From MikeW: 23* x 28mm Norman Foot Soldiers (113 Points)

Well the last few days has seen a stutter in my painted output, with work commitments getting in the way and time taken over the weekend with family commitments. The former are frustrating but it pays my wages, the later are much more welcome and fun to be involved with!

Conquest plastic Normans, built and
undercoated with white matt primer.

So knowing that I was going to get fragmented time to concentrate on anything, I dug out half a box of Conquest Games Norman Infantry, totalling 23 figures, including a casualty figure. Like so many wargamers I have a number of armies that I like to keep adding to – The Normans being one that I want to get to a size that I can run a linked series of 1066 Campaign Games at some stage.

Five mail clad Normans

Once I had built these little guys, I started basing them on 2 pence pieces as normal but soon found that I’d run out of loose change in my pocket and in the ‘piggy bank’ in the kitchen! Luckily is sorting through the drawers that contain my lead mountain a few weeks ago,  I had stumbled upon a pack of MDF round bases, sized the same as a 2 pence piece, so I pressed these into service. Usually I prefer the weight of a metal 2 pence piece as a base to a plastic figure, seems to add gravitas etc. But in this case I through caution to the wind and put plastic on MDF!

Four Normans in Leather Armour

I also took a short cut with the undercoating by venturing outside, between rain showers, to spray paint the figures with white undercoat, I use a cheap matte white spray sold by a leading Car Repair & Spares shop here in the UK! This dried very quickly and I was able to start painting a variety of muted and some not-so-muted colours for clothing on these figures. Some had leather coats, which I did in a rich tan colour and some had full mail coats for which I used my favourite colour Vallijho’s ‘Oily Steel’. This was also used on all steel parts on these figures – such as helmets, swords and spear tips.

Five unarmoured Normans, including as standard bearer

Once main colours were blocked in , I painted the spear shafts, all leather work – including shoes, belts and shield backings, before add in in flesh to complete the figures. I say complete but really mean – before going over each figure and carefully fixing my painting mistakes to complete them!

Five more unarmoured Normans

I used Army Painter Dark Tone on the figures to give definition and shading and then added decal shield patterns to each before I applied a matte varnish to each figure to protect and seal the wash and shield patterns.

Final four unarmoured Normans, including the casualty figure

Bases were done in my usual manner with sand and electrostatic grass, then adding a few tufts to taste. Finally I painted the edge of each base black – which is my preference.

Hopefully I now have a week where I can plough into a couple of large 28-figure ‘Floppy Hatted’ regiments, one Spanish – using the new North Star 1672 Spanish Range and the other an Imperial (Holy Roman Empire / Austrian) German Regiment…

So I seem to remember that casualty figures count as ½ Points, as you only need to paint half the figure – assuming that they are lying down. So I have counted the Norman casualty as 2 Points, instead of 2.5 – I’m sure no one can be bothered with 0.5 of a point complicating everything. As a result my points calculation is, as below.

POINTS

22 x 28mm Foot Figures @ 5 Points ea = 110 Points

1 x 28mm Casualty Figure @ 2.5points = 2 Points
TOTAL  110+2 = 112 points

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Great work on this stack of plastic Norman foot soldiers Mike. "Conquest Games" is another "new to me" sort of discovery, one of the things I enjoy so much about the AHPC.  I will now make sure to check out yet another manufacturer online later today :)

And you've done fine work here - the description of your process implies a relatively efficient, even speedy approach, but there is still a lot of thought and work to ensure variety in some elements and uniformity in others. And don't you love running out of bases? My hobby OCD compels me to have any figures in a given collection based on the same kinds of bases...knowing that some are metal and some MDF? How do you handle it??? :)

For points, I shall decree an extra point for the success of priming plastic figures between rain storms - 123 points it is! Does that seem silly? Well, that's what you get with Minions. We look forward to some 1672 Spanish!

GregB