A Gentleman’s Agreement (pt.1)

This year at Brush and Boltgun, we (Rob, Adam, Dave) have dispensed with the usual March to War challenge run by Games Workshop (or ‘Warhammer’ if you’re newfangled and fancy) Liverpool. This would have required us to paint 2020 points of models by March. Over the last few years, the B&B guys have branched out into a lot, and I mean a LOT, of new game systems. This means that doing that usual challenge would ignore a load of our other toys for months and, more importantly, we never finish the damn thing anyway!

Therefore, we came to a gentlemen’s agreement that we would just choose some projects we wanted to get finished this year and periodically update you on them. Not that this is going to be a regular ‘series’, we’ll just update you as and when we have something snazzy to show off.

With that in mind, let’s run through some of the projects that I’ll be taking on this year:

Imperial Japan (Bolt Action):

This should hopefully be the simplest of the projects, as everyone wears the same uniform! There’s around 50 models plus a tank, but I’ve had some success with Soviet and Italian (!) forces in Bolt action before, so think I am up to this task. At least, I will be once they are assembled.

Anyone who has read my posts in the past will know I struggle with assembling Warlord kits, but at least these guys have sets of arms with the weapons already held. Those Soviets where I had to put all the rifles into the hands nearly killed me…

Project Age : New for 2020!

Painted to Date Count: 0/53

Difficulty Expected: 2/10

Feudal Japan (Saga Age of Magic):

This project has been in the pipeline for about a year. When saga Age of Magic was planned, Dave and I decided to choose a Fantasy series to build the army from. We chose Raymond E Feist’s Riftwar series… so expect to see Samurai vs Western Medieval battles very soon.

Reading Feist’s books with Janny Wurts gave me the idea that I could have different Clan armies too, so the guys you see in the picture will be Minwanabi and play as ‘The Horde’ Battleboard, whereas the green guys yet to be assembled will be Acoma and play as the Elf variant of a Great Kingdoms list. A great idea, but a lot of work is yet to be done!

Also, I need to buy some giant ant models to be my Quadruped Beasts (cho-ja) so if anyone has any ideas, please post them below…

Project Age: Early 2019

Painted to Date Count: 0/173

Difficulty Expected: 6/10

Seven Years’ War Austrians (Black Powder):

A counterpart to last year’s massive Prussian army, I’m planning on smaller forces for the Allied forces of the Seven Years War over the next few years. That way they can gang up on the Prussians, just like in real life, with the added bonus that I’m not painting whitecoats for three years!

I haven’t bought all of these guys yet, there’s only a sample landed. In the picture are 20 Austrian and 20 Hungarian Grenadiers. In the box still are 24 Hungarian and 24 Austrian regular infantry. I’ll need a few units of light troops, cavalry and guns to round this force out but that’s for another day.

Project Age : New for 2020!

Painted to Date Count: 0/88

Difficulty Expected: 4/10 (less if it wasn’t for all the white!)

Cawdor Gang (Necromunda):

These guys have been around since they were released. They should have been finished as part of Necromonthda. Sorry, Rob! They’ve been assembled and undercoated and even played a few games. I’ve had Cawdor since the original Necromunda, so they’re close to my heart.

I just didn’t fancy the standard colour scheme for them (probably something to do with the 220 Blue-coated infantry I painted last year), so decided to channel their medieval theme and do them in more monk/knight type colours, with bland, neutral habits and individual coloured tabards. Hopefully it turns out as well as it looks in my head!

Project Age : October 2018

Painted to Date Count: 0/10

Difficulty Expected: 4/10

Thundrik’s Profiteers (Shadespire):

Another set I’ve had for a while, I have undercoated them and left them on a shelf. Before Christmas I got a game with them and they’re nice and different to my Stormcast warband, so looking forward to using them more.

As there’s only a few models I’d like to do a bit more detail on these, but they’re an out the box build and I hope they can be finished quite quickly

Project Age : Mid-2019

Painted to Date Count: 0/5

Difficulty Expected: 1/10  

Cypher Lords (Warcry):

These are probably the most adventurous project of the year as I want to do something a bit different with these. Rather than an out-the box-build, I want to do them as South American Eagle Warriors, so I’ll be replacing the hand weapons with Lizardmen (Seraphon) weapons, adding feathers and painting a native skin tone on them.

That’s the plan at least… but now they languish in their box!

Project Age : October 2019

Painted to Date Count: 0/10

Difficulty Expected: 8/10

Reflections:

So in total that’s 339 models, to date, that I should hope to finish this year. Optimistic, yes, but last year I finished over 300 models, albeit all in very similar uniforms.

On top of this, we’re off to the 40K doubles in May. I know I have at least 5 more Orks to do for this, maybe some guardsmen to complete and I’m sure we’ll start some other crazy projects: especially as there’s a new Muskets and Tomahawks version planned.

Oh the joy! What have we let ourselves in for?

If there’s any projects you’d like to see brought to the front of the queue, just shout, also check out our Instagram for more regular updates.

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