28mm William of Normandy Command Stand

Since the summer my wargaming year has so far consisted of re-basing...lots of re-basing!  This started with my Napoleonic armies that I was on the cusp of selling and then as I was photographing it all for the purpose of selling, I just found that I really liked them (but they would need rebasing!).  This continued with my 15mm ACW collection (last blog post). An update on all that to follow soon!

So having to work away elsewhere and in accommodation that I really couldn't leave static grass, old basing texture and sand scattered everywhere I realised that I would have to take paints and a real painting project in case there was any decent 'downtime' from the work.  In the event, there was a lot of downtime and I was able to paint 4 command stands (minus basing!) in one week.  This was immensely pleasing but also reflects badly on me in that I found that I can virtually imprison myself for a week from dawn to midnight just to paint!

I am always desperate for command stands. Rules these days tend to be much more command focussed (and rightly so in my view) and leaders play an obviously important role.  But between painting a 24 man unit of fusiliers and a command stand, I'll paint the fusiliers every time!  In this case I took away with me all of my paints and the Norman commanders and some plastic Infantry to build. As I was 100 miles from home and driving to my job, I realised that I had forgotten to bring polystyrene glue! - so no figure building for me - It was going to be focussed command stand painting only.

I have had my Norman commanders for quite a long time. I think they are from Gripping Beast. If they are then then they have clearly improved on their old crappy horses.  As I got to work on the command stands I really enjoyed working on them. These characters are great and the paint really made them come to life.

As we see here this is William of Normandy doing his famous tapestry pose of 'Hello everyone - look I'm not dead' and sliding his helmet up.  The banner was randomly chosen for William and chosen just because it looks really nice.  I have studied photos of the Bayeux Tapestry for many hours and cannot find his personal banner shown anywhere.

The banner is from Little Big Men Studios and the shield designs are from Battle Flag.

I have much to say on basing which I might save until I post my ACW figs freshly rebased on to my blog.  I have changed techniques, both to save money by using static grass instead of just clumps of expensive grass and the various shades of grass also looks more realistic I think.  I'm moving away from painting the edge of the MDF base too.  I usually paint the edge brown but it looks like the figures are based on a chocolate biscuit when I do that.  I quite like this worn effect from the various basing effects on the MDF. It blends nicely and stops the eye from being drawn to the base edge, I think.

Anyway, I took these photos with my phone camera as the cheap Poundland batteries were all dead in their box so I cannot use my main camera (yes the one with the pike scratch on the lens!). At least these pics don't have the scratch (even if they do look a bit soft-filtered!).