Morgan's Fantasy Warriors Blog # 2
So we meet again, dear reader. The armies are officially underway. I am beginning by painting my archers (for both armies) and working on the characters. I also need to make some standard bearers at this stage. Leaders and Champions will not feature any special conversion work to denote them. They’ll just have small painting differences to make them unique within their units. Overall, my plan is to paint just over 17 of these figures at a time. That way I’ll finish the armies in 5 installments. These models require no assembly, but I had to clean the parting lines off of them. These are a 3D line, visible on most toys and models, left behind where the two halves of a mold come together. If I was going for very simple paintjobs, I could have even left the mold lines alone. But mold lines will be too obvious after shading and highlighting, so they need to be filed and scraped off.
Starting with the Dwarves, I began converting unique hero models to lead the armies. I decided to have each of them lead a different faction of Dwarves that have come together against a mutual threat. These heroes were very simple to make. I cut the axehead and spearhead off two dwarves and swapped them. Now I have a Warchief leaning on his axe, and a Battle Leader wielding his spear like a poll-axe in close quarters fighting. I decided that the Warchief, a unit of crossbowmen, a unit of spearmen, and a large unit of axemen, will be in blue and white. The Battle Leader and a unit apiece of spearmen and crossbowmen will be in red and black. I got the heroes, as well as a unit of crossbowmen, painted up. One crossbowman has a green hood (to denote a Leader) and the other a more complex shield design than the rest (a Champion).
The orcs were a lot more work! I need five heroes for the orcs. So far I’ve only painted four. First I removed the spearhead from an orc, and painted the haft as a copper metallic staff. This gave me a Shaman. Next I removed the sword from an orc and gave him a curved dagger made from the leftover spearhead. This made me a readily identifiable Wizard. The Warcheif was made by stealing an axehead from a dwarf and swapping it for a spearhead. That way, the warchiefs of both factions are identifiable as leaning on their axes, overseeing the work of their subordinates. Finally I took the spare sword from creating my Wizard, and built and orc with two swords, to be a Hero. A small batch of archers were also painted at this point, with simply denoted Leader and Champion figures.
In order to complete the army, I’ll need several standard bearers per faction. I got some plastic rod (available at model railroad shops) and used it to extend the length of several spearshafts and axe handles. I’ll probably make simple finials using beads. The temptation is strong, however, to cheat and rummage through my spares box, for cooler looking flag toppers. Skulls for the orcs, tiny ceremonial halberd heads for the dwarves, etc. But, that doesn’t strike me as being in the spirit of 1991. These flag bearers will get painted up to go along with my close combat regiments later. The flags themselves are made of paper. I and going for simple flags so I will probably be attaching all of them prior to painting. That way, my flags can benefit from a good coat of spray primer to toughen them up a bit.
For now, this is it though. A regiment of archers per side, along with 2 dwarf characters and 4 orc characters. See you next time!