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Methingst this is going to be rather exciting...

@Gitsplitta: It certainly is! So far I spent most of the day priming the beast!

Quick little update - casualty markers! During the times I had to wait for the primer to dry on the single titan parts I painted up the first two sets of casualty markers for my wee 10mm TYW fellas:



Eight infantry, four cavalry, way too few for a full battle but enough for ...well, one larger mêlée? The thing is that as the game goes on and units get damaged, they accumulate those casualtiy markers that count against their Stamina which is basically anything between 1 and 4 IIRC. However, it can easily happen that during a round of combat, a unit ends up with way more than what their stamina allows for. At the end of the combat, they have to roll on a sort of morale check table and deduct the total number of casualty markers. If they pass and stand, only retreat a little but stay in order etc, the number of counters is reduced to the maximum the unit can handle and ...oh well, what I mean to say is that I need a LOT more markers.

Or, as I just thought of a better way to do it, I could make some counters with a small square cut out so you can put one of those tiny d6 in there which shows how many casualties they have taken. That means that there's a "non-scenic marker" on the table again (and some people really don't like that) but it's less work than a bunch of markers. Oh well, I'm ratehr happy with those now and I got the mould made so I guess I'll do that now. Hope that you like them.

Can't wait to see what you do with the Warhound, I've had mine about 10 years and managed to get it primed last year, I just seem to always have some other project to get on with!

Untill now I had little interest in hystorical miniatures.
But seeing your blog allmost makes me want to collect two little armies

Oh my those poor tiny horses :-( at least they died painted beautifully!

and I am slavering to see what you can do with a warhound! omg! it's going to be fantastic! and I'm sure you are going to go to town on the detailing! I can't wait! *Eeeeeeeee* (excited girly scream of happiness)

@Reaper Man 2020: Thanks muchly. I know what it's like with those big FW things. Remember the last time I've shown WIP pictures of my Marienburg Landship? I sure don't! I have to say that I have quite some respect for that pile of resin chunks. Much more so than with the first Warhound I did but that came assembled and it was chaosy (a fair bit easier to paint I think) and I didn't have to make a base, pose the legs (even though I don't have too much freedom there as the "toes" all are glued together already. Still thinking of what kindof base to do for that guy. Oh, and I need to get some flexible rubber tubes.
(For the warhound! DON'T JUDGE ME!! )

@IPS: Cheers, that's great to hear. I guess I really needed something to offset the fact that I paint quite a lot of Space Marines and historicals, especially at another scale, are great for that. Two years ago or so I started listening to the Meeples and Miniatures podcast of which I quickly became a HUGE fan. The enthusiasm for all kinds of historical wargaming in that show is just insanely infective. Pretty much changed the way I view wargaming and opened my mind up for so many rule sets, new approaches and so on. Best thing about it - I don't get upset about GW or any ruleset any more. It's also a great time to get into historical wargaming. There are tons of plastics around nowadays, thousands of rulesets, amazing sculpts altogether and a great "infrastructure". Also - price of entry is basically as low as you want. If you're interested in historical wargaming in Germany especially, I suggest paying a visit to the Sweetwater forum. It's quite a buzzing place and covers basically everything. Oh, and as for German language podcasts, the Unfinished Armies podcast I found to be very relaxed and easy-going. Just some guys sitting around, chatting about historical wargaming. It's fun, it's diverse as all heck, it can be cheaper than the mainstream games (of which Flames of War of course is one. It's spectacular how much I'm not interested in that ruleset . Minis are nice though.) and the best thing is, at least in my experience, a bit of a distance to all that GW rage.


Right, it's a new day, I guess I'll get cracking on that titan again. Thanks for the comments!

So when can we expect a pic update on the warhound Siggy? or is this going to be a looooong process for you? i've never built one so i don't know how much effort is required! :-)......


....yet!

Priming the last bits (tippy-toes) as we speak, then I'll but the fella together (at least so I have a few bigger chunks. Legs, head, as much of the "body" as possible, leaving the armoued parts off for now if possible, weapon arms). Then I'll see how I pose the guy, attach the legs to the torso and start with a looooooot of metallics. I'll see that I can post some kind of update tonight. The thing is that the model seemingly was put together before once but was taken apart again. Either by my customer so I can paint it more easily (wouldn't be beyond him, he's a really nice fella. Gave me a bottle of really nice wine for christmas ) or maybe he bought it that way second hand. So I may have to remove some dried glue before I put it together completely.

Thank you very much for the advice!
Yea, a little distance to GW is very much appreciated..
I think I will look into some of those forums and podcasts
However I want to finish at least one squad of deathwatch marines before I really get into it..^^

You're very welcome. I'll generally bother people with the Meeples and Miniatures podcast at the drop of a hat just because I find it so darned inspiring (= makes me want to throw money at people who make minis and rulebooks ). Over 100 episodes, each between an hour and two, perfect for painting along. There's also the "sister podcast" A View from the Veranda in which the M&M guy and Henry Hyde chat about wargaming in general which is amazingly entertaining as well. Love that stuff.



As for Titan stuffs - putting it together slowly whilst trying out a bunch of new techniques on the armour.

Alright guys, I got an update. I'm not really happy with it but I said that there'd be something up soon so there we go:







The thing about such a big model is that every single step naturally takes very long so overall, it looks like poop at the moment. I quickly slapped on these hazard stripes so I'd have anything to show off. They're not finished at all, need cleaning up and all of that.

The armour parts are mostly done but I don't want to show too much of those until I got the metallics done properly as well. And I need to put it all together and look if it's not a total mess. It's all a bit chaotic at this point but things are going on with that titan. My poor little airbrush compressor ran for almost eight hours straight yesterday so this is a shout out to Mr.Prezzles.

The titan legion requested is Legio Crucius who are basically black and white with golden trims. Really not what I'd have in mind for a titan of my own but that's the thing that makes is especially interesting to do. Really enjoyed doing the armour parts, I hope they don't look like crap but I can't really tell until some of the stuff around the armour is painted which means a LOT of metallics. Lots and Lots and Lots of metallics. I'll have to sneak in some other colour as well, probably blue. Oh, and I ordered some small jeweller's chains because I want banners on that bugger! Oh well, it's a rather big project, let's see how far I get within the next few days.

The weekend is upon us. Any of you got CRAZY plans? For me it's going to be the second weekend in a row with a double gaming whammy - American Civil War (along with a two hours drive back and forth each) wargaming which should be really nice on Friday and on Saturday it's going to be moving cupboards around and a few RADICAL rounds of Blokus! Woooohooooo!






P.S.: Oh, what's that about the surpringly colourful background I hear you ask? Funny story, I usually use large sheets of artist's paper for background, recently went to this store, picked stuff up, remembered at the last second that I need new background paper so I grabbed one of those large sketching blocks with single sheets of thick paper in them and rushed to the counter. That was a few days ago, I decide I'll get a new background sheet for the titan, open the sketching block and have to laugh at the rich colour beaming at me from the sheets. Pretty stuff. There's blue, turquoise, pink, brown, red, yellow, it's all there! Oh well. Prepare for colourful background with future updates if I'm in a funky mood. Oh, I could use the stuff to run tests about how differently coloured background make minis look or something like that. One more thing for the list of small things I'll never really do.

I know this is really late but how do you do your rocks? Like the ones on the first page.

Hey Nafarious! Erm, they're regular pebbles and small stones, glued to the base and painted. Hope that helps.

Oh ok I love your work man. Keep it up.

@Nafarious: Thanks, just let me know if you have any questions.

Well, Pendraken miniatures finally released a whole bunch of new ECW (and consequently usable for TYW) cavalry and characters of which I ordered all immediately (as well as some other stuff as well :p ). To make up for the increased numbers of cavalry this will result in, I decided to quickly add to the infantry.

Here are two new units of imperial pike:








The guys in the left are an Imperial regiment, not quite sure which one to be honest. Maybe I'll make them Colloredo's or something. The guys in the right are also Imperial but from the Spanish side of things so they probably served in Flanders or something, ran over the Palatinate to Saxony or southern Germany or something. As far as I remember there were not Spanish regiments at Lützen but who cares. I made the flags on these units interchangable this time so I could turn them into something else if needed. The thing is that these two flags were theonly ones I had left for Imperial infantry (don't worry, I ordered a bunch of new flags last night).

So yeah, that's that. They don't look mighty impressive and the pictures are kind of gak (mood showing through again :p ) but I'll do some army pictures again soon. Slowly the weather allows for it again.

C&C welcome, more stuff shouldn't crop up too soon so I get some actual work done. Like titans and space marines and all that kind of stuff.

The little guys look excellent Sigur. I'm not sure I could paint that many of the same miniature, would drive me insane

Thanks muchly. Those little fellas paint up really, really nicely in fact. HOWEVER, the grating thing is that I chose the period of massed armies of which none really believed in uniforms (or couldn't afford them). The Spanish owners of regiments were discouraged to use uniforms because they were considered to be bad for morale. This probably was a remainder of the Landsknecht times when every mercenary/soldier would get himself the most impressive and flamboyant outfit possible for his money. Not a too far fetched idea considering death is all around you and it could be over any day. Still, a real pain to paint. My next project in small scale (unless it's a commissioned army reuquired to look otherwise of course) DEFINATELY will be all uniformed up.

Hej hej

Boy, that interior of that tian, eh? Takes a BIT longer than I had planned. :p Lotsa detail crammed into a rather small space. BUT I'm finished now, just the pilots and the commander need a bit more painting:

The "back room" (oh no, look at the screen, there seems to be something wrong with the left leg and it looks like the right weapon arm is overheating!)


Third side of the room:


Cockpit/head:




Commander:


Gunner servitors:


"Main room":


..plus gunner servitor cockpits:


Hope you like it so far. For the next days I'm sure that there will be more updates.

Looking good thus far, Sigur.

Unbelievable detail Sigur. Really crazy work on your part.

That's really good. Can't think of anything else to say... Good job.

Craazy detailing right there! Loving the little image of the titan on the back room screen.

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates recently. (holy cow, 12 days!! This titan is taking me way too long)

Anyhow, it's really late so I can't write up replies to your comments at this point but I will tomorrow. Just one thing - the damned artificier, my lawyers are on to you for infringing on my IP.

The reason I took so long for new updates to do (see my weird wording there? I'm really tired) was that the titan didn't look presentable at most points in time so I thought I better wait until the pictures actually might look pretty. So here we are and I hope that you find the pictures which are to follow pretty:

The legs in full:



Leg details:









The main body:





Arnament:





So at this point I'm seeking out details I have missed so far and put the rascal together. Then I'll do some touching up, some more weathering and such and get the fella a base. Hope that you like the pictures.



Somewhat seperate from this project, I tackled another one I had lying around last weekend:
After all kinds of 40k things in my past, the Thirty Years War and some quick detours into ancient Greece and World War 2 (a plog on that is soon to emerge), I thought I should get into the thing that clearly was THE in-period to do in 2011/2012 - Dark Age wargaming. Of course the main thing that generated all the buzz around this usually dismissed period in terms of wargaming was SAGA, Gripping Beast's historical, game-y skirmish wargame.



By the buzz it created it seemed like everybody was playing it all of a sudden, and not only with a Dark Ages background. People made up battle boards for samurai games, napoleonic skirmishes and even variants for modern scenarios such as Afghanistan.




Anyways, my gaming pal has a few people who are interested in Dark Ages wargaming and got me hooked on the idea as well (the fact that he gave me a box of Gripping Beast Thegns and a blister of Foundry characters helped too :p ). My part in the whole scheme of things will be playing Anglo-Saxons (or Saxons in general for the purpose of other time periods). So I did what everybody does in this situation - read up on the stuff. I got myself the Osprey book to go with the period and of course I got myself a different ruleset to SAGA because having one set of rules for one period is a completely bogus concept, right? So I got Too Fat Lardies' Dux Britanniarum, a set of rules I've been looking forward to read into since the release. As all of their games it put the focus on command and control and "keeping things together" on and off the battlefield. Timescalewise it's set a bit earlier than the Saga supplement which has the Anglo-Saxons but never mind. What it does have is a detailled campaign system, scenarios and lots of "recruiting and keeping your shield wall together". I'm really, really looking forward to giving that one a try.



I was also shown the amazing pictures from the Arthurian age supplement for Warhammer historicals (Shield Wall?) and I have to say that those flags really cought my eye. Beautiful stuff.

With this project I'm back to 28mm wargaming I guess and I have to say that I'm very much looking forward to painting 28mm minis again, at least or myself. Commission work I do is mostly 28mm as you know and I love it of course but painting minis for myself is always a bit different. So let's start this Saga of Sigur's Saxons with some pictures of hardly painted miniatures!


First, here is a WIP picture of the first batch of ten Tegns ["Thanes"]. They are Gripping Beast's plastics and were pretty fun to put together. Those guys were the main fighting force of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. They were a sort of lowest nobility in the way that they were given land to reign over and often collect taxes and such in exchange for fighting for their king. Other than with "real" nobility, their status was not heritable, at least not early on.


The main weapon were the spear and the shield. Axes and swords weren't uncommon but way less widely used in war and often were a sign of status and social standing, especially swords.

Here's the rest of the Thegns from the boxed set. In total you get 44 models out of the box along with "command unit" options such as horns, cloaks and those pretty windsock standard things. Flags were also in use.


These are the characters I got along with the plastic fellas - really characterful sculpts and I'm very much looking forward to painting those. It's four fighter characters (very individual and all kind of "ealrier" looking than the plastics which all come with chainmail shirts and helmets), a christian priest or missionary and a fair maiden.


The Anglo-Saxons, other than their cousins from the mainland, didn't consider fighting from horseback proper war. Horses were used as means of transportation but there were no real efforts to set up cavalry forces or breed warhorses until much later so this army will mostly be on foot. I'll try to add some mounted figures as well just for a change and to mix up things a little.


So that's the starting force. All the minis are assembled, based and primed. My next step would be trying to get the first batch done as a sort of testing ground and then apply the same style and colour schemes to the rest of the army. After these models are painted I will try to get my hands on the recently announced upcoming Dark Ages Warriors box by Gripping Beast so I get some less armoured looking guys I can set up as Levy troops. In terms of Saga rules, Anglo-Saxons benefit from a horde-like approach to things, favoring big units and some stuff to give levy troops a bit of a boost.




I'm always thankful for comments and I'll reply to the older ones very soon!



P.S: Oh, and I'm going to Salute in April! Woohoo!

One of your images in the Saga Holidays section is broken, Sigur - but the titan is looking very nice indeed. Sick of painting eagles yet?

Yeah... OK... the titan is "pretty".



Love the the Tegns. Will your army have Huscarls & Fyrdmen as well? (though I suppose the Huscarls might be included within the Tegns)

Dude! Siggy that looks amazingly sweet! I love the titan, the details I never even realised it had like the aquila's on the hydrolics on the rear of the legs! so good! my favorite bit is the picture that I think has a tiny bit of 'Sigur finger' in the shot?

I can totally concur with you wanting to give a pic update but not deeming your work enough to show man, you can take a pic of an open paint pot and we'd love it but you exceeded our expectations with this one now we can't wait to see him together and completely detailed!

bloody good job mate!

Titan is looking amazing, you really made those flat areas interesting to look at!

I really want to start collecting some historicals after seeing all your stuff as well. Been looking for some decent 28mm Romans with lots of variety but I haven't found any I like yet, any ideas?

@Dysartes: Thanks for the heads up, fixed the picture link and thanks for the comment on the titan. Actually, the eagles weren't all that much of a problem. It's all those hidden cables and tubes that got to me at some point.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks! The Saxons indeed will get a bunch of Huscarls and Fyrd, but not at this point. I'll wait until I see Gripping Beasts' new plastics at Salute. As for huscarls (probably with dane axes) I'll probably get Foundry's again. They look pretty solid.

@nerdfest09: Thank you, mate. Yeah, figured I'd stick the old sigur finger into the picture just for fun. No, I realized it when editing the picture. That titan head wasn't glued in place at that point so I had to keep the emergency hand hovering under it in case the head falls off. I really try to make this titan look _good_. First, you gots ta have pictures of a pretty titan in your portfolio, second, if you're given a titan, you better make it look good! In terms of cost effectiveness/bizness stuffs, it's just stupid because I can't charge as much to make up for the time I invest in this one but oh well. It's for a good customer. He's almost fully assembled now, only gotta figure out a way to pin the weapons in place. This one, other than the Chaos Warhound, won't have exchangable weapon options.

@Commander Cain: Thanks muchly. I was a bit afraid of all those flat surfaces without any texture (the chaos Warhound comes with much more of a cast-on texture, damage and so on but the imperial one is all flat) so I tried this slight texture effect to make things look a bit more interesting. Great to hear that you're looking into historical wargaming. I think it's a great time to get into it and of course Ancients are never a bad thing to do. Did you have a look at possible rulesets to use based on which you'd choose your scale or are you hellbent on using 28mm minis? If I was you I would first choose what you'd want to do with the models, i.e. what scale of wargame you're looking into. I think that the most popular would be Hail Caesar (large scale battles with lots of figures work best with that one but you can scale it any way you like really. Loosely based on the Warmaster mechanics which I find very enjoyable. It's a bit of a gentlemen's game though and it's not for tournament use.) , Fields of Glory (basically the same but with much, much more detailled rules. Not beloved by everybody for it being slow and some say overly detailled. "FoG is the system in which you depict 10 minutes of battle in thrice the time" someone once said. However, many people like it, especially tournament players I think.), possibly Impetus (basic rules available for free to download, very popular as well). All those three work well with 28mm minis I would say but for the first two especially, be prepared to get a lot of minis and have a large table prepared. As for sources of pretty roman figures, have a look at Warlord Games' plastic romans. Wargames Factory (good people, doing lots of charitable stuff) also do Roman legionaries but their plastics usually have a tendency of not being quite as pretty as Warlord's for instance. As for metals, there is a LOT to choose from. Warlod Games have their own range but then there are tons more. Just check if they fit the period you're playing (early imperial rome, republican rome, late imperial rome, etc.). Other than with stuff like GW's core games, you're much more free to choose your models and rulesets with historicals which on one hand I love because, well, freedom and the market being more open and lively but on the other hand the offerings can be a little overwhelming if you're used to all-in-one-box things like the big sci-fi/fantasy companies offer. I think that in general, you'll be good with Warlord games. For other scales of minis, check out Baccus for 6mm, Pendraken and Old Glory for 10mm (and I think Magister Militum do 10mm Ancients), lots of 15mm minis by Essex and others, 20mm I'm not sure, 28mm we talked about and there are some companies doing larger too. Just let me know if you have any questions!

Wow, thanks for the informative reply Sigur! I am quite taken by all the choice that Warlord have atm, shall have to have a bit more of a browse!

Wow, that titan looks crazy good.
I love allmost everything about it
(the white dots on the lower leg plates may be a bit strong, but that's just me nitpicking ^^)
Got to say it again, really great work.