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Those Greeks are awesome, Siggy! Great work picking out some of the finer details. Did the decals work like kids' temporary tattoos?

Those ships are things of beauty! I'll be happy if I can get mine to even 10% of that (when I ever get around to them...)

 Sigur wrote:
Thanks for the comment, Gitsplitta. Consistently the quickest one to reply. Much appreciated.

I have no life.

Thanks for the info, will keep that in mind.

Love the battle damage!

@Moltar: If I remember correctly how those things work - yeah, it's not unlike those. Except for the fact that you don't rub the transfers on of course but soak the paper part in water.

@Arakasi: Thanks muchly. Oh yes, my own set of Dreadfleet is still on sprues as well. It does take quite a bit to finally start working on the models but once you're at it it's oh so worth it. I know, I'm probably getting annoying about this by now but I always try to emphasize how much fun these models are and how diverse, making the painting experience very enjoyable.

@Gitsplitta: You don't need a life if you got really nice spears for your 15mm Hoplites. You're welcome. Check out their minis ranges. Seriously pretty stuff. I'd love to get into 15mm stuff more but for big battle games it just makes not much sense to me in terms of price and looks. I'm considering 15mm for Sci-Fi Skirmish gaming though.

@Cutthroatcure: Thanks. I have to say that I'm glad that I could take a bit of a break from painting battle damaged Space Marines for a bit but now I'm eager to get my hands on those Rhinos and Contemptors and whatnot again.


Okay, here we go with the finished pictures of Dreadfleet, the Second (thanks for the patience ).

Let's start with one of the most notorious ships, the Black Kraken:




Such a great model. I'm always impressed how much movement and depth they got into the tentacles of a three part model.


Count Noctilus' flagship, the Bloody Reaver:


The small byship (is there a word like that?) is painted in colours to go with the big ship as always. The freehand on the sail is a bit different to how I've done it the first time around. This time I tried doing a skull in what is called "three quarter perspective" in German. Is the English term the same? My dictionary didn't come up with anything.





Here's a shot of the sails, mainly because the smaller one is really hard to see in built form. Here's where I point out what is freehanded and what is not - Thee scrolls, skeletal emblems and so on are all cast onto the sails. The text is all freehanded.




Staying on the "evil" side of things, here's the Curse of Zandri:






Very lovely ship. The small cog got some made-up Egyptian looking glyph.

Staying in the lands far off the Old World we got the Flaming Scimitar:








Surely one of the most colourful ships from the box and investing extra time into it does pay off. One of the things which impress me the most about Dreadfleet is how unique every single ship is. Each one of the ships has a very strong identity of its own, all in colour, design, shape and "gimmicks". The auxiliary cog just got a ...well, flaming scimitar on the sail.


Grimnir's Thunder:






I won't pretend that I'm particularly fond of the new design concept that Dwarfs built EVERYTHING from metal or stone but in the context of Dreadfleet, this one fits in rather nicely (by not really fitting at all ). Very straightforward ship and, as I remember form the review game in 2011, I remember that many of the players had their mind set on commanding this vessel.


Next we got the flagship of the "good" side, the Heldenhammer with it's shipwrecking automaton in the front:





Lovely model and pretty much encapsulating what I enjoy about the Empire (or Warhammer as a whole). Pretty much grounded in familiar real-life concepts from history but with some over the top things added. Of course you get away with that at a smaller scale much easier than at a large scale. On the sails I did the regular text this time. Upper sail on the front mast it says Sigmar, on the upper sail of the middle mast it says Vengeance and on the lower one Heldenhammer.

The Sea Drake is another visual highlight to me:




Bright, elegant, different to human ships and with a very Fantasy twist in the shape of a dragon. In true High Elven form, there are no cannons on the ship but instead it's all Bolt Throwers and if I remember correctly, that shows in the firepower ingame. But hey, they're maneuverable as heck and launch dragons against their enemies to make up for that.


As a complete counter-point we proceed to the Shadewraith:




I have a bit of a connection to this one because it's the ship I got to command in our review game (no, I haven't played since then because my own set is still on sprue of course). Very interesting to paint to say the least. I have to say that the less flashy this one looks the better, I really like the very classic ghost ship look with only a bit of a ghostly light from the lanterns.



Here's another one of the more notorious Dreadfleet ships - the Skaven's Skabrus:





It's a huge, ugly corpse of a fish turned into a warship by ratmen! What's not to like? The only thing I find a bit sad about this one is that there is a very fun set of fish guts modelled onto the base as the corpse's "inner decks" which end up being barely visible at all, so don't go too crazy with painting those. The auxiliary cog bears the Skaven symbol on its sail.


Last but not least, the Swordfish:






Another classic design but lots of fun stuff going on on the sails and stark contrasts. The big fish guys on the mid mast look like they're letting is know that they're "chargin' mah lazer". The little eeldragon thing on the sail of the cog is always fun to do.



So much for the ships. I'll upload some more pictures of the islands again and some more markers and so on. Hope that you like them.

Next up: More Discworld!

OK, I wasn't going to be the first to comment... but I can't help it. Fantastic work Sigur. Those really came out well. I'm not sure about the white castle on the "Bloody Reaver"... seems a bit incongruous & too fairy tale looking given the rest of the ship. Amazing job all-round though.

 Sigur wrote:
Next up: More Discworld!

Ooh.. shiny.

Those ships finished out looking incredible, Sig! Like the brief little write ups on each on too. Look forward to seeing more discworld stuff.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much, every comment is highly appreciated. Yeah, if there's one ship that polarizes it's th Bloody Reaver. I get what you're saying but I think that the bone-colour works best considering the alternatives (black or dark grey or something)

@Dysartes: Indeed. Those are always fun to paint. Even if it's always the same minis I'm painting from that range.

@Moltar: Cheers mate, I felt like writing up a bit for each ship other than just posting a list of pictures. I'm glad that you enjoyed the read. (another positive thing - I was able to recycle all the little write-ups for upcoming posts on the Tale of Painters blog. Which all of you should visit daily of course!)

Righto, let's proceed, shall well.


Update on Discworld stuff!





From left to right (as if that was necessary with those characters): Sam Vimes, The Librarian (once again ) and, for the first time on this plog, Granny Weatherwax!

I think that Granny and maybe the Librarian need a few finishing touches. Let's see about that.


After this batch we got two more fan favorites coming up: Rincewind the Wizzard and DEATH.

Have not stopped by in a while, Sigur, but man, as always- very impressive. Love the Dreadfleet ships, in particular, the Kraken. (big fan of 40000 Leagues Under The Sea the book and ride at Disney)

Also beautiful Discworld minis. I don't know much about them, but like the Conquistador's platemail.

I'll have to look back and see what else you've done, and not sure if it's appropriate or not (seeing as how this is your commission thread), but have you ever shown any of your personal collection off here? Would love to see what you do for customers and what you keep for yourself.

-Remi

@HF Izanagi: Thanks very much for the comment. I cought the 40,000 Leagues Under The Sea film a few years ago on TV. Good stuff. Me, being from an area which is all about mountains more or less (well, not the exact area I live in but oh well), I'm terrified of the deep sea and everything squid-like especially. Always have been. I find it fascinating though, just watched a documentary about some scientists trying to get film footage of that giant squid for the first time. Sometimes I just had to switch channels though, especially when they point the camera downwards, into the endless, black abyss. That kind of freaks me out. Oh well, too much information I guess. As for my own minis - This is called my commission plog because the main part of what I paint in general is commission work but I also post my own stuff in here. Used to be less but over the past 14 months It's become more again after I got into wargaming all anew I'd say. All the Infinity stuff in here is for myself really. Old-School 40k Orks, Zombies, those Civilians I posted recently, the Epic Ultramarines army and the smaller Epic forces I painted up to use in Tomorrow's way, the 15mm Greeks I posted a few days ago are my own and of course all the 10mm Thirty Years War stuff.

Heyhey, another late nighter here. Not all too much to report too I'm afriad but here's another one of the more central characters - Rincewind, the Wizzard:





The base is supposed to symbolize pretty much nowhere. I'm thinking of maybe adding a small scorpion or something just to spice it up. The model is still WIP. I've been experimenting with new ways of painting eyes and I think in this case I didn't get it quite right. Instead of looking kind of subdued and unhappy, he's got the crazy eyes. This is a thing I've talked about a few times before and which I love - if you paint eyes you never can be 100% sure what they will end up looking like. Just a few micrometers different, combined with a similarly tiny repositioning on the mouth and especially corners thereof and the whole expression changes. Always fun. You start out with the regular looking face, you paint it as planned, with the intended outcome in mind. Most of the times it works for me now (took long enough until it did. Just a few years ago I called painting eyes "an endless battle with no winners" in this very plog.) but sometimes after a moment of realization I hold the mini at arm's length and a completely unexpected personality is looking at me. Fascinating stuff. Yeah, I guess I should go to bed.



...juuuust one more little thing (or three little things really). In a rush I built and painted the first three officers for my Thirty Years War armies. As you may or may not recally, the whole lot is loosely based around the armies that fought at Lützen in 1632.

Let's start with the Swedes. Here's Count Ni(e)ls Brahe, commander of the Yellow Guards Brigade at Lützen:





The fact that he actually wore a yellow-ish doublet at the battle is purely coincidential. Or the thing used to be white and turned yellow-ish over the centuries. (nowadays the doublet is kept at the Bielke Armoury in Sweden). He was only 28 when he was made general of infantry and commanded the first line four brigades at Lützen. Along with him on the base we got a drummer and a sergeant, both from the King's own lifeguard (as shown by the light grey uniforms).

Next up is King Gustav Adolph's third in command, the gloriously named Dodo von Innhausen und zu Knyphausen (Dodo of Innhausen and Knyphausen):





At Lützen he was the commander of the infantry center's rear line and played a big part in keeping the army together and helping the Swedes and their allies to win the day after the Swedish king got killed in battle. At this point he already was about 50 years old which at that time was quite an age, especially for officers on campaign. He was probably the oldest and most experienced high ranking officer in Gustav Adolph's army and as such was a welcome counter-pole to the hot-headed young king and his second in command Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar. Dodo, being of old north german nobility, is also notable for never having changed sides for the whole time of his service. Keep in mind that during that time, colonels were "war entrepeneurs" and many well known figures changed sides during the course of the war. Dodo was born a Protestant and stuck to his cause, even after it didn't really mean much any more. Being employed and well regarded (and most likely well paid) by the most important representative of that cause surely didn't hurt either of course. Dodo had witnessed the crushing defeats of the Protestant armies in earlier phases of the war and was more cautious about enganging the enemy in pitched battles but was known for being daring when it mattered. The model I painted up for him wears mostly blue and yellow. Blue was somewhat of a preferred colour to wear for Protestant forces in Germany and it's a remainder of his service for "Mad" Christian of Brunswick and others whose armies, at least in large portions, were issued blue or dark blue coats. The coat of arms of the Innhausen-Knyphausens is black and yellow so these colours also play a part in his outfit. Protestant armies generally made more use of uniforms than their adversaries so the two fellas he shares his base with, a sharpshooter and again a drummer, also wear blue coats (albeit of lesser quality of course). Note how Dodo studies a map whereas all the other officers either stand and look or charge into battle, showing his more cautious and reflected approach rather than charging head-long into battle.




Speaking of "the other side", here's the first of the commanders of the armies of the holy roman empire, the one and only Field Marshal Gottfried Heinrich Count of Pappenheim:




Surely one of the most notorious commanders on the Imperial-Catholic side. Pappenheim, being dauntless in battle himself, using raiding tactics and operating behind enemy lines whilst often displaying a mind of his own which bordered insubordination, was the archetypical cavalry commander. At Lützen he basically did what the Prussians did at Waterloo except that he led his cuirassiers in a wild charge against the Swedish right flank as soon as he showed up on the battlefield, was killed and this way deprived the Imperial side of much of the momentum the arrival of his heavily armoured cavalrymen could have brought to his army's battle. Pappenheim was known to fight "with an open visor"which either meant that he fought without a helmet at all or with the helmet's visor open. This lead to several nicknames, all of which are variations of "scarface". Other than most commanders of the war, especially on the Imperial side, he wasn't an entrepeneur or manager of logistics and grand strategy but a soldier through and through. The miniature shows him as wearing a hat alongside with one of his cuirassiers (who are said to have worn these eastern-styled helmets rather than the more common German or Italian styles). He wears a big red scarf, the field sign of Wallenstein's troops at the time, along with other red and yellow details which are typical for Imperial troops. I tried to give him a colourful appearance to reflect how Imperial officers tended to look more gaudy than their Protestant counterparts.


I'm sure I'll get called out on several details I got wrong or not quite right and so on about this little presentation. :p It's interesting stuff though (at least to me ) and the little pictures of eight tiny dudes would hardly have warranted the post.


Apart from painting eight tiny figures today I also built/converted/sculpted casualty markers (4 infantry, 1 horse, 1 horse and rider) which I plan to cast up a bunch of. Pike and Shotte doesn't remove figures from play but instead units accumulate casualty markers over time. If those start to exceed a certain number, differing from unit to unit, you have to start worrying as they likely will run/dissolve at the slightest enemy impact.

Anyhow, I hope that you like the little officers. It was about time I got those done. It's just three for now, I got one more built and based but as far as the lists I currently have in mind go I'll need six commanders per army. Sheesh, this project will last me through several years.

I love the wizard sigur... the figure, the bright colors... those eyes... Don't change a thing... he's PERFECT!

Fantastic work on the historical figures. Really enjoyed reading the background and seeing the portraits of the actual people. Very cool.

Wizard rules and so does the Librarian. Are you just getting that orangutan shipped to you from disc world every week?

Just popped in to say more great work Sigur! Love the dreadfleet ships, really nice paint jobs especially considering how small they are. Loving the discworld stuff too, the red wizard is ace!

Will you be painting Rincewind's companion, the Luggage, as part of this commission, Sigur?

@Gitsplitta: Thanks muchly. I changed the eyes a little so they don't look quite as hollow and I sculpted a tiny scorpion on the base.

@Moltar: Almost looks like it, doesn't it. It's a very popular miniature and I can understand why. Fun to paint too every time.

@Reaper Man 2020: Thanks, man.

@Dysartes: Not this time, sorry. I painted Luggage some time ago but this time it's just Rincewind. But you know what Luggage is like. The fella surely will show up again sooner or later.


Now for something - once again - completely different. Last Thursday I had my second DBA game in total, first one with my own painted army.

Thanks to our usher (who also provided the miniatures, the table, the venue, the rules and the beer) there even is a pretty complete picture documentation of the game. When I plan to take pictures of games I usually take two or three of the setup and maybe the first two turns, then things get exciting and I forget to take any more pictures and then there are some again after the end of the game.
The armies were very similar in setup (as most Hoplite armies are).

Spartans: 9 units of Hoplites with Spears, 1 unit of Auxiliaries, 1 unit of Cavalry, 1 unit of Psoloi (= light skirmishers who probably weren't in the mood for working in the fields) with javelins.
Thebans: 10 units of Hoplites with Spears, 1 unit of Cavalry, 1 unit of Psiloi with slings

The setup:


I was defender so I got to place terrain, after that the attacker gets to choose one favorite table edge he's like to set up on (roll 1d6, 1-3 means he gets that table ege, every other number is one of the other edges) which led to a bit of a weird situation with the terrain. I had planned for the enagement to happen turned by 90° clockwise, with the rocks covering the flanks while our Hoplites fight it out. The dice had a different plan and we ended up with kind of limited deployment zones. Never to mind though. Due to our armies being so similar and open terrain being more of a boon to my army than to his (with the additional Auxiliaries instead of one unit of Hoplites), open terrain where it counts probably was in my favor anyway.

The green square bases are the camps of our armies.

The Spartans set up their spearmen in deep formation and a solid block. As always, the right flank set up stronger, supported by cavalry. On the left flank, the Auxiliaries were set up as part of the block (to be honest, for most of the game I didn't notice that they weren't Hopllites at all), Psiloi to their flank. My fellas, expecting the Spartans to do the same, set up on wide front with only the fight flank and the middle getting a second formation in the back for support.

At the beginning of the battle the Spartans started cautiously approaching my lines. My own guys proved to be very active but I spent the turn changing formation to a more compact block the same as the Spartans did while my cavalry advanced to the rightflank as far as they could and my Psiloi advancing in the woods on the left (they work well on cover but are pretty much dead in the open, especially againse cavalry).




The Spartans kept on advancing and wheeled a little, making sure that they wouldn't get my cavalry in the flank. My battle line wheeled a little to Meet the Spartans (yeah, yeah, that one had to show up in there sooner or later, right? :p ) head on.




In this picture we just missed the first bit of action. The Spartan cavalry, eager to get some fighting going (or trying to reenact a scene from Lord of the Rings) decided that they want to engage my cavalry on the opposite flank by passing by in the front of the large Block of Hoplites. It almost worked too, but just as they were right in front of the middle of the Spartan lines my Hoplites got into attack range and charged the cavalry, making them flee to the back of their own lines.




This is where all the stuff happens or rather it became rather clear that my plans seemed to have worked out. The two lines of Hoplites crashed into each other with formations shoving each other back and forth for a little. The Spartan right flank got harassed by my Psiloi (= they were in the Psiloi's zone of control, hampering their movement options considerably).




In this picture you can see how, after a bit of a stalemate in the beginning, the Spartan left flank started to erode, even though my cavalry was repelled off their flank attack first and had to retreat. In the right flank, despire fierce fighting, it was just some shoving around (in engagements in DBA you basically can get four results: stalemate [very rarely] - nothing happens, flee - one side turns and flees, recoil - the unit gets pushed back by one base length or destroyed). The far Spartan Hoplites on the right flank broke off to chase my Psiloi away but never cought them, so they returned to their lines hastily.

The Spartan Psiloi stayed reluctant to do anything.



After getting the upper hand on the right flank, the Hoplites wheeled around to push on from the flank while the Spartan cavalry rushed to support the flank which proved to be fatal because they ended upblocking the path of retreat of their comarde Hoplites and when they broke they were squashed between the Theban phalanx and their own cavalry.


As four units of one side were destroyed (victory conditions usually are either the destruction of four units, taking the enemy's camp and holding it counts as two units in that regard, killing the general either counts for at least two units or is an instant win) the game ended as a glorious victory for the Theban army.

My opponent, just like me, had only played once prior to this game and we both weren't too good with the rules (all three of us really but having an usher to look stuff up all the time really helped getting the game right) and the rules worked in my favour one time without me planning on that so dumb luck there but all in all the pretty simplistic plan worked out and it's nice when plans come together (along with some dice luck where is counts).

In these pictures you can see the compact nature of DBA. We played the game within one and a half to two hours and that involved some rules reading and so on so it's really fast, doesn't require much investment and it produces battles which seem historically plausible. It's not a game I'd play exclusively because for that it might become a bit repetitive but if there's a gaming night on which one of the players doesn't have much time or something like that it's really good. Also, if you're finished with the first game early, you can have a second or you can have a go at DBA after the first, bigger game of the night. It also requires next to no preparation apart from bringing armies and a bit of terrain along. The rest you need is just a measuring stick and one d6 per player. On top of all of that, it's also very well suited for tournament play if you're into that.

Well, this basically ends this project. I hope to post more small battle recaps in the future and maybe i'll build a camp for my Thebans. Let's hope I won't get another army too soon.

Discworld minis finished!






Hope that you like them.

They are terrific Sigur! What a motley assortment of heroes!

The Discworld guys look fantastic, really like Rincewind.and Vimes.

Cant see the pics for the batrep though :(

@Gitsplitta: Thanks. Yeah, I through of calling it "Discworld Characters" but decided to go for something more jazzy. (and the use of the word jazzier should already let you know that I'm not really the guy who's a big "seller of things" or hugely into martketing talk. )

@GiraffeX: Cheers! Sorry about the non-appearing pictures though. I also get that sometimes when loading this log. Usually a Ctrl-F5 (load the whole page again) fixes that. Let me know if it works for you.

No still cant see them, I can see all your others without issue though. Very odd.

 GiraffeX wrote:
No still cant see them, I can see all your others without issue though. Very odd.

Same here, Sigur.

Now, where did those extra feet come from...

*SNAP*

Hmm, the thing is that the pictures are hosed on someone's flickr account rather than my own "site". Maybe that's the reason. I'll try to get hold of the pictures, upload them to my own thing and repost them.

Hey guys, FINALLY brought the DBA battle report up to snuff (in that I replaced the flickr-links to the pictures with ones to my tabletopgeeks blog). Should work now as usual. No idea why Dakka decided to block my flickr pictures there but now they work and I hope that you enjoy the battle report.

Blood Angels!















I may have to reshoot those pictures because I think they don't really convey how good these minis look in real life. You know me, I'm not one to boast but I'm really happy with how these BAs turned out. I took some chances with the colour scheme in that I used quite a few stark colours and a much brighter red than usual but I think that it worked out really well, especially on the Dreadnought. With the Assault Marines, it was pretty much a given. It's just astounding how well the old BA scheme works. Bright red armour (I'm a 2nd edition guy, dark red BA never really worked for me), yellow helmets, beautiful. They're all third company so the sompany sign is that white drop (not really helping if you want to get vibrant, colourful BA). Making those big drop-shaped things in the front of the Rhino and the Dreadnought white gemstones to fit the company colours was something I Never did before (IIRC) but even with that I'm fairly happy witht he results.

Anyhow, I don't want to praise myself here, I just really, really like Blood Angels with a classic look and this little strike force has got that. I hope that you like them as well!


I even finished those BAs ahead of schedule so over Sunday and Monday I painted up a British rifle platoon:


...and a mortar platoon to go with them:


Those are my own minis and despite the fact that it may look like a "basecolour-wash-drybrush-paint skin" job I can assure you that it's not. The thing about British 8th Army is that you just can't do all that much with them in terms of colour. Even with bases you can't go for a too fancy look because it's desert (if you don't want to get into "moving scenery" too much by like adding walls and such). :p Still, I'm fairly happy with how the lads turned out and already I feel the urge to add something to them. To be honest, I already have ordered a few trucks, carriers and armoured cars for them to get around in the desert but I'd love to add some Australian and Indian pals for them, along with maybe a tank or two.

What I plan to do with these guys is not getting into FoW but to use them for games of slightly adapted Force on Force. A wargaming buddy of mine has quite a force of Afrika Corps and Italians and we decided that it would be fun doing something mid-1941 like with those. I used to be hugely into WW2 but I guess so much that now and for wargaming, it holds little "charm" for me. However, early desert war is something I could get into. Comparatively civic, fun early war vehicles on both sides and no Über-weapons (even though those Panzer III look mighty scary to my lads).

Oh well, that's it for now, next up... TITAN!

I have been lurking here for a while now, so I feel I should break my silence as it's only fair.
Your painting is very impressive and it's nice to see a blog with alot of variety as well.

I really like the battle damage / wear you have on the BA. Is that just painted on, or do you have a good technique or trick for it?

Stunning work Sigur. The chipping and scratching you do just blows my mind. Especially on the dreadnought.

Your WWII guys look fantastic... don't see a lot of historical stuff anymore so it's great to see it really well done.

Excellent stuff again!

Such a variety of different genres

@Dr H: Thanks for the comment, much appreciated. The battle damage I do in the very conservative ways of using a small sponge and then brush and paint to make it look "threedee" or something like that.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers, mate! Glad that you still enjoy the battle damage I do and not get bored of it at this point. I'm all about historicals these days really, doing lots of small projects for all kinds of eras. First, because for the past three months or so I've been "system hopping" a lot, trying out all kinds of historical wargaming (this Friday I'll set foot on American Civil War territory even!). Compared to the Greek Hoplites I did earlier the WW2 British desert guys will be a bit of a bigger project and after that it's back to 28mm for me with a warband of Anglo-Saxons for Saga and Dux Britanniarum!

@Northen: Thanks for the comment. Yus, it's great how diverse wargaming is.


Back to the 17th century for a bit!

I have a rather big 40k project coming up and didn't really feel like starting on it tonight so, after uselessly wasting two hours on some computer game, I looked around on my desk, looking for stuff to finish (there's always something). I found the casualty markers lying around which I based properly and basecoated and while that was drying I decided to do some more painting on that fourth officer. Things went pretty well, the miniature is finished and - well, say hello (and wave back to him if you want) to Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar:





The Saxon state and army was Sweden's most important German ally and had fought for the Protestant cause Since the very start of the war (which had started in 1618, the Swedes didn't set foot on German soil until 1630). Other than many other later or temporary allies, Saxony-Anhalt joined forces with the Swedes as soon as they showed up on stage. Bernhard, born in 1604, had fought Imperial-Catholic armies since his 18th year, first under the command of Mansfeld, lateron under the Danish King and in the Netherlands where he fought the Spanish army and studied fortification and siege engineering. [very interesting conflict there too - the 80 years war between the Netherlands and Habsburg-Spain. The very uneven power level of opponents led to hardly any battles but lots of siege stuff and the Netherlands developing the first concepts of the professional officer rather than nobles putting on their commander's hat]

Bernhard, a young and hot-headed commander, probably got along very well with the Swedish king Gustav II. Adolph and in his service quickly became the king's second in command at the age of 28. At Lützen, his first independant command, he led the left cavalry wing into battle (as by the Swedish combat doctrine, supported by units of "commanded" shot, independant musketeers who advanced along the horse to give supporting fire or cover retreats). After Gustav Adolph's death, he took over command and despite Dodo von Knyphausen's suggestions, decided not to retreat in an orderly fashion but to turn the moment of the Protestant cause's greatest loss into their greatest victory. Knyphausen, who wisely had kept the reserves outside of enemy cannon and well rested, managed to rally large parts of the retreating main battle line, Bernhard formed them into an attack force again and led the final assault against the Imperial lines.

In the combined Swedish-German Protestant army, Gustav Adoplh was well regarded by both sides and respected as their commander. As victories piled up in 1631 and 1632 and the Swedish king got a bit foppish, Bernhard became an increasingly important leader figure at least for the German armies under Protestant command.


Technically, this guy should have been an Imperial commander so that I'd have an equal number of both. The problem is that the Imperial German armies had a big problem - lack of capable generals. Many of the Imperial officer corps was of Italian origin (and I plan to have a model for Piccolomini of course and possibly one for Grana) but the "big names" on the Protestant side are somewhat more appealing and easier to find information on so I went for Bernhard on this model. The raised hand makes him look really enthusiastic which fits Bernhard's character and youth. The cornet his staff officer is carrying shows a design based on one of the flags carried by Bernhard's "green" lifeguards regiment. The colours, green, yellow and black, are the ones of the traditional coat of arms of Saxony.

Well, fun model, hope that you like him. Next in line for this project - casualty markers I guess.

Nicely done Sigur.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks muchly!


So, on to new adventures!



...that awkward moment when you realize that you ran out of super glue.