I haven’t finished painting a DBA army since February? Weird. I blame it on the goblins.
I chose to paint a Mongol Conquest army to participate in the Baltic Crusades themed campaign event at Historicon 2010. This is a fairly one-dimensional army in this configuration: 3x3Cv, 9x2LH. The figures are Museum Miniatures from their Mongol line. I also purchased a traction trebuchet model from Museum for the artillery option, but it was way too huge to fit on a DBA base. A future update shows the alternate model I scratch built.
I used medium cavalry with swords and bows for the Cavalry elements. They’re helmeted, but otherwise look very much like the light horse archers.
Painting this army was an exercise in finding all my different shades of brown paint. I used a grey-blue and dark red for highlights, based on images in the Osprey Mongol Warrior book.
There are two cavalry poses (MG09BP, MG09CP) except for the general (MG01P) and standard bearer (MG02P), and three poses for the light horse archers (MG06P).
This will be another challenging army to play (along with the Skythians). Maybe I just like losing. I’m not very good at playing light horse armies yet, but I want to be.
The surface of these figures is glossier than I prefer. This time I used a few base coats of semi-gloss varnish before topcoating with Dullcote. I probably should’ve waited longer before the dullcote layer.
My next DBA army is already in the works, so it won’t be 2 months before that one’s finished. I also need to paint one more army before Historicon for another theme.
Braxen says:
Nice army. What did you use for the basing and how did you it?
Alan says:
Thanks!
These bases are quick and easy. After epoxying figures to the precut metal base, leaving a fillet of epoxy between the figure and the base, I paint the base brown (I think Vallejo English Uniform in this case). Then I brush on watered down white glue and use a mix of Woodland Scenics fine turf: "earth" and "yellow grass" colors. There are a few bits of larger turf mixed in, which produces the green foliage. This mix of baing material is more due to neglect than planning, but it ends up adding to the overall effect.
For the clumps of grass, I use superglue in a few spots and dust on some Citadel static grass, "dead grass" color. For static grass, usually I apply the superglue and then put the whole base in the bottom of a small yogurt container with static grass, hold the figures down, and shake it.
It's a few steps, but they're all easy and the results are pretty good. In some cases I've tried applying putty to the base first, but I find it to be too much work for me, if most of the base will be covered with flock or foliage.