Burma: Chindit Support Weapons

This is my entry for last weeks Lead Painters league. One of the great things about LPL is that it makes you paint stuff you have had hanging around for ages. These support weapons will be very useful for my Chindit army. They are a 3 inch mortar and a Vicker's HMG. Not easy to lug around the jungle, but very useful in battle. 

These miniatures are form The Assault Group. 

VBCW: Servants and Sailors

I haven't painted much for VBCW this year, but I took the opportunity to paint a few figures for the Lead Painters League competition .

First up is a landing party form eh Royal Navy. The Navy, by and large, have chosen to side with the Left Wing forces in the Very British Civil War, and in Liverpool and the Wirral a good number of the armed men who defend the Liverpool Free State are volunteers drawn from the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy. I plan to add to the Navy in my LFS force, to build them up to a full company. These five are a mixture of 1st Corp and Pulp Figures.   

Next up is the men from the Duke of Farnham's Household Militia, part of the Dukes private army drawn up to defend his holdings from the forces of the communists and fascists. The Duke is the head of the Chester City Local Defense Force, and is a Royalist. 
The Household Militia (known as the 'Homeboys') are formed into two companies. The first company, The House Company, is comprised of the male servants and staff of the Dukes house. The second company, The Dukes Own Groundmen, is made up of the Groundsmen, Game Keepers and tenet farmers off the estate. The Duke will only commit the House Company when he is desperate or assured of victory as it damn difficult to replace a good valet in a time of war.
Links to the Dukes Own Groundsmen are here and here

These figures are by Gripping Beast, Iron Clad and Musketeer Miniatures. 

Lord of the Rings: Rangers

This was my third Lead Painters League entry. I won that round, which I am very glad about as I really went to town high lighting and shading these guys. I am delighted with the outcome. 

These Rangers are from Strider's little band of Dunedian  Rangers who watch over the lands of Bree and the Shire, protecting it from nameless horrors, orcs, wargs and so on. As Strider puts it to Butterbur at the Prancing Pony "...foes that would freeze his heart, or lay his little town in ruin, if it were not guarded ceaselessly."

Lord of the Rings: A Breelander and a Hobbit

Two quick additions to the blog: I apologize for the crummy photos by the camera/light wasn't quiet right.

Althric the Wanderer is a citizen of Bree, east of the Shire. He is an herbalist, who wanders across Breeland, and even as far as the Eastfarthing Wood. Most folk in Bree consider him a bit odd, if harmless. The shire-folk treat him with the same cautious politeness the reserve for any traveler who ventures into the shire.

Sandy Brandybank is a hobbit Border, which means he is among the sturdy band of hobbit-folk who patrol the borders of their lands on the look out for anyone, or anything trying to cause mischief. He enjoys regaling tales of the strange sights he has seen over a beer in the Green Dragon Inn after his patrol.
Althric is a Perry Miniatures Crusade Pilgrim. Sandy is a Games Workshop Hobbit. 

Hotel Zugando is Launched!

Today marks the launch of something of a divergence for Four Colour Super Minis as I have decide to start another blog dedicated to my Zugando Force on Force campaign. Hotel Zugando will contain all my African stuff along with lots of fluff and background for the campaign, links to useful websites and similar blogs, while Four Colour Super Minis will continue to offer Super Heroes and Villains mixed with a good dose of anything else that catches my eye, like zombies, spies and VBCW.

There’s a long-winded explanation of the blog over on Hotel Zugando, so I wont go into it too much here. Basically it is a chance for me to collate everything I have done for my Zugando campaign in once place. I hope it will appeal to you, and possibly attract new followers too. Fear not though, Four Colour Super Minis will continued to be updated just as frequently.

Check it out, hopefully it will float your boat. 

Burma: Chindit Patrol

The second round of Lead Painters League saw me finish off five more Chindits for my 1943 Burma campaign.  Again I have tried to up the ante a bit on the painting, and am quite pleased with the blending and highlighting on the cloth. By all accounts the Chindit's Jungle Green (JG) fatigues faded very quickly when they got into the humid jungle, and so I wanted to simulate that effect. 

These models are from all of manufactures of Chindits in 28mm (as far as I am aware). They are, from left to right, BAM, Foundry, TAG, BAM and BAM. Foundry are my favourite  but they only make them with SMGs, and according to the Bolt Action army lists in the Armies of Great Britain book Chindits only have 2 SMGs per section, so I need loads more with rifles. 

By the way- this round of Lead Painters League was a draw. so that is won one, drawn one so far. Looking good!

SAGA: Norman Warlord and Knights

Having got a few games of SAGA under my belt  my fancies turned to expanding out the game a little and trying something new. With that in mind I decided that a new war-band was in order,and so I have started a Norman war-band. Bearing in mind that it took me two years to paint the Vikings and the Anglo-Danes, this is likely to be one of my slow boil projects. 

These figures are plastic ones made by Conquest Games  (confusingly, not Conquest Miniatures, which is a different company). I painted them for the first round of the Lead Painters League competition  run by the Lead Adventure Forum. This is the third year I have entered the LPL and I'm trying really hard to up my game and produce high quality figures. I think I have been guilty of taking a few short cuts to get figures finished recently  and that shows in the photos on the blog. That stops now, and it's back to basics, with good highlighting and blending. 

Due to the rules of the competition I will only post my pictures on the blog at the end of the weeks voting, so as not to unduly influence the votes. I have to paint at least 60 minis in 10 weeks, so it's something of a marathon rather than a sprint. The standard of the competition is always rather high, so wish me luck. 

Four Colour: Starfire

Starfire is the latest in a long line of superheroes protecting the city. Starfire, aka Douglas Barrow, was a geeky research student working in the Metropolitan University, examining meteorites.  When the university laboratory was destroyed by a freak lighting bolt, mutagenic compounds extracted from the space rock somehow infused Douglass Barrow,s weakling body, transforming him into a superhuman, with incredible strength, endurance and the ability to project photo-thermionic energy from his body. 

Owing to being distracted by other projects I noticed that there was a distinct lack of four colour goodness in the blog this year, so I thought I would try to readdress it a little with this offering. This figure was a gift from my old pal Leon (AKA Pulp Citizen), a life long wargamer and comic book fan, who went to the rather extreme length of commissioning this figure to be sculpted and cast in resin. He only had a small number made, so I was honoured to get one. Obviously I wanted to pull all the stops out paining this one, and I am rather pleased with the results. I think it is the best one I have painted this year. The colour scheme was inspired by Booster Gold, one of my favourite heroes from the 1990's

French and Indian Wars: British Light Infantry and French Fur Trappers

 Here are some more of my French Indian War figures for Muskets and Tomahawks. First up, some British Light Infantry, skirmishing away on the flanks of the Regular Infantry.  

Next up, some Frenchies (boo!).

 These are fur trappers and frontier traders, or as they were called by the French Coureur de Bois (Forest Runner). These rugged types penetrate the deep forested interiors of Canada, living off the land and trading furs with the natives. In M+T these guise are a sort of elite skirmishers, able to use the terrain to their advantage. They sport beards and fur hats too, so they can't be all bad.   

These figures are by Redoubt Miniatures

French and Indian Wars: British Regular Infantry

It's time for another distracting aside. 

SAGA certainly took the gaming world by storm, with it’s quirky game play and fun skirmish scale battles. Leon (Pulp Citizen) and I have been playing a few games and are starting to get into it, but that’s not going to stop me getting distracted by an all new gaming project and, for me, an entirely new period: Muskets and Tomahawks and The French and Indian Wars.

The French and Indian Wars (sometimes called the French Indian War or FIW) was basically the Seven Year War as it was fought out in North America, between the British, with their Native American allies, and the French/Canadians and their native allies. The war is most commonly remembered in the collective consciousness thanks to the Last of the Mohicans.

The games Muskets and Tomahawks, (M+T for short) is a game by the same writer as SAGA, but it is a very different game that really captures the atmosphere of the period. I have read the rules, but have yet to play a game, and am really looking forward to it. It has been getting rave reviews.

I have begun work on the Red-coated British Regular Infantry. In truth I have been plugging away at these steadily since November, just doing one or two as the mood struck me. I still have a few more to go, but then I can start on the really good bit- the Indians!

These figures are by Redoubt Miniatures.