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Sometimes I just need something to really keep me moving on a project. Right now I have two things to keep me working on these Normans. The first is the competition entry for ReaperCon, which must be finished by the time I leave for the convention in mid-May. The second is the converted Rohan miniatures that I finished up. They have all been primed up with white and I'm pleased that I was able to blend in the head swaps pretty seamlessly. A number of the heads are definitely a little big, but most have blended in okay, in several cases I think the new head is much better than the old. I have come to realize that a couple of these poses have heads that really are just a bit on the small side. So any way here is the carrot:

I received a very early birthday present last week. I wasn't expecting these and really I did not buy them. In the box was a bunch of the Rohan miniatures that I needed for my army in September. Amongst these were five very precious Mounted Rohan Royal Guard. Considering the difficulty I have had even finding some anywhere online (yes I know I could buy them direct from GW) this is quite a haul. It was a very good box and I'm very thankful for it arriving.

I managed to get quite a bit of painting in over the weekend. I have temporarily set the Hearthguard aside for the moment to concentrate on the other three points of SAGA troops for the Normans. What is remaining are the Spearman (Warriors), the Crossbows (Warriors) and the Archers (Levi). It is interesting that among the remaining 28 miniatures that there is not a single armored spearman  but there are a number of chainmail clad crossbows and archers. I approached this last bit a little differently. I decided on two lighter colors for the "pants" ( I guess they are really some form of stocking) and about 6 different colors for the tunics. Concentrating the the spearmen first then applying the colors randomly to the remaining miniatures until I ran out of that color on the palette. The Spearmen went relatively quickly and as befits grunt type troops their shields were kept to pretty simple patterns, either halved or quartered. Later in the evening I called them done and spent time working on the crossbows after that. I'll post pictures of the crossbows tomorrow or Wednesday, but they are down to the highlights. I think I'm going to raid one of my GW plastic dwarf boxes and see if I can use those crossbows for some of the parts. More on that later. For now here are the Norman Spearman (Gripping Beast miniatures).:
The Group Shot:
 At the beginning of the day


At the end of the day, well close. After I took these photos I decided that they were to plain so I added a horizontal yellow stripe at the bottom of each of their tunics. I think it brings them together as a unit better.

I admit that I didn't find this all by myself it was posted on TMP. Washington was voted the winner in a contest run by the National Army Museum to identify the country's most outstanding military opponent. You can find the entire article here in The Telegraph: Britain's Greatest Foe: