Duelling Gamers - Month 2 Update 2. And the odd Griffon

May continues to tick by, and happily I have continued to make some progress in terms of painting. Nothing dramatic, but I'm now most of my way through my quota for the month after finishing the second wave of Quarrellers. 16 models down, just 5 Slayers to go. Seems very achievable.

The full complement of 16 painted Quarrellers

Many of them have the little token shields from the box set, but I think I am going to have to model some more up to be clearly toting great weapons in case I want to go that way with their equipment.

A selection of the models in the second wave. The guy holding his hand up was meant to be the champion, I think. He'll do for now. And the musician has been stolen from a Skull Pass Thunderer unit, because I didn't really want to waste a valuable multi-part Quarreller model when I could use a musician who would never be good for anything else. This will still leave me with 4 unpainted. Who needs more than 4 Thunderer musicians, really?

And you can see his embarrassing lack of a crossbow here. Still, he has a handgun. It's not like he's unarmed.

Of course, that would make things a bit easy. Why not complicate things for myself a bit? In the spirit of this, I have decided there is something else I would like to paint in the next couple of weeks. Actually, I am not really trying to make things harder for myself, but I have agreed to be involved in this year's Melbourne Little Wars. Up until now the exact plan has been a bit vague, beyond something basic like "we'll play a big game of Warhammer". I've given it a little more thought recently, and have come to the conclusion that my Empire will most likely be required. Somehow that led to me being annoyed at only having 1 Griffon painted, and that with a rider shared with the only painted Pegasus. I really needed to address this.

So, I need another Griffon. Or maybe more than one. After all, if I am trying to address a Griffon shortage, I should do it properly. One can never have too many glorious birdies. I decided that I would try to get 3 done instead. Get around to dealing with the shared rider for the last one, and that would give me a solid air force. Plenty of fearsome beaks and noble plumage to go round.

This being me, I had plenty of Griffon models kicking about. I decided it was time to assemble Karl Franz on Deathclaw, using the current plastic kit. The model is outrageously huge, but I think it will cut a dashing figure at the head of a sufficiently large army. I then tore the top off a trophy that has been kicking around here for the last 10 years or so. The old metal model was going to waste where he was, so I lazily undercoated over the top of his garish all-gold trophy paint job and re-based him to get him up-to-date. The chariot base is a bit excessive, but he'll live.

The magnificent Chesty Griffon (with breastplate clearly stolen from the front of a steam tank), ridden by the Emperor Karl Frank himself

The much less impressive (but perhaps more sensible) old metal model

Finally I did what every Empire player and his dog has already done on the internet, and converted one of the excellent Island of Blood High Elf Griffon models. I have a few, and always had one ear-marked for my Empire army. Potentially there are one or two details still to be added, but he's basically finished and ready for the undercoat.

An Island of Blood Griffon with the High Elf hacked off and replaced with something more Imperial

The legs and torso are from a Pistolier, The arms are from Knights, The head is from a Demigryph rider, and the sword from the Battle Wizard kit

I liked the sword, although didn't end up quite getting into the pose I had in mind

The knee joins are not ideal. The cloak was almost an afterthought, but worth doing. Slightly messy, but it will do

I may add some sort of clasps to hold the cloak in place, and clean up the other green stuff a little before painting

I angled the flying stand a bit in order to make the pose work better

Getting the Elf off the saddle was not terribly hard, but the Empire legs sat much higher and required a bit more putty to make them work

3 of the same thing, but all rather different

So instead of 2 weeks to paint 5 Dwarfs, it's now 2 weeks to paint 5 Dwarfs and 3 Empire Griffons. Sounds more worthwhile, don't you think?