Handgunners for the club's Wars of the Roses campaign

 Well, Covid has kicked our arses here at Geetarhero Towers, with the boy being on day 6 and still testing positive and me being on day 3 and feeling like utter crap - proper 'man-flu' symptoms. 

Still, thanks to a new Netflix subscription, we are binge watching Cobra-Kai and I am still being quite productive on the modelling and painting front. I've completed 6 hand gunners for Sir Bernard De Liasmith's retinue (Bidowers under the Lion Rampant rules) which, when added to the foot Men-at-Arms on the previous post gives me 8 out of the 30 points I need for my battle retinue (I still haven't finally decided what the extra 10 points are going to be for the full 40pt retinue I have to submit...

I was gonna do these in my usual dip and highlight style, but my can of dip has gone off and truth to tell I didn't wanna waste two days waiting for dip to dry, so completed the painting of these 6 chaps in quick time given that I was triple highlighting on a white undercoat, using brown ink wash to conceal any errors in the deepest recesses. The painting is certainly neat enough at table-top distance. 

Once again, these are Perry plastics. 

I've built my billmen, cavalry and one unit of archers too, so I think I'm gonna build the second unit of bow then start painting the billmen in between the sneezing and coughing fits. Thank God for the vaccine - how sick might I have been if I'd not had that??!!

Men-At-Arms For The Club Wars of the Roses Campaign

Here is the first unit for my Lion Rampant Wars of the Roses army for our Spring/Summer campaign. These are Sir Bernard De Liasmith's bodyguard of men-at-arms in full plate armour. 

I decided to keep some of the Norwich City yellow and green theme within the unit but decided to add some extra colours on some of the models - obviously Sir Bernard is happy to allow them to display their own family livery colours while they fight beneath his own banner. (I have no idea if this ever happened - I'm painting what I think is gonna look good, not necessarily what is historically perfectly accurate!) I like the effect I've achieved!

Perry models, undercoated with GW Leadbelcher spray and highlighted up. I wanted a very clean and clear silvery armour on these chaps as they are the elite of the army and I'm quite pleased how well they came out given how difficult I'm finding Perry models to paint - they are very slight and small compared to most everything else I've ever painted (My El Cid army is all Perry, but I painted that almost 15 years ago and I was a better painter then!)

Enjoy these pic and keep an eye out for more soon. I've built mounted men-at-arms, mounted light cavalry and billmen today, so I'll get undercoating tomorrow.

First Models for the Lion Rampant Wars of the Roses campaign at the club

First models painted for the upcoming Wars of the Roses campaign: The command stand - This is solely to indicate which unit my leader is in and will be superfluous to the actual number of models on the table, so utterly unnecessary, but it adds period flavour and looks cool.

So, may I introduce you to the lord of my forces - Sir Bernard De Liasmith, Earl of Matthews and Carrow, with his standard (the big one, indicating the lord's presence and position on the battlefield) and his banner (canary on a gold and green field.)

We are anticipating many defeats, an occasional shock victory and relegation at the end of the campaign!! 🤣🤣(Apologies to those who have no idea who Norwich City football club are and who don't get the references!)

Perry plastic models, painted using GW and Foundry paints, layered over a GW Leadbelcher undercoat. Banners hand drawn and hand painted.

Next up: the Men-at-Arms on foot...

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!