Merry Christmas!

No abominations today!

Except this one:

assorted Vile Abominations

Here are four evil spellcasters for Witchfinder General. I haven't gotten around to buying actual witch miniatures yet, so these are all necromancers from my preexisting fantasy collection. Fortunately for my half-assed attempts at thematic consistency, witch trials in Eastern Europe tended to persecute men at a higher rate than women, unlike the stereotypical Western trials.

And here are two more ghouls, of a slightly different breed than the last batch.

The ghouls (originally grimlocks) and the scythe-bearing witch are from the Reaper miniatures line that accompanied 3rd edition, I think. The other witch guys are all GW.

The Eternal Conflict

"Whoever wins... we lose."

-20th Century Fox

Nice Lady

"He chose... poorly."

-Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Ghoulsies

"The night was black, was no use holding back

'Cos I just had to see was someone watching me

In the mist dark figures move and twist

Was this all for real or some kind of hell"

-Iron Maiden

New Foes for the Commonwealth

“There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.”

-J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Redcoats

My opinion on current events is sometimes influenced by my awareness of history:

It's mind-boggling that British soldiers from the 1700s were held more accountable than modern American policemen. If you're confused, google (or baidu or yandex) "Darren Wilson".

Related fun fact: if you are a visitor from literally any other country, you have a lower per-capita imprisonment rate than we do here. Putin's Russia? Communist China? Any random banana republic or middle-eastern petro-kingdom? Your government has imprisoned less of its citizens than mine has!

And we call ourselves "Land of the Free"!

Better pictures

So much better...

commander's aides

Since I keep sleeping through the daylight hours, I'm trying an alternative method of taking pictures. I don't think I like this, the flash is quite unforgiving. But here are some pictures of the miniatures that came with the TAG commanders I bought.

The pointing guy with the mail shirt is one of my favorite miniatures ever. I'll have to put a bit more work into painting him to be worthy of the sculpt.

painted boss guys

Here they are, in ascending order of goodness. I am especially pleased with Wisniowecki and the reiter at the end.

more commanders

Not sure why I'm posting WiP shots of these guys, since there's no real converting here. Oh well

The dude on the left is TAG's Janusz Radziwiłł, who I will be using as Marcin Kalinowski, nominal commander of the left wing at Berestechko. The de facto commander was Wiśniowiecki from the last post.

In the middle is TAG's generic Cossack general, who is representing Mattviy Hladky (or something like that; Ukrainian names are even less consistently transliterated into English than Russian ones). The miniature ships with a pony instead of a warhorse, which is historically accurate, but aesthetically unacceptable for a commander, so I swapped it out for one of the Polish horses. He'll be commanding whichever wing Filon isn't commanding.

On the right is TAG's pancerny/cossack unit commander who makes a fine Stanisław Lanckoroński, commander of the Polish right wing. I just sculpted some fur and added a plume to turn his dumb haiduk-style pillbox cap into a proper fur hat.

These guys also came with staff/attendant figs, but they're even less converted, so I won't post them until they've been painted.

Some Commandery Types

Figured I'd show off some works-in-progress. I've got some genuine Eastern Europe character types on their way from TAG, but my out-of-period Perry miniatures arrived earlier.

All of these started off as ACW generals (of the treasonous racist variety), but by tweaking the headgear and a few other details they can make passable Cossacks and Poles. The leftmost is going to be Filon Djalali, one of the Khmelnitsky's subordinates at Berestechko. But if he turns out well enough, I might swap his sword for a mace and have him replace my earlier Ivan Bohun. They have a similar sort of dashing heroic pose.

The dude on the right is supposed to represent Jeremi Wisniowecki. I love his cool, imperious pose, and I added longer hair and a bunch of fur lining to represent this portrait of the guy. Also a hat, even if the portrait doesn't have one, because headgear seems almost mandatory for the era.

The guy in the middle doesn't represent any particular historical guy. His gloves looked quite reiter-ish to me, so I gave him a floppy western hat and plume from the Warlord infantry box, and sculpted a quick lace collar. I might just have him be Wisniowecki's aide, they do look like they're conversing. Or of course he could be a Swede if I ever run my western-style guys as Swedish force.

A Motley Bunch

Here are four essentially unconnected miniatures. A boyar/noble of some sort, a Ottoman janissary, a poor boyar or village elder, and a Western-style musketeer.

The first three can be seen unpainted a couple posts back. The fourth is inspired by this thread, although I cut corners in a few places.

I'm not dead yet

Just busy and tired. But I managed to throw together another batch of light cavalry.

Posting will continue to be sparse for the next few months, as I have both a vacation and a move coming up.

Miscellaneous conversions

I have *so many* WGF Persians. Here is one converted into a janissary, and another into a village elder or poor boyar or something. Some kinda angry bearded dude.

And also a better-equipped boyarish guy converted from a Warlord Games Celt leader.

Historical Mordheim

or perhaps "By Fire & Sword-heim".

The Poles use Marienburg rules (extra money at warband creation):

The Swedes use Reikland rules (better marksmen and leadership):

The Cossacks and Scots use Middenheim rules (stronger captains and champions):

A few new models here and there, but mostly you've already seen these. More warbands under construction...

Back-rank hussars painted

I may go back over the armor, hussar armor is supposed to be polished, not blackened.

And here they are as they were meant to be seen. Which is to say, "barely at all, hiding behind the proper metal hussars."

In most games, I'll probably split them up into two small units.