Found my Camera

Well, I found my camera, so here's some pics. Unfortunately, I don't have space right now to set up a proper photo-shooting-place-thing, so a lot of them are a bit blurrier than I'd like. But hey, the blurrier they are, the harder it is to tell that my paint jobs are bad, neh?

First, something completely random: The Doctor

Next, a Midshipman for a British crew. Midshipmen were often children; lacking a good supply of child-sized miniatures, I went for the next best thing: hobbits! His hand is still a bit big, but a bit of file work makes it not so bad.

Here's a group shot of a Royal Navy crew
And their nefarious counterparts:

Finally, this is my current WIP:

WIP Roman

Here's my first WIP Roman; he still needs a lot of work, but it's the shield design that's important

Sidenote: I was shooting for Caesar's or Agricola's force. Apparently, though, the armoured forearm identifies them as from the Dacian Wars of Trajan. Interesting...

Legends of the High Seas

Here's my first crew of pirates for Legend of the High Seas:




CAPTAIN JONATHAN STEELE [Captain with Sword, Pistol. Courageous archetype]
Steele was the governor of a small British colony which was overrun by pirate raiders. When he was denied aid from the marines, he took matters into his own hands....


QUARTERMASTER FRANKLIN DABBERS [Quartermaster with hand weapon and flintlock musket]
Franklin was left behind by his former crew during a raid on Steele's mansion. When Steele decided to seek vengeance, Franklin joined up easily, taking up position as quartermaster.


FIRST MATE NATHANIEL RUTHERFORD [Mate with sword and pistol]
Nathaniel was Governor Steele's butler while they were still civilized. He has taken piracy to heart, however, and proven adept with his pistol.

SECOND MATE JULIO CORTEZ [Mate with sword]
Cortez was of minor Spanish nobility who went to the Caribbean to seek his fortune. He met up with Captain Steele at Tortuga and decided to join his crew.

BEN YOUNG [Cutthroat with hand weapon]
Ben Young hails from Tortuga, a brawler born and bred.

JOHN GUNN [Cutthroat with sword and pistol]
John Gunn hails from Carolina; he joined Captain Steele's crew when he defected from the city guard during a raid.

HOB JANSON [Cutthroat with sword and flintlock musket]
Hob is the third survivor of Steele's colony, the former head guardsman. He has proven a talented shot, yet he disagrees with Steele's decision to become pirates.

ABDUL AL-JAZIR [Cutthroat with sword and grenades]
Abdul is a former Barbary Corsair; none of Steele's crew know why he signed on with them, but his grenades have proven invaluable in battle.

Captain Beregond

And here's Captain Beregond, finally. I didn't do as much converting as I'd have liked for fear of ruining the model; but I think I got what I was going for (read: if you have an extra Beregond, give it to me so I can hack it to tiny pieces and start mixing parts). He's mostly done, he still needs basing, and a black ink wash on the armour. The leather could probably due with another coat to hide the failed filing some more. Also, the mouth is currently Shadow Grey; it ought to just be Chaos Black but I seem to be out at the moment. Anyway, here's the pic:




Now that I have Legend of the High Seas, I'm working on a Pirate Crew. A quick pic of some WiPs:




Up next: finish the above crew; finish the Corsairs. Also, Roman Legions (long term).

More Corsairs

While the primer dries on the rest of my reavers, I had a go at some Corsair spearmen. I find them slightly tricky. In some parts, they're very nicely detailed, yet in others the failures of plastic clearly show. Paint scheme wise I'm want to keep every model unique (no uniforms amongst thieves), but I need some level of agreement for the army's purpose. I think they're turning out well enough; they still need touch up before they're done, but I want to see how they all fit together before I go into more detail.

Pictures of Corsairs

Right then. So there I was, trying to figure out how to post my corsair pictures onto the interwebs in an efficient manor. I was halfway through creating a new website, and then I realized "Hey, I already have a blog!" Time to dust off this old thing and actually put it to proper use.

So, without further ado: Corsairs
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First up is Alatar the Blue: The Blue Wizard became disillusioned during his sojourns in the south and, abandoning his call, took the name of pirate.

Hook Guy - Doesn't have a name, or a hook yet. Poor chap. But he's painted (though the green hat's not doing much for him; I'll probably repaint it black as soon as I get some Black paint). You can see where the hook will go; just a little wire


Dwarf - I felt I wanted my army to emphasize the eclecticness of piracy. GW seems to have interpreted the corsairs as a unified entity, their own race. While this is admittedly probably more Tolkienesque, I've always seen Umbar as less a unified city and more as something akin to Tortuga or Roanapur, a lawless den of thieves with lots of power struggles. Disenfranchised beings from all over (though mostly Harad and Gondor) end up in Umbar and become Corsairs. To reflect this, my crew will contain lots of different weaponry/sigils (bitz! my kingdom for LotR bitz!). But anyway, I wanted a Dwarf corsair, and the Gimli w/2-axes looks like a good reaver. The sailor-style paint job didn't shape up as well as I'd like though

Eolaf-Now to some unpainteds. I wanted a Straw Hat pirate a la Luffy from One Piece (but without the youthful optomism), while keeping the gritty, realist style. I think the paint job will make his better; I was trying to position him in a hand-to-hand fighting pose, hence the lack of swords


And just to be fair, a straight-up weapon addition to make a standard reaver. Even if my fancy ones go to hell in a handbasket, this one works (knock on wood)



And now: why I should never try scuplting crossbows. Here's my attempt at an arbalester. Observe this knowing this is the only one I thought worth keeping out of 7.


Taking the crossbows from the command blister and sticking them on plastics, however, I have no qualms with


As long as I'm uploading pirates, here's some old favourittes for comparison.
Captain Jack needs a new name, soon. As soon as I finish up my Captain Beregond (which could be a while, as I can't actually get the base model), he'll get demoted to reaver, and I'm looking for a better thematic point, "Jack' doesn't fit in. He does help my multi-cultural focus, though.


Marty's going to have to be cut from my final company, I'm afraid. He's nice, but the conversion work just doesn't cut it. He doesn't look too horrid from the front (though the filed hair and scarf are still kind of visible), but the back where I tried to lose the cloak is an unsalvagable mess.


Jacobt's got the same problem with the cloak. Also, his smoke bombs are kind of intriguing know that GW's actually given us rules for them. I may use him in Dalamyr's place. Though if I were to do so, I'd reconvert the model from a corsair base instead of the cloaked Warrior of Rohan


Barbossa (new name: Valandil) will remain. The parts of the staff I couldn't file off are a little odd, but not too jarring and his hat more than makes up for it. I just need to put something in his left hand, perhaps a cutlass. It's just begging for a pistol, but I want to keep the tech level clean for LotR



And I'll cap off this post with a group shot of painted guys.


That's all for now; as I paint more I upload more pics