Eastern Promises - Battle Monks of Cathay warband

I have improved the Emissary's lampions and polished the horse's neck a little. All warbands members just got their bases made too so I can start the coloring proces. Yippieah!

Yeah now the neck is kinda ok

looks good Cianty !

Very cool Cianty!

Great work mate, I really like it how this warband is shaping up!

Now, get some paint on them!

Thanks, guys!

Pfreck wrote:

Now, get some paint on them!

Man, I haven't touched a brush for more than three years and I'm really getting excited about finally painting some miniatures again. Can't wait to start... maybe tomorrow.. I need to check if any of my paints are still usable, though. I've had bad experience with that before...

So I painted my first minis yesterday...

The paints were still usable and half my brushes too.

I must say, I completely forgot what a blast it is to paint your minis. I've been using my older painted models for so long now. After painting two warrior monks (6 hours) my neck was hurting like sh**! It still hurts today but nonetheless I painted a Dragon Monk wielding Chain sticks.

Oh, sorry for the bad image. I'll take better pictures when I finished the other models.

good work so far Keep it up

Nice colour scheme Cianty! Grey/Red... I like it a lot!

Awaiting more pics

Very nice man! Yea, I dig the colors. Those monks look soo bad ass =) GJ

Great work cianty! See, you can still paint after 3 years..

Keep it up!

Nice Nice, Nice Twice

real cool! mind if you share with us how you made such a beautiful red on the monks?

Great work cianty!

Very fitting colour sheme.

The warband is nearing completion.






More coming soon...


Oh, and I just noticed the question about the "beautiful red". Actually I am simply using Red Gore darkened with a little black as base and the apply lighter layers with more Red Gore and Blood Red. Pretty easy yet effective.

looking great man, good job.. the flying one is my favorite

Haha!!! Friggin brilliant Cianty!

Got three words for you: I LOVE IT! Absolutely amazing!

good job again
and thanks for sharing how to make the red
keep up the good work

Thank you, guys! Here's a little more...








Further pictures of BTB Hired Swords, Dramatis Personae and other models will be posted soon.

one word GREAT

The Models are great! Great Details.

And just as good: are the pictures. Very well shot.

Props to the basing/terrain as well. Very well done!

I don't know if there's anything else I could possibly compliment! Great Job Cianty!

I must say, for a while, that guy's torch looked like a pile of intestines/innards on a stick =)

Cianty, the day you open a Wargame Studio, let me know!
Really cool... again!

Thanks for the nice comments!

The warrior monks are not the only henchmen available in Battle Monks warbands. There are also Cathayan soldiers, recruited from the town militia. They are especially useful as they provide additional firepower, something the warrior monk heroes and henchmen do not practise.
Since I am using these soldiers in my warband also I started with a Cathayan-style conversion for a crossbowman.


The Marksman

Looking for inspiration for how a Cathayan soldier armed with a crossbow would look like I found the following pictures.



The left one is an illustration from a book on chinese weaponry or something like that (actually I found the image on a forum via google). The comments sounded as if it was a quite well-known book. The second picture (right) is an illustration straight from the Warhammer Ancient Battles Rulebook (1998), page 131. The striking similarity of the two pictures convinced me that that was how my marksman had to look like.

I used bits from the Mordheim mercenaries/Warhammer militia sprue for the torso, arms w/ xbow and head. The latter had to be modified a little to take away his pirate bandana look. The "skirt" and legs are a Dark Elf bit I specifically ordered from www.bitzbox.co.uk. I converted the legs to give the model the same pose as the crossbowman from the Warhammer Ancient Battles rulebook. I had to file off the chainmail and the result looked like this:



To give the model the necessary resemblance to the two chinese illustrations I had to do some Green Stuff work. I filled the gaps between the arms and torso, and modelled his special cloths.




Up next: Painting.