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Simply amazing

@JustALittleOrkish: Thanks very much. I delivered them today, they were received well and with yet another assurance of the minis looking much nicer in the flesh than in the photos. Which means I'm still a crap photographer. But oh well.

Currently painting 15mm Samnites shields. I'm on 96 now. To prevent myself from going crazy I started making gabions on the side for field fortifications for my 10mm Thirty Years War collection. Never did fortifications of any sort, which I want to tackle now. Doing at least 2 hastily-built redoubts (very, very simple ones). First I made five gabions from green stuff, made a press mould from GS (because I seem to have binned the Polymorph pellets I got like over 10 years ago when they were new and never really used them). Now I'd need them. Oh well. So GS press mold it is. Works semi-well. It's just 5 per batch, so things are going slowly. Making more gabions by hand from GS as well, so I'm basically running the prodiction in two different somewhat inefficient ways. Oh well.


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160 done now.

Here's a really bad snapshot of the latest batch:


The more the designs I paint look like IKEA's latest christmas gift wrappers the sooner I should take a break I suppose.

Those shields are amazing though, the colour, detail, and variation!

Fantastic variation in the shields, you must be going mad from fiddling around with the details on them!

Those shields look great. Do you have set variations from a source or are you coming up with them as you go along?

@Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll: Thanks very much.

@IgtR=: Cheers! To be honest, so far it's probably the most enjoyable part of this whole Samnites project. Painitng them is reasonably fast (still unreasonable from a workload vs. "the money I could ever charge for it" standpoint, but that's a given) and cheerful. Just can't do much of them at the same time.

@CaptainWaffle: Thanks very much! I got some templates based on the 28mm versions of Samnite, Italic and Etruscan shields by LBM Studio and some figures other people painted. Based on those I can do most shields or derive similar designs from those.


Heyhey, I finished those fieldworks for my 10mm Thirty Years War dudes now.







Just two for now. Each will hold a full unit (of variable depth) or 10cm frontage or two bases of artillery. Hope you like them! Any idead for how to improve the things?




Also: No more shields painting for a bit as I have to paint Wellington and Picton in 28mm for a Waterloo thing.

Love the shields!

Nice work on the team, shields, and trenches.

Sigur,

A nice "small" update.

Cheers,

CB

@Gitsplitta: Cheers! Had to take a break for a bit due to other commitments, but the shield production will commence again soon!

@Dr H: Thanks, Sir!

@Captain Brown: Yeah, it's always either few big things, many small, or a mix...


Right, last night I played In Deo Veritas again. Guess I should sit down and write a battle report. And a rules review.

Hey hey, ho ho, it's me. Finally got to write up that In Deo Veritas review over on the site I use for that sort of stuff:

https://www.tabletopstories.net/language/en/2020/07/in-deo-veritas-rules-review/



Thanks for reading, hope you find the article satisfactory. I'll see that I get those two battle reports up soon as well!

Love how you addes the gun smoke and burning building effect. Love seeing gamers go the extra step.

It's shots like that that really tempt me to pick up historical 15mm...

@Solar_lion: Cheers. Well, I use the smoke as markers so I remember which units fire that turn (but also for visual effect of course). If anything, there would be lots of smoke on a 17th century battlefield!

@Gwyn chan `r Gwyll: There's several great 15mm ranges out there for early to mid 17th century! I went 10mm, because it allows me making units bigger and more regimented looking. It's also easier on the purse and in terms of painting time. But most people 'round here play the Thirty Years War in 15mm and their stuff looks amazing.

That's 10mm? Wow, I'm extra impressed now!

It always amazes me how realistic the tiny games really look.

@Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll: Cheers.

@Gitsplitta: Yar, the smaller the figures the more important scenery and the general look of the table becomes I think.



Right, I hope y'all like Samnites. Because that's all there is tonight!




That's 52 bases done. Out of a total of 99 infantry bases. Plus 17 skirmisher bases and 8 horsemen bases. Wahey!

Wow, what a riot of color! I love them!!

A riot of colour or a colourful riot? Who knows, it still looks bloody amazing.

Always glad to see battle pictures!

@Gitsplitta: Yeah, they look nice, don't they. They're pretty small dudes, wargames tables are NEVER as well lit as they should be, so they better be colourful and bright.

@Sherrypie: Thanks very much, sherrypie! Can't wait to see them all done and on a proper table.


Heyhey. 20 more infantry bases done:



Happy weekend! What are we up to?

I just got the latest Twilight of Divine Right scenario book in the post. Must be record time from the UK. I think I ordered it on Monday?



16 more scenarios, 11 of them set in the thirty years war, 4 in the Franco-Spanish war (which basically was the appendix to the TYW. In 1648 everybody made peace, apart from France and Spain as the French wanted to settle who's boss in westernmost Europe once and for all), and one scenario set in the Portuguese restoration war. Since 1640 Portuguese nobles led an uprising against the Spanish rulers, which led to a lively scrap which lasted until 1668 and the result of Portugal becoming an independent kingdom.

Apart from that the book contains a basing guide, mainly directed at new players using 15mm figures, a FAQ/Errata for the main rules and the scenario books which have been released prior to this one. In the front of the book we'll find the very useful listing of abbreviations used and an explanation of game terms, so the scenarios can be used with any set of rules without a problem. The scenario maps look a bit nicer than in the prior scenario books I think.

Nice book, well worth a purchase. One thing I notice about the scenarios is that they very often come with a LOT of cavalry units. Given how the game calculates between 500 and 600 men per unit it works out with the number of men listed in other sources I read (lately I read a lot about the battle of Höchst, which is featured in this scenario book, so I was able to compare directly), but I'm not sure if all of those should be treated as separate units. In the end it comes down to personal preference and what you have at hand. By now I got quite a lot of cavalry units, but some of the scenarios (and those from the other book I got) I'll have to 'bathtub', because who the hell has like 30 units of Cuirassiers? ( as suggested by the scenario for the battle of Wittstock from the first TYW scenario book IIRC).

Anyway, I better get back to painting Samnites, right?

Nice work there Sigur.

Cheers,

CB

@Captain Brown: Thanks, always appreciated.


Right, here's 8 more:



Well, I'm kinda running out of things to say about these.... I guess I'll do the horsemen next, for the rest I'll have to wait for the next delivery of bases. Hope you like them. Oh, and have a good weekend!
I played the Untitled Goose Game last night. As fun as you'd think it is. Very pretty too and great music.

....aaaaand 10 more! Happy Monday!



I always keep two bases from the prior batch on the table, for comparison. During the final touch-up stage I got those two mixed into the new batch, and despite a check one of the old bases (from the 8-base update from Saturday) slipped into the new batch's photo. Oops. If you spot the base which slipped in you win the permission to get yourself a Kitkat.

Right, that'll be the last infantry bases for a while as I need new bases and new instructions (mainly for how to use the remaining figures in terms of the commander bases). I'll see that I finish the cavalry bases, but then I really have to switch over to some Napoleonics (and possibly other things as well) until I get the new bases and instructions to finish the Samnites. Hope you like them!

Not only did it get mixed in, Siggy, it ended up...



Have you managed to avoid a, repeating any shields; and b, going insane painting these guys so far?

Permission to go buy a kitkat granted.

a.) I think so, yeah.
b.) I am the potato king. Coo-coo-a-choo.

It is incredibly satisfying to see them all complete and massed up for the field. Great work, Sigur. You mentioned the commission instructions were to not use black. How'd that hold up? I don't think I see any black.

@CaptainWaffle: Thank you. Well, the job's far from done. Still 9 more bases of infantry to do, 17 bases of skirmishers, 4 commander bases and I gotta finish 8 bases of horsemen (I'll get those done tonight). But the ones I got bases for so far all neatly fit that box. Instructions were not to use straight-up black and no blacklining. Which over light grey primer and a painting approach that's very much inks/washes/wet-based is something that was a bit hard to resist here and there. But yeah, No black on there. Instead I used dark grey (sparingly) on stuff like black feathers or the darker shields or shield designs. On the horses I cheated a little and used some black on the manes and tails. Because it belongs there.


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Right, here are the horsemen:






Hope you like them! I think those are the first batch of figures on which I'm aware of reusing a design I used on a prior shield (at least I'm darned sure I did) - the red sun on white I'm sure I used before in this army. Probably also the white sun on red. Because I don't have that many different designs for round shields at hand.

I can't wait to see the whole army completed.

Nice unit of cavalry there, Siggy.

Nicely done. Very together theme. How are you not insane? All those tiny shields...!