Small Victories

Happy New Year folks. 

Over Xmas I managed to get the hobby cave's electrics back up and running. Hooray! But then, over New Year, I had a short stay in hospital and spent the next couple of weeks flat on my back tripping balls. Boo! All of which meant that I hadn't painted any toy soldiers for nearly two and a half months. Double Boo! I'm feeling much more my old self this week and decided to get back in the saddle. I wanted to start with an easy win. I remembered I had half-painted a couple of bases of 18mm Saxons nearly a year ago so now seemed like a good time to finish them off. 

These are from the superb Wiglaf Miniatures range, sculpted by the legendary Mark Copplestone. The bases are a mix of PEN03 Anglo-Saxon Unarmoured Warriors and PEN08 Anglo-Saxon Princes and Warriors. These are mercifully easy to paint, which was very welcome while I tried to remember which end of the paint brush to use.

As a bonus, this means I now have enough Wiglafs painted to field an entire army in glorious 18mm.

I also took this opportunity to magnetise all the bases from my Dark Ages project to date so that they can be transported without all the spears pinging off. This is another thing I've been meaning to do for an age, and another easy win.

I picked up some packs of the Wiglaf Welsh towards the end of last year and the Saxons have definitely wetted my appetite to paint more 18mm this year. Let's see how distracted I get.

I was also pleased to receive my copy of Brother, Why? from Hive Mind Games at the weekend. I'd ordered this for Xmas, but due to an issue with the factory HMG have only just received the finished product. They did offer a refund, but I really liked the concept for the game and I think it's important to support small indie games companies. I am pleased to report it was well worth the wait.

The game itself is really simple. You play as medieval monks who have been illuminating manuscripts and have maybe let their minds wander off. Each player draws A Very Serious Quote card (Biblical verses) and a Silly Lil Guy card, which are genuine 12th-14th century marginalia. You then take it in turns to try and justify why, for example, a weasel-man shitting into a bowl is a suitable illustration for Corinthians 10:31. The worst answer from each round, as voted for by all the players, gets a strike. Three strikes and you get sent to the Abbot! As someone who loves marginalia, but who is more often than not completely baffled by it, this is right up my alley.

We played a family game of this on Sunday, before vespers, and it was an absolute hoot. I'm looking forward to playing this again after a few ales or a spot of mead. Recommended. 

Hopefully more soon. Toodles.

Hastings 960

I'm still trying to get the electrics in my workspace sorted, so there's been little to no progress on any new minis. Hasn't stopped me buying more though...

So, instead, here's a little love for an amazing project - Hastings 960 - which is aiming to recreate the Battle of Hastings at 1-to-1 scale in glorious 18mm, for display games at various wargames shows next year. That's a whopping 8,400 warriors per side!

To achieve such insanely huge armies they're using Peter's Paperboys. Even then, that's still a massive amount of work, so the team are asking for help with producing element bases for the game. If you sign up they'll post you enough paper minis for the number of bases you've committed to do and all contributors will be credited on a fully illustrated rolling banner that accompanies the game at shows.

Bases are around 300 minis each. I'm not sure I will be able to commit to this myself. I would like to, but suspect I'll be too busy (2026 is looking full-on). I am definitely thinking about it, though. Anyway, if you want to know more then please follow the links above.

I suspect that's that for the Evil Lead for 2026. Much love to everyone who's interacted with my ramblings over the last year. It's always appreciated. Catch you on the flipside.

2nd Longdrop Regulars

Project Beast-people is on a temporary hiatus. The electrics have blown in my painting cave due to it being a 'orrible damp oubliette. I got a sparky to take a look, but he was having none of it, because it's a 'orrible damp oubliette. Bugger! Then I was going to sort it out myself, but Mrs Hob was having none of that either, just because I have no idea what I'm doing. Chicks, eh? 

So, while I figure out illumination which doesn't require mains electric, here's one I found in the archives; half a unit of fodder for Turnip28 that I kitbashed and painted for a buddy a couple of years ago. They are the 2nd Longdrop Regulars. I can't quite recall whether I used Perry or Victrix sprues, although I seem to remember using French bits for the arms, legs and backpacks and snipping the shakos from somewhere else, so the answer may well be both. The heads and torsos are 3d prints from free stl files hosted by Turnip's creator, Max FitzGerald. Then it was just a case of hiding the joins with green stuff, tufts and muck. I think they came out pretty well.

 Hopefully, the normal erratic service will return soon. Right then, I'm off to buy some candles...

Grashak Kra Lives!

It's not been the most successful Orctober. I had a chunky Citadel Fantasy Tribes orc bruiser prepped and ready to go, but he just didn't get a look in. I've been completely distracted painting beast-persons. Here's my output for the month:

The minis are predominately RuneQuest broo, from various boxed sets and blisters.

The guy who sold me these three told me that they use to be part of his dad's warband from when they played together back in the '80s. He said the the guy in the centre was the warband's leader; a nasty piece of work called Grashak Kra. I absolutely loved this. I tried to match the colours of the original paint job (most of the paint had flaked off, but there were patches of colour to use as a rough guide) and he shall be Grashak Kra in my games too. I was also stoked to acquire Four Arms (on the right). It's one of the few times where I've tried to pay more than the asking price! 

I had wondered how the Perry's had managed to knock out such a large range of broo for the blister packs in such a short space of time. Now I've got my hands on more of the minis I can see their canny reuse of sculpts to build the range. The torso in the centre is from an earlier iteration of the broo where you had a choice of heads. In this case, two new unique heads were sculpted for the blister release.

I've also painted a couple of beastmen from the C27 range. The fellow on the left is Fang Head, the slotta version of a miniature from the original pre-slotta C38 Chaos Beastmen range, which famously launched the career of Trish Carden. The little guy on the right is Face Maker. I have other C27 beastmen in the stripping jar where I also have a broo that was used as a base for the sculpt. 

So, what started out as a bit of a pallet cleanser has escalated quickly. I've really, really enjoyed painting these. I also feel that I've finally hit on a tabletop standard of painting that I can replicate reasonably quickly and that I'm happy with. I think I'm going to attempt an old school chaos beastmen army. 

For starters I aim to paint 2x units of 24 beastmen each with full command. Obviously, I would need a fair few more than this for a WFB army (which would be the goal), but even if I were to stop there that would still give me 4x units of 12 beastmen for Dragon Rampant or 6x units of 8 beastmen for Midgard. That's the first milestone, anyway.

Rechgrindle - Chaos Knight

Due to life stuff, I missed last year's Golden Gobbo painting competition, over on the Oldhammer Forum. I've got in early this year just in case. It's a fun opportunity to paint something just for the hell of it. I recently picked up a few Citadel pre-slotta chaos warriors on a whim and had already decided that I'd paint one of them for GG '25. So, without further ado... 

Rechgrindle - Warrior Maiden of Dim Ponn the Unholy Grimace from Specialty Set SS3 (v2) The Knights of Chaos (1983).

I smashed this one out over a couple of evenings, which is incredibly quick for me. She's not going to win (there are some awesome painters over on the forum), but I'm really pleased with how she turned out, especially the pallid flesh. Remember kids: Chaos worship is bad for your health!

The Knights of Chaos set was sculpted from designs by John Blanche. Although the sculptor/s aren't credited, I've been told that the majority of boxed sets from this era were sculpted by the Perry twins. Having handled a fair few from this set, they certainly look like Perry sculpts to me. 

Big John's designs for the SS3 crew. Rechgrindle is top right. From Heroes for Wargames (Paper Tiger, 1986)

The boxed set came with an insert, penned by Rick Priestly, which gave fluff for each of the knights, the chaos gods they followed and rules for using them in Warhammer 1st ed. The extract below is borrowed from a scan of the insert from the Eldritch Epistles blog.

Beastie Boys

Here's a couple more Citadel broo from the RuneQuest box set 4(v3) from way back in 1983. Apologies that the photo's a bit naff, but the light is rather poor today. Anyway, that's two more done and dusted and I can move on to the next thing.

Judging from the Blanche concept art, I think the tail on the big lad is supposed to part of the pelt he's wearing as a skirt. I decided to paint it as if it's his own cute little goat tail, though. Ah, bless.

All-in-all, I've really enjoyed painting these. They have bags of character and they're not too fiddly. I'll definitely be painting a few more in the near future.

Knowing Me, Knowing Broo

Aha!

These two chaps are broo (the OG beastmen) from Citadel's RuneQuest range, which were produced under licence between 1982-3. The inclusion of 'Chaos Beastmen' in WFB 1st ed. was, of course, so you could use Citadel broo miniatures in your armies. Bryan Ansell certainly did (see Warhammer Armies, 1988). When Ral Partha acquired the miniatures licence in 1984 it brought the end to one of the finest beastmen ranges ever produced. To be fair, the same year Citadel launched their C38 Chaos Beastmen range, the first range sculpted by Trish Carden, which is chock full of weirdness and features some absolute classics.

These guys are specifically from RuneQuest boxed set 4 (v3): The Broo 2. Miniatures from this particular set seem to be more common and less insanely priced than the broo released in blister packs. That said, given the short time these were in production, along with miniatures of this vintage being prone lead rot, they're still hard to snag for a reasonable price. I'm not sure my pockets are deep enough for a large broo collection.

I couldn't find the sculptor credited anywhere (they did a really nice job on these). But certainly one of the reasons that the Citadel broo are a notch above the Ral Partha range has to be because they were based on concept drawings by Big John B.

EDIT: The Perry twins sculpted this set (thank you to Hobgoblin over on the Lead Adventures Forum for the info).

Broo concept drawings by John Blanche, reproduced in Heroes for Wargames (Paper Tiger Books, 1986)

Painting-wise, I've not done anything too fancy. The grey skin tones are a tip of the hat to the bestmen hordes featured in the Mighty, Dark-Winged, Avenging Lord of Chaos' Mighty Avenging Chaos Army in Warhammer Armies.