Terra Ferra

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====Turning to the Darkside ====
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I have never really liked 25-28mm figures. Why? Well they are big. If I want to field a fair sized army, to misquote  Roy Scheider, I’m going to need a bigger game table. On top of this is the painting. I’ve tried a few times to paint 28mm, buying a few figures occasionally at shows, there are even a load of French Indian wars figure somewhere in the lead mountain, but never really got past undercoating. I’m not the greatest painter and until the last few years was fairly dissatisfied with my efforts. I now have a style/technique which produces 15mm and 10mm figures which are tabletop ready and which satisfy me but would that work for 28mm?

{{:sam_2446.jpg?200 |}}The story starts a few weeks ago when I bought a set of rules from Wargame Vault by Nordic Weasel Games called Five Leagues From the Borderlands. The hook was the word ‘solo’ but those who know me might say it was the word ‘rules’, but I digress. I will play anything but Fantasy Skirmish is right on the edge of my personal Venn diagram. So the plan was to get the rules and make some counters to provide a few hour diversion for a few quid. I use counters quite often to do periods I’m not interested enough to invest time and money into. This time however it didn’t work. Oh the rules are fine but the counters just were not up to snuff. During the game I had imagined a pre-norman invasion Saxon world rather than the usual high medieval. The failure of the counters started me looking at pretty pictures on the web (no not that sort!). In the end I purchased some Gripping Beast Dark Age plastics and a few Conquest Games outlaws. Long gone is the “few quid and a few hours diversion” idea.

{{ :sam_2447.jpg?200|}}So here we are 25 figures painted and ready to play. What did I learn? Well the technique works for 28mm, at least well enough to produce table fit figures, I’m never going to win a painting competition. One thing that did surprise me was how easy it was to miss bits out! I would be looking at a figure and realise I had missed out an arm or other obvious part of anatomy. Another point I was less than happy with the figure posses. This is not a Gripping Beast problem but me sticking the arms on some times the figure ended up looking a bit ungainly. I could also have done it cheaper. Plastic figures are of course cheaper than lead ones but I now have enough left over to do a whole army, buying lead would reduced the total cost on table.

So what now? I can certainly see myself doing some more 28s.   Assuming I get into Five Leagues From the Borderlands which is set in a ‘low’ Fantasy world and my dark age infantry will have to double up as undead ‘fresh ones’, bandits, Barbarians, villagers, religious fanatics, Fey (Elves?) etc. etc. Gripping Beast do some nice religious figures in their SAGA range (for the Religious Fanatics) and I found some nice Silvian Elves for the ‘Fey’, but Arabs might also fit as ‘Fey’ into my vision. With the over purchase I might look at doing a Lion Rampant army (hence Arabs rather than elves). Now were are those French Indian War figures? …….
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Terra Ferra

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