Magua - Huron War Chief & Entwife

Finishing Stuff on a Friday

Finished off both the figures I have been working on this week. First is: Magua - Huron war chief and chief antagonistic from Last of the Mohicans. This model is with his war paint and tomahawk ready for battle. Hunting for Colonel Munro and his daughters. 

Second was the Entwife, which needed the base finishing off. After the leaf spiral around the dryad from last month, I decided to go for a similar effect as if she is summoning a whirlwind around herself. 

'When the Grey Hair is dead, Magua will eat his heart. Before he dies, Magua will put his children under the knife, so the Grey Hair will know his seed is wiped out forever.'

“God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces.”

Entwife of the Dreadwood

Rob 

You Always Take It Too Far

And It Was All Going So Well

Overall  I was quite pleased with the progress on Magua but I though the skin colour was too light, so I had added a series of washes with Reikland flesh shade to try and darken the colour. After highlighting I decided that I needed one more light shade. So, added a 50/50 wash of Reikland flesh shade and clean water. And yes it did darken the colour a bit but also left these ugly white patches. Which I then had to cover up. Obviously the wash separated, I have diluted other washes before without incident but had pushed the dilution too far this time. 

Post white patches

'Magua understands that the white man is a dog to his women. When they are tired, he puts down his tomahawk to feed their laziness.' - Magua

With white patches

Magua against an original zenithal 

highlighted Huron brave

Rob 

Nathaniel 'Hawkeye' Bumppo

One Miniature Finished , New project Started

Ok, so Hawkeye is finished and I can now claim that the French & Indian wars project has officially started. 

“Every trail has its end, and every calamity brings its lesson!” - Hawkeye

“Books! What have such as I, who am a warrior of the wilderness, though a man without a cross, to do with books? I never read but in one, and the words that are written there are too simple and too plain to need much schooling...” - Hawkeye

Obviously all of the quotes are from Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. I have avoided the obvious one from the film because I am reading the book and haven't got to that part yet. And want to see what is actually written. 

The hunter approaches

Magua and the first of his Huron Braves

Rob

Sunday Night Special

Work in Progress on Nathaniel 'Hawkeye' Bumppo

Nearly finished Hawkeye, I want to go back and tidy up some of the edges, but he mostly done. The colour palette of creams and tans seems very muted compared to my normal range of paints. But I suppose I will get a big dose of colour when I paint the Indians in their warpaint, and British and French regulars. 

When I looked for a photo of Daniel Day Lewis for reference, I was reminded that the film came out in 1992. I can't believe it!

Rob

That's Wrong Shade of khaki

Or Problems I Have with Historical Wargaming a.k.a. Are these the right Woodland Indians?

About twenty-five years ago, I was running demo games of Grenadier's Kill Zone at Salute. When a historical wargamer (who was probably the same age as I am now) came up to look at the game. Now this was a demo game of Killzone which was a Sci-Fi skirmish game based on Mark Copplestone's Future warriors, Which included some very nice troopers. Which I had painted up using American army desert camo scheme (See example below). His first (& only) comment was 'That's the Wrong Shade of Khaki' and then promptly walked off.  Now there are many levels of annoyance about this comment (not least of which was that I had painted them using Humbrol's Khaki paint) but it is one a good example of one of the things that puts me off historical wargaming.  

Ok, so if you have made it this far , then you are probably asking what has this got to do with the Woodland Indians in the French & Indian wars (FIW)? 

I bought the Woodland Indian Tribe plastic set from Warlord games under their American War of Independence (AWI, 1776 -1783) range. My assumption was the AWI was only 13 years after the end of the French-Indian war (1754-1763). So, they must be suitable for the French & Indian wars? Right... Also Warlord Games also do a FIW range which why I was puzzled they didn't feature in both ranges. 

But Warlord never mention that this range of figures might also be compatible with FIW range. Which is downright odd, as I very much doubt the Indians changed much in the 13 years between the wars.  And come to that most of the Europeans wouldn’t have changed much either. This does make me think I  might be making some massive ‘historical’ wargames faux pas. 

After a bit of background reading it seems that the Woodland Indians mainly supported the French and the tribes that supported the British had been 'civilised' .  So I'm pretty happy they would be suitable  for  the FIW. Anyway, Magua now has some troops for his war on the British. 

On A Side Note

After searching around for the Grenadier Troopers, which I thought I still had. I couldn't find them. But I did find these photos from 2001! Which explains why the pictures have very low resolution.  I was very much experimenting with lighting at this point which explains why some are better lit than others. 

Rob

Work In Progress Wednesday

Trying to Finish Stuff

Work continues on the fae queen who edges towards completion. 

But I did finish the second banner for the zombie. Hurrah! Just the second special leader model to bring this up to sixty. The Oldhammer Death Elemental has just arrived, so I can now start on this model. 

And time for a new project. This one is a bit of a departure from my usual stuff and when I get onto the British and French regulars I will have to follow the 'proper' paint schemes. 

 Rob