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Hi, my peeps. Hope you're having a GLORIOUS weekend!

I'm slowly recovering from my trip to Germany, where I attended Tabletop Knights' Gaming Day 2019. Here's my show report:

https://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2019/04/show-report-tabletop-knights-games-day.html




Hope you enjoy the report!

Yayyy! Can't wait to read it!

@Gitsplitta: I really appreciate that. Comparatively small events across the Atlantic, and still you take the time to look through the reports!


Right, back to miniatures, I say.

Here's the latest Infinity project done:


Haqqislam:





Yu Jing:







...and here's something a bit different again - a WIP of the human crew for Pirates of the Dread Sea:



The Kickstarter for these figures, as well as a few more, will be up in a few weeks. Hope you like the minis!


Tomorrow I'll show a friend how to play Last Days (the zombies game I recently got). Looking forward to that. Do you have any mini gaming planned for the Easter weekend?

Last night Cpt.Shandy and I had a go at Last Days, the Zombie game I recently tested solo. This time we went south of the border, into a Mexican village, which is also plagued by the global Zombie outbreak. Where's El Santo when you need him?



This meant I finally had a chance to have a look at Cpt.Shandy's Mexican terrain. Very, very nice stuff. A whole bunch of buildings, along with his great scatter terrain and bits in between, as is kind of his trademark in terrain building.




It's all there - a church with external bells, a well, a village square incl. remnants of a fiesta, snakes, dogs, chicken, cacti, wooden crates, fruit carts, and even a nast international company's oil well. Right next to a graveyard too! I'm sure horrible chemical stuff leaks down into the graveyeard. With GRUESOME consequences. And I'm not even mentioning the portable looks being set up right against the graveyard walls either...

The two gangs are the same as in the first campaign game.

McCoy's Survivors:


Left to right: Jens Gäbel (clerk in an electronics store,armed with cricket bat), Rosie (armed with toy gun and a fluffy bunny), Kyle Nightingale (Nurse, armed with shotgun and first aid kit), Chainsaw Charlie (Dishonorable discharge from the army, armed with a chainsaw), Mr.Jacket (nobody knows what he does. He just showed up, always wears the jacket and the hat, doesn't talk, but makes himself useful), McCoy (taxi driver, Leader, Everyday Hero, armed with surplus assault rifle and a knife), Reverend Ralf (founder of the Online Church of Easily Attainable Salvation, armed with semi-automatic pistol), Luke Isberg (Scout Leader, armed with a sporting crossbow and a knife)


Armando Toblerone's Troublemakers:


Left to right: Kim (Survivalist, left the NRA because she deemed them to be too illiberal in terms of the right to bear all the arms and too liberal in all other regards, armed with a modified surplus assault rifle and a knife), Ron (Gang Member, armed with a shotgun and a knife), Biff (Gang Member, armed with a baseball bat), Armando Toblerone (Gang Leader, Merciless Thug, armed with a semi-automatic pistol and a knife), Spliff (Gang Member, armed with a knife, carrying a first aid kit), Kid (Gang Member, armed with a surplus sub-machine gun and a knife), Michelle Masters (former olympian, former sports model, former reality tv personality, former singer, fitness youtuber, armed with a sports bow and a knife)




After the first encounter last month and since everybody recovered really well everybody went for a trip down South due to rumours of a stable settlement in the border region. On their way McCoy's group encounter Professor Challenger, a keen researcher in the field of mesoamericanic studies. He is looking for clues concerning his theories on the source of the Zombie outbreak. He travels along with the group and for this game he'll replace Rosie (the little girl, who has to spend this encounter on the sideline due to a case of the runs).



After setup the initial three zombies are placed around the centre of the board.



The first of them is easily dealt with by the nurse Kyle Nightingale with his trusty Shotgun. At the opposite side of the table Michelle feels challenged and takes down another zombie with an arrow to the neck. Due to a bilateral agreement that the third zombie isn't really worth paying much attention to. This decision would prove to bite me in the backside lateron...

Cautiously McCoy, Chainsaw Charlie, Kyle and Jens (behind Kyle) advance towards the village square.


Kim goes into position behind an old truck. As Jens charges around a corner he catches one of her bullets and goes to the ground. There's a quick firefight between Kim on the one and McCoy and Kyle on the other side (Michelle can barely intervene, Kid's running around to get into a better firing position).



Just then that darned third zombie surprisingly leaps at Kim. She panicks and wrestles with the monster. Spliff (far right in the photo) rushes to her aid and they kill the zombie together. This cost me time though. Time used by McCoy to get into a solid position from which she's a major problem for Kim. In the meantime Kyle dashed to grab one of the Supply Tokens.

In the mean time at my right Armando (Leader), Biff (baseball bat armed thug) and Ron (shotgun) are facing Luke (crossbow) and Mr.Jacket (Revolver). There's a mexican stand-off and a shootout across the graveyard. Luke fires bolts at the gangers while Jacket keeps zombies off his back. Due to the graveyard walls being good cover there are no clear winners for quite a while, but lots of shooting and shouting between Luke, Armando, Jacket, and Ron. Biff's got not gun and tries to make up for that with cursing wildly.

Professor Challenger uses this chaos to pry the church backdoor open and slips in. Armando and Biff take a gambit and storm right after him, several crossbow bolts burying themselves into the church wall left and right to them. The two bad boys meet the professor in the church and strike him down. In a church! Those two really are no good.

To my far left Reverend Ralf zips from cover to cover and grabs a supply token. Kid fires a few bursts at him with his sub-machine gun, but fails to do any serious damage. This can't stop someone who's on a mission from god and Ralf takes off with the supplies.



In the right neither side sees much use in firing at each other any more. Ron, Luke and Mr.Jacket cease fire to run to the village square to either side of the church to help out their comrades. Ron storms to help out with firepower, Luke and Jacket have the supplies in mind. Jacket stops at the closest supply token and starts picking up canned canneloni. Biff, who sat in the shadow of the church gate, leaps at him and clobbers Jacket. Chainsaw Charlie, who'd just been busy sawing at a zombie, won't let this aggression stand. She kicks the zombie back and lunges at Biff. She remembers their first encounter and who hit her in the head with a baseball bat. Both make ready for round #2.

Seems like there'll be a brawl on the village square as well:



Armando and Michelle storm towards McCoy (mostly to keep her from firing her assault rifle at Kim).
...

Luke comes to help his boss out, so the wounded Kim and Spliff also join the scram. In the left you can see the duel between Chainsaw Charlie and Biff.

In the ensuing brawl Spliff is taken out by Luke. In return he's beaten down by Kim. McCoy manages to hit and wound Michelle, but she stays on her feet. Behind the church Biff and Charlie fight it out. Charlie is wounded, but stays in the fight.



Luke being taken out of the fight pushes McCoy's band of survivors over the edge. They retreat, the spoils go to Armando Toblerone's gang. Shame; Kyle almost got off the table with another Supply Token. Kid (in the lower right) fires his sub-machine gun at him, but doesn't hit a thing.

McCoy's Survivors: 1 Supply Token, 3 Wounded.
Toblerone's Troublemakers: 4 Supply Tokens, 1 Wounded


Campaign Phase:

Right afterwards we did most of the campaign phase, so Cpt.Shandy sees how that's handled. First we see how the wounded turn out after being tended to. They recuperated pretty well (especially so on McCoy's side due to Kyle's medical background and equipment). Luke and the professor are slightly traumatized by the events, same as Spliff. All of them lose an Action Point each.

The Supply Token Reverend Ralf took off the table contains supply points and - interestingly - a riot shield. Armando's gang got mostly supply points out of the ..well, supplies. That and a military-grade sub-machine gun (possibly left behind by military or cartel guys).


Aftermath

A very nice game. Due to me and cpt.shandy being unfamiliar with how dangerous the guns in this game are and so both of us were kinda cautious and the game took a while, but it worked well. I really like Shandy's mexican village terrain. Something different. I think that Cpt.Shandy enjoyed the rules, especially so the campaign rules.



Right, I hope you enjoyed this battle report. Happy Easter, guys!

Right, more proper photos now. Well, at least photos with a neutral background.















Hope you like them!

Stunning work. The infinity minis are stunning anyways, but your work on them is truly beautiful.

I am looking at the terrain elements as well thinking of trying my hand at making some. Again beautiful work.

I gave up hating you and your friggin' talent years ago. Now I just sit... mouth agape... and enjoy the ride!

@Camkierhi: Thanks very much! I'm especially happy about this compliment as I know what others achieve on these figures (and often in a much more airbrush-y, "race horse painter" style). I think I mentioned it above - mostly these days when I get a chance to do my own stuff I now tend to make terrain rather than paint figures for myself. Love me some nice terrain, and you can't ever have enough.

@Gitsplitta: Well, that's good to know that sour seething hatred for me is gone now. That's one off the list of peolpe who HATE me with a passion. Thanks for the comment, mate, I appreciate it. We all do different things. I admire your work and the endurance you show when sticking to your core projects. I'm way too much of a hobby butterfly for that.


Okay, let's not lose any time, there's too much to do. On to Space Orks! Those are still a bit WIP. Need some weathering, bases done and final check-up:

Slugga Boyz:


Kommandoz:



...and here's an earlier WIP of a mob of Tank Huntaz:



As with previous units I do for this project (it's a pretty darned big Orks army I've been working on in batches since late 2017) I can't take credit for the remarkable builds. A LOT of thought goes into these to make each of the Boyz unique. None of the guys looks like another via clever conversions, use of resin parts, a bit of sculpting, and a mix of the above. Especially the Tank Huntaz again feature a ton of subtle conversions to keep a varied look about them. Then I slap on variants of the colour scheme onto every one of them and we end up with a huge force of individuals. As Orks should be, even if they're Goffs!

Ah, we do what we do my friend. You just keep doing.

@Gitsplitta: That we do indeed.

Well, happy weekend! What are we all up to? Had a smashing time last night playing Zelda2 (with someone who'd never played it before. Very entertaining.). Tonight I'm going to play Blackstone Fortress, which I'm sure will be fun as well. Virago took the time and painted the whole set, so it would be rude not to.

In terms of painting I'm still slaving away at the Ork tank hunterz. Here's another WIP shot:




I've said it before - I'm just the painter in this case, and it's remarkable how much work the guy who built these puts into it. Each and every single Ork is different by use of subtle conversions. Also means that each of the buggers has details and details hidden away on their person, especially on these bloody backpacks. Takes ages. But they're cool figures. I just hope that I haven't overdone it with the reds, but I'll leave that to boss to decide.

Hope you like the boyz so far and do have a nice weekend!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Gitsplitta: That we do.

Well, happy weekend! What are we all up to? Had a smashing time last night playing Zelda2 (with someone who'd never played it before. Very entertaining.). Tonight I'm going to play Blackstone Fortress, which I'm sure will be fun as well. Virago took the time and painted the whole set, so it would be rude not to.

In terms of painting I'm still slaving away at the Ork tank hunterz. Here's another WIP shot:




I've said it before - I'm just the painter in this case, and it's remarkable how much work the guy who built these puts into it. Each and every single Ork is different by use of subtle conversions. Also means that each of the buggers has details and details hidden away on their person, especially on these bloody backpacks. Takes ages. But they're cool figures. I just hope that I haven't overdone it with the reds, but I'll leave that to boss to decide.

Hope you like the boyz so far and do have a nice weekend!

Nice job on the Infinity fig's and Orkses looking good.

I always loved that about orks. You can fiddle endlessly with them. Hours and hours of entertainment supplied by my bits box!

@Dr H: Thanks very much!

@Gitsplitta: Yeah, well, you gotta love Orks in general. Even the new stuff I like.


Righto, before I post pictures of the finished Orks, here's a WIP of part of a Project I've been working on for a few weeks now; another batch of Super Dungeon Explore.

From left to right - King Sprout, Kasaro To, and King Starfire:


There's a lot more which is already done, and a tiny little more I still gotta do, but things are well on their way. Kasaro To is more or less done, the kings need a bit work done. Hope you like them!

Audrey II never looked so good. FEED ME SEYMOUR!

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Audrey II never looked so good. FEED ME SEYMOUR!

Now that I think of it, it's weird that they haven't remade this one again yet.


So here are the finished SDE figures:













































Hope you like them! Oh, and do have a nice weekend.

You know, I usually don't like that style of figure... but I gotta admit, those are pretty cool.

Well done, Sig'. Look great.

@Gitsplitta: Thanks very much! MAkes the comliment even nicer, I think.

@Dr H: Cheers, much appreciated!

Right. Hi, people. I'm back. Hope I haven't missed anything. How has everybody been?

Let's see what i've been up to...

First and foremost - you may have noticed that skirmishwargaming.com, the blog I've been writing articles for since 2014 has gone offline. Bad new indeed. However, I was able to salvage most of my articles and a friend was so good to set up a nice new place for them. I present you with:


https://www.tabletopstories.net/



This is kind of the site's avatar. The storyteller a-prancing and a-tooting.


The new thing is that it's not limited to just skirmish games AND I'm pretty much the boss of the thing. Also means I have to run it by myself. Sounds familiar. Virago is managing the technical side of things though, which helps of course. It's still in a sort of test phase. I'm putting up one to two articles each week; a mix of old articles from the old site and new ones. Battle reports. rules reviews, scenarios, the odd painting/modelling thing, show reports - all that kind of stuff. It's my outlet for the gaming side of things I don't cover on the battle brush studios blog.

Another new thing I'm doing on this blog is that articles are available in English and German. Which adds a ton of work for me, but it's a thing I've meant to do for a long time and it's cool that I got the chance to do that now. So yeah, pop over. Lots of stuff on there already, including rules reviews of Sharp Practice, What a Tanker, Last Days, Chain of Command (incl. suppments), loads of battle reports for said games and a rules review and three battle reports of Twilight of Divine Right.



It's a set of rules published by the Pike&Shot Society, covering the tumultuous time span between 1618 and 1660. Which, as some of you may recall, is a bit of a favourite of mine - the Thirty Years War. Been collecting armies for this conflict in 10mm since 2012. It's a HUGE conflict which impacted the political landscape of Europe for centuries to come. However, there aren't that many rules sets out there covering it. Thus far I'd tried Pike&Shotte by Warlord Games, with which I'm not quite happy and Baroque, with which I was pretty happy, but never played it much. These rules (review on Tabletop Stories!) resonate really well with me in terms of how they depict the conflict. I even painted more figures for the armies:





Bunch of cavalry, cuirassiers, lots of artillery, and some pike&shot infantry. Good stuff.

I'd run out of pikes, so I bought a wire-bristled broom head and had a bit of fun snipping off pikes. At least I'm all set with wire pikes for the next 500 years now.



Had three games so far, things went well. Fun rules.





So yeah, that was nice.

Apart from that I painted a bunch of 18mm AB Miniatures Frenchmen and Austrians:

1 battalion of Austrians:


..and two battalions of French:


Smashing miniatures. First time I worked with them, but I get why everybody loves them so much.


I also finished some 15mm WW2 terrain for an upcoming campaign:







I also finished this chap. Polish Lancer of the Imperial Guard, 1/9th scale:












Hope you like him.



Right, apart from that I painted some promo figures for Dead Earth Games' latest Kickstarter Campaign, Pirates of the Dread Sea (wave #2). This time a human crew was added to the figure range...




...as well as an undead crew:







Lovely, lovely figures again. Haven't played the rules, but I assume they play well. Dead Earth Games ran successful kickstarters before, and published a few rules sets. The campaign is running for a few more days, so if you want to get your hands on these fine figures as well as the Dwarves pirates crew (plus an Elf and an Orc), including one more chance to get your hands on the KS-exclusive Dwarf chef with fish, back this thing now!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chappellm/pirates-of-the-dread-sea






...then I hopped back to Napoleonics again, in 28mm. Painted Napoleonic Russians for the first time. Exquisitely interesting stuff. I mentioned it before, but each time I research stuff about the Russian army I realize how little Russian history I know. Fascinating stuff, well worth knowing. Almost made me order an army of 6mm Russians.



Pavlov-Regiment Grenadiers:





Only grenadiers who were allowed to keep the old mitre hats due to their commandable performance in 1807. Technically, grenadiers were outfitted with shakos from 1805 on. Some time after 1812 the Pavlov regiment was added to the guards regiments. Figures are by Front Rank. Their minis quickly became possibly my favourite Napoleonic minis in 28mm. Lovely sculpts and great casts.



Siberia-Regiment Grenadiers:


Quite different in presentation, here we got some more Grenadiers, this time of the Siberia regiment. All of them wearing the characteristic Kiwer-Shakos. Researching those is a rabbit hole in itself.



These minis are by the Perrys, with added dust, dirt, blood, sweat tears, and general misery (compared to the orderly marching Pavlov Grenadiers above).


Here's the big-hatted man himself, Tsar Alexander I.:


Front Rank miniature, the paintjob's based on this and similar paintings:




This almost brings us up to speed really. I'm currently working on some Harlequin characters, secret stuff I'm not allowed to post, and this guy:





Legs and size comparison:


Say hello to Mr.Stripey! Third Warhound titan I'm doing, one more for Legio Crucius.He should fit right in with his chaps I painted a while ago:







So yeah, that's the latest. Stay tuned, tomorrow morning I'm picking up a submarine from someone who needs his submarine painted on short order!

It's all looking amazing. However those grenadiers look something else. really capture what it's like to be on the battlefield.

Keep up the outstanding work!

Good to see you back on here.
Great work on all the things.

@howie: Thanks very much! Is your avatar from Red Alert2?

@Dr H: Yeah, well, I couldn't stay away. Thanks for the comment!

Right, time to wipe all the things I SHOULD be working on off the table. Yesterday I got one of those schedule-crushing emergencies in:



It's 1 metre long U-Boat (Typ VII C) that's gotta be painted "next week if possible". It's for the popular U-Boat boardgame.



...which comes with a cardboard u-boat with some plastic elements for the guns, snorkel and antennae. A clever and skilled gentleman on boardgame geeks made a printable 3d file. So yeah, this one's off the 3d printer, meaning the surface is just horrible. Spent the past day sanding and filling gaps. It doesn't have to be perfect or on the same level as a proper model, I know. But i'll try to at least get the outer hull to be somewhat smooth-ish. So yeah, I'm currently waiting for the third layer of spraypaint to dry, then I'll sand a bit again, and see what it looks like then.

Nice work on the Napoleonic's Sigur.

I see you are dabbling in a nautical vein for a brief time.

Cheers,

CB

@Captain Brown: Cheers. Well, they left me no choice.


New WIP from earlier today:



Today I mostly did the interior and started working on the deck.

Righty, done.
























.....and the crew, 16 individual sculpts. Gave them two extra thick coats of varnish, because these are gonna get handled a lot.




I worked out the scale of the model (it's just a few cm short of a metre). It's almost 1/72nd scale (1/73rd comma somethingorother), so in line with the crewfigures, which I appreciate.
Read and learned a lot about submarines the past week, that's for sure. Last time I'd done a submarine model must be over 20 years ago. It was also a model with the interior showing, by Revell. Must be the 1/125th scale one.

The thing I'm astouned by the most must be how surprisingly well the faux woodgrain on the plinth worked out. Really glad I tried that. Sanding the monster surely was the most annoying bit about it. Bloody 3d prints. But it's worth it. Oh, also note how I tried to lightly decpict the deck planks. The model's got an entirely wrong texture on the deck. But hey ho. Everything worked out in the end. I like to think that this is the nicest looking 3d printed U-Boat boardgame cardboard submarine replacement in the world. Which is nice. Hope you like it!


Since I finished the model a bit early (Sunday night) I cheekily allowed myself to paint some of my own minis. Two generic regiments of horse for my Thirty Years War collection. Again, it's the chubby 10mm figures by Lancer Miniatures.



Like fool (a damned fool!!!!1) I ran out of flags. Wasn't really willing to make them myself, not the least because I like the ones by Maverick Models so much. By now I'm keeping flags interchangeable for all new regiments as I moved on to doing more generic ones. During that period pretty much everybody wore the same stuff anyway, and regiments quite happily changed sides. Since I gotta do both (or three. Or four. Depending on how you view it, as my figures represented Bavarians, Spaniards, Swedes, Bohemians, Danes, German protestants, Imperials, etc. in the past) sides anyway I have to resort to stuff like that.

Got me another book from the excellent Century of the Soldier series by Helion early last week.



Two things of note: First - I got this one at a local bookstore for a way lower price than at Amazon (who I try to avoid) and the large book store chain I'd used the past years for ordering books. Arrived pretty much as quickly as if I'd ordered from these big copanies too. So do give your local bookstore a chance.

Second: I got two more books from the series and by the same author. The one on the Bavarian army during the Thirty Years War and the one about Wallenstein and his army. Both are excellent. This one about the battle at White Mountain however... the editing seems to be kinda off. there are some typos or missing spaces, and some sentences seem to be written, then the first bit's been changed, but the second bit hasn't been changed to fit the new first bit. I recognize these, because in blog articles and the like I make these mistakes all the time. Since I tend to use overly long sentences.

Anyway, in terms of content it's as interesting as ever. This one's about the Bohemian revolt (so the very beginning of the whole horrible affair that the Thirty Years War was) up to the decisive battle at White Mountain. It even covers a little bit of Bethlen Gabor's (duke of Transylvania, then king of Hungary, who aided the Bohemian revolt) army. What an interesting historical figure, especially in how differently historians depict the guy. His army must have been quite the thing. A mix of pikemen, musketeers and harquebusiers along the line of western armies, mixed with Hungarian formations who are mostly used to defending strongholds against the Turks and chainmail-clad cavalry, trained in attacking the Turks. If I ever get done (or sick of) doing the regular Pike&Shot formations and the usual types of cavalry, there certainly is more than enough choice for additional units, such as Hungarian/Transylvanian cavalry, Poles, etc.


THEN I also finally took final pictures of the Napoleonic Russian grenadiers and the tsar:












Right, that's that then. Hope you like the things. I would also like to add that I also painted the bathroom wall, because I'd gotten a displeasing looking water stain on it. Must have put a wet towel against the wall or something.

Next on the list: finish the Warhound titan! Finish secret things! Finish Harlequin characters, hopefully get to work on another Harlequin project I was promised, finish the Polish Lancers and then REALLY get to work on those 15mm Samnites.

Sigur,

Great work as always. Loved the uBoat crew and of course the Russians.

Cheers,

CB

@Captain Brown: Thanks very much! By the way, look who I found while cleaning up the other day:





Brother Apothecary Sigur of the Warseerers, 5th company, Cpt.Brown's command squad.

That sub is amazing nice job. I just found your blog and have had a blast looking through it. Also enjoyed the Last Days battle reports!

@squall18: Thanks very much! I posted the battle reports on here, because the site on which I usually did went down. Since then a friend helped me put up a new site here: https://www.tabletopstories.net/ . You can find battle reports, rules reviews, scenarios, the odd painting/modelling thing over there, in English and in German.


Hey, quick question, dear dakkaists.... do the more recent (ie posted over the past ~2 years) photos show up for you here on the thread? Somehow I don't get them displayed any more.

Oh, as for updates...

Well, Wolfshead (a.k.a. Mr.Stripey) is finished now, but I only got to take a pretty bad cellphone picture so far:


Better ones to follow!


Meanwhile I went on to work on two harlequin characters. Still WIP in that photo, but they've come pretty far now:


So far so that I put them away and will only give them a final check-up before I send them off to their home. Just earlier today I started working on a Baneblade.