Cheap Black Hawk Helicopter

Picked up a new collectible magazine at the news agents today

http://helicopter-magazine.com/the-collection/

Came with a very nice US Black Hawk helicopter in 1/72 scale for a bargain price of £2.99. As usual with this things the next issue is cheap (a Sea King heli) before they get expensive from issue 3.

The wife bought me a copy of Force on Force for my Birthday so a cheap Black Hawk might be just the thing to kick off a little Modern skirmish in 20mm.........

Two armies in nine days - The Almoravids

Here are my Almoravids ready to invade Spain and Ben Yusf's command. It ways in at around 1000pts in WAB consisting of

2 units of 10 bow armed skirmishers

3 units of 20 Berber spearmen and Archers (50-50 mix)

1 unit of 19 Blackguard (large shields)

1 general (on foot)

I gave the infantry white flags as (my limited research) suggests the Almoravids made white silk flags standard in the army handing out one flag per 100 men. Apparently sometimes they had the phrase "There is no god but god, and Mohammad is His Prophet" written on then so I did that with mine just to make them more interesting.

I've given the more veteran units more black clothing (most likely in reality a very dark blue) so the skirmishers are recent converts to the Almoravid cause and just have black head gear the infantry units add in sashes and trousers and the black guard are black with light coloured sashes.

All the Miniatures are metal and come from miniature design studio who sell warband packs of 50 miniatures for £25.00 which is outstanding value for such nice miniatures

I want to add some cavalry to this army and a mounted general. Some more skirmishers (with javelins) and some camel riders are also tempting as is painting up extra drummers for the infantry units to allow them to benefit from the special rules in the WAB El Cid book.

Cheers Jon

Two armies in nine days - the Spanish

Right here is the (roughly) 1000pts of Christan Spanish for the late 11th century we have

2 units of 8 Knights

2 units of 20 peones

1 unit of 8 skirmishers

1 General

All the miniatures apart from the skirmishers are plastics from Conquest games Norman range with some added tassels and turbans from greenstuff for a more Spanish look, the bare heads also had greenstuff added to get rid of the Norman style short haircuts. I swapped a few shields out with some metal shields from my Berber miniatures as well.

The skirmishers are from Crusader Miniatures El Cid range and have been used as they come.

I painted each unit with it's own two colours colour scheme. No historical justification for that I just like the way it looks.

I want to add some extra units when time and money allow m ore skirmishers and some archers are a must and some Spanish jinetes would be good to.

Cheers Jon

Two armies in nine days - part 9

Well .......I did it and managed to finish both 1000 pt armies in the nine days (even left myself time to do a bit of gardening and listen the the Southampton game on the radio today)

I'll post up pictures of the two armies in separate posts. A few musings on army painter dip.

1) individually the figures look a bit ..Meh. I can paint to a pretty decent standard and given enough time can produce some decent miniatures. The thing is army painter is just that a tool for painting armies it's all about the massed effect and painting up an army quickly. This took me a little while to get my head around.

2) basing is really important. Good basing really helps to lift the effect.

3) I still need to practice applying the dip you need a lot less than you first think and in my first efforts I applied much to thickly. I was applying a lot less to the last figures I did. You also need to go back and clean up any pooling of dip with a brush and white spirit after about an hour to avoid unsightly blobs.

4) Base colours are important I chose colours I would normally paint with and some of these were to dark (browns especially) meaning the army painter dip didn't really show up which kind of defeats the object.

5) block painting large numbers of miniatures really isn't much fun and mistakes start to happen when you are painting large numbers of minis on a deadline late at night.

Overall I think Army painter dip could be a really useful tool to reduce my lead/plastic pile but I still have some work to do refining my technique. For a first stab on a tight timescale I think my first attempts aren't to bad but there is room for improvement.

Cheers Jon

Two armies in nine days - part 8

Ok two days to go. So far I've managed to paint, dip, base and varnish 16 cavalry and 84 infantry. I have the last 60 Moorish infantry to do these figures have now been cleaned up, based and primed. Today's task is to get them block painted and their bases covered in sand ready for dipping first thing tomorrow. Tomorrow evening (neatly giving me the afternoon to give the house a tidy and mow the lawn) after the dip has dried I can finish the bases and anti shine the miniatures - Jobs a good'un....

A few more pictures of the miniatures finished so far I promise I'll take some much better pictures when the project is finished. It seems taking photos first thing in the morning while clutching a mug of precious caffeine in one hand under a dodge house light bulb doesn't equal great photos .....who knew.

Cheers Jon

Two armies in nine days - part 7

Ok yesterday I got the blackguard unit finished and managed to the 38 skirmishers block painted and dipped. Today's task is to finish the skirmishers and get the last 60 Moorish infantry cleaned up, based and primed.

3 days to go (although 2 are actually weekend days) and I've got 60 figures to paint from scratch and some flags to make and attach......I think it might be tight.

Cheers Jon

Two armies in nine days - part 6

Yesterday saw the first four units finished to completion with the bases finished off and a healthy dose of anti-shine spray the results aren't half bad (my poor photos aren't doing much for minis hopefully I'll do some proper ones when the project is complete) .

I finished painting the bases on the blackguard and have now dipped them. I also cleaned up based and primed 38 skirmishers (20 moors,8 Spanish) who will be tonight's work with some block painting.

Over half way through my allotted time now and still a bit to do including the 60 Moorish spearmen and archers....

Cheers Jon