All Your Polish Cavalry Are Belong To Us

Here's all the (so far) planned and painted Polish cavalry for my 17th century big skirmish games.

The Cossacks Are Back to War

These are the Gripping Beast Arab Light Cavalry & Horse Archers figures converted to represent generic Eastern European 17th century cavalry. The figures do more or less lend themselves to that with their garb and weaponry, so all I did was use laced torsos and sculpt fur hats on the majority. For the lack of firearms I'll just suppose they are of the poorer type.

(The title of course harkens back to the now more than twenty years old Cossacks: Back to War PC game, playing which I spent countless hours.)

Northern Barbarians

 

Continuing with the influx of 28mm figures, this time I present you some GB Dark Age Warriors and a pair of ladies made by Hasslefree. The former are leftovers from a bunch I gave away, and the latter were actually shown some time before, I just gave them a better paint job and a layer of varnish. 

GB Plastic Stuff

Eight various Vikings and Saxons, plus nine generic shooty persons, all from Gripping Beast, and acquired quite some time ago. They were speed-painted, and I think the finish is too glossy again, but they fit in style with the other thirty or so GB guys already painted.

Barbarous Hordes!

First ten of the GB Dark Age Warriors I've completed since Christmas. Not rushing things, but I finally have plans for them.

Complete Vikings

There was a WIP post of this twelve Viking raiders - now they are complete with basing. Pretty standard methods were used, and while GB plastics get some bad rep because of the badly modelled joints (where the plastic parts are glued together), they are very simple to paint. 

They are probably even better to be someone's very first figure than a handful of 1/72 plastics, if a beginner does not mind the higher price.

The Saxons and Vikings converge for a photo.

Painting diary XXXIII.

Or 33, a nice round number even in Roman, the last post with such a title is from 26 December 2014. 

The sole reason these various 28mm figures are not completed is the one mentioned earlier, the fact that I have used the remainders of my PVA and static grass supply to complete the 6mm Swedes.

There are twelve Gripping Beast plastic Vikings, three Pro Gloria (Warlord) metal Landsknechts and a Hasslefree resin lady (shown here). I have added some highlights on the latter and will hopefully photograph her with the rest of the crew. The varnish has been misbehavin' again, but nothing too serious, only a touch more glossy than anticipated.

In October, I will first and foremost resupply the grass and PVA, then start a GNW Saxon army in 1/72. If I don't want to paint 6mm figures, that's fine, I'll also have to buy a large plasticard sheet again.

I have also updated the Rules page with the incredible four-page 6mm Skirmish title, go have a look.

GB Plastic Saxons

Or Seven Thegns on the Dead Man's Chest, or Six Sexy Saxons and a Seventh Sexy Saxon, or whatever you like.

These fellows have been ignored for a long, long time. They are part of an ebay auction score of which I have painted a few figures already. Now, with painting mojo gone for a while, I thought these rather simple designs and a reasonable pace could help me out a lot, and I would be done with them soon enough.

I enjoyed painting them more than I had excpected. The shields are hand-painted too. They had a black undercoat and gunmetal drybrushed on the weapons and chainmail. I've completed the rest with some simple colors, a black shade on everything, highlights and a second shade on the faces.
Next up is a bunch of Vikings from the same range, then hopefully I'll be able to finish basing the GNW Swedes. 

GB Viking Warlord (from the plastic Hirdmen set)

Here we have this 28mm plastic figure, all suited up. He is made from the parts of the command sprue of the GB plastic Hirdmen box. The other figure from the sprue is the guy with the horn from the previous post.

Fifty Shades of Quick

Another four fierce fighters are finished. These are from the ebay loot I made in December. There are still more than twenty figures just with an undercoat and some work on the chainmail and weapons. Figured I'd rather double drybrush and shade the metal parts first, to not interfere with the clothing and faces later - drybrushing metallics on usually results in the little pigments flying everywhere.

Gripping Beast test fig

This figure was part of the lot I had won on an ebay auction and of which you could already see some WIP pictures. About a dozen were assembled, another 10 or so glued on bases and the rest was still on sprues. I am now done undercoating them and drybrushed the chainmail and weapon parts with gunmetal, except for this one figure I wanted to finish to see how it looks.

Besides the standard procedure of undercoat - block - wash - highlight, in the final stages I used blending and some freehand patterns on the shield, blending VGC Bonewhite over VMC Buff, and a thin brown wash on the flesh parts.

I evened out the base with some plasticine as well.