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 Cosmic wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
If you're interested in smaller scale stuff, Cosmic, there's a 6mm miniatures show in Sheffield, run by Baccus.

Thanks, Dysartes! The Joy of Six I’ve just discovered, and I could make it. It does sound very interesting. I think that I ought to make a holy pilgrimage to Warhammer World first, and I really don’t need any more miniatures. However...

Well, I'll be there if you do make it - usually wandering around as staff photographer and running the Baccus Q&A.

Swedes are fantastic Sigur. They look wonderful all together as an army.

 Cosmic wrote:
Also, that is so. Many. RUSSIANS!

- everybody who ever encountered a Rusian army

Yar, they got a bunch more units than the Swedes. Over the past few years I've become more and more enamoured with smaller scales. The advantages are just so manifold: storage, cost, transportation, all these points again for terrain, the visuals of an actual battle rather than the "12 guys taking a flag for a walk"-look", ... At this point in time it's really hard to convince my gaming buddies to even skirmish in 28mm because 15mm is so much more convenient. 28mm looks really nice on an individual figure level in pictures on the internet/in magazines. This is where 28mm shines and why 28mm is a such a predominant size of figures. Of course they're very pretty and I love the little buggers, but there are downsides. What always gets me is how Warlord games market their 28mm ranges along with rules sets like Black Powder, which is made for HUGE battles on HUGE tables. I haven't been myself, but I hear great things about The Joy of Six. Last year a dude brought 6mm Saga.

@Dysartes: Good call. I'd love to visit that show some time. The problem is that for me the cost of travelling to England for a one-day, small-time show (which really are the shows I'm most interested in) are just prohibitive. Which is a big shame. Joy of Six, BYOL and any of the Lardies events really are really tempting to pay a visit to.

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much, Sir. That's the thing - a battle with 6mm minis will LOOK like one (even if abstracted and all). I find painting 6mm figures to be very relaxing. You don't have to faff about with all too much highlight and shading. It's perfectly reasonable to knock out a unit in an evening, meaning you really see progress on your army.

Yorkright: Thanks! Yup, the detail's all there on the minis.

Hooray for Russian Infantry!



I sat now for a while, trying to think of a better opening to this post, but I just couldn't. I blame the hour, antibiotics and painkillers (got a tooth thing).



Anyway, above you can see that I started working on the Russian infantry regiments. Over the course of the Great Northern War the Russian army under Peter I. the Great, along with most of the empire, got westernized. This was a long and painful process, with lots of uprisings and counter-plotting involved. However, the most striking effects the whole Westernization plan had on the army. In 1700 at the battle at Varna (that thing at which the Russians were beaten horribly by a much smaller Swedish army) troops still wore distinctively 'Eastern' outfits (to go along with their drill and training).



Felt-laced hats and a long coat of polish/russian/hungarian cut. I think the general term for the outfits was "Hungarian", but it may very well be a Western thing to call them that. I assume that in Eastern Europe it was just called 'outfit'.

In the years between that and Charles XII.'s campaign against Russia the Tsar didn't only change the army in terms of training, but also in terms of looks.



For a very interesting and detailled look at the changes to a Western appearance have a look at this article: http://peter.petrobrigada.ru/unif/project3342/page23296.html


A few words on the figures above: Russian regiments at that time didn't have a completely common uniform. Within a regiment uniforms were the same, but colours differed between regiments. Among other reasons it was just not possible to produce like 50,000 identical uniforms just like that. While it was possible to send out sewing templates and goals for the material quality to meet, dying all of them the same was was the biggest problem at a time at which dyes were made from natural resources. There was a tendency to wear dark green overcoats with red turnbacks, cuffs and collars and Peter the Great's long term plan was to establish that as his empire's army's uniform. Mostly because at the time no other major power had already taken Green for their national uniform.

Sources for Russian uniforms of the early 18th century are sketchy (much more so than on the Swedish side), so we have to mainly rely on eye witness accounts of their enemies or international observers. Russian archives in which such sources were stored of course had often fallen victim to Germans, French, rebels, civil wars, communists, looters and other people (often the same people taking on several of the roles listed here). What we do know is the preferrence of the dark green with red details and some of the other colours used on other regiments. Details on flags are problematic as well.


A few variants

Lace trimmings on the tricorns were also much less common than on the Swedish uniforms (because they're expensive and the first thing you'll get rid of when you have to cut costs due to a complete restructuring of your army and the rest of the state). However, it does look cool, and most of what you see of the minis is the tricorns, so I'll paint them on at least a few of the regiments. On some, like the two guard regiments, we know that they had lace trims in white and if they were present it seems like they were in white. Apart from that I went with colour schemes to represent the findings of my superficial research: More than half the regiments wear variants of green coats and red detailling. Some regiments wear red uniforms with green details and then there are a few odd ones out: One with white coats, one with dark blue coats, one with grey coats, and one with mid-blue coats (on one of the guard regiments. We know that these guys wore the mid-blue with red at least at a parade aroun 1704), all with red details. I avoided the use of yellow in general because the Swedes got plenty of that and the belts will be buff/sand yellow anyway. Oh, and one more thing - the regiments changed their uniform colours every few years (mostly depending on what was available). So it's really a bit of a chaotic mess to 'get the colours right'.

As I mentioned above, the Russian army, just like the Swedes at the time (and pretty much nobody else) used Pikes. The Russian army used them a bit less than their adversaries in the war (only 25% of each battalion carried pikes, on the Swedish army it was a whopping third of the men). One of the main differences between the deployment of these armies was that Grenadier companies in the Russian army were removed from their regiments and combined into hard-hitting, shocktroop-like Grenadier battalions.


A bit off-topic, but a thing I notice more and more lately - pinterest is getting on my nerves. Majorly. I do quite a lot of research using google image search. By now pretty much the first 300.000 hits are useless reposts on Pinterests with NO additional information of what's shown at all. Very, very annoying.


On a more positive note: Tomorrow we'll play Sellswords&Spellslingers!



It's Ganesha Games' new cooperative fantasy miniatures game. Very, very keen on playing that one. I assume it's heavily based on Rogue Stars (from the same author), which itself of course heirs from the excellent Song of Blades and Heroes. So that should be cool.

Update on the Russians!



....all of them. They still need bases done and of course flags!

Right, I think we're done!

Swedes:







Size comparison:



Swedish Infantry:



Swedish Cavalry:








Russian army:




Russian infantry:




Russian cavalry:



...and that's that! Hope you like them!

Brilliant Sigur! Lovely little paint jobs, and the Space Marine and Ork for size comparison is hilariously helpful! Well done

Beautiful armies there sigur.

Cheers,

CB

Reminds me of my college days when I used to play a lot of historicals... my armies NEVER looked that good though. You are an inspiration to us all Sigur.

Really nice work on the tiny Russkies, Siggy.

Turning back time a little - any tips on painting light sabres on Imperial Assault models?

@Cosmic: Thanks very much!

@Captain Brown: Cheers, Sir!

@Gitsplitta: Thanks, that's a very kind thing to say.

@Dysartes: Thank you! Errrrr, lightsabres are a bit tricky, aren't they. To keep it simple I'd paint them very traditionally, with a colour of choice, blended up to a white stripe of highlight. Of course you can't place that so that it looks proper 'glowing' form all directions I'd place the stripe where people are most likely to look at the figure: in the front, slightly to the top. Just an even stripe. Making it bigger in the front will make the lightsabre misshapen I think. A lot of the effect can be improved by using OSL on the rest of the figure and the base.

Right, I'm almost back to normal now. During that nasty flu and that dentistry thing I had at the same time I wasn't able to do all that much. After a bunch of days I started recuperating and started doing simple stuff again. At first I just wanted to glue some small (Z scale; ca. 1/220th) trees to single bases as 'scatter terrain' for smaller scale tables. I'd ordered the trees off ebay a few years ago. 70 single trees:



Then I decided to give that thing for denser forests a try that I'd planned to try for years now. Unfortunately I ran out of foliage, so for now it's just 2 pieces, but I think it works reasonably well:


I also made some dirt roads for smaller scales while I was at it.

Then I wanted to put it all on the table for some nice photos, but I noticed a severe lack of the one thing you'd on ANY table/landscape if any villages, buildings or towns are around at all - fields. They not only make a lot of sense, but also make the thing look 'right' and add a bunch of colour. So I made a bunch of those as well and put it all on the table:





Of course this covers just a few square inches of a proper sized table. Roughly a quarter or up to a half if I add some hills and such. Still, I should add a few more things:
.) a few more buildings would be nice
.) roads are OK for now
.) I definitely need more fields
.) Seems like 70 single trees were not bloody enough. I should add a few more.
.) more dense forests, at least three to four

Here's the table with some 6mm Swedish troops:





Hope you like them!



Oh, and this is what i'm working on at the moment - a troupe of 6 Harlequins for Shadow War:Armageddon:

You are a mad genius! I should have you build the table for my son's model RR set. Looks astoundingly realistic Sigur. I don't see any seams between the sections... are they just areas with loose flocking sprinkled on (like for the fields)? The same goes for the hills... how are they made?

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much! Well, a little bit of basic photoshopping is inolved in these photos. I'll post a regular shot shortly.


Here's a shot without any 'shoop tricks:



In the back you can even see a nasty speed bump that happened on the dirt road. So yeah, gaps between (and even more so around) the sections are visible, but it's OK I think. The hills are just stuff shoved underneath the grass mat. Which is a look I much prefer over hill pieces on top of the mat these days. Works especially well with cloth mats of course and it's just really useful for making a flat table actually look like geography.

I was wondering if that was the case but everything else was so smooth that I couldn't tell. That works really well when you're not burdened with trying to generate hills that figures can actually stand on and it sure looks very convincing.

I think the table still looks fantastic Sigur... it's just less... confusing now.

Beautiful Sigur. really beautiful.

Cheers,

CB

The table looks really effective, Siggy.

Nice work.

What did you do on the inside of the large wood? I suspect you didn't use tree trunks all the way under.... That's the sort of mad thing I'd do.

@Gitspitta: Yeah, I guess you're right there.

@Dysartes: Thanks!

@Dr H: Cheers! Well, I did nothing on the inside of the woods; that's the whole point.

Hey peeps. I don't think I mentioned it before, but look what hit my doorstep last week:



I'm not a GW fanboy. Unless they tickle that late-80s-early-1990s nerve in me. Then I have online buddys of old (thanks a ton, Steven!) pester the good people at Warhamme World (thanks to the people of WHW. Great service!) into sending me 2 copies of Realm of Chaos - Slaves to Darkness, that bloody huge box of SM HQ tanks, a Slaves to Darkness shirt and a Slaves to Darkness cup. Okay, one of the books and the SM tanks are for a friend, the rest's for myself. Now I own two shirts with stuff on them: An Oldhammer shirt and now that Slaves to Darkness shirt. Never been a 'band shirt' guy, or stuff like that.

Over the past days I read Slaves to Darkness again. Never thought I'd hold that book in my hands; pretty amazing. The reproduction is, as far as I can see, flawless. Great stuff. And I don't think it's just a Nostalgia thing. This book (along with The Lost and the Damned) is just interesting. It gets the creative juices going. The artwork, the little vignettes, the general fluff, the humour.... it's just not a catalogue to sell figures with illustrations which show figures as they are available, it's stories and fluff and whatnot. Of course there are rules in there as well. For 40k (Rogue Trader), WHFB and the Warhammer Roleplaying Game. Anyway, highly recommended to anybody who's interested in Chaos or fantasy in general.



And here's another WIP shot of the first 4 Harlequins:





Hope you like them!


Apart from that I took some more photos of the 6mm Russians with some terrain:




...and did a tiny little bit of painting on the Rogue Trader Orks (which for some reason still are sitting on my desk). No photos of those, because next to nothing is new on those.

so yeah, that's what's going on. I'm also slowly starting to get ready for Austrian Salute (this year ironically taking place in Bavaria) on the 17th of March.

That was a very nice delivery. Nice haul of bits for you.

Love all the mass army shots, terrain is looking fantastic.

Harlequins are stunning.

Nice loot crate there, Siggy.

 Sigur wrote:
@Dr H: Cheers! Well, I did nothing on the inside of the woods; that's the whole point.

Yeah, but what is on the inside? Is it a flat piece of card supported by the outer trees, or do you have a box in there, how was it made to support the canopy?

Great job on the harlequins.

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much!

@Dysartes: Indeed. Okay, one of the books and the SM tanks aren't for me, but anyway. It's merch! woo!

@Dr H: Yeah, just the piece of cardboard supported by halved toothpicks really. It's basically this, without the base and the tree trunks connected to the canopy: https://www.6mmacw.com/forests.html



I'm currently working on the green Harlequin:




After that I'll do another blue one and then I can proceed to finishing them all proper.

Just love the harlies Sigur. Man, that's just the way every harlequin should look!

So if you get down low, you can see under the canopy and out the other side?
I know that kind of thing is not important on that scale, I'm just curious. Not had to think about how this might be done.

Great job on the harlequins.

@Gitsplitta: Cheers! Yeah, years and years ago I painted Harlequins before, but I was asked to paint them in a very uniform way, which I didn't like a whole lot. These here of course are going in a very different direction.

@Dr H: Thanks, and yeah, you can look right through if you go way down. The idea is that you can lift up the forests and place miniatures anywhere underneath without having tree trunks everywhere. Of course you can feel free to put scrunched up dark cloth or something in the middle to block LOS.


Okay, I took kinda sucky photos of stuff I've been working on.

Here are the new units for my little 10mm Arabyians - War Elephants from the Eastern parts of the empire, camels dressed up as war elephants from the South, and flying carpets:




I've got shows coming up, so I need something to show off. I decided to do some more work on the 1/16th French Cuirassier:





Getting there. Now where in the heck did I put that sword scabbard and the rest of the left hand....? Oh crap.. :/



Also: Remember that guy?





54mm Gladiator by Pegaso Models. Cool model, I started painting him years ago and now I wanna get him finished .


Last, but not least, here's the latest on the Harlequins:



They're all mostly done now, you can see I added the blue one now and bases. Just some detailwork left to do.


Hope you like everything!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and here's a nugget I found earlier today:



Quality.

The Harlequins just keep getting more and more beautiful. If you just kept working on them forever they would ultimately evolve into beings of pure energy!

What year is that top 10 for?

Im surprised to see dwars at 5.

@Gitsplitta: Just from how long it feels like I've been working on those this should happen any time soon now. Thanks though; you put that very well.

@Desubot: This double-page brings up a general ton of questions in my mind. I've been asking around for a better resolution version of this weird list, because I feel like the text may contain findings of high entertainment value. First - that title of "10 of the best miniatures games". Which probably should tell us a lot about this already. It's like those BIG SALES of UP TO 70% off everything, which means that some 70 cents item is a lot cheaper than usual, but stuff you'd actually buy is cheaper by just a few cents. I mean this article really is just an ad for the most well known miniatures games, isn't it. And of course just basically toy lines sold via rules sold along with the toys. I usually avoid youtube when it comes to wargaming due to various reasons. A while ago I saw someone list their 'top 10 miniature wargames' and it basically was the same list. Maybe it's just a cynical exercise in 'filling two pages / 10 minutes of video with the lowest common denominator and try to cover the widest possible audience', for which top 10 lists (or in this case ..well, a list of 10) are perfect and which pretty much writes itself. Of course I couldn't write a better list, because it's impossible. It's even less possible than say a list of your top 10 films. Miniature wargames would be more like '10 of the best things you can see on a screen or eat'. Because miniature gaming is bloody diverse. That's the inherent problem with such a list, isn't it. You'd have to get really specific and make it "10 of the best sci-fi skirmish wargames" or "10 platoon-level WW2 wargames". This wouldn't just cover the basics, but ALSO shed some light on other games people may not know. I fail to see the point in covering the broadest stuff everybody knows anyway, right? On the other hand wargaming magazines have to be specific, because they will always cater to a well-informed niche. Say I run a magazine about horror films; I couldn't write an article about the '10 of the best horror franchises: nightmare on elm street, halloween, saw, evil dead, friday the 13th, texas chainsaw massacre, 'rob zombie stuff', scream, Wishmaster, Child's Play', each along with a tiny little text blur what the franchise is about. People would throw their toy Pinheads at me. Very weird. Anyway, by now I found out that it's an article published in Tabletop Gaming, a very broad boardgames magazine. So yeah, MAYBE it's justified? But still - I think it would be much, much more productive to introduce people to flexible rules sets for which people can use any of their figures or at least choose rather than 'franchises', all relying on the old GW marketing strategy.

Right, the Harlequins are still in the photo corner, but I'll finish them soon. Here's a little preview of the next project: Sticking with 40k, and a great melange of power armour, heavy armour and superheavies.

Good news, everyone! I found the scabbard and the rest of the left hand of the cuirassier.

Here's the guy with the scabbard added.