Neil's Project Page: The Holy Land- part 1

The Holy Land - part 1

(Ed. Note: Neil, long time blogger and participant of our PAINT & CHATS, has volunteered to write up a series of articles - Neil's Project Page - where he describes how he goes about tackling new miniatures projects. Everything from force and miniatures selection, basing, and painting, along with all the considerations involved. Here is part one where Neil goes in to the details of his newest project - The Holy Land.)

Starting a new project can be a daunting prospect and also an expensive one. So in the following weeks and months I thought I would go through my projects as I start them (and hopefully) finish them, and share some of my research and the choices I make.

My first project actually happened by chance. The last night at the club I had my first game of Lion Rampant. I had a fun game and agreed to take part in the campaign set in the Holy land in the new year. So here we have 2 ingredients to start our project. 1 a game system I enjoyed, and 2 a campaign setting that sparked my interest. These I believe are the most important points for this project. The rest as we shall see adds more value and sustainability.

So we had a start. Next we needed some miniatures. These came from one of my favourite miniature company's Gripping Beast.

This box would form the core of my army for Lion Rampant. These are nice plastics that go together well and will be easy to paint. This is important for the sustainability of the project. If you can't enjoy the modelling and painting you won't get very far. Also you might be left with a lot of unused and expensive miniatures. Plastics are always a good choice if available as the outlay is not to great if the project fails. The next happy coincident that added value is that by planing the basing, these figures can be used for multiple rule sets. Not only Lion Rampant, but SAGA Cross and Crescent and most other bigger battle games. So we have a flexible army. Very useful for a beginner.

OK now on to the project. The first 12 figures have been clipped from the sprue, cleaned, glued together, and based.

  

The figures and shields will be paint separately to aid the painting process.  Next week we will see how far I have got and also what my thoughts are on this project one week in.

Cheers for now.

Neil