Nord-a-thon week 10 (2022 week 31)

Last week we had team red of Frostgrave Barbarians and this week we have team blue and I probably would have made my life a lot easier if I'd broken them into batches of five rather than seven, seven, six. These guys were a challenge (I can saytype that since at the time of writing, I've completed them). I wanted to do a good job and that added a lot more stress than I expected and doing them in smaller groupings would have made that at least slightly easier. 

For this batch I experimented a lot with GW Contrast Paints which I do like. What I don't like about them is that they're so terribly expensive. Also, I hate GW pots which, like many, I spill frequently. That makes their cost that much worse. I'll probably buy a bunch more in the years to come because they are really good for speeding up base coats but in all honesty, I can't imagined ever running out of paint at this time. I mean, I've completed a lot of figs and I've run out of exactly three pots of paint, one of which was an airbrush paint used heavily for zenithals (so basically every miniature) and one was an ancient flesh wash that leaked all over the dang place. Tune in next week for the thrilling finale of this theme!

2022 finished mini counter: 154/100

Nord-a-thon week 9 (2022 week 30)

Last week ended the middle batch so this begins the late batch, and continuing the trend from last week, these guys are even less Viking than the last. These burly dudes are Frostgrave Barbarians by Northstar and like the rest of the Frostgrave figs I've painted, these have been great. Also, before anyone rushes or shuffles slowly toward the comment section, I am in no way implying that the Vikings were barbarians--I just wanted to keep the theme going!

Unlike the first two sections, this isn't a speed paint batch, though they are still a batch. Last year when I  wrote up notes for the Frostgrave Crewmen (seen in Week 18, Week 19, Week 20, and Week 21) I noted that they probably deserved better paint jobs than I gave them (~1.5 hours per fig) so this time around I spent a lot more time and I hope it shows. We'll go through the entire cycle of these guys in the next few weeks before going back to the more freeform crap that usually happens here.

2022 finished mini counter: 147/100

Nord-a-thon week 8 (2022 week 29)

These guys are not technically Vikings or Nords as far as I know, though I doubt that any non-historians would be able to tell. Like the last couple weeks, they're also metal models and in slightly better shape than the last few. These are Warlords Saxon Leaders - Battle of Stamford Bridge and Saxon Earls & Kings - 11th Century. Had I realized that the Warlord pages had such good reference and if I weren't painting these guys as a speed paint batch, I might have chosen different colors and more details. For those interested in the history, the first batch includes Morcar of Northumbria, Edwin of Mercia, and Tostig Godwinson and the second includes Ethelred the Unready (sorry, no ash on this keyboard), Leofric of Mercia, and Edmund Ironside.

These guys end the middle batch of this theme, the longest I've done to date! They were done at an average of 45 minutes per fig for the 18 of them or about 13.5 hours. They were done in about a calendar week of easy painting while managing some other junk--stay tuned to see that!

If I have a regret about this batch, it's that I didn't spend more time on these specific figs. They will hold a higher quality paint job and I almost regret how plain their shields are. 

2022 finished mini counter: 140/100

Nord-a-thon week 7 (2022 week 28)

These guys are Viking Hearthguards from Warlord and like last week's offering, these guys are metal models. Also like last week's offering, they required a lot of cleanup which I didn't do a great job with. So I got that goin' for me. Also notable, their spears are super bendy since they're the same pewter that the rest of the models are made of and I'm super certain I'm going to break them at some point.

2022 finished mini counter: 134/100

Nord-a-thon week 6 (2022 week 27)

Continuing our batch of Vikings, we have these eight huscarls from Warlord. These are metal models whose sculpts are good but whose molds are bad. There's a half-life on molds and the more you use them the more they start to break down. These seem to have broken down quite a lot so the cleanup was rough and I didn't do a great job. As a reminder, these were a batch speed paint so the paint jobs aren't super high quality.

And of those of you who were wondering what a huscarl is, I'm assuming these guys are the military retainer variety as noted in wikipedia. 

2022 finished mini counter: 130/100