The weekend just gone saw the paint brushes come out again in force. I managed to paint seven more Gondorians for my son; this time it was the turn of the swordsmen.
Again, these are just re-paints; lots of tidying up where I could. They took maybe four hours tops to get to this stage - the waiting time between the different stages of basing took up the lion's share of time for them though. I am pleased with them even though they are just single layers of paint with no shading or highlighting. The main reason for getting these done this way was to get them ready enough to plonk down onto the tabletop with the minimum of fuss.
There are still around half-a-dozen Gondor miniatures to be painted, but these are the broken ones. I will need to find some swords and bows from my historical bits box to complete them. This mis-match of weaponry will make the Gondor force look more like a rag-tag, battle-hardened unit of veterans than if they were all painted neatly with their "official" weapons all pristine. This worked well for his orcs, but I was a little disappointed with my work on his elves.
My son's forces are really coming together now. He has more than enough now to make several Battle Companies, but there is still have a little way to go to create a couple of forces for something like Dragon Rampant. I will sit down and calculate what is required soon as I think a mass battle would suit us both nicely at the moment. He still has a force of about 30 or so Warriors of Rohan and a few less in the guise of Easterlings for me to paint up. I think, added together, there should be enough figures to make a good side and an evil side if we can also find a couple of leader types.
I was due to sort out roster sheets for the two Battle Companies in readiness for this post. I have got them both written up but there are a couple of annoying issues with the PDFs that means they will be difficult to showcase. I will see if I can find an alternative version that works a little better.
I have also managed to do a little bit of work on my skeletons. They are glued up now but just need shields that match the previous ones adding. Hopefully I can get a little more painting done on the undead cavalry soon too, as once these are all completed I can buy the last few skeletons I need to complete the force. As mentioned in a previous post, I am going to try to paint up units of my old figures before buying any new ones. Once the skeletons are done, I will try to move onto a force of zombies which are needed for a lot of the games I have recently bought, like Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadow Deep.
