Army General on Hippogriff

Well, a wingless one, to be precise...

I pulled the wings off the D&D prepainted mini, filled up the gaps with putty, and added a saddle-cloth and strap made with some foil.

I like the way the eyes were painted on the original mini, so I placed blobs of blu-tac over them before priming the mini so I could preserve them.

The hippogriff fits squarely on a standard cavalry base (without its wings), and I plan to field it as a warhorse. The rider doesn't really fit onto the back - there's a little gap -but that is probably as well since he would otherwise sit a bit lower than a moutned figure on a horse.

The figure on foot is the dismounted version of the same character. Neither one is particularly flamboyant compared to the Warhammer figures, but I guess that's what you get when you use historical figures. The general will be fielded in a unit with other knights including the army standard an a musician, so hopefully as a unit they will look more impressive.

DIY Movement Trays

With a few dozen figures painted, I decided I would make myself a few movement trays. The many movement trays available on the market are good, but they can be expensive. After considering a few materials, I settled on styrene sheets and strips.

I chose the Sidewalk sheet because it comes pre-scored with grids. By scoring lightly along these gridlines, I could snap the pieces off and end up with a base with perfect straight lines and right angles. The rectangular cross-sectioned strips were chosen over the square ones because I wanted my trays to have a narrow and tall lip. Using a pair of clippers, it was easy to cut these at right angles.

As the material is styrene,they can be glued together using the same Tamiya glue that I used for the figures. I glued the strips to the reverse side of the base, which is smooth. And there you have it.

A coat of primer and paint and some flocking on the lips and we're ready.

The sheet costs about US$8 and the strips about US$5, and will give two 5 x 4 infantry trays and two 5 x 1 cavalry trays. I'll probably need another sheet for the whole army, but the numbers seem good.

Mounted and dismounted

It's been a while since I posted - I've been busy with the Perry mounted men-at-arms.

Now one of the fun things about Strandhogg is when a mounted figure is hit, you roll to see if he was hit or if it was his mounted that was hit; if his mount was hit and killed then he can try to jump clear and continue the battle on foot. This means you sort of need a dismounted version of each of your mounted figures.

For the goblin warg riders I simply substituted a goblin warrior with the appropriate weapon; for the mounted men-at-arms I thought we can do better.

The Perry plastic men-at-arms come "multi-pose", which meant I could choose heads and torsos to match those of the (non-multi-pose) metal dismounted men-at-arms I already own.

They are not perfect matches, but I think the idea is there.

I hope to have all the riders completed this week and start work on their mounts next week. This will take a while...