First of the Conquest Games Knights

I'm rolling them our now, this phase of the crusade is coming to an end.  Previously we had seen the pair below in WIP.  Now I have them based up and finished.

Below is the next pair of knights.  The one on the left I have converted, giving him an axe from the Gripping Beast Plastic vikings.  I think its a neat little conversion that works well.

Below a better look at the converted horses, and their cloth barding.

And a view of some freehand on the shield.

The Conquest Games stuff is nice,  and paints up fairly easy.  I look forward to seeing their long awaited infantry.

My Crusades Infantry Unit...

Well yesterday we had the meager infantry additions.  Today we have the unit thus far.   I think it looks pretty good.  Right now its at 23 models, I'm going to see if I can't squeeze a couple more before Adepticon.

I still have not gotten around to replacing the banners yet.  I will get there eventually.

Its a nice colorful unit.  The spear man in the front rank are getting excited about poking some Saracens at Adepticon.

Crusading Infantry additions...

More of the meager additions.  My Perry Miniature Infantry...it's a love - hate relationship.  I sure hope that Conquest Games releases some good looking plastics.  If you know me well, you know that a pet peeve of mine is metal miniatures, I generally dislike them. 

 In a lot of ways wish I would have taken the time to separate the spears from these miniatures.  The metal is so soft and one little bump bends the dug-on spear.  I like working with plastics, not this stuff.  Anyways, meager additions again.  3-more English like models, and 3 more infantry from Jerusalem.

They turned out okay for back rankers and quick paintjobs. No real conversion work, other than the use of some plastic shields without the bosses.   Hopefully next time we see these they will be with the rest of the unit.

Some more Knights...for my Crusade

My meager reinforcements for the Perry Knights.

I must have bent the legs on the one on the left, will have to fix that.  Amazing what you see wrong when you take pics.  The middle guy is actually carrying a sword from the Gripping Beast Plastic Vikings.

You cannot buy that Hospitaller like that from the Perry's, its a shame too.  Note I converted the sword arm using a Conquest Games arm.

Meager additions, that all it is.  Next up the Conquest Games unit or the Infantry.

Introducing Sir Roland the Gray....errrr Green

Well, another Reaper Knight.  Reaper names this model Sir Roland the Gray, but I have changed that to Green.  This model was another happy experiment. I've never really painted a lot of things green, mainly because I really don't like the color green. So I decided to dust off all of those green colors and see what I could with them, grabbing another of my Reaper knights to experiment on.

I think it turned out pretty good, I laid out all of the greens on the cloak. Then went to the yellows to accent it.

The helmet's head display is massively huge, appropriately fantasy. Was not really sure what to do with it at first, and decided upon a stone theme that I carried on to the shield.  For the basing, I recently picked up some meadow flowers and decided this would be a good model to try that out on. I like the looks of them, definitely going to use more of that in the future.

That's it for now, soon the Crusaders will be showing up.  Got the movement trays, put together today.

A new Knight...The Eagle

Been a long time, but the miniature is finished.  Its a Reaper Miniatures Knight sculpted by Werner Klocke, one of my favorite Reaper sculptors.  I was finishing up the basing on my Crusaders and decided to finish this miniature up.

I'm very happy with the reds, its the same paint combo that I have used on my Khorne Demons and always looks very good and deep.

I played around with some different metallics, namely a Reaper Master Series triad.  I'm not real convinced that there steel works, their highlight color is not working for me at the moment and I had to go back and blend in an old standby Vallejo metallic to make it look better.  I'll need to experiment with it a bit more.

I like how the whites turned out, again a Reaper Master Series Triad, warm bone triad of colors with a final bright white to make that final pop.

Basing materials are identical to what my Crusaders got, but for whatever reason it just does not look as good with this miniature as my Crusaders.

Next up more knights.

FireForge Games - Teutonic Knights Kit Review

I had the extreme pleasure of unpacking a package from Fireforge Miniatures the other day, their first release to the miniatures world. The package was their new Teutonic Knights in 28 mm scale. Much like the Gripping Beast Plastics and Conquest Games plastics that I have reviewed previously, the sprues from Fireforge come out of the molding from Renedra. Renedra’s quality is extremely high.   In this kit are 12 multi-piece mounted knights, I simply love the fact that they are multi-piece and allow me to mix and match and change things as I see fit. They come with an assortment of 12 heads mostly Teutonic styled helms, 5 different hand weapon arms, 4 different lances, 6 different shields, 4 different torso poses for the riders, 4 separate capes/cloaks per sprue.   They also include a command sprue with many options on it in the kit. Excellent piece in itself, having flags, a musician's horn, and a cross.    A good look at the sprues and box contents can be found at the WAB Corner, where Dean broke open a box of them, if interested follow this link: http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/2012/03/fire-forge-teutonic-knights.html The horse sprue, has two different horse poses that can be mixed and matched, and three different heads, so fairly nice variety. When assembling the horses, the two halves join up nicely, and don’t have a real big seam in the rump. I had small issue with that in the Conquest Games miniatures horses, that was easily correctable. On these though the rump is good, the saddles can be a bit of issue, but like the Conquest Games miniatures, easily curable. By the way the Conquest Games horse just comes with a blanket and strap, because the actual saddle is molded on the rider. This saddle is on the horse the rider is added, much like GW’s Bretonian Knights. I assembled 5-different models to get the hang of them and to let them fester in my mind to figure out the look I want for a future army. I must say, I have been doing this a long time and I’m seriously impressed by these models. They are not only the best I have ever seen for a first release from an upstart company , they might just have become my favorite kit of all time. There was very little flash to remove, like with so many of the plastics coming through Renedra. Games Workshop could really take a lesson from this. Very crisp detail on the sprues, excellent undercut. Great looking mail armor, kudos to their sculptor, just when I thought I was getting really good at sculpting mail armor, this kit comes along and changes my thoughts. They do have the rectangular plate shoulder pauldrons as a separate option for those that wish to use it. Everything fits very well and is easy to manipulate at the joins.  I’m not much into the Teutonic’s, so I have removed the head dresses from the helms on mine. This should not be a problem in the near future as they are getting ready to release their 2012 follow-up kits of mounted sergeants and Templar knights at or around the end of April is what I heard. Fully assembled, I absolutely love the looks of them. I have been waiting for a very nice looking plastic knight kit for this era, and they have really fit that bill. Unfortunately for Conquest Games, I do not see myself buying and converting any more of their miniatures. As good as they are, they have not been able to follow up their first release. Quality level is high on them, but not as high as what Fireforge’s first release is, and that is unfortunate as I did and still do have hopes that Conquest will find the capital to release some more plastics. Period wise Fireforge is in what I see as an untapped niche, with older metal miniatures from Gripping Beast, that are kind of chunky looking, and less popular miniatures from Curtsey as their main competition, a much easier road to follow than what Conquest Games has took in competing with numerous manufacturers in a saturated Norman era. Now the size comparisons. Pictured below from left to right, a Conquest Games Norman, Fireforge Teutonic, Perry Norman/Crusader, HYW mounted Sergeant, Fireforge Teutonic, Warlord Games Roman Auxiliary Below, Conquest vs. FireForge Below, Perry vs FireForge  Below, Perry vs FireForge  Below, Warlord Games Pony vs FireForge   Next Pictured from left to right, Warlord Games Barbarian, Perry HYW Spearman, Fireforge Mounted Knight, Perry Norman Spearman, FireForge Mounted Knight, Warlord Games EIR, Warlord Games Giant Auxiliary, Gripping Beast Viking with a GW Flaggellant head. And not to forget my Fantasy audience out there that are looking at this kit for use with Bretonian armies, a Fireforge knight on the left and a Games Workshop Bretonian Knight on the right. For you WAB guys that’s the difference in historical 28mm and heroic 28 mm scale.   Bottom line, a great looking kit, well worth my pennies, I’m extremely impressed and I am very much looking forward to more from Fireforge in the near future. Now I need to figure out which WAB army I want to build using these. Capetian France, Later Crusades, Early Medieval English, Holy Roman Empire????