Turkic Ghulams

I have painted a small unit of Turkic Ghulams and as a sort of homage or maybe inspiration from Medieval Total War II I tried to paint them with lots of green.

The miniatures are from Old Glory except on that is from Perry, I switches so the Perry miniature got and Old glory horse to better hide the sculpting differences.

Overall I like the Old Glory sculpts, they are not perfect but it was a nice change to get some new sculpts and new horse designs.

The banners are home made from pictures I found on the internet and printed on regular paper. I then added some paint on them to make them better fit in with the colouring of the miniatures.
Lets face it, I can never paint that good calligraphy by hand...

Some of the shields are transfers and some hand painted. These six are the first half of a whole unit planned. And painting six at the time sure is funnier then batch paint them all in one go.

The miniatures are painted with a heavy green theme as I wanted them to stand out a little in the army and I wanted to theme them a little after the colour for the Turks in Medieval Total war.

Enjoy.

Here be trolls...

It really was ages ago but I took my "Tomtar och troll" game to the club and we managed to play two hilarious games.

In the game each player controls a troll and are "cooperating" in making a raid on a unfortunately gnome village. The gnomes are working the fields and are doing their daily life so are totally unaware of what will happen to them...

We had some new kids at the club testing out what this hobby is all about. And after a game of Warhammer 40k Kill-team and some miniature painting I thought it was time for them to learn how to "behave" in a gnome village...

The largest of the trolls have just entered the pigsty and is getting ready to fill his stomach with pigs...

Two poor gnomes are being hunted by a troll wielding a large stone.

Some of the gnomes seams to gather at the village centre in an effort to defend their homes.
 

After a hilarious game it was time for them to go home.

But I had still time for another game.

With some new players a new raid on the village was decided.

 A mighty troll charges the gnomes guarding the entrance to the village.

A troll shaman has just climbed over to the pigs and was just about to start devouring them when...

...When Johan rolls a blunder and instead climbs out and away from the pigs...

My troll here is running away from some gnomish militias that had formed up on the other side of the village. I had have some small encounters with some gnomes earlier but got my nose bloodied and was not looking to get into a new fight with the growing size of that militia.
 

One of the trolls finds a nice chest and manages to open it only to see a angry dwarf inside of it...
Somehow the gnomes had an dwarf in a chest in their village. I have no idea how he got their but he was really angry and attacked the troll.

A small gnome unit manages to push a troll out of the village and back into the forest.

The gnomish militia units I was running from earlier have managed to enter the village and just after I had eaten some pigs and was getting ready to run for it again... I blundered and got a move backward order... So instead of running away from the gnomes I climbed out of the enclosure just besides a group of angry gnomes trying to protect their village...
 

The gnomes have now taken back control of the village centre and is starting to chaise away the trolls. One unlucky troll didn´t manage to get away and was swarmed by a angry gnome militia....

One troll was investigating one of the smaller houses at the end of the village only to find tree gnomes inside attacking him with forks and other handy tools...

Here we called it a day, most of the trolls had severe injuries by now and the gnomes had taken back their village.
That was some great games with lots of fun. Thanks to all.

Frälse till fots

I have now finished a unit of knights on foot.

I think I spend more time searching for information about which noblemen to include, their colours or heraldry markings and so on then actual time painting the unit. And Im still not secure to if I went with the right choices.

Anyhow I have now completed unit of dismounted knights belonging to the house of  Folkunga/ Bjälbo. And therefore the unit have been given a blue banner with an yellow lion. The variation on the lion is the one I think looks oldest of the ones I have found. It ties the colours of the knights together and shows they belong to the house of Folkunga/ Bjälbo.

The banner is hand painted and learned a valuable lesson when I used a pen to paint the black borders between the lion and the background... Wait until the pen have dried...
I had to repaint much of the yellow as the black lines got all smushed out when I touched it when I intended to glue it in the first time...

I have used more single bases on this unit then I normally do when painting units as I wanted to have more miniatures available to Lions Rampant or other skirmish games, but also to be able to mix some of these into medium infantry units for that extra level of punch in combat.

 

Folke Jarl
I have chosen to paint six of the Knights as belonging to Folke Jarl and emphasising heavily on the red and white.
The centre figure could be used to represent Folke Jarl.

Acourding to the Eric Chronicles Folke Jarl could be called the founder of the house of Folkungar/ Bjälbo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Chronicles
Other sources say differently but its worth noting.


I have previously painted some mixed infantry belonging to Folke Jarl, more on them here: http://kampgruppe-engel.blogspot.se/2013/10/medieval-infantry-of-folke-jarl.html

The next six knights are painted as to belong to Magnus Minnesköld
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Minniski%C3%B6ld

I have seen several versions on his name and it could be linked to different variations and have different sources.
It could be synthesising on the word "Minne" which means memory.
It could be the on the word "Månesköld" which means moon shield and it could be "Minnisköld" which could be small shield.
I have chosen to give him a small shield with a moon on it.

For his closest men I have continued on the blue theme and I gave one of them the same moon on his shield.

This leaves me with four knights left. These I have painted somewhat generic an got them a multibase.

Another bonus with having so many of them single based, besides for Lion Rampant is that it will make it easier for me to include mixed foot knights into the ranks of lesser soldiers to stiffen them up. An idea I really and think is really historical correct and fitting, the rules for this I will borrow from the Feudal Scottish list in Hail Caesar.

Muslim scholar

I painted another miniature from Midlam Miniatures and I really like the somewhat cartoonish appearance.

Eventually I will have a full court to accompany my Commander or townspeople to fill a small town. I really like these civilian bystanders that could be used as a way of adding that extra detail to a game board.