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Those Space Wolves look great Sigur.

Really love those red power weapons are they easy to do, could it be done with a brush?

Thanks very much. The power weapons took a hell of a long time really, mostly because i wanted to be totally sure that any previous layers were completely dry. Could be done with a brush, probably to a more satisfying result. I started with a white base, this is why the red came out so bright. And this particular red I used is really something. It's very bright, almost neon-ish in colour, it's hard to describe. But yeah. I very much think that it can be done with a brush just as well.

They're never going to be my favourite models, but the paintjobs on those flyers are excellent.

Nice work on the Space Wolves all around.

@insaniak: Thanks very much, insaniak!


Here's another update on those houses. The barn and the wooden townhouse are the ones I did the most work on yesterday:











And look who's finished!





Four dudes aren't pictured because I didn't get any bases for them. Hope you like them. I know, it's old-school stuff, but there is something to them.

Wonderfully regimental!

The horse guys look great, I get bored after painting three guys in the same colours, to be able to do that many all to your standard is a amazing.

how do you paint the wood and the straw roof sig if you dont mind sharing.

The cavalry are splendid, Siggy - also, excellent work on everything else since I last posted!

@Gitsplitta: Thanks.

@GiraffeX: Cheers!

@carlos13th: I don't really keep track of how exactly I paint weathered wooden buildings. I use a mix of emulsion paints from the hardware store. Black, brown of some sort, white, yellow. Basecoat, drybrush, drybrush, drybrush, wash with acrylic washes and/or oils (all kinds of colours really, especially when using oils. Red, purple, green, blue [a little], what ever works. Weathered wood has the weirdest colours). As long as there's enough texture, drybrushing will really work wonders. In between I ink or blackline deeper parts where required.

@Cosmic: Thanks, sir!

Glad about all the positive comments about the Polish Lancers despite them being from a slightly different time.


Today a book I ordered from Warlord Games arrived. They seem to have a full-on collaboration with Winged Hussar Publishing now and released Orphan Eagles - Polish Armies of the Napoleonic Wars. The client wasn't quite happy yet with the minis (he painted 25mm napoleonics for 40 years and is especially an expert on Polish cavalry, so of course he knows his stuff much better than I do and he knows how it's done too. He's also been a horseman for all his life and puts much emphasis on the horses looking 'alive'. Very good practice for me.)



I shall have a read and let you know if I think it's any good.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Okay, now I got this one on the table. It's an Inn:



I'd love to add something to make it look more like an inn. Any ideas?



Here's the wooden house now, pretty much finished for now. This is my own little project, so I can't allow it to eat into my commission work time:





...and the barn:





I'm not 100% happy with this one, but the main thing is that it's done and it will look sufficiently nice on the table I suppose.

What do you think of the buildings so far, sirs (and madams )?

...after slightly reworking the horses and some details. They're also complete now (as in the prior pictures two or four dudes weren't pictured):





A few weeks ago I made a larger version of this my desktop wallpaper to get myself motivated:


Hope they're really, really finished now.

Is the one guy in the front rank missing an arm? Nice to see a veteran leading the charge. I love the look of a mass cavalry unit like that.

As for the Inn can you add a hanging sign on the front with a suitable pub name?

Looks pretty good! On the house, I might suggest making the door a slightly different color, as well as maybe the shutters. I am not entirely certain why but the doors on the old wood barns around here always seem to be slightly off color from the rest of the building, perhaps due to being touched more frequently, or left hanging open more or something. Might add some visual interest.

I like the Pole's too. What was the advice given to make the horses look more alive? I always am looking for advice on how to make animals, especially ones with short fur, look better.

Fantastic! CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGE!!! (Couldn't quite find the Polish equivalent on Google.)

Edit: Corrected Polish to have a capital P.

@Thraxas of Turai: Thanks very much for the comment! Nah, all arms are present, he's just holding it kind of behind his body. Yeah, they look really great together. I do love the idea of seeing a game of units that size. Yup, hanging sign would be my favourite choice too, but I can't find anyone who makes them. Maybe I have to cut out one myself or just look further. For transportation it might become a problem, but I could just pin or magnetize it (probably the latter as I'm not sure if the hard foam is that good a medium for pinning things together).

@Wehrkind: Very interesting idea. Maybe I'll do that. Should add some colour too. First I added just some satin varnish on the top of the horse bums, the top of the neck and a little bit at the top of the front legs to simulate sweat. That wasn't enough, so I added some more glossy varnish (just in small places) mixed with a tiny little hint of orange paint. That simulates warmer light reflecting and also the blood of the horse shining through the skin in these most exposed areas. I was hesitant at first, but it really worked nicely and added to the look.

@Cosmic: Cheers.



Hullo. The following is a bit about my TYW collection which took about five times as long as I thought. Of course I don't really have much of an incentive to get it done either because I rarely play TYW stuff. On the other hand, it's a pretty darned important thing. Possibly the most important to any army - it's the Baggage Train.

The full seven bases set up in column. The models are mounted on 45x40mm plastic bases. Almost all of the models are converted to some extent or in the case of the four females I sculpted them by hand.



Going through the bases one by one now, because I put effort into each of them, so you have to suffer through them now.


I put grass on the sides of the bases so together the wagons and such look like they're moving on a road. Of course this makes setting up the bases next to each other, but given the scale it doesn't make much sense anyway. So above there's a base with some cows and a dude and a green wagon. (When I took the pictures I already thought that this posting would read like a slides presentation of someone who was on vacation in a really boring place. And I think it might turn out that way. ). Not really happy with the cows, but oh well. They look good enough I suppose.

Here's one of my favourites - a family and their belongings:


Hope you can see anything at all. The lady and the little girl in the green dress I sculpted myself. The guy is carrying his musket on his shoulder.


Here's one with a well dressed dude chatting to some rider-by( if that's a word ) while a dude in a red hat pulls his horsecart by.







Here's a guy with a mulish oxen which refuses to walk on and a smug musketeer followed by his well-behaved packhorses:


...and here they finally are: The eagerly awaited flock of 10mm sheep (plus a cow which was raised by sheep, so it hangs out with the sheep), herded by a shepherd and his eastern European pal.


Another nice one:


The guy with the sack over his shoulder is converted from a pikeman. Maybe it's a bit hard to see, there's also a dark grey and pretty huge dog with him. As well as...



A tiny little girl sitting in the back of the wicker cart. Also sculpted by me. Probably not very responsible by the guy to have his kid sit there like that. There's also some kind of flower pattern I made up on that big earthenware container next to her.



Last one! On this one a strumpet uses the cover of a larger cart to unsubtly hit on a wealthy horseman riding by, waving her arm, donning the biggest 10mm scale smile anyone could muster and raising her dress just a little.





I sculpted the lady, and I'm pretty proud of her.

Another picture of a few of the bases together:




...and two size comparison pics:





Hope you like them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing from my way too long WIP-list was finished last night - the Soviet guns for the review:





An early 45mm anti-tank gun and a 76mm infantry gun, each with 4 Crewmen. I chose not to single-base all the crewmen and such because otherwise it would have been impossible to set them up at least semi-hunkered down behind the gun shield. I considered putting the fourth of each gun crew on a single base so I could switch them between guns (usually the crews should be more than four guys), but then I couldn't have used all the ammo boxes and spent shells and such.

Review (along with lots more finished piccies) should be up shortly. Hope you like them!

Damn, Sig'. That's some fine tiny sculpting. Great job.

Guns look great too.

@Dr.H: Thanks very much.

Oh, one more thing...

Here's my review of Gripping Beast's Plastic Saxon Thegns boxed set. I hope that you find the review entertaining and interesting!



The review:
http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/07/review-gripping-beast-saxon-thegns.html

Those are nothing short of spectacul ed Sigur, especially given their size.

Wow, those Gripping Beast lads look amazing! I hadn't realized they existed till now... I might have to put in for a few this fall!

Also, I was going to suggest adding a little bit of pink to the girl in the green dress's cheeks to make her look more like a little girl instead of a very small woman. Then I realized that they were like 10mm at most. Nicely done!

Really fantastic basing on those soviet guns...

@Gitsplitta: Thanks!

@Wehrkind: Cheers. Very glad to hear that. Sometimes I wonder if it's 'worth' doing reviews of stuff that's been out for a while. But with all the stuff being released these days all the time it's impossible to keep track of everything. Hope you liked the review! Yeah; I considered the pink on the girls' cheeks. Maybe still not a bad idea, despite the small scale.

@insaniak: Thanks very much, Sir!


Yeah, I forgot to mention - that baggage train is 10mm scale, most of the models are from Pendraken minis (kings of 10mm imho) with some single minis by Old Glory and Irregular. The lifestock is also by Irregular, horses and carts are mostly by Pendraken.

I swear I'll be back to being productive again, but late this month there'll be a little wargaming trip for which I have to prepare some Dark Elves (as I posted earlier). For one of the games we'll play Kings of War with our Warhammer figures so it's time for me to revamp my 2005 Dark Elves army a little. Time is very tight, so I'll stick to doing essentials. Tonight I added some very simple banners.



The banner for the Black Guards I made a few years ago, just so I'd have SOMETHING on that banner. Now I added banners in the same very simple style for my Spearmen and Executioners (the rune on their banner looks like an axe, geddit? )

I glued good old Rakarth to his dragon again, and - for the very first time - made them a proper base! In the end I added a big flag to his banner pole as well. I think I've got the original flag lying around somewhere, but it probably would have taken longer to find out where I'd put it than making this one.







Remember when on my list of stuff for the game I listed that I'd wanted to paint a 20 strong unit of Witch Elves? Well, I changed my mind. Instead I painted six Witch Elves and used my Cauldron of Blood as a unit filler. This way I get it on the table (KoW doesn't have rules for it) and it would have been a shame keeping it off table just due to that reason. I would have set it up on my table edge or something, but I think it's more fun that way. Also: I went through rather great pains (or have pains inflicted on others) to make my Cauldron mobile, so why have it just stand around?





I also added flags for these as well. Very simple pennants, but better than nothing.

Now for the big question that sprang to my mind immediately: Don't my DE flags look a little ..well... IS-sy? Err...maybe a little. To our sensitized minds at the moment probably. But for one they don't all that much and apart from that I did the first one of those banners a long time before these people were on the news and I hope I'm not held for a complete tosser who'd seek to make such a similarity on purpose.

Hope you like the banners! Of course I would have preferred very colourful, old-school banners. But these would have taken unreasonable amounts of time to make. I really try to keep a tight schedule on this DE-revitalization project because I just lack the time. One thing I did was getting the bases on all of the infantry magnetized because I really didn't want to put up with regimental bases any more. There always were a few guys falling over. With magnetic regiment bases this seems to go a LOT nicer.

The Elves are looking dapper, Sigur! Yes, I think that "those" guys came to mind when I initially saw the banners, too. As you say, it's very much on our minds at the moment, and probably will be for generations to come. Still, the axe runes are really nice! I hope that the games go well later this month

Those banners are really effective. Nicely done.

@Cosmic: Cheers! That's another funny thing when I wrote up the posting about the banners in my mind - for some reason I was hesitant to use the name IS or ISIS or which ever name the newspeople in one's country currently prefer and automatically thought of using some sort of paraphrase. Not sure why I did that. Maybe shows this interesting mindset which is made of general fearmongering and the general suspicion all of us a put under by our friends and allies. Weird stuff. Let's see how this reflects on society a few years down the line. ANYWAY, cheers, hope my game indeed will go well. First time I'll give Kings of War a go (not as a reaction to Age of Sigmar. It's funny though how the release of that and Kings of War 2nd edition is timed yet again so Mantic can make use of their prime [one and only?] selling point: "Well, at least we're not Games Workshop, right you guys?".). I hear good things about KoW though and it really reads like "Warhammer, as written by Alessio Cavatore". Very, very, very streamlined, probably playable (and very fast at that), all the fat is cut off and it also has the obligatory chess reference. But that's all okay really. It's a cool occasion to get out the old models. Last night (well, morning really) I cut the metal sheets to serve as my regimental bases and it was really nice to see my old army all ranked up and such on the desk.

@insaniak: Thanks very much. That was the plan really. I know for a fact that the other guys will have really, really good banners and I had next to none, so I had to get as many of them done as fast and as striking as possible. So the white runes on black flags probably make for an interesting "different" look to the other guys' flags and banners. On top of that I'd always really liked making up and painting dark elves runes.


Now on the painting table: Bjorn the Fell-Handed. Expect updates soon!

Tonight a friend's coming over and we'll have a game of Operation Squad. He barely has any background in miniature wargaming. Two times I arm-twisted him and my brother into playing games and he seems to kind of enjoy the gaming. Not that he'd ever buy any minis, but that's not all that much of a problem. It's not like I got a shortage of those.

Looking good. That old dragon is so... SO ugly, but your paint improves the initial impression to "wow, pretty nice!" and only after continued viewing does the horror of the original sculpt start to leak through. I don't think there is a paint sealer that will avoid that though.

I really like the banners too. Very simple, but VERY striking, and they tie things together really nicely.

I am looking forward to the KoW bat-rep. The game strikes me as a bit abstract for my tastes, but given that I can count my yearly games on one hand lately, I rely on gaming vicariously through you as well as for guidance on what's good to play, should I get the chance!

@Wehrkind: Well put. I really like the dragons from that era. All of them really. I mean okay, they look a little bit like Trogdor the Burninator, but I like them, especially the heads. Well, it's all a matter of tastes.

Last night's game:





First time I used those new houses, still a little WIP, but I think they work great. As it was my friend's first game and due to the fact how first and second floors can be a little detriment to the playability we just said that the houses were not to be entered. Still was an excellent game. Lots of terrain, snipers weren't too almighty, but still managed to do their job well by controlling relatively large areas.

The "lists" used were a regular Soviet rifle squad plus a Commissar, an LMG assistant and a Sniper. The German Grenadier squad got two G43 semi-automatic rifles, an LMG assistant, a Medic and a Sniper. The scenario played was Scenario 1: Recon. We we didn't have a building to take in the middle of the table we decided that the little horse cart has some important intelligence hidden in that blanket. The table used is 1x1.5 metres.

We rolled for who would play which side, I got the Soviets, my friend played the Germans. The German Sniper was set up very close to the mission objective (no biggie as you'd only have to hold it by the end of the 8th turn). My own sniper sat behind a tree on a little hill, overlooking the right flank. He had three buddies with him just in case the germans tried a flank attack there. The rest of my guys (3 riflemen, Sergeant and Commissar) were set up as a group on the left flank along with the LMG gunner and assistant in tow for supporting fire.

While I rolled rather badly on initiative rolls at the beginning of the turn I was more lucky in rolls for who to react first in reaction chains. Firing was rather even. At one point the Germans abandoned their cover and three of them rushed out from behind woods on the left flank to fire at my guys who at the time were sitting in a small cultivated field (both of which I'd cut out just prior to the game). They managed to wound one rifleman and lateron my Commissar, but in turn two of the Germans were killed and one was wounded. Cover is oh so important in this game.

In the end my Soviets had taken one casualty (the MG gunner of all), the Germans took four casualties, reaching their break point and (after a bunch of unlucky morale checks) another four took off, only leaving the Corporal and the Sergeant on the board. In their own personal Götterdämmerung they stormed out of cover, firing their MP40s, but swiftly were wounded and captured.

Good game, fun was had by both sides. Including rules explanations and such, the game took about three hours.

Okay, the venerable Dread is finished now (bar for the snow on the base of course):









Slightly dodgy picture quality. The final proper ones will follow once the base is all done. Hope you like the guy!

That axe is amazing. AMAZING! Hands down my favorite part of that miniature and perhaps one of my favorite pieces you've done lately. Great job Sigur!

Houses look amazing, make a brilliant table, must be a true pleasure to play a game on.

Venerable's looks fantastic, as always.

But that axe has to be one of the best paint jobs I have ever seen, just beyond outstanding.

@IceAngel: Thanks very much. To be honest I'm surprised how well the axe goes over with everybody it seems. I was kind of stumped for ideas, so I did a similar thing as I did on one of the Thunderwolf riders. Glad it worked so well.

@Camkierhi: Thanks. can't beat a good table. The game was fun indeed. And many thanks for the compliments on the axe!


Here's another picture of the dread with the axe "in hand". Hope it stands the test of a different angle and background.



..and a big tank! pew pew pew! It's the first Sicaran I'm painting.


Hope you like'em, fellas, C&C welcome!