A basing picture tutorial

Soo, this is going to be the first tutorial on my blog. I've done some tutorials before, and the main thing that in my mind makes a tutorial easy to follow is pictures, lots of pictures! So I'm going to do my best here :-D

On my warhammer models I've used all kinds of different techniques, some as basic as just putting static grass all over the base or some as difficult as doing rocky outcroppings or tiles. Since I'm currently painting a lot of miniatures to get set for some serious playtesting I've decided to go for the middle road. The main colors of my gameboard are brown and green grass so thats the same I'm going for with my bases.

This is the finished product I'm going for (way to go showing off my first archer :-)


Sooo, lets get started!

Thomas de Berkeley

Yey! So I finally got some sunshine here in the rainy Netherlands. Time to take some pictures of my second noble, Thomas de Berkeley. The real Thomas de Berkeley (his grandson) had 10 white crosses on his heraldry, but since that would look very messy at this scale I've decided to only add 6. Since it is not known until 1250 what heraldry the de Berkeley's were wearing (Thomas appears on the Falkirk Roll of 1298) I've come up with the solution that 4 more crosses were added since his forebears went on crusade. Of course this is fictional, but thats the fun in coming up with your own characters.

Objective markers!

So during the writing of rules and the painting of mini's I came up with the idea of making some objective markers. Considering what would be a good objective I ended up with one simple thing: Food! Every army marched on its belly and foraging was a major reason for skirmishing or battle.

Of course, little signs labeled 'here be food' is not very pretty on the tabletop to fight over so I've done a bit of brainstorming and ended up with either cattle or harvested products. First I've tried to get hold of some cattle, but that turned out to be less easy than I expected. As an alternative to ordering miniature cattle from the miniatures-companies I looked for toys, since that would be a big difference in price. Well, beside the big difference in price there is also a big difference in scale! Even the smallest pig I could find was about half as big as a horse (that would provide a lot of meat though!).

Since that idea was wiggled off to the kids' toybin, it was time for plan B. Since raiders would probably not be too keen on harvesting or processing food I figured they would be looking for stuff that they could easily carry off. Big sacks of grain seemed like a good way to go. I brought my tailoring skills to bear and cut up an old t-shirt into little strips of cloth, sowed those together (the things I do for this hobby), turned them inside out, filled them with ballast and painted them up. Mounted on bases so they will be distinguishable as gaming pieces the end result was quite statisfying :D.

Levy Militia

So, I've just finished one group of 10 levy militia.

Since there are no 12th century kits availiable I've used the multi-part plastic 'Saxon Fyrd' kit miniatures by Wargames factory. Since ordinary militia would probably have much the same weaponry in the 10th as in the 12th century I thought they could do. I've used as much kiteshields as possible since the round shield would be very much outdated by then but there weren't enough of them in the kit (not much a surprise as I'm planning to have 24 militia and only 12 kiteshields are availiable).

I've decided against the more modern kite- and heatershields since I figured that militia wouldn't have any 'modern' equipment. Those I'm saving for the sergeants.





They've turned out very nice, very characterfull mini's!

Lord Bardolf

So the first retinue I've been working on is almost done,

Lord Doun Bardolf, Baron of Wormegay and Shelford, father of William and Thomas (yet to be painted) with a retinue of two squires carrying the extra equipment and four mounted sergeants.

Lord Bardolf has been put together from the Fireforge Games teutonics (awesome sculpts!). The squires are from the plastic norman knights set from Conquest games, converted with extra equipment and headswaps. I used the gambeson bodies in the sprue for the squires and the chainmail bodies for the sergeants.




The sergeants are Conquest Games Norman knights, only minimal conversion done by a headswap and some alteration to the helmets.




In the future there are going to be some sergeants on foot to complete the retinue, but since there I have not found any plastic 12th/13th footsoldiers, those will wait a bit since both Conquest and Fireforge have announced that they will be bringing out those in the near future. In the meantime I will work on my second retinue and some Levy Militia to be able to put the first scenario together. After that I'll flesh out the retinue with more retainers like a standard bearer, veteran etc.

** Note: It has been correctly pointed out that the heraldry of the squires and sergeants aren't in line with history. I'll be correcting those errors after I finish my current paintwork, stay tuned for updates :D