Reinforcements are en-route

I’ve not managed to pick up a paint brush since I finished those penguins but I have been doing other things, including buying miniatures and putting them together.

Since I last posted Mantic have featured my army on their blog which was nice. For the record they approached me and asked to use the photos and I gave them some higher resolution shots than I’ve used here. Makes me wish I’d done a better job on them but the aim was to get them painted up for use on the table rather than to sit in a display cabinet. Various people in forum postings made comments on them being ‘tabletop’ quality which is what they are. Although it was kind of fun racking up huge numbers of hits I’ll be a bit more wary of showing off my stuff in such a public way in future.

I’ve decided to push onwards with the High Elves and I’ve bought a few things I know I want in the army. I’m still not sure about the elite infantry choices so I’ll carry on proxying them for a while, and besides, the Mantic Palace Guard aren’t out yet anyway.

So what have I bought? Well thanks to a well placed birthday I have bought the following:-
1 Mantic Bolt thrower (bringing the total to 2)
2 Giant Eagles (because every army needs them)
15 Mantic Cavalry (not yet arrived)
1 Avatars of War Light Elf Mage (not yet arrived)
1 Games Workshop Dragon

You may have spotted that I have started adding non Mantic stuff to the army. I did consider trying to keep it all Mantic or at least GW free but I’ve not been able to get any more information about their release schedule for the elves other than the Palace Guard will be going up for pre-order soon so I decided to press ahead and order stuff in. This way I think I will have a better chance of getting everything painted up for Toy Soldier in July.

The Gamezone giant eagles are very nice, and very big too. On the web I’ve heard that Gamezone make lovely models but they’re a pain to put together and from sirst hand experience I can now say that yes this is correct. I can’t remember every having metal models whose parts were so ill fitting. Lots of superglue, lots of green stuff and lots of foul language later I have them assembled although I still have superglue stuck to my fingers. My other gripe is that they don’t come with bases, irritating but not too much of a problem – I dug out a couple of 40mm bases and attacked them to those. Later I got a nagging feeling and hit the net, are they really meant to be on 40mm bases or 50mm? WHFB base size chart says 40mm, phew ... but wait a minute – it’s out of date, the new ones come on 50mm bases. Doh! More superglue and greenstuff later I now have the 40mm bases stuck onto cavalry sized bases to make them the right size. Sigh.

Today I had hoped to undercoat the new stuff but the weatherman had other ideas. I opened the curtains to find a thick blanket of snow outside. I guess I’ll have to wait for the weather to warm up a bit before I crack out the spray cans.