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@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much, mate! Your comments are always appreciated.

@Dysartes: Cheers.

@Nerdfest: Well, it would totally not be realistic if the four-fingered alien turtlefish soldier's rail rifle would glow as brightly as the four-fingered alien turtlefish soldier's rail rifle in full firing more when it's all out of juice, would it.

@Cosmic: Thank you very much! Looking back, these ten dudes took me WAY too long to get done and the worst thing is that their drones aren't even finished. I also did a boo boo with pricing them simply because I totally missed out on the fact that this one drone (forgot the name at the moment) they have with them is like three times the size of regular drones. Oh well.

@Col.Dash: Thanks for the comment, I think that you are absolutely right. In fact, I think that when it comes to 28mm minis this kind of chocolate chip camo should be the template for most camo one does on them. I mean GW's Eavy Metal painters weren't stupid when they chose the original Cadian colour scheme. A relatively britght base colour, some darker splotches and brighter dots really works. Yeah, with BDU I can imagine that it gets a bit hard to see much of the models from afar. One really would have to play around with making the colours brighter and such but that way it just isn't BDU any more. I did a platoon of mid-1980s British Army of The Rhine (20mm scale), uniforms are '68 pattern DPM and ...well, it's not too pretty either:



But with historicals I'm a bit more about "historical accuracy" (at least of some sort) whereas with 40k and such I prefer the models to be visible. A few weeks ago I "lost" a British Commando in a model forest because I didn't spot him between the trees when packing up.





Okay, no updates from the Tau front I'm afraid. Instead: I had a game of historical things! Well, I will report about two games I had actually because for some reason I left you in the dark about last week's game.

So I had my second game of Chain of Command! Patrol phase works a bit different to what I had thought it would, otherwise it was very straightforward. We played a game set in the deserts of Northern Africa, some time around spring 1941 and used our 15mm scale models. My Brits had gotten their baptism of fire a few months ago in two games of Force on Force, adapted for WW2. This time the rules had changed. This time it was personal. (well, no, not really)



Right from the start the germans had a crucial advantage: A few trees so they were less exposed to the burning sun.


Like in the first game it was a bit of a static shoot-out but for different reasons this time. My chronically under-staffed 1940 style rifle platoon faced off against German Panzergrenadiers. To even things out a little the Panzergrenadiers came on with just two sections instead of three but my guys still were outgunned because German Panzergrenadiers are all about their big, nasty, belt-fed MGs.


Here are my guys bunching up behind some cover where they spent the main part of the game:


At the other side of things:


At least the German 50mm mortar didn't hit anything all game long. Due to the very handy national characteristic "concentrated fire" which let me direct Bren MG (which was too accurate for its own good as a squad support weapon) fire against single teams I managed to take out a full German MG team early on.

I even sent out two small rifle teams out to advance towards the enemy. Here's one of them:


However, I didn't really manage to get them enough covering fire because Shock and casualties piled up on my fire base...


So slowly but surely my guys got shot up. We both decided to build some more desert terrain for the next time and I think that adding support choices will also add a lot of mobility to the game overall. It was very much a learning game again, just setting up some figures and playing to get the basic rules. Good rules too. Me likey. Campaign supplement was also just released.



So much for last week. Now for last night's game - I had a smashing game of Pike&Shotte again. It's a bit problematic how I only get to play about once or twice a year so a lot of time was spent looking things up but the way movement works in P&S alone is saving so much time. The minis are all my armies, the setting as always is the Thirty Years War, Swedish phase, some time around 1631 close to Stade in Lower Saxony. Count von Tilly and his Catholic League troops had taken the city a few years prior off the Danish army. Now a Swedish army showed up to liberate the city for the Protestant cause. An Imperial-Catholic army was dispatched to drive the attackers off.

The scenario was just a regular pitched battle so we'd get back into the rules. We diced off to see who would play which army. I got to play the Swedes, just like last time. It was basically a "put the models I have on the table and play". As luck would have it the armies I had more or less randomly painted up amount to roughly the same points costs according to the army lists in the P&S rulebook even!

Here are the army lists:

Imperial-Catholic Troops:

Heinrich Holk (General, Command Rating 8)


Ottavio Piccolomini (Command Rating 8)

1 unit of Pike
2 units of Musketeers
1 unit of Pike
2 units of Musketeers
1 unit of Swordsmen



Hans Heinrich IX. Freiherr von Reinach (Command Rating 8)

1 unit of Pike
2 units of Musketeers
1 unit of Pike
2 units of Musketeers



Count Johann Ludwig Hektor von Isolani (Command Rating 8)

1 unit of Croat light horse
1 unit of Cossacks light horse
1 unit of Dragoons



Count Gottfried Heinrich zu Pappenheim

3 units of Cuirassiers
1 unit of Arquebusiers



Swedish and Allied Army:

General Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar (Command Rating 8)


Nils Brahe (Command Rating 9)

1 unit of Pike (Yellow Brigade, Elite, Guard)
2 units of Musketeers (Yellow Brigade, Elite, Guard)
1 unit of Commanded Shot (Yellow Brigade)
1 unit of Pike (German Veterans from the Palatinate)
2 units of Musketeers
1 unit of light gun



Hans Georg aus dem Winckel (Command Rating 9)

1 unit of Pike (Blue Brigade)
2 units of Musketeers (Blue Brigade)
1 unit of light gun
1 unit of medium gun



Ernst von Sachsen-Gotha (Command Rating 8)

1 unit of Pike (Saxon)
2 units of Musketeers (Saxon)
1 unit of Pike (Hesse-Kassel, counts as Saxon)
2 units of Musketeers (Hesse-Kassel, counts as Saxon)



Dodo zu Innhausen und Knyphausen (Command Rating 8)

1 unit of light horse (Uplands regiment)
1 unit of light horse (Västgöta regiment)



The Swedish Lines, centre and left flank.

From bottom to top: In the very bottom left on the round base we got Nils Brahe, commandeering the Yellow Brigade, right above him the overall commander Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar, atop and slightly ahead of them the Blue Brigade and some artillery under Hans Georg aus dem Winckel. In the very top (and rather blurry) it's Ernst von Sachsen-Gotha's Saxons and Hessians.


Swedish right flank - Dodo zu Innhausen und Knyphausen's light horse


Catholic left flank: Isolani's light horse


Illustrating the different strengths of cavalry. Cossacks and Croats are pretty bad news already but three regiments of Cuirassiers and a regiment of Arquebusiers are something else entirely. I guess I was a bit too enthusiastic with painting Catholic Cuirassiers. Maybe I should convert one of them to Protestantism. Or at least give them money so they fight for the Protestants.




Freiherr von Reinach's Imperial-Catholic centre


This probably was the most bizarre scene of the game. A unit of Imperial Dragoons (infantry on horse, light harassing troops) had gotten off their horses, took a cosy position in a small patch of forest and about to start their their disruptive fire. When all of a sudden a command blunder happened and the brave fellas in their red jackets stormed out into the open and attacked the closest enemy unit in sight! The cannon's crew fought bravely and nobody quite came out on top. Eventually the Dragoons took a lot of casualties and were driven back into the forest but they had kept the artillery from firing for two turns and diverted a yellow guard pikes for a turn.

We had to cut the game short at some point (mostly because we spent a fair amount of time looking rules up. As I said, last game had been a year ago) but it was rather clear that things looked grim for the Swedes, mostly due to the massive cavalry superiority on the Imperial side. That's nothing bad per se because Imperial cavalry is more or less supposed to be but not to this degree I think. I really should get some Finnish Cavalry done and maybe some Cuirassiers or Arquebusiers too. And some Musketeers. And some Imperial pike and musketeers as well.

Game was good though. The point was raised that the rules do basically what Impetus does but with some more detail. We decided to repeat the game with Full Impetus Baroque once it's out (supposedly at some point this year). It's cool seeing my little dudes all out on the table. Sorry about the bad pictures by the way. I had some problems with my camera's flash for some reason. Oh well, good times, hope to play again soon and I hope that you enjoyed the little report.

Lol, Nope i guess you're right Siggy! :-) it wouldn't seem right at all if the four fingered alien turtlefish had differing glows on there space age imaginary weapons!!

That battle looks truly epic Siggy. Makes me yearn for the days when I used to play WRG with massive 15mm medieval armies.

Thanks so much for posting. Fantastic stuff!

@nerdfest09: Glad we can agree on this point.

@Gitsplitta: What happened to your 15mm fellas then?



Inspired by the uneven situation of cavalry, I painted a first unit of Finnish cavalry:





Hope that you like them. Finnish cavalry of course are one of those highly iconic formations of the conflict. Finnish cavalrymen first were established during the late 16th/early 17th century in Sweden's wars against the Poles and Russia. During the Thirty Years' War they went by various names based on their war cry hakkaa päälle (meaning something like "hack them down"). The Hakkapeliitta, as the name was formalized later on existed on into the late 17th century and participated in all of Sweden's campaigns. From the founding of Finland as a country the memory of these cavalrymen have been conjoured to instill a sense of national pride or for propaganda reasons.

In terms of warfare during the Thirty Years War the Finnish cavalry roughly were Sweden's equivalent to the light cavalry from Eastern Europe and the Balkans employed by the Empire. However, the constant lack of battle cavalry in the army along with Gustav Adolph's knack for aggressive tactics soon saw the Finnish cavalry not only filling the role of scouts and marauders but also a stand-in for the lack of heavy cavalry. The Finns are described by contemporary sources of both sides as rather shoddily equipped fellows on small, scruffy horses. However, Finnish troops especially weren't too highly regarded by the Swedes (and often used for especially dangerous missions or to lead attacks on which large losses were expected) and neither the Imperial-Catholic troops so these accounts might be exaggerated to an extent. Especially as it's known that Gustav Adolph put some effort in having the army he brought with him to Germany to make a good first impression for Sweden to be taken seriously as a major power in Europe (same reason you won't turn up to a wargaming event for the first time with unpainted minis).

The equipment was rather mixed but the heaviest armour to be seen on a Finnish cavalryman would be plate on breast and back, maybe a helmet, but probably mostly hat and buff coat so I painted the models to wear a mix of all of this, some even just wearing a shirt. As by the standards of the time they were armed with sword and pistol(s). The latter was only to be shot by the first one or two ranks at close range right before the charge but preferably the shots were to be saved for close combat. It is possible that these troops used less pistols than their equivalents in the Swedish army or most other armies at the time.

So between the fact that they were often thrown into battle where it was the thickest, the fact that the were struggling with a language barrier due to not talking Swedish for the most part, not being highly regarded by their superiors but proving to be hardy fellas, some historians being amazingly favourable towards them and some funky stories about them riding into battle on reindeers and such the Hakkapeliitta, either by a natural prowess or by lack of any other choices, became an institution within the Swedish army of the time, fiercely attacking by Gustav Adolph's ideas of the head-on cavalry charge with sword in hand.

So yeah, another unit of cavalry added. Next on the list: Two more units of musketeers (Mercenaries, to be used by both sides) and after that a unit of Cuirassiers for the Swedes. Hope you like the models!

Oh, I still have them. Just no one to play with out here. Cavalry looks lovely. Love the speckled grey.

@Gitsplitta: Aw, that's a shame. You gotta go recruit people to play historicals with you! About the speckled one: Cheers, I tend to have a grey speckled horse in almost every cavalry unit because they usually get some honorable mentions in comments. Cheap, I know. That said, they do look nice.




Two teams of Crisis suits. The guys with the missle launchers are one team, the three fellas with burst cannons are the others.

These have no camo. The whole concept (and I hope I get it right here) is that the Pathfinders and Stealth Suits are scouting ahead and once the situation is clear the big guys (heavier combat suits and such) are brought in for the proper attack.


On a different note, I had another game last night. As always: Totally different period, scale and rules.

Mr. Gaming Buddy's going to do a participation game at an upcoming wargames show. His plan is to do something about Aircraft (carrier) combat in the pacific theatre in WW2. The rules in use are adapted X-Wing rules due to the ingenious system of maneuvering and the overall elegance of that rules set. So last night we sat down and had a look for how to approach this.






(Japanese bombers going right through AA gun fire. One of them got a hit)

The state of the flying stands and carrier and such reflect the state of the rules too - very much WIP. It's going to look all prettie'd up in the end of course. I'm just doing paintmonkey workshoppy stuff at those shows so I'm always astounded how much great work the people who run demo and participation games put into their tables and models. So there's a lot to look forward to. Rules seem to work really nicely too so far. Now let's see how different altitudes are worked into the whole thing...

More good work Sig'.

Nice horses, like the Tau suits and nice, teeny-tiny, planes.

Oh Siggy, you make me weep... I LOVE to play "boats"! Have the IJN 3rd fleet lying around in a box somewhere...

@Dr H: Thanks very much!

@Gitsplitta: Ooh, nice. What scale?

Heyhey, it's been the weekend so I only did a bit of commission work and indulged in doing stuff with my own minis.

So I finally got around to getting some command figures I still lacked and which kept me from basing the infantry (mostly colour bearers as each regiment should have two, one with the battle flag of the Confederacy, the other one waving the state flag). I got a bunch more miniatures making sure I won't have to order any ACW minis any time soon (you heard it here first, folks). So now I got two units, another reduced unit primed, a unit of Zouaves (about a third of them converted to wear straw hats) for Louisiana Tigers, two units of mounted cavalry, one unit of dismounted cavalry and horse holder, some commanders and of course the very recently released plastic ACW artillery box. All Perry miniatures. I ALSO got that North American Farmhouse 1750-1900 kit, only to realize that my regular gaming buddy has two of those already. Should have gone with the church I suppose. Oh well.

Anyway, on we go to picutures!

This is a WIP of my first unit of cavalry, painted this weekend:


A picture of the based infantry units thus far:




To emphasize the more "up to snuff"-ness of the regiment in picture #2 I based them in two straight ranks whereas the models in the first unit's second rank haven't really formed a straight line, first rank is firing a few shots in general directions and so on. Hope that you like them!




I ALSO attended an Apocalypse game some local 40k peeps had. I was in the area anyway so I thought I'd pop in and take a few pictures. Sadly many minis weren't painted too extensively but there were some eye catchers none the less:




What cought the eye first of course was this:



They're the not-Vendettas/Vultures by Puppet Wars. I was a bit surprised by the size of the models. They're pretty darned big. And very pretty as well. I've got my half-painted Vendetta/Valkyrie standing around for almost five years now and it has seen action once so far so I couldn't justify getting one of those for playing 40k with. I'm also not a big fan of the companies who make models for 40k and try to be clever about it by pretending they didn't. just so they don't get sued. I'd prefer original or generic sci-fi models. Just not 40k over and over and over.

Anyway, then this was on the table:


Spartan Games' HDF spaceship model. I think they used the rules for Warlord Titans for it which kind of tipped the whole game's balance quite a bit. Anyway, pretty big model that too.

1:1200 I think... battleships are around 6-7" long.

Nice and handy but still big enough for some detail. The carrier in the picture above is 1/700th scale but the game's mostly about the planes so at a smaller scale they would get ridiculously small.

Heya, time for a little update. Here's a first WIP of the Remoras:



Hope you like them so far. They'll get some more colour on them soon!


After having put the Remoras aside for the day I added flags to my rebels. Behold, I managed to finish stuff!

14th Louisiana Regiment (a.k.a. "1st Polish Brigade". In fact it was a wild mix of all kinds of foreign types from around the New Orleans area. There were Polish, Italians, Germans, Russians and so on, many of them having been seamen or dock workers prior. They were an unruly bunch and Col. Victor Sulakowski kept morale somewhat intact with a heavy hand. I read episodes of some guys from his camp who, after drunken rioting, were on their way to a nearby jail, overpowered their guards, came after them to some hotel in which they were barricaded up. The men proceeded to pile up furniture and lumber in front of the locked door to set the hotel on fire. Just in time Sulakowski turned up, pistol in each of his hands, threatening to shoot every single one of them if they proceeded. Another situation had him hacking at drunk rioters [again] from his regiment with a sabre from horseback. Following such incidents an ad-hoc disciplinary commission was set up, including "the great woman spy, Miss Belle Boyd", looking into the number and circumstances of all those cases of executions and unruly behavior of the men. Sulakowski and some of his officers who were also on trial were found to have acted correctly and honourably and things went on from there):


3rd Louisiana Regiment (Col. Hebert's. Certainly less colourful than the above. As I plan to base my bunch loosely on Hay's Brigade these don't quite fit in but oh well. They got the right state flag and fight northern aggression so they'll be fine. I'm also planning to have a fictional brigade commander too for campaigns and suchso things get a bit fantasy-ish anyhow):



So that's them, I hope you like the first two finished units of my army! C&C welcome as always!

Those flags really make that squad Sigur! everything looks brilliant, I am in love love love with your Tau! the Suits are coming along like everything else you do, simply amazing, they remind me very strongly of a Tau army I remember seeing in an old WD against Dark Angels, the colour and weathering are very close!! and that army was one that made me try (I say try as it didn't last long back then) a Tau force! if you think your evil ways will get me to 'try' again for a 3rd time..... you're wrong...... yep....wrong

@Nerdfest09: Thanks, I tried some new things for the flags. Printed them meself this time, only problem was that the printer for what reasons ever didn't quite pick up the blue and it came out almost black so I had to colour the flags by hand (also redid the red a bit to make it pop a bit more. I also for the first time tried putting a piece of tin foil between the flag halves. Adds to the working time but it really gives nice results. As for Tau - aw come on, just look at those dumbfolded little lenses and their wobbly big heads. Tau are a fun bunch and you know it.


Here we go, finished Remora Drones:









I think that the lights and such add enough colour to the models to give it an interesting look without looking too fancy. Hope that you like them.

They look great. I especially like the light, almost duck egg blue on the underside, a fresh colour but also alludes to camouflage in the skies.
Nice colour choices, great weathering and beautifully painted

They look great Sigur, was very pleasantly surprised by the blue underside.

@dantay_xv: Cheers. At first I considered doing a red underbelly , indicating that the sky on that planet is red as well but then I decided to go with the regular old eggshell blue.

@GiraffeX: Thanks. I tried to keep the colour scheme very simple, as on modern aircraft, just with the blue downside added.



Commander WIP:



Decided to add a bit of colour to the base and help connecting it to the look of the models by having bits that were hit by tau weapons badly have a bit of a blueish afterglow. Helps making the guys and their weapons look a bit more dramatic and alien.

These look great and I like that you stuck to the eggshell blue as it unifies it with the other models (lens glow).

I think the red unless dulled down would have overpowered it, so a good choice there.

I relly like the commander too, the weathering is nice without making him look too grimy

Very nice touches on the base Sigur. You are a master!

Been gone too long, but gotta stop in and say I'm loving the civil war guys. The battle-worn tau look great as well!

@Gitsplitta: Thanks a bunch, too kind of you.

@Moltar: Cheers, hope you like these new cavalry guys as well!


Okay, another unit finished, slightly after the end of the weekend (ehem):







Until further notice (= until I find some really colourful regiment or something with a funnier name) they are the 2nd Louisiana Cavalry, depicted by company K "Alligator Rangers".

Hope that you like them! Next on the list are the Zouaves I guess but for now it's back to Tau for me!

The fauna on your cavalry's bases are spectacular, where did it come from? and please dont tell me you have your own special hobbit sized garden for this stuff

Thanks. I assume you mean the flora on the bases because faunawise there's just horses. There's a special ACW mix of static grass and some tufts by tajima1(.co.uk) and Army Painter's stuff on there (don't buy it, it's overpriced as AP stuff tends to be. I just got it a while ago because they had it lying around at my LGS and I wanted to give it a try).

"I'm the bugle boy. So I get the fancy horse."

You forgot to add "toot. toot." but yeah, that hits the nail on the head.

Haha!

The thought crossed my mind

*toot*

Nice work on the Tau suit and nice mounted chaps. The bases look very natural.

Boooo! Hissss!

<---- yankee

They look very nice Sigur the bases really bring out the realism.

@Moltar:

@Dr H: Thanks very much. Not sure if I really nailed a realistic look but as the word is dropped multiple times by you guys so I guess it works.

@Gitsplitta: Oh. Er.. *toot* *toot*? :S Fret not though, the federal troops still are an overwhelming majority around here.

@GiraffeX: Thanks very much! These ACW guys have to get done as fast as possible just so they don't soak up too much time between commission work but I still try makingthem nice. Good to see they're getting some positive feedback!

Alright, it's getting really late but I didn't want to go to bed, trying to stay away from video games so I took a picture of some of my 15mm WW2 vehicles because I recently added a Cruiser Mk.IV (the big tank in the middle) and finished the painting on the Matador trucks in the left.



Hope that you like them!