Some Fresh Recruits

 

Spanish Scutarii

My Minifigs 'PB range'  Carthaginians are starting to look like a proper army now with the addition of a couple of new units. These Spanish Scutarii are a mix of castings, some of which I've had to strip back to metal, others were unpainted castings. That means there at least three different styles of javelin: thick, thin and in-between!

Spanish Scutarii on the march

Here they are marching off. Nice clear castings these with just a little pitting here and there, easily filled with green stuff. The colour scheme is the usual thing for Spaniards, white tunics with coloured borders and black cloaks. As with my other Scutarii I've gone for plain shields: my standard dark red.

Libyan spearmen

Next up is a unit of Libyan spearman. These castings all came from the same 'batch' and have been stripped and cleaned up. Quite a lot of work with these guys: all the shields were badly distorted and/or pitted and needed skimming with green stuff, and all the faces were ripped out on one side and had to be recarved. Took ages... glad that one's off the 'to do' list. 

Libyans on the march

These guys get white shields - which is to say a light grey colour - my other unit of Libyans are the same dark red as I used on the Spaniards. The idea is that each type of battleline infantry has a different colour shield. All basing on these new units is as my usual plain green and WRG Ancients base sizes. 

Gondorian Citadel Guard

 Strange looking Carthaginians... well that's because these are Minifigs Mythical Earth (ME) Gondorian Citadel Guard. I've been building an army of the ME 'bad guys' and didn't really intend to touch the 'goodies', but here's my first stab. They are a bit 'black', but I've managed to lift them a bit by painting the cloth in a lighter grey. 

Citadel Guard off to do some guarding

I had a go at a design for the shield - seven stars and a crown surmounting a white tree - but it's a tiny shield and there's a massive boss in the middle of it. Just looked a bit of a mess to be honest; so I decided to leave it plain at least for now. 

With my ME figures I'm going for a matt varnish rather than the gloss I've used on the Carthaginians. I do think it looks better on the fantasy figures, even though gloss varnish - and plenty of it - was mandatory in the day. 

Black...! Black...!

The plan with my new Mythical Earth army was always to re-visit the army I had as a a teenager, and as such it is based on the 'bad guys' in the range, which is to say all those orcs and goblins and what-not. Having knocked together a fair number of troop units I thought I'd have a go at giving them some commanders in the form of what Minifigs called the Ringwraith/Nazgul (M57) and Skeleton Man (M32 mounted on M60).

Ringwraith/Nazgul ME57

And here we come to the tricky bit: how to paint  black? Never an easy one and I've ducked the issue  almost entirely by painting the flying beastie thing darkish grey, mixing in a little green to soften the colour a little.

Otherwise, I've gone for dark grey patches on the rider to show off the swirling... whatever it is. Could be a cloak. Could be a bedsheet if bedsheets were black. maybe it's just smoke and plain nastiness. We may never know. 

Is it a bird? 

The model was stripped of its 70s enamels and lashings of contact adhesive, before reassembly using superglue and greenstuff. Once I'd posed the wings to my liking I discovered the rider would no longer fit - note to self check rider for fit before fixing wings next time (eight to go after all). I resolved the issue using greenstuff and my special powers of bodging. 

Is it a plane?

I drilled out a hole underneath to take a length of brass rod, which I duly inserted into the beastie with hardly a squawk on its part or mine. The other end sits in a round mdf base - my first departure from standard 70s basing but a necessary one if my nazgul is to remain airborne. 

I managed to keep the overall impression of a 'black rider' on a 'dark beast' whilst giving the thing some life. As always, Orclord's collection on The Stuff of Legends website provided inspiration and I confess to have shamelessly copied the treatment of the rider's face. 

From the top

And finally... I considered all kinds of fancy marbling, flames and lightning patterns but in the end went for this simple solution for the wings. At this point you have to admire the sculptor's lack of concern for the mundanities of actual and credible  physiology in favour of something entirely their own. I still love it. 

 With a flying base it's useful to load the base with terrain to give it weight, but I've steered clear of doing so to keep the same clean look as the rest of the army. The stand is fairly low so I should get away with it. Fingers crossed. 

Skeleton Man (ME32) riding
 Horse for Skeleton Man (ME60)

When I started painting this chap I thought it might be cool to go for a 'four riders' theme: one black, one red, one pale and so on, and I might do that yet. This time though, I thought I'd go down the traditional route and paint the figure black: bony chap, black undernourished horse, black cloak-thing. 

When painting black I like to vary the colour a little by adding a little blue, red, green or brown just to give the thing some shape and separate the different elements. 

This seemed to have worked out okay, although it's not a highly detailed model and you do have to paint on some of detailing, as it were, especially around the legs and feet. 

It's not all that clear where the idea for this model came from. I always supposed that it was meant to represent The Mouth of Sauron, the Black Numenorean emissary of Sauron who treaties with Aragorn and Gandalf before the final battle in The Return of the King. If so, then it's a rather liberal interpretation of the description in the book, where there's no suggestion the character is anything other than a normal human... albeit a very naughty one. 

It makes me wonder whether this was a toe in the water to explore the idea of a larger selection of skeleton warriors, as was to appear in its full form a little later as part of The Valley of the Four Winds range. It's certainly odd that the rider and horse should be sold separately when there's no obvious alternative for either. 

The face withstood a fair touch of improvisation and I was pleased with the way it turned out. It's not quite a skeleton skull and not quite a zombie head, but I've gone bony throughout. The colour is mixed up from dark earth, white and a little black . 

I've gone for a standard cavalry base for this one, and I'm sure that will do for now. You can see that the model's metal base is a little twisted, it's quite a thin base and I think it got a little mangled during a former life. Funny how you always notice at the end... 

Eons ago one of the GW 'Eavy Metal painters showed me a basic technique for highlighting black, which is to just catch the very edges with white or practically white, and then blend to black over a very, very short distance. If you blend through several darker shades as you might for reds, greens and so on, the result ends up looking grey. 

Well that's two baddies done and while I'm at it I thought I'd have a go at a Gondor Citadel Guard... these are also predominantly black! A few folks asked me if I was going to broach the 'goodies' and I must admit I've been putting that off. However, I've now got a unit of these on the bench and this is the test piece. 

Gondor Citadel Guard ME35

This is a very common little model from back in day and one that turns up on the second-hand market regularly. You can also buy the same model from Minifigs as part of their reissued Classic Fantasy line, so he's not hard to get. 

This chap bore stripping, cleaning up and repainting quite well. I decided to liven him up by choosing mostly light colours where I wasn't obliged to go black: trousers, shirt, boots and belt. I also used a lighter more silvery colour for the armour that I would typically use for the bad guys. 

Just for once I started this fellow over a black undercoat because so much of the figure is either black or metal. I normally paint over white and would selectively base coat in black where necessary, mostly because I find pure black bloomin' hard to see these days! 

As (almost) always the mail is beautifully and finely engraved and I have to say it makes a remarkable change from painting modern figures where mail often resembles nothing so much as a string vest.

I've not ventured any heraldry on my guardsman. Tradition has it that the back of the surcoat and/or shield should be daubed with a white tree or - should one be so bold - a tree surmounted by a crown and seven star. Efforts from the 70s generally resemble a mushroom cloud more closely than anything else. Or possibly a mushroom. I wimped out obviously. 

The shield colour is basically black with a little Prussian blue - it needs an edge highlight but I wanted to rule out all possible 'tree' options first. If the shield didn't have the boss I think we'd be in with a chance. As it is... well... 

A Few More Mythical Earthers

 

Goblin with Spear, Shield and Bow

I added a unit of Goblins to my growing Mythical Earth (ME) army - Miniature Figurines 'not' Middle Earth range from the early 70s. These are the ME56 figure, Goblin with Spear, Shield and Bow. When I collected these as a nipper these were cheerfully dubbed the 'GSSBs'.

I stuck to the same colour palette that I used for the Man Orcs: iron for the metal-work and dark red for shields and straps. As I always do I primed in white, painted the base flesh colour, and then ended up almost repainting the rest of the model black to carry the armour and fill-in behind the shield and arms. Although a little lining with a brush will be done at the end, I mostly rely on the black undercoat for this, cutting in the surrounding colour to leave a neat divide.

ME56 is a funny little figure and you have to wonder whether it originates from the same hand as the rest of the range. The sculpting style is very unusual for Minifigs. The pose is also quite poor from the point of view of moulding and casting - although that is hardly a unique thing with these early Minifigs. The spear is crudely done, a very thick piece of wire which has been flattened and cut into a point without any attempt at shaping the spear-point. 

The armour is modelled to represent either mail or scale, and it's quite hard to tell which. Again, this is not the Minifigs way, which is to engrave the mail as is the case on the Man Orcs and other models in the range as well as all the contemporary ancient and medieval ranges. 

I've been picking these up from ebay and friends have contributed a few too, so it's hardly surprising that there is some variation in the models I have. Although the spear butts are all grounded at the back of the base, some extend over the lip of the base itself, making a longer spear held at a necessarily different angle. Some of my figures have the spear butts clipped - as is the case with this example - which was obviously done by the original owner to neaten them up. 

I have enough usable models to paint up another unit the same size, and a smaller batch of figures that are probably too poorly case to make the effort worthwhile. I think the inferior castings are genuine Minifigs, but I guess it's possible these could be contemporary re-casts - it certainly wouldn't be all that unusual were that the case. The poorer castings have massive fill-in behind the arms and shield where the mould halves haven't properly closed. I can't bring myself to paint those. The good news is that ME 56 has been re-issued as part of the Miniature Figurines Classic Fantasy range. I've not seen the new castings but hopefully they'll be up to scratch. 

The GSSB was a popular model in the day, not least because it was a reasonably potent tabletop proposition with a combination of weapons that offered ranged and close-combat abilities otherwise unavailable to the servants of the Dark Lord. 

I've also painted up a couple of sample figures: the Dunland Spearman ME21 and True Orc with Sword and Shield ME45. 

ME 21 Dunland Spearman

Here we have the Dunland Spearman - a standard hairy barbarian type albeit with a man-bag slung at his waist. This is a very typical Minifigs spear pose - as seen on the PB Hoplite for example. I've painted this in the same colours as the unit of axemen I already have. 

ME 45 True Orc with
Sword and Shield

And here is the True Orc. Not sure I fancy his chances much with that flimsy looking shield and complete lack of armour. Same anatomy as the True Orc Archer I already have as part of the army, and altogether a pleasing little model in the Minifigs style. The trouble with this chap, and also with his stablemate ME24 True Orc Swordsman, is that the combination of weapons and protection was especially poor in terms of the contemporary rules that we all used - effectively condemning him into the realm of 'D class medium infantry'... and we all know what happened to them. 

Mythical Earth Revisited

 

The Mythical Earth army takes shape

As some may have come to appreciate, I am a bit of a fan of the Miniature Figurines Mythical Earth (ME) range. This is a range that came out in the mid-70s and was the first proper range of fantasy figures available in the UK. The models are 'true' 25mm and entirely compatible with Minifigs historical ranges of the time. I've been collecting these for a while and have managed to amass quite a bit of original metal via e-bay and thanks to the kind donations of friends. I've been a little reluctant to show work in progress until I had a reasonable force ready - let's say something approximating the sort of tabletop army that might have graced a battlefield in the 70s!

As schoolboys my friends and I collected and gamed with this range when it was brand new - and for some reason I drew the 'bad guys' straw when it came to choosing forces. My gaming buddies sensibly went for the Gondorians and allies, or the dwarfs and elves. At the time I was never able to afford to build up the large sized units that the game suggested. So, at least in part, I wanted to go back and recreate the army that was in my mind's eye as a teenager. The core of the army is made up of man orcs (six units of twenty apiece), aided and abetted by goblin archers and Dunlendings (one unit of each twenty strong again) and goblin wolf riders (five units of twelve). The whole is led by a winged Nazgul.

The basing is standard contemporary WRG Ancients sizes - finished in plain green - on mount board. I know a few of my fellow 'old school' army builders like to use mdf bases, which are marvelously regular as well as convenient, but I find them rather thick. Maybe I shall regret this decision, because the board does tend to warp, but it's what I've done for all my armies including the historical ones. I mix the green colour up from Warlord 'Green Webbing' and Vallejo 'Flat Yellow': mixing up your base colour is, of course, madness. I rather like it!

Minifigs never made any man orc archers so I decided to have a go at replicating the Minifigs style myself. The result is not a bad approximation of the original and fits in quite nicely. I based the pose on a Roman archer drawing his bow from the 'PB' range. If anyone is interested I'll get a little post together on how I produced the sculpt. So, not an original model from the 70s but I like to think that it's something that might have been had Minifigs decided to expand the range further. 

Although most of the infantry are original metal (aside from my archers) most of the cavalry are new casting from Miniature Figurines, now owned by Caliver books. At the same time as I was buying up old models, the folks at Miniatures Figurines were putting models back into production. This proved a great opportunity to build up my wolf rider horde.

I've managed five units of twelves models, three units of the axe-wielding riders and two carrying swords and bows. The new castings are clean and fairly easy to prep and paint. They are also slightly smaller than the original metal and a little flatter due to being 'remoulds' from production castings, but you'd be hard-pressed to notice unless you were to place them side by side. 

I have a single unit of original models and the casting vary hugely in quality: I imagine because the pieces were cast at different times and the moulds themselves were variously worn. What was or wasn't an acceptable casting obviously varied a bit in the 70s, and I've resorted to a little bit of rebuilding here and there, as well as filling in sinks and pits, and carving out some of the 'clag' from torn and worn moulds. 

I scoured the inter-web for inspiration when it came to the wolf colours. 'Orclord' Richard Hale's collection on The Stuff of Legends website is a great example of what can be done with these and similar vintage figures, and I confess to shamelessly imitating the Mythical earth wolves in Richard's collection as painted by Andrew Taylor. Of course, I had to paint sixty of the beasts so it's production-line painting really, but I think the result passes muster, certainly as massed units. I'm tempted to have a go at a few conversions - maybe some lancers and possibly standard bearers and leaders. 

I'll take a few pictures of the individual units when I get a chance as well.  Hopefully I'll have a few more units ready soon. Not too sure what to tackle next: maybe a unit of goblins with spear, shield and bow. We shall see. 

More on the to do list

A few more samples figures completed this week including this rather nice Southern Gaulish warrior from the Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars '72 PB range. Unusually dynamic for a Minifigs model and sporting a haircut that would not look out of place on a woodwork teacher circa 1976. 

I have a smallish unit of these that needs a strip and repaint. One for the back burner I feel. As you see, I'm not terribly hot on stripes and checks and tartan all that guff when it comes to Celts. I've stuck to a plain colour in a shade that suggests a natural dye. It may be a little boring but at least they are saved the indignity of looking like a touring Rugby team. 

This fellow is from the Mythical Earth (ME) range - an Ithilien Ranger in fact. I've been collecting the ME range alongside the various ancients ranges for a good few years. 

The ME range is covered pretty well on the Lost Minis Wiki website along with the other Minifigs fantasy and SF ranges from the 70s, so I won't worry about doing any bare metal photography for these.

You can still buy many of the models from this range as part of the Minfigs Classic Fantasy re-issues, and more are being added every so often. 

This is his friend - there are only two Ithilien Ranger models in the range the archer and this spearman. As usual I have given them a coat of gloss varnish - I might try photographing before varnishing next time as I think that would show the highlights off better. 

The Wood Elf archer figure from the ME range is a wee chap even by the standards of mid-70's 25mm figures - I make him a tad under 24mm tall. Note the pixie boots - nice. 

I took a few shots of this model because it was hard to find an angle that showed him off properly. 

I've based all of these Minifigs onto what would have been 'light medium infantry' bases - 20mm frontage and 30mm depth - according to the WRG rules that were current at the time. They also had 'light heavy' infantry. I kid you not. 

While we're at it, this was the first advert for the ME range from the November 1973 Military Modelling. 

Note that the code numbers for the Dragon, Nazgul and Eagle are not as they ended up. If interested, check the 'pages' section to the right, where you'll find a scan of the 1975 catalogue, which includes the full range. 

And the review of the first releases. This is as good as you got when it came to knowing what is was you were buying at the time. I feel the 'Three Yorkshiremen Sketch' coming on, so I'll stop now and spare you that.... and you tell that to kids today... arghh... Nurse!