Barbaric reinforcements

September is the usual kick-off time for new year-long army projects after the lull of summer and passing of BOYL. However I have so many odd bits and pieces to add to existing armies I had already decided that 2022-23 should be the year of 'finishing' (such as is ever possible) those forces. I am approaching a significant birthday and am feeling a bit of pressure to get things I want to do done before my eyesight fails completely, then I can just enjoy playing with them knowing the figures are painted as well as I possibly could. Imagine my delight therefore when Dave of Snickit's Tail  announced that this year's challenge was going to be odds and sods, perfect! The rules are no two concurrent months can be from the same army (can definitely manage that) and each will have a theme. This month's is 'Rank and File' so I have used it as an excuse to get some barbarians added to my barbarian horde. 

Ral Partha Europe Savage Skirmishers from their Barbarian Clans.

Chronopia Maidens of the Blade and a shaman from Alternative Armies that was a free giveaway last year... or was it the year before?

More RPE Barbarians

The month's entry complete. 15 barbarians to join the throng of the Horny King.
 

Barbaric reinforcements

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

Ogres!

What do you do when you're at the start of an army painting challenge and you have 60 Clanrats and 5 Poisoned Wind Globadiers to paint before the end of the month? You spend a week painting Bob Olley ogres of course!

Someone (I forget who) did a bequtifully painted set of these great Ral Partha Europe ogres around Christmas last year, and (surprise surprise) they became one of the company's top selling miniatures ranges in December/January! I was among those who rushed to purchase them.

They have sat on my 'to paint' shelf giving me evil looks ever since, and having taken advantage of the nice weather over the summer to undercoat all the waiting miniatures it was nice and easy to grab them and get started when the mood took last Saturday.

I was getting a definite Scottish vibe off these chaps, so having had a break from tartan on my fimir, then just finished doing the tartan for my barbarians I decided to go for... more tartan! You'd think I'd be good at it by now, but it's still a right pain and I don't think I have it quite right.

In my head the fur trim is highland stag, but looking at the guy above it might be more Aberdeen Angus!

And here are two 'misfits'. The guy on the left is actually my reason for picking up so many ogres. After seeing JB's exquisite paint job I acquired one myself (through SHQ, although he doesn't appear on their website. I eventually tracked him down by emailing them a picture of JB's model) and imagined that the RPE ogres would be a similar size. They are actually much smaller, but enough of the Bob Olley character is shared by them that he just looks like a freakishly large member of the clan. A second edition of Golgfag makes a nice champion for the unit. Mine had a damaged club but I had a suitably large axe head spare.

Right, now onto the furry varmints... I promise!

Ogres!

Draggin' out the dragon

I remember when first I saw the John Blanche painting of the Zombie Dragon...

It was about 1991 and at the time there were no Fames Workshop stores anywhere near where I lived. It wasn't until three years later I would visit an official GW and by then the Flying Cabbage had been releasedso I never knew there was an earlier model for the dragon... one bearing a stronger resemblance to the art... one sculpted by the legendary Tom Meier.

When I discovered (after the rise of the internet) that the beast existed my heart was set on owning one. But I didn't have my undead army any more and older minis were getting expensive so the though went out of my mind. Then, recently, I began to think of reviving (re-animating?) my first undead army and was delighted to discover that Ral Partha Europe still stock the original Meier Zombie Dragon! I had to have one, my army would have had one when I was younger if I'd had the cash to splash, and it had to be painted as per the Blanche illustration. So last week I set to work.

I haven't based him yet as I will be making some terrain to go with the Lichemaster stuff and will base everything at the same time so they everything matches. I also bashed out a not-Mikael-Jacsen to lead one of the units, following in the footsteps of Nico and Pil and green stuffing some flames onto the head of a skeleton. He's not as definitely a character as some interpretations of Jacsen but of all the skeletons I surveyed he seemed the most appropriate to me. I painted the sword so it is heating to an orange glow in the heat of his fiery hair, the better to smite his foes. His shield colours draw some inspiration from a certain cultural reference I'm sure you won't miss...

Draggin' out the dragon

Raising the hordes... more skellibobs arrive

I've been throwing a bit more of my Undead horde budget around now the new month is here, so here's a quick overview of my purchases.



 

I was buying from Spirit Games as somebody told me they were a UK stockist for RAFM (they are, but seemingly only the Cthulhu stuff). Whilst browsing the site I spotted they had a load of older miniatures available, including these sets from Ral Partha. Now a Ral Partha order is still very much on the cards (Zomber Dragon!) but RP only sell these skeletons with swords separately now, so since I was buying anyway I thought I'd pick up a pack in authentic vintage blister. :) The skeleton champion with two swords I can't see on the current RPE site.

 

They also had a pretty 'Skeleton Command Chariot' from Fenryll. Having not bought Fenryll before I wasn't expecting resin, but no big problem. The details are crisp and nice and with the oxen drawing it this will make a great chariot for by ox-headed skeleton champion. Quite a lot of cleaning up to do which is a shame and the oxen have very chunky bases which I'll have to disguise somehow.

Now this is the find I was most excited about. Not in my budget (which has probably drifted somewhat!) but they had to join the army when I saw Spirit Games still had some because I had these models in my original Undead force:

 

Chronopia Devouts, including that amazing ram-headed Liche/Necromancer. I remember fondly the little hobby shop down in Devon I bought these from whilst on a holiday with my parents. I think we went back 3 times on rainy afternoons that week! The beefy armoured models always looked a bit odd leading a unit of skinny, bare skeletons, but this time round they'll be in Krell's Undead Chaos horde and fit in just perfectly. Now, do I try to replicate the colour scheme I originally painted them in, or go with something different? Hmm.... and yes, when I tore open the blisters I did savour the heady waft of air from 1997!

And now, a purchase not from Spirit Games. A Mantic Skeleton Regiment to fill out the ranks. As Chico said, these guys have a definite old-school vibe to them. They're dressed in tatters and remnants of armour which suits my theme perfectly. Not perhaps as flexible as the original Citadel plastic skellies, there are 10 bodies with separate arms and heads and 10 which are just 2-part models, but they should provide enough variation not to look odd when scattered through my units. Anyway, in a mass of skeletons who's going to notice a few duplicates?

So added to the previous tally,
Budget spent so far: £82.13
Price per model so far (cavalry counts as 2 models, chariot as 3): £1.52

Despite Spending £7.50 on the 3 Chronopia figures (well worth it) the Mantic Skeleton Horde has kept the per-unit cost down!

Raising the hordes... more skellibobs arrive