Ominous Silence? New Project?

With real-life events (mainly my birthday) pushing me around a bit lately, it has been difficult to get back to blogging.  Now I'm back, and this time, there's not a zombie in sight.

So, what's this about a new project?  I know.  This is supposed to be about not flitting from one unfinished project to another like a butterfly.  But, surely it's okay if I'm just using bits that I have already, isn't it? ... I'll take that as a yes.

The culprit is Mighty Armies.  I'd heard about this game in the past, but after reading a number of reviews, I decided to get hold of the rules on pdf and check them out.  They did not disappoint on my first read-through.  Haven't played a game yet, but they have the twin virtues of simplicity and character.  I guess they could be described as HOTT melded with SBH.

Not one to let a small detail like never having played a set of rules deter me from building an army for them, I've been rooting around in my storage boxes.  Out came the remnants of my Demonworld 15mm Orc packs, originally bought for dungeon crawl games.  I've got enough to make a unit or two of Orcs and Goblins.  Huzzah!  Not a whole army's worth, but enough to keep me out of trouble for a while, at least.  Pick of the bunch has to be this guy, though.  He will be my general.

Mounted Orc Hero.  I wasn't planning to do any conversion work.  Then I decided to add some banner poles...

...So then I had to add a cloak to strengthen/hide the join.  Then I thought I may as well add shoulder pads to hide the shoulders of the cloak.  Then things started to get more involved...

Originally, I was going to add a musician and standard bearer, but I figured he looked pretty impressive on his own.  Next, it looked like the wolf's head stood too far proud of the base edge to line up nicely for hand to hand combat.  Bit by bit, the conversion level increased until he ended up looking like this:

Pretty dramatic, huh?  Putting the model on a slope got rid of the wolf head overhang issue.

Gratuitous shot of the right side.  Well, all the other sides got a photograph to themselves.  It's only fair.

Bah.  You can't see it here, but I even painted wood grain/planks on the back of the shield.

The freehand shield design came out well, I reckon.  The shield itself is a Xyston Hoplite shield, by the way.  It's quite a nice fit, isn't it?

Seen at many times normal size, I notice all the little imperfections on details like the banners that I'll have to go back and sort out.  Also, I didn't get a great angle of the rider's face, which is a shame.  Maybe I'll get a better shot later on, when I'm taking group photos.

I'm hoping to get a whole army's worth of Orcs painted up, and a display base made so I can enter them in the Albanich painting competition in March next year.

Well, that's my painting binge over for now.  There'll be more to come, but the painting will be a bit slower, since I'm not a big fan of painting units of models.

See you soon!

Jon