Back to the painting table...

So,  Ive been getting some painting done, and thought I should post the results as its been a few months.

For starters I dug my old Dark Elf army out and decided its god-awful twenty year old paint job needed to be redone.  So the whole lot was stripped, excess models were sold, and the remainder reformed to make a 2000point KOW army.  Just under half has been through the painting process now:

I decided to do this a bit differently from the traditional black and purple look:  Skintone is blue.  Hair is grey.  Thats pretty much all that unifies the force .  I wanted a slightly irregular, almost piratical look so every figure is unique- theres no standard issue uniforms here- so bright colours were generally the order of the day.

The Witch elves.

The elite Guardsmen

Crossbowmen, ballista and Sorceress.

Corsairs, with my favourite banner!

Each of those units will double in size, and theres a few Cold one Knights and heroes to finish too.

Finally found a second bombard at triples- Ok, so this is actually the almost but not quite identical Foundry version of the Citadel model.  Its slightly smaller but not hugely so. 

I decided recently that I needed an alien force for 40k, a hunt around the internets suggested there wasn't much choice-  or rather, theres loads, but not if you want an army: theres plenty of Alien ranges consisting of just one pack of maybe 3 or 4 figures, but I wanted a variety of heroes etc to boot.  So A GW army it is, which narrows us down to either Orks or Nids. Then I found this chap on ebay:  

WAAAAAGGGHH!

Its always a figure I've quite liked and the decision was made.  It took only one evening to paint him: sometimes the brush just loves the figure!  I got a pile of Orks of various sorts from ebay, enough to make a 1000 point army in 2nd ed 40k, including Thraka for a mere £20 all told.   Also found this chap- 

 who will be on the painting table shortly, and then bossing the Grots around. The 40k stuff must take a back burner for a while though, I've got a lot of fantasy stuff to paint by Gauntlet in July, including this lot: 

I've been wanting a pile of skellies to add to my fledgling undead army for ages now, and the way I see it theres only a few options if you want a mass of plastic skeletons:

1) mantic-  not my favourite due to the clutter of rags and armour- prefer bare bones.

2) several generations of citadel skellies- the earliest Horde being the best, the later ones getting a bit too cartoony.

3) Wargames factory- my favourites but currently unavailable due to distribution going over to Warlord games who told me they're definitely in the pipeline, but they need to organise repackaging , where they fit within their range etc before they're released.  Arrrgh!    

Luckily I reckon the Wargames Factory and Citadel Skeleton horde to be about equal in terms of quality and style and, unable to get the former, was happy to find the latter for sale on ebay- I managed to pick up about 30 infantry and 10 cavalry (though 5 of those are the later metal mounted wights) , plus a vampire and necromancer for £30, which I figured wasn't too bad.

Also on the painting table are a dozen pikemen- Ive been wanting to bring my old Dogs of War Pike regiments up to full strength for ages but its been a long time since those figures were available for a sensible price, and I wasn't about to sell a kidney.  Instead I picked up some of the Perrys metal Renaissance Pikemen - they're about th right size and style, and had a go at sculpting-  I'm not great at that but hopefully a forgiving paintjob will hide the worst of my efforts- the plumes for the Alcatani Fellowship and the leopard skins for the Leopard Company.  Ill wait till they're painted before posting pics!

Last but not least this chap recently galloped off the painting table:

I picked him up at Triples for a mere £1.50 from the bring and buy. I'd managed to get four 5th ed metal Bretonnian knights off ebay and wanted a fifth to finish the unit, and the army.  He must be one of the earliest figures sold as a Bretonnian, being a 1989 Chevaliers De Notre Dame De Bataille  so its sort of fitting that he's the last figure for my first army.  

Anyway, thats all for now, I'd better get back to the painting table!