The Dogs – Spring Clean Challenge 2026

Overall Colour Scheme

I want the army to look cohesive but as a collection of separate Regiments of Renown these mercenaries don’t wear a single uniform, matched colour scheme, have matching banners or any of the usual tricks we might use to visually tie the force together.

There are things helping to unite the look.  They are all going to be painted by me the same Speedpaints+ style.  I’ll do base coats with Speedpaints over the top of the zenithed primer.  Then after a coat of matt varnish I’ll go back over key areas like the armour with 3-4 layered acrylics.  This gives the models a nice pop and helps brighten and enrich colours to provide a hyper-real look that suits fantasy figures.

Basing will be the same for everyone.  I’m going Goblin Green edging rather than my more usual earth or black.  I’ll also use the same basing finish – probably a Krautcover as they are just too convenient.

As to colours I’ll keep things fairly logical in terms of the main colour choices for a unit.  Armour will usually be bright steel and the other main metallic will be gold.  All units will have some black and white somewhere.  Although this will be fairly subtle it should provide enough of a visual link to help unify the force a bit.  I’ve decided to restrict myself to two main bright colours, blue and red.  So an individual unit will have the option of having blue or red as a focus colour with black and white appearing in every scheme.  This won’t happen for every unit as they will look too similar if I do that.  Those who would logically have a different main colour focus will get that instead.  The Wardancers are going to be green and the archers will either be green or possibly I’ll go russet instead but not so much on the blue or red.  I took a similar apporach painting a large Kislevite army for Warmaster and they looked good.

To test the overall approach I’ve picked a small unit, the Wardancers.

Not much to do with these.  Only one has a nub for a shield so I went through the 1980s plastic shield stash and picked out one of the four pointed ones:

Painting Guide

AP Speedpaints first

1. Skin with Crusader Skin
2. Clothing with two similar Olive Green shades, Desolate Brown and Algae Green
3. Leather in Burnished Red
4. Steel and chainmail in Enchanted Steel
5. Armour plates and jewellery in Aztec Gold
6. Hair in a variety of colours and blends working from Sand Golem as the darkest through Bony Matter to Pallid Bone as the lightest.
7. Wood in Bony Matter
8. White bits base coated with Holy White and the white colour reestablished with Vallejo white acrylic.
9. Black bits in Grim Black.

The basecoats for the armour (5 and 6 above) are the ones I use for elves.  This will mean they should still look right alongside my other elves.  I’ll probably do the humans in a more usual Broadsword Silver and Hoplite Gold.

After the Speedpaints were on I gave everything a matt varnish – Mr Hobby Super Clear Matt spray is my weapon of choice at the moment.  This evens out the appearance of the colours.  Neat Speedpaints look a bit odd with sharp contrasts and shiny areas so it is hard to see the final finish.  Matt varnish sorts this out and helps even up the finish so you can see if there are any areas of unevenness or missed coverage that need to be addressed.

Highlights

1. Steel and chainmail.  Everythnig is given a generous drybrush with Dark Star Steel, leaving just joining edges and deeper recesses.  Then Darkstar Baroque with a lighter drybrush or direct application onto the upper half of blades and the upper surfaces of chainmail.  Finally top edge highlights, blade edges and any top surfaces and corners are picked out with Vallejo Metal Colour Pale Burnt Metal.
2. Armour plates and jewellery.  Because I’m working up from Aztec Gold which has a slightly green undertone I’m not layering up with anything too orangey or warm in tone.  I started with Darkstar Regency Gold over the top 2/3 of surfaces.  Then Darkstar Renaissance Gold over the top 1/3 and a final upper edges and top pointy bits highlight with Vallejo Metal Colour Gold which brings back some of the green based look in the top highlight.
3. White accessories re-highlighted with Vallejo white.
4. Skin is tackled last as I need to see the rest of the model finished to see which areas of skin need a bit of improvement to sit well alongside the newly highlighted colours.  It needs highlighting and tonally correcting where the Speedpaint has come out a bit uneven with a mix of Vallejo Model Colour Beige Red and Vallejo Game Air White.  These are blended by eye for the requirement of the part being painted.  I try not to warm up the skintone too much – I like my elves pale and wan.

Not doing bases yet.  I won’t have either the edging paint or base cover until after I’ve been to Salute.  I am going to use my very green photography display mat (by Model Scene) and I’ve picked a fresh background from the Jon Hodgson Fantasy Background Book.

I wanted a sorceress on horseback and remembered the Kislev Ice Queen so looked at images online and was rather struck by this conversion on Stuff of Legends

This is a conversion using parts from several models.  The queen herself originally came with a standard plastic horse.  The horse here is from the Prince Tyrion High Elf miniature, two different versions, the head is from the earliest one that came with a plastic barded horse and the rearing body is from a later version.

I went to the modern version of the Citadel Bitz Service, eBay, and found the queen herself without horse, the two halves of the horse, his head and his tail all from separate dealers.  Probably cost me just over £40 which compares to buying a special character for AoS.

Everything arrived yesterday:

The build was fairly straightforward.  The only adjustment was to shave the peg in the neck down to fit the smaller round hole in the body.  The ridge that runs along the middle of the caparison over the flanks needed to be trimmed back slightly to allow her majesty to seat more easily.  Overall she is a pretty good fit but there will need to be some greenstuff work on the joins on the horse, especially at the neck, and between the rider and horse.

You can see the size of the bit of greenstuff that was used.  Once filled we get this:

Particular attention was paid to creating a realistic join for the rider.  This mostly meant filling in any gaps between her and the horse where a gap wouldn’t have shown were she a real person sitting on an horse.  The largest amount went on filling in under the fur cloak.  The cloak is fully sculpted so to extend it and sculpt more might not look right.  Therefore, I opted to fill under the fur as if there were layers of clothing that were ruched up as she sat in the saddle.  The edge of the fur then sits on them.

Another concern was the single attachment point onto the base.  There is a single plug under one of the hooves.  A hole was drilled in the base and the plug was glued into place, with extra greenstuff added on the underside to provide a bigger surface area for the glue to contact, which should make it much more robust for use on the tabletop.

As well as the Ice Queen the Green Knight has been getting some greenstuff attention to various gaps and uneven joins.  He was pinned onto his base with holes drilled into his rear hooves and then a chopped up paperclip stuck down into the groove underneath the base with a small amount protruding above.  The hoof holes were located onto the two protruding paperclip pins and then the whole securely glued. The underside was greenstuffed over the top of the pins to provide a better hold for the paperclip section that are under the base. He now looks like this:

Spent today basing and then priming ten units and 4/6 heroes.  They will need all day tomorrow to dry properly.  Working with Speedpaints it is necessary to have a well set primer.  If you work on the undercoat too soon you risk it coming off as Speedpaints are much ‘wetter’ than a standard acrylic.

Meanwhile, a small amount of building and repairing is underway.  I found the top half of the Leopard Company standard after they got primed so will need to get that stuck on tomorrow.  The Green Knight is still in the miniature hospital having been sorely abused by his previous owner.  No idea what they did but I can’t get the two halves to meet properly or get the slotta tabs into the base slots.  They’ll have to come off and I’ll glue and pin him onto the base.  He needs a bit of greenstuff work too to cover the gaps in all of the joints.

As you can see from the photo I’ve got everyone arranged into units and am starting to think about the army disposition and which heroes will command which units.  In Midgard the army is divided up between 3 senior heroes, one of whom is the army commander.  They can influence any units but the other senior heroes can only influence the units under their own command.

Our three main heroes will be:

• La Lionne Rousse who is the Army Commander and will get the main pike and spear units, along with the fusiliers and cannon.  She will be assisted by Sister Standard.
• The Green Knight who is likely to get the cavalry and chariots in his command
• The Ice Queen Sorceress who is likely to get the Greenwood Archers, Wardancers and possibly the schiltrons.  She may well also get the two L1 heroes Kane and Able.

Good news on the orders front.  Warbases emailed me to say the Midgard unit bases will be here on Monday.  Ace 🙂

The idea for this project is to build a Dogs of War army made up of the finest Regiments of Renown in the known world.  I’ve had a box in The Pile for a long time with a “Dogs of War” label on it.  I put all of my favourite fantasy miniatures in there.  The best bits of my collection taken from different manufacturers and created by different sculptors, but in my opinion the best fantasy miniatures ever produced.

I buy one special present for myself for my birthday and this year I went for a box of the Alcatani Fellowship that I found on eBay.  As expensive as you might imagine but that is in the eye of the beholder.  Fantastic sculpts by the Perry Twins.

I added a copy of the Dogs Of War army supplement for 5th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles from 1998.  This is the one that the ‘new’ Regiments of Renown like the Alcatani Fellowship were made for.

There was a discussion on one of the streams I watch, probably the UHH, about Vinted being a great place to shop for miniatures.  I have a poke round on there occasionally and was looking for the Lothern City Guard Regiment of Renown or Elwing’s Guard Horse.  Not long after Christmas I came across this:

Yes!  Someone was selling off the mother load of original 1985-88 vintage Citadel Regiments of Renown.  Prices very far from the outrageous levels you see on eBay where you pay £10+ for a single mini.

There are two boxes of Lothern  and two of Elwing’s.  I’d have been happy to get just those four for what I paid for all of it.  I had to lend the hobby budget some money to get the deal done so needed to pay it back.  I decided to sell the monopose early miniatures; Bugman’s Rangers, Meghil’s Dark Elves, The Elf Bowmen, Desert Dogs, Knights of the Cleansing Flame, Knights of Origo and a random mounted Strider (all shown in the last picture above) went onto eBay.  I didn’t have to charge outrageous prices to get my money back and I’m glad to have passed these on to other collectors.  The boxes were in great condition.  Either this was a much loved collection or it has been in the back of a cupboard since the late 1980s.

Money repaid I held on to the rest to see if they were needed in this project.  Then on to The Pile to see what we have already.  Alongside the Lothern and Elwing’s units this is what we fished out:

If you recognise all of these you win the hobby internet 🙂  I’ve spent some time today sorting through to find some bases for those minis that don’t have.  I’m going for square (as nature intended) slotta-bases for infantry, either 20mm or 25mm and then standard 25x50mm for the cavalry.  Midgard movement trays are on order from Warbases.

I have a notebook that I use to keep all of my hobby records, musings and planning in.  I made up an entry and started working on a Midgard list for this army.  A standard force in Midgard is 300 points.  I’ve got way too much stuff here so will aim at double that.  Anything not required can go.  I’ve got too many other projects already, I definitely don’t need to start something else.

So on to getting everything based and ready for undercoat which I’ll do tomorrow.  Hopefully we’ll still have decent weather so at least it will dry quickly.

Going forward the project will be both a blog of my general progress, painting log so I know how I got all of the finishes (which doubles as a handy how to guide for you, dear reader) and then a little something else.  I’ve decided I want to make a final entry for each regiment that reads like the original entries for the first Regiments of Renown.  Each one came with an origin story and some background for the leader as well as a set of stats for the game.  I can manage that too, although the game will be Midgard HB rather than Warhammer FB.