The Dogs – Spring Clean Challenge 2026

Any army is in need of a foe and I have been slowly converting my Warhammer fantasy armies over to Midgard.  The biggest is a Lord of the Rings inspired Gondor and Rohan army which uses many of the older officially licensed miniatures.  In 1985-86 Citadel briefly held the license and after an interlude at Grenadier Miniatures it was held by Harlequin Miniatures from 1995 until GW took it to develop the range to accompany the films in 2000.

Whilst the Citadel range are only available on eBay the former Harlequin range are still available from Scotia Grendel.

I worked through a Midgard list for them and they come out at around 500 points so plenty large enough to take on The Dogs.  I had already bought the movement trays so it was only the basing that was needed.  Here is what we started with:

As you can see in addition to the LotR miniatures I have the Bretonians from the 5th Edition Warhammer starter box which I did in a LotR style livery, half of the archers as as Gondorians and the others as Dol Amroth or other fiefdom troops.  The knights formed two units of heavy cavalry.  I didn’t like the helmet crests so those went and I found a knight errant standard bearer to act as a leader.

I wanted my heavy cavalry as shock troops which is why they are based in the wedge/arrow formation.

The only other non-LotR miniatures are a few Citadel D&D rangers in amongst the Rangers of Ithilien, a Citadel Giant Eagle, Mithril Theoden on Shadowfax and a set of 8 Carnage barbarians with sword and shield.  Well done if you were able to identify that last unit.  They are pretty rare but also date to the same late 1990s period as the Harlequin minis.

For the basing I was pleased with the Krautcover Meadows of Purity with one minor proviso, it is quite stony.  Therefore, for this force I decided to add some extra grass flock to help make the Krautcover mix go a bit further.  I’m hoping it doesn’t make much difference to the colour or finish compared to the Dogs units that have the neat product on them.  I bought Krautcover 4mm spring grass and mixed one whole pot with a whole pot of Meadows of Purity.  When flocked the army looked like this:

And close up they look like this:

My project won a GB this week.  I’m always absolutely delighted when I get one of these.  It really brightens up the week.  It is always great to know someone else likes what is bringing me so much joy.

As we are just over the one third point of the challenge I thought I have a look and see how I’m getting on.  Here’s where we started:

This is where we are up to:

There are 13 units and I’ve painted 8.

There are 4 foot and 3 mounted characters and I’ve painted 2 foot and 1 mounted.

So in painting effort I’m probably around half way there.  Here is my list of things to do to finish:

• Paint 5 more units, 2 foot and 3 mounted characters
• Write up the army supplement entries
• Put the supplement document together and create as a pdf
• Get the opposing army out and check what needs doing to get it table ready.  I know it has Midgard suitable basing but they certainly need flocking and there may be some other bits to do.
• Keep updating the project blog

So far so good 🙂

This army has all of my favourite units in it and it also has what is in my opinion the best ever Citadel/GW sculpt – The Green Knight.  Sculpted by Michael Perry for the Bretonians released as part of Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th edition in 1996.  This is likely to be amongst the last miniatures he sculpted before he lost his arm.  It is a popular myth that he did it as one of the first after the accident.

There are some blank spaces on this miniature which display painters love to do freehand work on.  That’s very impressive but I don’t have hundreds of hours to get mine done.  Therefore I’m sticking to Speedpaints+ just like everyone in this army.  I love the art  of Simon Bisley and he painted a piece in Slaine: The Horned God that has inspired me.  Here is his Green Man (actually King Gann during his ritual sacrifice to the Goddess but who cares about that).

Therefore, I’m going for the three brightest shades of green I’ve got.  First a quick test swatch on some white painted card to see what works well.

I selected three of these for the three basic layers of the miniature.  I got the basic bits done first.  The horse is Grim Black and I underpainted the caparison with AP Blighted Green (one of the Blanche colours).

The lowest of the three layers of the caparison is going to be Absolution Green, the middle layer Shamrock Green and the top layer and his surcoat are going to be Ghoul Green.  Orc Skin didn’t seem to fit so well tonally with the other shades so I will use that for the plumed crests on his helmet and the horse’s headdress.   To unite all of these colours I drybrushed the miniature with Vallejo Fluro Green.  I’m nothing if not bold with colour.  He is a character after all.  He should stand out, or at least that’s my excuse 😀

Once the green was on I got a better feel for the look I wanted and I decided to go with gilt armour rather than steel.  Therefore I used Azteec Gold and then after sealing in all of the first coats with matt varnish I went for Darkstar Victorian Gold, which has a green tint.  This is what he looked like after this step:

Next we had a go at the pennons for the back banners.  Sadly the original ones had to be removed when he went to miniature hospital and were too creased and torn to be reused.  I therefore measured the best one and drew some replacements onto a piece of paper.  They were then reconstructed using the same foil sandwich technique I used on the Alcatani banner.

Then there were a lot of edge highlights to do.  I don’t normally bother too much with these but I wanted him to look good.  Rather than use a bright gold as the top highlight I went for Vallejo Metal Pale Burnt Metal.  This is the brightest, chromiest metallic I’ve got and unless you know it is a shade of silver you’d never notice when it is edge highlighted onto gold.  It just makes it look super bright.  Given we’ve gone for Bisley-style hyper real for the green then I needed the armour to give the same look and not get overwhelmed.  The back banners were done in the three brightest greens, Orc Skin, Ghoul Green and Shamrock Green.  They and the plumes were highlighted several times with layers of their original colour with a dot of white acrylic mixed in.

As a display piece this barely counts as undercoated but for the tabletop he looks good to go:

Finally I wanted to see how he would look against some natural green tones.  Spring is in full spate here at Zoid Towers and I have a garden and small wood to wander around so The Green Knight went on a quest.  There wasn’t anything quite as green as him out there but I think he looks good against a natural backdrop.

RR17 also called just the Knights of the Cleansing Flame.  They were part of the second wave of Regiments of Renown and show some stylistic changes from the first release with slotta rather than puddle bases, and the miniatures are now more 28mm than 25mm.

The original description says:
The shields of the Knights are red with yellow flames. Armour and equipment is black, or a very dark green or blue. Spear-staffs are natural wood. The banner is red with the yellow flame device.

I’ll stick with some of this.  Having done blued armour already this unit will have shiny steel.  I do like the idea of very dark blue for clothing so will use Tyrian Navy.  This very dark blue should sit well with the yellow and orangey-red of the shields.

Basic colours (all AP Speedpaints):

Armour – Broadsword Silver
Leather – Dark Wood
Skintone – Warrior Skin
Spear shafts – Noble Skin
Shield symbol – Zealot Yellow
Shields – painted bottom half Blood Red and top half Bright Red.

I also did the basecoats for the flame effect.  I use a very good guide from North Star but use blended Vallejo Fluro paints instead.  The reflected light for the OSL effect is done as a drybrush with Citadel Macharius Solar Orange.

Having given everything a coat of Mr Hobby Super Clear matt varnish I reviewed the painting.  Some repairs to missing elements or overpainted edges.  Then on to final finishes.  I went through the same layered highlights for the armour, mostly Darkstar Baroque followed by a top and edge highlight with Vallejo Metal Pale Burnt Metal.

Gold details were added with Darkstar Royal Gold which had a top glint highlight of Vallejo Metal Gold.

I wasn’t happy with the flame effect.  I washed it with Citadel Yellow Ink which helped blend the tones and covered a few missed bits of white.  The OSL was enhances with Vallejo Metal Copper used on the highest points of the gold hilt.

Finally a ruby was added to either side of the champion’s sword hilt.  I used Carmine Dragon which is an excellent ruby gem colour, over a white undercoat with a second coat of the colour over the bottom third.  Then a white light glint dot in the top corner.

Basing completed using the previously detailed scheme.

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.  Roderigo’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 Roderigo’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 Roderigo.  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 Priestley 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: