Big Battle Ravenfeast Norman infantry

With the Vikings and Anglo-Saxon armies complete, I have turned my attention towards the third and final army of the 1066 campaign, the Normans of William the Bastard. 

Unlike the other two armies, the Normans have a rather decent sized contingent of cavalry. They also have some crossbowmen and archers. The Normans have a much smaller infantry core: 6 Norman infantry stands and 3 stands of Flemish infantry. 

Here are the completed Norman infantry, I opted to use Old Glory's heavy infantry (SVN-304) which have chainmail in addition to helmets, shields and spears. I will use the medium infantry for the Flemish. 

Side view of the stands to show the armor details. These were very easy sculpts to paint and even the shield designs went quickly. I have a feeling the Flemish/medium infantry will be a bit trickier. 

Frozen Chosin...

Or is that the Frozen Chosen? Any matter, when I went attended the Claymore wargaming convention in Edinburgh, I had the pleasure of chatting with Leon from Pendraken. I had placed a small order for pickup in advance but as I was standing there, I had pounds in my pocket that needed to be spent and lots of tempting miniatures on display. 

I opted to buy Korean War Americans and Chinese army packs in winter kit. It was completely impulse, I had never really considered collecting, painting or gaming the conflict (not entirely true, I think I purchased a pack of 15mm Chinese a few decades ago and maybe painted a couple and then sold them off, but I digress...). I told Leon I would paint some up for the competition with snowy scenic basing. 

Being a man of my word, I embarked on this project. I would initially paint up a platoon of Chinese with some support weapons. The army pack included infantry, officers, radios (alot of radios in fact) and 3 mortars with crews. I placed a small order for some additional support weapons and figures for both the Americans and Chinese. Hopefully that arrives in time for me to get them painted up as well. 

Here are my completed Chinese thus far. The uniforms were painted with a watered down, 50/50 mix of VMC 70.914 Green Ochre and VMC 70.821 German Camo Beige WW2. Green bits were Vallejo Game 72.145 Heavy Grey (which is actually green). 

Basing was accomplished with Golden fiber paste to create texture which was painted with Americana Dark Chocolate craft paint, given a wash of AP Strong Tone then drybrushed with CMC 70.843 Cork Brown. Brownish yellow static grass was applied and then GW Valhallan Blizzard (a very effective product). The reason why I am being descriptive with the paints and techniques is because I will invariably forget how I accomplished the look so I can use this as a reference later on. 

Here is a close up of an infantry base (representing a section) and the platoon command stand which includes an officer in an overcoat. 

Overall I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. I photographed them on a frozen tundra gaming mat that I purchased on sale from Cigar Box. I imagine I will paint up some snow covered hills and outcrops for additional scenery. I will have to do some research on the battles to get some good inspiration for scenarios. 

Sardaukar!

I managed to paint up the Pendraken figures that are my proxies for the Dune (1984) inspired Sardaukar Terror Troops. 

Here's the front view to see the green facial screens on both the figures and the movie.

A side view, I decided to give them a small bit of color so I painted three yellow gold striped on their right shoulder pad in homage to the Padishah crest of a lion and the stripes on the white armor of the Sardaukar in 2021/24 version of the classic. 

Being all black-clad in a desert environment, there is only so much you can do with the painting. I might do some additional drybrushing of the base to lighten it up. I used Army Painter Speedpaint black and Fanatic paint for the green screen. Basing was GW's Armageddon Dust (which I was underwhelmed with if I'm being honest). 

I plan to enter these fellas in the Pendraken painting competition's fantasy/sci-fi category because it's not often that I find myself painting 10mm sci-fi.