Not Swiss pikemen for BOYL

So, it’s been a bit of a busy fortnight. I recently got back from this year’s TWITWU and managed to get to taking some photos of these.

These guys are some of the heroes for my Boyl army, and yes, I’ve been doing a full Stillania thing with them with a lot of gloss varnish.

The Giant is called Barry and is the Cloud Giant from Ral Partha. There is my gerneral, Roderick Von Bek with his swan-wyvern, Trixxy. His brother is the Warhammer Quest noble, Ferdinando Von Bek. The army standard bearer is another Von Bek – Alaric.

With the wizards, the dwarf wizard in purple is Harry Palmz-Unie. Then you have Bek the Questionable and his apprentice, Bruno the Questioning.

A couple of these models will go into the pikeblock that I shared a couple of weeks ago.

So, it’s taken longer than I thought it would, but I’ve finished my first unit for my BOYL army. 99 Pikemen. I decided to go full Stillmania and do 3 coats of gloss varnish as well.

They’re all Wargames Foundry minis – the Swiss pikemen.

Hopefully these will come with me to the Boyl replacement events this year. But, they certainly will next year.

The unit is based on Michael Moorcock’s Von Bek stories, but this unit is led by Hauptkrieg, Wilsohn and Hecht and the block is nickneamed the Don’t Tell ‘Ems. Might you be able to guess what the names translate as?

There we go. I’ve finished painting up the pikemen themselves.

I’ve going to work on varnishing them, then turn to doing the pikes separately. It was the plan to do that all along, so I had something to hold.

I have more tufts on order, but they should come by the time I’ve done the pikes – they’ll need varnishing as well.

Hum, I think I’ll go full Stillmania and use gloss varnish. They’re the old sculpts that Dave Andrews did for GW in the ’80s or early ’90s, so it feels right to lead into the theme. After all, this is my BOYL army. Seems fitting.

There we go, it’s taken a while. I’ve managed to get the first coat of paint put on the bodies of my pikemen. I’ll start on the second coat tomorrow.

I thought it wise to paint the pikes themselves separately for the sake of manageability, being able to manhandle them about the table better while I paint them.

I thought I’d try uploading a vlog I did on Youtube. It shows the project off a bi  better, though I’ve not managed to get much progress done from last post.

Ah, they’re slowly coming together. I think this is the biggest unit I’ve worked on in one go. I got the first coats on the flesh tone, leatherwork and metal work done.

The rest should be easy now. But many will need a second coat.

I intend to do the pikes themselves separately. I’ll feel accomplished when this unit is done.

Then, I get to work on the other units ready for BOYL.

I managed to get the first coat of colour on the uniforms done. It’s taken a little longer than I thought, but I should have expected it to take quite long, there are 99 of them.

But, hopefully tomorrow, I’ll start on the metalwork on the models.

They’ll all be the same regiment and will go to BOYL with me this year. Though they’re Swiss Pikemen and being done in Schaffhausen Canton uniforms, they’ll get their first battle with Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules.

It’t tickles me, I want to name the block the, ‘Sages Ihnen Nicht’ Pikes, a crude tranlstion of Don’t Tell them Pikes. They may have to guard one of my wizards, most likely Harry Palmz-Undie.

Needless to say, the command group leader is Captan Hauptkrieger – a bad translation of Mainwaring. The standard bearer being Willsen, and the drummer being Hecht. You may be able to guess who they are based on.