Having recently completed my Norman army I wanted to finish off the crossbowmen modelling project with my end result. So, here are the long awaited crossbows....
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| On the command... fire..... |
The crossbows proved to be the trickiest item to mount and stay mounted. A few of them had to be re-glued with Superglue. Getting the position of the plastic arms just right to "hold" the crossbow was the hardest part. It's a shame the manufacturers don't make some of their figures with arms in pairs ready to hold the crossbow or even modelled with the bow in hand. I have GW Dark Elves with hands holding repeater crossbows!
Painting was pretty straightforward, a base coat of white matt spray undercoat (using a Halfords Primer spray can - one of the best sprays I have ever used not too heavy and dries very quickly with almost no smell!) Then using my Vallejo Game Color range I started with silver for the armour later darkened with a black wash. The arms and undergarment were painted with a dark red to give a consistency across the unit. Pale flesh was used for hands and face with a flesh wash to finish. Black hair with off white highlights for the bugler/leader figure. Bow and boots were beasty brown and the bolt was leather brown. The leggings were painted khaki. The final watered down black ink wash darkened off some of the other colours, but not too much (you can always go back later with more, but too dark is hard to pull back as I found with my Anglo-Danes).
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| Norman crossbowman blowing his own trumpet! |
The bases were finished with brown model railway ballast to cover any imperfections and level the base off. They were then covered with generic summer static grass (this batch was from Javis Scenics). Some of the bases had Army Painter meadow flowers attached and others had Mininatur summer grass tufts added, but in moderation.
The aim as always with my figures is to create a passable tabletop army in a reasonable time. I can't afford the luxury of highly detailed models (in time or cost of pro-painting services) and I do not have endless time to work on each model. My painting is done in batches of 8 to 20 models.
Links to suppliers:
Wargames Factory Saxon Fyrd
Wargames Factory Saxon Thegns
Conquest Games Norman Knights
Conquest Games Norman Infantry
(note: crossbows were sourced from eBay UK after some searching around - eBay US site seems to have more options!)
Gripping Beast Crossbow pack.
The author has his own blog which he tries to update several times a month at www.not2oldtowargame.wordpress.com. It features painting, modelling and battle reports for Flames of War, Saga and other games.
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