Avatars of War offers

It seems that Avatars of War are switching from resin/restic to injection plastic moulded figures. They recently introduced plastic Dwarf rangers to their product range and kicked off with a special offer of a promotional figure and a discount on the first 200 boxes. Now they are making a similar offer on dwarf gunners and warriors of apocalypse corrupters. There's also a new metal figure release too. Full details on the Avatars of War facebook page.

I was a big fan of Avatars of War, I bought and painted up their plastic dwarf berserkers (shown here) and have several of the metal figures in various armies. I pledged to their indiegogo campaign too, though only in a small way - the army standard bearer. But that's when things started to sour a little, as delays and lack of updates plagued the project. Reading between the lines, I guess they had some real production problems casting up their sets in the new wonder material, plastic resin, which was obviously cheaper to start up with than plastic injection moulding, but has cost them many problems in the longer term.

I much prefer plastic to restic, so am tempted by these new boxsets, but find myself with a little dilemma. I don't play warhammer much these days, but these figures are really nice. Should I buy them and hope that I can resurrect my interest in the game (or find a decent alternative), or should I continue to explore new gaming systems like Saga, Lord of the Rings, et al? I prefer other gaming systems to warhammer, but I still love the fantasy genre minis best of all and get most enjoyment out of painting them.

The Russian Alternative Miniatures

I am always on the look out for alternative minis for my Warhammer collection, the official figures are increasingly out of my price range and lacking in the detail and aesthetic that others can provide. A good example is this very striking vampire lord from The Russian Alternative ebay store. It's a lovely looking figure, with detachable wings and an alternative head. The price is a very reasonable $12.50, which at current exchange rates is about £8. Shipping adds a further $7, so a total price of around £12 for UK customers. That's comparable with most of the quality ranges these days, which in my book contains Avatars of War, Mierce Miniatures, some GW stuff (if you can find the old metal figures) and some of the more exclusive boutique figures like Enigma and Studio McVey.

There is the option to buy several figures from the ebay store and thus save on postage. I was impressed by most of the range, but these other two sculpts caught my eye. The chaos figure would perhaps give me the impetus to finally bring my years-old Tzeentch warrior collection into line with my more recent warriors force - rebasing would be required but I am considering doing this anyway. The dwarf would be purely a painting project, I have not played the dwarf army for about two years.

All images are used without permission, but I hope the owner does not mind (in the highly unlikely event that he knows about my blog)!

Mordor Orc Banner

I have a real mental block when it comes to banners. My freehand skills leave a lot to be desired, so I nearly always put off finishing them. This orc has been standing around on my painting to do list for about six months. I finally plucked up the courage today, googled a few designs, adpated one and took the plunge. It turned out okay in the end, but I still feel pretty inadequate in this area.

The good thing is that I can now cross another item off my 2013 painted list - it's over on the left of the screen if you have never noticed it before. I find keeping a list like this quite a decent motivational technique. I add an item to the list when it's prepped and primed, then cross it off when it's fully finished and photographed. In theory, the shame of having several half-finished items on the list forces me to complete them. And it works too, I hate seeing something lingering on the list for too long. I have got steadily better in the past three years at finishing half-painted items.

Fly My Pretties

Here's the next job for the Vampire Counts army - a unit of fell bats and a female vampire.

The bats are the Riesenfledarmaus set from masq-mini. As I mentioned in my last post, I reckon these are the best models for fell bats currently available. They are pretty accurate to life sculpts of real vampire bats, they even have the little fingers on the wings to help them cling to their prey. The poses are superb, one soaring through the sky, one coming in to land and one crawling along the ground, covering the last few yards to it's prey.

The quality of the casting was very good, there was a slight miscast on the wing of the left model, which I scraped away and then repaired with a little green stuff. There was no flash at all and almost zero mold lines, something pretty unusual on metal models. The fit of the components was very good too, there was a small gap to fill on the join between wing and body on the landing pose. All other joins were good, I have given them a coat of liquid green stuff just to be on the safe side.

The female vampire model is by Mad Puppet miniatures. Again, it's a lovely sculpt with accurate anatomical details. The quality of the casting was not quite as good as the bats - there was a good amount of flash on the sword and hand. Luckily, this is a fairly old school metal cast, in that it was quite soft and easy to scrape away with my craft knife. Mold lines were visible but very fine and easy to remove. I decided to add the flying bats at this stage, this might make painting a little more difficult but I cannot imagine how I would have painted such small bits separately. Again, it was not really necessary but I gave a few areas a wash of liquid green stuff to cover any joins and flaws.

Watch the skies!

I have finally found some fell bats to include in the Vampire Counts army. The stock models are far too comical for my taste so I have been looking around for some time for alternatives. A lot of gamers convert ghouls or daemonettes - add a pair of plastic wings and the result is a decent enough model. For me, these conversions are more batman (or batwoman), but I very nearly went down this route. The problem is, I want to use the "batperson" concept for my vargheists, so having two similar looking sets of models for two different units was always going to be confusing. Happily, I have found the solution in the sales section of the Warhammer Forum and am busily assembling my new unit. I will get into the details in a future post, for now I am thinking aloud about colours for my new unit.

As most of you probably know by now, I am a big fan of natural, muted colour schemes, even in my fantasy armies. I have been looking around for inspiration and I think I have settled on something like this little chap. A brown furry body and grey wings with fleshy arms, ears and face, not quite as dull as this picture. Some scenic elements on the base will also add interest. Notice that the wings have blood vessels and veins running through them. Something like that would add interest to the scheme, but it could be hard to pull off in a convincing fashion. Still, there's little else to complicate the painting so I will probably give it a go.

While I was searching I came across a lot of cartoon and anime illustrations, which are not really my cup of tea but can be useful sometimes for palette inspiration. This is a case in point. It just so happens that I am also prepping a vampire character to temporarily lead my army. I have a trio of ladies lined up and had decided a while back to paint them in different schemes - a red, a black and a white. This deep red will do nicely I think.

Empire handgunners

Over the past couple of weeks I have been tinkering with a unit of Empire handgunners. They are made from a mix of current and previous edition plastics, with a few head swaps and a little converting here and there.

The colour scheme is from the province of Ostermark, which is purple and white or yellow. I went for more of a burgundy shade with an off-white contrast, not being a massive fan of purple or yellow. Most of the painting is purely a base coat and a wash, though some areas got extra shading and/or highlighting. The idea was to get them completed quickly, Empire armies can be big on numbers so a quick and effective technique is paramount.

The bases are 2mm mdf, 60mm x 40mm in dimension. In warhammer terms, the two bases pushed together (as above) is a 6x2 unit. In reality there are 10 figures in total, this little saving will cut down on time taken to complete regiments. Now, you might be saying that I have no flexibility here, since I cannot reform or use a different formation. This is partly true, though the figures are currently fixed on by a paper clip glued into the foot and poked into the mdf, which is enough to hold them securely at the present time. Future wear and tear and general gaming may change this and necessitate the use of a dab of superglue, but in theory I could remove them from these mdf bases and use single plastic bases too, if I really wanted to. These days, such tactical considerations I tend to waive in favour of gaming convenience.

In other gaming systems, I have several options. Hail Caesar is element based and the dimensions of bases is left to the players to decide. I have decided on 60mm width for small units and 120mm for medium units,so these would be pushed together as one medium-sized unit, or separate as two small units. Other gaming systems that I am looking into have similar recommended base sizes, but again the gamer is free to decide for themselves. I am increasingly drawn to such freedoms and will hopefully get to use them in this way at some time.

Having put this unit together as a tester for a possible Empire type force, I am unsure of the future. I like the colour scheme and the models are nice enough. I have more gunners I could paint, enough for another two units of this size. There's about 20 militia I painted a few years ago that I could rebase in this way, trebling the number of painted troops at a stroke. I also have some unpainted Perry plastics I could employ as halberdiers. Only time will tell if they can draw me away from my other projects.