15mm knights, billmen, and arquebusiers

 This week, I finished another 30 of the 15mm medieval figures from the Joan of Arc game. First up are 10 knights, nine with axes and one with a warhammer.

These scale pretty well with the various Battlelore heavies that I have. They also match alright with the Splintered Light fellows, although the Splintered Light benefit from a bit of extra height on their base.

I also painted up a unit of 10 arquebusiers. These were fun enough to paint and had nice detail.

  

And finally, I knocked of another unit of 10 billmen in the same livery.

Up next: A bunch more 15mm medieval figures and some more buildings. 

Firehall

Back in April, I picked up this firehall at the model railway swap meet. I think I paid $10?

It needed a bit of TLC, so I touched up the paint, fixed some broken pieces, and gave it a wash and gravelled the roof (which was a wreck of broken off pieces). Then I pulled out some Pulp Figures monsters to do a double date and here we are.

I'm pretty happy with this. I might add some graffiti decals if I get ambitious (and run across the water slides).

Up next: Some 15mm medievals.

25mm Star Wars Smugglers

One of the challenges of collecting old figures is that you end up with a lot of duplicates. This is great news if the duplicates are stormtroopers. Less so if the extras are named characters. How many Han Solos do you need? My solution is to paint up a bunch as generic smugglers for Xenos rampant units (probably as some kind of skirmishing light infantry).

I thought about breaking out some sculpting material to add hoods and capes and other details to mix up the look some. Then I decided it was just better to get them painted. Lots of Hans and Lukes, plus a Lando and the pilot from Jedi.

Up next: A bunch of 15mm knights, billman, and muskets. 

15mm Elven archers

I painted up some more of the 15mm Joan of Arc figures I bought. I wasn't sure what these mounted archers were supposed to represent in medieval France (maybe Saracens for the crusades?). Anyhow, they looked more like elves to me, so that's how I treated them.

They are pretty decent figures for game pieces, with nice detail and no mould lines. The bases were tiny so I ended up putting them on washers.

They are notable bigger than the Risk pieces I used for light elven cavalry, although this is less obvious when you look down from above.

The Battlelore sculpts also have quite a lot of variation in size so whatever. 

Up next: Some 25mm Star Wars smugglers. Then more 15mm medievals.

15mm Billmen and Archers

I was looking around for figures to expand my 15mm armies and ran across some extras someone was selling from a kickstarter game called Joan of Arc. Beautiful figures from an apparently unplayable game. Anyhow, I worked my way through some of the 15mm archers and billmen.

The billmen are nice and usefully posed. Like most plastic game pieces, the thin bill shafts were quite bent. I straightened them in hot water but some have bent back

The archers are also nice and very easy to paint. I didn't end up with many of these so I filled out the ranks with some horn guys.

The light washed out some of the detail in the picture below.

Overall, a good match for my existing 15mm plastics.

Up next: Maybe some 25mm Star Wars and 15mm fantasy?

Star Trek Runabout

A couple of years back, I was putting together some 28mm STTNG-era crews and I ran across this shuttle pod.

It was from the Action Fleet series and was close enough to scale to work. I also got four STTOS shuttles in the same lot.

It included a pilot (maybe Picard?) and you could open it up to play. It looks like there is a warp core in the cargo area that you can eject (it comes out).

I was looking for another of these shuttle pods and, instead, ran across this runabout. It is much larger and was designed for the 4-inch action-figure range.

You can seat a single pilot in the front and there is a matching seat in the rear compartment.

I don't know what purpose it would serve in a game--maybe an objective? Anyhow, it sat on my shelf for a long time waiting for the right moment.

The cockpit aside, the ship scales pretty well for 28mm figures, when you look at the hatch on the side.

A few months back, I ran across some 3-D printed space-station furniture. So I bought it, pulled the ship apart (involving a ridiculous number of tiny screws) and put in a properly-scale cockpit. This was more involved than it shows in these pictures. I had to remove the old chair, create a proper floor, etc.

There were some extra pieces so I did the same thing in the back area (sorry the photos are bad--tough angles and light). I had the whole ship apart and looked at the dead area in the middle (where some electronics were) and, after some handwringing, decided against doing major surgery on the ship to open this area up.

I also gave the hull a wash to make the plating pop a bit more.

Clearly I'm not a skilled plastic modeller, but this was a fun little project. Now I just need to work this into a game.

Up next: Some more 15mm medievals.

15mm giant eagles

Today, I painted up five 15mm giant eagles. These are from the LotR Risk game. I thought they were pretty lame sculpts at first. Black primer and a white dry brush and then I started picking out details and layering colours to create some texture.

In the end, they are not awful. 

The extra bright lights I'm using in my light box is washing out the brown a bit and the feathers look better in person.

Put with some figures and they kind of come to life. They could also be used for 28mm as just regular eagles.

Up next: Probably a Star Trek ship in 28mm. One of those unplanned projects that just kind of happened by accident.