Sudanese and a new project: The Great Northern War

I finished a combined bow and spear unit of Old Glory Sudanese for the El Cid project- I am close to finishing the Almoravids and just need to finish off a few units of Christians.

And on a trip to Banff last week I stopped in at the Compustore in Red Deer where Will was having a big 1/72 sale. So I bought his entire Zvezda Great Northern War range to start a new project for Maurice. I'm starting with Swedes, here are the first batch of figs which I think came out very nicely. Mark wants to use 40mm frontages, which in my opinion will work better with 6 figs per base, double ranked. I based these first few figs 4 and 6 to a 40mm square- what do you think? Remember that a unit will be made of 4 bases (either 16 or 24 figs)?

Mercenary caballeros and jinetes

This week I repainted a bunch of 28mm mounted figs that I picked up in the MayDay silent auction. There are a mix of caballeros and jinetes in here that will be good for mercenaries for my Ed Cid game I hope to run in the autumn. I think there is a mixture of Gripping Beast and maybe a couple of Old Glory in here I think? Some of them I stripped and some I just retouched or added a shield transfer.

HOTT army, light dragoons and a Congreve rocket battery

The last couple of weeks have been busy with work-related travel to Vancouver, the UK and now I have to go to Ottawa tomorrow, but I managed to finish my 28mm HOTT army "The Warband of the Winter Witch" which also features a lovely Reaper Frost Giant:

Plus a battery of Hat 1/72 Congreve rockets for Lasalle:

And Italeri British light dragoons, also 1/72:

1/72 Napoleonics and Hott

Over the last 2 weeks I finished these first elements of my Hott (Hordes of the Things) army for the Fall EDBAG campaign. The theme is the "Warband of the Winter Witch" inspired partly by Narnia and partly a function of what I had kicking around in my bits boxes. There is obviously a winter theme here, my first time basing with snow. I thought it turned out okay. The General is a Kislev Ice Queen mounted on a High Elf White Lion, she will be a Magician - General element. Also on the table here are two warbands (Crusader Berzerkers and Thralls from their Viking range) and two shooters (Crusader Bondi with bow, also from their Viking range). The other half of the army is primed and waiting for my next 28mm whim.

I also dug back into my 1/72 Napoleonics after playing a game of GW-Waterloo (meh- some nice ideas and a beautiful book, but a few glaring play problems that obviously didn't get shaken out with sufficient playtesting. Two that come to mind: cavalry cannot counter-charge enemy cavalry, so my French dragoons were best able to take a charge from lancers by standing and firing their musketoons. Huh? Also, the ground scale is fucked. Musket range is 18" but infantry only move 4" per turn. Do the math, it means we catch a lot of musketballs before closing...I digress...) So I am now inspired to play some Lasalle, I am working on a few units needed to run the La Haye Sainte scenario from the book. Here I have some nice but too-spiffy looking French Legere infantry (Zvezda)
 

And the Tiger tanks of the Napoleonic Wars, Cuirassiers! These guys are by Strelets and I really like them. Strelets look like poo on the sprue but paint up brilliantly with lots of character and excellent oversized details.. a lot like metals.

 

I still have some British dragoons and rocket troops to finish, then we are ready to go.

More Old Glory North Africans for El Cid

10 North African cavalry done this week, these are Old Glory from their crusades range. I like them a lot, lots of character as you expect from OG, and they were very clean casts. A delight to paint! Pennants from LBM.

Muslim reinforcements

A combined unit of 10 spearmen and 10 archers, figures are from Old Glory crusades range, flag is by LBM. The Old Glory crusades range is excellent, I like these guys.

Naked Greeks and Muslims

I added some more hoplites to the growing Greek-Persian Wars project, these are Hat 1/72 from the Theban army box and I intend to use them to represent Persian-allied Greeks of Ionia or Boetia. They are okay I guess, a bit flat in terms of sculpting, but the shield transfers help them out and hide their naughty bits.

I also picked off a few more Muslims for the El Cid project, these are 28mm Gripping Beast (I think) that I picked up in the MayDay auction. I stripped them and painted them as North African invaders, the banners are from LBM Studios and I think really help make the unit pop. They are pricey but really worth it.