Some love to Gripping Beast Vikings...

Well Foundry is not the only Vikings on my desk to get finished.  I gave some love to a couple of plastic Gripping Beast Vikings.

 I do like the Gripping Beast plastic Vikings.  This one has a Battle Flag shield transfer, pretty neat transfer, just as nice in my opinion as the Little Big Men.  Its a waterslide type transfer, unlike the LBMS ones.

 I converted both of the heads on these miniatures, giving the helmets masks.  I think that turned out very well.

 The green and yellow combination worked imo.  I was happy how that turned out.

The Battle Flag transfers have a bit of a blood stain on some of them.  I think in the future, I'm going to try and work some blood splatter in on the miniatures.

Shield Wall.....Spears!!!

Another of the Foundry Vikings.  This one I converted.  The weapon arm had just an ugly weapon on it.  So I used a left over Gripping Beast plastic spear and shield.

 Otherwise a very cool looking miniature.  It has a bunch of character to it.  The sword, the hand axe, the knife and pouch.  All fun detail to paint.

Conquest Games Medieval Archers Review

Finally picked up a box of the Conquest Games Medieval Archers.  I've been waiting for this box set, so beware I'm sporting archers now for my armies.  They are 28mm scale plastic models like their other kits.  This is definitely their best effort thus far with the models, don't let their horrible box art fool you.  I do think they like hurt their sales greatly by using such terrible box art.  They would in my opinion be much better of not using any art and just have really well painted miniatures pictured on the box.

Lots of nice stuff here, lets go over the contents of the box.

You get 28 miniatures, which includes the command sprue shown below which is the same sprue form their infantry box.  It has two of their Norman infantry men and the cool casualty mini you see on the right.

You get 2 accessory sprues that have one body as pictured below.  Note that they have put longbows and short bows both on the sprues.

Below is one of the main frames.  As you can see the accessory sprue shows up once more in the lower half of the sprue.  In the kit there are 6 different bodies, 16 different heads for a total of a whopping 60 heads overall.  There are 36 longbows arms, 30 short self bows, 48 right arms (I really love the open hands), 6 left arms with pointing hand.

 Below is close up of the one corner.  Good detail on these, like I said this is their best kit yet.

One of the few things I did not like were the quivers, but I think I have been able to fix that a bit.  The sprue below shows the bodies and heads.  Lots of good heads, covering different looks.  I think you have some very good selections here.  I'm mainly looking for mine to play with my Saxons and Vikings and Dark Ages.

So how do they compare to other manufacturers, well you can see I pulled out a bunch of models.

 From Left to Right:  Above one of my Conquest Games plastic infantry, Conquest Games Archer, Gripping Beast Plastic Viking, Conquest Archer, Foundry Viking.  Below:  Gripping Beast Plastic Saxon, Conquest Archer, Gripping Beast Metal, and Perry Crusader.  One of the things you will note on the Conquest Archers like their infantry men are the very thick stands.  I'm basing on 20mm squares and they barely fit.

 Below:  GBP Viking - Conquest Games Archer

Below:  Perry Crusader - Conquest Games Archer

 Below:  Conquest Games Infantry - Conquest Games Archer

 Below:  Foundry Viking - Conquest Games Archer

 Below:  GBP Metal Viking - Conquest Games Archer

 Below:  GBP Viking - Conquest Games Archer

 Below:  GBP Saxon - Conquest Games Archer

 Below:  Various poses of the Conquest Games Archers

Overall and A for the kit, and F for the box art.  These are going to jump to the front of my paint que.

More Foundry Vikings finished....

You know when I build armies, I hate repeating poses.  I purchased quite a few Foundy Vikings and ended up with a number of repeats in poses.  So I'm thinning out some of them and putting these extras up for sale on Ebay.  I think they turned out really good.  Since returning to painting I have been experimenting with some paint schemes for my next batch of miniatures.

This is includes the varying the leather a bit, some greens, washed out blues, some different metallics, and Secret Weapon washes.  

Fun miniatures.....much more to follow.

Viking Swordsman Finished

This is the first of a batch of Foundry miniatures that I'm painting.  I don't plan to keep this one as I have a couple of this same pose.  This one is currently up on Ebay for sell.  Pretty cool miniature to paint.  I've recently changed up the way that I paint leather.  I have not been happy with the way my leather has been coming out for a while now.  For this miniature I used a ruddy brown Reaper Master Series Triad.  Definitely liked how it turned out, and it is how I plan to do leather in the future.

I think the red cape turned out extremely well.  Much more to follow.

WIP on the Desk - Vikings! Terrain! Inquisition!

Doing up some Foundry Vikings and a couple of plastic Gripping Beast.

Above, played with a paint scheme for my upcoming project on the Stronghold Terrain with this old rotted GW plastic tree.

Above, got some work done on the Inquisitor's cape.

Total War-hammer.....

Looks like Total War gets it, whereas I'm not so sure GW even understands their own game.

I've pretty much always have enjoyed Total War's games.  This might be a must have....

Viking!

 Finished up a Gripping Beast Plastic viking that I converted.  This one turned out alright.

 The base worked out.  The conversion uses a couple of axe arms from GBP.  The sword is from a Victrix greek kit.  Shield arm is a conversion using War Factory Games pieces with GBP.

I like the pose.

Another Finish Painted Arthurian

 Another of the Saxon Miniatures' Arthurian models.  This model was converted by me using a Gripping Beast plastic shield and spear. 

Detail is fairly good, with the exception of the face.  

Another  fun and easy model to paint.  I think it turned out pretty good.

Good side view of the model.  I do like how the purples turned out.

Finish Painted Arthurian from Saxon Miniatures

This is one of the Arthurian warlord miniatures from Saxon Miniatures that I received from them as a sample pack.   Pretty cool miniature to paint.  I really love the pose.

 Detail is good, but not quite as good as the Viking warlords that I have of Saxon's.  The shield is from Gripping Beast plastics.  I don't think the faces and hands on the Arthurians are as good as the vikings either.  I just ordered the Saxon Warlords.

Good dynamic.  Paint scheme was an experiment of sorts.  My left eye I feel is getting better, and wen to the optometrist yesterday and he felt there has been no change, just a matter of fighting with lubrication.  

A Saxon Tooting His Horn

Well I don't know who made this miniature.  I believe it could be just about anything, but not one of my Vikings.

Its another of the miniatures that I have painted to attempt to get back in the groove of things.  Its a color scheme that I'm very comfortable with.

Definitely feel like I'm getting back to a new normal.  Still having a few issues with the left eye.

Old Stuff Wednesday: GW OOP Fantasy Figure

Not really sure what this miniature was called.  It was a very cool mini, I believe from their Dogs of War line.

I entered this in the Gamesday Competition, probably back in about 2003.