Beauties and the 'Beast'... oh, and the Wehrmacht!

A bit of a varied and eclectic mix of subject material in today's post! First up...

Reaper Strumpet and Madam

I have had this Reaper Strumpet and Madam, undercoated on the workbench, for many months now, and just hadn't got round to painting them, I guess as I haven't played Legends of the High Seas for a while. I tend to paint what I am actively playing at the time.

But with the VSF Prussians project kicking off, I decided to clear the workbench of its distracting backlog.

It also made a welcome change to painting 15mm WWII stuff.

This strumpet had a bit of a saga attached to it... I bought the figure set off an ebay trader, but when the pack arrived this figure was snapped off at the ankles. It was in a sealed blister pack, and the ebay trader suggested I contact Reaper as their customer service is good.
A little while later, the replacement pack arrived... with the same model snapped in the same place!
I couldn't believe it.
I got back on to Reaper who apologized and sent out another pack. Apparently it had been a faulty batch...
When the good figure finally arrived, by then I had gone off LotHS gaming and was doing other stuff... so they sat unpainted for a while.

As part of the Analogue Hobbies Winter Painting Challenge, I painted up a dark skinned beauty from the Indian subcontinent. And as I already had a blonde (that got me into to trouble with SWMBO!), I decided to continue the 'international' feel of my strumpets, and this last figure I felt perhaps had a little of the orient about her, so I painted her with black hair and pale skin.

 So here she is, provocatively raising her dress, for a flash of underwear! Bound to catch a sailors eye!

Strumpet

The last figure of the set is the Madam, of the establishment, looking after her charges and ensuring plenty of work comes their way. She holds out a large tome, I am not sure whether this is a list of clientele, or services on offer! I leave that to your imagination.

Madam

So now I just have to make a suitable establishment for them to occupy. Here they all stand together touting for business...

Strumpets and Madam out for business beside the Chandler, its not just the ships that need servicing after all!

Business is never far away in a busy port...

Clientele arrive on scene no doubt attracted by the bright colours and posturing. Party on!

Next up today... the 'Beast'... Golfimbul

The appearance of this blog has always had a strong 'Lord of the Rings' theme, and I enjoyed playing this game for sometime, until I grew somewhat disillusioned with the way GW were handling the game and hobby.

I went whole heartedly into their new game War of the Ring, only to become increasingly frustrated with it... It now appears this game is being dropped, recent chat with a friend at my FLGS says the item (War of the Ring), and its supplement (Battlehosts)... are no longer on their order system...

GW re-released the army lists for the Skirmish Game, but I never got round to investing in them... and haven't played the game for well over a year, possibly two, now...

And yet I still have a fondness for Middle-Earth and the works of Tolkien, and still check out the LOTR hobby blogs out there...

One such blog; Dramatic Katastases by Panagiotis Batsos of Athens, Greece, recently featured a post on Golfimbul. I left a comment there concerning the availability of this figure, as its seems currently discontinued and thus unavailable. Panagiotis replied that they were still in the shops over there, and that he'd be happy to send me one over!

I was rather surprised by this kind offer, and very happy when the package duly arrived. Panagiotis wouldn't take any payment, saying that my blog had inspired him to launch his own blogging! What a kind comment!

So, as you can imagine, Golfimbul jumped to the front of the painting queue...

Here he is depicted as a large fat goblin upon a warg mount.

I painted him in my usual manner for Mordor forces; earthy colours for the clothing, dark metal for the armour and appropriate flesh tone, then all washed in Black Wash. Then the original base colours are worked up again, with the odd highlight here and there and a little facial detail of eyes and teeth added. Scenically based as desired.

I added a small piece of bark chip from the garden as a rock on the base.

Here's a little detail on Golfimbul, courtesy of wikipedia:

"Golfimbul was a chieftain of the Orcs of Mount Gram, who led his band in an invasion of the Shire. He was defeated at the Battle of Greenfields by a force led by Bandobras "Bullroarer" Took; the battle was only the first of two which were ever fought within the borders of the Shire (the second was the Battle of Bywater, the last battle of the War of the Ring, where his descendant Pippin fought). Bullroarer knocked off Golfimbul's head with a club and it soared into the air, finally falling into a rabbit hole. According to Hobbit folklore, this inspired the game of golf, which takes its name from the Orc. Golfimbul's name was probably specifically constructed for this pun; fimbul is Old Norse for "great".^[3]
The Orc incursion in the northern Shire occurred during the reign of Arassuil as Chieftain of the Dúnedain, and the Orcs led by Golfimbul were but the most western pack of Orcs which had left the Hithaeglir. The only reason Golfimbul could make it all the way to the Shire was that the Rangers at the time were fighting many battles with Orcs, preventing them from settling all of Eriador."

I look forward to the chance of fielding Golfimbul in a raid on the Shire. I just need to make a load of hobbit holes and paint up a pile of hobbits first - they're buried somewhere in the lead mountain... ;-)

A big thank you to Panagiotis, once again :-)

Last for today - German Infantry Gun platoon, Flames of War.

I recently felt compelled to get this 7.5cm leIG18 Infantry Gun completed for my Wehrmacht forces.

I have entered another mini FoW tournie; Bob Pearce's 2012 FRACAS in Shannon on 4th August; a 600 point small forces affair, themed for Early War.

I must admit Early War is not of great interest to me, it all seems to have been rather one sided in history, and doesn't greatly appeal. But a chance for more gaming practice for the later CTA tournament couldn't be ignored.

My Wehrmacht Grenadiers will do nicely for games set throughout the war, and to these I just needed to add a little extra kick to finish off my small infantry company. Some mortars will help with smoke and pinning, which I already had but I thought some infantry guns could give me a versatile little platoon to help my grenadiers; smoke, bombardment and direct fire which could even deter some of the thinly armoured tanks of the early war period.

Observer

I was a little unsure about my paint scheme though... I wanted them to match my existing forces and was a bit concerned they should be German field grey... but Bob was quite unconcerned at their colour, so long as the list was accurate and appropriate models were fielded.

7.5cm leIG18 infantry gun team

So we'll see how my day of small games will go. I haven't played such small games before, nor seen Early War forces in action so I am not too sure what to expect, though I suspect mostly infantry forces at this small game level... time will tell.

SMG platoon command team

I look forward to trying these out with my Lehr Panzergrenadiers too for Late War, as this gun was widely used throughout the war. And no doubt when I get round to Mid War it will be equally useful there.

Now, I MUST press on with those VSF Prussians!