Claymore Castings 2

As promised, I wanted to provide a review of Claymore Castings and I'm going to talk more about the new Citadel paints as well. The sculpts are by Paul Hicks and the models are quite simply some of the best I've ever placed on my painting table. There is a careful attention to detail, but the manner in which the sculpts are rendered make painting a joy - even the tiny laces on the leather jacks are easy to pick out with a brush. The soldiers are dynamically posed and carry various odds and ends of equipment that lend a lot of character to these models. 

I'm going to build a small collection for playing border skirmishes in the period so I mounted my models on wooded Litko bases (25mm round). The next step would be to clean up the model with a clipper and file to remove mold lines and flash... hmmm... ok, my Claymore Castings had ZERO clean up work. Wow - nice job (maybe Dave Imrie cleaned mine up before he sent 'em).

On to the painting. I never use a white undercoat. Ever. My style depends on using the black undercoat to provide the deepest layer of contrast and separate different areas of color to provide the ultimate contrast. Having said that, I am following along with Dave Imrie's painting tutorial so I decided to try his method of a white undercoat followed by a dark wash - Citadel Devlan Mud for Dave or Citadel Agrax Earthshade from my shiny new paint collection. This will provide a bright base for colors while hopefully providing the dark contrast the in deepest recesses that I want...

I'm not going into every stoke, but I want to say I am extremely pleased with the results and I am really happy with the new Citadel paints. In another departure from my normal method (and again following Dave's advice) I used a lot of washes. For the majority of colors I followed the following method:

1. Citadel Base Color
2. Citadel Shade (the wash)
3. Two layers of highlights from the Citadel... errr... Layers Colors

There are literally TWICE as many colors in the new range. One of the reasons I switched to Foundry paints years ago was to get a more subtle contrast between layers without the need to mix paints (yes - I am that lazy). Citadel has basically taken all of their old paints and added new shades between to create a range much closer to the Foundry model.

The end results of my initial test of the new line. While I am happy with these models, I still feel like I would rather start with a black undercoat. The new Base colors give even coverage even over black. On these models I actually went in and added a black line in a few areas. I've left the device off of the heraldry for the moment as I haven't decided exactly what to use for my fictional Scottish lord.

One thing about the Citadel paints that I'm not crazy about are the new texture paints. If you typically base your models with sand and then paint it you will probably love them, but for me the texture was too fine. I have my own basing method so I'll stick with that - maybe I'll find another use for the texture paints.

More Claymore models and another Warfare Miniatures unit coming up soon...

Claymore Castings

Claymore Castings is a new miniature company formed by David Imrie and Andrew Taylor. Both have been figure painters, collectors, and gamers for a number of years. The first range of models, Medieval Scots, are available now at claymorecastings.co.uk, with Border/English longbowmen in development.

The figures have been sculpted by Paul Hicks and they offer great flags and transfers designed by Flags of War. Head over to the Claymore site see see the full range and look for an ad soon in Wargames Illustrated (designed by yours truly) with more.

I have a full set of the initial release, mostly Scot spearmen plus a command pack, and it was my intention to post a review with my fully painted collection, but I've decided I want to paint them with my new Games Workshop set so I'll be holding off yet for a week or two. I will say the models are fantastic and I'll post pics of mine soon.