writes:It was last year when I showed you some incoming barbarians painted by our friends at Blue Table, and I am finally getting around to basing them up.
These barbarians were one of the armies originally released for Mighty Armies, and I've collected several iterations of these same figures (and given several armies away to staffers and friends). We featured a Workbench article on a previous army, and I think there were one or more small armies before that. (It helps that Mighty Armies armies are small!)
If I remember correctly, I acquired this particular group of figures from one of our TMP members, and it was a non-standard assortment (not the usual army pack, lots of figures, not the usual mix of figures). I'm only doing Warrior stands for this article. In the original army set, an army had three or four stands of barbarians, at four figures per stand. I'm doing three figures per stand (which is what most Mighty Armies armies now do), and there are 14 stands here – a big army in Mighty Armies terms!
All that I've done is to mount the painted figures on plastic Mighty Armies bases (1" x 2"), put some plaster on the bases to smooth them, paint and flock the bases, and add LITKO FlexSteel adhesive magnets on the bottom (for storage purposes). This army is 'color coded' with brown bases to make it easy for new players.
What I particularly like about the color scheme chosen by the painting service is that these barbarians have a Viking look to them, Nordic hair, ready for war, and the faces really 'pop out' for me. The shields have 'horned helmet' red silhouettes on them.
With some careful bending, you can add some variation to figures that are otherwise identical.
Did you notice my mistake? I'm pretty sure that after I flocked these figures, I used an old brush to knock off any flock that might have attached itself where it shouldn't. But then I sprayed a sealer matte coat, to protect the figures as well as to help the flock remain in place year after year. What can go wrong (and which I didn't notice until I took these pictures) is that the act of spraying on the sealcoat can cause the flock to fly loose and land where you don't want it – as you can see, up the legs and on the cloaks!
So that's a lesson for you, and a trip back to the workbench for me! 