Some new painting projects

The last few months have seen one of my regular slowdowns in painting with nothing for months, but in the last few weeks I've made a bit of an effort to re-start a couple of projects which I'd bought figures for.  I posted about these at the end of April so for me this has been really speedy work!!!

The first was inspired by my visit to the Little Wars Revisited games day (LINK) back in the spring.  The range of bigger figures on show reminded me that I do like the larger scale and inspired me to have a look at starting something new in a larger size than 28mm.  My only other figures in larger scales are my 54mm Northwest Frontier figures.  After a bit of pondering and hunting around online I settled on a setting that I'd always wanted to do and which wouldn't require a lot of figures... The Three Musketeers.  It's one of those settings that lots of gamers seem to dabble in, judging by the number of blogs and posts that I came across.  I settled into that pleasant part of a new project... perusing figure ranges and working out combinations of figures, before eventually settling on the lovely range of 40mm figures from Steve Barber Models.  These are really lovely looking figures although the range isn't huge,  I picked up 4 Musketeers to start with although I now have some Cardinals Guards on order.  I also added some figures from Eureka... these are a little smaller in some cases (Constance and Planchet are a bit weedy although Rochefort is a good match) but they should work well alongside the Steve Barber figures.  There are also some 42mm figures from Irregular which I may check out for a comparison at some point...

In terms of rules there are a few options... Osprey's En Garde is designed for exactly this setting but I also have a set of Donnybrook which I bought years ago and have never played, and my old copy of GW's Legends of the High Seas which I think would work well.

The other project is another one that just about everyone seems to do at some point.. Mythic Greece.  I guess most of us are of an age where Ray Harryhausen is a big influence and everyone loves Jason and the Argonauts, right?  I'd been looking at this in a larger scale as well but eventually decided that the Foundry 28mm were the best option in terms of the sheer amount of stuff that was available.  A lucky check on eBay showed up someone selling some of the Argonaut range as well as a few other figures so i snapped them up. 

I also bought a set of the Tales of Men Myths and Monsters rules which are designed for exactly this setting although, again, GW might be a good option with few tweaks to their Lord of the Rings rules.  

For inspiration I borrowed Stephen Fry's Mythos from the library as an audiobook... I've been doing a lot of long car journeys recently so audiobooks have been ideal.  I've now ploughed through all 3 of his books... Mythos, Heroes and Troy.  I can highly recommend them all, especially the audio version although this does seem to hinge on whether you enjoy Stephen Fry's style of writing and delivery or find him annoying.  I loved them but reviews seem very split  on this point.