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@nerdfest09: Thanks! Always a pleasure to get feedback. As for the avatar - you know how in some computer roleplaying games there is only one item slot for the head? Well, it's the same case here. I got the option of either moustache, Imperial Guard bandana, Dark Elves warrior helmet or santa's hat and given the season I decided to switch for now.


Update on the BA tanks!


Predators:


Baal Predator:





So you see that they slowly are getting done more and more. The Predator in the left and the Baal Predator are at about the same level now, the Predator in the right needs some more work done but getting there too. On the side there still is the Vindicator and a Stormraven that has a special kind of problem which I'll get to later.

In other news, I guess I mentioned how I ordered an Exorcist from GW (yeah, weird thing for me to do but I finally got a second one), got it today, opened it and was surprised to see that they don't seem to make the SoB vehicle boxes any more. What I got from mail order was the sprues wrapped up in plastic and one of those handy clear plastic containers with the metal parts.

Anyways, gotta focus on commission stuff. Hope you like them!

Very nice work sigur. You have such a wonderful touch with the chipping. Not overdone. The vehicles look bright and sharp without looking showroom new OR beaten to total crap which is where I always seem to end up.

Can you give any advice on knowing when enough is enough??

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much. Nowadays nobody knows when enough is enough, otherwise we wouldn't be in this whole gakky situation! Anyhow, a bit more on topic: I deliberately restrained myself on these tanks so I wouldn't overdo it. the battle damage had gotten a bit much on the BA Contemptor I did recently and this time I really tried to keep it a little more civil. The thing is that having an all red more or less brick shaped vehicle is a problem in itself and at this point chipping along the edges comes as a really comfortable way to make the thing still look interesting and to give it some kind of "texture". So you basically have a problem (all red brick) and a convenient and good-looking solution which of course can invite one to overdo it. I guess that "less is more"? It helps taking a step back every once in a while and think "does this make sense there? That helped me when planning the battle damage and chipping on these tanks.

Third predator finished so far, dozer blades finished, Vindicator is well on its way too!

Thanks for the advice! Looking really good. So... I'd like to see the bracing system from that tank to those three blades!

@Gitsplitta: Those are for THREEEEE tanks. :p thanks for the comment though. Always appreciated.



Vindicator WIP!






Hope you like it so far. I added some additional battle damage that's still to do properly in the back.

.....but for now there's an update on St.Celestine:


Definately getting there. I added some petals to the base because...dunno, SYMBOLISM/SUPERFICIAL DRAMA LOOK/ANIMU/whatever. But hey, I didn't add wings to her back so cut me some slack. :p

Freakin' beautiful! I really don't know how else to say it!

Looking beautiful Sigur. Love the drape of the cloak & the cherubs.

Oh yes she is a stunner for sure.

Celestine looks amazing, Siggy! Really like the cloak and the white and blue cloth work.

@Nerdfest09: Thanks very much.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers! Hey, what's up with your avatar?

@GiraffeX: She's a very fun model. No idea why it took me so long to paint her.

@Moltar: Cheers. Out of all the armies I got I think I'm the most proud of the SoB colour scheme I have to admit.




Back to Blood Angels again, with lots of red!


WIP Stormraven:





Finished Predators and Vindicator:

































That's it. I shall see you soon with update of the Storm Raven! Err, you all got christmas presents yet? Still stumped for what to get for my brother's girlfriend. For some odd reason she's not into tabletop wargaming so I'm completely out of my comfort zone there. Hmmm, maybe if i get her some 28mm vikings. Everybody loves 28mm vikings, right?

 Sigur wrote:


@Gitsplitta: Cheers! Hey, what's up with your avatar?

We had some idiot go into a grade school last week and kill 20+ people including 20 little kids. I have two kids of my own so it hit pretty close to home (even though it took place in a different state). For me, some color went out of the world with the lives of those kids... So I greyed out my avatar in their memory.

Simply beautiful Sig. Im always astounded at how you get such a good balance between crisp and new and gritty and dirty.

Seriously fething awesome.

@Gitsplitta: Ah yes, that. I was horrified when I heard of it back then. I don't have kids myself but that must add a whole additional layer to when such things happen.

@VitruvianXVII: Thanks very much.

Hey guys, sorry for the hiatus again. It's been over a month again. Wow. Well, merry christmas and happy new year I guess. Hope that all of you had great holidays and if not - oh well, at least they're over now, eh?


Well, here are some pictures so I can pretend that I wasn't completely useless over the past three weeks. I'm currently working on a set of Dreadfleet again which to me is very welcome because I'm a big fan of that game. Gorgeous and creative models, top quality materials and production value, fun rules. People calling it a failure I think usually never played the game but instead only measure "success" only by wether or not it sold out faster than Space Hulk two years prior. Dreadfleet though is a completely different beast. To me it very much felt like a "classic GW" game like they would have done in the early 1990s. Only loosely connected to WHFB/40k, a bit random, a bit clunky, very strong atmosphere and good creature/model design and good fun. This game defaintely deserves more of a chance than it was given by the wider public.

Anyway, let's go on to the models before I ramble on here.

Some of the islands:



The Black Kraken and Curse of Zandri:


Dragon!,treature markers (those came out pretty badly. They look good in real life, promise!) and a sinking Dwarven vessel:


Sea monsters:


Turn template and wind marker (both sides):







Two small squadrons facing off:



Now for the slightly WIP stuff. Starting with the Flaming Scimitar:


Then there is the Blood Reaver of course:





These are just some snapshots of what's finished (or a bit WIP of course) at this point. As you can see, the bases also need a bit more work. Mostly details and some more light reflections and such.

So what's left to do then?

.) Finish Bloody Reaver (needs sails and masts, otherwise finished)
.) Paint Heldenhammer (primed)
.) Paint Swordfish (primed)
.) Paint five Auxiliary Cogs (primed)
.) Finish Dwarven Airship (60% finished. It's tiny, about half the size of a thumb's nail so that should go fast)
.) Finish Flaming Scimitar (only thing that's left is some mermaids accompanying the ship)
.) Finish painting the bases

Okay, colour coding a list of stuff I still have to do probably wasn't a too great idea motivationwise but overall I would say that the set is 85% finished. Should take a week at worst until it's done.


So that's the Dreadfleet stuff. Let me take off my Battle Brush Studios hat there for a moment and show you some of the stuff I've been doing for meself:


Swedish Blue Pike finished:



The Swedish Blue Regiment was one of the elite "coloured" regiments (along with the Yellow regiment you've seen earlier) and amongst the very few who got somewhat uniform clothes. Those guys, along with the Yellow guards regiment, fought in the middle of the Swedish battle line at Lützen and suffered horrible losses during that battle.


A bunch of imperial cuirassiers who could do with a bit more painting on the trumpeter and a flag but otherwise done:




Two new units of Imperial shot:



...and the first unit of Swedish light cavalry, Västgöta regiment:






Unlike with some other of the "native swedish" cavalry regiments it's unknown what colour of cloth these guys wore so I thought I'd be on the safe side with blue (it being pretty popular amongst the protestant armies in general and especially favoured by native Swedish regiments. Green as secondary colour I chose simply because it would look neat along with the flag and it was a field sign of the Swedish army for a while IIRC).


Also - my Haqqislam minis for Infinity:





That Blood Angels Stormraven is finished as well (and it looks really nice), I just haven't gotten to take any pictures yet.


Just as general chat on the side - I got to play two games of Two Hour Wargames' All Things Zombie - Final Fadeout (basically the third edition of the rules at this point)! Got the ruleset along with all the expansions for Christmas, had gotten about 100 Zombies in fall so it was about time to try a game. Two Hour Wargames' games have the very unique selling point that they are very much suited for solo or co-operative games and especially All Things Zombie is quite a lot a roleplaying game as well (just like all wargames are to an extent in my opinion). So I sat down with my brother and we played the Day One scenarios for a bit. I'm amazed how a game can conjure up a tense, narrative and cinematic game like this from just rolling a few tables only based on the single phrase "Brother's Girlfriend still is in the city at her workplace and obviously the zombie apocalypse broke out. We gotta pick her up."

WIthout going into too much detail about our exploits, I have to say that it's not quite simple to wrap your head around the system and we had to look up a lot of things but that's always the case with new wargames. Once you're used to it though it's a very quick, seemingly very rewarding and versatile game. I definately suggest giving the rules sets by Two Hour Wargames a try (they're all essentially based on the same core rules called Chain Reaction which you can download for free from their website by the way) with various characterful and very fun additions depending on the game at hand. Definately worth a try, especially if yu're interested in solo or sooperative gaming.

Hi Siggy, good to see you survived Christmas and the new year unscathed! :-) everything is looking as beautiful as usual mate! I particularly love the Haqqislam mini's they are something else when you consider how fidly they are! which kinda leads me to two small questions for you, first, the colours and method for the camo fatigues on the above mini's i'd love to see how you do it as i'm toying with a similar project! :-) and secondly, with your tanks you paint, do you use powders to get the dust weathering or do you airbrush a light coat of earthy brown?

keep up the great work! can't wait to see some more of those Teeny tiny guys too! the charging horsemen are just mind boggling!

Love the Haqq stuff Sig, perfect colour choice IMO!!!!

What do you know, replies from Australia exclusively!

@nerdfest09: Thanks for the comment! The digital camo thing is very straightforward - just paint tiny boxes. I start with black boxes (paint outlines, fill out), partly overlapping, then I add smaller white boxes, slightly overlapping with the black ones and to finish it off, a few brown ones scattered in between. Then I gave it all a wash for additional shading and for tieing the whole surface together a bit better and highlight where necessary. I think the most important thing is to get the ratios right. Nothing's harder to make something look deliberately random. As for dirt/dust on tanks - it always depends on what the army is based on. These Blood Angels come on desert bases so it will mostly be fine dust on the vehicles for which the airbrush of course is perfectly suited. I find though that airbrush alone gets you a too even look so, to come back to your question, I'm basically using all three in this case: airbrush, pigments and a bit of not-quitedry-brushing (to get a few uneven spots and such). Having a few bits not look perfectly even is the thing that makes dirt look "realistic".

@Tech Guard: Thanks muchly. It's not too far off the (really, really good) "studio scheme" for Haqqislam minis but there's nothing wrong with getting some inspiration (or, in the words of Martha Graham: If you're gonna steal, steal from the best).


Right, no new pictures at this point, I'm mainly replying to your comments, which is always fun.

Speaking of fun - last night I finally had that game of Battle for Armegeddon a friend and I had planned to do for two weeks now. I had both earlier appointments implode, first by being sick, then by horrible weather (which is a rare one to intervene with gaming).



It's one of GW's board wargames, was released in 1992 and features a lot of cardboard chits along with a few cards. All printed really nicely onto very sturdy cardboard (2 to 3 mm each) and it's about the Second War for Armageddon of course. I played Orks, my gaming buddy took command of the Imperial Defenders and off we went.



The game surprised me in two ways - first: It's cleverer than I thought. It's actually a nice mix of simple rules with some elegant twists and a certain depth of gameplay. Each chit has three stats (Attack - Defense - Movement), you can stack up to three chits on one space to use as a combined army. You can attack each space from more than one other space. Battles are worked out by dividing the attackers' combined Attack value by the defenders' combined Defense value (so if Three formations of Battlewagons (combined attack value of 9) attack an Imperial position (combined defense value of 3) the defenders count as having the odds be 3:1 against them. If the defenders had a combined defense value of 4 for example it would be 2:1 and so on). For a certain random element attackers also roll a d6. Take the roll result and the odds of the battle, consult table and do as written. Even if attackers outnumber the defenders two or three to one you can still mess things up by rolling badly but there are all kinds of things that can go wrong during a battle (especially so if you're an Ork of course ). All very basic so far (even though we had a laugh at how nowadays we're really not used to wargames requiring us to do maths as advanced as DIVING numbers).

Now for the "elegant" twist - Before that each player chooses two strategy cards in secret and place them in front of them in the order they will be used. The cards either say Movement and Combat, Combat and Movement or Build and Movement (I think the sets are the same for both sides) and dictate what your troops will do this turn. Initiative (i.e. "who goes first" or who reveals the first strategy card) is rolled for at the beginning of each turn so you basically make your plans not knowing what exactly the enemy will be doing (because how would you apart from interpreting his troop movement and the general situation) and who gets to do it first. So this adds a layer of "fog of war" on a strategic level.

As mentioned above, apart from Movement and Combat you can also Build new units a.k.a. call in reserves. This adds another layer to the game. Throughout the map there are factories. Those, along with the five hives, generate build points for the Imperial side (who are very much outnumbered at the beginning) who can build a whole host of stuff for that, ranging from hastily recruited hive gangs over tank batalions and fortifications (which double the defense value of anyone inside them. Ouch.) up to titan legions. Depending on how powerful the units are the more turns they take to be ready for action. Hive gangs are available immediately if I remember correctly whilst Titans take five or six turns. Orks "build" units in a very different way - for every two destroyed (captured) factories or hives they get to place one chit that was removed from play (killed) earlier.

The game lasts for eight turns in total during which each player gets to reveal two strategy cards each. At the end of each turn you check if anyside has achieved their victory conditions. For Orks that is trashing and conquering any three of the five hives, for the Imperial side that is holding all five hives (or having fallen ones taken back) and having Ghazkull killed.

And on top of all of that, there are supply lines which have to be taken care of (if no line from supply areas can be drawn to a unit for more than one turn they are destroyed. This is what happened to many of my units actually after the army got too streched out) AND each turn you get to draw a special card you can keep and play at later points in the game which get you benificial effects of sorts (or not if you're an ork and roll badly :p ).

All in all, it's a really simple game with more strategic depth than I had thought. The rules are simple but come in "layers" which in combination make up for more than what the single parts suggest. When it comes to games design, I think this is something you want to achieve. Of course it's a bit random but way less so than many other boardgames published by GW. Makes it feel like a legitimate wargame with a GW twist. 't was fun. Well, I lost of course but it was my first time playing and I think I made quite a few mistakes. With the Orks side, more so than with the Imperial side, you have to have a plan and you have to coordinate your troops well (as an ADDITIONAL twist, Orks are divided by clans. Roughly a third of your army is Bad Moons, another one is Evil Sunz and the rest of course is Goff Orks. Formations from different clans can not be stacked into one army and can not attack the same space at the same time). Orks get ALL their chits at the beginning of the game which leads to space being really tight in their deployment area while Imperial defenders start out being just a few but bunkered up in hives or at the Russo-German border edge of the Orky deployment zone. I basically spent the first two turns trying to get some order into my army , especially after not getting through the initial defences as I didn't really "got" the rules on the first turn.

Still, very good game. The lack of miniatures is a bit discomforting but it's fun playing with cardboard counters for once. Makes you feel like playing one of them old Avalon Hill games.



(pictures used above were posted by FatherSquee on the Underempire. There will be pictures of the game I played too which I'll post at a later point)

Right, that's it for now, back to the painting table!

Very interesting review Sigur. I never played this game on it's release... sounds like I might have missed something worthwhile.

It was a bit before my time but out of the wargames series GW released then (Doom of the Eldar, Horus Heresy and of course Battle for Armageddon) it's said to be the best one. As far as I know it's also the only one out of those which got an expansion lateron.

For another look at the game, Andrew Law is currently writing a series of articles of his favorite GW games and recently he placed Battle for Armageddon on #6: http://lawhammer.blogspot.co.at/

(don't get confused by the weird ending of the url. Blogspot recently started adding endings depending on where you are from so I get all ".at"s )

Sigur, one of your Dreadfleet images is broken...

Interesting, I can't remember if I played that or not. Maybe I just played something similar, I definitely remember the old Horus Heresy game that came free with White Dwarf.

I'm a big fan of board games and the GW ones are excellent - Chaos in the Old World and the new Horus Heresy are great fun and both look to have a lot in common with Battle for Armageddon.

@Dysartes: Thanks for the heads up! Hope you like the now-not-missing picture as well.

@Bruticus: Never played any of the new FFG "big games" but I hear they're pretty good and FFG hasn't failed me so far (I'm a big fan of anything Talisman and they did a very good job with that. Also love Death Angel).


Hey peeps, it's time for an update!

A bit out of left field, we get a bunch of "Modern" civilians in 28mm and a few gangers.

Group shot:


I really like that shot. All together they look like the cast of a tv show due to how every single one of them is so unique and many of them are really characterful.















As everybody who ever searched for modern 28mm scale civilians, they're darned hard to find and if so, they usually are kind of expensive (Hasslefree, for example, do GREAT civilians but they're about 4 pounds a piece including shipping which is a bit steep if you need a handful of them). As I was looking around two weeks ago, after my first two games of All Things Zombie I noticed how much stuff I lack for playing that kind of game. First and foremost - civilians and a few gangers. However, you can implement those guys in any present-day or futuristic setting as mission objectives, hinderances, hostages, annoyances - anything pretty much. Many Infinity scenarios also require you to have civilians so there you go.

During a late night search for suitable and affordable miniatures I happened across No Go Zone (http://www.no-go-zone.com/index.html), a miniatures wargame based on "the British Urban Sprawl where Chaos and Law collide". Immediately I felt reminded of the 2011 riots in England of course. Weird. Haven't really looked into the ruleset yet but as an intereesting twist, it seems to be based on a kind of rock-paper-scissors system. No, you really play rock-paper-scissors (with slightly different hand signs and five thereof). Interesting idea but a bit exploitable I think as the random element is reduced to "mind games", reading people and so on. Not my kind of thing but definately something different.

Anyways, the company who sells these minis does a pack of six civilians for six pounds per pack and a pack of six gangers for the same price. For a quid a metal figure you can't do much wrong really. Apart from that you also get some nifty base "tops" for the minis to stand on. They look nice but some are a bit thickly cast. You also get one plastic 20mm round base for each mini.

As for the minis themselves - well, this is not exactly top notch quality. You can read this as a positive, encouraging you to sculpt your own minis ("what is this, I can do that just as well if not better!" ) but most people will see it as a negative. Casting is okay but there were some annoying miscasts as if small parts of the moulds ripped out earlier. Hands especially don't look very well done for today's standards. It certainly is no standard you're used to if you play some of the bigger name games with the expensive metal minis. But what the heck, it's 1 quid a figure and it's civilians and it would be weird if they looked better than your stars.

In terms of scale and size they're pretty much Heroic 28mm mins. Big heads, big hands, interestingly feet are almost in scale. Sculpting quality, as I said, is so-so. That said, once they're painted, they look really nice and what at first looks like clumsy, silly sculpted faces start to look surprisingly sympathetic and characterful once painted. Details are ....well, they are there but nothing huge. But again, they do the trick and I really grew fond of that lot.

I can absolutely understand if people don't like the sculpts but for me they work because they do what they're required to do - they're a diverse group of civilians (some of them shady or criminal looking) suited for many different games and settings. And for the price I'd say that those aren't half bad.

One word about the painting: I really had to finish those quickly because there's so much else to do so most of the models, especially the clothes, were painted very "roughly". Works perfectly fine for playing and seeing them on the tabletop though. Very much looking forward to using them in games.


I'd be really interested to hear what you think of these minis. If you paint a mini from A to Z and finished it you (or at least I) usually "bonded" with that figure after the painting process. I put effort into it and I usually end up liking them, even if I wasn't fond of the sculpt before. So what do you think?

I think you did a great job with them Sigur and thanks for the review. Love the AC/DC guy. He's a plumber during work hours.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks! They may not be the prettiest around but, as you said with the plumber remark, you see one of them and immediately you think of a story or what they could be like. Fun stuff.


Aye mateys, the Heldenhammer takes so much longer than I had anticipated, it's just insane. I really have to apologize for the delay. So instead of finished pictures, as I had hoped, I present you with a picture of the big capital ships of both fleets going toe to toe. The Heldenhammer (Big Red in the left) still is WIP as you can see on the flags mostly. The Bloody Reaver and the smaller auxiliary cogs are finished. As with the first Dreadfleet set I painted some freehand designs onto the sails of the small ships to indicate which capital ships they're supposed to go with (and I made the colour schemes fit accordingly as well). It's a fair bit of extra work but it makes the small ships look incredibly much nicer and more interesting.



Here's the Swordfish:



In a cunning plan to motivate myself to get the ships done more quickly, I started watching the Hornblower TV films. Good fun, a bit "lighter" than Sharpe but all the naval stuff allows for a lot of interesting new adventurous situations However, the plan didn't quite work out as it only got me in the mood for playing Napoleonic skirmishes (on land). D'oh.

Still, I plan to report back with finished Dreadfleets soon!

Fantastic as usual! Only bit I don't like is the colour of the seawater, it's too bright and friendly for my taste.

That's pretty amazing work Sigur. I don't know how anyone paints those tiny little ships, much less adds the free-hand.

Oh they are simply works of art! If you need good motivation to get the others painted, I would suggest listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, really gets you in the mood!

@Baiyuan: Thanks for the comment. Yus, I keep getting comments on the seawater's lightness. Maybe I'll add some darker shades or even give the whole thing a slight darkening.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, mate. The tiny ships aren't too hard to paint because they're not super-detailled. I guess the regular, sane people would just use a base colour, wash, highlight and maybe add a detail here and there. That would do the trick nicely. But oh well...

@Commander Cain: Hey, thanks for the comment! I'm sure that this would work. What I did though was starting to watch the Hornblower films in the back while painting. Got me more in the mood for Napoleonic wargaming but I guess I'm just not that much of a maritime guy to begin with so it's a bit harder to get me in the mood for ships. Still, good suggestion and surely a must when actually playing the game as well.

It is done, gentlemen! ("What is done?"- "Who are you?" -"go away!" - "where are the Space Marines?!" There will be Space Marines again soon and much sooner pictures of finished Dreadfleet stuff but for now it's all about Greeks again for a bit.)




Bit of a more detailled shot:



The different kinds of units in the army (cavalry, skirmishers, five units of hoplites):


...and of course the main body of the army - ten units of Hoplites:






Every single Hoplite has a different colour patterns on his linothorax, a glorious beard and a proppa Theban helmet. The Sacred Bond got all the same patterns of colours on their armour because it was paid by the government. The Sacred Bond also (almost) all have Hercules' club on their shields which seemed to have been the most popular shield design in Thebes at the time. A few other Hoplites got the club but mostly it's mixed emblems on the shields simply to have more diversity in an army which consists of 90% single pose guys. The decals I used are the excellent ones by Little Big Men Studios. The only snag is that they work very differently to any others I ever used. YOu pull off a translucent sheet of plastic from the decal sheet first, (the decals are all self-adherent (i.e. sticky). You turn the decal sheet around (or preferrably the cut out decal), press it against the surface, then brush water onto the decal sheet from behind and slide it off after a few seconds. The decal is in place and you can then shape it to fit. I have to admit that it took me a while to get used to (or any good at) this procesure and I think that I prefer the traditional transfers but it was interesting nonetheless and the quality of the decals is really good. As I mentioned before, I considered using all hand-painted shield fronts but it wouldn't really have been worth the time. This army, while I really like the way it looks now, is basically just so I quickly got an army to play DBA with (took me three bloody months to finish anyhow) and I got the minis from a friend so he's got someone to play DBA with and he had gotten them some time ago, wasn't too happy with what they looked like in the flesh (especially next to his glorious 15mm Athenes and Tracians by Xyston which are a bit taller, not monopose and have nicer details overall) so I got them. Really glad that he also gave me the transfers and spears to use.

So yes, next Thursday I'll have the first game with the fellas and I'm sure that they'll show those snooty snobs from Athens what it's like!

Man those bring back memories.... I may have to pull out my old units and dust them off! They look fantastic Sigur. Just the right amount of detail for DBA. What are the spears made of? We used to replace the lead ones that came with the figures with pieces of wire... but then they were just painted pieces of wire and didn't look much like spears on close inspection.

Thanks for the comment, Gitsplitta. Consistently the quickest one to reply. Much appreciated. Those spears actually are pretty darned good stuff. Thankfully the Essex minis come with "bare hands" already so you get to use proper spears instead of wobbly lead ones. The ones I used are Xyston's and I have to say that they are very, very good. They're usable for 25/28mm minis or 15mm minis (I had to cut them down to about 3cm each), very sturdy and the spike in the front is very well done. From what I heard Xyston pretty much is the go-to place for 15mm DBA armies. Slightly taller than the Essex minis I used, several poses, really pretty details.