Wooden Wars: Queen Victoria's Troops for Review, Dice and the Flags!!

"That’s how you build an empire. We stole countries with the cunning use of flags..."

                                                                                           ~ Eddie Izzard

Over 40K blog visits!

First off I'd like to say thanks to all you Skull and Crown followers. This week saw the passing of the 40,000 visitor mark on my blog!  It astounds and humbles me that so many have come to look at my toys and tolerate my narcissistic life lesson ramblings. If I knew this would happen so quickly, I'd have posted a 40K fig' to commemorate the moment. To quote the Emperor, " Though I love you all, I cannot embrace you all"...

 Automaton Grenadiers:

After much back and forth with paint, I decided to stick to an NMM style with the Robots - for this week anyways.  This fellow is one of  Princess V's Grenadiers, as denoted by the bearskin.  He is fitted for close combat with two claws, forgoing the Tesla gun arm. 

In Wooden Wars, units outfitted in this way cannot fire, but do get two attacks in melee. And since he is a grenadier, would get his dodge ball save as he closed in hand to claw combat with enemy units. Bottom line: keep these lads well away from your troops!

This model took me about an hour and a half to paint, but I was really pushing different base paints and testing to see if it worked better to start darkest and work up or go with the mid-tone and work back and forth. Jury is still out, but leaning towards mid-tones. When I get the method down, it should take about 30 minutes per fig (or less) for the robots, and I'll post pics - or maybe even videos.

Regimental Uniforms:

Here's another of the Queen Victoria's Robot Wars infantry. This soldier is painted more in the theme of the Sudan wars, sporting more khaki than traditional red.  He's also wearing the face mask.  When designing my models, I try to be specific to a style ("Say - that's a Hussar!") yet generic to a specific callout. The pith helm and jacket look could cover so many different nationalities and kingdoms, whether real or imagined, by just changing  jacket and trouser colors, and facing on uniforms.  I plan on doing a unit of Captain Nemo's troops in all white with red trim, for instance. 

Uniforms are French Paris Guard, but the flag is mine.

Guarding the Horde:

The first shipment of official Skull and Crown dice have come in!  Kudos to Chessix, who's attention to detail and turnaround time is exemplary.   Bottom line: these dice are cool, and defendable.

The guards are painted in a Paris Guard uniform. They are also showing off the drummer and flag bearer arms that come with any Napoleonic infantry unit.

That's all for now. Tune in next week when I should have the art work for the Tesla cannon crew and more prototypes to look at.

Cheers!