Dux Bellorum 11 More Pict cavalry and home made sabot bases

 Here are two more tiny mounted skirmish units for  my Pict force and also my mounted leader and companions and a unit of mounted nobles.

Once again the skirmish types are wargames factory with some Perry and gripping beast plastic additions .

The companions and nobles are a mix of dark age and late Roman Gripping beast plastic cavalry with the odd anachronistic Saxon helmet thrown in for good measure together with some Perry Ansar shields and some Black tree design shields to try and tie them in with the infantry. I enjoyed painting these chaps and they went together well, I would have preferred that you had full arms, rather than half arms but its a minor quibble on my part.The leader is a  metal Gripping beast figure. 

This completes the Pictish army ,giving me three Dux Bellorum forces, I'm moving onto the shieldwall armies next, so it will be Romano British and Late Romans over the winter, which should be fun!

They're all sabot based onto 120mm wide MDF bases with balsa cut outs. I've also included the previous mounted Pict skirmishers on their sabot bases and the ordinary Irish riders. 

That was strange, the pictures uploaded in the reverse order! Still better quit while I'm ahead!

All the best Iain 

Dux Bellorum 10 Pictish mounted skirmishers

 So here we have three mounted Pictish skirmishers for Dux Bellorum, forming a unit. They're made up of the wargames factory Celtic cavalry box and I can safely say that they are the worst multi part plastic set I've assembled so far. I've swapped out the heads and arms for Perry and gripping beast plastics from the Ansar and dark age warriors respectively.  

The horses are particularly weird, especially the heads, I've got a  couple more units and I need to sabot base them at some point, they work alright as highland ponies I guess? 

The detail on the human heads as supplied is also really soft,I've kept them in the bits box, so maybe I'll find some sort of use for them!

That's it for now,next up more Pictish cavalry of one kind or another or maybe some basing, I'm spending lots of time prepping figures at the moment. 

All the best Iain 

Medieval buildings from UK open air museums

 So this post is a little different, there are no pictures of miniatures or terrain in this post. What I have got is a number of photos I've taken of various medieval buildings at open air museums I have visited and as I have accumulated them as reference for terrain building I thought they might be of interest to others thinking of further builds.

15th century barn at Chiltern open air museum 

Iron age Roundhouse interior Chiltern open air museum 

Iron age roundhouse Celtic Harmony camp

Tudor outbuilding Weald and downland open air museum 



Man powered well

High street W&D various timber framed buildings 

Iron age roundhouses Buster open air museum 

Saxon longhouse Buster open air museum 

Iron age roundhouse Buster 

14th century flint cottage W&D 

Saxon longhouse W&D above,15th century Wealdon house below W&D

Period beehives 

High Street W&D various timber framed buildings 

Tudor barn W&D 

I hope this is of interest to some, I'm doing this partly because I was going through theseon my phone as I get ready to start on some dark age buildings.  Legacy blogger hasn't lasted long, so this has been painfully put together in the new format which seems to delight in deleting images left right and centre! I'm afraid there is still a  few lost titles in the post but if I were to try and delete them I would no doubt lose more images, I guess I will preserve but it's much less intuitive on the phone, which I understood was one of the reasons for the change? Next up? Probably cavalry, probably dark ages. 

All the best 

Iain 

Terrain 13 ancient trees restored!

Here we have the rusty trees from Terrain post 8 , restored to being pretty much functional.
They were made in the late 1980s/ early 1990s  ( which, I'm reliably informed  by Stew, was a long time ago)on hardboard bases that haven't warped too much, I made them for 40k but they're still usable for historical .
The slate came from the gardenof the  house I was living in as if you dig in almost any garden in London you will find broken slate from previous buildings or that has just fallen off roofs, together with bricks and bits of rusty metal, but no wargaming use for those!
The trees were made out of pipe cleaners( in those days lots of people smoked pipes and cigarettes ) twisted together and what I found (as detailed on the previous post) was that when they got damp the tiny wires rusted and I ended up with Mirkwood as the trees collapsed,so that they got replaced by plastic trees on recycled CDs and round MDF bases.  However inspired by Dave Stone of Wargamessculptur blog  in his terrain challenge I decided to refurbish them , so bound up with copper wire, they have become trees again! They once again got a coat of olive green/grey masonry paint,I haven't disguised the wires as I'm calling them vines! I've also brought the basing closer into my current finish and am happy enough with them.

Here they are with a 28mm monk for scale, they do have a bit more character than the plastic ones, but I will happily mix them all on the table together.  I haven't been painting much recently, I'm just prepping figures so that I can prime them before it becomes too cold,it'll probably be some Pictish cavalry of one kind or another up next.

All the best Iain