Clash in the Middle East

Palestine, at the end of the XIIth century AD. A clash between Templar knights and Ayyubid ghulams. Soon, the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem will be defeated at the battle of Hattin (1187).

Templars by Italeri.
Ghulams by Italeri, Caesar and Strelets.

Chasseurs de la garde

Hi everyone! I had no time to paint nor take pictures since last post (job, children, no need to explain...), so I looked into the archives... and I thought that it would be a good idea to show you a few Chasseurs à pied de la garde impériale, that I painted some years ago.

The Chasseurs are much less known than the famous grenadiers, but they were elite units as well.

Figures  by Hät.

The soldier, the camel and the goat

Hi everyone! Today I want to show you something unusual: a soldier (and his camel) from the "Régiment des dromadaires", created in 1799 during the French campaign in Egypt under general Bonaparte. This regiment was created because of the lack of horses (taken away by the Mamelukes). The soldiers acted as mounted infantry.

Some years ago, I was fascinated by Bonaparte's expedition in Egypt, because of the scientific part of this adventure - the beginning of Egyptology - and also by the extraordinary uniforms of this time.

The camel was painted after I read this excellent tutorial on Figuren und Geschichten, a great blog - I must admit that my camel is not as nice as the original, but I have a few more minis to improve my skill :-)

Here's a few pictures of a soldier with his camel somewhere in the Nile valley. He seems to be waiting for an invisible enemy, while a goat is looking for grass around. 1/72 Figures by GerMan, goat by Pegaso.

The GerMan figures are not made of plastic but of soft resin, which is a bit strange where you are not accustomed to this material, but the minis look great when painted.

The soldier...

... the camel...

... and the goat.

Musician of the month: Roman Cornicen

After the Napoleonic bassoon player, the musician of the month is a roman soldier from the Late Imperial Rome period. He is a Cornicen, named after his instrument, called a Cornu. His role on the battlefield was "to draw the troops attention to their standards before these were used to signal tactical movements" (Phil Barker, Armies and enemies of Imperial Rome, WRG publication).

He will be a welcomed recruit in my Late Roman Empire army.
Figure by Hät.

A Wizard, a True Star

I found a post describing simple but effective conversions on Cheap Fantasy Minis, and I immediately wanted to create a wizard that way. The explanation is given by 1Mac here: Cultists and other figures.

I must say that I am quite happy with the result, thank you 1Mac !

I need more adventurers for my dungeons... to be continued.

Almoravid warriors

Hi everyone.

Last year, I took some time to add a few Almoravid warriors to my (very) small band. The first ones have been painted years ago, poorly photographed and displayed on Hät website - they were issued from a test shot grape.
Several years have passed before they received reinforcement, and now, it is interested to show the differences between them: different painting style, and different camera :)
In the first batch of painting, I used only matt paints, dark brown underlining, highlights with at least 3 or 4 layers, no washes.. that was really nice, but was a very long technique: I spent at least 3 or 4 hours on each mini.
In the second batch, I have given up underlining, I now use a lot of inks (mainly dark brown, but also others, such as sepia), and usually 2 layers of highlights (more on central figures) - about 1 hour and a half per mini.

Let's begin with a family picture.

Fierce warriors coming from western North Africa

I chose the colors partly after the documentation found here and there, and partly after the clothes people were wearing as I noticed during my travels in Morocco: mainly blue, brown, ochre, grey, off-white.

The Almoravid army relied a lot on light cavalry, but I only painted infantry so far. The first to be displayed below are light skirmishers, probably coming from the Senegal river area (hence the very dark skin):

Their shields are covered with wild animal skins. You will notice that the base colors are different: that is how you will make a difference between the guys from the first and the second batches: the base of the latter is darker.

Here you are other units of light infantry: archers, slingers, javelinmen. Comparing old and modern figures, you will notice that the contrast is higher, which is fine since they are gaming minis.

Then the heavy infantry:

The last two have richer clothes than their counterparts. They come from the Andalusian set, and will be played as Andalusians too.

Beyond their historical purpose, it may be interesting to notice that the figures can easily be used in Fantasy as Haradrims, in the Lord of the Rings universe. If I find time one of these days, I may try to paint one of these guys with a red / purple / black color scheme :)

Oh, I almost forgot the camera change. You will see below one of the old photos, taken with a pocket camera. Now I use a Reflex: the difference is obvious!

I hope you found this post interesting, see you soon.

Zombies

I already posted these pictures in several places on the net, but since I wish to show my collection on this blog, I post them here too.Figures by Caesar, an excellent manufacturer.

To paint a troll

I you follow the blog, you could see that I had started to paint a troll by Dark Alliance. It is a very big figure compared to the human sized 1/72 minis - you can see a good comparison on 1/72 Multiverse.

This is what I could achieve:

The troll fighting three greatswords  (Redbox landsknechts)

And this is how I did it:

After the basic colors (see the first step here: What's on my desk ?), I used several washes to add contrast to the mini (which is meant to be a tabletop quality mini, nothing more).

A green wash for the loin cloth

Dark brown wash everywhere

Black wash added for the armor, red wash for the teeth

When the mini is dry, I add some rust on the armor (brown wash locally applied), then I paint highlights everywhere (only drybrush for the flesh, the scales and the armor).

There you are:

I hope you like it.