French cavalry, beware

Painting has been as slow as ever round these parts but I thought I would write a post about my progress anyway. Here are the first three archers for the English Hundred Years War army I am working on. Bar one Italian light halberdier (shown in an earlier post) they are the first 15mm miniatures I have ever painted. The miniatures in brown and red still need the odd highlight before they're properly finished and, annoyingly, I need to buy a couple more paints to do this.
I used Medieval European Armies by Terence Wise and The Armies of Crécy and Poitiers by Christopher Rothero (both from Osprey) as reference points and I am going to try and keep the colours I use quite autumnal. If anyone has any pointers with regards painting HYW colour schemes or heraldry then please do leave a comment as they would be very much appreciated!






J

More miniatures

Over the weekend I decided to order the bulk of an English 1330-1415 Hundred Years War army for Basic Impetus and I was surprised to find that it had been delivered on Monday morning. Unfortunately I was not in so this morning I went down to the post office to collect the box. I opened it up as soon as I got it home...










What a beautiful sight! The miniatures are all Corvus Belli and they were ordered from Vexillia Limited. I will continue to flog off the bulk of my Games Workshop stuff on eBay and will focus on this project. Also, in other hobby news, my Blood Bowl team (The Eagle's Claw) is now complete and so I will put up some pics soon.

J

First steps

I have finally got round to taking some pictures of the beginnings of my latest project- 15mm. I have already decided on my first project in this scale which I have detailed in the previous post. 15mm does seem to polarise opinion: for some (me included) the minis are small enough to achieve mass effect and large enough to appeal to the painter in you, but for others it's the complete reverse: too large for true mass effect and too small to bother picking out all the detail. I have only completed one mini as a tester but I though I would take some pictures of the various ranges I have samples from to show how they scale up next to each other in case anyone else is interested in buying some.










From left to right: Mirliton (from their 'Condottieri Italiani' range), Venexia ('Italian Wars 1495-1559), Corvus Belli ('Hundred Years War'), and Peter Pig ('Wars of the Roses' and 'English Civil War').
Below are some better pictures of the painted Italian light halberdier.














J

Scaling down

So as the temperatures tumble and the nights draw in you'd think that this time would be perfect for getting some hobby activities underway. Unfortunately life has got in the way for both me and Tom and so things have slowed down a bit over here.
Despite this I have managed to get some painting done, and I also intend to use today to crack on with my current obsession: 15mm. As an incredibly slow painter of 28mm, I am enjoying the novelty of actually starting and finishing a miniature in the same day! I'm also finding that due to the relatively cheap miniatures, it is easy to build up an impressive looking force in a short space of time. Those who've been playing 15mm will know this already but it is a bit of a hobby revelation for me!
I have been asking around for samples to try and decide which period to go for and I think I'm settled on the Hundred Years War- I will use Corvus Belli minis, and the rule set will be Impetus. This decision was mainly inspired by a similar HYW project going on over at the fantastic Geektactica blog- you can view it on our blogroll. I have also collected samples from Venexia, Mirliton, and Peter Pig (whose great WotR range I may collect next) and pictures will hopefully be up at some point this week.
In other gaming news, The Eagle's Claw, my Human Blood Bowl team, recently played Tom's Bolog's Brayn Broozaz again and this time managed a hard-fought draw: 1-1! I was a bit disappointed because I lost the lead in the game but I was pretty pleased because most of my players finished the game in one piece!

J