#workbenchWednesday 19/06/19

Back with another #workbenchWednesday update this week, on time again, so, hopefully the mojo has kicked back in.

How's it looking?

That's a lot of empty miniature holders...

Some rare Scottish sunlight has made its way in, making me recoil from the desk for a bit.  All that is sat in front of me is some part done Grymkin, that either need primed, or the primer touched up.

It was a lot busier about an hour before this was taken.

The appearance of the blister backing means I've been varnishing and adding blood effects to stuff, so keep reading to see what that was.

Off to the sidelines are the rest of the newer Grymkin releases needing the primer touched up, as well as a couple of solos, the Cephalyx commission, and I've slapped the basecoats and wash on the Reaper Bones Frost Giant for my Of Gods and Mortals force (OGAM).

It's actually been a really good week for painting.  Last Thursday, I finished up my Warlord and 2 units of Hearthguard with Heavy Weapons for my Jomsviking force.  The Warlord figure is touted as being Odin himself, so, I guess he is important enough to lead the force.  The Hearthguard are made up of random figures with two handed axes and mail shirts, I've managed to paint one full 6 figure pack, and also a duplicate...

#workbenchWodensday 

As regular readers may know, I'm not really one to rest on my laurels (if my interest is engaged) so I kept on with the Vikings and finished off another 2 units of Hearthguard (with shields this time), as well as a Priest figure, and a unit of Berserkers, so that I can play Vikings as well as Jomsvikings.  The Berserkers were planned for my OGAM force anyway, and the large amounts of skin and pelts balanced out he heavily armoured Hearthguard.

Should have saved this picture for Thorsday (3rd from left)

So, currently, it looks that in building up the Jomsvikings and OGAM stuff, I'll also be able to make a few additions to also run standard Vikings, and get double duty as a Horde force for Age of Magic.  I like the idea of adding lots of Berserkers, but just the Priest counting as a Sorceror/Shaman and the one unit of Berserkers gives me 8pts when added to my planned 6pts of Jomsvikings.  The fact that I have Troll-wolves and Trolls to do for OGAM aslo gives me suitable Quadruped and Biped Creatures.

When you pull off that Chris Hemsworth look 20 years before Chris Hemsworth does...

When I was putting together the models for the Jomsvikings, I split each point of Hearthguard into 2 models with swords and 2 with axes (maybe a bit too standard for the Dark Ages, but whatever) and used the embossed shields that came with the figures.  I pulled them from a variety of packs, with the only restrictions being that they had to be wearing mail shirts and no duplicate shields per unit.  I tried to get a variety of stances into each unit, but wasn't overly concerned with any other factors.

Shieldwall fails due to personal space issues...

When it came to painting, I just took each colour in turn (dark red, dark blue, dark green, ochre, purple, dark grey) and put it on a different part of each miniature in any given unit (I'm sure they'll get mixed up over time).  So models had more areas to paint than others, and some I just skipped certain colours.  I also painted all 4 shields a different colour in each unit, as well as the beards and hair, and used 2 different colours for boots.

The men that iron cannot bite.  Mainly due to health & safety restrictions.

When it came time to do the Berserkers, I carried over my 'standard' cartoony wolf pelt colours, and had to revert to my (honestly not a Care Bear) green basecoated fur for the bearskins to represent Polar Bears.  I think I'll grab the Belicose Bears pack from Foundry to use as Creatures as they will scale better than the Fenrisian Wolves I have assembled.  I also added the blood effects, but a lot more restrained than I'd normally do.

The Priest basically follows the same colours as the rest of the figures, with a little gold detailing on his helmet.

Rune Axe - will rune your day if it gets embedded in your skull.

So yeah, that has been most of my downtime this week.  22 figures painted, and 4/6pts of my #hobbyresolution2019 SAGA force done.  I'm hoping to get the final 2pts done over the next week or so, along with a Standard and Musician I've based up, and can them crack on with the OGAM stuff.  The Frost Giant should be fun, and possibly quite quick as he has a very limited colour scheme.  I might even do him at the same time as the next batch.

I've also assembled a unit of 12 Archers, as I needed 4 for OGAM, another 8 Berserkers, just so that I have the option of running 3 units, and have sorted out some Bondi with spears to get cleaned up.  Been a while since I felt his enthused about something (or at least, it certainly feels it) and I'm hoping to be as productive as possible whilst it continues.  I'm going to push the (long)boat out with these guys and try adding bow strings with fuse wire to them.

I also managed to snag a bunch of pirate stuff from a variety of manufacturers in a facebook trade, but I have a plan for that, that could be a monthly article (God knows I have a few of them to catch up with).


So yeah,  that's been my week.  With any luck, I'll have the full force together to show off next time.

Cheers,

John.