The Dogs – Spring Clean Challenge 2026

I bought a box of these for my birthday.  They were my favourite of the units from the Dogs of War release.  Clearly the Perrys wanted some Italian Wars miniatures and sculped a whole range of Tileans.  I’m very happy to have a unit to add to the army.

They feature in the middle of the Dogs of War cover art:

The central figure is Roderigo Delmonte.  I like the way he is shown, despite not looking exactly like the miniature.  I’ll try and make sure I get my paintwork to look like this.  The unit have dark clothes and red crests.  I’ve chosen to go with steel armour. 

Base colours were all AP Speedpaints:

Armour: Broadsword Silver
Skin: 50/50 Blend of Crusader Skin and Warrior Skin
Shoes and leather details: Grim Black
Hose and doublet arms: Turnbull Turquoise
Pike shafts: Bony Matter
Crests, pike tufts and trumpeter tabbard: Blood Red
Pouches and bags: Satchel Brown

Then outside for a coat of Mr Hobby Super Clear matt.  This is an important step with Speedpaints.  They have a slight sheen and under my painting lights reflect a lot.  They also have a slight peculiarity in that they seem to dry in an odd way that reveals spots of the undercoat again. These are very hard to see unless the surface is a flat matt.  This happens every time I paint a lot of minis with Speedpaints.  You can be sure you have fully covered an area but when dry there will be a tiny dot of undercoat showing through.  So a matt varnish at this stage is good.

You can see an old Alpha Legion symbol transfer that I’ve picked out for the trumpet banner.  Rodrigo’s arms feature snakes so this seemed apt.

Next I did the banner.  These images show the process.

1. The pre-printed banner is a self adhesive sticker.  I also need some metal foil.  The tomato paste tube is one of the few remaining sources for this since toothpaste moved to plastic tubes.  The foil is the perfect thickness for a banner.  I’m adding a single layer of foil between the two sides.
2. There is a pre-cut middle part on the sheet which is much bigger than the flag pole. I cut the top off along the pre-cut line to help with the next step.
3. I bend the flag around the pole and wrap it tight to work out how much foil I need.  I don’t want the foil to overlap onto the pole, the flag won’t be tight enough and the foil edge will show underneath.  I press down on the wrapped section around the pole so it keeps the shape and I can see where the foil needs to go.
4. I cut a piece of foil slightly larger than the flag half and flatten it by rubbing the barrel of a pencil over the foil on a flat surface.  Remove the backing paper and glue the flag half onto the foil.  You can see I’ve lined the edge of the foil up with the edge of the bend that goes around the flag pole.  This flag is very old so I added a bit of PVA to help it bond.  Then cut off the excess foil.
5. Wrap it around the flagpole and with a bit of extra PVA we’ve got a flag, foil, flag sandwich attached to the pole.
6. Once the PVA was dry I painted in the edges of the flag.  You can see the foil so you need to cover it up and the cut flag edges are white and need painting anyway.  Once this dries you can shape the flag.  As the foil is in there it will hold bends perfectly.  If it were just the paper it wouldn’t and you’d risk it creasing if you worked on it too much.  With the foil it holds a beautifully rippled shape easily.

The highlights to the steel and red were added in the way I’ve described before.  Darkstar Baroque followed by Vallejo Metal Pale Burnt Metal for the steel and AP Vermilion acrylic for the red parts.

The metal snake details on Rodrigo’s hammer and the banner top were painted first with Aztec Gold and then Darkstar Victorian Gold.  Both of these have a green tone.  There was a very small top highlight of Vallejo Metal Gold added to give a glint to the top edges.

A final bit of detailing on Rodrigo.  Murder Scene thinned for the inside of his mouth.  White acrylic on his teeth and I also added the white streak in his hair that the artwork has.  White acrylic, then shaded with Blinding Light and re-highlighted with White acrylic.

Done:

I got some paint onto the schiltrons.  I love this little unit and am enjoying writing their background.  It will be a bit silly and hopefully funny, like the old Priestly background content for Warhammer used to be.

Not a complicated paint job, just time consuming.  They are excellent sculpts from Scotia Grendel which means there are loads of details to do.  I stuck to a very simple scheme.  Ruddy Fur for the goblinoid skin (I don’t like green as a skin colour), and then basic Speedpaints for the wood, leather, iron and brass.  One schiltron has a red theme and the other is blue.  They come with a pack of weapons to glue in that stick out a different angles.  I decided to add some banners to this to enhance the mob effect.  These were made from Greenstuff and thin brass rods.  Colours were three layered acrylics.

• The red was painted with Flat Red, a touch of black and Cavalry Brown for the lowlight layer and then Flat Red mid tone and Flat Red with Vermilion for the highlight
• The blue was Flat Blue with a touch of black and The Darkness for the lowlight layer, Flat Blue for the mid tone and Flat Blue with a spot of Ashen Stone for the highlight.

The main banner had a LBMS 1/72nd scale greek hoplite shield transfer added.  Some shields were done in plain black and plain white to keep them loosely connected to the unifying colours for the army.

The other painted units also had their bases finished.  Goblin green edges to miniature and unit bases and the scatter and tufts added.  Here are the Wardances finished:

Also finished by completing the basing was an old Citadel Miniatures bombard.  This was from the C22 Imperial Bombards code which featured a small and large bombard with crew sculpted by the Perrys.  Amazingly these miniatures are still available.  Bryan Ansell took them with him to Foundry Miniatures and like a lot of the Fantasy but actually War of the Roses stuff they did you can still get them from Wargames Foundry.  The chap with his hands over his ears is a cracking sculpt and very typical of the Perrys’ early Citadel output.

They were painted along with my Saga English but at the last minute not included with that army as I was gifting it.  A few final highlights here and there but basically just as they arrived from the earlier project.

The other of the original Regiments of Renown I wanted was RR10 Elwing’s Guard Cavalry.  These were in the Vinted lot I bought, two boxes of a character and three troopers.  The two characters were the leader and standard bearer.  This gives a unit of eight which is perfect for a standard Heavy Cavalry unit in Midgard. I like the other two characters, a musician and a model initially called the general but later standardised to champion.  I’ll probably pick them up at some point, completist being a strong mental driver for me.

The troopers are painted in a very similar scheme to the Lothern City Guard infantry I’ve already done.  Silver armour and helmets, white tunics and this time black leather.  Shields are a matching blue blend and spear shafts are Beowulf Blue to match.  The horses are the main difference.

Painting Horses

I decided as they were a guard regiment that they would have horses of a matching colour.  I’ve got another unit of Elven cavalry to do so they will get the clichéd white horses.  This regiment will have bays, that is a chestnut coloured coat with black ‘points’.  For the non-horsey this means a redish-brown coloured body and black legs, mane and tail.  This is a very common colour of horse in the thoroughbred population that is most commonly seen in the UK.  As with all horses any colour is usually accompanied by some white bits, normally a mark on the face, between the eyes and also white on the legs, from the hoof up the leg a varying amount.  Usually on at least one leg, if not more.

*** WARNING TANGENTIAL DIGRESSION ***

There are rhymes about the number of white feet horses have such as:

One white foot, ride him all your life. Two white feet, give him to your wife. Three white feet, give him to your man. Four white feet, sell him if you can.

This was perhaps thought to relate to a difficulty of temperament or in managing a horse with lighter coloured hooves, white keratin being thought of as more brittle which can make them difficult to shoe and prone to losing shoes.  This has been proved to be superstition as the strength of horse hooves is related to other genetic factors than just colour.

*** DIGRESSION OVER ***

That said these won’t have any white on their legs.  This is fantasy and elves do have a reputation for wanting everything perfect all the time.

I use Speedpaints a lot for painting horses.  It gives a very quick finish that has some natural variation in coat colour you often see on real horses.  Bay horses have a chestnut coat and black points.  There are five main shades of chestnut.  I won’t go into details as the names used are different in English depending on which side of the pond you are on, and the Europeans use a different scale as well.  All we need to know is that Chestnut horses range in colour from a light ginger to a dark brunette.  Brown is a colour horses can be but this is quite unusual, chestnut is by far the most common.  It is therefore a mistake in the eyes of horsey-folk to refer to a horse colour as Brown, becasue it is probably a Chestnut or Bay.

To make Chestnut I took three redish brown shades (light to dark tone):  Ruddy Fur, Hardened Leather,  and Burnished Red.  These go onto a plastic palette with room between them.  I then proceed to paint the first three horses in one of these pure colours.  I then blend about 50/50 each colour with each other.  This gives another three shades.  Three more are painted.  Then these shades are blended 50/50 to produce up to another 3 shades.  By this point all 8 are painted but for larger units you can change the blend ratios or add a drop of Dark Wood to get a darker tone or Satchel Brown to get a redder tone.  Usually I’d paint the whole horse but as these are Bay there is no need to paint the legs, mane or tail.  These are painted in Grim Black.  Finally a bit of Cold Grey acrylic is blended with a couple of the blended chestnut coat Speedpaints and the hooves are painted with this.  The “realistic” fantasy horses are finished 🙂

Then the base colours were blocked onto the troopers.

You can see on this image I’ve gone for a pattern on the feathers on the helmets.  I wanted these to look like real bird wings.  These guys are Sea Elves so I reasoned a sea bird would be appropriate and settled on the Herring Gull whose wings look like this:

After all the base colours were on I put a coat of matt varnish on using Mr Hobby Super Clear matt spray.

Then I wanted decals on the shields.  I used the nail varnish stamps on the Elven infantry but the painted unit on Stuff of Legends shows an old GW transfer (a white crescent moon).  The standard top features both a sun and a moon so I thought about having both devices on these shields.  I have some sets of the old GW waterslide transfers and picked a white sun and yellow crescent moon to use on this unit.  Sadly they don’t both fit, the sun is very large and fills the shield on its own.  I used some of the crescents on the banner, two on each side, one had to be cut as the edge of the helmet wing touches the banner.

Final stage was to apply the metallics using the same colours and highlights as the other Elves, although more steel/silver and less gold on these miniatures.  Edges and basing texture/tufts as per the scheme.  Finished:

There are two Level 1 heroes in the army.  I’m writing the background for them now.  I have a couple of beautiful Confrontation Griffin Hunters of Darkness.  You can still get these miniatures.  In my background these are part of the Firstborn contingent that La Lionne recruited earliest in her career as a mercenary general.  They are responsible for order and discipline in camp.  Able carries the contract that all the mercenaries have signed and harangues the troops, reminding them of their oath of service and the riches promised them when they win.  Kane does not speak and even the brashest bravo falls silent when he approaches.  If a transgressor is found with their throat slit as the camp awakens in the morning  then all know whose blade was responsible.  As a result of their efforts La Lionne’s army has a reputation for discipline and focus on and off the battlefield.

Painting

I have stopped using a straight black with a grey highlight for models wearing black clothing.  I think that there are much more interesting colours available that still ‘read’ visually as black.  To that end I’m trying both of my current favourites on these miniatures.  One will be in Tyrian Navy and the other Turnbull Turquoise.

Here they are after the base coat was on:

The other base AP Speedpaint colours used were:

• Skin – Crusader Skin
• Shoes – Grim Black
• Leather – Satchel Brown
• Clothes – Battleship Grey
• Buff coat and cuffs: Bony Matter

Metals all in Darkstar using the blued steel triad described for the Firstborn Iron Guard.

The ‘black’ coats and hats were then highlighted using AP acrylic The Darkness.

Now on to the detailing.  I tried sticking with the new technique I’m learning, to add nail varnish stamp patterns to my miniatures.  Whilst the shields worked okay this effort wasn’t so good.  In the first image below you can see what happened when I tried to transfer the block of text from the stamp plate to the scroll.  I wasn’t being pathetic – I spent ages on this and despite lots of attempts just couldn’t get any sort of pickup from the plate, no matter how quick I was getting the stamp onto it.  I think that the engraving is too shallow and the nail varnish dries too quickly between wiping the initial blob off and getting the stamp onto it.  You can see how little of the pattern transferred, and much of that then flaked off because it was already totally dry.  Pity.

To fix this I had to go in and do it by hand with a 000 sized brush and some very thin black acrylic.  It looks fine as you can see in the second image.

Bases completed using the new Goblin Green edges and Meadows of Purity scatter.

As these are characters I’m doing eyes as well.  Kane has glasses though so I got away without having to do his:

One of the important things I needed at Salute was the paint and scatter to do the basing for these miniatures.  As far as the scatter look went the DoW Supplement book had minis with both the old “just spring green flock” as well as the 5th Edition standard “brown dirt with green flock on top”.  It goes without saying that bases are edged with Goblin Green.

I’m used to a more modern (and arguably better) finish so will go for some modern basing products.  I used to do the spring grass flock on my models but wanted a quicker process for this army.  I’ve enjoyed using the Krautcover one box solution.  I needed some bright green flock and they have one called Meadows of Purity that has exactly that.  Sold.

Next we needed some Goblin Green.  The original hex pot Citadel Colours are still in production by Cote d’arms.  This range is available from various suppliers but Battlezone Miniatures were at Salute so I dropped by the stall and picked up a pot.  They are noted for being quite thin and two coats are needed.  I’m hoping I can avoid that by mixing with a more modern paint and Reddit tells me the closest match is Two Thin Coats Goblinoid Green so I got a pot of that too.

Base edges were done with a 50/50 mix of the two paints.  Sadly this is still quite transparent and coverage is a bit uneven so a second coat is needed.  Given that is the case I’ll probably just use the Cote d’arms paint for future base edges.

The flock went on well and gives a good mix of bright green flock and grey stones.  In some places the white is still a bit visible so I’ll need to make sure I get extra green onto the base to cover up the areas that might show through.

Next issue is whether to paint the edges of the movement trays.  All the units have them as Midgard is set to a 120mm wide standard unit facing.  Here are the options, burnt mdf brown or Goblin Green:

I really wasn’t sure about what to do.  The brown looks ‘right’ to my modern eye as this is the finish I use on all my other armies on unit bases and is also the finish that most modern gamers use.  Having said that, I remember having the old plastic movement trays and did them in Goblin Green to match my basing at the time, and so did everyone else I gamed with then.

I asked my gaming group for their opinion and they were similarly torn.  The consensus was that brown looks best – the contrast helps them to ‘pop’ off the table so they are easier to see in gameplay.  However, those of us of a certain vintage remember the look that armies had and agreed with me that we all used to do the tray edges in green.

So green it is.

Finally some extra grass and flower tufts, all from my local supplier Tajima1.  Not too many as there is a lot of grass in the basing mix.  Flowers are going to be red and white and I’ve gone with different heights too.

The finished look:

The next unit is the Firstborn Iron Guard.  They are Chronopia models from the Target Games era of the game in the late 1990s.  I bought them new then and they have been sat in the collection ever since.

The Firstborn in my setting are a religious cult.  I’ve moved away from the background as written (which has some AoS hallmarks) to help them to fit into my quasi-Old World setting.  Here the Firstborn are a cult whose belief system centres around the principle that Humans were the first race, not Elves.  Specifically they claim descent from these first beings, hence Firstborn.  The Iron Guard are the shield bearers of the order, holding and defending on the battlefield.  They refuse to give ground to any inferior race, which is basically all of them given they know they were the first.

They have extensive understanding of forging and each man makes his own armour to the divine pattern handed down to them.  They are finished with a technique called “bluing” where the armour is gently heated in a flame to oxidise the outer layer of the steel.  This gives it a distinctive dark colour with a faint blue hue.

First off are the base layers (all AP Speedpaints unless specified):

• Spear shafts in Darkstar Blue Steel
• Armour in Enchanted Steel
• Plumes and loincloth bottom edge in Poppy Red
• Helmet Crest and spear butt in Darkstar Royal Gold

Next I moved on to the cloth.  The original concept has them in a monochrome chequered pattern but I’ve got lots to do so I’ll stay with the black and white but do it in vertical halves instead.

I started with a line of Vallejo Cold Grey acrylic down the visual middle of the loin cloths.  With something visible as a guide I then put the black on with AP Grim Black which gives a good layered effect when dry.  The Speedpaint white isn’t so good and just makes everything different shades of grey so it is necessary to go back in to restore the highlights with acrylic white.

With this stage complete the models were varnished with Mr Hobby Super Clear Matt spray.  This is the only varnish layer they will get and protects them as much as possible from handling in game situations.

This matt layer means the shine needs to be restored to the shiny bits like the armour.  I’m happy with the flat effect on the spear shafts so they will stay as they are.  Reshining is done by an overbrush (a sort of wet drybrush) with Darkstar Blue Steel.  Then the highlight layers are added focus moves from:

• broader upper surfaces, any parts that will catch light coming from above and to the left of the front of the model using Darkstar Steel
• to the highest surfaces; the upper faces of the shield rim, side edges of the shield, upper defined edges of armour plates and poleyns (knee protectors) and pauldrons (shoulder protectors) in Darkstar Baroque
• to the brightest points like the corners of the shoulder pauldron ridges, shield rim upper edges, spear points and blade edges.

Final highlights.  AP Firey Vermilion into the plumes.  Then a more complex process on the gold areas.

The shields were painted in parallel to the miniatures and added near the end.  There is a gold cog symbol on the shield which was first circled with the Firey Vermilion.  Then I overpainted most of the gold with Regency Gold.  A wash went over both red and gold using AP Warm Skin Shade and then a final highlight on the upper half of the symbol and central rivet.

The crest on the helmets received similar treatment.  Regency Gold on upper surfaces, a stripe of wash to help darken the junction between red and gold and then the Vallejo Gold as an edge highlight.

Finished.  No basing and no banner yet.  I’ve got to get the gubbins at Salute this weekend.

Shiny.  Well a bit dour, but still a bit shiny  🙂

After all of the work so far all that needs doing now it to get the metal lovely and shiny.  Elves never knowingly less that dazzling so I need to go bright on the metallics.

Fortunately I’ve found some great paints to get a high shine on metals.  First we have the steel.
I use Darkstar Baroque to put the basic metal shine back onto the figures.  Not a complete overpaint layer, I’m leaving the edges and low points in the Enchanted Steel.  Over that just on the edges of weapons, tips and high shine points on armour I use Vallejo Metal Pale Burnt Metal.  This is almost a chrome finish – the clearest I’ve found as the pigment is very fine so it doesn’t make the finish grainy.

Now on to the gilded armour and gold weapon fitments.  To get a bright shine I have to add an extra layer.  Starting with Regency Gold I overpaint in the same way as I did on the steel, leaving the original colour in recesses and at the joins between colours.  Next I went with another Darkstar paint, Renaissance Gold.  This is very bright and would normally be the top highlight but we want our elves extra shiny.  This went into the usual highlight positions at the top of high points and edges.  I also picked a notional direction for light, from the upper left of the front of the miniature, at 11 o’clock.  Then put patches of highlight onto the flatter plates and surfaces where this light would hit them.  Finally a top and edge highlight using Vallejo Metal Gold. In small quantities this has a colour appropriate chrome finish.

Now a couple of finishing touches on the character miniatures.  A touch of black here and there and a snow leopard pattern on the musician’s animal pelt.  The pattern is much bigger than in real life but it needs to read as leopard at a glance so the characteristic circular loop spots need to be clear enough to see and are therefore upsized.

As with the Wardancers the basing will have to wait until I get back from Salute with the stuff needed to finish them.

Shiny 🙂

Took a look at everything this morning and the skintone looked a bit flat.  Time for a light wash.  I don’t want to warm up the colour at all, just increase the contrast to help the sculpted details show better.

I blended some AP Strongtone Wash with some medium, two thirds to one third.

Now for something new.  I’m trying to stretch myself and learn a new technique with this project.  At Christmas I got given a Goblin Hobbies stamp kit.  I’ve not used this technique before so watched the videos on their website that introduce the technique.  They are useful and there is an excellent Gerry Can about this as well which I can heartily recommend (and thanks to @sundancer for finding the link for me).

Some prep is needed.  You have to blot the silicone ends of the stamper for several hours before you start using them to get some of the production oil off as this stops the design sticking.  I also needed to order some lint free pads (basically medical gauze) and a bottle of 100% Acetone as this kit uses nail varnish.

I picked a design I wanted.  There is a tower and a ship’s wheel on one of the etched sheets.  I’m going with a tower up the long length of the shield on the right and there will be enough for a small ship’s wheel on the left.  They are Sea Elves after all.

Here’s the kit and tools used.

I practiced a lot on a piece of scrap card.  The technique isn’t easy and isn’t instantly repeatable so getting a perfect pick-up off the etched sheet is hard and then getting it transferred into the right position isn’t all that easy either.  The tower was easier than the ship’s wheel.  Because it is so small it dries incredibly quickly so is very hard to pick up because there isn’t enough time to do the swipe and then pick up the stamp and roll it over the design.  I got quick enough eventually but it took a very long time with lots of failed pick-ups.

So as you can see some weren’t as good (on the left) but others looked nearly perfect (on the right).  Most failures on the wheel:

I did the leader last and he came out with the best looking transfers.

Once done some of the transfers started to flake or were clearly not fully stuck on.  I coated them in some matt varnish to help stick them on and diminish the sheen that the nail varnish has.  I was then able to tidy up any missing elements with some white paint.

That used up today’s hobby time so I’ll have to finish off the metallic layering tomorrow.