Painted Picts

Here are the Picts I promised.

They are from Tanatus Miniatures, a small range of figures which I did not know of until fg showed me the site.

I absolutely love these figures. I especially like the way the sculptor modelled the hair - it is like a Dark Age chart for grading of male pattern baldness - even if the leader does look like one of the Bee Gees, and the standard bearer Ron Jeremy (I was tempted to change the motif on the banner from a boar to a hedgehog...).

They are a perfect match for my Perry plastics, and thus also GW's LOTR range. In fact, I think they have more realistic proportions than Perrys. I replaced the soft metal spears that came with the packs with steel spears left over from my 15mm Attalid Pergamenes.

I painted them using my standard block-and-wash method, which makes them very dull - they look depressing if not for the addition of green flock. They can be used in three capacities: as Dunlending allies for my orcs in our Dux Britanniarum campaign, as peasants in my Strandhogg games, or in the front ranks with my armed peasants in Warhammer, where they will count as Spearmen. The "movement tray" they are on is actually a lipped chariot base, which I bought as artillery bases for my WOTR guns and crew.

I painted them all with black hair because they were described as swarthy and dark-haired by Tolkien - the professor was obliviously and unapologetically racist the way some old British gentlemen are, I suppose. Tolkien didn't tell us a lot about the Dunlending, but it is believed that they are based on the Celts (as the Rohirrim are based on Germanic invaders). While googling, I read that a computer game assigns them clans named after animals, and decided to give them a banner featuring a Celtic-styled boar.

Lacking the skills to make a "proper" banner, I simply found a "parchment" pattern I liked, printed that on a piece of paper, then found a boar motif, resized it to fit, and then printed that on the same piece of paper. This gave me a "pre-painted" banner which I simply cut and glued to the spear. I then painted the exposed edge of the paper with some Devlan Mud, which "sealed" the edge and added some staining.

I really like the way this unit turned out - let's hope I don't fail them in the next DB game...