The Knights of Bal Timorea Winner!

Santa Cruz Warhammer announced the winner of the drawing for their Knights of Bal Timorea - yours truly!  I can assure all the participants and those who followed the project that they will go to good use.  The Brettonians were my first WFB army and have always held a special place in my heart.  I honestly intend to get some games in with this guys, so expect to see them fighting against the forces of evil across the battlefields of Southern California in the near future!  I feel really lucky to get to keep all these great looking models.  Here's all the knights together:

I would also encourage you go check out all the participant's blogs and continue to support everyone's efforts to contribute to our online hobby community: Mik's Minis, DiceRolla, My Dice Hate Me, Painting Sanctuary and From the Warp.

Battle Toads: Strange Advice about Slann Mage Priests

I don't write much on tactics, a WFB strategy savant I am not.  Go see Bringer of Victory for that department.  However, a recent BOLS article about Lord choices made me face palm.  The article was suggesting some "interesting" Lord level character combos.  One suggestion was running two Slann.  One would have Lore of Life with Focus of Mystery (giving him loremaster).  The other is packing Lore of Death with Focus of Mystery and Focused Rumination (+1 power die per casting roll).  As a Lizardmen player, I'm all for all-glory-to-the-hypno-toad, but this suggestion really stuck in my craw.

15mm Warriors - Scaling Back to Paint Flames of War Miniatures

Recently Flames of War has pried my interest away from my Lizardmen army after I picked up some Operation Market Garden intelligence briefings - my favorite WWII battle.  Before I jumped into my next FoW endeavor I'll share with you my experience during my first go around with 15mm mini's.  In 2008 I was given a British Para company for FoW. They don't see much action, much similar to the real 1st Airborne Division, aka the Stillborn Division (that's not a sick joke - read A Bridge Too Far).  Prior to getting my hands on the paras I had never painted anything besides 20-30mm figures.   Despite the rather straightforward painting guide in the D-1 book* and the solid advice of Art of War Vol. 1, painting 60+ of the buggers looked daunting. Particularly, I was concerned how difficult it would be to get effective shading and highlighting at this scale.

I painted these one platoon at time, ending up with 3 platoons, extra PIAT teams, company HQ, snipers and a blister pack's worth of machine gunners. With each platoon I modified my technique slightly, until I did the final platoon and though "dammit, why didn't I do this the whole time." Here's how I developed my  technique as I moved through the company.  Note that I used Vallejo paints for the entire company, with the exception of the bases.  If you haven't tried Vallejo, I'd highly recommend them particularly if you're setting out to paint WWII mini's as the colors are close to being 100% historically accurate.  The little eye dropper bottle are fun too.  Sorry for the poor quality pictures, they where taken before I built a light box.