Winter Update

 Not much new this winter, except all the snow.

We don’t get the big snowfalls like people down east with those Nor’Westers or people in Colorado with the huge snowfalls.

But we do get blizzards, which is sustained high winds and snow.

This year they’ve been a near weekly occurrence and we are getting blocked in by all the drifts.

So it’s been a great time to do favourite tv and movie rewatches, read a book and paint toy soldiers.

Here’s a scene reminiscent of Valmy. Hong Kong soldiers made into Revolutionary war period French.

Next are a few Thirty Years War types. The large base is a terico, made of figures from one box of Mars figures. The pikes are those provided in the set and a bit of an experiment on my part. I used to just use florist wire, but after I dropped a biscuit tin full of pikemen, I kinda walked away from them. These soft plastic pikes may not be painted (yet) but they stay in place. 

These next guys are actually lead 25mm Minifigs S range if I’m not mistaken. I bought a bunch of broken figures and these guys were in them. No swords, but they look ok on those Giant copy horses. Also there is  a squadron of Warrior Miniatures 25mm French Cuirassier.  

And finally here’s some of those medieval figures I bought and featured in the last blog post. They paint up nicely.

Cheap Medieval Figures ****Updated****

 I’ve looked at Ali Baba and other places and noticed Caesar minis for sale in loose bunches.

Largely these have been World War 2 types, but I saw these medieval types on eBay:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/165147756445?hash=item267392c79d:g:DUsAAOSwBVlhdpIN

I checked on plastic soldier review and these are indeed Caesar minis, from these sets:

European Knights:

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=1974

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=2299

So for $12-16 US, one can get 200 figures in 12 poses which is the equivalent of 4 boxes of Caesar.

I picked up some.

I’ll add some pix once (if) they arrive.

My hope is that these are releases by Ceasar under licence and not just pirates, and that they release cavalry and ancients.

If they do chariots from the Hittites I’ll faint and hit the floor.

****Addendum****

Well it’s December 22, and the soldiers arrived yesterday.

11 days from order to my house, very good considering it’s Christmas season!

So what did I get?

I ordered a double dose of figures, that is 400 of them.

I received four bags of figures:

The package label is a ubiquitous one showing larger 54mm type figures with horses:

The figures themselves are of a hard plastic, which is a relief as the original Caesar figures were notoriously soft with rubber twisty weapons that were often difficult to straighten, and bent figures that had a tendency to lean and fall over.

Their use is pretty broad, as medieval types go, but I can see the heavily armoured pole axe figure being a “stand in” for Swiss infantry or even bill men in Wars of The Roses scenarios.

The heavily armoured types could also pad out an army of Lord of The Rings armies along with those Dark Dream Alliance sets.

They are 1/72 scale:

So for around $20 bucks I ended up with 400 little guys that look pretty good.

(After I posted this I sat down to count the figures and they do vary, from 180 plus to 190, so you don’t quite get 200 figures.)

I can only hope they continue to release other periods in a like manner, along with mounted figures.

Risk Europe

I saw this game a while back.
It said it had 22mm figures.
So I finally bit and bought a copy:

4 colours, with more than 60 miniatures each.
Here’s the meat and potato’s:

Top row has nick knacks, small crown tokens, tiny walled castles and a bag of dice.
The bottom row has the four armies plus a bag of siege weapons.

Here’s the blue army:

Archers have crossbows, men at arms have axes and shields, the cavalry look somewhat Viking-ish with large battle axes.

The green army:

Archers, standard medieval foot soldiers with sword and shield, and barded cavalry.

The purple army:

Definitely a Muslim army look to them. Turbans and scimitars.

Finally the orange army:

These guys look eastern, pole axes and barded cavalry.

The siege weapons:

A catapult, a trebuchet, a giant ballista, and three men with a battering ram.

Now the box says the figures are 22mm tall.
So here are some figure comparisons:

Next to Giant recasts of knights they fit in well.
These Giant figures are available from several toy sellers by the bag. I got mine from ATS toys.
A little pricey.

Archers next to a 1/72 Norman figure. Not a bad match. Btw, there are polish recasts of many Airfix and Revell figures showing up in bags of 100 or so figures.

Another Revell recast shows that he is taller and beefier than the game pieces.

The mounted troops are pretty small.
Here I set them on dominos to be on a level with the other figures.
On the left is a cavalry scout from the game Sid Meier’s Civilization.
On the right is a Revell Saxon.

As for numbers of figures, each army has 35 “footmen” or men at arms.
12 archers
12 cavalry
4 siege engines
1 army banner (a flag on a stick).

So was it worth it?

I really liked the blue siege piece, the three men with a battering ram.
Most of the archers would be useful.
The men at arms would have to be in their own unit or mixed with smallish figures like the giant recasts.

Anyway, the cost was about $50 Canadian, or about $30-$35 US.

Stand Ins

I often check out board games for the minis inside. A while back I found a version of Risk! called Risk! Godstorm:


https://www.amazon.com/Avalon-Hill-4098337-Risk-Godstorm/dp/B0002Y0QXA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487955537&sr=8-1&keywords=risk+godstorm


From the box it looks like you get some nice hoplites in armour and some Viking looking guys.
The price is around $30 range and you get a whack of figures.
I ended up with some 300 guys all between 1/72 and 25mm high. They are made of a vinyl like plastic, so they are softer than esci type figures but not floppy.
NO hoplites though.
What you do get are 300 of the same figure in 5 colours. The figure has leggings similar to dark age figures, trousers, rough tunic with oddly ornate sleeves and long hair. He has a caveman barbarian looking spear and a rough wooden shield, more like a small targe, with metal studs.
The odd thing is that he's a lefty.
Spear in his left hand, shield in his right.
So these aren't front rank soldiers.
But they might do to fill in the nameless ranks of barbarians or rear rankers in another army.
So here's my first attempt, not quite done yet but here goes:

They need hair touch ups but otherwise they're there. A barbarian horde.

I also painted some to back up my Warrior Miniatures Saxons:

With the Miracle Dip you can see the odd shoulder detail, best ignored in my opinion.
Here they are backing up my Saxons:

They do pad out an army.
Not bad for stand ins.

Crusade Miniatures Polish Army From Warrior Miniatures

Hello. Good to be back blogging again after a disastrous autumn computer wise. A couple of hard drive crashes and a failed android battery left me stymied. So I settled into painting more.
This time I thought I'd make a departure from the plastic realm and show a 100 piece army I purchased from John Holt of Warrior Miniatures:


http://www.warrioronline.demon.co.uk/


He has many 25mm figure ranges and features 100 piece army deals.
I've been a customer over the past 25 years, so I settled on trying some figures that I haven't tried before.
He has in his line some medieval sets under the "Crusade Miniatures" line.
here's the link:


http://www.warrioronline.demon.co.uk/crusade/index.htm


I ordered the Polish army.



This is the army I painted. They are nice figures, crisp and clean and feature a nice degree of detail. I base coated the infantry with a brick red and painted them in earth colours. The cavalry I base coated in white. Painted with acrylics and painted with "Miracle Dip", ie Minwax Tudor Stain for that shaded gloss look.
The army comes with a couple bags of accessories in the way of spears, lances and axes. In point of fact, the infantry have enough side arms to select pole axes or spears for the entire company.
Here are some more pix:

The knights are interesting, having winged helmets. IIRC Funcken has a picture of these sort of knights in his books:
http://dev.artvalue.com/image.aspx?PHOTO_ID=2657085&width=500&height=500


One quibble. The figures are cast in a nice hard metal that allows minimal adjusting. And by minimal I mean almost none. I dropped the red fellow and his wings snapped off. A quick repair with white glue and super glue did the trick.


The infantry are a nice lot:

I used the pole axes, but I had enough spears as well. I think they'd look fine without a weapon as they have a sword and scabbard. Nice pose and detail, I think they could stand in for many different armies.

These two units are archers, one has axes and shields with their bow and quiver slung.
And now the cavalry:

Listed as Kazak cavalry I left the spears off them as they tend to be a bit soft in my opinion. The figures are kitted out with axes and bows, so they aren't naked. Very useful types I think, from ancients to medieval.

Heavy cavalry. These guys needed their lances.

Dramatic looking, they certainly stick out from the drab looking infantry.

The remainder of the 100 piece army. I suppose I will mount them individually. As you can see I had one casualty in shipping. He might make a good flag bearer.
So what was the damage?
Not much.
Listed at 35 pounds, plus shipping to Canada it was a total of 50 quid, which worked out to 80 dollars Canadian.
I ordered in early January and John shipped within a day or two. Two weeks shipping and I was painting. I did a quick job on these guys, but I had fun, and they were easy to paint. The clean figures took acrylic paints like a dream. I liked the small rectangular bases that made fitting them on my wooden bases very easy, I didn't have to trim any.  So I can recommend these figures for anyone looking to put together a small force or a DBA style army. two or three of these sets would make an impressive wargame army.
In fact, I ordered another army (different era) in early February, and I received it yesterday.  I've already painted one unit and started another. I'll post soon. Perhaps I'll do "Warrior Miniatures Army of The Month"?

Hard Plastic Marx Miniatures: Knights and Barbarians

I've found these figures in collections of other ebay purchases. There are two types, Knights in shining armour, and various barbarians.
They are produced in brittle hard plastic and hand painted at the factory.
Size wise, they are bigger than 1/72 scalle, and a few are over 30mm tall, but most are 25-28mm tall.
Here are the barbarians:

I imagine that there are some of these figures in soft plastic somewhere. I have some soft plastic 25mm copies of Elastolin Romans and Barbarians.
There are at least 8 poses in my toys.

The knights are a more ecclectic mix of knights and supporting troops:

Some of the knights are really quite impressive:

The catapults are operational, but the rubber bands are crumbling:

I really don't know much about these toys. So like the Helen of Toy stuff, I'll just keep adding to this post as time goes on.