Ral Partha Wizard and North Star Hero

I've just finished another one of my old minis. This chap is a rather splendid Ral Partha wizard, one of a small eBay purchase simply labelled 'Pre-slotta wizards'.  Now while I enjoyed painting him simply for the pleasure of painting a nice old mini, I did have another reason; I wanted a wizard to expand my Kingdoms of Men Ambush force. I chose to paint his robes in yellow and his cloak in blue to match the rest of the army. Originally I used Speedpaints, mostly so as to match the colours with the rest of the army, but the deep folds in the cloth didn't look quite right, the yellow especially. In the end I gave him a quick coat of matt varnish, then proceeded in a more traditional manner, layering up from a dark basecoat.

Mayster, battle wizard extraordinaire (hopefully)

As with most of these older minis, he was a joy to paint.  The original owner didn't do too good a job of cleaning off the mould lines. I thought I'd got them, but I missed one down his left  chest.  I thought it was part of his beard, I painted it as beard to hide the mistake.  The flowing robes look great, and I spent some time deciding what was what.  I did have plans to paint in decorative bands, but in the end common sense prevailed.

I also recently finished another character mini for the army, one of North Star's metal champions that accompany the Oathmark plastics. I have most of the infantry versions, though strangely not the wizard (hence recruiting the Ral Partha wizard above). As with the wizard, I started out using Speedpaints, intending just to add extra highlights as I did with the hero here. Unfortunately, when I varnished her the varnish frosted.  I put it down to it being cold and/or damp, but when I had the same result with the Spear Phalanx I realised the dregs of the can were the problem.  She got a bit more layering as a result, and I think I'll rely on layering rather than Speedpaint for characters in the future.

Anichka; Human general

As with the earlier hero, I gave her a purple cloak, otherwise she has pretty much the same colour scheme as the rank and file.  There's nothing particularly fancy about the mini, but its a good one and does the job nicely.  I'm actually using her as a general.