be ready to show and tell next week.

Front on view

Calculations: 12 x 28mm foot figure @ 5 Points ea = 60 Points

Unpainted figures,fixed to 2 Pence pieces!

Next item on the workbench this week were three Games Workshop plastic Adventurers,I recently completed another figure from this boxed set - a Necromancer type figure that I painted to match an Egyptian Undead Army I once started to collect but never finished.

these three figures represent what I assume is a Dwarf Trollslayer(??) some kind of Barbarian Shamen and a more classical Wizzard.

Troll Slayer, from front

and the rear view

The trollslayer is mostly fresh and hair, I gave him a tanned look with flesh ink for shading. Blonde to Yellow hair and that was about it.

Thinking of adding an intricate patterned shield - but not found anything suitable yet, I'll need to find the right part form somewhere

Rear view of animal skin cloak

Barbarian Shamen

The Barbarian is all animal furs (Bear) plus earthy materials and rawhide belts and straps, dark hair and bone staff head. I dry-brushed the bear fur lightly with white paint and then applied several brown washes to tone and blend together. I used buff colour to do he underside of the fur - where on show as well as all the rawhide straps etc.

I used Bone coloured paint - well for the bones! and then washed with sepia ink and dry brushed white.

Wizzard, looks better
from the front...

... than from the back!

Finally the wizzard has a dark blue robe with red, orange and yellow flame edging and this guy is be old with seriously grey hair.

In doing the challenge these last few weeks and having to take photos of the figures has definitely improved my photography skills. As these skills have improved I am noticing more and more defects in my painting of figures,as the evidence gets clearer and clearer in the photos!

Another driver to do better in the future and get too self satisfied with my work....

Calculations: 3 x 28mm foot figure @ 5 Points ea = 15 Points

TOTALS = 50 + 5 +60 + 15 = 130 points

Another wonderfully varied entry, Mike! It is a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, as I had those plastic GW wizards with 3rd edition Talisman in the mid 90s, when I was starting to paint. The less said, the better! I like the goblins- one can never have too many- and I'm taken by the rich green pike shafts on your Saxons.

Barks