A Comprehensive Cavalcade of Cossackish Clubmen

 Here are my new peasants mixed with my old peasants, 125 angry Eastern European farmers. Quite pleased with the overall effect.

 

In this pic, I added a command base and some skirmishing musketeers to make it a proper rebel rabble battalia. 

 Probably my last peasant pics for a while. Next up, maybe Tczew casualties, maybe Trench Crusade, maybe more Of Gods And Mortals.

a Plethora of Peasants

 Here are the Peasant Levy / Dark Age unit builder mashups for my Khmelnitsky Uprising angry serf rebels.

First are seven of them that I just kinda think turned out neat. The Baron's War peasant arms don't quite match the Dark Age bodies but it's not a huge problem

 

These three guys sport looted German-style gear from Warlord Games' ECW/TYW plastics.

I wanted at least some to be in more casual, non-attacking poses. These guys could be objectives or civilians in a skirmish scenario, or even staffage for the terrain.

 

These four are armed with maslaks, a pretty region- and period-specific weapon for the poorest of peasants and tatars, just a horse or donkey's jawbone attached to a stick. I use the curved blades from the old Wargames Factory Persian Infantry to represent the jawbones, and greenstuff for the little straps holding them in place. 
 

 

 

And here are the rest. The heads are almost entirely from the Dark Age Unit builder, with greenstuff fur added, but there are also a handful off Gripping Beast heads and even a few Wargames Factory Persian heads.

 

Later this week I hope to get some pics of these guys mixed in with all my previous peasants, for a proper hoard of rampaging rabble! 

Peasant preview

 I've been meaning to for a while, but I finally bought a box of Peasant Levy and a Dark Age unit builder from Wargames Atlantic to combine into Eastern European rebellious serfs. The former has some delicious peasant weapon arms, including a variety of axes, billhooks, pitchforks and flails, while the latter has oodles of basic bodies and hairy heads. 

 I just took a handful of pics here for scale comparisons and to give a sense of the greenstuff usage this involves. These guys should go great with the Gripping Beast conversions and TAG minis that make up most of my previous peasant hordes.

 

Norse Kaiju

 Haven't had much hobby inspiration lately, but I did eventually paint some big monster types for Of Gods and Mortals. The Frost Giant is, I think, an old Reaper mini. The Fenrisulfr is a plastic toy, and the Jormundgandr is a plaster knickknack that was $2 at Goodwill. Gripping Beast plastic vikings for scale.

 

This pic also has a Thor converted from a... Goliath Barbarian?  

 

Of Gods and Mortals - Dark Ages

 I've been working on adding some mythological type characters to my Dark Age collection. I've had the OGAM ruleset for a while but it always vaguely bothered my that all the factions, while possessing iconic gods and heroes, barely (if at all) overlapped chronologically. So I've been using the point-buy system to create some gods and saints for a specifically 900 AD ish set of factions.

I'll come back around with more detailed stats later, but here's a preview of three 900 point forces.

Here I Stand

 Here I Stand is a boardgame of Early Modern Europe, combining military, theological and diplomatic action into a very complex card-driven map-based game. My brother rounded us all up and learned the rules, and also put together themed music playlists and drink options. It was a blast.

 I decided to chip in by building miniatures to replace the standees that represent the military commanders on the board. I initially thought there was just one per faction, but there's more! I did have a couple preexisting minis that were relevant, but I had to do a lot of converting. It got a little rushed but overall they turned out quite well enough for the group.

 

The game standees have tiny portraits, so I explored Wikipedia and sometimes Google image search to get fuller pictures of the individuals in question. I did get a little creative to distinguish some of the plainer-dressed commanders.  Fun fact: Montmorency's tennis racket is not an anachronism (except maybe very specifically in the details of form, he was Francis' tennis buddy), but Dragut's telescope predates their actual invention by decades. 

 

 The game itself was a blast! We called it at the end of turn 5 or 6, since it was 2 in the morning, and my Ottomans had the most VPs (by one!) at that point, but I doubt I would have won if we played to a proper game end. 

I did feel bad about the Papacy not having any commanders to model, I had meant to bring some of the Catholic minis from my previous post so the Papal player wouldn't feel left out... but it turned out he had a better way to represent his faction: 

A little late for the conclave but...

 I painted some Catholic guys, these are Perry miniatures for late-Medieval or early Italian Wars, but I'll also using them into the 1600s for my Poles.

I've got all these and a bunch of Orthodox guys, but only like one or two Protestants, my Swedes need spiritual guidance too!