Hello!
It's been a couple of months since I last wrote a blog post but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy enjoying painting more miniatures from Footsore's The Baron's War range. Indeed I've been learning to paint in batches! Batch painting is a valuable skill all wargames miniature painters must learn because, as much as I enjoy painting for painting's sake (and for the meditative benefits it provides), the best part of owning your own teeny 13th-century army is being able to see them in all their glory on the battlefield!
It's taken a while for me to find my own way of going about batch painting, but now that I've cracked it I see it's actually quite a simple process. Rather than painting a miniature head-to-toe, base-to-drybrush one at a time as before, I now work in groups of four miniatures and do all the base painting in one go, painting like colours across the whole batch to save me constantly switching between paints. I try and keep this initial pass relatively neat but I don't worry if things go a bit outside the lines, the main objective is to just get the colour where it needs to be and to hit those tricky angles. Then I switch to a fine brush and go over the smudges/mistakes, again working in like colours, neatening up the lines and borders between colours. Once this is done I then apply the shade washes, which is quite a quick and easy step, and then let them dry (a good time to start batch painting the next lot of figures). The final step is the edge highlighting and dry brushing, and again it's a huge timesaver here to work in like colours. Then it's just a matter of basing. By working in this way I am now able to get a group of four miniatures tabletop-ready in approx. 2-3 days (fitting a couple hours painting around work and study time) rather than 1-2 weeks of slow head-to-toe singular painting where I'm much more likely to get caught up on little details and lose sight of the bigger picture.
As a result, this is something of a bumper post as I have three packs of four miniatures to share with you! All the miniatures are from the first wave of The Baron's War range, by Andy Hobday and Paul Hicks of Warhost, and are sold by Footsore Miniatures. The three packs seen here are Spearmen - Pack 2, Spearmen - Pack 3, and Bowmen - Pack 1.
Spearmen - Pack 2
Just a bunch of trouble-makers really, aren't they?
This chap is one of the more heavily armoured of his group, surely a veteran of several clashes. His tunic has several small rips and tears, which add so much character.
The spearmen packs tend to feature two types of poses, raised and lowered. The raised miniatures are great for filling out the back of your lines and presenting a fierce, prickly defence against the enemy!
The great thing about Paul Hicks' sculpts are the little details added to each figure that make them feel more like a real person than just a toy soldier, such as belt ends, pouches, and eating knives.
This is my favourite figure of the pack, without a doubt. I love the patched tunic and sleeping roll slung over his shoulder. This guy is no stranger to trudging through fields and thickets on the long march to battle!
Spearmen - Pack 3
Not exactly born fighters, more like born farmers! Still, they're a brave bunch...
This miniature has loads of expression in his little face and pose, just a brilliant sculpt!
For this group of spearmen I wanted a decidedly non-professional look, as they almost entirely lack armour, so I chose to make them "green" billmen, fresh out of the fields, some armed with their tools!
The bills and voulges are a separate pack of twelve pieces, also available from Footsore. There's three types and you get four of each. I really like them, although they are a bit tricky to clean up off the sprue due to being made of a soft metal.
I've yet to master the art of miniature photography so apologies that the polearms are sometimes cut out of the image - I've made the assumption that the figure themselves is much more interesting to the viewer!
Bowmen - Pack 1
Possibly a poacher or two among this motley crew...
The most well-equipped of the bowmen, I like to think of this chap being part of the local castle garrison. Perhaps he's even the captain of the archers there.
If there wasn't already a designated Robin Hood figure in The Baron's War range (from wave two), this guy would be my pick for the legendary archer. As it is, he's a great looking figure and the pose is very dynamic.
I've chosen not to add custom arrows and bowstrings to my archer miniatures as, for me, its too much faff for very little payoff - on the tabletop, they look perfect without them.
I love the warm, earthy forest tones on this figure. He could well be a particularly talented poacher who has been called up in return for a more lenient sentence.
I hope you've enjoyed looking at my work and reading this post, it's been great fun and very satisfying to fill out my The Baron's War retinue a bit quicker whilst still making each miniature look as good as my skills allow. Coming up, I have more bowmen and also some knights, including the Greatest Knight of all England, William Marshal 1st Earl of Pembroke.
- The Kenilworth Knight
P.S. Have a bonus pic of the billmen with some terrain (building from Sarissa Precision)!
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