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Right-o, we played a full game of X-Com last weekend!


UFOs attack Australia, Africa and Asia (seems like their attack plan's based on the Alphabet). Three squadrons of X-Com jetfighters are sent to take care of them. At least in Africa they were successful. Asia and Australia Squadrons were never heard of again.




A group of two Heavies, a Sniper and a Support soldier are working on the final mission while a Sniper and an Assault soldier (left) defend X-Com main base.


We were five people, so I took a back seat and watched/did administrative stuff. The players won in the end, yay!


After that we had a game of 7 Wonders, one of my all-time favourites:

Okay, this time my strategy was mind-boggingly unsublte, but it worked!

Tonight we had two more games of X-Com. For the first one we set the difficulty to Hard and lost badly. We gave it another go with a different scenario and the Normal setting and won. Hooray! One thing's for certain - there is plenty of replay value in this game. Which is nice.



In other news: I got hit by an early fall cold. Managed to skip that one last year, but this year it hit me badly. Despite that I managed to paint a few things recently.


28mm 'tiny shed' (or outhouse) for the fantasy/medieval village:



6mm Polish Lancers of the Guard:

A few nights ago I felt like painting something for myself and I got out the 6mm Polish Lancers of the Imperial Guard. Those chaps are a famous regiment in Napoleon's Grande Armée with numerous battle honours to their name. Originally they were raised as a regiment of light cavalry for Napoleon's Imperial Guard. The reasons for this probably were twofold: First, Poland was France's ally throughout the Napoleonic wars because he promised them independence and it would make for good relations to have a Polish formation around him. Also, Polish horsemen probably were the finest in Europe and Poland was a great source of manpower. On several campaigns Polish horsemen were Napoleon's lifeguard.

They had pretty strict prerequisites for recruits (in later years of course they were loosened as men from other guard regiments came in to fill the gaps) and it was mostly the sons of nobility with higher than usual education riding in the ranks of the regiment. In 1809 they were equipped with lances, which went along with a revival of the lance-armed horsemen in Europe which basically lasted until early WW1. After a demonstration at which a single Polish lancer won against three Guard Dragoons Napoleon was so impressed that a number of Dragoon regiments were re-armed and re-trained to be Lancers. The finest lancers still remained those from Poland (be it them serving in the French, Polish or Austrian army).



For his exile in Elba Napoleon took a troop of Polish Guard Lancers with him as his Lifeguard and during the 100 Days campaigns they fought with him in every battle.

The pennants (the little flags on the lances) were universally red and white in the French army. Red on top, white at the bottom. This was due to blood inevitably getting on them. The flackering pennants also were meant to disorient and scare enemy cavalry horses.



I painted all my musicians in full parade dress:


It was very important for musicians in Napoleonic times (usually drummers for infantry, buglers for cavalry) to stand out. After all they were the radiomen of their day and officers should always be able to quickly identify their musicians even in the chaos of battle to give them orders to pass on to the men.


This is what a Polish Lancer of the Guard looked like in full uniform:



Other things concerning Napoleonics: I may well get my hands on a bunch of French light Infantry in 28mm by the Perrys. And of course I'm currently working on some more 25mm Minifigs. All Polish Lancers (but not in French service, but serving in the Polish-Lithuanian army fighting alongside Napoleon's army). Just finished working on the riders of the 8th:


Uhlan of the Elite company of the 8th cavalry regiment (Polish-Lithuanian army)



Next week I'll pick up their horses. Until then I'm doing some work on the riders of the 6th regiment:


Uhlan of the Elite company of the 6th cavalry regiment

It's really just touching up and correcting the existing paintjob on the figures. Which is about the least sexy thing to do for a paintmonkey-for-hire like me, but someone's gotta do it.

By the way, I recently ordered at Minifigs. The process is slightly backwards if you're used to sleek online stores, but they people are really fast with the service and very nice indeed. The figures of course are an acquired taste to us nowadays and hard "af" to paint, but they do have their own charm if painted properly. Good stuff. Casting is really nice as well. They redid the moulds a while ago.



Other things: Malifaux!

Here are the last two of the Crossroads Seven before the finishing touches:



They're finished now, expext pictures of them tomorrow!


Hope you like this eclectic mix of things.

Fantastic group of miniatures Sigur! I just love the variety you work on. Really inspirational.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much. It's all in the variety, isn't it.



Alright, let's bring this a bit more up to date. Here's the Hunters team!











The camo pattern was requested by the customer (well, some kind of woodland-y camo pattern was, the exact look was up to me), which gave me a bit of a headache integrating it into a colour scheme, but I think it worked out in the end. On this team I also added some fallen leafs to the bases, in part to cover up the traps a little bit. Doesn't actually cover them up of course, because it would be daft painting them and then covering them up. It's like with painting camo. You want it to look like camo but you really don't want it to work like camo of course.

Oh yes, and the bear is huge. Probably the nicest bear mini I know of too, that I have to admit. Oh, and i like the hair on the red haired lady in that team. About the crouching bald guy: completely bald guys are boring. Usually I paint some stubbly hair on them or some sort of half-bald stubbly hair (my favourite). On this one I just painted some tattoo over half of his face and scalp. Works as well for making the mini a bit more interesting. I've also seen the Avatar arrow been done on him, but I don't really dig that look (mainly because I don't watch the show. I hear the movie's a pretty good representation, so I might watch that. ). So yeah, swirly, tentacly tattoo it was. Hope you like them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Here are some more mascots for the Butchers (hog), the Fishermen (Octopus; research on this one was tense. These creatures freak me out. In school I was taught that their eyes developed parallel to the eyes on higher developed mammals. They have similar properties, but developed completely independently and thus work differently. These things are as close to aliens as it gets I think.), the Alchemists (Snake) and the Union (Turtle):









Took a bit of a gamble on the colour scheme of the Turtle. It had to fit the rather gaudy Union scheme. In the end I trimmed the shell in gold, because I think this is exactly what the Union dudes would do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As I wait for some paint to dry on the big dragon, here's the Malifaux crew I did before the current project:













Here's hopin' y'all like them figures.


....and if you're interested in my awesome thoughts and incredible opinions on the Malifaux plastic figures, here's my review:

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2015/10/review-malifaux-arcanists-plastic.html

Nice work all round.
Like the cats.

Seeing those cats and the bear, how do you go about painting fur, out of interest?

@Dr H: Thanks very much! It depends on the sculpt and animal really. Looking at the animals at hand (the furry one. Discounting Turtle, Snake, Octopus and Pig. :p ), the bear, the Guildball wildcat with the metal armour and the three Malifaux Hoarcats the animals and sculpts are pretty different. The Bear (with which I'm not quite happy to be honest, at least with the fur) has strongly worked out texture, so drybrushing and washes did help a lot. Of course every time I paint an animal I do a google image search for what the things look like in real life and open up a few tabs with photos which fit. That's a thing I would like to suggest in general - just look up what the thing you wanna paint looks like in real life and think of how to make that look well on the miniature. Especially on 'alive' and naturalistic things. The Guildball wildcat thing had NO texture to it, so drybrushing was out of the question and the fur's supposed to be really slick and short-haired anyway. So a bunch of base colours worked, some highlights and some shade here and there with very thin paint worked well, and after that I painted on the black stripes. Which of course helps a LOT with anything. If you've got a larger more or less single-coloured surface it's always easiest to paint on texture as to confuse the eye and make it way more forgiving because people will pick up the details of the pattern rather than errors with the fur. And it looks more 'interesting'. The Hoarcats are more 'pelty' and the models have some slight texture to them, so it was a mix of the above. Base colours, some very slight drybrushing, highlights, shades and then the stripes. This time (due to the rougher texture of the fur) I didn't just paint stripes, but painted them on a bit rougher with small dots, so they look a bit less neat and more scruffy. With wild cats the face is always very interesting in terms of the stripes patterns, so that's something to be careful of. Hope that helped.

Ha, I survived my light-to-medium cold and back at the painting table. Here's the Shadow Emissary:











Hope you like him! I guess it's time for some group pictures next.

Oh my gosh Sigur... I just love that dragon. The pale belly contrasting with the blue and red scales/fins. Wow!

Great Shadow Emissary Sigur!

Cheers,

CB

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much. He's one of these models where I made up the colour scheme as I went along, which is why it took me so long to finish him. The overall colours were a given, but what to put where and/or to introduce new colours or not was the question.

@Captain Brown: Cheers! And thanks for the PM on Warseer. I'd noticed the thing about the ~original addendum, but when I entered it on other pictures which had stopped working they still didn't show up. Guess I put it in the wrong place then. Seems to work like a charmski.



Group picture of the Malifaux Misaki crew:






....and the Crossroads Seven:



What do you think, Sirs?

that dragon is phenomenal! I love the blend of red it's so soft and perfectly done! really a special looking model.

Lovely work, thank you for posting. Vibrant and engaging Malifaux.

 Sigur wrote:
@Dr H: ..."fur talk"...

Ta. Yeah, as I expected. Was just wondering if you had any secret methods.
I'm a big advocate for reference photos. I have gigabytes of reference stuff in my "ideas" folder.

Love the dragon.
Nice work on the rest also.

@nerdfest09: Thanks very much. I tend to be all 'harrumph' about digital sculpting, but this is the nicest chinese dragon model I know. Of course the same could have been achieved on a traditional sculpt, mind you.

@Shrapnelsmile: Thank you for reading and commenting! The minis lend themselves to a colourful look.

@Dr H: Sometimes I think I'm the only paintmonkey in the world who doesn't claim that there are any secrets of superspecial techniques. It's still all just painting, isn't it. If people want to be technical and do by-the-numbers - there's scale modelling for that with mind-boggling tricks and use of materials. However: All materials which have been around for ages. Either that or Space Marines. Those are made to be easy to paint with 'techniques' it seems. I'm exaggerating of course.

Yeah, I get you, Sig'. But we do all have our own "special" way of doing things. Sometimes, someone may stumble upon a "new" way of using a set of techniques to do something that we all do, but this time it's quicker, easier, better...
I've not had much call to paint any fur and the last time I did, I used washes and dry-brushing.

Was just curious if I'd missed anything, for future reference. There's always something new to learn.

Wisdom.

Lovely work.

@Dr H: Oh yes, that's very true of course. Always stuff to learn indeed.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks.


Heyhey, working on a new batch of SDE figures:


full size picture: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2017_09/wip1.jpg.74b1d2a6b6e43df41ca0ce7d39014912.jpg

Boy, these take long to paint. Even though they're just lowly monsters. First time I seriously regretted going NMM on these SDE minis.

I thought I painted fast! you Siggy are literally a machine :-) those SDE models are sweet! the lenses are the main part for me, really pops out and I'll have to have a crack at trying that style myself!

Hopelessly cute though...

Really love those guys, right up my street, stunning work.

@nerdfest09: Only goes to show how incredibly dull the other 99% of my life must be. Oh yes, the eyes (and lenses on the whippy ones) do make the models. Especially when working with a limited palette contrast is king.

@Gitsplitta: My, my, Mr.Gitsplitta... oh, the figures you mean?

@Camkierhi: Chees. By now I painted a whoooole lot of these Super Dungeon Explore minis. Only reason I don't get into the game myself (because the rules are said to be very, very good as well) is that I'd have to paint ALL the minis again and I can't justify to dedicate that time to a project for myself. (jumping right into hypocrite-mode if you look down just a few lines... )



Look what I got!



I like that box design. The three sprues came in a plastic bag along with a 2-page A4 sized instructions leaflet for painting and assembly. Well, less of an assembly instruction than the picture from the boxfront (plus a back view in the same style. Very, very pretty.) and a bunch of numbers for where the parts go. There are no numbers on the sprues themselves, but if you open the instructions there's pictures of the sprues along with numbering for the parts.



Last night I couldn't resist ripping the box open and starting to build the horse. The fit of the two main halves of the body was awful. Some filing and shaving with a blade helped that though. The plastic's rather nice. Not too brittle not too soft. Detail looks great.

The little nubbins on the horse halves went bye-bye during all the filing of course. I replaced them with metal pins, mainly to help positioning the parts against each other. Then I applied some plastic cement (Revell Contacta Professional of course), used five rubber bands to tightly keep the parts together and it as off to bed. Me, not the horse. It stayed on the table.

So far the build is going OK. Of course there'll be much fiddlier parts later on, but I think it'll be OK. Painting the chap should be very, very interesting. Never painted such a large figure before (concerning scale of course. I painted larger things like titans and dragon and such. Also not counting the lawn ornament Snowwhite figures a few years ago.)

Some parts with a 28mm Space Marine for scale:

Little update on the Super Dungeon Explore Kobolds:





There are yet a few more to come, and after that out come the big trolls!

Last night I started slapping paint onto the Cuirassier here and there:



Also managed to finish some more Kobolds for Super Dungeon Explore. Now I have to go back to 25mm Minifigs Polish cavalry.

Here are the Engineers' Guild, another Guild Ball team















...and then I did some more mascots:





A St.Bernhard's (very pretty sculpt indeed), an armored armadillo and a nasty bunch of rats holding together a pile of skulls it seems. :p
Hope you like the minis!

They all look amazing Siggy, are the cog type symbols freehand? or are they part of the sculpt on the cloths?

the mascots are so cool :-) and I am pretty damn impressed with the way you paint the wooden parts of all those models! a very nicely executed technique my friend!

@nerdfest09: Hej, thanks very much! Nah, the cogs are cast on, but rather slightly.

Oh, my Rommel rulebook also arrived last week:



Looks very good so far. Rommel depicts actual proper big battles. You're commanding multiple brigades/divisions/combat groups around. It's using area movement (squares), which some people may not like. I'm OK with it. You can do it really subtly actually by just outlining the squares by placing pebbles or little dots at the corners so the visual spectacle isn't too disturbed. Terrain is equally simply organized in how a square is either open, wooded, mountainous, soft ground (like marshes) or 'built up area' / urban. Doesn't mean it actually is ALL that, but that there's a forest in the area, a few hills and a mountain, a village, etc. Each square is ~1km in length (and thus in width ) and in game terms 6" on a 6'x4' table. Enough space for say a stand of 15mm figures for each unit.

You move units around, you may stack up to three units on each square, if you move onto a square on which an enemy unit sits you do combat. Only artillery units may attack squares other than the one they're moving onto (and, if in range, may support friendly units attacking enemy-held squares).

The basic unit of the game is is either an infantry company (in the case of understrength formations maybe even two companies) including support (like heavy weapon platoons, some anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns, etc.), tank companies including support, artillery is usually about a battalion of artillery. So the general kinds of units you get are infantry (either on foot, motorized), armoured infantry (riding armoured troop transports), tanks, artillery (towed) and self-propelled artillery. Movement values (in squares) are decided by type of unit. Units are either depicted by models or unit cards (your choice):



You can also use both. There's a dotted line which suggests you could slide the card underneath a base of models. In the top picture you can see the card for a Panzer III tank company. In the lower right you can see the unit's relative armour/armament value which I think mostly comes into play in tank battles; meaning if tank units are involved on both sides. The side whose tanks have a higher number in the red field get an advantage. If one side only brings tanks to the combat the opposing forces get a disadvantage in combat (in the open. In difficult terrain like woodlands, urban areas, mountains, etc. tanks also suffer disadvantages).

The numbers in the white boxes are the combat power and "life bar" of the unit. Each time they take damage you cross out a box from left to right (thus also reducing the combat power of the unit), if al lthree boxes are crossed out the unit is shattered and off the table.

The symbol in the bottom left is the element the unit belongs to. In this case Kampfgruppe A of the 19th Panzer Division. Each unit belongs to a larger grouping of units. Especially later in the war armies combined various units into Kampfgruppen (Combat Groups) on the German side, Regimental Combat Teams in case of the American army and so on. Those usually are different formations of tanks, anti-gun, anti-air and infantry operating as a separate combined arms element. If you do combat with units from different elements you get a penalty as communication across elements wasn't as close.

..and that's it really.

Now for the interesting thing - Command&Control.

Each player has an Ops (= Operations) sheet. Those are different depending on the nation they play and the stage of the war (they do the familiar thing. Early War: '39-'41, Mid-War: '42-'43, Late War: '44-'45). These are all downloadable for free off the Honour Games website's download section (all you need to play Rommel is the rulebook; everything else is to download for free. All you need is the Ops sheets; the unit cards are options as I said above). Here we see the Ops sheet for "British Early War".



Now this is a little abstract, but it's basically just resource allocation stuff. Each player starts with a certain number of dice in the top centre box depending on the scenario. You place your unused Ops dice on there (10 max; that's universal). These represent operational resources and sheer command ablility (in terms of the commander and his staff, but also communications and infrastructure). Over the course of your turn you can use those dice (which are basically just markers) to allocate to trigger Events first (brown boxes, left). These cost dice from your Ops File pool and give you various bonuses for that turn. Events with a blue bar can only be used once per game.

Tactics are used in combat. Each time you move units onto enemy-held squares combat is carried out

Dice allocated to Events and Tactics remain on the boxes and can not be used until you Reset your Ops. You may Reset at the beginning of your turn, but it means you receive fewer new dice that turn, meaning you can't do as much this turn. This means you have to cleverly time your Resets. I haven't played yet, but I think this is at the core of the game, along with maneuvering and such.


From Sparker's Wargaming Blog, using 6mm figures: http://sparkerswargames.blogspot.co.at/2017/03/rommel-western-desert.html


Movement is split up between a Road Movement phase and the Tactical phase. During the Road Movement phase (for which one Op die has to be used to invoke the phase) all units on foot may move up to three squares, motorized or armoured units may move up to 6. After this they may not combat or move through enemy zones of control (squares adjacent to enemy-held squares). They also are more vulnerable to enemy attacks on the subsequent turn. It's basically the period's version of march column.

After this a player may invoke one or more Tactical Phases in which all units who may do so may move 'tactically' (meaning all fanned out, using cover, looking out for enemy positions, etc.). This includes moving onto enemy-occupied squares and thus attacking. The first tactical phase per turn costs 1 Op die, the second tactical phase costs 2 Op dice, etc. so you may 'blitzkrieg' around to exploit a breakthrough, but it will come at the cost of being much less flexible and able to act on subsequent turns.

Oh, and always keep an eye on your supply lines (drawn through friend-occupied or uncontested squares and not within the enemy's Zone of Control). Each player has one or more squares denoting their source of supplies (like a supply hub, storehouses, a larger railyard, ...) from which supply lines are drawn. Units out of supply will cost additional Ops dice to activate and are less effective in combat until they can draw a line of supply again.



Combat is pretty straightforward, but there is some finesse to it. If you move a stack of units (up to 3 per square) onto an enemy square. Each side adds up the total combat power of their units on the square, modifiers for terrain and circumstances are applied.

Then each player may allocate Ops dice (in secret) to up to as many Tactics on their Ops board as they have units in the combat which further have an impact on the outcome of the combat (the defender obviously using defensive tactics, the attacker using offensive ones). These are revealed and carried out at the same time for both players. But remember that these dice stay and you may not use the tactics any more until you reset your Ops

Then each player rolls a die, there may be further modifications and there we have our result in boxes each side loses from their unit cards (or markers or what ever you choose to use).

The rulebook includes a bunch of generic scenarios, guidelines to turn historical battles into Rommel scenarios (which is pretty easy), it has 'army lists' and stats for British/Allied armies (Early, mid-war, late), French (early war, obviously), Italians (early war, mid war), Russians (early, mid late) as well as a bunch of guidelines for making up unit stats for additional formations. There also is a bunch of Advanced Rules for things such as paratroops landing, beach landings, pure recce units, pioneers, engineering, weather, cavalry units, etc. The only downside is that there are no rules for the Pacific theatre at this point, but I'm sure people around the world already are working on Ops sheets for Japanese and US forces in he Pacific.

But yeah, it's all there to play big WW2 battles. Very much looking forward to my first game!


Hope you found this little overview interesting.

Nothing better to wind down after hours of hours of painting Bay horses than to paint a Bay horse, eh?

LOL! No rest for the wicked...

It's good too see you back, Siggy, you painting MACHINE!

I like the look of that Rommel game, as i've heard generally positive things about most of Sam Mustafa's game designs. What manufacturer are the minis? I know GHQ is the standard for 6mm. Is there anyone else who makes WW2 in that scale aside from Bacchus? GHQ has great quality but their pricing is a little ridiculous considering the scale.

@Gitsplitta: Eh, i rest way too much anyway.

@Cosmic: Thanks very much, dude.

@Das_Ubermike: Yar, I played a few of his rules sets and they're incredibly well thought out. Very much fun to play while also representing the historical challanges of commanders of the respective strategic levels and periods as far as I interpret them at least. You can just as well go 10mm (Pendraken), 15mm with a whole plethora of ranges or 3mm. IIRC Heroics and Ros do 6mm WW2, as do Irregular Miniatures.