Saxon Army Restoration Part 3

Just a quick update on my Saxon army restoration project. I completed these archers a couple of weeks ago but I had a little trouble with my Vista computer...and...well, I lost the before pictures. No worries, they looked pretty much like the other two units.

I have started on the first formed unit for this army, but I have been a little distracted with other projects lately. I am not sure when I will get back to this but I will.

Completed Beast Herds

Ha! I bet you thought the Tale of More than Four Gamers was dead...well it is actually, but I am still working on my Beasts of Chaos army. I have finally completed the first two Beast Herds. Each of these represents the contents of a single regiment box.

The first unit is hand weapon and sheilds. Why? Well...because I got the models already built and I didn't feel like tearing them apart...and I didn't have the bits to make them into a two hand weapon unit.

The second unit is more properly equipped as a two hand weapon unit. Having never played the game I was still able to figure out that a shield is a waste of time for these guys.

These two units put me at about 750 points painted and ready to go. The movement trays are actually borrowed from the Chaos Hounds units. I will be making new trays for the Beast Herds that will be 7 figures wide by 3 ranks deep. Each unit will then have a character attached to help with the poor leadership.

Saxon Army Restoration Part 2

Here we have the next installment of the Saxon Army restoration. This time we have 8 Dark Age Irish in need of some attention.


This unit has many of the same issues as the first one. One major problem, however, is the skin...its orange. I am not sure how that happened exactly but it must be fixed!


Here is the after image. Looking much better I think. Not award winning but very nice tabletop quality.

Saxon Army Restoration Part 1

After more than a year away from Warhammer Ancient Battles our local group is planning a couple of games days in a couple of weeks. This means it is time to pull out my Northumbrian Saxon army and take stock. I painted this army several years ago and it has been my main army since the release of the Sheildwall supplement for WAB. That makes it about 6 years old.

During that time the army has seen lots of playing time and transport time. In fact, this is the army I took to Historicon 2004 for the WAB tournament. Needless to say, it is starting to show some ware.

This is the first in what will be a series of posts tracking the restoration of this army. I know I will not have this done for our games later in the month but it is a great excuse to get started.

I have a lot of experience with army restorations. It seems that most of my projects involve large amounts of used figures and models. In fact, this army was built with about 50% used models. This project will be a little different, however. For this project I will be doing some touch-ups and highlights along with freshening the bases. The army is very large with about 160 figures. Back when i painted it I wanted to get it on the table quickly so it was speed painted and dipped.

In the Before picture above, you can see the heavy coat of dip as well as some of the damage to the figures. There is also a lack of detail in the painting. The flock is almost entirely worn off the bases. Frankly, they look like crap.

Here is how they look after my restoration work. I have painted highlights directly over the dip layer. This is possible because the figures had already been dull coated. I have also re-flocked the bases. This is about an hour of work and I think they look much better.

Eight down and only 150+ to go.

Another Batch of Space Marines

Here is the next installment of my Knights Of Eden Space Marine chapter. These are the Space Marine figures from the new Assault on Black Reach box set. These are very nice figures even if they are not multi-pose figures.

The sargent is slightly modified. I did not like how the right arm fit. There was too much of a gap between the arm and the body. I replaced it with an arm from the regular Space Marine models and the fit is much better.

These are nice figures and the new box set is a great value if you are interested in one or both of the armies.

This project still has a long way to go before it is done. I have command elements, veterans, scouts and vehicles left. And those are just items I already have. There are a bunch of new models I would like to add to the collection.

More WW2 Germans

Time to take a short break from the Space Marines. Today I have some new additions to my WW2 Germans. First up are a couple of PaK 40 AT guns.



Next we have some German tank Hunters.


Anti-tank rifles are not much good but a must have for early war Germans.


Finally we have a couple of 5cm mortar teams.


I still have quite a few items left to paint for this project. Next up might be the motorcycle scouts or perhaps the cavalry.

Space Marine Casualty Markers

Today's project is a little How-to for creating cool Space Marine casualty markers for 40K. These can be used as objective markers for the new 40K 5th edition missions or as Sacred Ground markers for Cities of Death games.

For parts I dug through my bits box and found the following items:

1 Space Marine head
1 Space Marine right arm
1 Space Marine left arm
1 Space Marine backpack
1 set of Space Marine legs
1 set of Space Marine Biker legs
2 shoulder pads
1 Space Marine torso
1 Boltgun

The exact parts that are needed depends on your plan for creating the model. Most likely you will have to design your model based on the parts that you have available. For my first marine I wanted leg positions that are a little more relaxed than the standard standing marine legs. This is were the Space Marine Biker legs come in. These legs have a more relaxed foot position relative to the lower leg.

After some visualization I decided to make a hybrid between the biker legs and the standard legs. I first cut the right biker leg off at the hip joint and threw the rest back in the bits box.

Next I did the same thing with the standard marine legs. This time I kept the left leg and the lower torso.

Next, I glued the two legs pieces together. I think this gives the desired relaxed look.

While the legs dry I assembled the torso and the backpack.

After everything has dried it is time to attach the torso to the legs. Because of the awkward shape of these pieces I needed to support the legs while the glue set.

The left arm that I selected is an old school marine arm with the flat hand. This one look very strange and just will not work as is. The answer is to take a sharp knife and carefully separate the fingers.

I also needed to needed to modify the shoulder in order to get the correct angle.

The right arm also needed some work. The normal firing position of the arm was all wrong so I cut the arm from the shoulder mount. I then glued the arm back together in the 'correct' position.

Then I glued on the boltgun.

With the arms complete it is time for the final assembly. I added a grenade to the 'relaxed' left hand as I was not completely happy with how the fingers looked.

For basing I used a spare 40mm square base and covered it in FIMO modeling clay.

Then if mashed the marine into the still soft clay. This will leave an impression that will be used to mount the marine to the base once the clay is hardened. To harden the clay just leave it under a lamp for a while. No need to bake in an oven...in fact this would be a bad idea as the plastic base would likely melt.

After you glue the marine to the base it is time to paint and flock.

Here is another one I built at the same time with the extra leg bits. I have plans for three more of these.