Ever since watching Army of Darkness as a kid I wanted to have my very own undead army. I decided to take a stab at it and here are the first batch of figures.
They are 15mm figures from Splintered Light and Miriliton. 3 poses from each manufacturer. They mix perfectly. I've based them up as if ancients, four figures per element, on a 20x40 mm base from Renedra, with flexible sheet steel from Litko on the bottom.
They are just the start of the army that I have no idea when I'll finish. I've got all kinds of melee and other baddies to go with them along with a whole mass of individually based guys for casualties, skirmishing, or running RPG's. I picked these guys first because they had the least amount of gear to paint.
I mostly just used drybrushing to do them. I used the Reaper Master Series Ivory Bone Triad for the bones.
I'm sort of "meh" on them. I don't love how they turned out, but en masse I like them well enough and they are done. If I did it again I think I would based 6 archers on a 40x40mm base in a more loose formation. Thinking of that, I made up some 40x40mm bases with sheet magnet to help move them around and make them easier to pick up.
There you have it, finally out of the way, and off my painting table. My very own groovy undead archers😉.
I started working on some Anglo-Saxons for Saga and here is my first unit (1 point) of warriors painted up and ready for battle. All are Patton sculpts, seven from Gripping Beast's Viking Age range. A mix of Saxons, Danes, and Vikings I believe. The guy with braids is a Saxon Miniature now owned by Warlord.
The freemen of Wessex
These guys are Ceorls or freemen. I've painted them up to be drab for the most part. I find that people paint Viking Age stuff way too colorful. When I get to the Hearthguard and Warlord I'll be adding more colors to represent rarer and more expensive cloth. The shields are hand painted. I hoped that they would make the force look unified. I plan to decorate the bases later when I have more units done.
The photos are all with my iphone6 with typical editing for color and light corrections on the same screen, highlights mainly. I just did a bunch of remodeling in my game room so I hope to get my lightbox and Canon back in action in the near future.
I'm pretty happy with them. I learned A LOT painting them. I haven't painted much 28mm so they were a real challenge for me. There were three things that were very useful for me when painting them.
First a Color Wheel.
They are readily available and inexpensive on Amazon or a local craft store such as Michael's in the US. I did not use the mixing side much as most of the modern paint ranges have a pretty good selection of colors to make triads and or layers. I use Vallejo mainly along with a few Reaper Master Series paints and the Games Workshop washes. I used the other side to select colors so I could achieve schemes that were complementary and pleasing to the eye. A $5 tool most everyone should have in their kit.
Thank you! Awesome resource. I found that some of the colors were maybe off a bit, but it was a great place to start. I struggled with a soft yellow. I'll be working on that again in a future unit.
Great resource. Some of the paint schemes are insane the number of layers used. I'll admit I skipped some layers. Really helpful on a lot of things. If you want to go beyond tabletop standard I think this will help. I hope I achieved something a bit nicer than tabletop.
Here's a little video I did of them for fun.
It will be a while before I'm ready for Saga but in the meantime I hope to use them on the tabletop playing Blood Eagle.
Thanks for peeking in. Be sure to leave a comment if you liked them or hated them. All criticisms are welcome.
15mm Cavemen and dogs from Khurasan, 15mm Cave Bear and Dire Wolves from Splintered Light, all painted by yours truly. I'll be working out a game soon. Enjoy!
It's going to be bloody.
Picture with the Canon, meh.
Picture with the iPhone and flash on. You be the judge.
I like the youths better than the men. I like the dynamic poses.
Bob Olley sculpts, cool.
Olley again.
Who is going to eat today?
Everything painted real nice for me. The detail and castings are all good. Played around with reverse drybrushing (light to dark) and it seemed to work alright for me.
I'm convinced that if I ever want better photos with the Canon i'll need a new lens with a larger aperture. I can use the lightbox and get better results but I would rather get photos on the game table and have the lightbox packed away or sell it off for that matter. Honestly if the iPhone ever had an aperture priority setting I think the Canon would almost never see action for miniature photography. With my current glass the only thing it has going above the iPhone is depth of field were everything is in focus at all depths in the picture. This group photo (using iPhone) almost achieves it but the women in front are a bit fuzzy.
Hope you enjoyed. Not sure whats next. I have some WWII bits i'd like to finish up, a mess of Stuarts, and some pointy headed wizards i'd like to give a go at. There is also masses of Saga stuff in 28mm I want to do...
Part Two of my mini diversion using Lego mini-figures.
My imagining of a Separatist Droid Battalion.
Droid Battalion with various Leaders and support units.
Droid Commander and his 2 security droid bodyguards.
The Battalion all equipped with short blasters. I imagine Battle Droids as very binary working in pairs to be most efficent. A battalion includes 2 companies of 2 platoons where each platoon has 2 squads each with 2 teams. 128 Battle Droids per battalion.
Each Droid squad is made up of 2 teams of 8 droids with a leader included (show bottom left).
Super Battle Droids at a supporting ratio of 1:8 vs battle droids. 8 of 16 all with blaster arm. Why Lego made the left arm the blaster is unknown. The movies and shows all have them blasting with the right arm.
Grievous, droid-like badness. I added a cape to him.
A pair of droid scouts. I made a sturdier base for them.
Droid Scouts back.
Dwarf Spider Droid 1 of 2.
Destroyers or Droideka 4 of 8. 1:16 ratio to Droids.
Rocket Droid Scout teams.
Rocket Droid squad with leader included.
Jengo Fett. I imagine him as having done some dirty work on the outer rim for Dooku between Episode I and II.
Droideka, 4 of 8. I made the Naboo variant with rear armor plates.
Super Battle Droids. 8 of 16.
Super Battle Droids, 2 per team.
Dwarf Spider Droid 2 of 2. I copied this second one, ordering up all the needed parts.
A couple of dastardly conspirators. Sith Count Dooku and dupe Nute Gunray of the Trade Federation.
Homing Spider Droid. Probably the largest type model I would use in a game. Anything bigger would be for a scenario.
Droid Battalion. I need another, NO!
WIP Hills
I do have some other support droid stuff that didn't fit in nicely that I may use in the future. The Rebels will be next. I'm excited about them because I can use them has Separatists, Rebellion, or The Resistance. After that I'll finish with classic movies and the Galactic Empire. I'm not planning on doing The First Order but we'll see how I feel about it as the next movies release.
Not so much a mini distraction, but a minifigure one!
I've been having a lot of fun with the kids and all things Lego. I decided to collect some armies to play with. No painting, no fuss, loving this.
Here's mostly a photo dump. I'll have more to share in the future.
Clone Trooper Platoon
Lieutenant Flux and Sergeant Rip enter the field with a couple of ubiquitous Jedi.
Yellow Squad. 1st of 3 squads.
Typical Squad Sergeant.
Red Squad 2nd of 3. Each squad is made of up 2 fire teams of 5 clones and a Sergeant. I've indicated the teams as black and brown for each squad.
Typical Fire Team. Team leader with a short blaster, 2 clones with blaster rifles, a clone with a repeating blaster, and a clone with a portable missile launcher.
Typical Fire Team back. Team member with backpack carries fuel for the repeating blaster. Portable missile launcher clone is also equipped with a long range radio antennea and spare short blaster.
Blue squad 3rd of 3, typical.
Heavy Repeating Blaster Team; support from the weapons platoon.
Heavy Repeating Blaster team back. Spare small blaster for the gunner.
Heavy Portable Missile Launcher Team from the weapons platoon.
Heavy Portable Missile Launcher Team back. Extra missiles carried by clone team member.
