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@Carlos13th: Thanks very much!

@GiraffeX: Cheers. Yup, freehand.

Finished those guys!































Here's a bit for myself, because it's bloody time I get my 15mm Persians done and on the table!



As my buddy's Macedonians are still in their primed state (I assume) the King of King decided that it's not necessary for them to pop up. Rather than that, we'll just walk over and visit Athens. Because there surely is no shortage of Later Hoplites to fight!

I just love the facial expressions on the guy with the striped pants and the guy in the pit helmet.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks you. Yus, proper faces. None of those digitally done deathmasks. (sorry, I'm in a bad mood )

Persians done for DBA:

How bright and colorful! The leopard shields are just amazing too.

 Sigur wrote:
Force on Force is that game in which you pretty much start right where the action begins. This is why many of the scenarios are set on 4' by 4' tables or even smaller. I spent about five turns running my guys towards the village.

This was just so much win

I love the variety of things that you paint, and those models are amazing given the tiny scale!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers! Ancient Persians are great to paint.

@RTides: Glad you liked the little bit. Only thing I found in the batrep to put some little funsie speech bubbles on. You're the first to comment on this too. So thanks for making me not doubt my universal funniness any more. I too love the variety of stuff I get to do. To me, variety is the main strength of miniature wargaming.

amazing Persians. And for the record add me to the list of those liking the speech bubbles.

@Solar_lion: Thanks very much.

Look who popped up on Beasts of War.

http://www.beastsofwar.com/news/battle-brush-studios-paint-shattered-crown-heroes-troops/

Thats great news Sigur, you should get an influx of commissions from that.

@GiraffeX: I do hope so! Just so I can tell them that I'm completely booked out until fall at least and then feel really important and cool about myself!



Either way, I finally finished my article on how I made that 28mmMedieval/Fantasy village!



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/06/tutorial-my-kind-of-town-make-of-dark.html

Hope you like the article.

I love this thread so much. Thanks for sharing Sigar

Totally agree with you about the warbases guys being great people to deal with.

Just for grins when you take a group photo you should add a ' easter egg' in the shot so we have to ponder. As an example .. put one of you feudal Japanese guys barely visible in one of the door ways.. something of a Sigur signature.

Anyways always a good show here. Thanks for sharing.

 Solar_lion wrote:
.. something of a Sigur signature.

Oo oo oo, you could make a tiny squirrel, with a 'tash. Do it, go on, do it.

Interesting read on the buildings. But if you're going to put that much effort in to detail the piece, why pay for a house-shaped piece of wood when you could knock up a basic shape yourself, and then detail it?!

@carlos13th: Thanks very much, mate.

@Solar_lion: Nice idea. Maybe I could sneak something in into such group shots in the future. Of course it would be giving it away if I gave a definitive answer at this point...

@Dr H: Nice idea. I mean so far I have a few items done in my self-indulgent cult of the squirrel..



This guy, Sir Sigur, I'd done a long time ago for a friend's project. He asked a few people from an online community each to paint up a Bretonnian knight for his knights of the pie-shaped table:




..and of course this guy here as the latest addition:


Not mentioning all the vehicles, weapons and ships I easter-eggedly named Squirrel in all kinds of languages.

Anyway, about the buildings - very good question. I think that at 3.50 quid it's well worth getting these things to build upon rather than me having to cut out the shapes. It makes for a nice, sturdy sub-structure.
In addition to that, I never really planned to put that much work into them. It was more of a thing that developed naturally over one or two phases of "if I just add this little thing here, it looks even nicer". My regular gaming pal instead waited it out until the Gripping Beast resin houses were back in stock and got a bunch of those. They're really, really nice as well. But of course these I got are mine.

That's the bit where I think that the 4Ground things (with some exceptions. Feudal Japan, small scale modern stuff and Wild West) just doesn't work for me. It's too expensive for MDF and the paintjob is irrelevant to me. Stuff like Warbases' on the other hand I think is pretty handy. Saves you the time to come up with designs of the basic shapes, measurements and so on, but still lets you do your own thing. Of course the best of the best will completely scratch-build their buildings. But if you feel a bit insecure about where to start, what measurements to use, what materials to buy and so on I think that it gives you a very good starting point. In addition to that it always helps if you got the basics done for you. Then it lies around and you think "i paid money for this, I better get on to do something with it!". With completely scratch-built things it tends to lie half-finished for ages. At least that happened to my scratch-build projects once or twice.

I know I'm a few pages behind, but that Force on Force battle report was just downright awesome!

finally went back and looked through this whole log.

so good, dude. so good. i'm psyched you've posted all this!

Very amusing stuff Sigur.... well, it would be amusing if you painted like a human rather than some kind of artistic demi-god...

I really liked the article on buildings Sigur! I intend to put that knowledge to good use soon!


soon...

@Warboss_Waaazag: Thanks very much! Glad you enjoyed the battle report. Motivates me to do more. Force on Force is a pretty fast and unforgiving game, but quite fascinating.

@slamma: The whole thread? Wow, thank you. Much appreciated, mate.

@Gitsplitta: Well, that's an incredibly kind thing to say.

@Wehrkind: Cheers, the article goes over really well with people. I can't believe I only got to do it now (to be honest, having Battle Brush Studios featured and linked to on Beasts of War boosted my ego so much that I put stuff aside for two days and just wrote reviews and similar articles I meant to do for a while).


Awoooo! Back to painting Space Wolves.



First time I'm painting these new Thunderwolves, Fenrisian Wolves and that wolf chariot. Okay, they don't look quite natural and the fenrisian wolves have bat-like ears, but the poses are really, really good and I like the fur texture Good successors to the classic plastic GW wolves.


Last night we had gaming night again and as I had just finished my Persians for De Bellis Antiquitatis (DBA) we decided to give this old girl a ride again. :p

Just a little reminder what DBA does and what it is:


(we played DBA 2.2. By now version 3 is out)

DBA is a highly abstracted miniatures wargame depicting battles from the biblical period up to medieval times by Phil Barker. Originally it was released in 1990 and since then revised and updated versions have been released every few years. DBA 2.2 (which we play) was released in 2004, in late 2014 DBA3 was released. The rulebook includes roughly 200 army lists, the game is 'scale agnostic' (that means you can use any scale you like. It's a standard thing with all wargames rules actually, but sometimes people have to be reminded of that ) with 15mm or of course 28mm being popular choices. It only requires a few figures per side, from 22 to 100 (in extreme cases). Usually your army will have about 50 figures. Each army consists of 12 elements or units. Each player requires one six-sided die and a measure tape for playing. The gaming area for 15mm figures is 24" by 24" (some people prefer 30" by 30").


The facial expression on DBA Man is chosen wisely. This is what most people look like when trying to read the rules which are known for their peculiar and technical language. However, there are several guides and extra explanations available online which makes the game understandable pretty well.

It's an I-GO-YOU-GO system. At the beginning of their turn the player rolls a die. The number of pips rolled is the number of units he or she may activate (= move) this turn. In certain cases a move requires two pips, but this is a rare and usually avoidable thing. If your elements touch bases, they may be activated as a group using just one pip to activate, but groups are less flexible in movement.

Close combat is based on each player rolling one six-sided die, boni are added based on troop type and special circumstances. If one side ends up with a higher combat result the other unit usually is pushed back, if the combat score is double the other side's result they usually are destroyed. These results may vary based on troop type.

The side to first eliminate 4 enemy elements (1/3rd of the enemy army) or the enemy general element wins.

On to the games now! I fielded my Late Achaemenid Persians, my opponent brought Athenian (Late) Hoplites. A classic match-up.



Late Hoplites:
8 Spear elements (one of them is the general's element)
1 Cavalry element
1 Light Horse element
1 Auxiliaries* element
1 Psiloi** element

*light infantry, when fighting in rough terrain their combat value is comparable to the one of Tiger tanks
** pretty much farmers with slings or javelins


Late Achaemenid Persians:
3 Cavalry elements (one of them is the general's element)
2 Light Horse elements
4 Spear elements
1 Scythed Chariot
2 Psiloi elements


Game 1

I ended up as the defender, so I got to set up the terrain. Two roads, one forest shoved into a corner somewhere. Wouldn't want some pesky terrain to interfer with my horses running around. The attacker then rolls for which table edge he would set up on (he chooses one table edge,on a 3, 4 or 5 he gets to set up on that edge. Any other result means that he deploys on one of the other edges). The defender then deploys his force, then the attacker sets up his.

Early game:








[STUFF HAPPENED]

Most of the game took place on one flank, as one half of the Greek army advanced quite far and I did my dearest to throw stuff their way. concentrading almost all of my army in one quarter of the board led to some trouble for cavalry to maneuver though. Sorry for the lack of pictures of the mid-game. It was our first DBA game in a year or so, so we had to look up a lot of rules.

Anyway, in the end we had made up a neat little pile of people on the Persian left flank:




In short: I managed to kill 4 Greek units, Persians won. Woo-hoo!


Game 2
It wasn't too late yet, so we decided to have another game. Same terrain setup, the Greens got the opposed board edge this time.






This time I set up my spear fellas in two blocks rather than one with the Scythed Chariot in between. The cavalry too wasn't concentrated this time, but one Cav element went along with one light horse element on the left flank. The Psiloi were set up more defensively as a rear guard.




Early game:


The Greeks set up in a more linear fashion this time, to the left and right of the road and sent the Light Horse and Cavalry down the flank to harass my light troops.





The rest of the Greek force acted more defensively this time and it came to exactly the situation I would have preferred not to get into when fighting Greeks - the push and shove with a solid line of Hoplites. Including their reserve units being able to run up and down along the back of the line, popping up where required.



On the left flank my troops were at a disadvantage of numbers, especially after a daring attempt in which my Light horse got in the back of one of the Hoplites, but the whole situation amounted to very little despite it looking very promising. My Light horse got caught and destroyed. The only reason my left flank held as long as it did was due to pretty rubbish activation rolls on the Greek side (clearly representing the lack of flexibility when employing a static battle line strategy ).

On the right flank I had a few more troops, but so did my opponent.


In this picture you can see a final attempt to break the Greek lines with a charge of my Egyptian Spearmen along with the General's cavalry. In the back you can see the rest of my cavalry (light and medium) in their own little skirmish against Greek light infantry which went on for most of the game and which I should not have pursued for so long. My guys were at a slight advantage and I just wanted to drive back the Greek light infantry far enough, but those pesky islandfolk refused to flee even once, just retiring slowly, effectively binding my right cavalry flank.

The only way I could have won this in the end was if I had launched my Scythed Chariot (peculiar creature that it is) into the Greek General, roll really, really well and maybe killing him. I was just ready to do so as my left flank collapsed and the Greeks had won. For funsies we rolled the charge of the scythed chariot against the Greek general's spear element, but failed and the chariot was killed.

DBA is much more playable than I had remembered it to be. We still weren't quite sure on some details (mainly which unit has to conform to which if being charged at weird angles), but got two credible, enjoyable games out of it, requiring very little space, comparatively little monetary investment and which looks rather pretty in its own abstracted way. Works well for Ancient battles for me though.

well, it was the whole thread over a "few" sittings. haha

i really like the historical minis. those games look really cool!

Great to see other minis on your portfolio and also in all scales.

What can I say, every miniature you paint regardless of theme, scale or setting is just a great display of your talent. Keep it going!

@slamma: I bet. Thanks for taking the time though. Yeah, a bunch of years ago I got into historical wargaming quite seriously. I mostly blame the excellent Meeples and Miniatures podcast. I was really lucky to find another guy who's in the same stuff (everything pretty much ) and we get to play regularly. Good times indeed.

@NAVARRO: Thanks for commenting and the praise. Much appreciated, mate!


Well, I didn't get much done today. Cleaned and basecoated a wole lot of Space Wolves vehicles and some infantry.

Lovely battle reports Sigur. I have many a fond memory of playing DBA when I was in graduate school.

That was a great little batrep really enjoyed it. The wolves are looking very nice so far as well.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. To be honest, the game is more fun than I remembered (this of course has nothing to do with the fact that for the first time I won against my gaming buddy in DBA :p ). So far I only played Thebans really and it's a great change to have such a diverse army such as Late Achaemenid Persians who got a bit of everything really. DBA seems to be much more popular in the US overall it seems.

@GiraffeX: Thanks for the comment! Glad you enjoy the battle reports.


Didn't get all that much done Saturday and Sunday, BUT at least I cleaned and basecoated a bunch of Space Wolves Terminators and characters, Logan Grimnar's wolf sleigh, a Stormwolf, a Stormfang, Bjorn the Fell-Handed (plus all kinds of switchable appendices for weapons) and a Sicarian. I'll try to get the Stormwolf done first.

Litte update with new WIP pictures.

Holy smokes, those are gorgeous with the darker tones!

They look very nice indeed Sigur, that's a lovely blue/grey

Excellent battle reports and awesome space wolf flying boxes of death, so far.