Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (Rust Monster face reveal)

[Hobgoblin]

I've been confined to the spare room with Covid since Sunday: my second bout in six months, which feels a touch unfair, although this time around it wasn't even as bad as a mild cold - just a touch of the shivers on the first couple of days despite the quickest, thickest and darkest line I've ever seen on an LFT.

That has meant no painting whatsoever, but has afforded access to sprues, glues and a window. So, when work has allowed (and it hasn't allowed much), I've been putting together any odds and ends I can find that will allow us to use more of our Saga battle boards.

Here's what I've managed so far. I've just tested negative again, so, subject to a confirming test, will descend into the land of the living tomorrow and start to slap some paint on this lot. I ran out of cavalry bases, but some more should be on their way. I reckon there's enough here to get the Norman and Carolingian boards into play; there should be enough for two lots of mounted hearthguard and a unit of warriors (or two more hearthguard), plus two points of foot hearthguard (adding an already painted figure or two) and a unit of javelin-armed levies.

Cavalry, or rather its absence, has always been the Achilles' heel of our skirmish games; we just don't have very much of it barring some wolfriders and a few cold ones. These fellows should go some way to addressing that, and I succumbed to the temptation of the Fireforge cataphracts after reading the rules for klibanaphoroi in Saga. It occurs to me that I might add a (reasonably) historical Byzantine force to our options at low cost; I have plenty of Victrix vikings to serve as Varangians, and eight klibanaphoroi are 3 points and so half an army. So adding a Hardrada stand-in would be all I'd  need to field a six-point side.

[Blackwolf]

Looks very good 
Liking the books too,William Dalrymple is a fave

[Grumpy Gnome]

Sorry to hear about the Covid mate.

I regret not backing the Fireforge Byzantine cavalry Kickstarter. Your plans seem sound.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, guys! Out and about in the sunshine now after a second negative; Covid was mild for me first time around, but this time, it really was less of an inconvenience than a cold (internal isolation aside!). In normal times, I'd have thought "Am I coming down with something? No - shrugged it off"). At least it's been a productive spell on the min-assembly and reading fronts!

Blackwolf - I had a moment of "where have all the other Dalrymples gone!" after your comment, until I realised I'd grouped the rest under 'travel' rather than history downstairs!

Grumpy Gnome - cheers! Yes, the koursores look tasty as well. Cataphracts appeal to me as being the easiest cavalry to paint! I realised that I haven't finished painting a single horse in the seven years since my return to gaming! Time to put that right - and I think copious amounts of barding should help here!

I also managed to put together a few Wargames Atlantic goblins during my internal exile. They're great figures - but what a struggle with the arms! The few I've managed so far required lots of socket-digging and joint slicing, and they're still going to require green stuff to make them presentable.

[Knight-Captain Tyr]

Lovely stuff - great paintwork on those Hobgoblins especially.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

Here are some tiny adventurers for my 25mm RPG project. I'd been planning it mainly as a 1/72 thing with old 25mm figures dropped in when required, but I find that 25mm is actually faster to paint satisfactorily than 1/72. So, while I'll be using plenty of 1/72 monsters, most of the humans will be 25mm - from Ral Partha, RAFM and Grenadier for the most part.

Here, the male fighter is from RAFM's sadly out-of-production Wanderers and Warriors range, as is the half-orc, who sports the wonderful catalogue name of Petimerd.

The female fighter is Ral Partha and is so petite that she fits in quite well with 1/72 figures.

[Diablo Jon]

Those are great lovely oldschool stuff.

 RAFM was the one oldschool company you didn't really see in my part of UK. In my youth Citadel, Grenadier, minifigs, Essex and Ral Partha were all readily available from various local hobby shops but I was never really exposed to RAFM. So it's always interesting seeing their stuff.

[Hobgoblin]

Cheers!

Some of the RAFM stuff was really excellent (both reptiliads ranges, for example, which are as good as fantasy miniatures get, I think). Some was less technically superb but really characterful - especially the faces!

I presume that the Wanderers and Warriors range was retired because of the smaller scale (later RAFM stuff is 28mm). It's a real shame - especially as the corresponding Orcs and historicals have been kept in production.

[DivisMal]

Oh. Those are really nice and really old school. I remember owning some old Ral Partha stuff that was dwarfed by my shiny new GW back in the 90s.

Nice that they fit your 1/72 collection. And bloody good painting!

[Vladimir Raukov]

Those are great lovely oldschool stuff.

 RAFM was the one oldschool company you didn't really see in my part of UK. In my youth Citadel, Grenadier, minifigs, Essex and Ral Partha were all readily available from various local hobby shops but I was never really exposed to RAFM. So it's always interesting seeing their stuff.

In my youth, we had Citadel or...Citadel, so it's great to see stuff like this, especially so well painted!

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, chaps! I may even squeeze a few very early Citadel fighters into this project; I have one or two that are more like 25mm than 28mm.

Here's the start of an experiment with grisaile, or greyscale. I watched some of Marco Frisoni's videos on the technique; I've used contrast paints over black undercoat with grey and white dry brushing a lot, but I thought it might be worth trying a slightly more sophisticated approach and painting up the grey and white in successive layers. Rather than try it with a cutting-edge plastic model, I thought I'd try an old Nick Lund hobgoblin. I'm using these hobgoblins as ogres in 25mm and 1/72, so there's no problem in them looking quite individual in terms of colour scheme (in case this one goes horribly wrong!).

Here's the lunchtime effort on the pre-shading; I'll get some colours on him after work:

[Pattus Magnus]

I’m looking forward to seeing how this works! I tried something similar 10-12 years ago using inks for the colours and got good results. The choices available for inks was a bit limited back then (I never found a flesh tone I liked), so I drifted on to other techniques. The choices now seem a bit wider!

[DivisMal]

Yes, indeed, looking forward to seeing the results here, too!
I’ve been tinkering with a similar approach some years ago. I saw it first done by Delaney King.

The results were quite good for my standards, but I didn’t have contrast paints at that time and used inks, laces and washes. That required three or four layers to be effective and wasn’t really faster than traditional highlighting.

Here are the results, done on the Rackham orc (not the citadel ones, these are highlighted):

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=101286.0

[fred]

Interested to see how these come out.

I did wonder from the title, if you where going for mono-chrome figures.

[Hobgoblin]

Here's how he turned out after a quick colouring in!

I'll get a better photo in better light tomorrow, and I'll probably add some further highlights, but it took about 25 minutes to add the colours. He's got a kind of Ian Miller-ish look, I think (hope!).