Lead and Steel 2026 - Acquisitions

So, what did I get at Lead and Steel? A late addition to the show was Four A miniatures, and I picked up a few adventurers, some weird little critters and a cloud of faces that will make an excellent monster.

The goodie bag had a whole ton of stuff from an assortment of manufacturers. For a free show, this is a whole ton of stuff!

The organiser also gave me a couple of other free bits and pieces as we were about to finish, so I’ve also got a drunken master monk and some orcs. Despite having a criminal number of goblins I am very short on orcs for RPG purposes.

Due to the pick and mix results (below) I ended up splashing out on an old Citadel Bretonnian cannon to use as a Border Princes Bombard.

I also picked up an Advanced Fighting Fantasy book to relive my childhood and a pre-coloured ALEPH shipping container- I think by Antenocitis Workshop originally?

And finally, the results of the Pick n Mix for charity. For £10, I got the Bombard and crew, then four cool minis I can paint up to add to D&D warbands and such like.

This is a bit more than I intended to get, but it’s fine. I can just be more restrained at Salute tomorrow, right?

Back to steady progress

 

I finally got the first rank of the Bretonnian Men at Arms finished. They've been "in progress" for a whole long time. I'll work on the second rank in a bit, but doing it by rank keeps it to manageable numbers.

While waiting for the Men at Arms glue to dry I got out the Combined Army reinforcements pack to clean up and assemble in between times. They are quite complicated and a little spindly, so I'm a bit nervous about how much faff they're going to be...

The easiest of them proved to be a faff. This "Base Operator" started off OK, but the moment I started trying to glue his left arm on, it all went wrong. It wouldn't stay on, and while it seemed to have a firm connection it turned out to not be meeting cleanly. I've set it down to let the glue dry before I get back to it. I'm likely to file it down and then mark it up for pinning to make sure it stays on next time.

That said . . . it's time to get the painting tray out again. I've got some Battlemechs, a rogue in a wheelchair and some Halfling adventurers to finish up. My hope is to get a few of these long neglected projects finished up before the end of the year.

Setting up for November success

 

In a gap in the weather, I managed to get these Conquest Games miniatures undercoated so they're ready to paint. I've gotten a lot of my half finished assembly projects done, so I'm hoping to get on to painting shortly.

The last unfinished assembly project are the Bretonnian men at arms. It took me a bunch of time to dig out all the bits for them as part of my tidying up.

Trying to get all twenty five done at once is a recipe for disaster. It'll be way too many, and get overwhelming. I'm planning on breaking it down into individual ranks to make it a bit more manageable.

A short update - Bretonnians, a Limited Model and playing 40K

 

Between work being busy and being Out out, I've not got much hobby done at home. The other half of the Bretonnian command group are mostly done-ish, and I'll be getting on with them over the Easter weekend.

A friend was up at the Warhammer World Open Day and kindly picked up the Steel Rook for me. I love this model - it calls to basically all my aesthetic buttons. Not sure what I'll use it for just yet, but he looks great.

I also managed to arrange my first game of 10th edition Warhammer 40,000 with my Deathwatch. A full write up will come later, but I'm much happier with how 10th plays than my short experience of 9th.

In the upcoming week I've got my Infinity League game on Wednesday, and the Red Star Blues tournament at HATE on Saturday. The weekend after is Easter, where I'm aiming to get a bunch of hobby done alongside some tidying up around the flat.

Assembling Bretonnian Men at Arms

 

So, it's been a long while since I've painted anything for a large battle game rather than a skirmish game. I did a little bit of a stock take, and decided I have enough models for two units of 25 men at arms, and one of 20, leaving me with 36 archers. To bring it up to 4 units of 10 archers, I ordered one sprue of 4 archers from eBay.

I've started by sorting the basing. I've really liked how Krautcover "Common Earth (dark)" looks so far, so I'm using that. I glued it on using a bunch of Geek Gaming Scenics glue I got free in some goodie bag at some point.

I was a bit nervous about how much might flake off over time, so once the glue was dry, I mixed up some more with a bit of water, and soaked them all in a layer of water and glue with an old brush. Once it dried, I wasn't losing any material when I tapped them. Success!

I started assembling the first unit and glued a couple of them to the bases using super glue. After leaving them overnight, I confirmed my suspicion that I couldn't be this lazy and that they were very wobbly due to the connection between the basing texture and the base. I quickly pulled them off and pinned them.

I'm already thinking during assembly of how I want the units to look. I like the idea of naming units, so thought about what their backgrounds could be. For the first two big blocks of men at arms, I've decided to split them between peasants raised from the countryside, and a town militia. This unit is going to be the country unit. In assembly, this will mostly be down to what they're not - I'll be using all kettle helmets for the town militia!

To pin the dog, rather than try and pin through the leg, I ran a pin up into the body up the inside of one leg. You can't see it at any angle you'd view it on the table. I'm really pleased with how it turned out! I decided to use the dog with the "rural" unit as I felt it fit quite well.

For the town militia unit I'll be digging through the internet for town names in Mousillon. For the rural unit, I'm thinking of using the name The Good Folk of Mousillon. It's a nice medieval sounding phrase, and is a nice counterpoint to the later fate of Mousillon.

Plans for March

 

I've got quite a few commitments this month, but lets try and set some goals. I had a delivery a while ago for the next "big" project. I'm not sure I'll get it all assembled this month, but I definitely want to get started... And the reveal as to what it will be is coming a little later on in this post.

Along with the Frameworks kits I looted for parts in January that I got assembled in February, there were two more that I got in case I needed them then didn't open... One is just short basing texture, the other is still on sprue. Lets get them assembled, shall we?

That said, the "ready to paint" tray is basically full, so no more "fun little side paint" assembly until a whole bunch of this lot get painted... If I really want to assemble stuff there's all sorts of dull repairs sitting waiting to be done, even if it doesn't generate any content for the blog...

I've got this small assortment of half finished works in progress to sort out. None of them are particularly time consuming, so should be good for the delicious brain chemicals you get from finishing something. There's plenty to pick from the tray once these are done...

As the project assembly is a biggie, I've dug out the Imetrons I had been thinking of painting last month before I got distracted with a couple of Battlemechs. While the big work this month is project assembly, I want to keep the pace going on getting projects painted.

So, the big project assembly... This is sadly not full boxes. I sold the knights ages ago, leaving only the peasants. Still, it's not the end of the world, I can pick up new ones once I've got these done. The current plan is to paint a Mousillon force, as Warhammer: The Old World is set before its fall.

One thing I haven't decided yet is the colour scheme. The canonical scheme for the Duchy of Mousillon in this time period is blue with fleur de lys, but other sources have them in a yellow and black quartered scheme. I quite like the yellow and black scheme, but I reckon I could do a really solid blue scheme too. I'll probably paint a couple of the palette cleansers in each scheme to help make me the decision.

Why am I putting time into assembling Bretonnians while also saying I have enough stuff assembled? I split my hobby painting between "projects" which are things I game with or super fancy time consuming paint jobs, and "fun little things", which is random bits and pieces and D&D models that are smaller numbers of models who get simple tabletop paint jobs. I've ended up focusing more on the latter for a while, and while its built my painting momentum, it's time to get back to getting stuff done to play with.