Devizes Attack Show Haul

 I went to the Attack Show in Devizes yesterday with my gaming friend Speckled Jim. It was quite fun, but no impressive demo games to marvel at unfortunately. 

I did spend too much money though...

A big bag of Redoubt ECW castings from Grubby Tanks. Some musket rests from Warlord, bases from Products for Wargamers, brass pikes, heads and a rather nice roadside shrine from Bicorne, and a bundle of Melniboneans from a trader called Tom ( I don't know his business name). 

And it's raining here in North Somerset at last..... Hooray!

New Addition to the library

 I was pleased to get hold of this Chaosium supplement today. Sorcerers of Pan Tang. It can fetch quite high prices but I got lucky at under twenty quid.

I don't do roleplaying games any more but  I do have a large box of Citadel Pan Tang figures from the 1987 Eternal Champion range, so any extra background material about this chaotic race will be useful when I eventually get round to painting them. 

 

Shading

 I've been continuing painting 17c figures, primarily because they are easy and I don't have to think too hard .

I prime them black ( by hand) and then block in all the colours except metallics, then I dry brush with Ushabti bone, add the metal colours and then wash the whole figure.

Up until now I've been washing the figure with GW Agrax Earthshade, which is a very useful product for grubbying things up, before then highlighting selected parts of the figure. Quite often I won't highlight items of clothing, letting the wash over the bone dry brushing suffice. This creates quite a dark contrast, particularly on light colours which is ok but not always ideal.

I've now discovered Army Painter Soft tone, which is creates a much softer ( surprisingly) contrast which I prefer. It's cheaper too so I'll be using that from now on , occasionally dipping into the Earth shade to use up my reserve.

The last 4 washed with Agrax.

The first 4 washed with Army Painter Soft Tone .

I'm not sure if there's any noticeable difference in these pictures but the

 yellow in particular looks a lot better using the new method.

I need to start painting some up in Dutch colours as I've decided to theme my planned Mansfeld's Army on the battle of Fleurus, and it contained quite a number of Dutch infantry. 

Shiny, shiny, shiny wings of Leather...

 Following on from my post a couple of weeks ago, I dug out some more Balrogs and demons to paint in a similar manner.

Left is one of my first ever figures, a Ral Partha demon. Right is a recently acquired Heritage mini, who looks particularly nasty.

Both Heritage I think. Left hand chap

 has definite Maurice Sendak vibes, I love his slight pigeon toed stance.

I can't do a group shot with the previous demons as they have been summoned to Oakbound Studios to take part in a game at BOYL.

Ral Partha Goblins

This picture of one of Joe Dever's battles shows a unit of Ral Partha Goblin archers from the 1977 Wizards Warriors and Warlocks range ( bottom left partially in view). I think this regiment was split up and repurposed in Joe's Giak army, but I want to recreate it pre-Lone Wolf. 

These must have been some of Joe's earlier figures as the original unit is based with flock ( now faded) , rather than Tetrion or Pollyfilla. He mentions the advantages of the latter over the former in one of his Tabletop Heroes articles in White Dwarf. I only have 2 of the original regiment from Joe's collection in its pre Giak guise.

 

  But I do have a lot of this range, which were some of the first figures I bought from Forever People in Bristol around 1980, so I mustered 30 for service.

Unfortunately some of these soft lead

 figures had been bashed about and had lost their helmet spikes, so I drilled holes and added fine brass rod.

I had to repair 10, a few of which are shown above.

These will be off to the basing filler queue before undercoating. The detail is so crude on these figures I decided not to bother stripping the ones that were already painted.