This is the Wallachian army cleaned up, glued onto nails, and ready to be primed.
This is the horse archer figure who's bow was broken - as you can see I've glued a length of steel wire into his hand and now intend to use him as the army's standard bearer.
Wednesday 30/08/2006
Hello,
Well, today I've finished cleaning up the figures, glued the riders to their horses and superglued the whole army onto nails & primed them ready for painting. I've found that gluing the figures to nails makes them a lot easier to handle whilst painting and means I can get to all of the awkward nooks & crannies(undersides of horses etc) without too much trouble. It also enables me to paint a bit more quickly than before; working a "production line" method - all the flesh on bowmen 1 through 6, then back to 1 to start on the tunics or whatever.
Whilst I was cleaning up the figures I had a bit of a re-think about what to do with the Light Horse figure who's bow was broken. I'd initially thought about depicting him as a lancer, but after looking at the command figures which would make up the army's sole Cavalry element I decided instead to swap the least inspiring looking command figure with the now lance armed Light Horse model and use him as Vlad's standard bearer. This will give me an opportunity to try my hand at drawing and painting a banner, hopefully making the command element look a bit more imposing...
I've finished my reading about the Wallachian army and have pretty much decided on a palette of colours to use; bright greens & muted browns with grey-white sheepskin hats and jackets where modelled, with the occasional splash of red for a bit of variety should be enough for the Rustici & Curteni. I'll spend more time, and use more reds, on the Voivode, his Boyars and Viteji to make them stand out a bit more.
I undercoat all of my minitaures with Games Workshop's chaos black spray primer. I find that it covers well and gives a good surface for acrylics to adhere to. I like black primer because it's very forgiving - you can pass off any fiddly bits you happen to miss as areas of shadow! I know that there are a few colours, particularly red and yellow, which don't cover black very well, but I've got my techniques for those which I'll discuss in more detail as I progress...
I mainly use Vallejo and Citadel paints, but also have a few paints from other manufacturers; Winsor & Newton, Daler-Rowney & Humbrol - it seems that every time I visit an art/model store I seem to discover a colour which will fill some perceived gap in my paint collection....
I use Pro-Arte Acrylix brushes - they're inexpensive and I've found that they maintain a good point for a long time. I use an old white dinner plate for thinning/mixing paints. Because I do most of my painting in the evenings I have an old lamp with a flexible neck and a daylight simulation bulb (available at most hobby stores). Finally, I find that Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" or "Blonde on Blonde" are good background music for painting..
Well, the 1st coat of primer should be nearly dry - I'll go and re-spray any bits that i've missed and leave them for a few hours.
Whilst I'm waiting I'll measure & cut the bases for the army. I use mounting card for my bases, and have recently discovered that my local art store sells off damaged sheets (bashed corners, slight creases etc) for a 20pence donation to a local charity - I've picked up enough sheets this way to provide enough bases for all my DBA needs for the next couple of years...! Every basing method has it's pros & cons - Although it's inexpensive & easy to cut, I've read that people find that mounting card warps and isn't very durable. I use woodfiller to texture my card bases and find that this makes the bases a lot tougher and doesn't cause them to warp. I'm just cutting the bases for now and will go into more detail about my basing technique once I reach that stage.
bye for now
Bob
Monday 28/08/2006
Hi,
I've not had an opportunity to work on my army this last few days. Although it's been a bank holiday weekend here in the UK (3 days off work is usually a time for much painting), it is also a whole year since I met my girlfriend, and she surprised me with a couple of days in York (Yorkshire, England) to celebrate our first anniversary. It was a fantastic break - nice locally brewed real ales, a ride on the Yorkshire Wheel (similar to the London Eye, only smaller), and a lovely Mexican meal in Plunketts, an excellent restaurant which I can't recommend enough - great service, great ambience and top class food, all at a reasonable price - well worth a visit if you're ever in the area... (don't worry, this Blog's not morphing into a restaurant guide, honest...!)
I did buy myself 2 new paintbrushes and a set of modelling clippers which are ideal for removing bigger pieces of flash from models..
I'm hoping to get back on track, and post some pictures tomorrow..
bye for now..
Friday 25/08/2006
Today I unpacked the figures, giving the castings a quick check for any broken spears/bows etc. A couple of the castings come with separate bows which need to be clipped from the body of the figure and glued into its hand, unfortunately one of the bows is broken, but it's not going to be a major problem - WRG's excellent reference book: Armies of the Middle Ages, Vol 2 describes the Wallachian Light horse as being armed mainly with a light lance as well as a composite bow and a hand weapon, so I think I'll glue a wire lance into the broken casting's hand. This really simple conversion will hopefully add a bit more variety to my army, and better reflect how these troops were armed.
At this stage I can also assess how much work needs to be done cleaning off "flash" and filing down any mould lines on the castings before I can start painting. These castings look quite clean and I think about 1/2 an hour or so should see them ready to be primed for painting.
The figures themselves look great, and seem to accurately portray what I've read about the Wallachian troops. there is a nice mix of light horse figures that should give my elements of Lesser Boyars and Viteji a really varied appearance, in keeping with their irregualr status.
At this stage I begin to think about colour schemes, and how they'll look on each of the castings, although I'll do a bit more bed-time reading before making any final decisions. In addition to the excellent WRG & Osprey titles covering armies of this period I've found the Eye Candy section on the Fanaticus website an invaluable source of information on clour schemes, as well as being quite inspirational! It's also worth mentioning that the Fanaticus site has an excellent forum where other members are more than happy to answer questions and share their knowledge about everything DBA (and a lot more too), including uniform colour schemes.
Well, I'm off to get these figures cleaned up, and hopefully ready to prime for painting. I'll have some photographs to post tomorrow.
'til then
Bob
Hi,
I purchased a Wallachian DBA army pack from Essex Miniatures
www.essexminiatures.co.uk about 6 months ago and have decided to use this for my project.
Essex were one of the first 15mm manufacturers I discovered, and generally I've been happy with their ranges and the quality of their castings. I've tried other manufacturers in the past, with mixed results - when I'm gaming I like all my figures to be roughly the same height - there's something aesthetically "not right" about figures of vastly differing heights and proportions lining up alongside, or opposite each other. I find this particularly noticeable with the smaller playing area used for DBA. That said, I do retain an affection for Tin Solider's Hoplite range, which was the very first DBA army I ever bought and painted
www.tinsoldieruk.com So why Wallachians?
Well, they provide historical opposition for the armies owned by Rupert & Ian, the guys I regularly game with at our club, The Kirklees Crusaders. Ian fields a Later Polish army whilst Rupert commands Lithuanians and a Golden Horde. In the same period I have Ottoman Turks whom the Wallachians can fight against, or ally with in a game of Big Battle DBA (BBDBA).
A few elements of Wallachians are needed by our group for a BBDBA re-fight of Nicopolis which we're hoping to stage at Recon in Pudsey, Leeds in November.
This army has an interesting background, as well as an infamous General. I've been reading a bit about this army and couldn't really pass up the chance to field an army lead by Vlad Tepes - Dracula.
In DBA terms, I'm interested in pitting this army against my Ottoman Turks. The Wallachian's low aggression means they should select the terrain more often than not, hopefully giving the Curteni & Rustici plenty of opportunities to stage their own "Night of Terror" ambushing the invading Ottomans.
Lastly, because it consists of mainly light troops and has no optional elements I should be able to complete this army in a relatively short space of time.
Hi,
Thanks for dropping by & welcome to my blog.
It's the 1st time I've attempted anything like this so please bear with me.
My initial plan is to record my progress as I put together a wargames army for the DBA rules system; from selecting and buying the army, through to fielding the fully assembled & painted force.
I'm hoping that this project might be of some interest to established wargamers as well as giving potential newcomers to ancient/mediaeval wargaming an insight into what exactly the hobby involves.
The main motivation for this project stems from a long-held view of mine (no doubt shared by many other wargamers) that historical wargaming is often perceived as an impenetrable, obscure hobby with deliberately complex and, lets face it, unattractive looking rulebooks - I can still remember reading WRG's 6th edition rules for the umpteenth time and thinking "what the $&*%..?" My introduction to DBA almost 15 years ago was equally inauspicious but considerably less traumatic - coming from a gaming background of slickly produced RPGs and Games Workshop I remember skimming through the thin, card covered rulebook with some trepidation thinking "where are the photographs of beautifully painted miniatures?", "where are the reminder texts and illustrated examples covering every possible eventuality?" - I was, to say the least, distinctly underwhelmed and only agreed to play because I had an hour or so to wait for my bus. I looked sceptical as Gordon Yacomine produced 2 ugly-looking (compared to Games Workshop's 28mm miniatures) 15mm armies from a tiny box, but over the next hour my perception of wargames was changed for ever.
Things have improved considerably since then but I think there is still more that can be done to encourage people to participate in a hobby I love, playing a game that I love!
Chris Brantley made a comment recently on his brilliant website
www.fanaticus.org, which is devoted to all aspects of DBA, that he felt it would be fun to see someone start a blog charting the progress of a DBA army - well, here we are......
