Sigur wrote:


Oh, here's a picture of last night's game by the way:

Worst.
Lookout.
EVAAAAAA!



Loving the vikings, they're totally metal!

Great work on all the Vikings, Sig'.

and lol at those last pictures.

@SlaveToDorkness: Indeed. The tower also actually proved to be full of nice look in that scenario. Took my guys a turn to break the door (using Roland the Ram as a battering ram) and then another to search the tower, but it paid off. And I guess the guy on the tower was happy that the Saxons were satisfied with the pig they found in the lower level of the watchtower and took it back to their ships rather than coming up.

@Dr H: Cheers, glad you like them pictures.


Alright, today I based all the guys and did their shields. Also painted the peasants a bit, but got fed up (hey, there's a fun coincidence. One of the peasant minis I'm painting is the same as the guy pictured in the 'worst lookout evar' picture above. The one in the picture of course painted by virago, not by me). It happens. Finished a dead priest, a dog and a treasure chest though. And of course the bloody shields. Making decals made for Gripping Beast plastics fit Foundry shields. Good times. :p But yeah, so most of the guys are finished now, just the warlord and the peasants and carts to do. Still no news on the Warlord Base situation. Serves me right for not stacking up on these things. Or something like that. The deadline I'd set for myself was the 15th. Oh well. Not too bad. It'll work out fine.

Oh, yesterday I made up a new trick to keep me going. I take little pauses during painting and in an empty editor document I sketch out a list of stuff to do on the models I'm currently doing. Just a simple list saying "eyes, beards, highlight metallics, lips" and so on. I think the list mustn't be to long. Whenever I think "bugger it, I'll stop painting now", I look at the list and think "just these two more things and then I go.". Once they're done you can delete them from the list and put the next few things. I know it's basic stuff for people who properly know how to organize stuff and I'm sure that it's not for everybody, but it worked for me on some things. I'm sure that some organizational 'simplify' guru whizzninny wrote that in some book about a million times and I shouldn't be posting that but it's late, so whatever. Let me ramble. And maybe it helps someone. At least it's worth a shot. I'm sure I won't be doing this a few months down the line, but whatever works, right?

Anyway, good night.

Okay, I got my 60mm base now, put the models on it, slapped some stuff on it to make it more scenic. Today I got some stuff to do during the day, but I aim for the Warlord to be finished before Saturday.

Here's a bit of a teaser picture of the finished carts:



In fact, all the Vikings got their shields now and the bases are finished. They're varnished too.

I ALSO got the base for the warlord earlier today and got to working on the warlord base:



Hope you like them, the self-imposed deadline of "before Saturday" still stands.

Lovely work on the cart. Really like the wooden effect you got.

@ckig: Thanks very much!

Okay, Warlord finished!



...and varnished. Just recharging the cam's battery, then I'll take some finished pics of the whole force (not that it's finished. Still got a few scenic dudes to do and a few more leader figures, but they're a playable force now at least.)

Free hand raven banner or does it have a historical counterpart?

Nah, just another LBM decal flag. Freehand banners take longer to do and thus are more expensive. My guess would be that the design is made up with little foundation in history.

Great job on both the cart and warlord. Good job on the base too.

Beautiful work, that warlord looks stunning.

Carts are amazing for the scale they are.

Just love the commander, such a great steriotypical look to the group.

The commander looks amazing Sigur, the model really does say "You don't want to mess with me".

@Dr H: Thanks muchly.

@Camkierhi: Thank you! What do you mean by 'for they scale they are'?

@Gitsplitta: Yeah, this warband isn't very light on stereotypes, but there are few things which are more fun than playing with stereotypes!

@GiraffeX: Yar, the sculpt is really imposing. Proper warlord!

Okay, here are the finished pictures:

























Hope you like them.

There is more to come. Quite a few great sculpts from sets of 'vikings having fun' sets and some leader figures (plus: vikings on horses!).

Group shots are amazing.

Sorry thought they where the tiny scale stuff. They are amazing regardless, and the dappling on the horses is superb.

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much. No worries, I was just a bit confused by the scale thing. Those horses acutally are very interesting minis as they actually got shaggy fur sculpted. Gives them a very rugged, proper look. These, along with the peasants, are amongst Gripping Beast's better metal minis (which generally have a pretty bad reputation, and deservedly so from what I've seen so far).

Hullo, today I would like to share with you my review of WLG's plastic M3A1 Half-Track. The article also has a little report of how I turned this M3A1 into a M5 Half-Track (the export version) for use with my Soviets.



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/08/review-warlord-games-m3a1-half-track.html

I hope that you find the article interesting and entertaining! Feedback and comments are as always highly appreciated!

Okay, back on the Fantasy side of things now, painting minis for Guild Ball.

As far as I read it's less like Blood Bowl (despite being similar in theme) and more like Malifaux/Warmahordes with a ball.

I'm working on a Butcher's Guild team and a Mortician's Guild team, starting with the Butcher's. (I have no idea what's going on with these apostrophes, but the designers write it like that, so I assume the guilds were the idea of some butcher/mortician each of whom now runs their own guild rather than having a guild of butchers/etc.).

Here's the test mini, the Butchers (I'll just refer to them as 'butchers' and 'morticians' from now on if that's okay):



Hope you like the guy. There's 7 models to each team (including mascots).

oh Guild Ball, very interested seeing what you do with these, its supposed to be a very good game with lovely minis.

First guy is looking great, very nice axe.

@GiraffeX: Yeah, I'm sure it's a game which is very playable and the casting quality of the minis seems to be alright. I mean it's one of those things which are just not up my alley. Some of the minis I think are nice, but it's not something I could see myself actually playing. Putting them together was a bit of a chore on some minis, especially so on some of the Morticians. I'm sure the person who sat at the computer and designed the models had good intentions and knows what the crowds go for, but I assume they do not know how to design a miniature which is to be actually cast up. There's this one guy who hold a LONG, THIN staff in his outstretched hand. All of this, along with this body, is a one-piece cast. The models come in big, shell-like blisters and the way I got the model was with the top half of the staff being bent right above the fist at a 97 degree angle (my estimation). Of course the bloody thing snapped when I carefully tried to bend it back again. Impossible to pin because the staff is too thin, hardly possible to use the staff as a pin itself and just drill a hole in the first because the staff would be too short in the front then. Stuff like that. This is what makes people not like metal minis. Those Foundry wikings? Solid casts, nigh impossible to damage, clean, glue to base, done. But no, we gotta have some spindly 35mm size bloody sailor moon figures. The world may complain about "heroic" 28mm all they like, but then they also gotta complain about that silly fad in mini design too. Baaaaaaaah, I say. Yeah... I don't know, it's just not my kind of thing. From what I read the rules are like Malifaux or Warmahordes so that certainly doesn't draw me to the game either. Minis are fine to paint though, no complaints there.


Butchers WIP:

Looking very nice, the skin tone on the ladies is very well done. Which paints did you use if you don't mind me asking, I'm always looking out for ways to improve in that area.

Glad you had fun putting the minis together

Cheers. I'm using either the Andrea Color skin tone set or Coat d'arms skintones (mostly Elven Flesh). I also recently got myself Vallejo Model Color Flesh Base, which seems to be a great skin tone paint as well. A friend of mine swears by it.

Looking very nice! Needs some tats!

The game itself is very fun, but then I like Warmachine. It has a more fluid pace, and feels more like a sport but with thinky bits. Lots of resource and risk management decisions, which I like in a game. Much less randomness that breaks the game than BloodBowl, but a lot of fun effects and the like. I have only got a single game in, but watched a bunch at our local club, and it was fun and interesting (and I can't even sit through a football game.)
Honestly, as the models are all named characters, there isn't much reason to not just scratch build your own from bits, and skip dealing with the annoyingly thin metals. They are all pretty nice, but I am sure I can do better

Some really interesting models you've been working up lately Sigur. Must keep life enjoyable when you have such variety to play with.

@Wehrkind: Yeah, I thought of tattoos as well when painting those. The rules are available for free online as well as far as I remember, right?

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. Yup, it's all in the variety. I could paint those Foundry minis for quite a lot longer too I think. The style of the sculpts really clicks with me. The funny thing is that I also never really grow tired of doing Space Marines too.

Speaking of which... here's a WIP Space Marines special character:



...and here are some test figures for the Morticians:



...aaaand there's another thing I probably shouldn't say (I probably shouldn't say anything but positive marketing drone crap), but I may have messed up on the colour scheme there. The order was "make 'em grey and purple". I also wanted to make them dark to fit their guild and to contrast the brighter Butchers. Between the grey clothes, the grey NMM metal, the black and the dark/dull purple I'm not sure if they aren't a little boring to look at. I'm pretty sure I'll stick to the colour scheme for the most part, but maybe tweak it a little by adding green bits. I really like those stripey things over the eyes as seen on the dude with the mask. Maybe that's a thing I'll carry through the whole team. Maybe i'll make it green when it's on purple masks or black or purple when it's painted on faces. What do you think?

Nice work on the marine. Just can't believe how quickly you work with such skill. The guy on the right looks great because of the position of the bare skin. The guy on the left.. well... it's the way he's sculpted.

I think they look good, the markings on the mask break it up nicely, maybe a few bits of grass on the base to add another colour?

@Gitsplitta: Thanks, glad you like it so far.

@GiraffeX: Yeah, some green grass on the bases as on the Butchers testmini is a given.


Okay, army pictures time!























Hope you like them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Finished three Butchers for now:



The photo isn't great, but i guess you can see the breasts.

They all look fantastic! The Ravens on the banners (or whatever corvid they may be) are amazing. Also, The cat was beautiful, too! (Their picture was in my email.) Keep up the awesome work

Thanks muchly. Yeah, that cat. Lady a bit down the street brought him back home from her holiday in Greece a while ago. He spends most of the time roaming the streets with his pal (who's deadly afraid of people) and leave, as cats do, trails of mangled corpses. He's a huge charmer. With most people as soon as he sees them (no matter if he knows them or not) he drops on his back and relies on being cute. This way he gets fed by lots of people along his territory. :p But the thing is that he IS very cute and not afraid of people at all. Nobody does not like him (even though I'm very allergic to cats).

That is indeed the sign of a clever cat! Ours has gotten past the hunting phase, fortunately. He did, one evening some time ago, casually bring in a monster sized rat (dead, luckily), so that's certainly better than poor birds and mice!

...or snakes, frogs, toads, any sort of insect, snails, etc. They're bloody killers and they do it for fun. :p Okay, I'm sitting between woods and ponds here, so maybe freeroaming cats are a bit more 'feral'. At least they stopped bringing the dead animals as gifts. (which they did twice or thrice. Usually bird heads. :/ ). Maybe that's a little harsh. I just was out on the balcony to prime some models and the cat was sitting there. It's a very friendly, cute cat.

 Sigur wrote:

The photo isn't great, but i guess you can see the breasts.

Aye and they look very nice

Keep up the great work Sigur

The Vikings look wonderful Sigur.

Vikings look great! What a wonderful force to see on the table.

The Guild Ballers look nice too, though I have always disliked Tits McGee there on the right. Your paint is fine, just always thought the model looked bad. Which is weird, because tits.
The rules for GB are available online, as well as all the cards for the models. So really you can play with whatever 32mm and 40mm based models you have handy, then decide to buy later. Nice little feature I thought.

Hullo, here's my review of one of PSC's few 28mm kits which patches up a surprisingly large gap in WW2 Russian ranges - 45mm anti-tank guns and the 76mm infantry gun.



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/08/review-45mm-anti-tank-gun-by-plastic.html

Hope you enjoy the article and that you find it interesting and informative. As always it's got a short historical bit on the models at hand, large, high-res pictures of the sprues and figures included as well as fully finished pictures of the models.

As I don't get to write up a report of our latest Dux Britanniarum game, here's the report by my first-time opponent Frank Shandy (not his real name. The real name's Jericho Burns*.):


https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/2015/08/21/meet-the-neighbours/




A short and sweet re-telling of the story of the raid for down-kickable doors and piglets, featuring the wrath of the unwashed masses.


*) this may or may not be entirely true


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Libby wip! Well, finished really bar for the freehand chapter symbol on the shoulder pad.






Okay, here's something fantasy football-ish again, but a bit different.



Got to do a collection of Dwarfs and Halflings (sideline personel, fans) and two human star players for the customer's friend's wedding. Quite a few extra requests when it comes to some colours as the figures are meant to depict friends and family of the groom.

Nice write up! I now want to order Dux Brit and a bunch of GBP. Are all the models in the report made by Gripping Beast in their plastics line? Looks like the boxes are pretty limited; do they have a lot of variety of parts inside?

Libby is coming along beautifully Sigur.

@Wehrkind: Most of the minis from the game are Gripping Beast plastics, yeah. The leaders (and archers) on the Saxon side are Musketeer minis characters, I think the warriors and elites on the Romano-British side are ...err... not sure. proper Romano-British minis, not sure from which company. Dux Britanniarum is really, really good. Play it! Well, the minis from the boxes are servicable I would say. All you need really is dudes with pointy sticks and round shields. That's it. Well, and four models armed with missile weapons of some kind, but you can make those as Slingers from the Dark Age Warriors box. The models are a bit limited of course, but that's the thing about plastics, isn't it. I mean you may be able to pose arms at slightly different angles, but that's about it. If you want really different dudes you'll have to get metals. For a closer look at the Saxon Thegns box and the Dark Age Warriors box, here's my review of the Saxon Thegns:

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/07/review-gripping-beast-saxon-thegns.html

..and the Dark Age Warriors:
http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2013/05/review-dark-age-warriors.html


@Gitsplitta: Cheers! Should be done very soon.


Slayers!

I'm very excited & will have need of him when he arrives.

Slayers WUUUUUT?! Those models are awesome, and silly, and awesome. The left one is fantastic. What are those from?

I am making a note to grab some GBP for Black Friday. I am building up a Celt/German/Brit collection, generalized "Old Dudes" like, and those will be great!

 Gitsplitta wrote:
I'm very excited & will have need of him when he arrives.

Wait, what, really???????????????

I'm very jealous.

@Gitsplitta: Will finish him asap and PM you right then!

@Wehrkind: They quite fit Blood Bowl I think. You'll never guess where those are from - these are Warlord minis. Have fun with those Gripping Beast plastics. Let me know what you think of them!



Automatically Appended Next Post:


Here's the whole gang so far. Today I added the gardener Halfling (apothecary for treemen, geddit?), the two Dwarven fans , the cooking pot for the Halfling cook and the Bloodweiser girl:

Wow... did not expect that! It took me like 5 minutes just to find them on the site

Speaking of the site, how do you find the Hail Caesar line? I have some of the hoplites from back in the day when someone else had the name and I thought they were pretty decent. Do the rest of the sets hold up?

No idea actually. My own Ancients are all 15mm and I did a whole lot of 6mm Hoplites by Baccus years ago for a customer, but that's about it. I assume they're okay. It's kind of hard to get a proper overview of where Warlord Games buy together their mini ranges from. I'm also an unfair bastard towards Warlord Games more often than not, just because they make ....clever business decisions and appeal to a very, very wide audience.


edit: asked the Frothers guys. They swear a lot, but they do know about miniatures. Seems like the plastic hoplites used to be Immortal Miniatures' line.

Today's my birthday and just in time this arrived on my doorstep:



It wasn't my idea, but when it comes to buying toys and especially rulebooks I put up very little resistance against peer pressure. I don't like hypes (and wargaming nowadays seems to be ALL hype), especially when it comes to "the latest fantasy skirmish thing", but this looks kinda fun. Very interesting to see Osprey putting a lot more money into producing a rulebook of their own for once. This is hard-bound, full colour, thick pages, well laid out. Possibly a bit too much artwork and such. I can do without every fifth page or so being a full page picture of a wizard. The artwork is nice, but I could do without that. I've got a lot of books with wizard pictures in them. Wizard pictures and half-page photos of minis (again, nice looking, but unnecessary). The interesting thing, and this is something constable pointed out a few weeks ago already, there are no pictures, maps or anything of the city of Frostgrave itself. For a game which has a very thematic setting (it's basically this ancient ruined city covered in ice and snow) I would have expected to see something like that. Would have been cool, maybe instead of one of the many HUGE pictures.

Flicked through the rules and it's pretty much like I imagined - very simple, probably elegant. Looks fun. Lots and lots of spells (you basically play a wizard. This is the only model in the warband who gathers exp and levels up and such.The apprentice levels along, but always stays a less powerful version of the wizard, the other henchmen don't advance at all and seem to die rather easily. Warbands are the Wizard, his apprentice [if you choose to get one] and up to 8 'soldiers'.), big loot tables and random hostile NPC creatures ('creeps' essentially), some scenarios, campaign rules. That's cool. In general it's pretty much what many people suspected it to be - it's Mordheim light. This probably is a bit unfair towards Frostgrave. It's kinda like a fast Mordheim if you prefer that way of putting it.

Either way, it's a good reason to paint up small warbands of Fantasy dudes. So far Frostgrave is all about humans, but that's mostly due to North Star's minis range they have released for the game so far. I'm sure that - true to the GW model of selling Fantasy/Sci-Fi stuff - there will be more stuff added as soon as the miniatures are done. Either way, I'll just use the heaps of fantasy minis I've got lying around already.

Happy Birthday, Sigur !

And excellent work - as always

Happy birthday Sigur, sounds like you've got fodder for some fantastic new figures to paint & some fun times on the gaming table!

Happy Birthday Sir

Also great job on the dwarf team and coaches. Love the apothecary/gardener

Happy Birthday Sigur.

I picked up Frostgrave the other day as well, it looks really fun but you need an awful lot of minis and buildings etc for the missions and random monsters.

@Greldinard: Thanks, Sir, and thanks.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, I do hope so. Glad I got all these Dark Elves painted already, because if we're realistic for a bit I have no idea where I'd find the time to paint any other warbands at the moment.

@Theophony: Thank you, Sir! Yeah, those are some fun minis. Over on another forum someone said the only figure this bunch lacks is a Dwarven Duff-Man.

@GiraffeX: Thank you! See, this is something I missed so far. I thought you maybe need like three skeletons or something in addition to the warbands. Yeah, you certainly need a ton of terrain for this game. And preferrably snow-covered ruins to boot! I really should read the section on random monsters. You almost make it sound more like a dungeon crawling game. Do you have any specific plans for your Frostgrave adventures yet? Are you gonna get the "official" minis or will you just use some fantasy stuffs you've got lying around?



Ahazra Redth finished!










...and two more BloodBowl minis done as well (halflings with a bunch of light snacks and female human star player):


Hope you like them.

Happy Bday.. hopefully you'll put down the brush for just a bit and celebrate.

No time, have to sculpt a tiny little Vince Lombardi trophy. :p

Thanks, I'd love to paint some of my own stuff actually, but ain't nobody got time for that. Happy funtimes celebrations will take place on Friday and Sunday.

That's beautiful Sigur, thank you!!

Happy Birthday!

Thats the best BB team I have ever seen ^^

Happy Bday Sigur!

 Sigur wrote:


@GiraffeX: Thank you! See, this is something I missed so far. I thought you maybe need like three skeletons or something in addition to the warbands. Yeah, you certainly need a ton of terrain for this game. And preferrably snow-covered ruins to boot! I really should read the section on random monsters. You almost make it sound more like a dungeon crawling game. Do you have any specific plans for your Frostgrave adventures yet? Are you gonna get the "official" minis or will you just use some fantasy stuffs you've got lying around?

I don't have any fantasy miniatures I could use for Frostgrave. I've had a good look round and will be mostly be using Pathfinder and Otherworld minis and a plastic Perry kit for men at arms. I'm not too keen on the official minis, I've got a lot of things to pick for other games before I get to this one, will be a project for next year I think.

Ahazra Redth is looking outstanding, Git's you are so lucky

@Gitsplitta: Glad you like the fella.

@Wehrkind: Thanks very much, had a very happy day indeed.

@Ifalna: WHAT! HAVE YOU NOT SEEN MY ORCS?! Just kidding. Thanks very much!

@GiraffeX: Well, he paid for it, so... Yeah, I'm not too much into the "official" Frostgrave minis either. Perrys along with some fantasy stuff sounds quite perfect.

Guildball Butchers!



Only lacking the mascot now. Hope you like them.

Great work and happy birthday, Sig'.

The Butchers are really nice, looking forward to seeing the other team painted.

Terriffic looking group their Sigur. OH, and happy birthday!

@Dr H: Thanks very much!

@GiraffeX: Hope to be able to deliver with those pictures soon!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers and thank you.

So yesterday I spent all day shopping, preparing and - indeed - baking scones. :p




On Thursday I took the night off to play with toy soldiers. I played Sharp Practice! W00t! Sharp Practice is Too Fat Lardies' popular Napoleonic skirmish game. One might say that it's their flagship game, at least it feels like that to me.

As a very quick run-down, here's how it works (if you're familiar with any Lardies games you'll feel right at home with this one as well): This game is about command and control as depicted by leaders (a.k.a. Big Men), basically a series of bits of crisis management as our host and umpire Frank Shandy (not his real name. The real name's Butch Steele.) put it so very well. Activation is based on a deck of cards and Big Men. There's one card in the deck for each Big Man, one 'Tiffin' card that ends the turn (the turn's over, the deck gets reshuffled and activation starts anew), one or two Random Event cards (a thing, usually bad, happens to the next Big Man drawn), Bonus Cards (the player controlling the next Big Man drawn gets a bonus card he can use at any point, giving a little bonus or counters a bad event) and if you want a few more which aren't that essential.



So if one of your Big Men's card gets drawn you can use him to activate his troops (or the troops of a lower-ranking Big Man), change their formation, rally his troops to reduce Shock on them, move around on his own or do more swanky stuff depending on the scenario, but usually he'll activate troops and, increasingly so as the game proceeds, is busy keeping his troops in order. Each Big Man has a rank of between 1 and 4. This doesn't just indicate their rank in the chain of command (in this game my Level IV Big Man was a Major with 4 command points, a Level I Big Man being a Sergeant with 1 command point). All these above actions a Big Man carries out (activate troops, change formation, move around, rally) costs them command points.

If a formation of men is activated they may carry out two actions which usually are: fire, reload or move 1d6 inches. So each time a group is activated they may do stuff like fire and reload (this being muskets reloading takes quite a while and has to be done each time after a unit had fired their muskets) or move and fire, move 2d6 inches or other combinations of the actions above. Infantry fire is pretty straightforward: Two range bands (and a third for Baker rifles), you roll 1d6 for each model firing plus bonus die for troops quality and command ability of the officer ordering the fire, targets within the first range band are hit on a 5+, target within the second range band on a 6+ (groups firing in Line formation get a bonus on their to-hit rolls, but may only fire in a straight corridor). Each hit is rolled for on an Effect table resulting either in a kill or points of Shock. The Shock mechanic combines morale, disorder and fatigue. Points of shock reduce a unit's ability to move, hampers their fire and if shock points exceed the number of models in the group they start retreating.

So one Big Man after another is activated via card draw. This of course means that maybe your opponent gets to activate all his dudes before you can even do a thing that turn. On top of that, there's the Tiffin card which ends the turn (often prematurely, very often met with the gnashing of teeth). So it can happen that you get to activate all your troops this turn and then it's over via Tiffin card. This depicts your force's tactical momentum and that they just were able to seize the moment while the enemy is somewhat hampered/surprised or otherwise occupied. This of course isn't to the liking of the kind of players who like to have 100% control over their troops and like to be assured that they will get to move each of their units once per turn. This is nice in a game like chess or Kings of War, but to me this makes little sense in a wargame.


Friction!

What you need to play Sharp Practice is two or more players, an umpire (not 100% required, but an umpire makes things oh so much easier), a bunch of six-sided dice and a tape measure. Sharp Practice works best on a big table (with 30 to 100 miniatures a side). There is no points system, the whole game is built on scenarios.

Now for the game we had on Thursday. It was set during the time of the Haitian Revolution. French colony, slave uprising (inspired in part by the French Revolution), French troops are hopelessly outnumbered, free a few slaves themselves to help them (European troops NOT dealing well with the enviroment, huge losses due to sickness), also sent a bunch of additional troops (amongst them Polish troops who, looking at the situation of the rebels, realize that they are much closer to their own mindset than the French troops and many of the Polish defected to the rebels' side), British send troops to support the rebels but with the ultimate goal to take the colony for themselves. The recently independent United States of America don't like the idea of the British sphere of influence expanding in the carribean again, support the French cause more or less covertly.



A very interesting and rarely done setting for Napoleonic conflicts. We played with 15mm figures (mostly Minifigs, some Peter Pig and others) on a ca. 80cm by 120cm table. Distances used were 1inch = 2cm (so effectively reducing the ranges a little due to 15mm figures and the smaller table. Distances looked entirely credible this way.)

Our scenario played depicts a group of US sailors landing at the beach with a stash of weapons, French and Haitian troops escort a cart to pick up the goods and get it off the table along the road on their table edge. British troops were to stop them from doing just that. Frank Shandy umpired (and explained the rules to us), virago played the French while I had the honour to play the British side.



I had three Big Men on my side. Unfortunately I forgot their names. One Major (level IV, I think his nickname was 'Tipsy'), one Lieutenant (level III) and one Sergeant (level I). I put the Major with the two groups of regulars, and the Sergeant and Lieutenant with the black troops to have a keen eye on them. The French had one level III big man, a Lady (level II), a leader for the Maroon troops (level III I think) and another Big Man to lead the US sailors.

The British free slaves troops have a special rule to help them move through difficult terrain more easily, the French Maroons an improved version of that and are Aggressive troops (bonus dice in mêlée). The French and British regular troops are Good quality and the British troops, ravaged by disease and the climate, get a disadvantage in mêlée.

The French troops, as full of élan as ever, drove their cart down the road, dedicated to getting this deal over as quickly as possible. As an early on random event one of the Maroon groups' ammo had gone bad (good reason to pick up new from the Americans) and they would have to rely on big, nasty hatchets and machetes for the rest of the game.




My own British troops almost completely refused to move altogether. Even the skirmishers were only very slow to get out of the jungle.




The black troops commanded by the British Lieutenant (green jackets) didn't do much ; they probably had to get their training straight first, while the Sergeant's troop of redjacket haiti troops got to activate quite often, but only really managed to turn themselves into a bit of a laughingstock, getting tangled up in the jungle, then losing their nerve and unloading their muskets at imaginary enemies (due to random event Poor Fire Discipline).

In the meantime the French advanced down the road and set up the regulars to the left of the small hill to keep my British troops from interfering.



The British regulars had advanced at this point and had formed line to unload deadly volley fire at the French. Much to my discomfort though the hugely enthusiastic French black troops had run up to their flank and, knowing about the mêlée weakness of my troops) charged their flank without even considering firing first. A dogged combat ensued, lasting several rounds, grinding away at both sides. After a lot of back and forth the French auxiliaries fled, but had achieved their goal of breaking up the British firing line and battered one of the British groups of regulars quite badly.



Unfortunately at this point the camera crapped out. I had left my cam at home too. Here's what happened: The green jackets on the British auxiliary troops worked their magic and in two salvos they did huge amounts of damage to French troops. Spurred on by this the rest of the British took up steam as well. In short: I started rolling really well. This allowed my guys to kick the French off the hill, running after the cart which had picked up the supplies and made for the table edge. The French troops retreating along with it. My guys, despite valiant efforts, didn't manage to stop the shady deal.



So yeah, I finally got to play Sharp Practice. Had the rulebook for quite a while, finally played it now. And it was fun. Very playable and as with all Lardies games referring to the rulebook is barely required after you got the basic rules down. Of course it helped that we had an umpire who is extremely familiar with the rules (Sharp Practice is his favourite set of rules). This was great, especially as the rulebook is written or laid out in a way that sometimes makes the rules a bit hard to understand.. Especially for modern sensibilities it may be a tough nut to crack, but it's such a brilliant set of rules.

Too Fat Lardies also produced a series of three videos in which the rules are explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhhsFI_CuBo

It surely isn't for everybody, but for me, as with most Lardie things, it hits the mark. Highly recommended and the go-to thing for Napoleonic skirmishing.


Hope you like the report.

Great report Sigur, looked like a lot of fun. Too bad about the camera.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. Yeah, but at least we got the most important pictures.



Okay, by to serious sports. Here are the BloodBowl dudes finished. The whole crew:




....and with a white background:


Slayers:





Sideline personnel:





Fans:





Star Players:




The dude who's going to get those minis for his wedding is a big fan of Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, hence the 12 and the colour scheme. I also converted the model to hold a tiny replica of the Vince Lombardi trophy in his hand rather than the blood bowl cup the model originally comes with (had to replace the hand, sculpted the trophy including the ball).

Hope you like them.

It's been a while since I've done Malifaux minis.




But now I'm back, with a band of Arcanists!



Very interesting things, these plastics. I'll write up a review of those, but first I gotta paint them!

I like Malifaux as well. You are getting lots of interesting minis to paint at the moment.

@GiraffeX: Yeah, it certainly is popular. Interesting minis indeed. And it doesn't stop there!


Guildball Morticians WIP:

Very nice models! I love the way the purple, teal and black come together. That was pulled off very nicely indeed!

wow the Morticians are looking really great, you are making me want to buy models I don't need

Man, both Guildball teams are amazing! Love the Butchers as well as the new Morticians

 Sigur wrote:
Guildball Butchers!



Only lacking the mascot now. Hope you like them.

Nice NMM on the Morticians.

@Wehrkind: Cheers. Yeah, the teal was just a necessity. I hope the customer will be okay with it.

@GiraffeX: Welcome to my world. In the not to distant future I will announce what models I just bought pretty much out of nowhere.

@RTides: Hehe, thanks very much. Glad you like them!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, mate.



...aaaand we're done!


Mortician's Guild:













Butcher's Guild:














What do you think, Sirs?

Very nice indeed Sigur, they were the two guilds I was interested in starting with so its extra nice seeing them painted so well.

The Fisherman guild look nice as well.

@GiraffeX: Cheers. On a German forum I post on there's a guy painting really really cool Fisherman's Guild dudes (http://www.tabletopwelt.de/index.php?/topic/150187-guild-ball-alle-teams/)

Malifaux things:



I'd say they're finished (MAYBE the big elemental dude gets some more shading here and there), but there'll be snow and such on the bases too in the end. Possibly some dead grass.

What do you think, Sirs?

Awwww the kitties are so cute! I want one

Ice monsters look good, but I could go for a bit more shading on the biggun. He looks just a little light and airy now.

Thanks for the link his Fisherman's Guild look really nice.

Malifaux minis are looking nice especially those cats.

Stellar work on the Guildball teams, as Gitsplitta commented the NMM is especially impressive.

Are the Malifaux miniatures for personal use rather than a commission? I really must dig around in my Malifaux collection, and probably buy the Ironsides crew as well.

@Wehrkind: Yeah, right. They're called "Hoarcats" for a reason. (also: look up the older models for them. Very, very funny. )

@GiraffeX: Sure thing, you're welcome. The guy does pretty nice stuff.

@Thraxas of Turai: Thanks very much. Oh yes, that NMM. Bloody heck, I should have charged more for that. The Malifaux stuff is commission stuff. Malifaux is one of those games of which I like some minis (not that much any more for some reasons I will get into when I do the review), but I really don't think I'd like to play with those. To play with minis I want to be able to emphasize with the minis at hand or at least have sympathy for them. I don't see that with Malifaux minis. I think that's just one of those basic things. On the other hand, I like those games which are about, as someone of a different school of thought put it, "just soldiers". I like historical stuff. I can deal with "classic fantasy" stuff too. But the spindly comicbook fantasy stuff some of the newer games use just doesn't do anything for me. I'm also not much into naval, aerial and space ship games. I like things to have faces and be in a way relatable to me. But then again, I'm a big hyprocrite, as shown in the following example:



So my gaming pal drew artist pal into a game they both could agree on - Dystopian Wars. I had painted a fleet for that game before if you remember...



...but never had much of an inclination to get into the game myself, given my reluctance to like cad-designed models too much, given my preference for historical stuff for my own private gaming (because I get my sci-fi/fantasy kicks from doing commission work), my misgivings about steampunk in general and the fact that I have SOOOOOOOO much stuff unpainted and no time to even begin considering doing my own minis in the forseeable future.

So when another friend announced that he has a ton of DW stuff to sell of course I jumped on the occasion. :p Now I own ... let me check...



I now own a Naval Battle Group, a Naval Support Group and a Dreadnought Fortress of the Chinese Federation. They look cute and the rules are said to be good too. No problems there. NO idea when I'll get to do the minis. But I do want that giant robot chinese dragon too. :p

Anybody here got experience with playing Dystopian Wars and could give me some pointers? Today I read half of the rulebook. I'm such a noob, I didn't even know there were cards involved in DW!

Malifaux update:


Sorry for the lack of updates over the past two days or so. I've been painting things, but they're super secret. :/ Gooooooooood, I wish I could paint my own minis. I know, this sounds ridiculous, but especially now with these many tiny projects I seem to get a lot done, but really I don't. In mid-September I'll start doing old-school Napoleonics again which, according to the dreadful plan, will take up all my time if I want to get them done within the prospected time. Until then I have to finish the Malifaux minis, the super-secret ones and a bunch of Space Marines. And Freebooter's Fate minis some time between that too.

I envy your skills and the amount of painting you get to do, but not the amount of painting you have to do :(

Good luck to you sir!

@Wehrkind: Thanks very much. It's all just non-problems really. It's really all these tiny projects, getting them done within a few days, but the workload just doesn't get less, but the smaller projects require more communication and administration and all of that. You know, all the stuff I don't get paid for. But I'll shut up now. I'm very happy where I am, this all is much nicer than I could have ever imagined.

Done!












Here's hopin' y'all like them figures.

They all look really nice, although captain duster there has a lot of very similar color, which is a little dull.

Speaking of whom, what exactly is going on with the cat monster thing on him? Is it choking him? Overly affectionate? I can't quite tell what the model is supposed to be, or which part is the character and what is elaborate terrain

Wow... those are really fantastic paint jobs on excellent and creative figures. Really cool stuff.

 Wehrkind wrote:


Speaking of whom, what exactly is going on with the cat monster thing on him? Is it choking him? Overly affectionate? I can't quite tell what the model is supposed to be, or which part is the character and what is elaborate terrain

The cat thing is the actual mini and the Guild guy is the scenery.

Great painting Sigur, your ice colours on the golem and little dudes is lovely.

@Wehrkind: Thanks. Yeah, the creature attacking that cowboy dude is the actual model. This is a very, very weird model to begin with (I wrote about it in my review which is up and coming): That cowboy is incredibly tall. Much, much taller than any other human. It almost seems like they saw the CAD-design (and I blame this on cad-designs entirely because I can ) and said "that's a really cute scenic piece, but people won't know what the actual model on there is. Maybe if we scale it up just a little...?". And now we still don't know which one the actual model is and are stuck with a gigantic cowboy. That dude looks the way he does due to three reasons: First, I wanted to have him be pretty brown as an homage to the Guild Warband I did in 2011. Purely for egotistical, nostalgic reasons. Second, I wanted him to be pretty plain looking compared to the Wendigo, so I tried to kind of making him blend and blur with the ground or background or whatever. Third, I wanted to keep the Wendigo in line with the colour scheme of the rest of the gang and have him contrast with the warmer, organic colours on captain duster.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much.

@GiraffeX: Cheers, thanks for commenting!


Here are Dystopian Wars Chinese! A Naval Battle Group, a Naval Support Group(?) and a Dreadnought Fortress (I'll leave it up to you to guess which one that is):





I bought all of these second hand (you can see that a few of the cruisers have been painted), so all I did on those so far was put together the flying fortres and the other flying structures and prime them.

I also quickly tried to figure out a colour scheme, just painted straight over black primer, so it looks a bit crap, but it's good for getting an idea. I mean if these were Prussians, Russians or Brits the colour scheme would be much easier to figure out, but with Chinese it's much, much more iffy an issue.

So, any ideas?

I believe I like the one in the lower right the best.

Middle gets my vote!

Middle for sure!

I also like the middle option!

Also, sent you a PM with a separate question from what we were discussing before

Those Malifaux minis are stunning! Which faction are they?

Thanks for your opinions, guys. Much appreciated. In the end I went for the middle one, but it was a close call between this one and the one in the right.

@Mymearan: Thanks. They're Arcanists.

Now I'm currently working out a proper recipe for the whole thing by means of this test mini:



+++INTERMISSION+++

Yet another Operation Squad Battle Report of mine was just put up on skirmishwargaming.com.

http://skirmishwargaming.com/battle-report-operation-squad-game-2/#.VfQf7ZdodR0




Thanks for having a look if you did.

The past Thursday I played Command&Colors for the first time. We played the Ancients variant (which to my knowledge is the most acclaimed one from the series). I have to admit - this is a very, very well designed game.



It's Romans versus Carthiginians in the Punic Wars. I played the Romans (grey meeples). We played the first scenario from the booklet (there are about 15 included in the box). As you can see the board consists of hexes. Dotted lines signify centre, left and right flanks.


Virago reading rules while I muck about with the camera

The general distinction between units is as such: Light troops (colour coded green), Medium Troops (blue) and heavy troops (red). Each category includes foot as well as cavalry (incl. camels, chariots, etc.). The game comes with two quick reference folders in which you'll find combat tables and unit stats. There can always be only one unit on a hex, you may not move through other units (unless it's light troops under very specific circumstances) or shoot through them. Foot units consist of 4 meeples each (depicting their 'health points'), cavalry of 3 each.

Depending on the scenario each player has a hand of a certain number of cards. In this scenario I, the Roman player, had 6 cards, the Carthiginian player got 5. Each turn you may play one of these cards.


It was only in editing that I realized I had chosen the same card twice to show examples. D'oh.

These cards show which units to activate. This is pretty much the core of the game. Choosing which units to activate when. The cards in the above example are pretty straightforward: Activate two units in the centre. Activating a unit means that you may move them up to their total allowance of between 4 (light cavalry) and 1 (medium and heavy infantry) hexes. If the units get on a hex bordering a hex on which an enemy unit is sitting they may attack them in close combat. If the unit has ranged weapons they may fire them at the enemy (they may not target enemy units in adjacent hexes. Firing ranges typically are 2 hexes for most light troops, 3 hexes for archers. If they moved this turn they roll fewer dice for their ranged attacks. Once the units got activated and rolled for combat the card played is discarded, a new one is drawn and the opponent's turn commences.

...which leads us directly to combat!


The game uses six-sided dice. Instead of numbers they show symbols for the various troop types (green - light, blue - medium, red - heavy), a helmet symbol on purple for leaders, a swords symbol and a banner symbol.



On this QRS sheet you can see the combat tables for ranged combat and close combat. When ever a unit attacks at an opponent either in ranged or close combat you roll a number of dice (usually 1 to 2 for ranged attacks, up to a whopping 5 for heavy troops attacking in close combat). If you fire at light troops you need to roll a green symbol to hit them, to hit medium troops you need a blue symbol, for hitting heavy troops you need to roll red symbols. For each fitting symbol you rolled your opponent has to remove one meeple from the target unit, if all meeples are removed the unit is killed. Sword symbols do nothing in ranged combat. In close combat they mean an additional hit on the target unit. The white-on-purple helmet Leader symbol also counts for a hit if the unit has a general with them or on an adjacent hex. For each banner symbol rolled the target unit has to retire their full movement allowance. If a unit is alive after a close combat attack and wasn't forced to retire they may strike back at their attackers.

If your unit gets charged in close combat you have the option to evade, meaning that you possibly take a bit less damage but you don't get to trike back and instead automatically retire. If a unit was wiped out or forced to retire the attacking unit may move on to their hex. Cavalry in many cases is even allowed to immediately attack enemy units they got into contact with due to this move.
If a unit containing a general is hit there is a slight chance he may gotten hit. This you roll for as well.

The scenario we played was the beginners' scenario, so there was no terrain (there are hex markers for that in the box) and the objective was to accumulate 5 victory markers. These you get for killing enemy units and you get an additional one for each enemy general killed.

And that pretty much is it. There are some minor special rules for things like camel troops (horses NOT liking camels), elephants (rampaging when forced to retire) and so on, but as far as the core rules go, that's it. The main part of the game is playing your cards right. Especially later in the game I ran into a situation in which I had no left flank left at all, so all of these cards were worth naught (usually they allow you to activate a single unit of your choosing if the card in question has no more use for you) and on top of that it often got necessary to activate badly battered units to have them run from the enemy troops and keep them from getting wiped out rather than activating troops to do harm to the enemy.



The bits and pieces look rather nice. I like the look of the meeples even though of course you could play the game with miniatures (preferrably painted by yours truly :p ) and I heard of many people using miniatures over the meeples with the stickers on them (which I hear are a load of work to put on :p ). The whole thing feels like a proper strategy game. It strikes a very nice spot between simple mechanics and strategy along with a good dose of battlefield friction in the shape of the players not knowing which card they'll get next. But this is migitated by the fact that they hold a whole hand of them.

Good game. Solid quality, very enjoyable. Thanks to virago for introducing me to C&C:A!

Good read, as usual, nice report!

Reminds me of the way we used to play Napoleonic's in my very distant past.

@Littletower: Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

@Solar_lion: There actually is a Napoleonic variant of C&C out there. I just hear it's not all that great. But that was just one opinion, so who knows.



Right, this is the state of the Federation at the moment. These are pretty much done, even though I'm not sure if I'm entirely happy with how they look (plus, the photo kind of sucks too ). Three Wo-Dao or Dao Gunships (depending on whether or not the little extra turrets I haven't painted yet are dropped into those square slots), one Guan-Dao Battlecruiser, 4 Wue Destroyers (those still need their dragon-shaped flamers painted) and nine Nu Frigates.



These are of course the unfancier ones, but it's good getting those out of the way. What do you think of the final colour scheme, Sirs?

I really love the ones with the lighter tan color, would there be any way to work that color in on the other ships? Overall they all look great, but those ships have the best balance of colors imo, and avoid being too dark. So I'd love to see that light tan decking on some others.

Also sent you an email reply about the farrow, although I know you're busy painting

@RTides: Thanks very much. The decks are that tan colour on all the ships, there's just varying amounts of visible deck planks of course. Yeah, I think I went a tick too dark on the whole fleet .Oh well. Maybe I'll do something to brighten things up. As for your message - thanks, I'll get back to you asap!

Look everyone, I just published another miniatures review!

In this article I took a look at The Assault Group's 28mm WW2 infantry. First time I did anything with TAG minis, but I'm impressed.

Here's thre review, hope you find it interesting and informative!
http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/09/review-assault-group-ww2-germans.html



Thanks for having a look!

Ah that makes sense on the decking! I just love the test mini color distribution:



But you can't create decking that isn't there! It's hard to see in the pic but I think it's mostly the 3 small ships in the center that looked to be missing that color. Not sure if it could be added on the interior sides of those, like it looks the small ships on the far right of the pic have?

The WW2 minis look nicely gritty!

@RTides: Thanks for the comment! Yeah, I think the fact that these dragon flame throwers on the smaller ships in the middle of the last picture still were just undercoated black didn't help much either. That's fixed now. At a higher angle you also get a bit more of a look at the decks.

Right, these optional slip-in turrets are done now as well so I can turn the Dao gunships into Wo-Dao. (at least two. Still looking for that darned third turret bit.). Apart from that the two Chui Support Carriers are done.



The planes still are just all white, not sure about a colour scheme on those yet. Probably white with red? Or jade green like these dragon flame thrower things here:



Finished the smaller Destroyers and the Jian Battleship. Above it's in the Mk.I configuration with additional crew compartments and armour (fer bordin', yarr!!) and below you can see the Mk.II version with Bombard Rocket Batteries:



That's that then, ships done. Next: big, flying things.

Thumbs up. Look great.. I think the planes look good white as a base color. Some red will fit in nicely!

Nice background as well.. is it a mat?

Those are looking stellar my friend. Great color combo on the ships.

Oh man, those look really great now! I do think it was the "dragons" in the middle of the ships just being black that threw me - I did not realize they were still being painted. They're just awesome in that light green now

@Solar_lion: Thanks. I think I'll go for jade green on the airplanes now. White and red might get mistaken for Japanese planes too easily. That blanket thing is from the Dreadfleet game.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks.

@RiTides: Cheers. Yeah, I'm not sure I pointed out properly that these were still to be finished. I guess I just wanted the stuff to be finished quicker and left out that bit of info.


OH NO, it's the mighty Zhanmadao Dreadnought Bastion!!!!1



Well, WIP. :p

Sweet.. love the green tiling. Are you going to paint the dragons green to match?

I'm guessing the dragons will be the paler green like the ones on the ships? I love how you have run with the scheme, they're a lot of colors I wouldn't have expected and are working extremely well together

It all looks fantastic! I am going to check out that Command and Colors game. Looks like something I could play with the old man to good effect.

That's a very impressive piece Sigur... it's like a flying Imperial palace! Going to look great when finished.

@Solar_lion: Yeah, the dragons I did as on the ships.

@RiTides: Me neither. Trying to do Far Eastern stuff is always a challenge to my learned colour sensibilities. I learned that first when I did 28mm Samurai. Cleaned the minis, put them on bases, basecoated them - and then I noticed that I had NO idea what a Samurai armour or an Ashigaru actually looks like in detail.

@Wehrkind: Thanks. It's a really, really nice game. There pretty much are versions of the game for most periods you'd want to play (Ancients, Napoleonics, ACW, WW1, WW2), but I hear that the Ancients and ACW versions are the best.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, I hope it will.

Updates!



For a slight change, here are the finished Dun Floating Bastions.





They are armed with one of those dragon-adorned flame throwers one to each side, bombard missile batteries and a Rampart Generator each, which, as long as both these things are still active, generates an energy field between them which weakens fire directed at targets behind it. One of those gimmicky things I suppose. This more and more feels like C&C:Red Alert 3.

And yes, these totally look like an inverted game of Hungry Hungry Hippo.




Here's another WIP shot of the Zhanmadao Dreadnought Bastion:



And here are lots and lots of small fliers (66 thereof):




The tiny fliers were less annoying to do than I thought. But then of course I kept them very simple and the base edges are still left to do. Hope you like them!

Wow, that's a ton of little flyers! They look great (especially for the size). By the way, is this for a client or a personal project? I assume it's a commission but just checking

Like the flyers and the water bases. Very cool.

The jade dragons on the smaller floating bastions are really amazing. Looks just like the creamy green jade I've seen in so many beautiful sculptures.

@RiTides: Cheers. I did those on the side for myelf along with commission stuff I'm not allowed to show online.

@Solar_lion: Thanks. Got to work out some techniques for doing water bases like that back when I did the League of Italian States fleet last year.

@Gitsplitta: Thank you, Sir. I was lucky in getting a rather pleasant result at the first try. Down the line I refined the recipe a little and there ya go.


Hey, remember the Mordheim dudes I did about two and a half years ago? Well, they're getting their annual reinforcements!



They're Don Pedro and Sorceress by Brother Vinni Minis. Can't and won't say too much about them at this point because I've got a review planned.

What I CAN say something about is that these are going to be added to the crew for reasons of Frostgrave. There's a mercenary wizard in the group already who will act as wizard in Frostgrave, but you also need (well, you don't really need him/her, but it's a very, very handy addition) and apprentice. The thing about Frostgrave is that it's set up as a campaign game, but the only character out of your crew of up to 10 models who actually 'advances' in power and such is the wizard (and along with him/her the appentice). The rest of the warbands are just cannon fodder really. Which is an idea that puts me off a little. It just feels wrong, putting one dude over the others just because he can cast spells. And I'm pretty sure that one could construct parallels to weird ideologies around that ("Fudge everybody else, as long as they're useful to me for personal profit and 'advance'!"). Yeah, not a fan of that. But I'm rambling. Not a huge wizard fan. Self-entitled, power-hungry bad news, the whole lot of them!

On the other hand I'm sure it's a very fun game I definately intend to play. I mean I've got the rulebook, I've got a bunch of Empire, Chaos and Dark Elves (and soon-ish a bunch more Dwarves), time to give that thing a go!

If you want to know more about Frostgrave and aren't sick of it due to all the marketing and general buzz about it, as always the first and foremost adress for solid info on wargaming related things is the Meeples and Miniatures Podcast. The latest episode has a very in-depth review of the game.

Either way, have fun, hope you like the WIP shot, hope to finish these minis soon and get the review article up!

Lovely paintjobs and crazy flying boats.

@Warboss_Waaazag: Hooray! Thanks.




..aand done!



Hope you like them. I'll try to finish the review today as well.

I like them better with the black background... Just sayin'.

They look really nice, the glow from the flame is really good.

@Gitsplitta: Quiet you!

@GiraffeX: Thanks. Very rough OSL there, but I think it's a funky connecting bit not only to tie her in with the colour scheme of the rest of the gang, but also with her teacher:

Mordheim models look great, although I especially like the teacher from previously... on the white background

@RiTides: Oh, you people. Anyway, yeah, I really, really like that Mordheim warband. Just yesterday I saw it again and it looks so much prettier in real life than in the pictures I made then. Not to blow my own trumpet, I just would really like to take some new pictures of that group some time.

Yesterday I had my first game of Dystopian Wars. A friend decided it's time to teach me the rules. He's only familiar with 1st edition DW, I only have the pdf of 2nd edition, I played the Chinese 2nd edition list, he played the old 1st edition Italian list. Somehow it still worked despite lots of rules looking-up and all. Not a bad game. Not a fast, intuitive or elegant game by any stretch of the imagination (for that, please refer to Chain of Command and/or Dux Britanniarum ), but not a bad game.

We played ca. 750pts per side, I brought my Guan Dao Battle Cruiser, a squadron of two Wo-Dao Cruisers (a flight of four bases of dive bombers each), a squadron of two Chui Support Carriers, a squadron of 4 Yue Destroyers (the ones with the big flamethrowers in the front) and a squadron of four Nu Frigates.

He brought a battleship, a squadron of three Gladius Cruisers, six bases of torpedo boats (now these guys are annoying), a squadron of three Fortuna torpedo bombers and a squadron of three nasty Destroyers (torpedo turrets and top turret). Italians are fast, got shield generators and have so, so many gun turrets. Must be really nice if all your guns are mounted so you can fire pretty much anywhere rather than having them in an fixed arc to the front.

No, i'm not complaining. Chinese have no generators to rely on, but only their cool Rugged Construction which still is rather nice. Also: All hail Isolated Systems! Those saved me not only from an ammo magazine explosion which would have ripped justg a huge hole into my lines, but also it saved me from so much other stuff.



In other news:



We're setting up this huge Waterloo game for VIVAT2015 (November 15th, drop by for lots and lots of historical wargaming stuffs!) and I contribute to a small capacity. Above you see the humble beginnings of the 27th line regiment (1st and 2nd batallion) as deployed at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. This is one of the smaller units, all in all it'll be 36 figures. The miniatures used is a mix of plastic Perrys and Warlord Games late Napoleonic infantry there'll be a demo game on the upcoming weekend at Vienna Army Museum. Not that these guys will be finished by then.

Apart from that I'm currently busy painting the 7th regiment of Vistula Legion Lancers (early 1980s 25mm Minifigs) for a customer. As with the Guard Lancers before I'm rather unsure if I pull it off correctly. The required painting style is very different to what I'm used to. Every single thing I paint I have to do in a different way than I'm used to. Oh well. Hope you like the 27th so far.

Quite. So yeah, we're just going with a 1 Mini = 30 men ratio (roughly). It still will be quite a sight to behold.

Here's a 'teaser' from a wargames show earlier today at which the guys set up a quick-ish Waterloo-ish game:



....and of course everybody has to check out the 1970 film Waterloo. Most probably the best film about the battle which has and will ever be done.


edit: By the way, I reactivated my Twitter account. If you want to follow me just look up Battle Brush Studios on Twitter.

That looks awesome!


Man... now I miss going to Cold Wars and Historicon over on this side of the pond!

 Sigur wrote:
Here's a 'teaser' from a wargames show earlier today at which the guys set up a quick-ish Waterloo-ish game:

Oh man, that is epic! Very well staged... but I especially like those casualty token / counters . Quite nifty!

I can't believe strategy back then was to march right into the cannon...

@Wehrkind: ^^ I'm sure there are lotsa nice wargames shows within reach of your location, right?

@RiTides: Cheers. It does look great, doesn't it. The casualty markers are painted by now (not by me, but the guy who does them owns more casualty markers than I do painted Napoleonics minis altogether ). As for Napoleonic tactics - they were sound for the time, worked out by clever people and tried over and over during the course of the several wars. Of course I'm no expert what so ever. Batteries of artillery were outmaneuvered where possible, but often that artillery position had to be taken out. Stuff like lying down (which was employed at times of course, but mostly to hide formations from the enemy as far as I know). If you would see the enemy lie down in front of you of course it's time to send in the cavalry. And let's not forget that even in WW2 and thereafter the frontal attack on enemy positions often was the only way to get the job done. As far as I know Napoleonics is such an ever-popular period to play not only because it looks magnificant, but also due to the fine balance of cavalry , infantry and artillery of the time and the fact that a quite big number of major powers were involved. This is always a popular choice for wargamers of course.

That's a fantastic looking scene Sigur. Been a long while since I've played any kind of historicals and I'd forgotten how darn realistic the tabletop battles can look.

@Gitsplitta: ...and first and foremost they look awesome!

Okay, it's been a while since the last update. Mainly because I didn't do much show-worthy to be honest (played C&C Ancients again on Friday). However, this past Saturday the Waterloo Boys set up a demo table for The Big Game (a scaled down teaser at least) at Vienna Army Museum for their special Waterloo event. They got a spot right in the middle of the big festival hall, which is pretty darned cool. Of course it's all leading up to VIVAT III in mid-November:



With a firm hand and a big map, Nikfu orders how to set up the table:


Here's a closer look at the map:


See the VI Corps under Lobau, right to the North of where the Imperial Guard is held in reserve? This is where my dudes are going to sit (along with many others). My dudes are just half of 2nd Batallion who themselves are just half of 19th Division who of course are just a third of VI Corps. But they still count!

Right on queue, the Imperial Guard Grenadiers showed up:


Quite a few reenactors were present on the day as well. No formations as such, but a bunch of various specimen. I even spotted a lone Austrian grenadier (not pictured) outside the museum as well.



All the buildings you see here are by Hovels. Really, really nice 25mm resin buildings. I've also seen their 15mm stuff. Very nice as well.



Considering they're resin buildings they aren't very expensive either.



Here's another look at the village of which I forgot the name of, along with a few more reenactors depicting Brits:


British Rocket troop en miniature:



As time progressed the table filled with minis:





After a while this chap got out the old bagpipes for a sound-check:


It sounded rather nice and certainly added mood to the whole scene, but bloody hell this thing was loud.


So that was that. I could only stay for the setup as I had to leave for further adventures (originally I had planned to visit a miniatures gaming get-together at a nearby [1.5hours drive] castle, but that [the event, not the castle] was relocated farther to the south, which would have meant a 3 hours drive back and forth each, so I passed on that). So what was I actually up to in the mean time? What I usually do when I get quiet for a while, I painted a bunch of Polish Lancers:





These of course aren't for myself, but for a customer. 25mm Minifigs from the early 1980s, being Vistula Legion, former 1st Uhlans, at the time these figures depict them 7th Lancer regiment in post-1812 field dress. As with the Guard Lancerrs, 32 figures per unit. These are just the troopers in the picture, officers, NCOs, colour sergeant and trumpeter are still in the works. The guys pictured are pretty much finished. I'll pick up the horses on Wednesday. Hope you like the pictures.

Outstanding update Sigur. Thanks for posting.

Nice table but you always seem to have the best locations to house your events. Columns and floors of marble ect. Very Nice.

@Gitsplitta: Glad it is enjoyed.

@Solar_lion: cheers. Yeah, the location was really, really nice. Here's aother shot of the hall: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/HGM_Ruhmeshalle_01.jpg.

D*mn, Now that makes a great Game room.

It's far from the norm that a table with miniatures is set up in that hall though. They usually are hidden away in one of the wings.

War hounds are a thing in Frostgrave, so this fella is going to be added to the Mordheim/Frostgrave band:







He's from that Toughest Girls in the Galaxy range which bugs everybody on pretty much a daily basis with their latest (and seemingly never-ending) Kickstarter projects. Hope you like him!

Cute pup . And the Waterloo event looks like it was awesome!

@RiTides: Cheers! Yeah, I would have loved to stay beyond the setup, but I had to leave for some other appointment.

Update!

Alright, what happened over the past few days? I did some more work on the old school Poles. The cavalrymen are done now, next up are the horses. I picked the main part of them up this week, some are still being worked on (the customer reworks the models one by one with great level of detail and making them look much, much nicer than the original sculpts. Really impressive how much work he puts into them. Tomorrow I'll pick up the rest.). Furthermore I'll be at a minis flea market hosted by the 'local' wargaming club. Very much looking forward to that, not the least because I'll meet some friends there. Anyway, the Vistula Uhlans are half done now. Very eager to see how they look once the horses are all done as well and with the unit all based and ranked up. It's a very different thing to what we're used to nowadays, but it's got a unique charm to it as well I think.

So after this short break I returned to do a little work on my part of the huge Waterloo project - the French 27th line regiment. They look like this now:



This time I used a slightly zoomed shot for a change because you already know how many minis these will be approximately. Things are getting more colourful now and I started some detailwork. These blue mushroom shaped heads two of the fellas are wearing is the kind of cap that was worn in camp. Much more comfortable than wearing a shako all the time. The guys may wear them in battle because they lost their shakos or they just dissolved due to campaigning. Maybe it's not easily visible in the picture, but there's a little 27 (the regiment's number) on the front part.

If you look over the pictures from the army museum event I posted last week you can see the grenadiers with the big bearskins and in the next picture you see their officer inspecting our waterloo table. In the second picture he's wearing the officer version of this camp cap.

By he epaulettes (the shoulder things with the fuzzy bits in the end) you can already tell which models will be part of the Grenadiers company (the biggest, burliest and seasoned guys in the regiment with the completely red epaulettes), which models will be part of the Voltigeurs company (red epaulettes with yellow rim and green tassles). Voltigeurs were exclusively shorter guys who were able to run faster then the bigger ones as well as the better marksmen of the battalion. They got special training in skirmishing in loose formation, traversing obstacles and scouting. From 1808 on they got better payment (like the Grenadiers). Both these elite companies wore short sabres in addition to their bayonets for close combat (only until 1812 by decrete, but many of the men kept their sabres beyond that date).



Here you can see the general layout of a French battalion back then (1808 to 1815 IIRC). Basically there were 6 companies: 1 grenadier company (heavy infantry), 1 Voltigeurs company (light infantry) and 4 companies of Fusiliers (line infantry; the regular grunts). On the day of the battle of Waterloo the two Battalions of the 27th line infantry regiment comprised 821 men (including officers). The ratio of model in this unit to man is roughly 1:23 (1 model represents ca. 23 guys in real life). One of the reasons why such a weird ratio was chosen is that 36 figures can depict this Battalion structure really well: 6 figures per company, a nice line look to it. I think that this is one of the reasons why this is one of those really popular sizes of units for Napoleonic infantry on wargaming tables. A few months ago there was this little upheaval with Warlord Games who reduced the number of models in their French Line Infantry box to 24 (along with a substantial price increase) and they tried to justify that move by saying that they got a lot of feedback from wargmers who said they'd prefer smaller units. of course nobody has any idea who got asked to get this information. Oh well.



In this picture you can see fusiliers grenadiers and Voltigeurs next to each other for comparison (and again one guy in camp cap with complete camp outfit). Grenadiers in full red (no.3), Voltigeurs in yellow (no.1 and 4), fusiliers (2, 5 and 6) without epaulettes. Number 1, that Voltigeur, doesn't wear any epaulettes as well. The reason for this is that ACTUALLY only grenadiers were allowed to wear grenadiers. Towards the end of the Napoleonic era this probably had cost reasons as well. Despite all this Voltigeurs are so often depicted wearing epaulettes so I assume that it was very common for them to wear them as well (some variations, but always keeping the yellow and green or just green).

That black leather case (with the golden N on it on the fusilier in the picture) worn by everyone is the ammo case. The gentleman in the right has an additional bit of fabric over the ammunition case to keep the contents from getting wet (which would have made them unusable). When greatcoats weren't worn they were carried rolled up on top of the knapsack. I left the knapsacks off the minis for ease of painting.

Alright, I can't think of anything more to wirte now. I hope that I didn't get too much wrong in this posting. I'm a newbie myself in terms of Napoleonics, but I have to admit that it's very interesting (i hope I'm not the only one in this thread who thinks so ).

So the goal is to get this bunch painted by November the 14th. Oh, by the way: I also put together an officer, a flagbearer and a drummer. Those will be added as well. You'll notice that I'll end up with more than the 36 required models. No problem, I'm sure I'll find some use for them on the day. Maybe as extra troops or exhibition pieces at my painting workshop. If the next update will be about the 27th again I'm not sure. First the Polish Uhlans should get done.

Thanks for reading, I hope you find this whole thing interesting. Comments, critique and questions are always welcome of course!

They look glorious Sigur!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers.



Yesterday I've been busy. Meeting with two customers, a shopping trip with a friend in between AND the local games club fleamarket! I missed the event a bunch of times before, but yesterday I made it. Very nice event, mostly for meeting the lovely people, but also for making sure the lead and plastic pile doesn't deteriorate any time soon.


Now for the loot:


Goff Nob and Cinder, a dragon by Reaper minis. As I may have mentioned a billion times before, I've got a Space Orks army. All 1st and 2nd edition models, mostly Goffs and Snakebites. Horribly unplayable under current rules. (the only vehicles I've got are two Buggies and a beat up 1st edition plastic battlewagon which I still haven't managed to restore properly, no fliers even though I've got a Dakkajet still in box, waiting for getting converted [at least the pilot] to fit my guys) So when I see a 2nd edition Ork Nob in blister I still have trouble not picking it up.



That dragon on the other hand caught my eye. Really, really pretty model in 'heroic 25mm size'. So it's not huge, but next to 28mm models it looks proper big as a dragon and as I said, lovely detail. There's a new Bones version of that model out, but the metal version looks so much sexier and the detail is much better. The foam inlay thing is kinda bent in the picture because I had to hold it upside for taking the picture.

I also picked up those:


I developed this weird habit of buying lots of 15mm WW2 Western Front stuff, and I managed to pick up this box for cheap yesterday. I have no excuse I'm afraid.



Now for the books. First I got the Future War Commander rules:



Last year Pendraken Miniatures picked up the rights for the whole Commander series (Blitzkrieg Commander, Cold War Commander, Future War Commander) and they're currently working on re-releasing the rules with a few clean-ups and probably with every single picture replaced with pictures of the (excellent) 10mm Pendraken miniatures. I'm still holding out on their release of Blitzkrieg commander, which will be their first release. From what I read Future War Commander is last on their list. As I probably won't pick that one up as I don't have much in the way of small-scale sci-fi gaming (well, apart from an Ultramarines army for Epic of course, but I got nobody to play), but I'm eager to see what the rules are about. I keep hearing good things about this series of rules. Has anyone of you played any of the Commander games? (Blitzkrieg, Cold War or Future War)


The Oldhammery-inclined amongst you will probably have much more of an interest in the background of the previous picture. Those probably are the 'biggest haul' (objectively speaking) on the day:



Aw yeah, it's the Warhammer Roleplay campaign books The Enemy Within/Shadows over Bögenhafen and Death on the Reik. For a phantastic price. Very much looking forward to reading those.


Well, that's that. I also started working on some promo minis for an upcoming kickstarter project from the Dead Earth Games guys. Very interesting stuff, stay tuned!

That's an impressive loot pile Sigur, I think the WFRP books are my favourite although that dragon looks nice.

@GiraffeX: Cheers. Yeah, the WFRP books surely are the most impressive haul. €12 for both of the books. Bless the guy I got them from. His friends even said he should ask for more, but he said "nah, it's okay.". Cool dude.

Just so you know that I still paint stuff too instead of just buying things and looking up Napoleonic formations and uniforms and stuffs, here's one of the minis I paint for Dead Earth Games' upcoming Kickstarter project - Princess Nave:



Just a WIP at this point of course, but getting there. Slowly. :p The other mini I'll paint for this KS project is bear cavalry!

If you're interested in what I think of the quality of the sculpts, I wrote up a review of the minis I painted for the prior KS project the guys ran a few months ago:

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/06/review-shattered-crown-miniatures.html


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And another update! With a very underwhelming first WIP of the bear rider:




Added some more colour, some more details and backpacks!



Things are grinding down a bit now with all the detailwork. This is the point at which I have to decide how "well" these guys will be done on the day. Technically they only need the pommels on the shakos painted and some more decorations on the shakos and they're ready to field. Technically. Well, of course they need to be based as well. :p But let's see how much time I have to do these properly. Of course they also need their "command models" done as well.

Well, the princess is finished!

























What do you think, sirs?

She looks very nice indeed.

That mounted model looks incredible. And a Kickstarter, I'm intrigued!

I'm changing my tune though, I like the pics with that nice grey background

Excellent job. However the base is equally incredible.

That was my thought as well. Basing can really propel a model, even an expertly painted one.

@GiraffeX: Thanks muchly.

@RiTides: Thanks. IIRC the Kickstarter starts on November 1st.

@Solar_lion: Thanks. It's for promo reasons so I thought might just as well make it a pretty scenic base.

@Gitsplitta: Oh yes, very much so.


Okay, I should leave right now, but here's a quick little update:

Case in point...

@Gitsplitta:


The bear's done!





























Hope you like the model! Him and the stag rider lady are going to be fundable through Dead Earth Games' Kickstarter on November 1st! They're really, really well cast minis with barely any mould lines cast in high quality white metal.


First WIP of the officer, drummer and flagbearer for the 27th Line Regiment:



I also started working on the comparative review of the Perrys Napoleonic French line infantry (1812-1815) and the Warlord Late Napoleonic French Infantry.

Heyhey, I got to play a game again!

After Frank Shandy (not his real name, but close :p ) was so good to introduce virago and me to Sharp Practice a few weeks ago and a general agreement of the Lard being to everyone's taste we had a game of Chain of Command again!



It was me vs. Frank (his first game of Chain of Command), the setting was our regular mid-1941 Northern African theatre. He got to command virago's German Panzer Grenadiers platoon under the notorious Oberleutnant Lechner whereas I, as usual, commandeered my stalwart British rifle platoon under Second Leutenant Fitzpatrick. Virago, much to his credit, umpired, poured drinks, provided tiny Germans, snacks, terrain and the table. Speaking of the terrain: We were a bit short on terrain as the hills were all out doing duty on other tables that night, so it was ruled that the bushes as usual block LOS and between the bushes troops can see but get light cover. Same goes for palm trees. Houses and walls count as hard cover.

We chose to play scenario#1 from the CoC rulebook: Patrol. Two patrolling platoons meet by accident and have to shoo the opponent away. Only little support, get the opponent's Force Morale down to 3 or less and you win. I ended up with a whopping six support levels, the Germans got two.


Patrol Phase and Setup

Here's an overview of the table setup as well as a quick rundown of the forces:


In the patrol phase I did my dearest to get as close and if possible into the built up area. Setting up position in these buildings was my first and foremost objective, because it's a rather tedious and potentially self-destructive task trying to get infantry out of hard cover. If the Germans would get into the built up area I would try to use superior numbers to drive them out again, hence the additional infantry section as support. I also brought a second 2" mortar team because those are just brilliant. I rolled for Force Morale and ended up with 10 as a starting score.

My opponent, having read his combat manuals, viewed the built up areas as a deathtrap and instead chose to rely on mobility and keeping options for flanking maneuvers open and do that encirclement-destruction thing. Or so I assume. The German support, limited as always due to high platoon rating, was the usual: a staff officer to keep a close look on Oblt. Lechner's and a medical orderly to keep NCOs and officers out of harm's way. The German starting Force Morale was 8.


The Early Game

I started by setting up the two 2" mortar teams as well as my platoon sergeant in a nice, cosy and first an foremost safe place and started lobbing smoke rounds at the German Jump-Off points.



The Germans deployed two full squads of Panzergrenadiers at roughly a 90° angle. Of each squad one team set up overwatch positions to use the other team as maneuver element. Once those guys got to a good position they'd do the overwatch and the other team would follow suit. Again, textbook stuff. My comparatively primitive plan was to hug the buildings, keep the boys' heads down and the Germans from firing at them via means of smoke rounds. These Panzer Grenadiers can pour out horrible amounts of fire.

Once the smoke finally landed in the right spot I deployed a section of infantry in the biggest building (thanks to the close jump-off point I got there), in part because I was anxious that the Germany might take any building if I didn't deploy troops there.



There was a short exchange of fire between them and one of the Panzergrenadier teams, but not much happened.

Or so we thought.



Due to a random event fire broke out in one of the houses! Many a theory were formulated that evening about the enormous smoke cloud emerging (and lasting until the end of the game no less!), amongst them comparisons to the Springfield Tire Fire. Given how the smoke was there to stay and blocked LOS completely, this changed the whole tactical situation, and not necessarily to my disadvantage I have to add.



In the mean time the German plan unfolded further. Oblt.Lechner himself grabbed a team of six Panzergrenadiers to take them around my right flank, using smoke and vegetation as cover, to silence my mortars and put some pressure on. At the opposing side of the built up area another team of Panzergrenadiers advanced to the walls of the compound. I reacted by deploying another infantry section and by moving them into the only other usable house left (two being completely covered in smoke (or burning), the leftmost being mere ruins and completely open in the direction of the enemy.



The Germans also deployed their third full squad of Panzergrenadiers (you can see them in the background).



The Mid-Game

Curious things happened. True to his nature, Oberleutnant Lechner doesn't only lead from the front, he is the front. This team of Panzergrenadiers he took with him seem to have been especially chosen to be his Stoßtrupp because they ran like crazy. Before I suspected it they charged through the smoke, hurling bullets, spades and insults at my mortar teams and platoon sergeant who fought back bravely, but were killed after a quick and bloody struggle.



What's worse is that Lechner and his team also took out my Jump-off Point. Not that it was vital to my plans, but this can have bad effects on Force Morale. Just like losing two support teams and a platoon Sergeant.

Luckily I had held the Australians in reserve who I deployed immediately (after Lechner and his group had hunkered down behind thick vegetation to take a breather). Only few of them actually got a shot at the enemy, but hurling grenades over the wall and the shrubbery did the job nicely too. In addition to this the section on the large building repositioned a little to open fire at Lechner's team, without effect. Seeing as how well the grenade lobbing worked for the Australians the NCO ordered his lads to throw one down as well. The rifleman fumbled though and the grenade fell to his feet, which is very bad in a confined space with hard walls. Luckily the result wasn't quite as horrible as it could have been. The German group outside was reduced to three Grenadiers and Lechner himself got injured. They broke and retired swiftly towards a table edge. If at all, it would take quite a while before they would be factor in the game again.

Here's an overview:



You can see the currently unsable Jump-Off point got greyed out. By the end of the turn it would become unusable for good if I wouldn't retake it and lead to a loss of Force Morale. Of course the Oberleutnant getting wounded and a team breaking hurt German Force Morale as well.

In the mean time the third German section moved directly towards the built up area.



I expected nasty close combat erupting over the compound and pulled back then Australians to set up overwatch in the narrow alleys between the buildings. They even caught one German team trying to slip by at one point.



I deployed my third infantry section in the yard of the large building as a reserve in case nasty close combat should break out. My second section meanwhile duelled with the forward Panzergrenadiers team. As both sat in hard cover effects were bearable for both sides. However, the German squad's NCO got killed due to a string of bad rolls, reducing German Force Morale quite a bit.


End-Game



At this point things didn't look too good for the German platoon. Some defensive fire had eaten away at their teams, shock points had built up slowly and the effective loss of a senior leader and one NCO made it hard to regroup for a big attack. As another German NCO got killed we called it a night.



In the end the German Force Morale was 3, British Force Morale was 7.



Debriefing

Had the Germans pushed on they could have caused quite some damage, but eventually probably would have gotten overwhelmed by numbers and by the patchy state of their... well, Chain of Command, meaning they would have lacked the required activations. Of course it was Frank's first game, but he got into it pretty quickly as he's very familiar with the mechanics the TooFatLardies games make use of. Each one of them is different in some details, but the general mechanics are similar.

We all agreed that Chain of Command is a really, really good set of rules and the table setup and smoke was admired. Good game, thanks to everyone involved.


I hope that you enjoyed this little game summary and found it interesting! Comments, questions and such are welcome as always!

Looks like it was a very fun game Sigur. So strange to see a game decided without people dying by the hand-full! The game mechanic obviously works though.

Yeah, it was cool. In relation to how often I play a single set of rules, I think CoC I played a lot over the past two years and never had a bad or boring game. I have to stress that it really comes into its own once you play a campaign (the excellent campaign supplement At the Sharp End is available for free). I think over the course of this game I lost maybe eight dudes? The Germans probably around the same number, maybe a few more, but it surely wasn't more than ten. Keep in mind that this wasn't even a campaign game so a preservation of manpower wasn't even the top priority!

That thing about stuff dying by the hand-full (and some people thinking that this actually is important) is something I just realized a few months ago when I heard from two completely unrelated sources about people complaining that in Dropzone Commander too few units get killed each game. This is pretty insane I think. Never even thought of that before.

Back to business and that means: Star Wars - Imperial Assault. Here's the latest batch, all WIP:



IG-88 is finished, same as the Probes. The Royal Guard dudes in red maybe need some minor additional work, but are mostly done. Han Solo (ohmigawd, I'm painting Han Solo!!1) at least got the base colours in place and the skin and hair mostly done, Luke Skywalker (ERMERGERD, I PAINT LUKE SKYWALKER!!!!12) needs a bit more work.

The Scout Troopers with the heavy weapons are very WIP at this point. Lateron I'll add a champion of the Royal Guard, Two Nexu (of Episode 2 .. fame?) and three imperial officers. Hope you like the dudes so far.

Great work on those Sig.

Yeah, they are looking great even as wip.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To bring over the page:

 Sigur wrote:
Back to business and that means: Star Wars - Imperial Assault. Here's the latest batch, all WIP:



IG-88 is finished, same as the Probes. The Royal Guard dudes in red maybe need some minor additional work, but are mostly done. Han Solo (ohmigawd, I'm painting Han Solo!!1) at least got the base colours in place and the skin and hair mostly done, Luke Skywalker (ERMERGERD, I PAINT LUKE SKYWALKER!!!!12) needs a bit more work.

The Scout Troopers with the heavy weapons are very WIP at this point. Lateron I'll add a champion of the Royal Guard, Two Nexu (of Episode 2 .. fame?) and three imperial officers. Hope you like the dudes so far.

They are very cool indeed, its great to see some painted Star Wars minis.

The minis are nice but the commentary on them is even better

@Carlos13th: Thanks very much, mate!

@Dr H: Thanks for the service.

@GiraffeX: Yar, they're rather fun to paint.

@RiTides: I aim to please.


New WIP:



Han Solo is finished, same as Chewbacca (although he might need some more licks of paint), just a little bit of work on the white on the heavy weapons. Not sure why the Nexu don't look as nice in the picture as they do in real life. But they'll get better.

Those are looking really nice man. I'd say the models paint up surprisingly nicely, but I suspect it is more "Sigur can paint up models surprisingly nicely"

@Wehrkind: Thanks anyway. The models are a bit inconvenient to work with, but paint up alright once they're cleaned and all (which takes very long).



Done!





Hope you like them.

They're really cool.

How come some models have a red rim and others don't?

D

Thanks for the comment, evildrcheese! That's gameplay stuff. As far as I know Imperial Assault is based on the Doom/Descent rules in which enemies have a regular level version and a champion version which usually has slightly higher stats, additional special abilities or both. In the likes of Descent these were cast in a different coloured plastic. Of course that's of no help if you intend to have your collection painted by a paintmonkey such as myself. So the base rims are painted red to differentiate who's a regular dude and who's a souped-up dude.

Great job on them all.
Love the fabrics.

@Dr H: Cheers, much appreciated!


Heyhey, a new Fantasy mini.



A new Freebooter's Fate release for one of the Brotherhood gangs I'm doing. Hope you like her. Not sculpted by Werne Klocke and on a computer I assume. (meh)


In other news, here are horses:


...and the rest of the Imperial Assault photos (uploading then didn't work for a while, but I fixed it):




Imperials:


Nexu:


Rebels:


Royal Guard:



Hope you like them.



Right, now for the blogger-y stuff: I've been to Vienna's model fair again this year. Same procedure as every year. I hope to post pictures after Monday when I go there again.

Apart from that I played Space Hulk for the first time. Proper Space Hulk that is, not a computer game. (in the past I played two SH-based computer games: Space Hulk - Vengeance of the Blood Angels, which looked amazing. Seriously good stuff. Decades later I played that latest game which is a 1:1 port of the 3rd editiojn rules from the 2009 release.)

We played 3rd edition in celebration of my friend having finished painting most of his SH set. We played the first scenario from the book. First I played Genestealers, then we switched sides and had another go.



The general mission was "go there, use flamer to set control room on fire. Once that's done, Space Marines win. If the flamer should run out of ammo before that or get killed the Genestealers win".



The first game was kinda close, but Marines won.




Then we switched sides, I got to play the Marines and lost badly.




According to a bunch of people Space Hulk, along with Blood Bowl, is GW's best and most playable game. That might well be the case. Very solid, tight, well thought out rules sets. There is little of the stuff others think of when GW (board) games are mentioned (random, but cute stuff).

Good game, that Space Hulk. Very tactical. Of course dice can still ruin your day if you play very bad, but that's always a possibility. I looked through the later missions and I'm sure they can wrinkle your brains trying to get through.



The minis of course are really pretty. Painted the set three times, always an experience.



I assume you can still pick up the 2014 version for a less insane price than the 2009 version (virtually the same thing) went for shortly after it was sold out.



And now for something different YET AGAIN:

I did a most unusual thing and wrote a book review!

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/10/review-scenarios-for-all-ages.html



I usually don't do this because I'm all about miniatures on the Battle Brush Studios site, but I think that this book is a very handy addition to your wargaming library, especially if you don't want to have to rely on the (faulty) suggestion that points guarantee balanced, equal, good or remotely 'realistic' or interesting games. But who has the time to work out intricate scenarios all the time? Well, this book might be just what you're looking for. Over 50 mostly generic and generally applicable scenarios with suggested forces involved. Explained quickly and easily, just leaf through the book and choose one. Okay, the thing currently is out of print, but it's not too hard to track down.

Have a read if you're intrigued. I think that this might be useful.

Piccina is finished!














Hope you like her.

She looks very nice, thats one big ass crossbow!

@GiraffeX: Yeah, I guess if you're all out of ideas you start making up huge weapons. I feel bad for giving this mini so much flak. It's an okay sculpt, I'd just prefer a Werner Klocke sculpt for Freebooter's Fate minis.

Here are pictures of a 15mm Fortress by Kallistra:









Really nice set of modular castle walls. They're being sold as fitting for 10mm and 15mm, but really, I think they don't really fit for 10mm figures. Goes very well with 15mm though.


...and some Salamanders characters:


That's going to be the third time I paint Vulkan. First time I paint the Finecast version.



I wrote yet another review too! This time I took a close look at some minis from Brother Vinni, the man who makes it very, very, very, very clear on his website that you WILL get your minis even though he's located in Russia. Very, very useful for all kinds of Fantasy things. He also has a Fallout range and some viking ladies which are really popular (because people in German-speaking areas will throw money at anything that's remotely Saga-esque these days. It's a weird thing I might ramble on about at some point around 5am. )

Here's a link to the review:
http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/10/review-brother-vinni-fantasy-miniatures.html



Hope you like the review and find it interesting!

The more I see that crossbow, the more it irritates me... it really is just long for long's sake. The actual functioning bit is not proportional to the size... it is just a normal "big" cross bow with a 3 foot stock attached. The firing bar is... ARGH! So silly.

Pretty paint though

The fortress looks nice too! I am always tempted to get back into 15mm gaming, torn between the awesome scenery and tables you can do, along with the better maneuver options, and the fact it is really hard to do characterful, neat models at that scale. I really want a way to play with larger scale figures on a giant ass table that doesn't involve suspending myself from the ceiling.

@Wehrkind: Yeah, it doesn't make much sense, does it. Oh well....

It's all about the pros and cons I guess. What would you play in 15mm?


Spehs Mereenz update:


I spent the day NMM'ing the poop out of Vulkan. :p

I used to play a good bit of ACW in 15mm (it was really popular at cons etc. when I was in high school.) Napoleonics are pretty fun in that scale too. Anything with formations is really better at 15mm... I'd like to play some big ancients battles too, but you don't see them much around here. Well... maybe you do. I am still expecting that most stuff like that involves owning all the models yourself and hosting games which is a lot of work

Come to think of it, I rather miss micro-armor games too (~6mm I think).

That fortress looks beautiful. Excellent painting all around.

@Wehrkind: Yeah, it's tricky. You either need people who are willing to pull that off with you, a club or a LOT of motivation. The problem is, even if you power though the whole project by yourself, it might still be hard finding people to play with. I think that people usually are more motivated to play something if they own minis for that game/period themselves. What you could use to lure people into playing 15mm ancients with you is DBA. Pretty much minimal investment, pre-done army packs, relatively few minis to paint, all in one book, including a campaign system. Lateron you can add minis to those forces and use DBM, big DBA (or what it's called), Impetus, To The Strongest, etc.

@Warboss_Waaazag: Thanks. There is something about castles and such that's just instantly appealing I think.






So here's the fortress all set up on a quickly thrown together "gaming table". I was under a little time pressure, so couldn't get out all the rest of the terrain and throw little bits and pieces of vegetation on, but at least it works somewhat well to get an impression of what the thing looks like on a table.







As you can see I added my little 10mm Thirty Years War figures to add some life. I was also curious about how they would scale with the fortress. According to Kallistra's website it's made for 10mm and 15mm sized figures. When I saw it I thought that it's way too big for 10mm and that it would go much better with 15mm, but looking at it with figures next to it and such I think that it scales rather well with 10mm. Doors probably are a bit large, but otherwise it seems like a nice fit.








Hope you like it.

Man, that does look pretty! You are right that there really is just something super appealing about seeing big architecture on the table like that. Especially with the city buildings inside. Proper looking city scapes really are lacking in most war games I think, just because they are a bit tough to really do well at scale. Infinity or a similar game at 10mm would be awesome if you could get the models to work (and not forget them on the table )

My plan to get back into 15mm stuff someday is to take my daughter to some conventions, and if she digs the whole war gaming thing start building some armies with her. My guess is she will like the bigger, more monster laden stuff (I certainly did at her age... and sorta now) but coordinating with people to play Hordes is hard enough, much less the smaller, less popular games.

@Wehrkind: Yeah, the thing about cities in 10mm is that games at that scale usually don't use the whole 1 figure = 1 man scale, so it looks weird if buildings are at 10mm scale. That's a whole world of trouble in itself. Sounds tricky, but as long as you get your daughter on the 'right path' I guess a little detour to 28mm fantasy stuff is okay.


Last night another game of Chain of Command took place. This time it was Frank Shandy who borrowed my Brits (BLUE) pitted against virago and his German DAK platoon (RED). My job as umpiring the whole affair and taking pictures.



The scenario is Scenario Six from the rulebook - Attack on an Objective. The British platoon's job is to hold an objective, in our case here an important hill going along with control of the railway and telegraph, the Germans' job is to kick them off the objective and occupy it themselves. The attack would go on until one side is retreating (voluntarily or by means of lowering their force morale to a point at which the force is uncommandable any more).

In this scenario the attacker rolls 2d6 for their support level, the defender gets half that support.

Force Morale was rolled for and the Germans ended up with a force morale of 9, the British got 8.


Patrol Phase

Being the attackers, the Germans got four patrol markers (check out the snazzy patrol markers virago made) and a random number of free patrol marker moves (in this case three), starting at their table edge. The British got three markers, starting at the objective.



The German patrols advanced aggressively and got quite far into the enemy flank on the right side.

I also put the opposing forces in the picture. The British mid-1941 rifle platoon versus the German DAK Panzergrenadiers. The Germans ended up with 7 points of support while the British got 6 (half the points the Germans get = 3, plus the difference in platoon rating = 3). Given the relatively high level of support it would have been perfectly possible for the Germans to bring a battle tank. With this in mind the British brought a 40mm bofors anti-air gun (often used in all sorts of roles at the time, even though it was deemed 'unenglish' to use AA guns against ground targets by some officers). For the rest of their support they got entrenchments for two teams. Those would be deployed along with the teams sitting in them on pre-determined jump-off points.


German Platoon Sergeant

German support went in a whole different direction though, with a second senior leader, an adjutant, both an excellent way to make sure the troops move swiftly and where you want them to move, and a forward observer team with a battery of 81mm mortars on stand-by.


The Early Game

Jump-off points were placed and the attackers started their first phase. The Germans deployed a squad of Panzergrenadiers right away at the central Jump Off Point as well as Oberleutnant Lechner, the platoon commander. He immediately started reorganizing the squad, massing the two MG34s into one group and the riflemen into another.


Lechner, blurry dude in the bottom left, bellowing orders in his thick Styrian accent while his Panzergrenadiers scrurry around. The half-track and staffers is one of virago's scenic Jump-Off Point markers.

Then two riflemen were detached as a combat patrol and were sent off around the dune at tactical stance (slower, but cover is increased by one level) to scout the British positions. The other two Panzergrenadier sections were deployed at the other two Jump-Off Points each, going on overwatch.

A British squad was deployed to the left on the slight hill, met the German scouts with fire and send them back around the dune. The other team within that section went on overwatch because the German Panzergrenadiers on the right side had started advancing, capturing one of the British Jump-Off Points and thus making it unusable for now (greyed out).




The British Bofors gun was deployed pretty early on due to the Germans' pressure. It was deployed bang on the objective and entrenched.



They opened fire at the advancing Germans, didn't do a whole lot of damage, but one might say the damage was done where it counts: The unlucky second senior leader got hit by a 40mm round and the German force morale took a hefty hit.

Mid-Game

Seeing as how the British had revealed the position of their big guns (right next to the Bofors gun a rifle section and the mortar team had been deployed as well) it was time to bring in support to silence this strongpoint. The forward observer team revealed their position with the Panzergrenadiers squad in the back and started calling the 81mm mortar barrage.



In the next phase a ranging shot was fired...



...the position confirmed and the barrage came in.



The Bofors gun team, who had taken a slight beating already, were wiped out to the man. The rifle section and mortar team didn't suffer any casualties, but were pinned until the barrage would end. In addition to that the area of the barrage blocked line of sight completely. The operation was in danger to go pear shaped, so 2nd Lt. Fitzpatrick called his men back behind the hill to rally and reconsider.



This is the sitation as it presented itself mid-game:


In the top left you can see the British squads pulling back behind the hill. Before that the bofors gun and rifle section had forced the Germans in the top left to retreat a little as well. Lechner and his reogranized squad got into firing positions along the dune.






End-Game

At this point the whole affair ground down into a bloody stalemate. The barrage ended prematurely and after a few failed connections the forward observers were informed that the mortar battery had been reassined to another mission. The force morale on both sides had been reduced to 5. Less so due to men lost but due to wounded or, in the German case, killed leaders. The British infantry behind the hill had regrouped and set up again in firing lines to fend off the Germans once more. For how much longer they would be able to effectively fight them was a different matter, seeing as how they were outgunned and ever so slightly outnumbered as well.

On the German side however the willingness for swift and decisive attack had veined as well due to the low force morale. A back and forth of largely ineffective and mostly suppressive fire erupted.



The British 2" mortar team also finally got to fire their smoke rounds, disrupting firing lines, negating parts of the German firepower advantage.

We stopped at this point and packed up as it was getting late.


Debriefing

Very hard to telling which way this situation would have ended, with both sides effectively being locked in exchanges of fire. This of course always can go either way and usually should be avoided because it usually leads to both sides suffering without achieving much at all. In Chain of Command casualty numbers usually are not very high compared to other games and games are decided on my other factors rather than who killed most guys.

Fun was had by both sides, Frank is getting a better grip on the rules now (especially now that he's got his rulebook) and a very interesting idea for a force of his own - French Foreign Legion which he'll pick up at Crisis (and yes, I'm very jealous that he's going and I'm not ).

So stay tuned for more Chain of Command. I hope that you enjoyed this little After-Action Report.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Btw, here are the latest WIPs of the Space Marines:


Hope you like them. It's about time I finish them. Should be this weekend.

is it wrong that my favorite thing on this page is that little 15mm herd of sheep???

very nice job on the Sallies characters...
you did well on the NMM...
i like the darker look on Vulkan...
i'll have to work with that vibe if i ever paint him again...

always a pleasure to see your posts...
keep up the good work!!!

cheers
jah

@jah-joshua: Thanks muchly for the comment. It's a 10mm herd of sheep actually, and it's perfectly understandable that you like them best. I may have 'squeee'-d a little when I found them on Irregular Minis' site.


Here are some size comparison shots:

Very nice stuff! I always like these CoC reports. Might have to grab a copy one of these days.

How does CoC compare to say Flames of War in your opinion? The latter is a lot easier to come up with around here it seems, and people seem to play now and again.

 Wehrkind wrote:
Very nice stuff! I always like these CoC reports. Might have to grab a copy one of these days.

How does CoC compare to say Flames of War in your opinion? The latter is a lot easier to come up with around here it seems, and people seem to play now and again.

Thanks. Glad you enjoy them. You certainly should grab a copy. It's a brilliant game.

It's a bit hard to compare CoC to FoW. First and foremost - I haven't played a single game of FoW in my life. I'm not very eager to do so, mostly because I haven't heard all that much good about it and I've got alternatives (I Ain't Been Shot, Mom). Second, Chain of Command is of that popular "platoon+" level of ww2 games whilst IIRC FoW is kinda in a way and pretty much a company-level game. With some weird extras like on-board artillery and such, but oh well.

The thing is - if people play FoW they got the minis to play Chain of Command or IABSM. All you need to get is some wound markers for those multi-based infantry sections. In general games by Too Fat Lardies (who made Chain of Command and IABSM) have two big focus points: Command&Control and friction as per Clausewitz. Men in the field don't do what you want them to do on their own, you have to get them to do it and you have to communicate to them what you want them to do. The whole friction thing is the old "many things are beyond the commander's control" and "things can go wrong". I suck at explaining it, but if you want to know about the games you definately should listen to Episode 80 of the Meeples and Miniatures Podcast in which one of the authors of the rules tells us about the design process and the intentions behind IABSM 3rd edition (which is much more comparable to FoW than Chain of Command is): https://meeples.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/review-i-aint-been-shot-mum-3rd-edition/

... and episode 106 which is about Chain of Command: https://meeples.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/meeples-miniatures-episode-106-chain-of-command/

Both really good games, and of course the podcast is very interesting and entertaining to listen to. .)

Greetings, I hope you survived Halloween night well. Did I have a good time?

Before I took off last night I even managed to finish those two Space Marines:




Vulkan:







Xavier:









...and because I know you just can't let go of the white background, here they are again.




Hope you like them!

You know what you're problem is Sigur?? You are so damn prolific, and so damn good... and so damn diversified... that half the time even though I love what you're posting I don't know how to respond it. "Wow" and "Cool" usually are the first things that pop into my head.... but I can't actually POST that.

Just quit being so awesome... it's starting to really get annoying!

ditto

Wow....Cool!







See, that was easy!

What Gits said! ^

@Gitsplitta: Thanks mate, that's a very nice thing to say. Much appreciated. It's really silly, but comments on these plogs help me stay motivated tremendously.

@Camkierhi: Cheers.

@SlavetoDorkness: Exactly!

@nerdfest09: Thanks muchly, Sir.


Right, after a little pause on the Waterloo project I had a look at the calendar and realized that it's just 10 days until VIVAT III, the day of the big Waterloo thing. So I better get mon cul in gear and get the 27th line regiment done.

True to their name, here they are arranged in line:


In this close-up you can see one of the fellas turning to go home, but the officer, who always has to have more eyes in the back of his head than in the front, yells him back in rank.



There's still so much to do. In fact, not much got done since the last update. Okay, the colours sergeant, drummer and officer are mostly done now (even though the Officer especially still needs a lot of work). I noticed that I made a mistake on the Voltigeurs (six dudes in the far right with the yellow pommels) and for some reason painted the cuffs yellow even though that was just a very rare variant. They should be red, as on the rest of the men. I fixed that now. At least they got proper pommels on their shakos now.

The most appearant thing which changed of course is the bases. I put them on 20mm square bases. Of course this makes no sense what so ever for the upcoming game, but as I won't be doing Napoleonic battles in 28mm (because I'm just unwell, not insane :p ), so I based them for skirmishing. After all, there's the excellent Sharp Practice for which we have some plans (which should be really cool if they are to be.). By the way, they're playtesting a new version of Sharp Practice now. Very exciting stuff. And even if that shouldn't happen, I still got Songs of Drums and Shakos lying around. So I still could set up a game of these Frenchies playing catch with the few Austrians I painted before. Poses aren't very fitting, but oh well.

I also started writing the comparative review of the Late French Line Infantry boxes by Perry Minis and Warlord Games. Not sure if I mentioned that before, but that's going to happen pretty much as soon as I'm done painting these gentlemen here.

So yeah, fingers crossed I get the 27th presentable and on the table by the 14th of November. You can then see them live along with a bunch of their friends on a huge table.

By the way, I reactivated my twitter account a few weeks ago, so if you want to stalk me there just look up Battle Brush Studios.

I have a twitter account that I've never actually posted on. Maybe I will use it to stalk you!

@Gitsplitta: Yeah, my own account lay dormant for about three years as well.

I received the rest of the magnetic foil today (as well as a bunch of rivers from Gale Force 9. I just gave in and bought those instead of making my own rivers). Of course I'm not a monster and ask the guy who will command these dudes on the day of the battle to move around single minis, so I'm putting them on magnetized bases.

Here they are in attack column:




......painting on these darned horses also continues...


Of course they're 10 times more work than I had anticipated.

Okay, it was time to start the hat party.



It may look a tad overpowering at this angle and with the nice lighting, but it's less so once on a table and all. Each company has a differently coloured pommel/plume on their shakos: 2nd company is sky blue, 3rd company orange, 1st company green, 4th company purple, grenadier company red and voltigeurs company yellow. The command figures are hanging out with 2nd company so they got blue plumes as well. In reality (this formation is basically depicting a battalion) each company would have a command of course and the regimental flag would be with staff. I think. I also omitted the battalion sappers who are another trademark of the French battalion. One corporal and a handful of sapper privates, all big burly dudes with big beards, axes and leather aprons.

So what's left to do?
Basing
Buttons
Piping (white)
Piping (red)
Flag
Officer
Shoes require some neatening up (not too much, and I probably won't do the gaiters properly)

Oh, and the faces could do with some additional work. Anyway, hope you like them so far!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Update!

I managed to reduce the list to the following:
.) Basing
.) Flag

I may manage to finish the whole lot tomorrow!

Let's say they're done:











What do you think?

I think they look awesome. Really great job.

I like how the chap next to the shouting (leader of some kind, whatever rank he may be) appears to be wincing a little.

Very smart looking group Sigur. Just can't wait to see them in a battle report!

@Dr H: You're right. I guess he's been with shouty guy for years now. Through Italy, guy right next to him shouts at the top of his lungs, Prussia, Austria, always shouty dude next to him, into Russia, out of Russia, always the shouty guy next to him. I'd wince too.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers! The big game's next week. It's going to be awesome (and I'm not one to use that word lightly).

Now with white background!

They are so cool! you know it's a great looking group dude! even if they aren't GW ;-)

@nerdfest09: I just did two Space Marines, it was time do do something else! Glad to hear that you like them even though they're not something you'd usually seek out to have a look at.

Given how I have to take pictures of (and like to play with) miniatures of all kinds of historical periods and sci-fi/fantasy settings I'm always on the lookout for generic terrain. For quite a while now I've been debating with myself about getting some rivers. I planned to make some myself from acrylic mass (the stuff I made roads sections from last year), but never really got around to doing it. So I gave in and bought a few sets of GF9's Battlefield in a Box river sections. I was asked to borrow my Dark Ages terrain for a SAGA table at VIVAT III next weekend, so I thought it would be a good occasion to get some rivers done.



I was also curious about the product. It's my first BFiaB set, because I'm naturally opposed to anything pre-painted (not the least due to the fact that the stuff most of the times looks piss poor) and a big fan of DIY when it comes to terrain. I got the stuff, got the sections out (they come with little baggies of static grass. In my opinion way too little for the amount of sections you get). The river banks are pre-painted (painted dark and drybrushed; looks rather nice, but it didn't fit my terrain bases, so the river banks was the first thing I repainted.

The water itself is without any texture, has very, very slight brighter lines sprayed on and is really, really, really blue. Way too blue for my tastes. So I repainted that as well, using darker and more greenish colours. I also added some more lively stripe patterns and 1 or 2 layers of water effect. Barely any texture as they have to work for any scale to getting to detailled or specific would make it fit for one scale, but not for another. I still went for a quite blue colour, because, despite better knowledge of real rivers, I like the look on the table. Going too green would make it meld with the green surface too much, so I prefer a more blue look, but still somewhat natural-ish.



In the end I used some fine sand to add sand banks and to suggest possible fords (as I don't have any real ford sections or bridges YET I thought this was a nice solution to get by). It also adds a nice effect to give some sections a more interesting look. I also glued on some clump foliage for additional vegetation. This would work at any scale as well. At 28mm/20mm it would be shrubbery, at 15mm/10mm it would be tall hedges and such and for 6mm/2mm it would be trees growing along the river.

Here's the result. With 10mm figures and thinner streams:










...and wider river sections:






Here with 28mm figures:







This of course also displays the disadvantages of the classic river section terrain parts: They're slightly elevated and you seee there they end and where they begin. Some people don't like that look, and I can understand it. A river lies in a bed and not in a ... loft bed? You know what I mean. On the other hand I'm not a big fan of modular gaming tables, not the least due to storage. Colour is another factor, but that's purely up to tastes. As I said, I like a blue-ish look to rivers on the table. At least it's not the plasticky blue look the rivers had originally. I think I went for a rather managable compromise, but that's up for each person to decide. I hope you like the way they look.

The rivers look really nice Sigur, I've wondered about them for ages. The fords are a very clever idea to give the impression of shallow water.

@GiraffeX: Thanks for the comment!

Alrighty, the comparative review of the Late Napoleonic French by Warlord Games and Perry Miniatures is online now!



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/11/review-late-napoleonic-line-infantry.html




Hope you like the review! C&C are welcome as always!

Really enjoyed the write up! Despite not being in danger of buying 28mm Nap's any time soon, knowing the proportion differences is strangely comforting, and I will/would be buying Perry models based largely on their superior hands.

Excellent looking well dressed gentlemen off to war!

Beautiful work as always.

Troops looking amazing.

And although the river looks good enough, I am sorry, raised rivers bug me. It is a personal thing. Having said that the set look nice and useful gaming wise.

@Wehrkind: Cheers, glad you like it.! Well, it's the Perrys. They're the kings of everything for a reason.

@Solar_lion: ...and looking smart on the table is the main thing!

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much. Yeah, I'm not entirely happy with the rivers myself (which is why i keep bringing up the disadvantages of these river parts). My thinking was "better than no rivers at all". I mean the only possible alternative would be a modular gaming board which is really annoying to store and which I'd have to make in the first place. As I rarely play games at home and more often take my terrain to other people to play at their places or donate my terrain to demo/participation tables at wargames shows I'd rather have something more mobile. So yeah, it's not perfect and i fully understand if people don't like the rivers, but it was a compromise.



Okay, yet another link to something. Surely you remember the Stagrider and the Warbear I painted a few weeks ago.

Now the Kickstarter is up and actually funded already! (congrats, guys!)


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chappellm/warbears-and-stagriders-fantasy-wargames-miniature

]







Just to clarify - I don't have any hand in Dead Earth Games, I just paint promo minis for them. It's cool to see that their KS is successful so far and maybe the minis are interesting to some of you if you need some interesting monstrous cavalary and/or some characters/leaders on slightly out of the ordinary mounts.

So VIVAT took place yesterday; a great day out. I'm currently working on getting all the photos edited to put together a report of the day.

I've been a bit more quiet the past week because I upgraded my computer (basically ripped out everything but the power unit, RAM and hard drives) and put in a new motherboard, CPU [with a humongously large cooler], graphics card and ssd. I also got a new windows version now too. All 2015-y and stuff. It's weird, but at least the computer is super quiet now. Of course this took a few days to actually get to run again. Apart from that I've been preparing for VIVAT. As I had to get up really early for that on Saturday I called it an early night on Friday, so I only learned about the horrible going-ons in France Saturday in the morning. Can't say much on the tragedy. From the reports I heard the attacks were just horrible. At VIVAT we had a few moment of silence in honour of the victims.

Anyway, hope everyone and their families and friends are safe. I'll report in later once the report is done or at least well on its way. At this point in time I'm shopping around for some new photo editing software. :p

Computer upgrading can be quite traumatic, but it sounds like you have things well in hand.

I always enjoy getting a new bit or bits for my pc. There can be a lot of stress finding the right bits to work together, but it's worth it for the shiny/pretty/new result.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. First time I did something like installing a new cpu, playing around with that heat conducting paste and such.... and given that it worked out really well so far. (knock on wood) The really traumatic thing only happened on the software side of things, but that's a story for another day

@Dr H: Yeah, to be honest I really didn't want to put in the time and effort into researching all the hardware and then making a decision. I haven't been up to date when it comes to hardware and such for about 10 years. So basically I know nothing. I'm not that big on upgrading my computer, and I don't buy new hardware often, so for the last two upgrades I relied on the kindnes of strangers. There are some very good computer fora online at which you just enter how much money you want to spend, what you have, what you need and then you can watch several people getting into a fight about the best configuration for the price and the config which wins is the one I pick. It sounds very risky, but my last full new computer I put together this way and it's the best machine I ever had. So I went with this option again.

Here's my report of yesterday's VIVAT, Austria's one and only wargames show which is all about historical miniatures gaming!


http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/11/show-report-vivat-2015.html


The event's centre piece of course was the huge multi-player Waterloo game:


...but there were several other nice things to see. Hope you enjoy the report!

Wow. Impressive set up and great report of the event. Thanks for sharing Sigur.

That is an incredibly impressive setup on that table!! Any idea how many models total were in the battle?

Your work never fails to impress mate.

@IceAngel: Glad you enjoyed the pictures.

@RiTides: It really is amazing. I didn't know a game of such immense proporations was possible in Austria. We're but a small community (and unnecessarily fragmented too). I think it was about 6000 figures on the table on that day.

@carlos13th: Cheers, much appreciated!


Hullo, I'm back on the ACW. I told you the South would 'rahse' again!


This Saturday I attended VIVAT2015. It, along with Austrian Salute near Salzburg, is one of the two events us Austrian wargamers get (not counting tournaments). So it's not unheard of that towards the end of the day of VIVAT questions of "what are we going to do for Austrian Salute?" arise. A very wise man had the idea to have a big American Civil War game. At this point it's barely more than an intangible vision, but given how much stuff we can put on the table already and given how we got all the required terrain really it's not hard to make this game become reality. All we need is a battle, some orders thereof and we'd need to check what else would be required in terms of special terrain and troops.

The promise of this happening alone made me grab a box of Perrys Confederate Infantry (review incoming soon!) and have at it:



As you can see, I'm doing the compulsory 'butternut' coloured uniform regiment. Of course the idea for Confederate units was to wear grey uniforms (at least from 1861 on IIRC, before that there was lots of blue involved which led to terrible confusion in battle with the Federal army). Depending on the kind of dye used to make grey fabric it often happened that after multiple washing and exposure to the elements on campaign the uniforms took on various shades of brown. This colour became known as 'butternut', and if you want to have an endless argument on the CORRECT look of a colour on miniatures you can add this one to Dunkelgelb, Feldgrau, pike grey and the right red for British uniforms.

Not sure who these guys are to depict anyway. Following my very crude Louisiana theme it would be nice to stick with that. Maybe the 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th Louisiana Infantry would be an idea, so I could go for roughly a Hays' Brigade theme for my force.

Those look quite nicely realistic

@RiTides: That's very diplomatic of you. They'll look better once they're all done and based, I swear!



Heyhey, I'm currently working on six Steampunk characters for someone's Kickstarter project (launching on the 21st, so very soon!).



The sixth dude isn't pictured, but soon will be (i hope!). So here we got the Commodore, Jack Union (in a spiffing suit and posing atop a Jabberwock's head), the Mayor in a dancing pose, the Engineer and the Nurse.

Mayor and Engineer are done at this point, Union Jack will be finished next. Commodore and Nurse require some more work, and the sixth guy, the Policeman, will take some more work as well.

Hope you like them so far! It's a very intersting project as each model is based on a Steampunk performer of whom I hope to post pictures as well!

Update time!

Jack Union is done now, same as the Commodore the Policeman is almost done, still needs some neatening up and some more work on the little cloak and jacket.



Here are some of the pictures I got sent as reference:














Hope you like the minis and enjoy the pictures.

Very nice work on the figs Sigur. Good representations of those photos for sure.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks.

Alright, they're all finished, just in time for the Kickstarter to commence tomorrow!

Btw, the reason for the minis to bei ~35mm size is that they're supposed to go with all the other steampunk-y stuff that's out (Malifaux, Infamy, that wild west thing, ...) for which the minis are always taller than 28mm.





Commodore and his Monkey:







Policeman:








Mayor:








Jack Union:








Nurse:








Engineer:








Against a white background:



Hope you like them.

in case you like the minis - the KS is up (and funded already!).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/951486445/legends-of-british-steampunk-roleplay-and-wargames

Here we go again with 28mm Star Wars and another batch of Imperial Assault Figures. This time a whole lotta minis, yet again including some star power.

Here are four finished Sand People and WIP Boba Fett and R2D2:

I am defenseless in the face of the R2 unit. So good!

"Sand People pose single file to hide their numbers..."

@Gitsplitta: Yeah, it's a cute one. Very nice model too.

@SlaveToDorkness: Indeed.


More WIPs!



Two rebel characters, (more or less finished), C3PO (fnished), two WIP heavy stormtroopers.

Nice group you've got there, Sigur - how're you finding the detail on the Imperial Assault figures?

The detail is perfectly fine. Especially the rebel characters a very, very detailled. of course the details aren't quite as sharp as you'd find them on wargaming figures or proper scale models, but it's very solid quality. The less nice things about these minis mostly are the massive mold lines and the material in general. These are boardgame figures made of very soft, bendy plastic (kinda like the old Revell/Airfix 1/72nd infantry figures). You cant file or scrape the mold lines properly, so you have to cut. Due to how soft the material is this can go wrong very easily. The surfaces are also a bit bumpy where they shouldn't be and the details, as mentioned above, aren't too sharp sometimes. Still, fine minis even though they're a bit harder to work with.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So here's what's done so far (sans sand people):



The red-ringed Stormtrooper I just got back again from the customer so the new ones would fit with the old one and in case I'd forgotten what white and black look like. Here we see a classic Star Wars scene of people firing laser guns at each other. Within seconds the Stormtroopers will be mown down without having caused any damage. :p

I've been following the annual MST3k Turkey Day Marathon for almost 7 hours now. Still going strong.

Rebel Saboteurs:






Here's what's on the plate next - rebel troopers!




Hope you like them!


I also made an advent wreath this weekend, played poker with friends (very good evening, surprisingly high taxi bill in the end), prepared three more miniatures reviews and built 10 German WW2 tanks AND started building not only jump-off points for my 15mm Brits for Chain of Command, but also two artillery positions for 25pdr guns. One abandoned, one still at large.



Of course artillery such as this has no place on a gaming table usually, because it makes no sense. However, I had the models and sometimes artillery positions get attacked or the enemy gets close and they still have to fire or use the guns for some desperate close-quarters tank defense (those situations are mentioned several times for the war in the desert in 1941).

The Jump-off points are a destroyed Crusader 2 tank with a scouting dude using it as cover, a little scene in which a local camel driver is interrogated for info on German movement while some British soldiers rest and marvel at the camels (I'll add another one sitting on that box there). The third jump off point will be some truck with this spare artillery limber.

Great looking as usual! I like how the rebel girl on the left thought to bring a pint to the fight.

 Sigur wrote:
I also made an advent wreath this weekend, played poker with friends (very good evening, surprisingly high taxi bill in the end), prepared three more miniatures reviews and built 10 German WW2 tanks AND started building not only jump-off points for my 15mm Brits for Chain of Command, but also two artillery positions for 25pdr guns. One abandoned, one still at large.

OK, now I feel lazy.

Will some of the saboteurs and troopers be getting the red base of elite status at some point, Sigur, or is that just for the Evil Empire?

And for once, I don't mean GW...

Is that camel carrying part of a jeep on it's back?! Marvel indeed!

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Is that camel carrying part of a jeep on it's back?! Marvel indeed!

I think that's the battery for the abandoned gun emplacement in the background.

Rebel Saboteurs.. hummm.. Note to Empire" look for the Blue guys! Great job on C3PO!!

Camels.. How often in life does one get to paint Camels! Not something you see on Dakka a lot theses days!

@Wehrkind: She's got an engineer's degree and yet you reduce her to the drink she holds in her hand.

@Dysartes: That's a very kind thing to say, but I'm afraid I lazier than anybody else. :/ Yeah, I'll add the red base bits in the end on the rebels as well as on the empire troops.

@Gitsplitta: I'm afraid SlaveToDorkness is right.

@SlaveToDorkness: Exactly.

@Solar_lion: Yeah, they're master of deception, but their bulbous blue heads always give them away. It indeed has been a while since I painted camels.I painted a bunch of 10mm camels for an Araby Warmaster army about 7 years ago. Since then... hmm... I think I haven't painted a single camel since then really. Camels are cool stuff to paint, but elephants and chariots - that's where it's at. Especially Scythed chariots. I recently listenened to a very good podcast (it's the Ancient Warfare Podcast to accompany the Ancient Warfare Magazine. Highly recommended. Very well informed and educated people talking about interesting stuff in a relaxed and easy to follow manner. Especially the bits on battlefield communications, life in camp and how winners and losers of ancient battles were determined are highly recommended and pretty well applicable to fantasy warfare. And it will help understand that friction and command&control just are necessary to meaningfully depict any battle) and the topic of scythed chariots came up. I think the general consensus was that the whole concept throughout history was a series of weird fads, overblown stories and just an idea that never really worked. Still won't stop me from launching my Persian scythed chariot into lines of Greek Hoplites (and just shatter on impact in 80% of all cases ). Anyway, yeah. Camels. Bought these earlier this year, thinking I'd use them for my Persians' camp. But of course they're really handy for these desert brits here as well.


Update on the rebels as well as some Koopas:

Your Star Wars minis are aboslutely beautiful. So much detail from boardgame miniatures!

@Mymearan: Thanks very much. Yeah, well, they're a little rough and such, but they aren't bad.

Here come the rebs!


Pew pew pew!


Trandoshan Hunters:


Against my expectations those Trandoshans turned out to be my favourite models out of this batch.

Hope you like them! There's still one more to come: Boba Fett.

See now you spoilt it.

2 years ago I bought a suitable scale camel to have as a silly dio with an ork painboy, now I can never do it, ta.





Oh yeah everything else looks truly amazing as usual, Starwars bits are cool.

@Camkierhi: Come on, you know the rulings when it comes to camels: After 20 months the Right of the First Camel is null and void.

Boooooooooba Fett! No other character in Fantasy films (or Sci-Fi if you will) did so little and gets so much reverence:










Hope you like them. Group pictures coming up!

How true.

Though... he WAS the genetic blueprint for every storm trooper out there. Just sayin'.

@Gitsplitta: Having a CO2 footprint is more of an achievement than having a genetic footprint. If anyone Boba Fett's mom is to be credited for that.

Well, there they are.









cheers. C&C welcome as always!

That Star Wars group shot is impressive, really nice work!!

What a fantastic group Sigur! Pat yourself on the back for that one.

The Force is strong with this one...

@RiTides: Thanks.

@Gitsplitta: Well, thank you very much, Sir!

@Dysartes: We won't get into which side exactly....


Got some painting done on them Jump-Off Points and artillery bases for Chain of Command:




'So what's wrong with that tank then? Looks fine to me.' - ha, look again!




The funniest thing happened - seems like our Chain of Command table at VIVAT got something going. Many local dudes are getting interested in the game. Very nice developments.

Alrighty, today I painted some Polish horses. Once those were done I finished my Jump-Off points for Chain of command:







Okay, technically it's just two proper Jump-Off Point bases and the third is random trucks, either with a hanger or without. But hey, in the desert it makes a whole lot of sense. The little diorama in the middle is an officer and a translator gathering info from a local camel driver while the lads have a chat with the camel. The destroyed Crusader II tank is a bit too late for what we play, but oh well. may just as well be a Crusader I with the weird MG turret removed (which happened quite often in the field, because they weren't very popular). Still, I didn't paint on the usual Caunter camo scheme, because of course it was only used until ..err... the end of 1941 if I remember correctly. Also saved me some time of course. :p I added a little scout dude to the base to depict a scout patrol.


And of course I finished the artillery bases:





Just as planned, one firing, one abandoned. I was thinking of doing a whole collapsed camo net setup fgor the abandoned one, but realized that it would make the thing hell to transport and it would probably break at some point or another, so just slapped some camo netting over one side of the gun shield and that's that.

Hope you like them.

Those look wonderful Sigur. The red lights and paint job on the truck just tickle my fancy something fierce!

@Gitsplitta: Oh, thanks. It was time to get some Jump-Off point markers I think.


Heyhey, for months I've had this guy stand on my table. It's a Persian general in chariot. In game terms he isn't that important or even required as you get the choice between him and the general with the cavalry unit, so I was under no pressure to get him painted. But still, I guess it's time to get some paint on this one:



Of course he's WIP. Hope to pull that white-purple off.

nicely done SW minis, just in time for the movie.

Love those brits ands their shorts panst uniforms. Bravo.

@Solar_lion: Cheers. I've got a ton of Star Wars stuff scheduled to be publicized over the next four weeks on the site (battlebrushstudios.com).

Now for some people with (mostly) longer trousers - Italian Bersaglieri!





As this Chain of Command project of ours is getting bigger and bigger (I'm on my second platoon now, German player is doing a British Indian platoon now and the third guy is doing French Foreign Legion), we'll cover pretty much everybody involved in our chosen setting (Early Northern Africa setting) soon.


For months I tried to get hold of the regular Italian rifle platoon by Battlefront, then for some sale at a store I caved in and just got the Bersaglieri instead. They are a sort of elite formation within the army, tracing back their miliatry lineage as crack light infantry back to the Italian unification wars. To this day the Bersaglieri units wear black cockerel feathers on their headgear; to this day.






As I found varying infos on how their platoons were organized in 1940-41, I will use the regular Italian rifle platoon organization. It's a rather interesting platoon setup (you can see that I pretty much require twice as many figures as I'm working on at the moment):



Only two big squads (as opposed to the three smaller ones which other nations use), but each one split up into a gun group or two LMG teams each (overseen by the squad commander) and a maneuver element led by a Corporal. No other organic support weapons to the platoon, no platoon sergeants, just one officer on top. It's an interesting beast indeed. Rather inflexible, but at least the manpower is there. Should be really, really interesting getting to know how these chaps play on the table.

Interesting tradition, Not sure it still works with the modern helmets but I'm guessing that's not the point.

Yeah, my sentiments exactly.

Love that "surprise" broken down tank with the tracks missing on one side . Very realistic looking paint job on it, too.

@Solar_lion: I happened across a site on which it was claimed that the tradition actually isn't that impractical in the field, as it helps messing up the outlines of the helmet; kinda like putting shrubbery on the helmet. Might be a reason why it's still kept.

@RiTides: Thanks.

A bit more work on the Bersaglieri:


This is just one squad for now. They aren't finished (still need some detailling done and the skin needs to be finished). The full platoon will comprise two such squads. You can see the two fire elements in the back, each with a Breda light MG, both led by the squad's sergeant. The maneuver element in the front is armed with all rifles and led by the squad's corporal.

Some of them are wearing the green-grey jackets usually worn in Europe, because the Italian army was notoriously short on khaki uniforms. And trucks. And anti-tank guns. And their MGs were a horrible design and their rifles were kinda old and had a weird calibre (same rifle Lee Harvey Oswald used in the Kennedy assassination, by the way). And their doctrines weren't quite up to snuff for desert warfare, especially not against the British Western Desert Force who were rather capable and well equipped. It was only after a ton of their men and their stuff were shipped to protect Malta and Greece that they were slightly overworked coping with the Germans in Africa.

In short - the Italian army probably was just not able to keep up with Mussolini's grand plans for that Mediterranean empire. Certainly not within that short a timeframe. It's not like Italian soldiers couldn't or wouldn't fight (far from it), but there were so many factors working against them that it just didn't work. Right up until the end in Northern Africa Italians were the main part of the manpower on the Axis side, but they were mainly used for static defense. Until 1941 the British thought very little of them, and confidence in the Italian fighting capabilities on the German side wasn't too great either. Again, this was mainly due to the lack of everything in terms of material and a certain lack of training. Apart from a few formations the Italian army also never developed much in the sense of ésprit de corps, because they mainly were used as static defense and garrison troops, so many never got much combat experience nor a sense of their own capabilities as a fighting force, always playing second fiddle to a much glorified ally led by this golden boy. There wasn't even a sense of fighting for something greater than them, because Africa was viewed as a sort of colonial combat zone where in fact it required high tech, state of the art combat doctrine and was led against an enemy who had both of that.

Interesting stuff to learn about. At least I think so. But hey, the Italian army had one thing that worked and was quite beloved by everybody (apart from that Semovente self-propelled gun): The Sahariana jacket!

 Sigur wrote:
@Solar_lion: I happened across a site on which it was claimed that the tradition actually isn't that impractical in the field, as it helps messing up the outlines of the helmet; kinda like putting shrubbery on the helmet. Might be a reason why it's still kept.

All I thought was.. ' Aim for the feathers"...

Looks like some are the grey and some are brown.. wip?

Solar_lion wrote:...
Looks like some are the grey and some are brown.. wip?

Nah, that's meant to be that way.

Some of them are wearing the green-grey jackets usually worn in Europe, because the Italian army was notoriously short on khaki uniforms.

Took some additional work, but I'll take anything that makes a force look a bit different.

Last night that Star Wars Armada test game finally happened! My gaming pal insisted in repainting all of the ships because he found them not being pretty enough. And indeed, his ships are much prettier now. Unfortunately Frank Shandy had to drop out on short notice.



I played the Imperials, my opponent naturally went with the rebels then. I had a star destroyer and six squadrons of tie fighters, he got a corvette (pretty sure it's the big ship in X-Wing we played with once), a slightly bigger ship and four squadrons of x-wings. In this game they certainly got the way x-wings and tie fighters relate to each other in tems of 'power level' better than in X-Wing: X-wings are nasty, blunt bully tools, tie fighters are elegant butterflies. :p

Speaking of bluntness and lack of grace, On turn#5 I moved my star destroyer off board because it maneuvers like a bag of bricks in a vacuum. We played on a 36" x 36" mat, so maybe a bit too small for Armada, but the rulebook said it was okay for the test game with the box contents.



In the end, despite of the fact that none of the big ships had taken any damage, adding up points shot up I came up as the winner by a slight margin. I had killed all the enemy X-wings, afterwards my Tie fighters, after trying to scratch the bigger rebel ship, got mauled badly, but one squadron managed to flee the scene in the end. Of course if you count the Star Destroyer I moved off table as lost I'd be the loser, but they were just called to a more important mission I'm sure.

Armada pretty much is how I imagined it to be: 'x-wing for grown-ups'. Someone once called it that, it's not my words. X-Wing is fun and really, really well done. I mean there's a reason why it's so insanely popular. Armada requires you to plan ahead much more, it's quite a bit more complex, it requires more thought in general. It follows that it's also slower. Not much, but a bit. The star destroyer for example has to be given orders two turns ahead of time. these tall grey trivial pursuit looking dials are the command dials for the large ships. You stack them onto each other and the Star Destroyer always stacks three. The latest being added at the bottom. Each turn you issue a new order and execute the top one. This alone will tell you how it requires some forethought. Models a cumbersome capital ship really well.

Overall, it's very FFG in the way the rules are done: elegant and they work. Not much else to say. The basic box is very expensive, but so is every single bloody boardgame out there these days. We played with about 140 points, "regular" games are played at 300pts the rulebook says. On a larger table of course. Nice game.

Afterwards we played the "fast card game" version of Settlers of Catan because we still had some time. Solid game. Doesn't work that well with 2 players, but I can imagine it being quite a lot of fun with more than that.

Okay, time for a more proper update again. Between polish horses and other things I've FINALLY started doing these Salamanders here (just a few outta the batch):



So expect to see more green mereens again in the near future!

Looking forward to this.

HH Salamanders at that! Very nice.

Salamanders! Looking nice - i'm loving the HH fervour going round at the moment, wish I had money so I could be more directly involved :(

 Sigur wrote:
Okay, time for a more proper update again. Between polish horses and other things I've FINALLY started doing these Salamanders here (just a few outta the batch):



So expect to see more green mereens again in the near future!

Someone might want to point out to a couple of the troopers that wearing a brush on your head whilst wielding a heavy flamer might not be the best idea.

Unless the brush is also made of ceramite, of course...

@Gitsplitta: I hope that these don't end up disappointing!

@solar_lion: Indeed!

@lipsdapips: Thanks, it's nice to paint Space Marines again.

@Dysartes: Oh, you know what these Space Marines are like. You tell them one thing and they do the exact opposite out of principle. :p


Update:


The guys with the heavy flamers are done now, next on the list are the Firedrakes and after that it's time for some characters!

The only disappointing thing is that they're green, but they aren't Mantis Warriors!!

Mmm! Wonderfully characterful. You've done those salamanders justice there - looking forward to the characters