Many years ago, a student of mine (a keen 'gamer, a very clever young man who ended up with a scholarship to Oxford, and a thoroughly decent human) returned from a trip home to China with a gift for me: a Chinese Dragon. He thought that this might be useful in some way shape or form for a HOtT army. I duly bought a box of Caesar Q'in infantry with a plan to paint a 'reanimated' terracotta army. The idea was to make the painting really quick.
I subsequently found another dragon (a 'frost dragon') to add to the army, thinking that the thing that would make this army different to my other HotT armies would be that it had two dragons. Now that is unlikely to be a tournament winning army, given the vagaries of dragons, but that's not why I construct armies. It's all about the narrative, the aesthetic, and the variety. I try to make each army different in composition in some way shape or form to any of the others.
The project has sat suspended for possibly 15 years. And then I played a Volley and Bayonet game with Adrian and Jon featuring Adrian's Boxer army. I was inspired by the colourful nature of the Boxers, and turned my mind back to the Q'in (yes a totally different historical period, but the painting inspiration was still real).
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| Source: https://thelosttreasurechest.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/historical-warrior-illustration-series-part-x/ancient-chinese-warriors-of-the-qin-dynasty-under-the-emperor-qin-shi-huangm-the-first-emperor-of-a-unified-china/ |
Having arrived at one of those decision points about what to paint next, I was 'grabbed' by the possibility for the semi historical Chinese army. Here are the first photos.. the first half of the basic 24 point army : two dragons, two blade, and two shooter bases.
Because I wanted the colours to be more vibrant, I used a white undercoat, something I have not tried before. The colours are block painted over the top, and then a wash is applied to bring out the depth. It worked well with the blade, but I was too heavy handed with the wash on the shooters. Oh well, lesson learned.
At the time I also bought a box of HaT Assyrian chariots, with the intent of using Chinese figures to create Chinese chariots (knights under the rules). However these are hugely problematic to assemble. The locating pin holes are in the wrong place, for example). I first tried to assemble them quite a few years ago, and gave up in disgust. It's time for another attempt - you may hear my screams around the other side of the globe.
That's a nice army. I have a box of those figures in my '1 in a series of too many projects' pile, but my thought was to use them as fantasy Elves. I'm not a big fan of the Caesar or the Dark/Light Alliance ones, but as these Chinese are actually quite tall, they might suit my idea of how Elves should look (plenty of missiles, plus lots of close combat). A few mods and they may work anyway!
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