Tales of a hobby butterfly

These dudes are 20mm figures from the platoon 20 Arvn range and some of the brittania miniatures Us specisl forces range

the platoon 20 sculpts are awesome and have loads of detail.
This smaller scale is great to be  able to get a whole squad completed quickly before i zoom off to another project

So on sunday i visited the local gameing club in illford to play and loose my 4th ever game of saga.

my normans took a swift beating from a force of viking raiders i woukd like to say the dice were against me but it was more down to poor generalship on my part and a rather gung ho attitude for my cavelry.

however a game of horus heresy was also being run and it looked awesome which reminded me i had a pile of sprues and 3d prints that were ment to be built a while ago.

so when i got home i plundered the pile of shame and found about 2000 points of bits that should make a good force. The bits origionaly started as emperors children then before i painted them they became world eaters so i printed some land raider doirs and pads, before deciding green would look cooler so restarted the army as sons of horus. After trying to find a green i liked which took a long time and was mostly me painting a model to find out i had painted it brown or grey and not green (being colour blind is fun)i kind of gave up so had a box that had bits of three chapters but not enough for one army on its own.

so today i spent my day off pulling bits off and sticking things together to remake them as the emperors children they started as…..

This week has mostly been a week of painting muddy troops.

i tried undercoating in brown for a change then drybrushing lighter browns and khaki before washing with strong tone from army painter. Once that was dry i went back over the uniforms with some greens to add some colour and a dull metallic for the metal bits.

i need to decide on a colour for the bases and may look into a way to create a wet mud finish to add to the look of the force.

had a day off from work on sunday and having moved home last week wanted to explore the area with my other galf so we went on an adventure to check out the illford gaming club, which was time well spent. Met a group of like minded people and should have some new saga opponents as well as other games. Had a chat about turnip 28 and saw the project on xlbs now i have the turnip bug. This is great as it will use up some 28 mm napoleonics that i had sitting around. They were ment for sharp practice but half way through collecting the armies i decided to build them in 18mm miniatures rather than 28mm which is cool but left lots of figures in the shame pile but now they haveba new muddy home in turnip 28.

The first force im working on will be a standard force organisation rather than following a cult.

It will be made up of a single toff with two toadys allowing four units of followers, i chose to convert up a unit of fodder armed with black powder weapons, kind of wanted to model them with pikes but as this is ment to be reducing the shame pile i went with what i had. These will be converted from british line infantry

one unit of brutes with black powder weapons made from some french dragoons.

i kind of fancied a cannon so the next unit is a stump gun.

the last unit in the force will be cavelry in the form of three bastsrds eith melee wespons. The cavelry will be made using some cold ones from the shame pile and milliput and green stiff to make them odd.

time to get converting

Among other things this week i managed to complete the scratch built war waggon putting the final unit into my empire mercenarie force.

i would usually have just bought an stl and printed out a unit like the war wagon but dont think it would have fitted into the okd school vibe of the army. So collected bits and bobs from my bits box and started cutting and sticking and ended up with my own version of the model as close as i can get without spending silly money on ebay and at the same time reducing the shame pile.

I kind if fancied adding some empire sllies/mercenaries to my dwarf army,I have always liked the empire war waggon model but dont have the dosh to afford ebays crazy prices so thought i would have a go at making my own from scratch. The old mail order pictures turn out to be one to one size so i traced  them off and made some templates.

the empire mercenaries are from a kick starter oakbound studios did last year and The dudes on horses are from the old battle master game. I think the knights with a single plume on their hat are dupposed to be brettonians but i think with empire style horses they fit in pretty well.

The mercenaries in base colours ready for a splash of army painter strong tone

The war wagon is mainly built out of cerial box card, match stivks and coffee stirrers liberated from greggs in the great late 2022 swizzle stick heist.

luckily the old plastic sheilds that came in an old warhamner starter box matched the sheilds on the front and back of the origional. The eagle heads on the corners i think came from a 40k imperial knight kit.

to make the tiles on the sides i just layered small squares of card then coated them in watery pva to keep them in place, the rivitd are pin heads glued intk s hole. The horses are old empire horses that need serious tlc and green stuff.

i have one of the origional crew with the big ball and chain that came in an ebay purchase as a bonus but is missing a leg so needs some green stuff. The rest of the crew will need to be converted using ofds  and ends from the bits box of doom.