Faramir - Knight Captain of Gondor

Well it's been a hectic, at times frustrating, and yet exciting, last three weeks at work... and yet, after the first couple of weeks, we seem to be getting the hang of things, and I have been able to find a little time at the end of the day to pick up the paint brush again... to chill out, and clear the head a little... the vino helps too! ;-)

Faramir - Knight Captain of Gondor

I am still hoping to attend Wellington Warlords Call to Arms in August, accompanied by my son, Chris. He wants to run a Gondor force, and at 800 points, wants to add a little cavalry support. But who to lead them?... I didn't have any mounted heroes that were painted...

A rummage in the lead mountain found the original Faramir model in knights armour - mounted and on foot.

The original model depicts Faramir as he leads his brave horsemen in their doomed charged to retake the ruins of Osgiliath from the occupying orc army. In that pose he is wielding a sword aloft, urging his men onward.

However, in the game, the character may be upgraded to have a shield and carry a lance. This I would normally just tell my opponent before the game, and that would be fine. But in the more formal tournament setting, that simply would not do, where WYSIWYG is the almighty acronym!

So what to do?

Well it was time to sacrifice a couple of plastic Warriors of Minas Tirith to take their shields from them, and glue those into place. An easy conversion for the foot model and  revamp for the mounted version. But what to do about the lance?

As it turned out, I had a spare metal mounted Knight banner bearer. So I cut off his arm, from the body, and separated the hand from the banner pole. I then drilled a hole down through the hand grip, to take a Foundry steel pin, as a lance, and drilled and pinned the arm in position on to the mounted Faramir model, having first, of course, cut away the sword arm. A final detail was to add a spear top to the lance head from another WoMT, to complete the look. Et Voila!

Then just to paint him up...

I am rather pleased at how he has turned out, and I look forward to seeing him in action. Hoping to find time for a little practice game with Chris this weekend, fingers crossed.

Back to the movie, and I always find Faramir's doomed charge and very moving moment, especially to the accompaniment of Pippins mournful song... stirring stuff!

Nice to find time for a little blogging again too :)

Converting FoW Infantry Teams

In my ongoing quest to find a German list that actually works, I have been playing about with more army list options, more drama on this topic can be read here.

One of these involved a change from my regular Panzergrenadiers, to the SS variety, who have an option to upgrade a number of teams from the platoon to being Panzerfaust equipped.

Rather than buy a whole new packs of Grens to do this I decided to just add the Panzerfaust teams, via rare earth magnets...

So I took an existing base of 4 guys;

Standard base awaiting conversion

... and carefully removed them from their base. I prep'd  the Panzerfaust guy and drilled out his base from the underside, and superglued a magnet into place.

I then drilled out a hole in the original base and glued a magnet into the hole, getting it flush fit with greenstuff from the underside. Then I put the original 4 guys back on the bases and re-did the flocking. Panzerfaust guy was painted up, and hey presto, he sticks nicely into place. So no having to guess or remember which stand is the panzerfaust...

Magnets in place and original figures rearranged...

So I didn't get mixed up with magnet polarity, I marked this base H for helmet for the panzerfaust guy, as the other was wearing a cap (I did two bases at the same time)

Magnets drilled and glued into position

Hey presto, Panzerfaust MG team.

And of course when being used as a regular MG team, the panzerfaust guy comes off, and a magnetized twig from the garden works as a fallen log to fill the gap...

MG team with 'fallen tree trunk.'

You could of course get really clever, with the 'gap fillers', but the twig had to do quickly as I had a game that night...

Two MG/Panzerfaust teams

Two MG/'log' teams

I really wanted to do this right as its damned annoying when someone is using proxy teams and you get up close and personal only to find out, "...oh, that's the panzerfaust team, didn't I tell you?".... yeah right...