Thrifty git strikes again!!

Give 'Candy Apple Grey' a go too!.

  So the last few weeks have flown past but i have not been (completely) idle. You see, since i have got back into painting i have been 'borrowing' the Amazing Mrs Sprinks craft paints to get the job done. No point in buying miniature paints if i'm not convinced i will keep up with the splodging. Now this has not been a problem so far and has pushed my 'thrifty gaming' buttons but i have been noticing a sort of dry and grainy finish on the minis i have thus far produced. So i thought i would look into getting some mini paints to fix the issue.

 The mystical paint brands of Mrs Sprinks.

So i had a delve on line.......and had a ruddy heart attack!!, GAMES WORKSHOP WANT £4 FOR A BLOODY THIMBLE SIZED POT OF THE PISSING STUFF, THE CHEAPEST, ARMY PAINTER, WANT £20 AND CHANGE FOR A STARTER SET!!. WHATS IN THIS STUFF ANYWAY? FAIRY TEARS AND UNICORN FARTS??!!!!....ehum, yes well, you get my point. So i dug further as to why i should use mini paints at all when i had a fairly complete set of paints just lying around the house where i could swipe it any time. I mean, the Amazing Mrs Sprinks is managing to turn out work like this with the cheap stuff:

 So it must be good enough for a total pleb like me. Apparently mini paints have a finer pigment or something but many folks on line use the craft stuff for minis with very little problem. This was what i wanted to hear but did not solve the issue of the finish.......then some further digging on the subject turned up these vids:

 LOOKS LIKE I'M MAKING A PAINT SET OF MY VERY OWN!!!!!!!!!.

 So a few ebay orders later and i had the following:

It took a few attempts to get the mix of paint to medium right but not too much work (and there is a real nack to decanting thick paint into the thin neck of a dropper bottle). In an evening i had a paint set ready to go at a fraction of the price of the manufacturers stuff!!. I know what your thinking: 'Yeah but Sprinks, is it any good?'. Well glad you asked because oddly i have been using the stuff and i have to say it is great. As soon as you have a good viscosity nailed the paint becomes easy to work with and it covers really well. The 'chalky' finish has gone, replaced with a slight gloss sheen which is kind of old school and has a charm i rather like. And dropper bottles are the bloody nuts, so much control over how much paint you use, especially when mixing. Want the proof, here are the latest batch of minis for the £30 challenge thing:

Black Rat Co bows.

The wrong 'uns practicing for their next line up.

I also did a few units of Skirmishers:

Sneeky feckers.

As with the rest of the army these are 12mm troops from the rather fine kallistra miniatures.

 So thats the missile lobbers for the army done as well as all the foot, just some mounted troopers to chuck paint on and i should be done. Here's a group shot of the army so far:

The Black Rat Co assemble to conduct some form of prickishness or other (boo!! hiss!!).

So far the cost of the army is:  1.5 packs of Kallistra Scottish pike @ £9.00

                                                  1 Pack of Kallistra 100 years war Bowmen @ £6.00

                                                  4 Dark alliance army of the dead 1/72 (as 'ogres') @ 80p

                                                  1 Kallistra command stand @ nowt, they were free samples!.

                                                                                                                          £15.80 spent so far!.

.......'till next time.......

Getting there

 

                                                They were good once.......honest guv!.

  Just a quick progress report type post, its rather weird having a painting project on the go, i have never completed a full army so this £30 army challenge is proving rather refreshing. I have so far  finished the non-missile toting foot troops:

The Black Rats mercenary company so far.

  The force so far consists of 3 units of spearmen (the shafters),  Captain C.C Bathion the company commander and the power behind his double crossing/ backstabbing reign of terror: a mob of Ogres that have so far not turned on him, murdered the Rats to a man and stolen everything that's not nailed down.....yet.

 The spear troops are kallistra 12mm minis and are rather nice to paint. If you were to enlarge the picture you would no doubt see the horrors that are the individual paint jobs however at this scale it is the effect of the unit as a whole that matters (i hope!). The Ogres are...well i will let the 1:72 fans have a guess in the comments but i think they work well against the 12mm troops, they have a real sense of 'heft', like they could wade through the 'little' people!. Also they don't have that silly G.W.  body builders in armour style about them.

ORDER IN THE RANKS!!!!!!!!

  So far i have only used half the pikemen i ordered for the army as i settled on 2 bases of 8 men per unit. I think this looks good and allows me to build more forces for less, i am keeping the rest of the pikemen for an opposition force. This also means i have saved a bit of money towards the challenge!.

Hopefully i will have some more troops to show soon.

The total so far: 

1.5 packs of Kallistra Scottish pike: £9

1:72 'ogres': 80p

Command stand : Free (samples)

              £9.80 so far............

.........'till next time.......

......'till next time........