Return to Mythical Earth

 I have watched the wargames blogosphere for a long time now, so I know that I am well in the mainstream of gamers with respect to the way inspiration will suddenly shift.  November turned out to be a month entirely devoted to 1/72 scale fantasy:

However, after I finished the orcs and sorceress posted in the previous entry, the only additional work I got done was to mount some cheap plastic flies obtained from Amazon on flight stands for use in Rangers of Shadowdeep. We drove up to Michigan to visit my family over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I took my travel paint kit with me but didn’t use it.

When I regrouped after the trip and got ready to do some painting, Ross Macfarlane had started rebasing vintage 25mm fantasy figures for a game for his Gathering of Hosts blog.  This got me thinking, which, of course, is always a dangerous business.  I’ve gotten more 1/72 painted this year than I have vintage 25mm fantasy.  Looking at Ross’s blog, I started wondering if this might be because the 1/72s have an overarching backstory, and I am stalled on creating that level of background for the 25s.  From that thinking, I had a look at the force levels I have in 25mm fantasy, and concluded that I really only have three “large” armies: pseudo-Byzantines, orcs, and pseudo-Saracens.  So, it would make sense to set those three as the primary combatants in a campaign (whether an actual map campaign or a conceptual narrative framework).  That also pointed out to me that my vintage Minifig Mythical Earth figures clearly formed their own separate project (even if the orcs might see dual service elsewhere occasionally).  And I don’t need to write their backstory…

After a brief consideration of painting some more pseudo-Byzantines, I ended up digging through all of my boxes of primed figures cleared in previous desk sweeps trying to figure out what I had done with the last batch of MEs that I had been working on.  I eventually found them, which reminded me that I needed to do a better job of keeping track of works in progress…

Last year I painted some Gondorian swordsmen (ME44), and I had pulled out a dozen Gondorian spearmen (ME43), thinking that they would be easy to paint. I hadn’t gotten as far as doing metal cleaning on them, though, so that’s what I started with.  They did turn out to be pretty straightforward.  In retrospect, I wish that I had drybrushed the cloaks a little more smoothly, but they’ll serve, and I’m sure it won’t be too obtrusive on the table.

I had picked up a lot off of eBay last year which had six more ME50 goblins in it, as well as a few “true orcs”, a Beorn (ME36),  and some early Grenadier figures I can find a use for.  In this ME revival project, I’ve painted 60 of the goblins already, so I didn’t expect it would take too long to paint another half dozen.  Since I didn’t have twelve (the default unit size), I decided to base them individually.  They got their own shield theme — flames— based on a suggestion by my brother.  The two true orc swordsmen (ME24) didn’t take very long either.  I’ve got one spare archer as part of that lot, which will probably be finished this weekend, along with a unit of a dozen, which has been in progress for almost two years:

I’ve probably mentioned before, but the MEs were the first metal figures I owned in any numbers, and therefore I do have a nostalgic fondness for them.  I am enjoying the opportunity to finally put something on the table that makes real my adolescent daydreams.  More to follow …