Painting Challenge - Moorish Horse Archers

OK no regular posts for 3 weeks and now two in one day – but it took me til the 26^th until I could get painting.  I have completed a unit of 8 Moorish Horse Archers in 28mm to add to my El Cid hordes.  I think that this gives me 80 points towards my very far distant goal….

The figures are hard plastic and produced by Hät, who mostly do a wide range of 20mm figures.  I picked up 3 boxes of 12 figures each on my last business trip through Vancouver in June at Imperial Hobbies, which is a well-stocked store and is conveniently located when traveling by Skytrain to the airport. 

These were the first Hät figures that I have painted, and they in the end produced reasonable results (to my eyes anyway).   The detail is not a clean as found on metals, but the plastic is neither bendy like Airfix nor brittle.  They are also a little lighter in build than metals, but that doesn’t hurt for a LC unit.   In particular the horses are very nice and have the look of fine boned Arabians.   I painted them in my artist acrylics with generous washes. 

The shields and flag are free handed, because that’s how I do them.   I may redo the flag later but I am mostly happy with my results.  I’ll toss my thoughts into the forum on free hand vs. bought flags and shields.  Which is I see no point in paying good money for products that are more frustrating and time consuming than DIY, especially as the results never seem to be worth the bother, cost and time.   Yes I am an old fashioned curmudgeon but my first ancients army was Hoplite Greeks and I handled that so can handle anything else.  As for flags, free handing ancient banners is quick and for Horse’n’Musket I get them free from Warflag, or in some cases DIY on the MacBook.  So if you are buying flags and shield designs, you need to grow a pair and get on with doing it the real way!

Challenge Entry - Fred and Ginger plus 2 Bangers

I had a busy December so this is my first non-bonus round submission, and it’s figures that I actually had primed for last year’s challenge but didn’t proceed with any further.   

We have two Napoleonic 28mm siege cannon, a 12 pdr and an 18-24 pdr, both on fortress cannons.  They are made by Brigade models and match the similar pair that I did submit to last year’s challenge.  But honest they are different models (check the much chunkier rocks on the bases on tis year’s models).  They are very nice pieces; I will use them for War of 1812, FIW and SYW projects.  And yes the rocks are definitely over scale, and will be replaced with proper gravel in the form of model railway ballast when I get a pack.

Also we have two 28mm civilians from Reaper, a barman a working girl.  They cam in a multi-pack with figures that I used last year in the Challenge.  I’ve christened the barman Fred as he looks like a Fred, plus I remember an odious barman named Fred from Coronation Street in the 80s.  So Fred needs a Ginger, which fits for obvious reasons.  Michael A did a much better job on this particular figure for a bonus round last year, so hopefully everyone else forgot about that by now.

I think that these add up to 30 points (10 each for the weapons and 5 each for the foot figures).