Wee Free Men

Part of tackling the intimidation factor is going to be breaking the project down to a pln I can follow along and just focus on one bit at a time. I’ll probably jump around as my mood takes me but having a rough pln will hopefully stop me from getting overwhelmed.

The loose To Do list I’ve come up with:

• Read back through the books for research but don’t let this get in the way of actually doing things
• Write a rough 2k list for Kings of War
  • An army like feegles just makes sense for a mass battle game and I like Kings. The army isn’t going to be built around the list though, the list will be dictated by the models I know I want to put in
  • This will help figuring out how I fit what’s in my head into an actual army and not just a big diorama
  • They are goblin proxies, without any reservations I have known that from the start
• Figure out the base sizes (this army will be displayed in a glass cabinet so size matters)
• Plan out the scenic bases (and work out pinning for all the metal minis if necessary)
• Pick the models I want to go with and work out how many I’m going to need
• Paint scheme; needs to be effective but quick and easy or I’ll never get through the hundreds of minis needed
• Convert all the models I need to for various units as best as I can to what I see them in my head
• Sculpt other units from scratch (this step has multiple steps within it but that’s not current me’s concern)
• Actually paint it

Let’s be honest, this is not an army that is going to see the table all that often. It is an army I am doing mainly for my own enjoyment and keeping true to elements of the book is important to me.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t want it to be clear to any potential opponents what everything is. Everything is a proxy but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be able to tell roughly what things are from across the table.

Why goblins though? Well, several reasons.

1. I knew from the start that Tiffany would be a Giant so it had to be a force that allowed giants.
2. Feegles are clearly a horde army. There are constraints that I am putting on the army to feel like the feegles from the book. No ranged weapons or cav. A melee horde screams goblins to me.
3. A quick glance through the goblin range gave me ideas for analogues from the stories.
   1. The wizard? That’s the Gonigal, blowing on his mouse pipes, demoralising the enemy with battle poetry.
   2. Winggit – Hamish on Morag the buzzard.
   3. Rabble and Luggits will both work for general feegles but rabble stat line just doesn’t feel good enough so this will be an army of luggits. I knew I wanted one unit to be special (more on them in the future) so the Grogger’s Lugg Lads horde worked quite nicely for them.
   4. There will be a toad and a cheese

There are other ideas that I’m still fleshing out but this was the starting point. There are also a couple of things that from a list perspective I’d like to include but I’m going to have to go through the novels and the army list to find a way.

This was my starting point and next I turned to the novels themselves. I reread Wee Free Men with a pen in one hand to make notes and underline important bits. For the other novels I had to switch to the audiobooks for unrelated reasons but still managed to get a lot of notes in a little book.

After sitting for a couple of hours with this pile of army notes and the Mantic Companion open, I think I have something I’m happy with. Is it a good list? Not a bloody clue but I also don’t really care. It allows me to include all the characters I want in a way that I think represents the books fairly.

The feegles are too good to be Rabble so everyone became a Luggit. The army builder lets you name units so it makes keeping track of my ideas a lot easier. I’ll address each unit in time in its own post but for those who know the books, this is how things stand as of June 2023.

The Nac Mac Feegle, known also as pictsies, a type of fairy folk. They are known for drinking, swearing and fighting, are incredibly strong, brave and are so heavily tattooed with wode that their skin appears blue. They have red hair, wearing kilts and occasionally mouse/bird skulls as helmets. They strike fear into the hearts of all who go against them… or a form of dread at any rate. Feegles are also only six inches tall.

The ones on the Chalk have a fear of words, writing being a tool used to punish feegles by things like lawyers and judges.

There are five books in their sub-series but this is enough information for now. Anything else you need to know, I’ll bring up when it matters. You really should give the series a try though. Wee Free Men is your starting point and even if you’ve never read a Discworld book, it excellent. There, my librarian bit is done.

With Tiffany being a Giant, the feegles had to be in scale to her. The books say they are around one tenth the height of Tiff so after measuring the Mantic giant, that gives us 15-17mm.

In the novels, the feegles don’t use armour. They have large swords, kilts and the occasional rat skull worn as a helmet. Two handed weapon wielding, kilt wearing, 15mm humanoids. Easier said than done.

There are ranges of kilt wearing 15mm models a plenty but most are using shields or had helmets on them. Early on I found this range from Magister Militum and after buying little samples from a couple of different companies, these won out. Size wise here they are compared to a 15mm dwarf from Ral Partha.

What I like about the Magister ones is that they look a little chunkier, more heroically proportioned. Although they are 15mm, for the purposes of this army they are just small creatures in scale with a giant who is normal height human. That sentence made more sense in my head. They had to look good next to Tiffany and not like they didn’t belong together.

The model range from Magister is extensive however only two unit types work for me; berserkers and warriors with two hand weapons. The berserkers have great feegle poses to them but none of them are kilted. The warriors are kilted but have some metal helmets on three of the five poses. There are both problems I’ll need to deal with; at the scale and volume of the army, things don’t have to be perfect, just to look good en masse at three ft away.

Next up is figuring out the paint scheme.

Painting the wee free men is going to be the bulk of the project but also the most boring. What’s needed is a quick but effective paint scheme for hundreds of minis. Reference images vary bit in hue for the feegles but given we’re working with tiny men, bolder will be better I think. It is about contrast. Not Contrast. Small c contrast. Bloody GW ruining a perfectly useful term.

Time for some testing:

1. White prime, Contrast neat
2. White Prime, Contrast thinned
3. White prime, ink
4. Zenithal prime, Contrast neat
5. Zenithal prime, Contrast thinned
6. Zenithal prime, ink
7. Black prime, white drybrush, Contrast neat
8. Black prime, white drybrush, Contrast thinned
9. Black prime, white drybrush, ink

The photos don’t really do them justice because I can’t be arsed taking photos. It is a paint test, you get the idea.

Even before things were dry the answer was obvious to me. Feegle 9 wins. The Contrast (and I suspect the same would be true for Speed Paints as well) was just too flat. Maybe it is the scale of the minis, maybe it is the choice of blue. I could try more options but I don’t give a hoot. I like 6 and 9 but the drybrushing of the white over the spray can gave a much more consistent result. So here is the result in full:

• Prime with matt black
• drybrush Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White to act and a zenithal (too hard to achieve on minis this size with a spray can)
• Winsor and Newton blue ink over the top

I put an order in for the first load of feegles on Friday so hopefully they should be here in a week or so. Then the fun can truly begin.

And by fun I mean mindless boredom of batch painting hundreds of figures.

So after the news about Magister in the last post, it was time to think about what I’m going to do. I placed quite a large order which arrived this morning but had no idea how many more I am going to need to complete the army.

Getting in from work tonight, it was time to get down to some maths.

I’m actually pleasantly surprised. I had in my head I was going to have to put in a large order that I couldn’t really afford but having done this tonight I can breathe a sigh of relief. It is only a little over next month’s normal hobby budget to pick up the remaining packs.

I don’t see me ordering extras though I know that KoW can scale up,  even at tournaments. I could second guess the shit out of myself, and I probably will between now and next pay day, but as of this evening, everything will be fine.

Let’s not dwell on what happened, let’s look to the next few months instead shall we? The project currently looks like this:

The feegles look like this:

Picking it up where I left off with bases. Most of the time, perhaps all of the time, this army will be in a cabinet and not on the table. Measuring the size of the shelf and then marking it on my cutting board it was time to start figuring out where all the bases are going to go.

Bit of playing around but I think this will be how it goes.

Now to sit and clean the rest of the feegles during the UHH…

A quiet evening spent gluing feegles to tongue depressors. I have some cans of primer arriving this week (thrown out by the Easter weekend, I forget every year) so this was the extent of the progress this weekend.

I was going to just glue all of them but realised that was silly at this point. I know that there will be five regiment bases to cover with these “normal” models so just got enough ready to cover those. That box of cleaned minis would make a handy weapon in a pinch…

Somehow this four day week has felt seven days long. I have other hobby that I should be doing (promised to friends) but I came home to a couple of packages with things for this project and honestly, a weekend of diving back into the Disc sounds wonderful.

After a wonderfully unhealthy dinner, I went over to the bookcases and grabbed some inspirational reading.

While the army is just feegles in general, it has a lot of references to Wee Free Men in particular. This copy has been marked up with notes for the army for a long time now but going back through them has been helpful for refreshing my memory.

If you are a Pratchett fan and don’t have the HisWorld book, it is an excellent hardback that was created to go alongside a gallery exhibition. Checking the Discworld website, they have it in their clearance section down to £7.50 which is a fucking steal.

Another quick post today though about another slow process. I’m trying not to leave the basing until last like I usually do. In the future I’ll go into further detail but today’s main goal was to use some insulation foam and sculpt all the bases at once.

I’ve not really used the foam before but I’ve had a small sheet of it for a while in the stash. Cutting it down to the same size I marked out on my cutting mat before, I drew the base outlines on the bottom of the foam so I could check as I worked what would be on what base/lost in the trimming stage.

I then spent an afternoon listening to an audiobook and carving away with a utility blade. As someone who doesn’t usually take a ton of time on basing, I don’t have a great mental picture of what I am going for. There was a lot of going back and forth but eventually I got it to a place where I’m happy. Part way through I decided to cut out the base footprints and get them glued onto the MDF to prevent warping. I used a cheap but very cheerful grab adhesive which was cured enough within 20 minutes (or a perfect time for a tea break). Some more carving, making sure to mark the footprints for a couple of elements I know will be on them. This is a horribly messy stage and reminds me why I don’t do terrain making.

Next step was the first application of filler (with brown and black paint added).  I’ll need to go back for a second pass on the areas I couldn’t easily get without mess and to touch up areas that I missed.

There is a lot more to be done but for the first afternoon, I’m happy with the progress.

I’ve been a little frustrated in hobby time lately, I’ve got a flare up of carpal tunnel and so painting isn’t very comfy.

Coming back to this project and the test minis I painted, there still felt like there was something missing. The blue skin still felt a little flat. I decided to look around more online for other options and ended up with a bottle Two Thin Coats blue wash. Impatience won out and no test model was done. Or maybe the whole unit is test models. Perspective, eh?

The process to this point then is:

• Prime black
• Drybrush with white to zenithal/underpaint/whatever the heck you want to call it
• Two Thin Coats Blue wash over the skin
• Tidy up with white over the hair/beards
• Citadel Blood Angels Red Contrast for all the hair
• Citadel Gore-grunta Fur contrast over weapon shafts and the few wee bits of leather
• Army Painter Gun Metal over the other parts of the weapons
• Vallejo US Field Drab on all the cloth
• Citadel Mechanicus Standard Grey on the little bits of fur on the two poses that have some
• Vallejo Charred Brown for the puddle bases

At this stage, I’ve had to stop work. For the tartan, I need some pens and it is too close to payday for me to go out and get them right now. Hopefully by the end of next week, I’ll have what I need to finish them off.

In the meantime, I have some other bits to start working on…

The reality of painting a couple of hundred minis for an army is that you will have to batch paint.

Yesterday I prepped as many minis (65) as I had tongue depressors for and today fit in two hours of the skin stage and what I’m now calling The Smurf Stage (going back in with the white paint to touch up for the next stage). I’m learning the blue wash’s behaviour; it scared me as I was putting it on because it seemed to pale but it darkened as it dried and I got the same results as before.

Have you ever hated yourself so much that you decided to do tartan on over 200 17mm tall miniatures? Even for me, this might be a new low.

A quick trip to Hobbycraft after work and I found what I was looking for. This pack of three fine nib brown pens. After a bit of trial and error, it looks like only the smallest will be useful for the feegles; the 0.5 can’t quite fit in the fabric folds and the brush one doesn’t go on quite as well. Being ink, the result is pretty shiny but there is still a wash and matte varnish to come.

In the meantime, I have plenty of chances to git gud…

On the day Granny Aching died, the men had cut and lifted the turf around the hut and stacked it neatly some way away. Then they’d dug a deep hole in the chalk, six feet deep and six feet long, lifting out the chalk in great damp blocks… Granny Aching had been wrapped in a woolen blanket, with a tuft of raw wool pinned to it… The chalk had been put back over her and Granny Aching, who always said that the hills were in her bones, now had her bones in the hills. Then they burned the hut. That wasn’t usual, but her father had said that there wasn’t a shepherd anywhere on the Chalk who’d use it now… Next day, when the ashes were cold and blowing across the raw chalk, everyone went back up onto the downs and with very great care put the turf back, so all that was left to see were the iron wheels on their axles, and the pot-bellied stove. (Wee Free Men, 2003, pg 108-109)

With five identical regiments in the army, I wanted a way of each being told apart (esp when it comes to magic items, I don’t like the immersion breaking act of sticking a card between the models). What with payday just happening and the last bits for the army now on their way, I wanted to get at least one completed base to push me forward in motivation.

I started with the one that has the remains of Granny Aching’s shepherding hut on it. This is the point when I have to fully accept that scale is a flexible thing in this army… regiment bases aren’t as big as you think. 

Pratchett himself had a shepherding hut and there’s photos in the exhibition book I talked about a few posts ago. The wheel for mine was taken from one of the plastic wagon kits from Great Escape Games and the stove chimney is a bit of water pistol.

Once the hut was set in, I started to lay out some feegles. There are fewer of them than I originally thought would be on these bases but as I have gone on with the project, I’ve realised I need more space for grass tufts as you’ll see soon.

Super glue secured everyone but to add more stability I used a texture paste to level the ground. I used up the end of a bottle of Stirland Battlemire and then switched to AK’s Dark Earth. After it cured, I applied some tufts. I’ve got a load for this project from Tajima 1 Miniatures and they are excellent. From reading the books, we know the Downs are covered in white flowers and that often the only sign the feegles are around is the movement of grass. It made sense then to have the grass be higher on the models than I normally would. Getting these bigger elements in place first, I then went through with smaller tufts and laid out a good thick layer of grass to match the descriptions.

I’m still not sure the fronts/sides. I’m leaning towards keeping the sides the bare earth colour but having grass over the front so each base will look complete on their own stampeding towards the enemy.

I’m delighted with how this one turned out. After a few weeks of spinning my wheels, this was a big step towards how I see the army in my head. In fact, it gave me such a boost that I worked on three more bases on the same day (photos later once they are finished). The bases will have more feegles on them going forward but overall, this is the look I want.

It was too big to be a rabbit hole and badgers didn’t live up here, but the entrance to the mound was tucked in amongst the thorn roots and no one would have thought it was anything but the home of some kind of animal. (Wee Free Men, 2003, pg 124)

The second regiment is another at the back of my display, this time of the entrance to the Feegle mound.

This is the point where I realised that I’ve made an expensive mistake. I should have bought a static grass applicator and mixed up my own static grass rather than using tufts. The Tajima1 tufts are fantastic, easily the best I’ve bought over the years. Not even a hint of needing to add glue to keep them stuck down, a nice mix of shapes and sizes and very little shedding. Can’t recommend them enough… unless you decide to make them the entire ground cover for a full 2000 point multi-based army! The cost is going to be eye watering but as they say in for a penny, in for over a hundred pounds.

Tufts used from Tajima1:

• Natural elements large summer green (the bulk of the ground cover)
• XL green
• Wild flower beds in white
• Wild grass tufts (free when you order five boxes or more)

What’s that? This project isn’t nerdy enough? Let me fix that for you.

While working on an idea for something to add to the Granny Aching hut base, I decided to add in a packet of a Jolly Sailor tobacco. After Granny died, shepherds were known to leave packs of her favourite tobacco at the old hut site to keep the sheep safe. The feegles continued to keep the sheep (or ships) safe and so they took the tobacco.

Looking around the internet, there were two examples of Jolly Sailor branding but the photos are terrible so just printing them out very small wasn’t going to cut it. Thankfully one of the reference materials I found was a better quality image from Discworld Emporium from one of their older stamps.

I’m not very good at graphic design stuff but I know enough to muddle through so one evening, cribbing ideas from other people’s work, I managed to come up with something I was happy with. I could have spent longer on it, tweaking to my heart’s content but I have to keep in mind that this is not the point of the army, it is an Easter egg. My to do list is long enough!

Printing out a bunch of them very small, I added them to the Granny’s Hut base. I also got round to doing something I’ve hidden from you until now. The Feegle mound has a cut out section at the back to show a little bit of the inside of the mound. In the book, there is a scene where the Kelda’s room is filled with gold so my go to gold glitter came out of hiding. I mixed some with pva to make a thick paste (the less messy option – Smaug’s hoard taught me last year!) and added in some packets of Jolly Sailor while the glue was still wet.

There is this other thing I did with the file…

And yes, I’ve ordered new dice specifically to go with the army’s custom dice tin.

This is not the last you’ve seen of Jolly Sailor in this project.

As I said, this is largely just other people’s homework but here is the full image

My new dice arrived from Chessex. Having small child hands, I tend to use smaller dice (12mm) especially for Kings of War when you roll loads at once.

The new additions are Speckled Air (CHX 25900).

The white ones are for marking wounds, just the bog standard GW ones you get in every box game.

My bank and I sincerely hope this is the last stupid thing I buy for the army.

“Flappity-flappity flap! Cheep, cheep! Ach, poor wee me, cheepity-cheep!” Tiffany ran over to the window. There was a Feegle on the path. It had made itself some crude wings out of a piece of rag, and a kind of beaky cap out of straw, and was wobbling around in a circle like a wounded bird.“Ach, cheepity-cheep! Fluttery-flutter! I certainly hope dere’s no a pussycat aroound! Ach, dearie me!” It yelled. And down the path Ratbag, arch-enemy of all baby birds, slunk closer, dribbling. As Tiffany opened her mouth to yell, he leaped and landed with all four feet on the little man. Or at least where the little man had been, because he had somersaulted in mid-air and was now right in front of Ratbag’s face and had grabbed a cat ear with each hand.“Ach, see you, pussycat, scunner that y’are!… Here’s a giftie from the t’ wee birdies, yah schemie!” He butted the cat hard on the nose. (pg82-83)

The middle base for the back of the army display, this regiment is where the two other hills meet. This led to some creative positioning to get a decently full base.

Now to its special element; the Bird Feegle. Originally I was going to sculpt everything on it from green stuff but one of the other models I’m using on another gang had some extra bits they weren’t needing anymore so this little feegle got some feathers and a bird mask. I needed a little bit of green stuff to make the back look right but over all, there wasn’t a lot of work involved in this one. It’s not remotely how the bird feegles are described in the book but the bits were too good to pass up.

Ratbag crept along a branch. He wasn’t a cat who was good at changing the ways he thought. But he was good at finding nests. He’d heard the cheeping from the other end of the garden and even from the bottom of the tree he’d been able to see three little yellow beaks in the nest. Now he advances, dribbling. Nearly there… Three Nac Mac Feegles pulled off their straw beaks and grinned happily at him. “Hello Mister Pussycat,” said of them. “Ye dinnae learn, do ye? CHEEP!” (pg104)

I actually wrote this post and made model last summer so the photos are long gone by now. 

Horace the Cheese first appears in The Wintersmith. He is a Lancre Blue, a blue cheese known for developing character and personality. Tiffany in addition to being a witch, is something of a cheese expert and so when she tried her hand making a lancre blue she ended up with Horace, a cheese with an attitude.

Fond of eating mice that made the mistake of setting foot in the dairy, once Horace met the feegles, his destiny was fulfilled. Good pals with Daft Wully, Horace can now be found running around with the tartan of the clan wrapped around him.

Funnily enough, there aren’t any miniatures of sentient blue cheeses on the market so I have to make my own. There is this  great piece of artwork of Horace from Paul Kidby.

Here’s how I did my Horace (without arms cos I just think it looks more sinister):

• Starting with tin foil, I made a cheese shape. Compacted as much as possible to make a stable core for the next step
• Using what I had around the house, I opted for Super Sculpy for most of the work on Horace.  I have quite a lot of it; a lockdown purchase that never saw any use until now. This is a very soft polymer clay that is lovely to work with. Once you’re happy with it you can bake it and then add more to it if you like. Horace got two bakes; one once his body was done and one once his kilt and legs were done
• Texture was done with rolled up tin foil, a little piece of hessian for the kilt fabric, and the rest of the sculpting with some basic tools I’ve had for years but never really done anything with.
• The legs have some wire inside them and weren’t fun to do.I don’t like them but this is his second set and I’m trying to just let things go so these are the legs he has.
• Feet are hard and after two attempts I went looking through my collection for the best feet to use. GW Rockgut Trolls have great feet but because GW are just soooooo inconsiderate, there aren’t spares in the kit. Never mind, that’s what blue stuff was invented for. Milliput was used for the final feet. Easily drilled so they could be attached to the wire with some excess left to pin to the base.
• Daft Wully riding on top of Horace isn’t mentioned but felt like a reasonable thing to do. I tried bending the legs but at the size of the models, it didn’t work so I chopped them off and did a very rough Milliput version. A little more Milliput to help blend the join and Horace is ready for the next step
• [this is where Horace languished from last summer until the Spring Clean Challenge started] Coming back to the model, the legs needed some reinforcement so, when I was doing some work elsewhere in the army with a green stuff/Milliput mix, I came in and put an extra layer on Horace. This was especially necessary around the ankles

This is the first time I’ve made a model from scratch and I’m pretty happy with it. He looks like a cheese with legs. Perfect? Far from it but I have a model which didn’t exist otherwise. And more importantly the feegles have a cheese friend to fight alongside them.