I have finally gone forward on a long desired miniature project. The Grand Gnome Army of the Republic of Redhatland ! For some strange reason, I have always wanted to do a 28mm fantasy Gnome army. Maybe it goes back to my childhood and interest in Mythology. Maybe it was that Christmas that I got the Book of Gnomes. Maybe, it is just that I like troops with oversized hats. Who is to say?
This is a project that I had thought about many times over the years, but never really found the right miniatures for such a force. Most 28mm Gnomes are basically dwarves with cone hats. Way to big for my taste. Everyone knows that Gnomes are only six to twelve inches tall, with hats of equal size! I remembered that I had a few minis from the nineties for 15mm Gnomes. These were too big for 15mm also. However, maybe they would do for 28mm?
So, I did my research and found two companies that sold such figures. The first is Peter Pig and the other is Splintered Light. Looking through the offerings, I figured all would work for something. So, me being me, I ordered them all. The minis sat in my closet for a while, as I had not decided how I would use them in gaming. With the Alpha release of Vermin Swarm by The 9th Age, I decided that this seemed to fit my idea of the army. Lots of mediocre troops that liked to tinker and now stuff. With that, I organized my minis and got started.
I started with the foot troops. Since the individual troops are small, I decided to go with a straight forward painting method. I started by spraying all the models tan and just randomly applied various pastel greens, blues, tans and browns. I then painted all the hair white and flesh for the faces and hands. I then painted all the various bits and bobs a shade of brown or black, with some silver fittings here and there. I finished off the base painting with red for all the hats (there is a whole lore on what the different hat colors stand for). I then glued each to brown sprayed GW 20mm bases.
The next step was shading. I simply hit all the models with GW Earthsade wash. I thought this was good enough shading for most of the figures. However, I needed to brighten up the most important feature on the figures and that was adding some highlights to all the red hats. It is all about the hats!
Next was the basing. I opted to go with the woodland and field look, so covered them all with Vallejo brown mud textured pumice. Once is set, I dry brushed a shade of red brown and tan to lighten them up. Next I added a small amount of Scenic Express summer blend flocking. At this point, I hit a hard stop. I wanted to add lots of flowers to the bases, only to realize I only had a few. My FLGS was out, so I search online and ordered them (it took a while to find the in stock online too!).
It took a few weeks, but they finally arrived. So, I sat down and started gluing different flowers to every base from the six options I bought. I then went back and glued down some random bushes from Woodland Scenics to add a little more texture. With that, I had a nice carpet of terrain for my Gnomes to look at home in.
A finally spray of dull coat from Army Painter and the troops are done! I am now working on some unit fillers and characters.
- Mantueffel