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Okay, after all the chattery I guess I should post a picture or two again.


The remaining three dudes from the second unit, flag bearer on horse and general Robert E. Lee:





Hope you like them. I guess Lee's coat needs a bit more work. Meh.



...and now for something completely different (I'm sorry I'm digressing again, but I'll keep it short and to something of actual content). I got a parcel from amazon today containing...



Yus, European Weapons and Warfare 1618-1648 by Eduard Wagner. It's a classic from 1980 I think, recently re-published by Warlord Games (probably to tie in with their Thirty Years War supplement for their Pike&Shotte rules). It's an invaluable resource for anybody interested in the period of the Thirty Years War, if you're a reenactor, wargamer, artist, writer, what ever. 296 pages, full colour and there are colour plates on pretty much every page.

The funny thing is that Warlord Games seems to have printed (it's the same publisher as always, I assume it's the exact same content, layout and so on, it just got an Osprey piece of artwork on the front) a rather small print run because it was sold out immediately. A few days ago I checked Amazon and they actually still had a copy left so I ordered it. Was a bit surprised to get the regular Winged Hussar Publishing edition rather than the Warlord Games one, but who cares.

I haven't fully read it, only leafed through it, but it's a gold mine. As I said, a TON of colour plates and illustrations, great information on various things concerning the war including such cool background info as the speed at which horses moved when walking, trotting, galloping and so on, of course there's the whole musketry drill, the way horses were trained for war, close combat drill and so on. I know it's a very niche thing, but if you're in any way interested in the period this book is the best companion piece you can find. Literature on the period is notoriously scarce, especially if you don't have access to French and Swedish sources (German literature is rather rare actually.). Excellent stuff.

Another mounted DKoK commissar (WIP):

I love the dappling on Lee's horse, very well done!

I like the stark contrast between the horse and rider.

@Wehrkind: Thanks!

@Gitsplitta: Cheers. I put a bit of thought into that whole model because it's supposed to be a showcase thing.




Okay, Deff Korpz of Kragh!

Second Grenadiers squad:


Commissar (again):


Bit of an "army shot":


Twin-linked heavy stubber on the move (again):


Second Commissar (couldn't quite decide which pictures to post, so I'll just post all of them :p ):















"Look at my horse. My horse is amazing."


Hope you like them!




P.S.: Oh, and here's a picture of the last AWC guy from the client's batch:

Oof, those DKOK are outstanding. You can post even more pics of that 2nd mounted Commissar if you like, that pale horse is particularly wonderful.

Sigur those mounted Commissars are rather stunning, I really love how you paint horses.

@sockwithaticket: Thanks very much.

@GiraffeX: Cheers. Painting the horses probably takes longer than painting the commissars themselves. To make things even more complicated FW decided to cast horse and rider in one piece.

Started working on some Space Hulk terminators and an X-Wing repaint.

Over the weekend I wanted to make moulds for a new set of bases and some crates, got all my stuff together, only to realize that after the first pump I was all out of release agent spray. Drove all the way to Big-Artist-Supply-Store only to learn that they're all out of it as well.

So instead I did something I hadn't done in a while and did a little work on some of my own minis. Just the first thing I had at hand. It's the rest of the Australian infantry platoon(two infantry squads of 10 each, platoon commander, platoon sergeant, an anti-tank rifle team of two and a team of two with the venerable 2" mortar) two Indian HMG teams and some dismounted tankers. I had the minis standing around in their primed state for almost a year now. It was a question of either putting them away in a box or getting them done (and then putting them into some box :p ).



Just a little WIP shot.

Amazing stuff all around!

They look good Sigur, although a bit hard to see, it's quite funny I paint my minis then put them away in a box as well.

@Solar_lion: Thanks!

@GiraffeX: Okay, I admit that it's not too much out of the ordinary to put the minis into boxes after having painted them. What I MEANT was that all too often they never get out of their boxes again any time soon.

WIP:


the little truck is just as a pedestal for the lambda shuttle to stand on for the picture. Don't mind it..

The repaint looks fantastic. Love the idea of the ww2 truck being required to give the shuttle a run up to take off.

The black Lambda looks beautiful.

Siggy, the shuttle is awesome! At first I thought that it was a dropship for the truck, like in Dropzone Commander

Edit: grammar.

Those DKoK are truly fantastic! Side note:

 Sigur wrote:
"Look at my horse. My horse is amazing."

Now stuck in my head. Thanks a bunch

@Carlos13th: Yeah, it reminded me of those stories of Rommel strapping airplane engines to trucks to throw up dust and simulate a bigger tank force than he actually had.

@Warboss_Waaazag: Thanks very much.

@Cosmic: Yeah, looks a bit like it, doesn't it. It really was the first thing I had at hand to use as a thing for the model to stand on and at 5am I didn't want to look much further (lest get out the actual X-Wing stand for the thing out of the box).

@gunslinger pro: That's the payback for your avatar being stuck in everybody's head. Thanks muchly though. By the way, only due to your comment the song's stuck in my head again now too. Quoting the song is a game where everybody loses I guess. :p



Freehanding things on the Lambda now. Got all the writing done. Next: freaking freehanding empire logos. Delaying having to start this by posting on forums.

I'm considering making airbrush templates for it, but I have the bad feeling that this would end in desaster on the rest of the model's paintjob...

 Sigur wrote:


@GiraffeX: Okay, I admit that it's not too much out of the ordinary to put the minis into boxes after having painted them. What I MEANT was that all too often they never get out of their boxes again any time soon.

I actually got what you meant, mine don't come out of the box again after either.

The Lambda is looking nice, I've not seen a non white one before.

Update:



In my defence - the beige stripey freehands were only outlined last night. Now they're pretty much done too. Still needs touch-ups on the freehands and elsewhere and some weathering and battle damage and such. Hope you like it so far!

Finished!











White background:










Here's the picture the client gave me and told me "make it so!":




If I ramped up the contrast my version would look even closer to the repaint in the picture. That's one of the convenient things about dark backgrounds: People can turn the contrast to 11 without getting supernova backgrounds. That's why you see all these supersupercolourful chaos marines and such lately. With half the mini being hidden in darkness, because who cares about the paintjob? Anyway, back on topic: I just added this so down the line I wouldn't get accused of ripping off other painters. I waz only following orders!

Anyway, hope you like the shuttle! It was my first x-wing repaint, probably not my last one even though the insane hype about that game (and it's a brilliant, fun game. I just don't dig the fact that it's pre-painted.) is waning a little around here.


edit: Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: The little scribbly stuff on the mid tail wing thing (the top line, the second line is just random stuff more or less) reads "squirrel". The letters on the bow of the spaceship read "nose". Before that I honestly didn't know that there was a special Star Wars alphabet.




Update: Now I'm painting Space Hulk Terminators. I'm painting them in a Knights of the Chalice colour scheme which is a SM chapter who really like chalices and drop iconography because their first chapter master kept the relic of a chalice filled with Roboute Guilliman's blood (they originally were designated as a chapter with a job of guarding special relics and shrines throughout the Imperium), but it was dropped during a space battle so the chapter is pretty much on an endless penitent crusade cleansing spaceships and space stations of space aliens and space vampires and space ghosts. This is the official fluff I just made up on the spot as I wrote this for the Knights of the Chalice and it's canon now.

They look like Blood Angels but with an Ultramarines colour scheme (more or less). If someone posted this on any foruml I would have to bite the fingers of both my hands not to flame this person into oblivion or report him or her for trolling. But such is the way of things. Client wants 'em painted, but not red (because if you remember, I did these CSM termiantors for Space Hulk recently in a dark red colour scheme), but doesn't require me to convert the models (ie cut off all the drops and whatnot).

Here's the WIP test mini for the Space Hulk terminators:



I really like painting blue power armour.


Speaking of power armour, the past week I played HORUS HERESY!!!!112
The way it's meant to be played, in the shape of the 1993 boardgame.



We diced to see who was to play which side, I ended up playing as the Imperial defenders.

Here's a picture of the secret set-up:


There are some instructions for the Imperial side to set up their markers (each one is a military formation, including stuff like titans, imperial guard divisions, arbites, custodes, space marines and so on and characters such as Adeptus Mechanicus General, Sanguinius, the Emperor and so on), for instance Adeptus Astartes units have to be set up in the outer palace, Adeptus Mechanicus units will be set up in or around the factories, some imperial guard units have to be set up in the bastions, the emperor and the custodes have to be set up in the inner palace, the Imperial Fists have to be set up in their fortress monastery or adjacent to it and so on. A bunch of the units (including the important defence laser batteries and also dummy markers) can be set up as the player pleases. All turned upside down.

On turn#1 a random-ish number and kinds of imperial defenders will turn traitor and the chaos player starts his assault, starting with orbital bombardments, after that come the drop pods. At this point the Imperial player reveals his troop locations by turning the chits around. After pretty ineffectual bombardment and traitors (except for the traitors on one far end of the board where they took control of a space port for a little while until they were crushed by the 2nd Terran tank division with infantry support and adeptus mechanicus units.

The main assault was spearheaded by the World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Death Guard and Thousand sons legions, led by their respective primarchs, taking one space port and in quick succession taking control of a bastion by the World Eaters and another one was taken soon thereafter by the Thousand Sons (under heavy losses, including Magnus the Red).

The game itself works pretty much like Battle for Armageddon, making it a not-too-heavy wargame with some pretty neat tactics strewn in as well as the trademark GW wacky/characterful randomness in the shape of Special Cards. The goal of the game is for the Imperials to kill Horus or pretty much stop the invaders from achieving their goals of killing the Emperor OR taking all four space ports and some more things (factories/bastions).

Here's the mid-game situation:


Chaos have the full arsenal at their disposal: Chaotic war machines, traitor titans, chaos space marines, trolls, disc riders, minotaurs, beasts of nurgle, warbands, and so on. And daemons. They have to be summoned, have random stats, if they're destroyed they return to the warp and can be summoned again. All very fun stuff. Otherwise Chaos can not get units back. The Imperial player once per turn can do a building phase in which he can rebuild up to three units (you can not rebuild titan legions or space marines) for each factory he still owns and which haven't fallen to chaos yet.

On turn#1 already I drew the Surprise Attack special card which means the emperor and all formations with whom he's the same space on at the moment (but there's a general cap of 3 units excluding characters and some special things per space) teleport onto Horus' battle barge and fight a round of close combat against him. Which of course isn't unlikely the end the game prematurely. Alas, it didn't work out, despite the Emperor having Sanguinius and Rogal Dorn with him along with a bunch of Space Marines. Horus' crazy strong bodyguards were reduced, but that was it. the battle raged on and on with no clear winner emerging and we ended the game as a draw due to time (we had to learn the rules and all, so the game took quite a while to get started proper).

In comparison to Battle for Armageddon, I think that Horus Heresy is a bit more chaotic (no pun intended) and probably needs less forethought as there are no lines of supply to keep an eye on and the defender can instantly rebuild units rather than having to set up a "build queue" which is worked on for a few turns. On the other hand it's hard not finding a certain charm in the scenario of this iconic climax of the Horus Heresy. It's impossible for anybody to be THAT jaded about 40k. It feels like a cool, highly thematic strategy game with wacky things happening and each of these many, many little fights between formations would make for a great 40k scenario to play. In this regard it almost works as a 40k campaign game too. If you ever find this game somewhere buy it and play it. It's not a great game by any means, but it's a fun one.

-----------------

..and now for something compleeetely different:

Having to put the Terminators aside for a bit, I'm going old-school with this other project:

It's napoleonics, it's proper 25mm figures by minifigs and if I remember correctly, they are straight from the early 1980s. I got 32 of Napoleon's Guard Light Cavalry Polish Lancers to repaint.

This is what they looked like:




Here's one of the fellas in the state I got the minis in:


Here's my repaint:


The horse was completely repainted from scratch, the rider was repainted one surface by another. It took a very long time, so I might just redo the whole bunch of minis from scratch (the riders also somewhat are a bitch to paint. To be honest, 60% of all of this is pretty much freehand work).

My main goal was to keep the style of the miniature as it was, just neaten it up. Of course it still required a complete redo, but i kept the bold, flat surfaces with only minimal highlights and shadings to keep the old-school look. The main focus here is getting the mini to look RIGHT rather than dramatic. To the client's wishes, I painted a little gloss varnish onto the horse where they would look shiny due to sweat. When I visited him to pick up the models he showed me his amazing collection of miniatures and various wargaming projects. Highly impressive.

This certainly is something different. It's really cool working on some old-school stuff for once and keeping it in an Old-School style. I sent the pictures above off to the client, fingers crossed he likes them and that the painting is historically accurate enough. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the whole bunch finished and ranked up. It's something to different tastes, but yet something to be appreciated I think.

knights of the chalice testmini pretty much done. The client approved.

Here's the official and highly limited VIVAT2014 event-only miniature. Like the year before it's something with a specific connection to Austria. In 2013 it was Empress Maria Theresia, the past year it was Archduke Franz Ferdinand (the guy who was shot in Sarajevo which everybody took as a great opportunity to have a world war). Now I'm painting one of the casts for a friend. The mini's painted to wear a K.u.K. army field marshall's parade dress:




In other news, look what came in the mail today:


Got it for comparatively very cheap, completely untouched, everything unpunched, a virginal Man'o'War set. The days in which I scavenged ebay and such for old GW stuff are past me, I only found this on a local trading page and took the opportunity. To be honest, I probably would have been happier with a somewhat less mint condition copy. The way as it is now I barely dare to open the box again or leaf through the rules. I do gaze at the box from across the room, lovingly though every few hours.

I love Man 'o War, I recently completed two fleets Empire and Dwarfs.

My Dark Elves are next they are ready to be undercoated so hopefully they wont be too far away.

Wonderful painting...... and two classic games on one page!

Is there such a thing as too much retro goodness? Emphatically NO!

Any chance of squeezing 'Battle for Armageddon' on as well for a royal flush?

@GiraffeX: Cool stuff. I never owned any Man'o'War minis myself (except for a dark elves Black Arc(?) which I sold to a friend a few years ago for very little money). My regular gaming nemesis gave all his MoW minis away last year. To be honest, I barely dare to touch the set, as it's in all its mint condition glory. And as nobody around me has a fleet ready I think I won't touch the box much for a while. I didn't know the stuff was in SUCH good shape. Usually I'm not the guy who shrink-wraps "collectors items" and such. I'm the first to rip open an old blister pack if I like the mini and all, but with a whole unpunched set of a complete game I won't play any time soon anyway it's a different thing. One thing I did do though: I put the box in the middle of the living room and each time I pass by it I have to smile and it makes me happy just seeing this thing.

@ReductiveTendencg: Thanks very much! There certainly can not be too much oldey times GW stuff. I did play three games of Battle for Armageddon actually, in the fall of 2013 if I remember correctly. Really good game. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures.

@Codsticker: Well, it's the kind of judging I'm not completely averse to. Thanks for commenting!

@ModernKiwi: Thanks! Glad you like the AARs.

@Easy E: Yeah, doesn't he. It's an Alan Perry sculpt, by the way.

So... hrm... what's up? Had a good week? I got some serious work done on the Polish Lanciers.

On Saturday I went to Go!Modelling 2015 at Vienna Army Museum. It's one of the two yearly events (at least I hope that the second one will take place again this year) at this location which miniatures/models play a part in and between these two this one clearly is the bigger one. Last year I was pretty much blown away by the dioramas and models on display, especially the models which were entered in the competition.

This year I went again, but it was more for meeting friends and clients first and for the models and such second. The whole thing looked like it was even more popular this year (and there were even fewer parking spaces).

Another thing I observed was that there seemed to be more 40k/fantasy/sci-fi stuff in general this year, here by visitors from Bavaria:


...and here some more by Tabletop Wien West club:


In general the whole thing seemed a bit more "open" or at least it got more broad attention this year, being reflected in the entries for the large model competition:


Everything has an anniversary in 2015, one of them being the Austrian army. The 60th to be precise. Until 1938 Austria used to have one of the longest unbroken army traditions in Europe. The new Austrian Bundesheer was founded in 1955 after the end of the occupation and was equipped with what was left behind by the allies, mostly US hardware. Funnily enough, this probably was the time at which the Bundesheer was equipped its best compared to other nations' armed forces. When all this initial equipment had to be modernized it was evident that it would be way too expensive to keep up the level of equipment. Small arms and a bunch of vehicles (like tank destroyed 'Kürassier' or Saurer's Schützenpanzerwagen, both of which are currently being sold off, so if you have too much money lying around you can get yourself one of those. :p ) were designed by domestic companies, but other stuff like man portable anti tank weapons and such were harder (and more expensive) to come by. The air force was also a constant pain to keep going. Anyway, pictures! In the very back you can see a Kürassier, next to it an early Saurer APC/AFV with a guy looking out of it.

A bunch of Austrian army hardware en miniature:


Even the old Draken, butt of many a joke in its day, made an appearance, at least in biscuit form:


The Saab Draken was replaced by the Eurofighter around 2005, in one of the shadiest arms deals in the history of everything.


Anyway, here is a very, very pretty vignette Austro-Modell had at their stand:




Adorable stuff. I have no idea if their store really looks like this, but in my mind it does now.

Here are some entries for the competition. It's really just a handful out of lots and lots.

Wonderfully detailled German WW2 APCs in 1:25. Very interesting scale.


A retreat from Moskow diorama. Sorry for the bad picture.


Here's another one from the Austrian armed forces modelling group. Excellent stuff, especialyl with the leafs:


Of course this fella cought my eye as I'm painting a bunch of his comrades at the moment:


Then there was this breathtaking piece. I think it's 1/72nd scale:


I think it's the USS Missouri, showing the Japanese aircraft attack on the ship on April 11th, 1945:

www.pacificwrecks.com wrote:Kamikaze Impact
On April 11, 1945 off Okinawa, a flight of sixteen enemy aircraft were spotted on radar. An A6M Zero approached from the stern and was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the starboard side of the battleship. A famous photo was taken just prior to the Zero's impact.

The plane ricocheted away, causing only minor damage, but the pilot was catapulted from the cockpit, and his body demolished part of a gun mount. The pilot's body landed on the deck and was buried by the ship the next day, with a Marine honor guard firing a salute. A dent in the hull between frames 159 and 165 still remains. Inside a display case are pieces of wreckage from this Zero, believed to be piloted by Petty Officer 2nd Class Ishino Setsuo.

Good stuff, very impressive. The model is HUGE.

Last but not least I spotted a bunch of fliers for next week's event:

Look, that's me on there!

Here's a picture of the booty i brought home from the day:

Tamiya masking tape, two size 1 brushes (without a doubt my most used brush size), two miniature plinths, a rotating display stand and four tree armatures. I've had my eyes on these for a while. They look great.

So that's that. Nice event, very nice meeting up with people, good to have a look at some really cool models and army museum is always a nice location to be at for such events. The lighting is beyond horrible, but the exhibitors learned to deal with that.

Next weekend I'll be at Austrian Salute in Salzburg, along with all my painting stuff, including paint-along things of course and lots of models on display.

Looks like a wonderful time was had... and those are some amazing models and scenes... thanks for sharing them Sigur!

Thanks for sharing. Nice to see stuff in Modelling that happens around the world.

Looks like you had a great time Sigur, looking forwards to this weekends report, those are more my sort of games.

Wow! Loads to catch up on. Love the repaint on that x-wing ship! That looks insanely good and so does that UM terminator. It amuses me that you posted man o' war. For no good reason (other than it rules) I was trying to remember that cover art on the box earlier today. I used to have it as a poster way back when. And thanks for the pic-dump from the show. Some great stuff there too.