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I have a twitter account that I've never actually posted on. Maybe I will use it to stalk you!

@Gitsplitta: Yeah, my own account lay dormant for about three years as well.

I received the rest of the magnetic foil today (as well as a bunch of rivers from Gale Force 9. I just gave in and bought those instead of making my own rivers). Of course I'm not a monster and ask the guy who will command these dudes on the day of the battle to move around single minis, so I'm putting them on magnetized bases.

Here they are in attack column:




......painting on these darned horses also continues...


Of course they're 10 times more work than I had anticipated.

Okay, it was time to start the hat party.



It may look a tad overpowering at this angle and with the nice lighting, but it's less so once on a table and all. Each company has a differently coloured pommel/plume on their shakos: 2nd company is sky blue, 3rd company orange, 1st company green, 4th company purple, grenadier company red and voltigeurs company yellow. The command figures are hanging out with 2nd company so they got blue plumes as well. In reality (this formation is basically depicting a battalion) each company would have a command of course and the regimental flag would be with staff. I think. I also omitted the battalion sappers who are another trademark of the French battalion. One corporal and a handful of sapper privates, all big burly dudes with big beards, axes and leather aprons.

So what's left to do?
Basing
Buttons
Piping (white)
Piping (red)
Flag
Officer
Shoes require some neatening up (not too much, and I probably won't do the gaiters properly)

Oh, and the faces could do with some additional work. Anyway, hope you like them so far!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Update!

I managed to reduce the list to the following:
.) Basing
.) Flag

I may manage to finish the whole lot tomorrow!

Let's say they're done:











What do you think?

I think they look awesome. Really great job.

I like how the chap next to the shouting (leader of some kind, whatever rank he may be) appears to be wincing a little.

Very smart looking group Sigur. Just can't wait to see them in a battle report!

@Dr H: You're right. I guess he's been with shouty guy for years now. Through Italy, guy right next to him shouts at the top of his lungs, Prussia, Austria, always shouty dude next to him, into Russia, out of Russia, always the shouty guy next to him. I'd wince too.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers! The big game's next week. It's going to be awesome (and I'm not one to use that word lightly).

Now with white background!

They are so cool! you know it's a great looking group dude! even if they aren't GW ;-)

@nerdfest09: I just did two Space Marines, it was time do do something else! Glad to hear that you like them even though they're not something you'd usually seek out to have a look at.

Given how I have to take pictures of (and like to play with) miniatures of all kinds of historical periods and sci-fi/fantasy settings I'm always on the lookout for generic terrain. For quite a while now I've been debating with myself about getting some rivers. I planned to make some myself from acrylic mass (the stuff I made roads sections from last year), but never really got around to doing it. So I gave in and bought a few sets of GF9's Battlefield in a Box river sections. I was asked to borrow my Dark Ages terrain for a SAGA table at VIVAT III next weekend, so I thought it would be a good occasion to get some rivers done.



I was also curious about the product. It's my first BFiaB set, because I'm naturally opposed to anything pre-painted (not the least due to the fact that the stuff most of the times looks piss poor) and a big fan of DIY when it comes to terrain. I got the stuff, got the sections out (they come with little baggies of static grass. In my opinion way too little for the amount of sections you get). The river banks are pre-painted (painted dark and drybrushed; looks rather nice, but it didn't fit my terrain bases, so the river banks was the first thing I repainted.

The water itself is without any texture, has very, very slight brighter lines sprayed on and is really, really, really blue. Way too blue for my tastes. So I repainted that as well, using darker and more greenish colours. I also added some more lively stripe patterns and 1 or 2 layers of water effect. Barely any texture as they have to work for any scale to getting to detailled or specific would make it fit for one scale, but not for another. I still went for a quite blue colour, because, despite better knowledge of real rivers, I like the look on the table. Going too green would make it meld with the green surface too much, so I prefer a more blue look, but still somewhat natural-ish.



In the end I used some fine sand to add sand banks and to suggest possible fords (as I don't have any real ford sections or bridges YET I thought this was a nice solution to get by). It also adds a nice effect to give some sections a more interesting look. I also glued on some clump foliage for additional vegetation. This would work at any scale as well. At 28mm/20mm it would be shrubbery, at 15mm/10mm it would be tall hedges and such and for 6mm/2mm it would be trees growing along the river.

Here's the result. With 10mm figures and thinner streams:










...and wider river sections:






Here with 28mm figures:







This of course also displays the disadvantages of the classic river section terrain parts: They're slightly elevated and you seee there they end and where they begin. Some people don't like that look, and I can understand it. A river lies in a bed and not in a ... loft bed? You know what I mean. On the other hand I'm not a big fan of modular gaming tables, not the least due to storage. Colour is another factor, but that's purely up to tastes. As I said, I like a blue-ish look to rivers on the table. At least it's not the plasticky blue look the rivers had originally. I think I went for a rather managable compromise, but that's up for each person to decide. I hope you like the way they look.

The rivers look really nice Sigur, I've wondered about them for ages. The fords are a very clever idea to give the impression of shallow water.

@GiraffeX: Thanks for the comment!

Alrighty, the comparative review of the Late Napoleonic French by Warlord Games and Perry Miniatures is online now!



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/11/review-late-napoleonic-line-infantry.html




Hope you like the review! C&C are welcome as always!

Really enjoyed the write up! Despite not being in danger of buying 28mm Nap's any time soon, knowing the proportion differences is strangely comforting, and I will/would be buying Perry models based largely on their superior hands.

Excellent looking well dressed gentlemen off to war!

Beautiful work as always.

Troops looking amazing.

And although the river looks good enough, I am sorry, raised rivers bug me. It is a personal thing. Having said that the set look nice and useful gaming wise.

@Wehrkind: Cheers, glad you like it.! Well, it's the Perrys. They're the kings of everything for a reason.

@Solar_lion: ...and looking smart on the table is the main thing!

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much. Yeah, I'm not entirely happy with the rivers myself (which is why i keep bringing up the disadvantages of these river parts). My thinking was "better than no rivers at all". I mean the only possible alternative would be a modular gaming board which is really annoying to store and which I'd have to make in the first place. As I rarely play games at home and more often take my terrain to other people to play at their places or donate my terrain to demo/participation tables at wargames shows I'd rather have something more mobile. So yeah, it's not perfect and i fully understand if people don't like the rivers, but it was a compromise.



Okay, yet another link to something. Surely you remember the Stagrider and the Warbear I painted a few weeks ago.

Now the Kickstarter is up and actually funded already! (congrats, guys!)


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chappellm/warbears-and-stagriders-fantasy-wargames-miniature

]







Just to clarify - I don't have any hand in Dead Earth Games, I just paint promo minis for them. It's cool to see that their KS is successful so far and maybe the minis are interesting to some of you if you need some interesting monstrous cavalary and/or some characters/leaders on slightly out of the ordinary mounts.

So VIVAT took place yesterday; a great day out. I'm currently working on getting all the photos edited to put together a report of the day.

I've been a bit more quiet the past week because I upgraded my computer (basically ripped out everything but the power unit, RAM and hard drives) and put in a new motherboard, CPU [with a humongously large cooler], graphics card and ssd. I also got a new windows version now too. All 2015-y and stuff. It's weird, but at least the computer is super quiet now. Of course this took a few days to actually get to run again. Apart from that I've been preparing for VIVAT. As I had to get up really early for that on Saturday I called it an early night on Friday, so I only learned about the horrible going-ons in France Saturday in the morning. Can't say much on the tragedy. From the reports I heard the attacks were just horrible. At VIVAT we had a few moment of silence in honour of the victims.

Anyway, hope everyone and their families and friends are safe. I'll report in later once the report is done or at least well on its way. At this point in time I'm shopping around for some new photo editing software. :p

Computer upgrading can be quite traumatic, but it sounds like you have things well in hand.

I always enjoy getting a new bit or bits for my pc. There can be a lot of stress finding the right bits to work together, but it's worth it for the shiny/pretty/new result.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. First time I did something like installing a new cpu, playing around with that heat conducting paste and such.... and given that it worked out really well so far. (knock on wood) The really traumatic thing only happened on the software side of things, but that's a story for another day

@Dr H: Yeah, to be honest I really didn't want to put in the time and effort into researching all the hardware and then making a decision. I haven't been up to date when it comes to hardware and such for about 10 years. So basically I know nothing. I'm not that big on upgrading my computer, and I don't buy new hardware often, so for the last two upgrades I relied on the kindnes of strangers. There are some very good computer fora online at which you just enter how much money you want to spend, what you have, what you need and then you can watch several people getting into a fight about the best configuration for the price and the config which wins is the one I pick. It sounds very risky, but my last full new computer I put together this way and it's the best machine I ever had. So I went with this option again.

Here's my report of yesterday's VIVAT, Austria's one and only wargames show which is all about historical miniatures gaming!


http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/11/show-report-vivat-2015.html


The event's centre piece of course was the huge multi-player Waterloo game:


...but there were several other nice things to see. Hope you enjoy the report!

Wow. Impressive set up and great report of the event. Thanks for sharing Sigur.

That is an incredibly impressive setup on that table!! Any idea how many models total were in the battle?

Your work never fails to impress mate.

@IceAngel: Glad you enjoyed the pictures.

@RiTides: It really is amazing. I didn't know a game of such immense proporations was possible in Austria. We're but a small community (and unnecessarily fragmented too). I think it was about 6000 figures on the table on that day.

@carlos13th: Cheers, much appreciated!


Hullo, I'm back on the ACW. I told you the South would 'rahse' again!


This Saturday I attended VIVAT2015. It, along with Austrian Salute near Salzburg, is one of the two events us Austrian wargamers get (not counting tournaments). So it's not unheard of that towards the end of the day of VIVAT questions of "what are we going to do for Austrian Salute?" arise. A very wise man had the idea to have a big American Civil War game. At this point it's barely more than an intangible vision, but given how much stuff we can put on the table already and given how we got all the required terrain really it's not hard to make this game become reality. All we need is a battle, some orders thereof and we'd need to check what else would be required in terms of special terrain and troops.

The promise of this happening alone made me grab a box of Perrys Confederate Infantry (review incoming soon!) and have at it:



As you can see, I'm doing the compulsory 'butternut' coloured uniform regiment. Of course the idea for Confederate units was to wear grey uniforms (at least from 1861 on IIRC, before that there was lots of blue involved which led to terrible confusion in battle with the Federal army). Depending on the kind of dye used to make grey fabric it often happened that after multiple washing and exposure to the elements on campaign the uniforms took on various shades of brown. This colour became known as 'butternut', and if you want to have an endless argument on the CORRECT look of a colour on miniatures you can add this one to Dunkelgelb, Feldgrau, pike grey and the right red for British uniforms.

Not sure who these guys are to depict anyway. Following my very crude Louisiana theme it would be nice to stick with that. Maybe the 5th, 6th, 7th or 8th Louisiana Infantry would be an idea, so I could go for roughly a Hays' Brigade theme for my force.

Those look quite nicely realistic

@RiTides: That's very diplomatic of you. They'll look better once they're all done and based, I swear!



Heyhey, I'm currently working on six Steampunk characters for someone's Kickstarter project (launching on the 21st, so very soon!).



The sixth dude isn't pictured, but soon will be (i hope!). So here we got the Commodore, Jack Union (in a spiffing suit and posing atop a Jabberwock's head), the Mayor in a dancing pose, the Engineer and the Nurse.

Mayor and Engineer are done at this point, Union Jack will be finished next. Commodore and Nurse require some more work, and the sixth guy, the Policeman, will take some more work as well.

Hope you like them so far! It's a very intersting project as each model is based on a Steampunk performer of whom I hope to post pictures as well!

Update time!

Jack Union is done now, same as the Commodore the Policeman is almost done, still needs some neatening up and some more work on the little cloak and jacket.



Here are some of the pictures I got sent as reference:














Hope you like the minis and enjoy the pictures.

Very nice work on the figs Sigur. Good representations of those photos for sure.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks.

Alright, they're all finished, just in time for the Kickstarter to commence tomorrow!

Btw, the reason for the minis to bei ~35mm size is that they're supposed to go with all the other steampunk-y stuff that's out (Malifaux, Infamy, that wild west thing, ...) for which the minis are always taller than 28mm.





Commodore and his Monkey:







Policeman:








Mayor:








Jack Union:








Nurse:








Engineer:








Against a white background:



Hope you like them.

in case you like the minis - the KS is up (and funded already!).

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/951486445/legends-of-british-steampunk-roleplay-and-wargames

Here we go again with 28mm Star Wars and another batch of Imperial Assault Figures. This time a whole lotta minis, yet again including some star power.

Here are four finished Sand People and WIP Boba Fett and R2D2: