War-tership Down

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A cold shiver runs through the spine of all mortal men. A threat more terrible than the torments of Hell sets each to his priest in the hope of salvation. No mother would use such tales to scare children, as it would assure no sleep at all for the listener, or teller. The ravages of the great Khan or the decimation of pestilence bear nought to the horror of their name. Where they crawl from the earth, death follows......

Killer Bunnies!!!

Scouts first, as by tradition

Yes, so I made a start on what I think is my 15th or 16th Dragon Rampant force; one I bought as a Kickstarter last year from Skull & Crown.  These are now available online for late arrivals, and are reasonably priced, being admittedly small models (about 20mm foot to eye); postage may be a different matter for those of us not in the USA however.

As you can see from the image below, there was definitely something going on in the minds of the middle ages' scribes regarding Rabbits and Hares, and I personally couldn't resist having a go at these. 

Those monks can't focus on the day job!

The initial set of models is as I find often the case, a small unit of skirmishers, to allow me a chance to test my painting approach.  Being such small models I felt I was going to need to use a style more like that of my 15mm models than my 28-32mm figures, there bieng very little in the way of details to the models.  Also getting a plausible fur was going to be crucial.

Feel cute! Might put a crossbow bolt in you. IDK

Following a mixture of advice given by the Kickstarter, and using pictures of actual wild rabbits, I began by mixing up some mid browns over a brown undercoat, with a grey-brown for the leader.  Each shade was then lightened, and applied to the belly, front of the face and inside legs.  I then added lighter still tips to the ears, and used the same colour around the eyes..  The weapons and belts got a traditional three layer finish, then finally the large black eyes were dotted in to the light patches on the face, so that only a tiny amount of the light colour remained.

Then I gave the whole of the models a wash with a very thinned down brown ink (about 3 to 1 water to ink), and when this was dry a coat of matt varnish.

For the bases, I splurged on a mass of Euro 5¢ coins I had lying around, these being slightly larger than British 1p coins - about 22mm size - to allow for a bit more basing and kinder handling.  I applied filler to the base and then over my standard brown undercoat I did two layers of light brown and sand dry-brushes, before adding a range of flocks and covers, most bought specifically with this project in mind.

At the same time I worked on a piece of terrain, to serve as a Hold-fast for the colony .

Wat-ership Down.  I'm pondering what to put on the flagpole...

 For this I began with an off-cut of inch thick insulation foam (the blue stuff). and made a simple two tier hill.  Into this I then cut some holes for entrances, and gouged out the contents.  Next I added a whole plethora of roughly inch long pieces of bamboo barbecue skewers, sliced up at angles, with the tips used periodically as dictated by supply.  I marked a pattern for them on the hill and pre-drilled their locations before adding some PVA to the holes, then slotted them in.

The Watch tower was more involved, not least as the rope lashings are part of the construction!  However the main posts are simply skewered into the hill point first a good inch and a half deep, so it is remarkably sturdy.  The top platform is of coffee stirrers sliced up as planks as well as more skewers; as is probably clear the whole thing was eyeballed rather than carefully built to a plan, and so has a more natural, wonky look to it.

The watchtower

For painting it was first a case of applying filler to the tunnel entrances, and all the gaps the make the hill a smoother shape; then a thinned down slip of filler - roughly a four to one water-filler mix - was painted over all the blue foam to seal it and add more texture.  Then I hit it with the same undercoating and basing process as the rabbits, except without any bushes yet, and with the wood getting a different treatment of lighter browns with a yellow-beige for the cut ends.

Job done.

Well, except that I now have five more units to do.  But given how quickly these came together, I think they shouldn't be too bad.  This process moreover taught me what to tweak for working on the next batch, to make the job faster and better too.  Which is partly why I start with a small unit first.

Even so, to this point, the end results look adorable!

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