Monday 28 September 2020

 

Hurrah! After approximately two weeks wait, my small order of Reiver related figures from Stu Armstrong at Col Bills has arrived!

A slim cardboard pack greeted me on arrival home from work this evening, and inside were one pack of Reivers on foot, one pack of mounted reivers, a pack of four “Bastle Burners” and a Belt Fed Games mounted Queen Elizabeth the First – who will be repurposed for use on the Border – possibly as her cousin Mary Queen of Scots!

A quick size comparison reveals they should work fine with the slightly chunkier Hokahay figures. These are very nice, clean castings, with quite a high tin content I would say, as they have that “shiny” look of Perry metals, for example.

Preparation on this small reinforcement shall commence this very evening!



Size comparison above with one of the Hoka Hay figures

 

The Bastle Burners armed with torches and bundles of wood



Four Reivers on foot

The mounted “Hot Trod” – a lawful hot pursuit


Her Majesty – or Her Grace if she is the Scots Queen!

That’s it for tonight, its taken a while again but I think this post will look ok when I publish it……

Saturday 26 September 2020

First Batch of Reivers Completed

 
 
Today I have finished off the last of my first batch of Border Reivers.

I am a bit disappointed that the other two small orders I placed a fortnight ago have not arrived yet but nothing I can do about it.

First up below are the three Reiver groups I have purchased, as presented on the manufacturers website, followed by my version

After that, I have at last actually completed most of the scratch built buildings I have been working on and took them out into the Spring sunshine in the garden this afternoon to take advantage of some better lighting

Finally, we have the five most recently completed reivers, two Broken Men armed with bows, a “Heidman” in some snazzy clothing, plus a couple of followers. 

 

This isn’t the order I planned to present things but its the way the images have ended up on Blogger and I am not spending any more time messing about with the bloody thing so they can just stay that way. On the old blogger, I could have cut and pasted them where I wanted in a few seconds but this new version is ….well I wont say, although I am tempted. 

There are five cottages, a Bastle house and  two Pele Towers, a smaller three level one plus the original five level.

Still to finish off are a couple more cottages, the church and a March Wardens residence – once those are all done, I think I probably have enough buildings for a skirmish level game.

 
The Armstrongs


 
The "Broken" Men - Outlaws


 
Red Rowans Reivers


 
Five Reiver Cottages

 
A Bastle House



 
The smaller Pele Tower




 
The Five Story Pele Tower







 
Above and below bow armed Reivers


 
The final three






 

Once again, this has taken twice as long (at least) as it would have done on the old Blogger and I have had to do a whole lot of messing around, renumbering images and half a dozen other “tricks” just to get it done. Every time I want to add comment, I have to do it on Word then paste it in, as if I try to type anything in Blogger, it freezes every two or three letters. Whoever made these changes and for whatever reason they made them, to me, it is a complete and utter failure – hopefully in a month or two, all these issues will have been resolved.

Thursday 24 September 2020

Another Four Reivers Completed

 

Here is the latest progress on the Border Reivers project – two figures per night – these were painted on Weds 23rd and Thurs 24th Sept – two more are under coated black on the painting desk in the garage and will probably be painted tomorrow – unless I have a night off and drink beer instead! (There is all weekend to come after all…..)

For the last few days I have arrived home with a slight feeling of hopeful anticipation that either my few Reiver figures from Col Bills or the civilians from Fenryll will have arrived – so far I have been disappointed – maybe tomorrow….

Tonight I tied an experiment with saving the images onto Word (where I have written this) and then copying and pasting into Blogger – but it didn’t work….

A couple of these figures are not my favourites in the bunch – particularly the one in red top with the sword and shield – he has hardly any face at all, hidden away inside his huge helmet – and the pose isn’t that great – I think this is reflected in the less impressive paint job – although that may just be the colours I chose to use on him.









 
 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 
 


 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday 22 September 2020

A Trio of Completed Border Reivers

Ok, here we go again! Tonight in an effort to overcome Blogger II resistance, I am taking a tip from Jonathan (whether he intended this or not!) and am writing all this in Word prior to copying and pasting it into Blogger – lets see if that makes things any easier!

Following are the three latest additions to my Border Reiver collection, fresh of the painting desk. Two more have been completed this evening but are just setting to their bases prior to finishing them off tomorrow – they will probably appear on the Blog on Friday or Saturday.

 








OK that seems to have gone without a hitch - changing font colour or any of the other issues experienced last time – but I am not going to tempt fate so that’s it for tonight!