Napoleonic French

Lately I have been kept busy with my personal life, but have managed to get make progress on some of my projects, notably my Napoleonic French.

 I currently have a reasonably sized force, probably with more cavalry than what I need. I some how ended up with 3 boxes of Dragoons, giving me 24 of the foot sloggers which is handy, but 39 of the mounted men is a bit excessive when I have other cavalry on the field. So far I have assembled 1 box of Perry French Infantry, 1 box of Dragoons, and 1 box of Heavy Cavalry as Carabiniers. I also have assembled a few Victrix French infantry, but are far more tedious and time consuming to assemble due to being multipart, and having instructions which can be tedious to follow since most of the parts go together in certain ways. I have gone and removed all the bits of the sprues and sorted them into their 'assembly orders' to speed up the process

2 boxes of Victrix French all organised and sorted accordingly

In total I have 2 boxes of Perry French infantry one of which is assembled as is standard, the other which is in the process of being put together using some of the head variants in the box, a box of Perry hussars, the Dragoons and Carabiniers, 2 boxes of Victrix French Infantry 1807-1812 and a few Victrix metals. I would like to add some more command models, since I plan to use these for the Black Powder ruleset, and thus need Brigade commanders and a Commander in chief as the head of the army.

Infantry Colonels and Sappers

As you would expect with Perry Miniature products, the quality is superb, with all the details being crisp and accurate. The Victrix sculpts are nice but the quality of the plastic itself is a bit sub par in some areas, with bayonets being brittle, and the quality of the casts not as clean as other comparisons. However their two main French Infantry kits were some of their first products, and went through a lot of the teething issues to began with, and have since overcome the issues with their newer products. The main difference between the Perry and Victrix kits are of course the uniforms being different, Victrix covers the period from 1807-1812, and Perry is based on the uniform regulations of 1812, thou the new regulations didn't fully come into effect, or simply weren't available, and thus older uniform standards were still kept in many areas. I plan to base my force primarily on conflicts in 1812-15 so both work fine in terms of historical accuracy.

Perry French Infanty 2nd box command with alternate heads.

Victrix 1807-1812 Line Grenadiers

I have taken some photos of most of the Perry set sprues in order to do some proper review of each kit, and made sure I did so before assembling ( or removing much of the sprues in terms of the second Infanty box set). I have found that I always try to find an 'unboxing' of kits before making a purchase, so will try and do my own reviews on things where I can. I should have some up at some point, along with several other things I have been revving working on.  

Carabiniers in their brass cuirass' and helmets issued in 1809

I also recently acquired some Storm Guardians for my Eldar, which I managed to nab of Ebay for a nice price.

Them Shortly after being removed form the package. May re-position some arms, but all good otherwise

 Been trying to get some for a while, and GW recently repackaged the kit to just be the head and arms in finecast, and instead of having enough for 10, only included 8 for just a bit over half the price of what it costed to get 10 Storm Guardians with the bodies. So I am quite happy to have finally gotten my hands on some, whether they are good or not in games terms is besides the point, I just think they look awesome :P

High Elves and Commission update

Well this next post has ended up being later than desired due to a busy week sorting out some things in relation to my personal life, but nevertheless here it is...

Coming off from Eldar in my last post, I thought I would touch on their fantasy counterpart, High Elves.

My High Elves are one of my later projects, but ironically probably my most together one. Most of what I have is assembled and based, or needing to be based. I have only a few unassembled items, being my Lord and Prince kit, which is because I can't deiced how to equip them, and my Dragon Princes due to being a recent purchase and are still in the box.

The army so far consists of:

• 40 Sea Guard- split into two units of 20 ( I think I may actually be 1 or two short)
• 12 Sword Masters
• 10 Ellyrian Reavers
• 1 White Lion Chariot
• 10 Phoenix Guard
• 10 White Lions
• 1 Eagles Claw Bolt Thrower
• 1 Prince of Griffon 
• 3 Mages- the Island of Blood one and the two from the mage box set
• Korhil
• 5 Dragon Princes (not pictured)
• and 2 Noble/Prince models (Not pictured)

and that's about it. The whole army is plastic, with the exception of Korhil being Finecast.

The bulk of it is from the Island of blood kit, which I cherry picked what I wanted off Ebay to avoid ending up with a mass of Skaven. However I have had to convert a few models, mainly being the command duplicates from the Island of blood models so I don't have a heap of similar command models among the rank and file ones.

Second Sea Guard Unit conversions

In the picture above are some examples of the converting done. The main issue was with the Second unit command, since I wanted to keep the unique I had to convert the musician and Champion, which I did by changing the champions weapon to a halberd from the Noble/prince kit, and had the musician pointing with his horn holstered under his shoulder. On the far right is a ranker converted from a musician, by removing his arm and replacing it with another.

Converted Duplicate sword master champion.

I also had to convert a Sword master. I only ordered one lot of 10, but for some reason I was sent 12, and the 12th being an extra unit champion, which was both nice but annoying at the same time, since the unit champion is quite unique and would look odd having two in the unit. So I removed the sword arm and replaced it with left over Sea Guard champions sword, and replaced his head using one of the bare heads from the white lion kit.

So the army itself its pretty much sitting waiting to be painted. I am going to be using the scheme that is used in the Island of Blood kit, which I assume is the generic scheme shown. I actually did a test paint for the sea guard a while ago, which is shown in the picture below

Left: White undercoat                        Right: Black undercoat

I painted two up as a test, using both black and white undercoats, and I was actually shocked to find the black undercoat turned out much better, especially for the bright, clean colours. Probably because I've been painting on black undercoat for years, and that's what best suits my painting style. The white one also took me far longer, and is a lot messier since Its harder to cover up mistakes. I followed the Island of Blood painting tutorial for the Sea guard, which is actually why I haven't painting more due to GW taking down all the tutorials shortly after I began painting them. Really should have noted them down, If anyone has a copy of them somewhere or anything, I would love to know about it!

So that's it for the High Elves at this stage, they most likely wont grow beyond that for a while. I'd like to bulk up some of the special units, and add a Prince on a Dragon, but I will hold off until they are all painted.

Speaking of painted, I did complete part of the commission I am currently working on. All matt varnished and ready to be posted!

Game Zone Blood Knights

High Queen Khalidia

 Glad to have completed them, they were quite enjoyable to paint, but now I am onto the biggun of the commission being the Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon.

I will probably hit up on some of my Historical in the next post. I was going to try and do a post on every Project first before working on any, but some are all over the place and wont be worth going over until I start working on them, or like my Warhammer Dwarfs, are just the battalion box set, so not even worth making a post on at this stage.
So from here on in I will update on what I'm currently working on, and if I start working on something that belongs to a project I haven't gone over, I will go over it in the same post.

Eldar overview and current workings

Eldar.

Hands down my favorite race of the Warhammer 40k universe. I highly enjoy the look and feel of them, and also the way each unit is a specialist in a certain art of war, over being a jack of all trades. 

I have been collecting Eldar for a while, they are my oldest current collection, before them being Space Marines which was my first ever army (which tends to be the case for many people). But after looking into other areas of 40k, I purchased a box Farseer and Warlocks shortly after they had been redone in 2006, and I was set on Eldar. Since then I sold off my Space Marines to fund my Eldar army, and it has grown to a decent size, but of course not a whole lot is actually painted, and much of what was painted has been stripped of paint. 

Nestled safely, but for what reason without paint?

I nearly have at least one everything, minus Swooping Hawks, Jetbikes and Wraithguard- all of which I'm awaiting new kits, and I lack War Walkers, Heavy Support Weaponry (which I mostly have equipped in other areas anyway) and a Wave Serpant. The last 3 more because I just haven't really thought about them, bar the Wave Serpants, which I would like to get, but want to finish the current grav tanks I currently own.

Grav tanks and Grav unassembled mess.

The army currently consist of (based on model count)

2 Farseers and 3 Warlocks

Eldard Ulthran (Which may end up being kitbashed/converted since I'm not overly keen on the model)

10 Guardian Defenders

10 Dire Avengers

5 Rangers

6 Striking Scorpions 

6 Howling Banshees

6 Warp Spiders

6 Fire Dragons

6 Harlequins- Including Death Jester and Shadowseer

5 Dark Reapers

2 Vypers

1 Falcon Grav Tank

1 Fire Prison/Night Spinner (magnetized to allow for both weapon configs)

2 Wraithlords

1 Wraithseer

and last but definitely not least, 2 Avatar of Khaines, the GW and Forgeworld Variants.

Father and Son?

Definitely a major size difference between to two, but still will be cool to have both painted up and side by side. The list also reflects my love of aspect warriors and Wraith lords having nearly 1 of each Aspect Warrior and 3 Wraith lords (including the Seer). I would like to bulk up on troop choices however, and will probably pick up another unit of Dire Avengers and would like to get some Storm Guardians.

I am currently torn between what craftworld I would like to represent. Its up between Saim Hann, which is what I originally began with, or Ulthwe. I enjoy both colour schemes, thou I do usually prefer brighter colours for Eldar, and I enjoy the background of Ulthwe more, and the rune symbol of the Saim Hann more. So its going to be a tough decision. 

Wraithlords

One reason why I have ended up stripping paint of a lot of models is since the collection is one of my first, my painting level and the way I painted at the time were very different to how I paint now. When I first started out, and for the first few years I painted straight out of the pot without using a pallet, and I NEVER water down my paint, which leads to blotchy and pasty result of paint on the model. An example of that is the Wraith Lord in the above picture, which I painted around 4 years ago. While he may look nice, he would most likely come out much smoother and cleaner. I think I may leave him like that so I can compare him to the other Wraith Lord when he is painted. Thou depending on what Craftworld I decide on, that might be hard to do effectively 

Wraithseer/Lord bits

So that's the general lot of it. Most are assembled and just need to be based and painted. A few need assembly. One of my Farseers, a few Warlocks and some of the Exarch's are in the process of being converted, which I will show in the next Eldar post. I will probably do a test paint on some Guardians to work out what Craftworld to pick, and also have that up, but for the moment will continue posting up the other armies/projects current states.

I'm also currently working on a commission for a friend, which has kept me busy.

Blood knights and Khalidia

The first half is mostly done minus attaching the standard to the blood knights, Matt varnish and flock. I also have a Vampire lord on Zombie Dragon to do, which should be fun to do.

Hopefully the next Project post will not be as long. This one took longer due to being more over the place than my other projects, which are more neatly sorted due to being newer. 

Current Projects

Lately I've been sorting through all my current projects, and there are quite a few that have been sitting around, slowly being built up, but of course are still in the boxes and on the sprues. So I guess my goal for this year is to get a majority of them off the sprues, assembled and ready to be painted, or painted. Of course, that's easier said that done. I tend to be quite finicky about assembling models, and try to make them as unique as I can, but hopefully I can restrain that when it comes to models that are meant to be rank and file :P

Most of everything currently reside inside tool boxes and in plastic storage drawers

Some of the Pile

At some stage I need to invest in some proper cases to store models in so they are kept secure and protected form damage once they are painted and such. The tool boxes are nice, but really only are useful for storing unpainted models since they do move around quite a bit.

More stashed away

Currently I have the following projects/armies in the works:


Warhammer 40k:

• Eldar
• Inquisitorial/Ecclesiarchy Project

Warhammer Fantasy:

• High Elves
• Dwarfs

Lord of the Rings/Hobbit SBG

• Basically a mix of both Good and Evil. Really any model/characters I enjoy get added to the collection

Historical:

• Early Imperial Romans
• Thirty Years War (Imperialists and Swedish)
• Sengoku Jidai Samurai
• French Napoleonics
• Flames of War Germans
• a Hand full of Wars of the Roses Plastics from Perry Miniatures

I believe that is everything, plus a few models I have picked up just to paint, which are not part of a project or army. There are many more projects and armies I'd love to sink my teeth into, but I would like to focus on getting these ones further progressed and closer to being "complete" before starting anything new.

In my next few posts I'd like to detail on each project specifically and show its current state and such before I begin working on them. I jump back and forth between projects so will be working on one thing here, another thing there and then a few other things at the same time to help keep things fresh and driven. 

I will do my best to show my progress on things as I go rather than suddenly having a load of things done out of nowhere, but occasionally I may get carried away :P