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Wow at first I was going to give you a hard time for taking so long on that boat, but now I don't even remember the boat.

Holy pic dump. So much nerd-win.

@Cosmic. Thanks very much, this is too high praise! Yeah, it's a rather nice colour scheme on them Messerschmidts, especially with the yellow.

@Moltar: That's the trick, taking so long for stuff until people completely forgot about it and then trying to present it as new.


Tetras!







Hope that you like them!




Here's a little WIP thing as preparation for the workshop this weekend:


Not even finished. Once I figure out a nice recipe they'll paint up really well though I think. Nice balance between skin, armour and cloth which is part of why I chose them as the topic of the workshop. I gotta finish a bunch of things firs tbut then I can get cracking on my own roman army. Don't ask my why we went with 28mm on this project as well. That one guy who already has a collection got them in 28mm. I have no idea why people bother with this scale for actual battle rules sets but then I'm grumpy at the moment so I'll complain about anything. Given my mood, the less I write the better so good night, C&C welcome and take care!

Those Tau gizmos are really cool looking. A+ baby...

Warlord Games plastic Romans, siggy?

@Gitsplitta: Thanks, love.

@Dysartes: Yup, exactly those. They paint up really nice I have to say. Of course they got the Warlord Games dimensions but the models look like fun. Me and the guy I meet up with regularly for gaming got a Conquest of Gaul set each and split the minis between us so I got 60 Legionnaires and two Scorpions now and he's got the honour to paint up 120 Gallic warriors and each of us got a rulebook. But get this - there are no waterslide transfers in the box! Every single Roman plastics box comes with waterslide transfers but the starter box doesn't? And here's the kicker - You don't save all that much on the set to begin with but taking into account you have to get decal sheets for the romans from their webstore (unless you want to freehand all the shields) you save exactly nothing on the whole deal. But yeah, the models are fun. Rather basic as from each sprue you can only build a certain number of Legionnaires armed with a Gadius or Pilum. Choice there is not much but I'm okay with that.

I'm back from Austrian Salute, Austria's biggest miniatures wargaming event. Just finished editing all the pictures and I'll see that I get a report uploaded soon.

And tonight I felt like painting something, didn't want to do anything really productive so I started painting my first 54mm scale figure:


Highly interesting experience and I hope that you like the fella so far. (Yellow space marine pictured for size comparison :p )

Oh man, you're gonna hate me Siggy! but I am going to ask you about the yellow marine lol! :-) how do you approach your yellows? base layer, shade recess and highlight? or do you have a more technical palette?

now that's outta the way! the 54 is coming along nicely, just as nicely as everything else you do! I like the skin tones, do you find the larger mini easier or harder to paint due to the larger areas needing more careful and neat blending to get the nuances correct?

Ow, nicely painted stuff, me likes!

@nerdfest09: Phew, I painted this guy around 2011 or 2012.... I think it was rather basic really with a yelllow basecoat, some washes, some inking and highlighting of course, all over a dusted basecoat. Painting a 54mm scale mini is quite different I have to say. I'm not using any full-on washes on anything, rather than that I'm doing a lot more very thin layering and manual shading. Still figuring out things really.

@Meph: Thanks very much, mate!


My report of Austrian Salute 2014 is up! over 50 pictures, small bits of text, lots of different games, lots of really cool tables!



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2014/03/austrian-salute-2014.html

Spent some time this evening catching up your blog....amazing stuff mate.

The tau look great. The fantasy...boat vehicle thing though, that blew me away. Looks almost luminous. The fades on the shields...I don't even know how you would do that.

Also, the cloth on the gladiator looks fantastic.

As for the yellow marine.....dare I hope he is an imperial fist?

That's a nice report Sigur lots of lovely tables and painted minis, I'm surprised there wasn't an Infinity table.

@San76: Thanks muchly for the comment and the complments. He indeed is an Imperial Fist. I painted him as a test mini for an army somebody said he wanted to commission but which never came to be.

@GiraffeX: Cheers, glad you like the report. I actually talked about Infinity with a few people there and the general consensus pretty much was that people don't want to put up with it any more. Reasons being an overload of special rules, a certain amount of "combo gaming" (as I clumsily call it), all of which goes along with them releasing more and more minis each month and having to keep up with rules. I agree with this to an extent. I mean it's evident that there just are too many special rules in Infnity. There have been since I got into the gamer more properly in 2009 already. Sure, only about 10% of all of those special rules come into play each game but still, you gotta know them pretty much all. The core game is really good, I'm sure that everybody agrees on that. There just is too much stuff going on around that. I mean I really like Infinity miniatures (even though they seem to be sculpted digitally these days, boo, hiss, spitt o' venom ), I really like the rules. I like how it's less about what models you bring but what you do on the table. I never played all that much but I always thought that the cheerleader effect would regulate itself with growing experience. A guy who played for two years who I talked to at the show said that it wouldn't. Which is a bit disheartening. Either way, I'd love to have a game again. Sure, it's got all these problems game have nowadays (they have to sell models over everything else, they have to work in a tournament enviroment and have some kind of points system and all of that stuff) but I still have a soft spot for it.



Well, no gaming for me this week, or at least not any 'proper' gaming. Just went to a little meet-up of the Napoleonics guys at the games club (a place which usually is dominated by some blood bowl, lots of unpainted 40k/warmahordes armies) for another test/demo game of Generale de Brigade. It plays rather well, I like the old-school like giving out of orders. I mean I got no idea what I'm doing and in that case I usually end up not doing much at all so I wouldn't slow down everybody else's game. Everybody's learning the game still so not all that much happened anyway and I had to leave before things got interesting. I got a brigade to command on the far right, basically set up to getting wiped out by the strong left flank of the French army.



It seems to be a good group of gamers, nice guys. One of them recently dropped out so they're still looking for more people for their big thing next year. These guys have big plans, with the basic infantry unit consisting of about 36 models, 28mm scale and the wild aim of putting Waterloo on the table. The full thing. So painting time is immense on these. Of course I'd love to contribute but I can't see myself having the time to do a whole bigade or something like that. Maybe I'd manage to contribute a little, let's see.

That was my gaming this week, but the first game of our Chain of Command campaign is planned for next week. I painted one 15mm tank, Mr.Gaming Nemesis worked on a ton of really great desert terrain, The Lardies uploaded army lists for Afrika Korps and 1941 Desert British, so there's nothing to stop us!



So far I rolled up an officer and NCOs for my platoon (using the tables from At the Sharp End as well as some additional traits from Platoon Forward!) and 2nd Lieutenant Frederick Gibbons' platoon stands ready to throw a spanner into the German war machine!




All that aside - yeah, I'm still painting Tau. The Gladiator figure is put aside for now.

Looks like that one figure IS actually throwing a spanner...

@Gitsplitta: Quite true! Possibly a Scotsman because he's got the spanner attached to his belt with a cord so he can throw it again!


Oh, here are some pictures of last night's Napoleonic game:

This basically was my big moment - the cheeky frogs trying to crawl up me hill!


My brigade's order was to hold that hill basically. All brigade commanders get dealt a card saying Hold, Assault, Engage, Support, Move or Retire along with hand written specifications. Mine was pretty simple: a Hold card, saying "Hill" underneath. These are the orders the brigade commanders get from the general in at the beginning of the battle. Later on at the beginning of each turn the general can change the orders of one brigade per turn (and has to roll for it, the target being dependent on the country's chain of command, general turmoil of the battle and the general's skill and so on). Brigade commanders can try to change their orders by themselves at the beginning of each turn as well but this requires a roll of about 9+ on 2d6 (most rolls are done via 2d6 in this game).

I saved the first salvo to repel the French attack directly. By the way, I rolled horribly bad. I rolled about six time total and on no roll I ever rolled better than five. The French came on in two attack columns, one of them I got to fire at head on with canister shot with my artillery for two turns and did almost nothing. These guys should have been just riddled with buttons, little rocks, belt buckles, boots, musket balls, bolts and cutlery but no, they kept coming. The infantry's defensive fire went equally well.

A look at the whole table:


The thing took place at Vienna's premier wargaming club and there just weren't enough tables or space so the battlefield lacked depth.

French line infantry aside, there were these guys trotting to the flank:



As you can see, the number of models is immense already. No idea how the guys plan to get all the stuff they got planned done until the deadline which is in something like 16 months.

the masses of painted (well painted) troops look fantastic Sigur.

Yeah, really beautiful spectacle.

@San76: Absolutely, and I think that this is the most attractive part of Napoleonic wargaming, at least to me. On the other hand of course there's the relatively equal importance of artillery, cavalry and infantry and the presence of several about equally powerful empires who participated in the war. But it ALSO looks so splendid. This was my main gripe when I got into the American Civil War late in last year - it just doesn't look as splendid or at least not as colourful. By now I'm cool with ACW too though. The models weren't painted superneatly in some cases but they were painted very effectively. I think it's a bit of a shame that many of the French units didn't bring any flags and are depicted by greatcoat-wearing infantry but oh well. It still looked really impressive.

@Gitsplitta: I absolutely agree. And if you go plastic, Napoleonics are rather affordable. Units of about 36 figures is a little excessive but visually it's hard to argue with them.

Back to Tau! I reworked some of the Crisis suits to the customer's preferences, finished the commander and here are some drones now:



It's all the drones for the Pathfinders. They're all magnetized so all the options are available to them. Camoflage scheme'd drones are of course for the Pathfinders, the missile&shield drones will go with the Riptide (those are not magnetized), the regular (non-camo) drone discs on top are just placeholder on lower parts which are meant to go with the pathfinders drones. These regular drones (and some more) will go with the Crisis suits and are in part magnetized. Hope you like them!

Oh, by the way. That big drone is HUGE. I wasn't aware of the size of that thing when I got the Pathfinders.


And here's the other thing - update on the Zouaves!

I changed the approach on the trousers and got them done. Not only those but also the socks which are striped blue and white as well but horizontally. I guess the main work on the models is done (just barely though. Rifles, hair, some more detiail on the skin, the 'pommels' on the fezzes and of course all the bags, canteens and so on, ...)




There's a date for the first ACW game now - 24th of April. Until then I want to have a brigade of three infantry units, a cavalry unit and three bases of artillery done. Oh, and a commander of some kind would be a good idea. So once these Zouaves are done, there's still the artillery and the commander left to do.


Anyway, hope that you like them!

Beautiful work as always Siggy. Those pants are crazy. Need a pair of those to wear around the house on a lazy Saturday morning!

Looks like a couple of guys are bringing a pike to a gun fight...

Siggy, the Tau image is b0rked...

'dem pants!

Looking solid, Siggy! Tau stuff looks top notch and those Zouaves look smashing. Should be quite eye-catching once they are completed.

@Gitsplitta: Oh yes, they do look rather comfy don't they. Also: Just take off your shirt and you can cosplay as Obelix!

@Dysartes: Thanks, I ficksed it.

@Moltar: Thanks very much, I do hope so. I think that if I do any ACW infantry again soon I better make them look more like the regular picture of rebels we all got in our heads, otherwise the army might look a bit too fragmented.

Well, the Tau army is finished, I shall attempt to take army shots tomorrow if weather allows. Tonight I finished the last few drones and bases.

In the meantime, there's a first WIP of the brigade commander's base:

(interesting carrying device for the flagpole)

Certainly an interesting place for the cup to end up, but I've seen that type of thing used to help support/steady flags when I went to Remembrance Day parades as a Scout. Don't recall ever using one myself, mind you.

Given you're working on a mounted commander, Siggy, do you have any general advice to give on painting horses?

@Siggy: MAJOR props for the Asterix & Obelix reference!

@Dysartes: Yeah, I vaguely recall seeing such 'holsters' as well. Makes for a very cool mini too. As it happens I recently stumbled across a rather good link for horses: http://majnouna.deviantart.com/art/Guide-to-Horse-Colors-and-Patterns-243666224 This is just for patterns and colours and such but certainly handy. Henry Hyde also put a pretty cool horse colours guide into his generally cool Wargaming Compendium. As for painting: Nah, no real suggestions I'm afraid. Painting horses is tricky and like with painting skin and such everybody has to fire out how they prefer to do it I'm afraid.

@Gitsplitta: It was hardly avoidable with those pants but thanks.



Currently on the table: Epic Steam Gargant.

Those Zouaves look fantastic! I knew the term from ACW, but didn't realize they were based on French units.

Looking forward to the Gargant!

@gunslingerpro: Thanks muchly!


Here's a WIP of the Gargant:






Bit of a rarity on the painting table! Hope you like him so far. Space Marines and Dreadnought from the author's collection pictured for scale. In these pictures the fella's almost done, finished pictures tonight. Hope you like it, C&C welcome as always!

Tugs at my heart strings... played a LOT of Epic in my younger days!

Tau Empire is a Go!

Great job on the Tau.
and Good effort on the stripy trousers. That would be enough to send lesser men round the bend. Did you come up with any easy way to do them or is it all just basically freehand work?

Pretty amazing looking group of Tau there Sigur.