Ba ba ba, barbarians

 Ba ba ba, bar-bar-ia-a-ans, painted by ha-a-and, barbari-a-a-ans, they got me rockin' and a reelin', rockin' and a reelin' barbarians.... ba ba....

A host of barbarians has been slowly amassing on my to-paint shelf for some time now. The past couple of months has given me a bit of space to get them battle-ready. After all, we don't want a critical mass of butch fighters hanging around with nothing to do now!

My initial foray into barbarianism was a few years ago when Foundry stopped their 2000AD license and re-released some ex-Citadel fighters at Bring Out Your Lead. I'm pretty sure I documented it on the blog but can't find it... maybe they went off marauding? Anyhow my intention was to create a small Slaine-influenced raiding party to accompany the Horned God. This was made up of the ex-Citadels and a handful of ex-Grenadier Mark Copplestone barbarians (Copplestone is the epitome of barbarianism to me, if it ain't a Copplestone it's an imitation!). It stayed a small force for about 18 months...

The next muscle-bound, fur-clad raiders to join the ranks were miniatures from the RPE barbarian kingdoms range. I had been carrying these around game shows (Oakbound represents RPE on the show front in the South of England) for a few months and fancied picking some up for myself. Several of them remained on foot but others...

...others ended up in a Scotia Grendel howdah on the back of a Heroes of the Dark Age mammoth. Harry got one of these at Salute a couple of years back and I regretted not joining him so when I was there trading last year I sent him to find me one. It's so much more animated than most mammoths out there and I think definitely suitably Slaine-influenced. Although the original chieftain's throne is much closer to the Slaine art I wanted more of a horde on top to rain spears down upon their foes.

On the subject of Scotia Grendel, the other beasties in the force are these wonderful giant warthoggy things from SG. I'm calling them the Shoggy Beasts. The small ones come with integral resin riders which are much bigger in scale than the rest of the barbarians and, I'm afraid to say, pretty crude, lumpy sculpts. Cutting and grinding them off was not a pleasant task, but the beasts look much better with their new riders. The bigger one had kilted legs attached but a separate rider from the torso up so swapping him out for the Copplestone banner bearer was simple enough.

Last year at BOYL Kev Adams was once again doing his "heads for charity" sculpting session. It's been a few years since I had one done so fancied having another for the collection and decided on a barbarian hero as it's so completely not what my fantasy type would be! For the job I picked up these from Foundry but unfortunately (or fortunately) Kev was inundated and I had a game to run so didn't manage to sneak into the queue. Nevertheless they still got added to the horde. They remind me of other characters from Slaine...

I said I love Copplestone barbarians, right? So I picked up a few more... It's so great these are still available from Moonraker/Forlorn Hope (and, I think, Mirliton?). Very cheap too! There are some identifiable Slaine figures in here. The knife-toting shaman is straight out of The Horned God.

To further reinforce the horniness (ooer) of the horde I picked up these Celtos miniatures by Kev White (now with Brigade Models and also very good value). The good, evil, male and female aspects along with a more 'normal' human-sized but definitely still Slaine figure. I love the Celtos range and now have pretty much every figure in one army or another. They're satisfyingly 'chunky' figures and nicely dynamic without being in poses that look ridiculous on the table. Might have to get some duplicates though...

Mike (of Broadswords and Beasts) and Jon Boyce very kindly sent me some original Citadel miniatures to 'legitimise' the force, plus a couple I don't recognise. The guy in front with the axe- looks like a Bryan Ansell sculpt? I also got a few of the former Asgard barbarians, available from Alternative Armies though I actually ordered these from The Viking Forge along with some other former-Asgard miniatures. Funny how you don't always spot things until you photograph them, I missed a shield! 

Lastest and greatest is a figure I wanted/needed to have at the forefront of the horde. Microarts' Discworld characters are every bit of 35mm tall and far too big to fit with most 'standard' sized wargames miniatures, sadly. I do have a Nobby Nobbs in my Empire force, but he's "shorter than mist dwarfs" so fits in fine. I managed to make Cohen not stand out too much by bending his legs a little (not too much, thin and a very brittle metal) so he's stooped to the level of the others. Beats me why they picked such an odd size. A pricey addition but one I just had to have,

Ba ba ba, barbarians