Ultima Ratio Regis

"The Last Argument of Kings", which terribly quotable monarch Louis XIV had written on his cannons. I've painted up that lovely gun I got on the cheap, as well as most of the monks, a 'Mech and a peasant.

Dynamic action shot, as I mentioned, colour scheme based on the Arsenal football strip.

Not sure how I managed to get the front and back shots of the Whitworth sitting parallel, but they look nice and I'm too scared to change anything now. Took me a while to summon up the courage to face a whole four colours arranged in striped, but it's a relief to have it varnished. Colour scheme loosely based on British WWII desert camouflage, as remembered from seeing it in World of Tanks.

Two thirds of the masher monks, the third missed the varnishing due to shield repaint

I've finished all but two of the monks, one is the chap who I left on the shelf, and the other is the mail-armoured chap. I tried to paint each cross on the shields in a different style, and the last one gave me awful trouble. I tried about three different designs, all of which exceeded my ability as  a painter before I settled on something dull but neat. Pics to follow.

Monks finished. Second from the left was holding a bishop's staff, but I gave that to a conversion project that got lost.

The ink vs. not ink competition was won by the armed non-ink brigade, so the left over monk has had a first run without the ink malarky. First attempt didn't go quite so well, so will try again for next blog.

The peasant on his own looked a little barren, so I decided to show the non-shield sides of the armed monks.

Very little risk of running out of models to paint, I did finish assembling all the conquest plastics, but there's so many still to go and all the other odds and ends so I doubt I'll be finished even by my birthday. Not that I won't demand new toys of course.

Left: I finally converted a javelin chap that I'm happy with. Right: starting on an EM4 orc

I've been thinking about potential new armies to invest in (although I still want to add a few things to the Normans, like more artillery) . At the moment, I'm leaning toward more EM4 orcs, as you can get 50 for £7.50, and all the converting will be keep me occupied for a while. I think it would be an interesting challenge to just use these, although I'll try to find some wolves or something to mount a few of the models as cavalry. Got to have cavalry.

Leaving you with a final pic of the cannon. I'm so happy with it!