Knights of The Celestial Tower for Dragon Rampant: Painted Lancers

 Well, I finally got some paint onto the three converted GW Stormcast Palladors on their resized Mousillon Miniatures 3D printed horses. 

What a task! These were SO tough to paint! The sculpted detail on the horses is brilliant but very tricky to paint well. I'd already decided I wasn't going to use Army Painter Dip on these models and was going with a more typical GW-style layers and ink washes approach, something I haven't done in absolutely years.

Well, it was worth it, I think. I'm generally pretty pleased with how these have turned out. My helmet conversions aren't as neat as I wanted - I had real trouble making the removal of the Chaos horns neat enough. But they'll do. I'm pleased with the armour overall. I followed some online tutorials to get some ideas about how to do it and I think I got the 'shining steel' effect I was originally after. I like the colour scheme too. 

Dragon Rampant Warband - The Knights of the Celestial Tower Kitbash Part 2

Here are the rest of the units:

The Grand Mistress of the Celestial Tower. This is the Dominion boxset Yndrasta straight out of the box. What a killer model! She is accompanied by two Seraphim Paladin bodyguards. These are Prosecutor models with spears and shields from the Vindictors. You can get spear and shield armed Prosecutors but I fell foul of an EBAY deal where the 'on sprue' thing only meant the hammer-armed models not the entire sprue! Sigh... Anyway, I kept the original helmets on these and will paint the face plate as flesh, as I figured flyers would need a good field of vision on their helmets!! Reduced Model Unit of Elite Foot with Flyer. 

The Paladin Banner Guard. These are the Knight Vexillor and Praetors from the Dominion box set with the usual hornless Chaos helmets with Pallador plumes attached. The Knight Vexillor has had the banner removed as I want to do a handpainted paper one without Sigmarite stuff on it. Reduced Model Unit Elite Foot.

Celestial Spear Guardians. These are the Vindictors from the Dominion box set with hornless Chaos helmets. The leader has a Pallador plume attached. Reduced Model Unit Offensive Heavy Foot.

Knights Arcanum. These are the Annihilators from the Dominion box set with Vindictor spears and hornless Chaos helmets, plus the Knight Arcanum and Lord Imperant (plus Gryph Hound) from the Dominion box set. These are unconverted as they look excellent as they are. Reduced Model Unit Heavy Foot with Wizardling. 

The whole lot can create a 36pt war band which is standard size for me. 

Dragon Rampant Warband - The Knights of The Celestial Tower

I've been thinking for a while about a new Dragon Rampant war band, mulling over using Games workshop's Stormcast Eternal range to give me a slightly Excalibur movie 'shining steel' chivalric knights war band, albeit with more fantasy elements and I've finally set about it! 

While I love the ridiculously OTT plate armour of the Stormcasts, I HATE the helmets and the oversized hammers so it was with some trepidation that I began my quest to set this force up. First, I had to locate possible heads. I tried two options - Puppets of War Spartan heads and GW's Chaos Warrior heads (minus the horns). The former were sadly just a little too small for my tastes (although others may well have been happy with them) so Chaos it is!

Also, the Age of Sigmar 'Dominion' box set has just come out and EBAY was full of half-sets from the box set, so I bought the Stormcast bits, then scoured EBAY for other stuff to give me the other units I need. The box contains 10 Vindictor models, all of which are basically armed with spears. It also includes some Praetors armed with halberds, so that was a result. I'd already decided that all units would be single or reduced model units so I only needed 6 Vindictors, so the remaining spears were used to convert other models' weaponry, removing stupid hammers from those who had them. 

I've built the first units and here are the first two. Hopefully the others will be done later today. 

Here are the Celestial Lancers. These are Pallador knights with Vindictor spears and the sword from the Standard bearer from the Dominion box. The horses are from Matt at Mousillon Miniatures via Easy, who resized three of the faux-Bretonnian Calix Knights that he sells to fit my needs and did me a very good deal on them. Excellent 3D prints from a superb company. Matt went above and beyond on this and I recommend him wholeheartedly! The helmets have plumes from the original Pallador set. I'm really pleased with the movement in these models! They can be either Elite or Heavy Riders depending on how many points I have to play with and are a Reduced Model Unit.

Next up are the Celestial Marchwardens. These are GW Farstriders with GW Chaos Marauder heads. I left the horns on these as in my backstory for this war band (which I'll share later), these are barbarian hill-tribesmen from the wooded hill-country on the Northern borderlands who have resisted the lure of The Abyss (Chaos) and have been recruited by The Celestial Tower to guard the Northern border. They are Scouts and are also a Reduced Model Unit. 

More later once I've finished building and photographing! 

Andy MacTaggart's Bolsheviks for Back of Beyond - Getting Started...

Following on from my recent post about my British infantry for the Back of Beyond/WW1 project, my good gaming buddy Andy MacTaggart has sent me some phone pictures of the Bolsheviks he's currently working on. They just need basing and they'll be done. I really like the various colours he's used for the uniforms on these - it makes them look more rag-tag than the highly trained professional British, which is exactly right. There's also enough variation in the colours from the mass of khaki that most of my forces will have (aside from the mass of White Russian/local militia that I intend to add once my core British units are done.) These are all Copplestone figures which really are superb and are a must-buy for this period. The Bolshevik range in particular seems more complete than the others which will no doubt serve Andy well as he builds his first force. 

I'll be posting pictures for him on here as his forces grow, as he doesn't blog and this is a good way to document both sides of our new project so you can follow where we're both up to. 

Into the Back of Beyond - 1/4 Hampshire Regiment 1918

 A bit more painting to show off after a long discussion with my good buddy Andy MacTaggart over potential future projects ended up with us both diving headlong into the Back of Beyond - Central Asia at the end of WW1. 

This is a unit of Copplestone 28mm WW1 British infantry in tropical kit. Lovely models, but the molds are beginning to show signs of age, with some worrying chunky flash issues to sort out. I've painted some of these before years ago for an aborted project and they are really good to paint, and this Back of Beyond idea has really got me interested! This unit can be used with either The Men Who Would Be Kings, Setting the East Ablaze or Triumph and Tragedy - all rulesets that would work for the period (although the former will need some tweaks). 

This unit represents the 1/4th Hampshire, one company of which served with the Malleson Mission against the Bolsheviks in 1918. The rest of the force will be based on Malleson's main Anglo-Indian force and will have 3 companies of the 19th Punjabis, plus a British artillery piece and a unit of Indian cavalry. Heavy machine guns will also be on the list. I think I may step outside the remits of Malleson's original force and add an armoured car and an aircraft before diving headlong into some local allies sourced from Copplestone's Back of Beyond - some White Russian infantry, some Armenian (or whatever else 'local' might mean) militia sourced from the Bolshevik militia pack plus various White Russian infantry and maybe some Cossack cavalry painted to represent Turcomen.... An eclectic force... The only non-Copplestone models will be some Indian Lewis gunners sourced from Woodbine Designs British infantry with Indian heads (purely because Copplestone don't do any), Indian Cavalry probably from Brigade Games USA (that'll cost me, but nobody else does decent WW1 Indian cavalry) plus some Woodbine Designs Indian Infantry as their dismounted counterparts, plus an Empress Miniatures artillery piece. The vehicles - well I'm not sure yet... 

These models were painted using my usual 'dip and highlight' technique. I'm pleased with them. they look the part, I think! 

Next up, a Muslim company of the 19th Punjabis...

Shock, Horror! New Painting!!! Hollywood US Cavalry in 28mm

 Blimey...

8 months since I picked up a paintbrush! 

Lockdown and pandemic generally has been 'interesting' for me. Completely lost all interest in gaming and painting despite having no work on. Truth to tell, I have been doing a lot of music, as well as managing to meet someone (On Facebook, of course...good old social media) and start a relationship by setting up a 'support bubble' over the summer, as well as spending a lot of time with my son, so I've not been exactly idle. I just haven't been interested in painting. At all!! 

However, I decided after Christmas and when lockdown 3.0 started, to get the brushes back out. I've always been fascinated by 1950s-60s Hollywood westerns involving the US Cavalry and I love the look of them in those movies. Currently nobody does those in 28mm (although there are whispers that Empress are gonna do some in their Wild Bunch range), so I decided to have a bit of conversion fun. I bought some Galloping Major troopers and a set of Dead Man's Hand 7th Cavalry and I already had some 'proper' US Cavalry from Artisan and I love their officer figure, so added him in. I added braces and a couple of neckerchiefs with Greenstuff - this was a bitch of a job! Getting consistency in the width of the braces and getting the Greenstuff thin enough was a complete pain. I'm not 100% happy with what I did, but it'll do from 'gaming distance'. 

I also struggled with the painting. The GM figures are delightful but the detail is sculpted very thin and the faces in particular aren't well defined. This made it difficult to use my 'dip and highlight' technique effectively. 8 months without doing any painting didn't help either as I was simply very rusty. However, they haven't come out too badly - certainly good enough to put on the table, although they'll win no prizes! 

Anyway - here they are. 

I hope you like them. Next up some cactus plants and the first Apaches, as well as some horseholder stands. I'm hoping that Galloping Major will produce some mounted cavalry soon as well, so I can do some mounted versions.