Last Epic Salamanders units

Haven't gotten much painting done after returning home, but I did manage to get all the stuff that I painted at the cottage based up and ready for gaming!

So I present the final installation of my Epic Salamanders project (at least until I end up buying more stuff). Some support units this time to round up the core force of tactical marines and terminators. Definitely nothing that would work in a tournament, but rather a more classic fluffy force of a reinforced company going into battle. The razorbacks and infantry models are old plastic creations while the rest are newer metal ones. It's a shame GW stopped doing these as the sculpting quality on the newest models really is quite amazing for the scale.

First up the Devastator squads with their Razorback support vehicles and two Dreadnoughts. These should provide a decent firebase to anchor the line. Not exactly accurate fluff wise as there are no heavy flamers or meltas present, but still it's hard to tell at this scale anyways :)

A trio of Vindicators to blast holes through fortifications and provide fire support for the assault. I actually need one more to field them as an individual unit instead of attaching single tanks to other formations. So if somebody reading this has spares I'd be more than happy to reduce your lead pile.

Then a unit of Predator tanks. Two each of the Destructor and the Annihilator variant. I skipped the flame details on these as I didn't really feel they had any suitable surface for them. And a black stripe seemed to make them pop much better.

And finally a unit of assault marines. Not sure if they'll ever get any use as they aren't really in the Salamanders normal combat doctrine, but I had the minis so they deserved to get some paint on them as well.

With these out of the way I'll sign off for a few weeks as I'll be visiting France for a friends wedding and for seeing the sights. After that it's off to the cottage again and starting to prepare for the biggest wargaming event in Finland, Ropecon. So thanks for reading and have a good holiday everyone! I'll be back sometime in the end of the month.

Frostgrave reinforcements and treasure tokens

I'm finally back from our summer cottage and normal business will resume at least for a short while until we are leaving for France next week. A French friend will be getting married, but being there I figured a visit to Les Invalides and other historical sites will be in order as well.

Some quick additions to my Frostgrave forces. These were painted before leaving for our summer cottage, but I didn't get around to basing them then. As I'm playing an Enchanter I needed a large construct as well and Heresy Miniatures provided an excellent mini for that. I also painted up another Empire Greatsword, this time a fully armored one to act as a Paladin in game. Also added a Landsknecht Crossbowman to provide even more ranged power. I think it's from Redoubt, but not 100% sure as it's one of the minis I bought as a larger batch. One of the worst sculpts I've ever painted, but as I didn't really have any other suitable Crossbowmen he had to suffice until I put an order in at Foundry or some other suitable manufacturer.

And finally some treasure tokens to be used in game. Fast and dirty with just a basecoat and a wash on most of them. These are all the official treasure tokens that Northstar makes as I didn't want to start scratch building my own. And they are actually rather nice looking so I didn't deem the extra effort needed for unique ones wasn't justified.

As the weather was quite favorable while at our cottage, I didn't get too much painting done. Instead time was spent on the close by rapids fishing and just fooling around outside with the little war hound. Luckily, at least miniatures wise, there was a bit of rain on a couple of days and I was forced to stay indoors and paint. Finally got the last of my Epic Salamanders finished and got started on a Gargant Big Mob. I'm hoping to get at least some of the Gargants and Stompas finished before leaving for France. But we'll see.

Frostgrave monsters

After finishing my warband for Frostgrave I needed some random monsters to populate the tables. I bought quite a few random minis at Salute with this in mind and dug into my archives for old random purchases to paint up.

As Frostgrave usually only has a few monsters on table at a time and I was under some time constraints to get them finished for our game day these were mostly speed painted with drybrushing and washes. Luckily skeletons and furry creatures are easy to get decent looking that way.

The Skeletons are from Wargames Foundry from the Casting Room Miniatures range and present the two Skeleton characters pack. Lovely sculpts with some very imaginative poses. Unfortunately they are very fragile with only a millimeter thick spine and due to that one of the pack is missing as he snapped and I couldn't get it fixed yet.

The Bears are from Foundry as well and the succubi an older Reaper sculpt that I got as a freebie from Caliver books for buying some Frostgrave items from them.

And the final four are some of the more random miniatres that I had in my collections. These are Tom Meier's sculpts from his own company Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures. He has a line of miniatures sculpted from the stories told by his young daughter. The missus wanted some of the ballerinas riding unicorns and carrying bombs so I figured I'd order some minis as well. 3 Bushwoolies and a flying sabre-toothed mole completed my order and finally after a few years in the cupboard I actually got them painted. Considering that I prepped them for the 2014 edition of Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge it's a bit embarrassing how long it took to get them painted. Especially as they only took a short time to get them all painted.

That's the first half of my monsters. I still have quite a few Heresy Miniatures and Reaper Bones left that have now been based and basecoated. Haven't managed to do any painting in the last two weeks though so not much progress after that. I'm leaving of for our summer cottage in the weekend and a hobby bag has been packed. We'll see what I find the motivation to paint there. Epic 40k, Flames of War, Napoleonics and Frostgrave stuff is all packed up. I'm just going to paint what ever strikes my fancy when I'm there, so it remains to be seen what's ready next :)

Frostgrave Warband

My theme for May was definitely Frostgrave. A campaign started at the club in the beginning of the month and I wanted to do a warband with completely new figures and not dig into older Mordheim stuff etc. that I have stashed away. The first painting efforts went into finishing my Wizard and his companions, before venturing into NPC monsters etc.

Coming up with a good theme for the posse was a bit tricky at first. I'm more a fan of Low Fantasy settings and wanted something semi historical looking. I was thinking about England or France around the 100 Year War period as a suitable setting, but in the end wanted to go for something much more colourful. Me being an engineer I figured the perfect wizard character would be more akin to an inventor or engineer and what better era for that than Renaissance era Italy. I'd expect the devices built by a renaissance genius would look like magic to the uneducated masses. And with the era also being the prime time for Landsknechts and Condottieri it would offer plenty of opportunities for colourful figures.

So I present to you the enchanter Ernesto di Armati and his technology hunting band of mercenaries. The miniatures really are quite a mix from different manufacturers from different eras. There's Games Workshop stuff from early 90s through to Games Day specials, Lead Adventure, Northstar a Crisis 2011 mini and even one I have no idea where it's from. It took some digging up to gather all the minis I wanted and I'm still missing a few that I originally wished to have, but all in all I'm pretty happy with the little warband.

The group is lead by Ernesto di Armati a famed Milanese inventor especially known for his Constructs that have been used to great success by the Sforza family against Milans enemies. His young apprentice Marco Forlani has been serving faithfully eventhough he has developed an unhealthy interest in fashion and dresses far too flamboyantly to Ernesto's taste. Offering muscle and protection are a trio of Landsknechts who have also been tasked with carrying Ernesto's personal flag showing his gear and screw motif.

Ernesto himself is the 2011 Crisis miniature depicting Gerardus Mercator, known for his maps. As a tribute to the man I decided to also include the globe in Ernesto's hand. I got the mini through a very generous individual on the Lead Adventure forum. Kudos to him! Marco Forlani is Games Workshops Marco Colombo that I managed to buy through the Oldhammer trading page on Facebook. The Landsknechts are Empire Greatswords from both the older early 90s and the 00s. Those I managed to pick up from a fellow Finnish blogger, who's blog Dawn of the Lead is definitely worth a read, along with plenty of other older 15th century minis.

The Captain of my warband is the crossbow wielding Wilhelm Schwartz who is pictured alongside the two thieves, who'd rather be referred to as acquisition specialists. All are from Lead Adventure, with the captain represented by their Wilhelm Tell miniature and the two thieves are looting Landsknechts. All amazing sculpts that really were a joy to paint!

And finally the odd additions to the bunch with an archer, from some unknown manufacturer. He was bought with the older Empire models, but I'm not really sure which mini it is originally. The constructs are there for Ernesto to manufacture between games. They are from Northstars Frostgrave line.

This group really was a nice project to bring back my painting appetite, but they did prove very time consuming to paint. I normally batch paint large similar groups, so 11 minis that are all more or less individuals did take quite a while to finish up and I only managed to get them done late in the evening prior to our first game day.

Still there's a lot more to come as I bought quite a few Oldhammer minis with the 4 painted here, and I've already gotten some of them nearly done alongside multiple monsters. Funny enough going into a new game that supposedly only needed a small amount of painted minis I actually ended up having about 50 on the painting line with animals, skeletons, zombies and the like ready to attack unwary explorers.