Tag: 28mm plastics

Categories
miniatures painting wargaming

Forgotten Heroes III – Flora Sandes

After several painting challenges where I intended to illustrate Flora Sandes things combined to make it happen.

First I joined Forgotten Heroes for a June painting challenge. I intended to paint some ACW figures.

Then I happened upon some freebie Russians in 28mm and I suddenly remembered my much failed 1:72 ideas about a Flora Sandes figure.

The result is basically a build from the multipart sprue which have some female head options.

The basing grit material is from an old pot from games workshop which seems to be lasting forever as you can see

Ok so this is all Russian World War Two kit while Flora Sandes is a heroine from World War One where she uniquely served in the armed forces of Serbia.

I say unique because she was the ONLY British woman commissioned to serve as a soldier in the whole war.

Born in Poppleton near York, Yorkshire, Flora volunteered as a Red Cross medical orderly in the Royal Serbian Army fighting the Austrian Empire.

She transferred into the military arm and eventually achieved the rank of sergeant major and then after the war ended senior captain.

She died in 1956 having lived in Suffolk after the end of World War Two.

Her Wikipedia page reveals an amazing story – wounded in action, decorated with the highest Serbian military award, marrying a White Russian general, detained by the Germans in WW2, global speaker between the wars……go read it.

For this figure I chose to go with white primer

Painting wise I used Vallejo yellow green for the uniform with a wash using citadel contrast plaguebearer flesh.

Usual Vallejo colours for boots and belts etc. although I used 021 dark flesh tone for once instead of 018 flat flesh. Seraphim sepia goes on top.

Boots got some snakebite leather wash.

I might get the ACW figures done by month end.

Categories
metal miniatures normans in the south

Metallic and Plastic Infantry for my Normans in the South

Having reviewed my thoughts on horsemen for my Normans in the South project I am going to take a quick look at infantry. Did you spot the SHQ 20mm in the lead photo?

For my command bases I plan to use Tumbling Dice Miniatures command packs which provide both mounted and foot options. These foot are respectively 2 normans to the left and 2 anglo saxons to the right.
here are a strelets norman at left and strelets anglo saxon to the right. The plastic and metal foot match well I think.
These are the tallest strelets anglo saxons I could find and the match between plastic and metal is again fine. Note their breadth is to frontface, so both products are thinner as you look along the line.
1970’s Garrison viking to left and Citadel Crusader to the right are ostensibly classic 25mm figures. They make the 1/72 scale Tumbling Dice guys look a bit small.
1970’s Lamming bigheaded anglo saxon on the left and norman on the right. Oh dear what was happening in the 1970’s!
The guy at left is an SHQ 20mm saracen archer. I picked these up at Newbury or Reading shows when I was after some newline figures in the flesh which turned out to be the wrong size for me. SHQ were there and I took some of their crusades range – really nice figures.The middle grey/red normans/saxons show that even within strelets there is a height and bulk variation – which I like
The SHQ archer is just that smidgen smaller than the TD norman but both seem less bulky and shorter than the strelets norman. I think once painted and based these minor differences in height/bulk will simply improve the look of the bases if anything
2010’s Perry burgundians (ironically plastic) show the morphing of 25mm to 28mm and beyond.

At least tumbling dice and SHQ are still offering metals in the traditional scales of 20/25mm and 1/72. And they carry good detail, have realistic posing and are not too bulky. I may mix in some command foot with strelets figures on some of my fighting bases.