Qin Army - FINISHED

It’s been a brief season of completion around here -- my 10mm Ancient Chinese army is finished. As in, 100% totally done with everything I'm ever gonna do to them. How often do ADD wargamers get to say that? They are cleaned, primered, painted, varnished, based, textured, and flocked. All 1400 or so of 'em. I even went back and painted little Chinese characters for "soldier," "horse," "arrow," "art," and "war," onto the banners. Especially gratifying was that Robert saw one of the stands, and just started talking about what those words might have meant -- he just took the characters for granted, which is nice, considering I had to look them up on the internet and wasn't 100% sure they were right!

Before posting this, I'd thought I'd posted about the army at least once between now and the time I finished dry brushing them, but the truth is the baseing went so fast that I was done with it by the time I got around to posting anything. So I'll just post this, and go back with gallery shots later after I get around to taking beauty shots of the army.



The basing was done in pretty much my normal way, except that I didn't paint anything. When the figures were glued down to the metal plates I used for bases, extra glue on the stand was soaked up with sand. At times I would add little puddles of super glue just to get the sand piles. Then I mixed up some of my standard issue coffee paste and smeared it over all the bases, trying to get semi-clean feet lines and nice blends with the sand, without covering it all. Then I'd sprinkle just a bit of sand over the while thing while the coffee paste was wet, giving me darks and highlights without needing to paint them or anything.



Then I went back over them all, placing small spotchy patches of watered-down white glue. Into these patches were placed tufts of static grass, rather than flock, giving the army the look of walking through knee high grass. These pics are from just before I added the fake grass.



I'm pretty happy with the way this army turned out.



Granted, hell will at least be in danger of freezing before I do another project in 10mm, but now that they are done they do look pretty damn good all arrayed in ranks for battle. Honestly, I just hope I like playing Ancients! It will suck if I did all that work, actually completed an army -- not just a unit, but an entire army! -- only to find out I don't like the game. But hay, I've got some fancy chinamen!

Chinese Army progress

Well, this has been quite the little distraction! Honestly, it hasn't been any fun, either. There is no room for art at this scale, just process and repitition. Still, I've got this step done: the entire army is modeled (what little modeling there was to do) and dry-brushed a very light grey. All I'm going to do for painting is to stain them with color and then some simple bases. I want to play the game, but it just isn't worth much modeling time. So here's what the Thousand Yellow Devils are looking like, still mounted to their painting sticks:

Qin Chinese - 2nd Wave Arives

Yesterday, the second delivery of Chinese troops was delivered to his magesty. This was the 2nd Order from Eureka. Came in their standard little postal box, wrapped up in bubble wrap. I gave the minis a quick glance, and they seem good enough -- not quite as nice as the Magister stuff, but more than servicable. I'm not sure how much they will fit the army, though -- some of them are just wearing too much armour for the period. Still, any of them that don't match will just end up as skirmishers or impressed troops or something.

Man, when the final, big ass lot gets here from Great Hall, the Paratrooper Project is gonna get so distracted...

Qin Chinese - 1st Wave Arives

I got in the first wave of my order with Great Hall Games today. It showed up nice and fast, but one of the packs was wrong. We'll see how long it takes to get the right pack (they just placed a big order with England, so if they don't have any of them in stock it may be quite a while....) but the figs look good. 10mm are some small little buggers, so I'm surprised they have as much detail as they do.

These guys are going to have to wait a bit before I start working on them. I might clean them up, but past that they will be waiting on the 2nd wave, at least a month out from delivery. Which is fine, I have plenty to do in the mean time, between all the other painting projects, the paratroopers, and Mighty Empires.

Qin Chinese -- 2nd Order

This force was going to be 100% Magister Militum figure, but you always find that one little accent piece that you've gotta have, so there is going to be just a dash of Irregular Miniatures . They are pretty much the only other maker of 10mm Chinese, and they have a rocket launcher. Gotta have that! Since they only website I've been able to find to order their stuff is Eureka Miniatures, which entails shipping from Australia, I figured I'd have 'em throw a few other things in the box. Here's the order I just placed:

Products (Edit)
1 x	Peasant pack (10 figures)	AU$6.00
1 x	Chickens	AU$3.00
1 x	Pigs	AU$3.00
1 x	Sung Chinese/Mongol Rocket Launcher	AU$2.25
1 x	Sung Chinese/Mongol Subject Infantry Standard Bearer	AU$0.70
1 x	Sung Chinese Cavalry Standard Bearer	AU$0.70
1 x	Sung Chinese/Mongol Subject Infantry Officer	AU$0.70
1 x	Sung Chinese Cavalry Officer	AU$0.70
1 x	Mongol Cavalry Standard Bearer	AU$0.70
1 x	Mongol Cavalry Officer	AU$0.70
1 x	Halfling Personality	AU$0.70
1 x	Mongol Light Cavalry, holding sabre	AU$0.70
1 x	Wizard	AU$0.70

Sub-Total:	AU$20.55
Zone Based Shipping (Air Mail - North America):	AU$15.61
Total:	AU$36.16
Total in AUD:	$36.16

Normally, the whole "ya, but I was paying shipping," logic only goes so far, but in this case, I feel like a schmuck for not ordering more shit.

Qin Chinese -- On Order

So, the gang has talked me into a new game: Warmaster Ancients in 10mm. This is about the first time in 10 years or so that I was the guy getting pulled in. Usually I'm the only doing the pulling, so this is kind of irrisistable. I would probably have done it in15mm, but hay, the gang says 10mm. It should give a nice look, with that "more spears than I can count" effect. 6mm would just be too small, and 15s too expensive and big for that many troops.

I'll be playing the Chinese. This should be a lot of fun to paint -- COLOR! I'LL HAVE COLORS!!!! -- and interesting to play. Different, at least, since everyone else is rolling Romans, Greeks, Huns, stuff like that.

I just placed the initial order via Great Hall Games. I decided to just bite the fucking bullet and order the entire army all in one lump. OK, so I'm still gonna get the rocket launcher from Irregular. The troops are comming from Magister Militum. Here's the order list:

• 1 x ADW61 Qin Chinese Army, 1000 Points
• 4 x QIN02 Halberdiers
• 4 x QIN03 Spearmen
• 2 x QIN05 Archers
• 6 x QIN04 Impressed Troops
• 3 x QIN09 Wu Hu Cavalry
• 1 x QIN10 Four Horse Heavy Chariot
• 2 x QIN11 Command with Chariot
• 1 x SAM009 Ninja
• 1 x NWK011 Elite Archer, shaven head
• 1 x VIG004 10mm Egyptian Scribe and Soldier
• 1 x VIG009 Samurai Commander with attendants
• 5 x packs of metal bases
• Warmaster Ancients rule book
• Warmaster Ancient Armies book

I hope I didn't over order on anything. I don't need a bunch of lazy chinamen layin' around. All that only comes to about $340.....