Gunfreaks Apartment of war

Union v. 2.0

2012-02-12T00:24:00.004+01:00

I think I've found the right blue now, it's still a little light, but going darker would mean loosing to much detail, infact some detail has allready been lost with this shade, but not to much.
Most importantly there is now a clear diffrence from jacket to trousers.

Tomorrow I'll go at the rebs, trying to find the right gray.

The detial on the folds on the arms are very nice I think,

One thing i've notised is just how natural the figures are, there is always the lure to figure makers to do lots and lots of folds, becasue folds are easy to get to look good, it's much harder blending shades when there are no folds, yet these figures do not have an excess of fold, only on the bent arms do we see any amount of folds, as it should be. And even those folds are no way excessive.

Union 40mm v.1,5

2012-02-11T20:57:00.003+01:00

So did another two figurs today, tried a diffrent take on the jackets, but again, to light.
It it slightly darker tho.

Look at this foureyes, what is a nerd doing with a gun, get that gun away from him before he takes revange on the jocks.

I must say, the faces have so much character, really they are just a joy to paint.

I'm gonna try another go at the blue later to try and get it just right.

40mm Union

2012-02-11T14:57:00.004+01:00

So while I was painting my 10mm ACW I felt a hole in my heart.
After painting some 200 28mm Ancients, the 10mm are a little simple, while I love the look of massed ACW figures, the painting is very mechanical, asebly line stuff, fill in the colors, ad some easy highlights, And I do 30 at a time, it left me a little cold.

Then I rememberd I had like 100+ 40mm ACW, they were for another project that is now dead. But I still have them.
So I thought it was a fun idea to just paint some of them, and really putting in the effort, not havin to think about "oh I have to finish so and so many figures, I have to hurry" ect.

This is painting for painting sake, not having to finish to finish, there is no goal, I'll just paint, and one day, I might have enough to do a small skirmish game. But the game is not the goal, it's simply iceing on the kake, the goal is to paint something VERY WELL.

To do this I only paint two figures at a time, I did two so I can paint two diffrenct poses at the same time, it also lets me paint one figure while the other dries, if I only painted one, I would have to stop up all the time, while waiting for the paint jo dry.

When I did this I made the consius choice to paint the union jackets in a lighter color then what is historic. I did this for one reason and one reason only, it's more rewarding to paint, when you paint very dark blue, alot of the effort you put in, gets lost, it's very hard to spot all the details on dark blue paint, So you might spend 2 hours painting 5 layers of diffrent dark blue, and in the end, most of the effort won't show up.
It's much easier to get a good looking paint job on mid or light blue, in the ned, the resault was mixed.

So here's the figures, I'm 95% happy with them, I went all out with this, almost everything has 3 or more layers. Trousers got 4 layers, jackets got 3 layers, kepi got 3 layers, blanket got 4 layers, face got 3 layers and one layer of wash, musket stock got 3 layers, hair got 3 layers.
The only things that got only two layers is leather, musket metal and shoes.
It's EASLY my very very very best paint job EVAH, but why only 95% happy?

Well the jacket is to light, I said I was going to paint them light, but the jacket is to close to the trousers in color. The problem was simply lack of a shade. You see I found a great base coat, it was just dark enough to use as shade, but then I missed a shade, I have like 8 differnt blues, but still I was missing a mid shade, so I had to use a lighter color then I wanted, which left the whole jacket to light. it still looks good, but the diffrence between the jacket and trousers is to small.

The musket got 3 wood colors, and two metal colors, it got gun metal base with chain mail highlights.

I'm very happy with the faces, first a dark flesh, then a flesh wash, then I did the eyes, then a main mid color flesh and finnaly a very light highlight flesh.

The S&S faces ae great, so much character, and very easy to paint.

So this was very fun to paint, except for the jackets lightness I'm extremly happy with these.

Crazed rebs attacking

2012-02-10T16:37:00.003+01:00

Did another unit, this time reb, this is an advancing unit.

I did this one more uniform, 23 of them have all gray unitform, and only 7 have any butternut, but the diffrent blanketrolls do add to the randomness,

Gray line attacking the blue line

Also I've done some number crunching, I got enough figures for 6 Union regiments, and 4 confederate, as well as sevral generals, and a reb battery of 3 models.

Now thats not enough to game with, but I got a cunning plan, baldric gave it to me, before Blackadder had him beaten for buying to many turnups.

The plan is to buy a mega pack from gordon and hague, this is a new thing, namely plastic 10mm ready painted ACW.

It's great you get ready painted and based figures for about 50cent a figure.

Granted the paint job is very basic, but it can be imporved by a lot by simple adding some more color to the units, and putting some flocked grass on the bases. But even then they aren't going to be a nice as my own painted figures, but they are going to be adiquate.

With the boxed sets and these I'm painting now, I'm going to have 15 union regiments, 13 confederat regiments, 3 reb batteries, 2 union batteries, some cav and such.

About 450 infantry pr. side, That is if all regiments are 30 figures strong, that would be 600 soldiers, which is ALOT for a ACW regiment, I'll also have 4 command bases left over for each side, so by lowering each regiment to say 24 figures I can get another 4 regiments pr. side.

That would give me a good sized division pr, side. and perfectaly gameable.

Look sarge, I got a bluebelly in the eye

2012-02-09T14:47:00.002+01:00

So yet another unit done, I got the flu, but the fever goes up and down, when it's up i'm in bed watching tv or sleeping, but when it's down I do a little painting.

This is a "advancing" unit

So now I got 90 feds and just 30 rebs, next up is two units of rebs.

We got our rats ye damn yankie

2012-02-07T19:39:00.004+01:00

I'm not really sure rebs said ye, that might be more pirate speak, but who knows mabye this particular reb was decended for a pirate or something.

Anyway here is another unit of Evil Yankies,

These are in standard marching pose, quite a few diffrent poses, gives a good animated unit.

60 evil baby eating federals, ready to insault the fine southern ladies..

Here they are defending the fence line, against a huge muteded hobby knife.

Thin blue line

Rebs walking into a world of hurt

See you in hell johnny reb

2012-02-06T13:48:00.005+01:00

Well if they are in hell, then hell has frozen over, as it's snowing like crazy out there.

So finished another unit, this time reb, these were alot harder to paint for sevral reasons

1. The poses, some of the poses, spesificaly one type, had a lot of flash I could not get rid of, they were also partly miss cast, so I had to put all those poses in the back.

2. Those damn blanket rolls, they made it kinda hard paint.

3. the colors, I spent 15 minutes to find the propper highlight for my tan earth/butternut, with my union, I knew exactly which colors to use to highlight, but I had never highlighted my tan earth, so I spend alot of time going through my paints.

I did half in all gray, a quarter with gray jackets with butternut trousers, and another quarter in gray trousers with butternut jackets, I also did two random figures in brown trousers, and the commander got sky blue trousers just to help him stand out.

The blankets just got lots of diffrent colors, red, green, but mostly brown.

Hats are also mostly brown, with some gray and lighter shades.

I might have over did the butternut, I might do more gray next time.

I also did a couple of snake fences.

Rebs talking into the barrles of the yankies.

Back to painting muskets

2012-02-05T11:33:00.003+01:00

So I havn't painted muskets in months now.

So what am I painting, I'm painting 10mm ACW, I have like 150 of these figures from pendraken, but never got around to painting them, this is like my 27th attempt at at doing ACW, but this time I have a plan, so hopefully it will work out.

I decided to do these in a prety standard basing style that will work with a myriad of rules, Spesificaly fire and fury but also others.

I did these prety simple, I did do a to color system tho, both the trousers and the jackets have highlights, the jacket are painted french blue shade, with french blue highlights, the trousers are light blue with bravarian blue highlights. I also decided to do all my black leather actualy in dark gray, I think it works well, as actual black would just not be notisable.

The poses are very dynamic, and there are sevral poses, they come 30 figures to a bag which work out well.

The fence is just a little to big for 10mm.

I want to thank

2012-02-03T21:56:00.002+01:00

So I havn't painted in a long time now, I've got like 7 diffrent computer and video games I'm playing, 4 on my ps3 and 3 on my computer.

But I was looking back, to when I started all this, and there are a couple of guys I want to thanks.

First Lord Ashram, you can watch his blog here http://lordashramshouseofwar.blogspot.com/
He was the one that started my wargaming interest, long long time ago in a galaxy far away. there was a forum called the lordz moding collection, this was a group of people that made mods for other games, mostly Napoleonic mods, they did great work, and Ash was one of the people there, I just hung out there becasue I liked their work, I had nothing to do with it, I just liked it.
And every now and then Ash would show some stuff he did, mostly 15mm ACW and 28mm Napoleonics, and finnaly I had enough and started my self with 15mm Napoleoincs.

I sucked big time at painting, but ash was a great guy, I'm sure he sugar coated it for me, but it made me paint more and more. so he helped me very much at the start of my wargaming career.

The second guy is Mark from Scalecreep, while I don't buy as much form his store now a days I do try and throw a little cash his way now and then, when I started with Napoleonics I didn't know grandiers from linge or linge from carabiner ect. He helped me create my first 15mm armies. Great guy to buy from, has a great store and ofcoruse he runs http://deepfriedhappymice.com/

Anyway that was all,

A bit of this, a bit of that,

2012-01-29T20:44:00.005+01:00

So this one has lots of pictures, it covers about 1200 years.

We start with the recent past only going back some 1000+ years, My first vikings are done, 39 breave vikings, 39 becasue one of my vikings jumped ship and has gone AWOL.

I got very board with these, and bearly got done with the last 10(well 9) figures, I still got enough figures for two more units, but not sure when I'll get around to it.

We then go another 1200 years back in time, and I finished my second and so far last Hastati unit,

I'm not really happy with this light blue armor, just dosn't look right.

My hastati line, 40 figures representing 1200 hastati.

My romans so far, I'm now only one principes unit away from a complete legion.

I also finished another phalangite unit,

I really like this unit, the red and white is really cool.

40 phalangite from two diffrent units

I've decided that all my phlangite units should be uniqe in one way or another, the problem will be to find a cool yet not totaly unhistoric mix of colors for each unit, also so far all my phalangites have been in linothorax, I'm still devided if I want ALL my pikes with that armor or if I should mix it up, I like the linothorax becasue you can paint it in many colors, other armors are not that free when it comes to how to paint them. Also I have deiced that the next unit will have standard bronze colored helmet, just so it won't be to much of a good thing.

Back to ancients

2012-01-27T23:50:00.002+01:00

I did finish my vikings today, but won't post them until the basing is done.

Anyway it's been one of those weeks this week, I havn't been able to sleep, not falling a sleep until 3 or 4 at night, not only that but I've been having headaches on and off during this week, I've cut my fingers 4 times this week, and dropped 2 glasses while doing the dishes.
I even lost one of my vikings, it fell on the floor, and bounced away and I can't find it, looked and looked. Then when I was starting on my ancients again today, I couldn't for the the love of me, find the shield transfers I needed, they were gone. Now I'm bad at keeping my plase tidy, so stuff disapear everynow and then, but I usualy find it with in 10 minutes, this time I looked and looked for 45 minutes, after almost going mad, I looked inbetween the back and steat cushins on my couch, not only did I find my fabled shield transfers, but a found a screw driver, and a hobby knife to.

Yeah it's been one of those weeks.

So yesterday I got Alexander Revistied, this is the 3rd version of Oliver Stones alexander, I havn't seen the movie since it first came in the standard edition in 2004, I just remember I did not like it.

This version was much more apritiated, even tho the battles are still to short and few, they do last longer now, and in all of the hollywood battles made, these are easly top 3 best.
I just bought the move to see a battle with phalangites, but I got alot more, it's not a masterpeice, but I repsect Stones comitment to the movie, he has wanted to make this movie since he started as a director.

Anyway I listened to the directors comentarty today, it was great, lots of historical info and talk about Stones love of the man Alexander, he really has a propper intrest in the period and Alexander.

While I was listening to it, I painted some Phalangites.
I love the Linothorax, you can paint them almost with inpunity. ALMOST.
Fact is we don't even know what they were made of, some say sevral layers of linen, others say they were linen with metal plates inside, some say they were leather. Mabye some were leather others were linen with metal inside. But both leather and linen could be colored in many colors.

I did these in a red theme, the linothorax is red with white borders, the helmet is red, I think they look great, the red white really looks good

I decided to do them a little less uniform then my others, all my others are all in purple linen, but these are a mix of brown and white.

I did have big problems with the shield transfers, for some reason they have problems sticking to the shields, all the badly sitting transfers had to be hidden in the second rank,

This is my successor "army" so far.

Even more Vikings

2012-01-25T21:55:00.005+01:00

Man it takes a long time to do 40 vikings, almost there now, 30 are done, so started on the second base, I also did my first ever conversion, the conversion is to say the least, simple!! basicly cut of a sword hand, glue on a axe hand, takes abouot 20 seconds to do, I really liked my viking commander, I did him with duel weapons, a sword in one hand and axe in the other, ofcourse as I took the pics I realised the damn shield of the guy next to him covers his axe hand, and it's not longer obvouis that he has two weapons.

I did the commander as a grisled old chieften, I think he turned out great.

I also really like the resualt of the metal, it's extemely simple, just paint the metal in chainmail, dunk it with "ink wash armor" then a highlight on parts of the helments and metal on the swords.

I must say the faces on these are great, granted most of the faces are coverd by helment and or beard, but even the commander with out the helment has a great face, that is easy to paint get to look good.

I'm still not sure if my viking battle should be vikings vs vikings, or vikings vs what ever.

I did have an idea about vikings and anglo-saxons teaming up in the totaly unhistoric battle against the normans. but we will see, I'm also toying with the idea of making "imagi nation" type stuff, were you have diffrent cultures. but we will see.

The Vikings part Deux

2012-01-24T21:42:00.003+01:00

Finished the base, 20 hardcore mofo vikings, the base is really crowded, getting four propper lines was impossbile, but that only gives a more mob like aperance, and while vikings didn't actualy fight in mobs it does look good.

I've almost gotten over the shield thing, they still kinda look off, I also was informed that I overdid the shields, apreantly not every shield was cool and colorfull, most were just wood, or a single color. Had I known that I could have saved alot of money, I bought a 132 shield tranfers and they cost almost as much as the figures, I played like £45 for the transfers, I could probebly have gotten away with just some 30 transfers instead of 132.
Well atleast I got lots of them now, and don't need to buy more of them for atleast 300 more figures.

I did alot of spears in the 3rd rank, the idea is that they can back up the sword and axe people,

Then I did mostly axe in the 4th line

And here are a few little known facts about vikings.

1. Female Vikings looked remacably like male vikings, this is becasue if the beard.

2. Vikings loved Techno music

3. Vikings were the first europeans to reach the moon,

4. The reason it's rare to find vikings swords is that they mostly used lightsabers, and the lightsaber hilts hold up badly in the dirt.

5. Vikings fought for the light side, the Normans were vikings that were currupted by the dark side and became Sith,

6. Vikings only slept 3 hours a day.

7. Vikings are classifed as Cheese acording to Taxonomy

Vikings, vikings, vikings

2012-01-23T20:01:00.003+01:00

So I finnaly got my vikings, I was supose to get them on saturday, but the evil post office didn't have the package even tho they said they would.

Picked it up today, primed and glued 10 of them togeather.

I was very happy with the result untill I got to the shileds, the transfers is a little to small for the shields, really to small for just hadding a border to the shield would help, as you see from the picutes, I tried to fill out some of the shields with bad results. on a few others were filling out the shield didn't seem very doable, and the result was even worse, and the problem is that becasue the shields is the big drawer of attention, my decent paintjob on the figures kinda go away and all you see is my fuck up with the shields.

The figures are very nice, great poses, an EXTREME amount of options to make uniqe figures, I have here 10 figures and none look the same, You got swords, one hand and two hand axes, and spears. You also get like 15 heads pr. 10 figures, you get enough swords to do like 5 figures, and enough axes to do about 8 figures, so if you absoulty hate spears you can do a whole unit with just axes and swords.,

It was also a wonerfull experience not to have to paint all that flesh, with my ancients all I did was paint flesh, arms, head, neck and legs, this time I only had a very little face since most of it is coverd by helment and beard, and hands, thats it. the rest is armor or clothes.

I did alot of diffrent color, reds, two diffrent grees, some blue some natural wool ect.

Again huge units, each is going to be 40+ strong, I got enough figures for 3 units and then some.

So good paint job up to the shields, then it went horribly wrong.

Roman cav 2

2012-01-18T22:42:00.002+01:00

Did A second unit of romans, a mix of yellow, red and white themes.

I finnaly found a tirad of yellow that worked, still yellow is a pain in the ass to work with since you have to paint it white first.

I did the shields very basic.

It was fun to paint the cape in yellow.

Back to the romans

2012-01-17T22:32:00.002+01:00

So this was fun, in Hail Caesar, the roman cav is fielded as "small unit" thats 6 to 8 figures, I've decided on 6, for sevral reasons, 1 I can fit 6 cav on single base, When doing Napoleonics, you need to be able to have the cav in single line, but that is not a big deal with HC, as they are always in two lines, that means a single base., 2 I can do 6 in one sitting, thats very cool, it means I can finish a single unit in one day, I primed, and painted these 6 with ease today. 3 Aventine got 12 figure bargen packs, so I get two units for about £32 thats not bad.

In all my previous units I had done them uniformely, but this time I wanted to do them a little more random, the idea is that the cav was poplulated by the elite of roman sociaty, so they had more money and everything to play with, so they are more individual.

Three are painted in red, two in green and one in white with some random shields.

I think this is my best cav unit ever done, first time I've ever painted cav with shields.

I got another unit to paint, then I hope I'll get MY DAMN VIKINGS, if not then I'll go to paint a unit of greek cav, that one is reglar size so it's going to be 12 strong.

Thurephoroi Finished

2012-01-15T17:30:00.004+01:00

So the unit is finished, and I thnik it looks very good. This was so easy compeard to the the phalangite, and much faster, not only were they figure for figure much faster to paint, but you only need 20 instead of 40

So I have to finish my phalangites, still need 10 of them.

As usual I loved doing the commanders

I have another Thurephoroi unit in metal to, I'm thinknig it's going to have a red theme, I'm thinknig red with white cape.

I've now painted alot og greek, some spanish and Carthaganians, Time to paint some Romans again, I have to finish the Phalangites, then I'm going at the Roman cav. By this time I expect my Vikings to have arrived so I'm probebly going to paint those.

Thureophoroi

2012-01-14T00:42:00.003+01:00

You know I'm getting tired of these complicated names, hastati, principes, phalangite, thureophoroi ect. What ever happend to line and light infantry, or even jeger or grenadier, the only name I hate from napoleonic period is voulgitureureuireujijfojeklgjkleejgklrgjeklf I can never remeber how to spell that one.

Anyway here are the thureophoroi for the longest time when painting these I wasn't sure about them, I wanted them to be bright and cool, so I did them in light green, with dark blue cape, and it just didn't look right, but as I added more color, the brown leather, the dark blue helments with white feather and hair, the white shields with blue borders, I think they look very nice.

Still I have no idea if my colors are totaly wack and completly unrealtisc, basicly someone said medetarantin people liked color, so I did a lot of color, but light green just dosn't seem that military, dark green ofcourse is, even purple is more military then light green, light green is somethnig ladies have on when they go to the oscars.

Also there is the idea that these were "lesser" soldier, while not as "lesser" as true skrimishes, they were still lower on the paygrade then hoploites and phalangites so mabye they had simpler colors, mabye they didn't get the expence of colored cloth, but had to use natural color, but on the other hand the helments are quite ordinate so mabye they weren't that low payed.

These were alot quicker to paint then phalangite, I started about 2 hours later then normal and finished about an hour earlier.

Phalangite WIP 3

2012-01-13T18:11:00.003+01:00

3/4 done, again I went over board with the command figures, I did one in a blue theme, with blue cape, blue checkerborad pattern on the armor and blue helment, the other in a red theme, red cape, red checkerboard and red helment.

I've come to the conclution that I LOVE capes, when doing napoleonics I never got to do capes except for a few generals. But when doing Anceints I get to do lots of them, I love them for sevral reasons, one they looks fucking awesome, 2 they are so easy to paint, lots of flowing folds ect. 3 fast to paint, very few things of figures have stuch a high ratio of ease, speed to coolness.

So I got 10 more to do before this one is finished, but I'm taking a short break, they are slow slow slow to paint, the armor got lots of small details, it takes alot of time to do 10 figures, I've been up to half past midnight for 3 days now finished 10 and 10 figures.

Phalangite WIP 2

2012-01-12T13:41:00.002+01:00

Half done with this unit, it's going to be a massive unit, 40 figures in 4 ranks.

Also wargaming has become life thretening, I've only had these 20 figures done for a few hours and allready I've almost died sevral times moving them around, a little careless and you got 20 spears right through your hand.

A lawsuit in the making

2012-01-11T13:16:00.002+01:00

So one of the very talented painter posted some fantastic pike figures,
http://watchthatflank.blogspot.com/

So Now I'm totaly stealing his paint idea, those blue helments were just to cool not to do.
Also some of the figures had purple cloth, and I'v been wanting to paint alot of purple for a long time, I've had had this bottle of purple and never really gotten to use it, only a few small detail stuff. but this gave me the excuse to do them in purple.
So I might get sued or assassinated or something over this, but I had to do it.

So I had one problem, purple is not the kind of color you have 2 or more shades of, so how to shade it, luckely I did have purple ink wash, so I painted them purple, added the wash and then highlighted the purple again, and it was very good stuff, worked great.

I did have problems with the shield transfers it's hard to get them on the center of the shields.

Review of Adrian Glodsworhty Cannae

2012-01-04T12:43:00.003+01:00

So this is the first time I've read book about an ancient battle, and it was quite diffrent from the usual Napoleonics I read, this book is a thin 178 pages pluss pages sources, compear that to the good and nice 500ish pages of James R. Arnold Eylau. Ofcourse this has nothing to do with lazyness of Goldsworthy it's simply a lack of sources, there really is only two main sources, and Livy is at best iffy half the time, So while Arnold got hundreds of sources, from commen soldiers wringing journals, to Napoleon him self.

So there isn't that much to actualy put down in the book, hell even Hannibal one of the all time great generals of history we know little about. So the book is a lighter read then most Napoleonic books, but thats not all bad, I read the whole book in two eveings, I kinda wanted it to last longer. So the book is a cracking good read, Over half the book is actualy showing the campaign.
Then seval pages are used to talk about the armies and tactics, deployment ect.

The battle is actualy just about 30 pages, and some of those pages give a very good decription of mele combat in the ancient times. and talks about just how silly hollywood movies are when it comes to mele combats, which I enjoyed.

I did learn alot from the book, I learned that the romans deployed in an extremly deep formation, sacreficing moblity for sheer weight of numbers. I learned thay my spanish were painted in the wrong color, I also learned that while Carthaganian sosiaty was very class based, with very few actualy having much to say of anything, the carthaganian army was more like a band of brothers. The spanish "merceranries" seem to actualy have bonded with their carthaganian officers and commanders. They seem to have trusted them, they weren't just cannon fodder, even tho the gallic and spanish did take the brunt of the force, it dosn't seem like Hannibal was just throwing their lives away.

It was a very entertaining read, but there is alot of unsertenty. I don't think any other ancient batteles that we have anymore detail on.

So a solid book, an easy book to read.

135 28mm in 25 days

2011-12-28T18:04:00.002+01:00

Ok, this is quite impressive some time ago I did do 1000ish 6mm in like a week, but I think this is cooler, 135 Ancient 28mm, in 25 days, and thats with a week of not painting at all, so I guess you could say 135 28mm ancients in about 18 days. I have no gotten enough figures to do a small photo shoot.

First up the first of two bases of Celt iberians, this is a massive base of 20 figures, they got lots of character, lots of diffrent shields, two diffrent types of spears, swords and axes. So a real ragtag unit, some of the warriors got mail, some got this really cool leather/bronze thing were they got a chest peice made of leather with a kinda boss of bronze ontop of that.
Sevral are totaly unarmord, so this unit will be medium infantry.

And now the photoshoot

The romans move towards the carthaganians

Even tho the carthaganains only got one finished units, and two half inished units, they got basicaly the same number of soldiers.

The carthaganians got 65 figures, 45 vetrans and 20 iberians.

The romans got 70 figures, 60 close order infantry, 8 skrimishes and 2 generals.

So whats next, I'm going to finish the iberians, then finish the half done carthaganians, that will bring my carthaganain side up to 100, I'll then go at that romans, and finish the legion, thats one unit of hastati and one of principes. That will bring the romans up to 110.

By that time or long before I'll get another shipment from Aventine, this will include a latin allied legion, and 2 big units of Phalangite and two smaller units of Thureophoroi. two small units of roman cav, and one unit of phyrric cav. So basicly for this very unhisotric game, carthage and Pyrrhus is allied, so I get 3 carthaganains in a division with the iberians, and one division with the greeks, with two Phalangite and two thureophoroi and the cav.

The romans get their own legion with cav, and the allied legion. When I get this done if I ever did get this done I can have a game.

This is for my very very unhistoric battle, basicly the battl

300 post and some wips

2011-12-26T22:11:00.003+01:00

So this is my 300th post on this blog, yay for me, it would have been cool to have like a big thing to show, like a finished roman legion or something, but I don't.
SW TOR took up like a week of my time, just gaming and gaming it, nothing els, but I reached the point and got bored with it at level 21, that leaves 29 levels left to do before I reach the max on the game, so I doubt I'll ever get there. Right now I just want to paint again.

So another base of 15 carthaganians, or half a unit, I finished the 15 figures in a day, but then spent a week finishing the shields and getting them based.

This is basicaly a unit and half, so it's not a unit, I just felt those 15 looked so alone, I wanted them to be with friends.

But you've seen my carthagainans, they aren't going to change much, so here is something new,

Some Spanish/celt iberians, as you see I went with a green theme on this, I didn't want to do them totaly uniform, so they got diffrent shades of green, well two diffrent shades of green, some are painted with foundry russian napoleoinc green, I like this color, but it's very dark, I then did a few others in coat d'arms russian green which is alot lighter yet still a dark rich green, I did the same with the shields but mixed up a little and did one shield blue, and two shields wood, and added a 3rd type of green, namely olive, so the shields are in 3 diffrent greens, with brown and blue added.

I was a little unsure about these figures, some of the poses looked really wiered, like most of the figures in mail, had this verry odd "chicken dance" pose, basicly he had pulled up both arms like chicken wings, I did not get this pose, it looked very odd to me, not like a fighting pose at all, only when I added the shields did I understand, with out shields, they look silly, with shields they looked nice.

But my biggest problem with the figures was that it was very hard to glue the weapons to the figures, they did not have a propper grip like pose on the hands, so the weapons kinda had to be glued to the side of the fist. But this only applies to one of the poses, the other poses have good grips to glue into, another part was totaly my fault, I read, " the pack comes with apropriate weapons and shields, spears not included" I thought that ment you got axes and swords, but if you wanted spears you had to buy on the side, well I got the figures, and you do get swords and axes, but not enough, less then half actualy, so I now had 20+ figures with no weapons, luckely I did rumidge through my boxes and found alot of wire spears. so it worked out.

As I painted up these figures I was very unsure of them, they looked odd and just not that nice, but two things helped alot, 1 as mentioned the shields, it really makes the figures much better, 2 hair, the last thing I painted was their hair, and damn that was a big diffrence, the figures came to life when the hair was painted.

So these turned out much better then i thought while I was painting them. all the things I thought was wrong with the figures actualy makes sense when they were finished, so they are very good figure indeed

To add to the variaty, I did the leather in diffrent shades, some have light leather, others got dark, some got both.

This is actualy just halv a base, each base needs 4 ranks, thats 20 figures pr. base, thats alot, and that was one of the reasons I did not use transfers on these, I could have gotten them, but I wanted some speed to the project, and so all my barbarians will have simple shields, mabye a little boring, but when you have to paint 40 for a single unit, 40 shield transfers takes about and hours and a half or more to do. So that is time I save. If I were doing a all barbarian force, like if these were going to be iberains fighting only romans on their own, or if they were going to be allied with gauls, then I would probebly have used shield transfers, but these are just going to be mercernaries in carthaganian service, so they can't look cooler then their bosses.

God Jul to all my followers and short update

2011-12-25T20:55:00.002+01:00

So I wanted some figures for this juletime update but non is ready, I got side tracked with Star Wars The Old Republic and spent the last week or so playing it. That was bad, since I had just painted 15 carthaganians, and Only needed to do the shield, so I've now taken a week and a half to finish 15 shields.

So I had a nice christmas with my family and got about £400 in cash to spend, most of it will go to aventine miniatures, but some will also go to gripping beast ect.

I have 15 more carthaganians primed and ready and 40 celt iberians.

I'll probebly have some pictures up with the new 15 carthaganians tomorrow.

So enjoy your time with your family.

Carthaganian Almost a Horde

2011-12-16T16:04:00.003+01:00

So I FINNALY finished this unit, it was supose to take 2 days but took 3 days.
I am sorry but I had to give my command some color, I was going snow blind with all the boring white. So I gave my command some color, one blue and one red.

These do photograph well.

I even did a little freehand, on the banner I painted that "woman" thing that the carthaganians have on some of their shields.

The Carthagarian Horde

2011-12-13T20:22:00.002+01:00

Well not a horde just yet, but 15, I can tell you painting 15 28mm figures is quite a project, When I do napoleoincs I only paint 6 at a time, so 15 is is alot. I had to paint the shields last night since the spears had to be glued to the soldiers, and that takes hours, so I did the shields last night, and painted the figures today, I started to paint at 8 in the moring and finished the painting at 6 in the evening. With only a break for an hour and a half when I went shopping for my grandma. So thats 8 and a half hours of painting, I'm not sure I can keep that gonig for a week. I wanted to paint a unit over two days, thats fine with the romans, since they are only 20 strong, but these are 30 strong, that means 15 at a time. Thats is hard work. And that was with the shields done the day before, with shelds that another hour atleast of work.

But the resualt is hard to argue with. I did these alot more conservative then my romans, basicly the only color the figures have is a few of the shields. I put the coolest shields up front, I really like the red and black one. No color on the figures, it's all white and brown, cloth is white, the hairs on the helments are white, I did think about painting the leather border on the chainmail colorfull, I was planing on each unit, having a uniqe color. But since I went all out on the romans, I guess these can be more low down. So I did the learthe border in natural leagther.

While less flashy then my romans they still look prity damn good If I can say so.

I did experience one problem tho, the bases on the figures are very very narrow, and badly balanced, so they keep falling over so I had to prop up the figures while the the glue hardend a little. This is very anoying.

It's gone man, all gone

2011-12-11T19:50:00.003+01:00

Last Saturday I got 70 figures from Aventine miniatures, today 8 days later they are all gone, not a single figure is still unpainted.
This is 60 close order infantry, 20 hastati, 20 principes and 20 Triarii, 2 generals and 8 skirmishes.

All that is left in this legion is two close order infantry, 1 hastati and 1 principes unit. That means my legion will have 110 figures. Not a lot atualy, compear that to a single brigade of austrians, that has 160 soldiers.

The "divisions" of carthagians will be bigger, I'm doing my Carthaganian infantry 3 deep instead of 2, it has no bearing on the game, they don't get any bonouses for having more figures in a unit, now the rules say the let you make 3 deep battle lines becasue some nations fought in deeper formations, 2 deep line is 6-8 deep in real like, 3 deep is 10-12 and the 4 rank phalanx and war band is 16 deep in real life. Now I have no idea if the Carthaganians fought in any deeper formation then the romans, I actualy kinda doubt it, I think they fought more or less like the romans. But it's simply for show, so it's easy to see who is who, on the table.

The carthagainians will also have alteast one division of Iberians and probebly one of gauls, those are going to be huge, since they use 4 deep warband formation, thats 40 figure units.

Anyway on to the figures, 70 of them painted in 8 days.

The skirmishes was easy to do after the other infantry, like going on vacation, first it was only 8 of them, while I paint 10 of the close order infantry, second, no armor, third no shield transfers.
I did spend some time on the cloth, a 3 layer white color, the wolf pelt was done fast and wrong, first a main color, then dry brush a lighter color over it. paint the eyes and nose and ta da, done.

Hard to hide in the underbrush with bright yellow shields.

Half way there

2011-12-10T23:53:00.002+01:00

And then some, I now only need one small skrimish unit, and two standard units.
I'm only going to have two triarii in the whole army, one for each of my propper roman legions, while my allied legions will only be hastati and principes.

Again I had great fun with my command figures, the cool thing is that you can bascly paint the armor as leather or bronze, I decided to give all my command bronze this time, since they are supose to be the heavies of heavy.

I like the color mix of these, first the enemy have to fight the white, then the yellow, and finnaly the red.

This is shaping up to be a very good looking legion.

Musings about the diffrence between Napoleoincs and Ancients

2011-12-09T22:55:00.003+01:00

So over the last week I've painted 52 Ancients, I've also painted another 20, the week before that.

It has become clear that some how, I'm a better painter of Romans then I'm a painter of Napoleonics, I'm not sure why, I've painted 6000 Napoleonics in diffrent scales, but lets keep to 15 and 28mm, the scales that let you do details and be a little artistic. I've painted problebly 600 28mm Napoleincs, anoter 1500 15mm, but lets narrow it down even more, only the last year has my painting of 28mm, really been much to notice, so lets say 400 28mm Napoleincs and some 700 15mm Napoleonics, so 1100 Napoleoincs to a decent standard, I've gotten some nice comments some people have been very genurous with their comments, some people seem to like my style ect.

But the comments I got after posting my finished Hastati blew any comments I had about my napoleonics out of the water.

I don't know, mabye it's becasue of the slighlty less strict adherance to the standard, mabye it's simply my artistic choice of color that make my ancients pop out more, and no so much the actualy skill. So more my practical aplication of theoratical color mixes, then actual skill with brush.

Now this is ofcourse not all good, while nobody can probebly say out right that my romans are 100% imagi nation, they are probebly not what a real roman unit looked like, I picked the color for the cool look, and that fact that they make shields in so many nice colors, which let me make a theme with my units, Blue/white for my hastati, Yellow/white for my principes and Red/White for my triarii, only the triarii is close to what I guess the colors of a roman unit would be like.

But I asked and said nobody know for SURE the color, of roman units, while white and red is probebly the standard or norm, I made my units on the rather hopefull guess that romans have the same taste in color mixes as me.

Basicly my roman legion is not going to be the most realistic painted legion in the gaming world but it will be intresting and not boring, I apear to have an eye for what looks good, mabye I should become an interior decorator I don't know.

But enough about that, Lets talk about the actual painting.

When painting napoleoincs there is one big chore, muskets, I hate to paint them, whenever I paint figures with muskets, I hate it, it's so boring, brown with metal ontop, From the start of my paintng, I rue the time when I have to start on the muskets, I usualy do this after I've finished with the main colors and flesh, and before I do detail works like straps and facings. Man I hate it.

SO not having to paint muskets is a big pluss for Ancietnts, but instead of 1 chore I now have 2.
1 Flesh, while flesh on horse and musket figures is easy, face, hands and if highlanders the knees. it's fast and easy. I did spend years trying to figure the face out, but got it more or less sorted out. BUT in ancienes, you you face, not only hands but whole arms up to the shoulders, and the legs, not just the knees, but the tighes, and chins, even the toes have to be painted. And while my flesh dosn't look that good, it does take some time to do, I probebly spend 30% of my time on 10 figures just doing dark flesh, flesh was, and light flesh, so thats 30% were I can't really be arstic, just aply the paint, get it over with. It's boring,

2 Shields, this is kida a chore and not, while I thinks it's extremly boring to cut out the transfers, aply them, tuch up the shield, they do look great, And basicly with these big shields, they are like 70% of the impression, that probebly one of the reasons people seem to like my romans, not becasue of me, but becasue the shield transfers from little big men studioes are so fantastic. I just happend to paint my figures to harmonise with the shields. So while I hate to do the shields, it does help the figures so much that it's very very rewarding when you are done, and so it's slightly less of a chore. While I don't think my flesh has any bearings on how good the figure looks, atleast not for the postive, the shields are the big draw the big seller of the figures.
This will be intresitng, as my allied legions, will not be using those great transfers, but I've deicded to make my romans stand out more, the allies will be painted less fancy, the shields will be one color, no markings, so simple white or red shields, will see then if I get the same nice comments.

So far I've only painted 20 figure strong romans, this is fast and easy, two days work, pluss basing. it will be intersting to see what it wille be like to paint the 30 figre Carthagians or even worse the 40 figre barbarians like Spanish and Gauls.

I do know from painting 30+ figure napoleoinc units it's get a little much, you work and work and in the end you only got 1 unit to show for it.

So the question is will my stamina hold out, right now I'm enjoing the crush of first love, never painted romans before, fun colors, small units, how will it be with almost all white carthagians or 40 figre gauls.

Now granted I have over the last week painted much more Romans then I have painted any other period besides Napoleoincs.

This is my track list of late

Napoleonics( billions and billions)
AWI (24)
7YW (12)
30YW (24)
ACW (18)

I have allready painted 72 ancients in less then two weeks. I hope that is a sign I can get a few more units done.
I got a BUNCH of figures on the way, 2 more roman units, I hope to get these done so my legion is finished. 3 units of carthageians, 40 spanish.

So it apears I'm for some unkown reason a better painter of Ancients then Napoleonics, but both periods got their ups and downs. The question is can I see it through, or atleast keep it going for a few more units.

Rome Classic

2011-12-09T20:07:00.003+01:00

I finnaly got to paint Triarii, they have always been my favorite type of roman soldier, the story dates back to 2004, long before I became a wargamer. It was when Rome Total War first came out. In the game you can basicly play any nation/faction in the ancient world, the game starts around the time of the punic wars, rome is starting it's major conquests, Alexanders empire has fractures into the successor kingdoms, carthage is potentaly the new major power in the Meditarnian.

If you play as rome, you follow the republic into the first 100 years of Empire, that means in the early part of the game, you use the Maniple legions, with their Hastati, principes and Triarii.
I liked the triarii from the start, while not as powerfull as the "sacred Band" of Carthage or the Spartans of Greek Cities, they were still very good, the best roman infantry you had until you got the legionary cohorts of the empire.
Ofcourse this beeing a Total war game, they didn't pay that much attention to the details.
The early romans don't look much like they are supose to do, they look kinda like a mix of High Empire Legionaries and what they are supose to look like, atleast they didn't use the Lorica segmentata for these, but the hastati are more or less unarmord, the principes have chainmail which is correct, the triarii have chainmail and greaves.
But what makes the unit look totaly wrong is the shield, they basicly have the square much later shield. and the helmet is wrong ect. It's a mixed bunch, luckely there are mods like rome total realism that give more propper armor and uniforms.
But anyway thats when my love for triarii started, ofcourse back then I didn't know how to use them, so I always placed them on the flanks to protect against cav, after all they were pikemen.

But now when I sometimes take out the old game, I play with propper roman tactics, and I must say, there are few armies that can get through, hastati and principes and then handle fresh units of triarii.

Anyway over to the figures these are as the title hints at, classic romans, that means red. I always inteded my triarii to be red.

I was lucky, the red of the shield transfers matches perfectly with my russet red paint, meaning the shield transfers blend perfectly with the shields.

I also finsihed the bases on the generals.

Generals

2011-12-08T22:03:00.004+01:00

So becasue of my short sightedness, I had to wait for the glue to harden on the spears of my triarii, it takes many many hours for that to happen, so what was I supose to do in the meantime.

Well it happens that Aventine sent along a couple of generals, so why not paint them.

I painted both cloaks red the war color, both have natural leather cuirass, one in red cloth another in white.

I really like how the helment on this one turned out.

First Principes Done

2011-12-08T15:42:00.002+01:00

But there was a hicup, after the first 10 I decided to paint the shields yellow BEFORE I aplied the transfer, so I wouldn't have to paint the fiddely bits after, the resualt was good, the color was much better, BUT ups, the shade is now diffrent on the two bases, the first one got a much lighter yellow, while the second got a much deeper og richer yellow.

Commander, sticking with the yellow white theme, I gave him white leather and yellow borders.

I also did the wolf skin in a gray hue instead of the brown.

Hastati in the front, Pincipes in the back.

The width of one legion is about 30+cm, giving a little room between the units.

Principes half done

2011-12-05T20:51:00.003+01:00

So while I'm quite satefied with these, the chinmail turned out well, but yellow?
I kinda regret buying the yellow shields, it dosn't seem very roman, red, white, purple and even blue yes, but yellow?

Granted I'm a roman noob and know little about it, I decided to give them a theme like I did with the hastati, the hastati had blue white theme, blue cloth, white shield, the officers had white trimming and stuff like that, I dicded to give these the yellow white theme, the cloth is white, the shield is yellow, and the chainmail got yellow borders and trim. I keep the feathers blue/purple as that is going to be the legion sign, all units in this legion will have those feather, if this is realistic of historic I do not know. But I'll find out sooner or later.

These Principes come with a loose arm, so you can make sevral diffrent stances, I know that romans stabbed and thrusted with the sword, so I have given the front rank a under thrust type stance, ready to move the shield to the side, and stabb low to high or center to high. the back rank has the swords in a higher possision.

I gave the shoulds yellow border to keep with the yellow theme. I also gave these more elaborate scabards then the hastati, with yellow in the center, and bronze borderd.

Another small anoyance is the yellow I used on the shields, the transfers are a slightly diffrent shade of yellow, then the yellow I used to fill out the shields since the transfer dosn't cover the whole of the shiled, I had to use my own yellow paint, to color the far edges, but it'a not the exact same yellow, so the shields look slighlty off.

Hastati Finished

2011-12-05T13:15:00.003+01:00

So this is a very good looking unit, I had great fun painting it.
I also did diffrent basings I found the 45x100mm bases to shallow and wide, the figures were to spaced apart.

So I decided to use 75x75mm bases, these are very deep, infact when I use 3 deep formation I can use the same bases, it will just mean a little less room to spice up the base, also since they are 25mm less wide with formation is more compact and just looks much better.

I particularly liked to do the command figures, normaly I hate to do command, they are often bland and unintresting, and I hate to do drummer.

But these were fun, I spend quite some time on them, the one under got bronze lamellar, with white trimming, I wanted to keep the blue white theme, so the command got white trims and white on the helmets and white scabards.

But my favorite is this guy, in leather cuirass, it looks to be greek style, now I did think about doing the whole armor in white, becasue I know you can have them in all white, as I've seen greek hoploites in them, but I didn't want to go overboard, so I kept it in natural leather, with white borders,

I REALLY like him, I might have to marry him, after all romans had no problems with that, he might be my favorite single figure I've ever painted.

So this is my first HC unit, it's a rather od unit, not a full line of hastati but about five Maniple's or half line, or about 600 soldiers.

Roman invasion is afoot

2011-12-03T19:30:00.003+01:00

So they are finnaly here, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity.
I orderd the figures on a Thirsday from Aventine miniatures, 12 hours later and they were shipped. Then the damn british and Norwegian postalservice took their sweet time in getting the figures to me, 10 days it took, you would think that the North sea wouldn't be much of a hindrence with you know planes and boats having been invented, we aren't talking about pre historic migration of hunter gatheres, it takes 2 days with a boat, it takes 80 minutes with a plane.

Lets say I get drunk one evening becasue Ninjas killed my family, I think that would give me cause to drink, then after a wet night, I decide I want to get drunk in another country, so I get on a train to the airport, wait mabye 2 hours for a plane to london, and then less then 90 minutes later I'm getting even drunker at the airport bar at heathro.
So less then 4 hours after deciding to go, I'm in the uk, yet my figures take 10 days to get here and they aren't even drunk.

It's not like the package had anything dangures in them, This is a list of what was not in the package.

Plutonium
Coke
Coke the liquid type
Pepsi
Heroin
C4
Semtex
Dynamit
250 AK 47s
Horse radish

As you see since I have none of those things, it should take the customs people that long to prosses my package.

So I finnaly got the package. And now for some unadoltirated ass kissing.

After I bought the Warlord romans I decided I didn't want to do imperial romans, I wanted to fight carthage, so I started looking for propper romans to use, I googgled this and that, found some here and there, but they never looked nice enough, I'm used to 28mm Napoleonics, were you have perries, Calpe, Front Rank ect.

The metal romans I found looked just off, weird poses, not that detailed, or they were the wrong period.

So I googeled and googled, to my suprise I didn't find avantine miniatures through google but google led me to were els, TMP with an old thread talking about avantine.

So I found the site and fell in love with the figres, the right period, wonderfull figures, I hadn't planed on buying lots of metal but hey what are you going to do.

So I orderd 1 unit of Hastati, Princepei, Velites and triarii, thats about 70 figues, or about half a legion they way I'm going to make a legion.

So as I said the order was shipped with in 12 hours of me placeing it.
I sent a few mails to keith about hisotric info, possiblity of unit deals ect. He was very acomidating, answering my silly questings, giving me quite alot of help in everything I asked.
This is just yet another example of what I've notised with wargaming sellers, they are wonderfull people with great service in mind.
I look forward to the next time I order for aventine.

So on to the figures, I loved to paint these, they were quite easy to paint, beeing mostly cloth, I painted them in a medium to dark blue, infact I used the French blue from foundry triads. I liked the resualt, I also gave them white shileds with dual stallions on them, I'm glad the transfers came with a user guide, since they are aplyed quite diffrently from the warlord ones.
The transfers are quite expencive, £3.5 pr. 12 but they are a step up from the warlord ones, these have lots of detail of the 12, sevral are unik, they aren't 12 clones, one got dirt on it, sevral got diffrent cuts ect. Makes the shields seem more real.

But they also take some time to do, with the cutting, and placing of the transfer and the fact you have to paint the shield first, just doing 5 shields takes probebly as much time as painting 2 figures.

So I'm happy with these, I really like how I got the bronze, I used bronze barrel shade, then armor wash, with light bronze barrel to highlight,

I like the blue I like the shields, tho I expect they will look better once I get the hang of the transfers. I used dark leather with highlights.

The scabard is a little sinple, I've seen people do the scabard very elaborte with lots of color, I deicded to keep my Hastati simple, and do more elaborate stuff for the Prencipei and Triarii.

As I said, I like how the bronze looks.

What has the romans ever done for us

2011-11-28T18:26:00.003+01:00

Besides the aquvaducts, law and order, sanitation, oh and cool armor and wargaming possibilities.

So at first I was quite happy with these, but then I saw these
http://www.aventineminiatures.co.uk/page25.html and now I feel really bad about my figures, especaly the metal armor on those look fantastic, I want my armor to look like that.

So anyway these are a little simple, spesificaly the command, the trimpet thingy is just painted brass, no detail, and the wolf fur, is also to simple, next time I'll spend more time on them, but this is kinda a test unit, and not part of the project, I'll probebly spend more time on the republicans, that are part of my project.

Still not sure what to do with these figures,

Romans Go home

2011-11-26T17:58:00.002+01:00

So I'm working on how my Republican army will be.

I've decided that each Legion will be a "division" in the HC rules.
I've also decided that I'm going to deivde each line into two units. So the hasatiei are 2 units, follwoed by 2 princepei, and 1 triarii, and two Velites so each unit is about 600 soldiers in each unit.

So each Legion will be 7 20 figure units, 140 figue legions.

I'm thinking 2 legions. 1 allied division, and two small cav divisions, 280 roman infantry, some 100+ allies, and I'm thiknig 36-54 cav. Thats 434, quite alot in other words. With width of my table should work, but with my infantry in 3 lines, I really need 6 deep table and not 4, or at the very least 5.

Then we got the evil Carthegeians, I havn't studied their standard if there is a standard deployment. but my units will be bigger, my romans are 20, Hannibals forces will be 40 or large units, so I'm thinking fewer of the large unit to make it up, but i have to study some OOBs, what since HC wants ATLEAST 4 units pr, division, I'm thinking just 3 divisions, but then I have a problem with the cav.
One option is two divisions of African infantry, each with just 4 units, so the army will have 8 large spear infantry units, then another allied or mercanary division, and finnaly two cav divisions on the flank.

Thats all I got for new.

Roman part 2

2011-11-24T23:36:00.003+01:00

So finished the base. I decided I had to rebase them or not rebase, since I hadn't finished the base, The first base was 7.5 cm wide, at it was simply to small for 5 legionaires, the problem is I had no 8 or 9 cm bases, so I had to glue togeather two 5cm bases for a big 10cm one,, that does mean the finished unit will be 20cm, that's quite big, compeard to the 15cm I had planed on.

Anyway I've decided to give a tiny review of Hail Caesar, the rules I'm gonna use.

They are based on the Black powder rules, which I'm familiar with.

There are some diffrences, while I have a good understanding of combat and tactics of the 18 and 19th centuries, I'm a total noob when it comes to ancients.

Therefor, while I can say something about realism of BP I can't really say the same of Hail Caesar.

The first thing I should say that it apears that the book has less eye candy, I havn't taken an exact count of the number of pictures of figures, but there apear to be less of them in this book.

Here are some obvious diffrences, while in BP you can shoot the enemy to pieces, but in hail caesar, you are before the use of the long bow, and musket, while the rules do strech into the period of the long bow, you would need some special rules for them, because in this ruleset, ranged fire is probebly never going to break a unit, infact fireing long range at heavy infantry is at best going to be anoying for them, but thats it, stones and arrows, won't go through a heavy laminated shield then armor. A volley of .79 on the other hand would. Yes, if you get 20+ arrows in your shield it might be hard to use.

So really the only way to break enemy is to go all out, no kissing or boob tuching, but full on 3rd base. In BP most units have 3 in stamina, that means they can take 3 hits, while in HC it's 6, meaning combat lasts longer.

Also almost all infantry has a short range ranged ability, this is a a mix of infantry with javelins or just a few warriors darting ahead of from troops taking a stabb at the enemy.

Anoher diffrence is more formations. In BP you had line, column, square, as well as mixed and skirmish order. In HC you have 2 deep line, 3 deep line, 4 deep line, 4 deep phalanx line, warband, skirmish order. In BP you mostly have line infantry, light, medium and heavy cav. Other then that you got light and guard infantry. And some generic artillery that are mostly the same.

HC got light, medium and heavy infantry, archers/slingers, you got catapracs, heavy cav, medium cav, light cav, horse archers, you got diffrent types of artillery, oh and ELEPHANTS!

The command and control system is more or less the same as BP, units can get up to 3 moves, the movies are shorter then PB only about 6" for infantry, so up to 18 inches of movment for infantry, conpeard to the 36 in PB, that means, you don't need the MAGA FUCKING HUGE table like you do in BP, granted there is no problem changing this in BP.

There are small other diffrences in the command and control system to make it less about fast sudden changes, into a more controled steady move into contact.

What this does, from reading the designer notes and just from reading the rules, is that it's less about exploiting a sudden opertunity, then making a good battle plan, a good deployment and sticking to it.

There is somethings I find a little od, the game uses "divisions" this is to help control the battlefield, and the unit is well not that defined.

While in BP you have simply a battalion or cav regiment as a unit, this is not as clear cut in HC.

While unit, works great for lets say Roman imperial cohort, it dosn't work that great so for everything, like Republican romans ect.

What exactly should a division be? It will be very diffrent for each army I think, I the end I went for each legion should be each own division. So my army might have 2-3 roman legions(divisions) 1-2 allied divisons and 1-2 cav divisions.

The game is more figure heavy then what I think most ancient rules are, I think some of the DBA or DBM or IBM or BMW what ever have single units with less then 10 figues.

And while you CAN play HC with those units, I think most will play with much higher figure rations, I'm doing 20 figure units for 2 rank infantry, with 4 rank, that is 40 figures.

I still havn't decided on size of cav units, I'm gonna have a look at historic cav formations and see what works best.

So my finnal thoughts of the rules, I think they have lots of promise, I would have liked more info and battles with republican romans. It will be fun to see if can stick with this project, or if it's going to be still born.

And now for somthing completly diffrent

2011-11-23T23:23:00.003+01:00

So I've been in a painting slump, and needed to do something new, I have been thinknig of doing roman stuff for quite a while, mostly in 10 or 6mm, but in the end, I went for 28mm. I wanted do it it cheap, so I bought plastics, but there are no plastics for the romans I want, Warlord only makes high imperial romans, which basicly only fought half naked gauls and germans.
While I have nothing against Asterix and Obelix, I want propper war against propper solid enemy armies. My perticular intrest lies mostly at the Punic Wars, but also with a side intrest in conquest of Hellenic Greece.

On a whim I bought the warlord plastics, they atleast let me paint some romans.
The figures are actualy very nice, while the warlord pike and shot and napoleonics are some times not that great, these romans are really good, infact I had a hard time finding metal of republican romans that mesured up to these plastics.

I was planing on just going with the imperial romans, but I found some fanastic looking republican romans from aventine miniatures, so my now cheap plastic project, became a expencive metal project.

Anyway here are the first plastic imperial romans, what the hell I'm gonna do with them I do not know, they aren't good enough to sell, so I'm kinda stuck with them.

While not good enough to sell, they are perfectly fine, a decent first attempt, concidering it's not only my first romans, but my first ancients, it was also my first attempt at using waterslides. that was probebly the trickest part.

While the figures are very nice. The flesh part was a little, a little unintresting, the face is very nice, lots of detail and easy to make look fine. But the legs and arms, really have no detail, there are no mussles to highlight, they are kinda just plastic legs., but then again the shield kinda hides them. Infact the shields kinda hide everything.

They look good, not great but good. But what the hell I'm I supose to do with them, I got 35 more to paint.

2011-11-16T17:02:00.003+01:00

Well the first base is done, it did take quite a while, since I'm playing skyrim, so I play some hours of skyrim, then sit down and watch house while painting.

So I must say I like these even more now that I've painted them, they are still more raw then AB, but they got ALOT of detial, even the cufs are actualy modeled, making them easier to paint then AB cufs.

The only thing thats kinda iffy is the straps, they are a little thin and a little badly modeled, but it's no big deal. They paint up very well, VERY well. Good poses, good faces.

Don't mind the redcoated giants in the back,

I used 3 color system for the trousers and jackets and I think they look very good.

Quite fankly at this pice, I will have a hard time going back to AB, I might have to buy AB for cav since it will probebly take some time before BM comes out with them.

I think this wil lbe a very good looking unit when done.

Very early review of Blue moon Napoleonics

2011-11-14T21:46:00.002+01:00

So I'm painting them up right now, so this is not a finished review, just first impressions of bare metal and primed figures.

I got them, today took less then a week for them to get here from the US, thats not bad, I orderd only enough for a single unit, it was 30 fusliers, 12 elite and 12 command, that actualy leaves quite a few figures left after 36 figures are used. I got 10 fusiliers and 8 command left over, infact I found out I actaly only need 1 command pack pr 3 battalions. I don't know if the command packs are random or not, but this command pack worked out to exactly 3 offciers, 3 sergants, 3 eagles barers and 3 drummers, I use one of each pr. battalion. that works out perfectaly to 3 battalions on one command pack. I also use excatly one elite pack pr. battalions, it that makes things kinda easy to work out. Fusiliers, I use 20 fusiliers pr. battalion, with 30 figures in each pack, that leaves 10 over pr. battalion, but that means if I buy 2 fusiliers packs I get 3 battalions worth of fusiliers. So if I want 3 battalions I need 2 packs of fusiliers, 3 elite packs and 1 pack of command. The price of this is $58 pluss shipping thats a prety good price if you ask me.

The same 3 battalions of AB would cost almost exactly $100, so almost half price, and I'm prety damn sure it would be well under half price when shipping comes into the mix.

But enough about the boring numbers, whats the figures like.

Well atleast for these french, they do not reach the AB standard, they are to crude and raw if that makes sense. they are still a hell of a lot better OG15s, in fact they are no soring past Fantasin and is easly the 3rd best 15mm out there, and by 3rd don't mean they are now as good as fantasin, they are far better then fantasin, but there was a HUGE gap between fantasin and CGM followed by AB, this gap is now filed by Blue moon, and BM is much closer CGM then it fantasin. So now there is a huge gap between fantasin and BM/CGM/AB.

So far I've only painted the trousers so I havn't tried to paint the details yet, so as I said this is only a first veiw review. Even the bases are a big improvment over the old OG, they are still not as perfect as the bases on AB but still very nice.

Painting slump AGAIN, and cash flow problem

2011-11-03T19:44:00.002+01:00

So I'm still trying to sell my AWI 40mm figures, my ebay auction is ending in 5 minutes and no takers.

I have to finish my Prussian unit to, but I just don't feel like painting. I got so many figures to paint but never feel like painting them, I got 15mm, I got 6mm, I got 10mm, I got 28mm, in sevral periods.

I got samurais to paint, Napoleoincs, 7YW, I got a bunch of AWI 28mm to paint.
I just don't have the want to paint. my 7yw figures are just to make money, so no project there, AWI is so so far from beeing playable I have problems beeing inspired, same with my samurais.
I got bored painting my WSS figures, even tho I'm alsmost done with my british battalion.

I also have problems getting money, I've had alot of bills of late, coupled with some video and computer games I bought.

I was hopeing to sell my 40mm AWI, that would give my some spending money. But nobody wants them, poor fellows.

Damn, when I don't paint, there are to many hours in the day.

Why I should never become a Cavalry General

2011-10-30T20:49:00.003+01:00

So we had another game today, The very historic battle, were the french and prussians teamed up against russians and british.

It was a rather big battle, really to big for the table which was 8x6, actualy the table was fine, we just put to much stuff on it.

This time we did try and class some units not just as line, my highlanders got to be vetran, prussian death dead hussars got to be elite, the french dragoons were vetran, and my poor poor russians were second line, so was the landwehr and reserve.

We were four players, one took mostly prussians, the other took the french, on the other side we had one player with russians and a british battery, While I took the british inf and cav, The russians also got suport of a single british light dragoon regiment.
So I controled 5 British infantry and a light and heavy dragoon regiment.

The french/prussians were kinda attacking we were kinda defending. But in the end we both kinda attacked each other in the middle.

My cav was holding the right flank, infornt of my two cav regimetns were 3 regiments of french cav, and 5 battalions of french line.
Basicly my cav was a plug holding up this horde, I was expecting to be over run any minture, either they would advance in square and shoot me down, or they would charge my cav with their cav, My heavies were infornt, but I could not charge their cav with out hitting the square, so I tried a fancy thing, I changed formation of my heavies, to colum of sqaudron, and then sent my light through the heavies. my idea was that my lights would chage sacreficing them self, leaving the enemy cav weakened, I would then use my heavies to punch through the enemy cav, if I beat the first regiment, it would retreat through the other cav, disordering them, leaving my heavies to mop up 3 regiments.

Well that didn't work, when you interprenitrate you have to get 8+ on the dice for not getting faultering. ofcourse I got like 3 or 4, not even close. So my light cav was faulting and my heavies were faulting, easy target for the enemy cav, and wola, my flank was gone, luckely my british infantry did not get faced by this and stood their ground.

On the russian side, we lost control as those 24 prussian jeger skirmishes got sevral hits on a russian battery, sending it retreating, it was basicly what was holding that flank, but the russians stood, tried a charge, the light dragoons on russian flank got beaten by the elite death head hussars, But the hussars ran behind their lines after the fight, theyby avoding getting hit with 12pdr canister. We ended it there, I had been very lathardic with my british infanty, they never got to fire a shot, and only lost soldiers to artillery. The only fireing I did was with my 7 Rifles, they did not get that many hit, but did togeather with the british artillery some damage to the french line, the artillery twice got double six, giving the french faulter statues, basicly cloging up the attack in the center against my brits.

So it was kinda a stalemate, My british were about to be over run, with my 5 battalions against 10 french and 3 regiments of horse. ofcourse beeing brtish, and in line, and a couple of vetran units, the french would have been very bloodied by the attack. But I do think number would with the day, On the russian side, no unis were lost, the artillery was back in place, while the light dragoons had lost sevral tropers and were retreating, they were not routing, and probebly would be back. The russians had started to take casualties. but that 12 pdr battery would do alot of damge if some one got with in canister range.

So A victory for the french/prussians, but not in any way decisive atleast not when we ended it, had we spent another hour, the victory might have been complete, but probebly bloody.

Ofcourse my camera/cell died out because of the battery. So only a few pictures of the first couple of rounds-

At the Start

French

British

The french only got a few skirmishes, while the prussians got a whole a battalion in skirmish order.

The sole british solder to get into it, the rifles.

Horde of prussians

French with skirmishes infornt.

Choosen Men. They lost 3 rifles fast, but then the last 4 hung on the rest of the game, scoring a few hits.

Damn you Zombies!!!

2011-10-21T20:12:00.002+02:00

So I got a came comming up in 9 days, I NEED to finish 6 more dragoon guards, but those damn zombie games got me hooked.

Since Monday I've played 15 hours of Dead Island and 15 hours of Left 4 Dead 2.

Thats 30 hours in less then 5 days.

Most of people will know about Left 4 Dead, it's a zombie game that uses the same game engien as Half Life 2, It's a bloody game, the concept of the game is to get 4 surivers of a zombie apocalypes to safey. But there are sevral thousand zombies in the way. It's a simple game, you got either a melee weapon or handguns, the handguns got infinate ammo. You can also pick up bigger guns like shotguns, SMGs and rifles. These guns got limited ammo, and should only be used when the shit hits the fan, you know when 200 zombies come at you. You mow them down. The resault is bloody mess, brains, arms, legs, heads and guts everwere. There are also sevral types of special enemies that are more dangures.

A campaign is 3 to 5 levels, I usualy kill 150-300 zombies pr. level and close to 1000 during a campaign that lasts about an hour. You can play with up to 3 other people.

It's a very simple game but very fun, and adictive, you can also go online and play a standard team battle game, were one side is zombies the other is people.

Dead Island on the other hand is not a simple game, the concept is actualy very uniqe and fun, You are one of 4 people on an island resaort that for some reason has a plauge of zombies. You are one of 4 that for some reason is imune to the zombies. So natuarly you get all the dirty jobs of saving people.

The game isn't so much a zombie killing game as a roleplaying zombie killing game. You choose from 4 diffrent characters, one is a blunt mele specialist, another is blade specialist a third is throwing specialist and the forth is a a gun specialist. Two men two women. You can play alone or with up to 3 other pople each taking one of these characters. I have two games going, one with a friend of mine, were I play the gun chick, and another were I play alone were I'm a knife chick

As the game starts it's obvious that you are one of the few imune to the plauge, so to help other people you go out into the beutifull but dangures resort, Your weapons? What ever you find, at first all you got is rowing paddles and broom sticks. As the game goes on you get brass knukles, mace, swords ect. All weapons can be upgraded, Making them more deadly you can even mod the weapons, by finding random shit around, like batteries, wieres, nails ect, you can mod your weapons, one of the first effective mods is very simple, it's called nail mod, you need a piece of wood, a bat is the best, but any thick wood workds, you simple hammer inn nails into the top of the bat, and wola, you got a nail mod bat. But it can get much more effective then that, putting electicity on metal weapons is very effecive. You can also make molevtovs with booze you finde around the resort, or make deo bombs ect.

But weapons get worn the first weapons you find like the paddle gets broken almsot right away, the better the quality the longer they last, you can ofcourse fix the weapons on the work bench were up yougrade and mod them, but to fix them cost money. the really good weapons cost a fortune to fix if they get broken. the weapons follow Roleplaying standards, white weapons are cheap and commen, green is better, blue is better still, purple is epic and orange is legenadry.

So when you start your imidiate job is to get the survivors to the life guard HQ, so you wander out into the resort and meet zombies, the zombies are quite nasty half rotten things, at the resort most of them are in badeing suits or tropical outfits, The damage system on the zombies are quite intricate, you can break bones on limbs leaving them defenceless, with cutting weapons arms can be cut right of, but that only means they zombies will try and bite you.
So you bash the zombies, get the suriviors to the lifeguard HQ and from there you get many many quest, all over the island people are in trouble and need your help, rewards can be cash, weapons, mods and always Experience Points.

You level up, each skill tree is uniqe to the character you play, gun chick has ofcourse lots of gun realated skills. You also have one uber skill, that lets you take down hordes of enemies with ease, for the gun chick it's pulling out a revolver that does tones of damage and can be used to take down a dozen lesser zombies. But this skill can only be used when a meter is full up, and the only way to get it up full is to kill, you guessed it zombies. So it's a skill you should only use when it really is getting bad, If you got 12 zombies comming at you, that would be the time to use it, it's a waste on anything less then 6 zombies. Part of you skill tree is to make the meter go up faster so you can use you skill sooner, also you can make it last longer and do more damange.

Like all RPGs you have a main quest/story and many minor quest, the minor quest are important to get lots of XP and nice uniqe items. The quest can be as simple as to get booze to make molotov, or as stupid as finding a womans teddybear becasue she can sleep with out it.

There are 2 standard types of zombies, infected and walkers. infected are fast runners and agile, walkers are your standard garden veriaty zombie, slow walkers. With bad or worn weapons it can take quite a few blows or cuts to take them down, if you get a nice weapon, a single blow can be enough, but zombies go up in level like you, and if you use a level 5 weapon against level 15 zombies you are in trouble, so you always have to be on the lookout for new things to hit them with.

There is also a third semi commen zombie, called thug, these are a lot harder to take down, and a couple of punches from them is enough to kill you. So the best way to take them down is to cut of or break the arms, they can still bite but are far less dangures.

So you do lots of diffrent quest gain level get new weapons, explore ect.
You then get to move to a new area, some distance from the resort is a bad city, that was a slum before the zombie apocalype. It's even worse now, with a mix of new and tougher enemies, gangsters with guns ect. Again you help people, this time people at a garage and a church.

Thats as far as I've gotten, after 10 hours with the first character I've only done about 35% of the main quest.

The graphics are nice and GRAPHIC, arms and legs go like crazy, heads get crushed under your stilatoheels. And yes if you happen to be a bastard, you can cut and mutilate the bodies when they are dead. If you like that sort of thing.

It's as close to a simulator to see if you can surivce the zombie apoacalype as you can get.
It's a very fun game, I was also suprised by how good the guns are in the game, this is by now means a shoot em up, but the guns got a nice feel and good sounds, normaly guns never work in RPGs, like in Bloodlines, the guns were kinda off, But here they are very fun, I love to get into a gun battle with some punks.

So this is why I problebly won't post new stuff on this blog for a few more days, but I have to do those 6 royal horse guards done by next sunday.

Review KR multicase

2011-10-19T22:10:00.003+02:00

So here follows a short and badly writen review of KR multicase:

Background:

It was clear after last game my current way of getting figures to and fro the game was extemly ilconsived. Not ever having to walk around with figures it had never been a problem before.

I needed a way to store and ring figures. So it was multicase for me.

I orderd the case on Monday the 10th, I got a reply saying it was gonna be shipped on Thursday, and it was, what I did not get into my head was that it was shipped with fedex, so it actualy showed the next day on friday, but I wasn't home, I needed to order a new drop of and didn't get that untill Monday, so I got in on Thirsday, so 8 days after I orderd it was here with free shipping to boot, thats right, free fedex shipping. I would have gotten it on friday just 5 days after I orderd it if I had been home.

It wasn't cheap £130 for my triple case, but when you get as good a service as I did it does lessen the sting of the price, it really sucks when you spend lots of money and get terrable service, but these people did everything right, answerd mails in minutes, shipped free fedex, It was a very good experience to buy from them.

The triple case I orderd has room for quite a good number of figures, the foam options I choose was 6 infantry foams, these will let me have 18 bases of 6 figures pr. foam board, so thats a maximum 108 28mm infantry pr. foam board, times 6, thats 624 figures max, I also have 3 foams for individual figures, for skirmish figures, so I can ontop of my 624 massed figures I can have 75 skirmish figures to. And lastly I have 3 big deep foams for cav and artillery. Sadly cav takes up alot of space, I can only bring with me 54 cav. This means I'll probably buy another smaller case just for arillery and cav, and use that case for that, that will mean I can add sevral more of the infantry foams bringing the total up to mabye 8-900 figures of infanty.

Ofcourse thats HEAVY I ogt lots of plastics, but metal is a pain, I hope the quality of the case is such that it can take the weight.

So here is the pictures

Because of command bases I will probebly not be able to get the full 108 figurs pr. foam board. Also I noticed that if I use 4x45mm bases they just fit, bearly, but I got sevral bases that are 50x50mm, and they are simply to big. Anoying yes.

As you see it's quite a deep case, there is 3-4 layers of foam there

Royal Horse Guards part 2.

2011-10-16T18:32:00.002+02:00

Another base done, I did a BIG nono on the last figures, aperantly the Horse guards rode black horses. So I guess one squadron didn't get their black horses.

There are some other improvments to, I used ink wash armor on the gold, to bring out the plate on the helmet.

Ofcourse painting black horses sucks, I did try sevral highlights, but they were to light, I need something that is almost black but not quite, even my darkest grey isn't dark enough.

They are quite a fancy bunch, just to bad their horse furniture is so bland and boring.

Royal Horse Guards Part 1

2011-10-13T18:15:00.003+02:00

So I keep hammering at the British, The next game is still on for the 30th, So my goal is this guard unit and another KGL unit. I have also orderd a KRmulticase, that hopefully was sent today, so it got some 17 days to get here before the game.

So on to the figures, Painted as Royal Horse guards AKA the blues, they are alot more fun to paint then the regular heavy dragoons. becasue in the end British heavy dragoons are a little boring. The saddle and saddle cloth is is very basic, nothing facy, it means they are fast to paint, but also boring to paint. While these have the same boring saddle stuff, atleast you got a very fancy helment to play around with. I only have enough figures for 12 of these, it will have to do for the game on the 30th, but as mentioned I plan on extending this unit to 18.

I'm probebly going to grade these as Guard, tho from their preformance at Waterloo, they weren't very guardish, more like horny teenage boy getting in a fight. General De brigade does give ALL british cav a -2 on the stopping a charge table.

That means that any time you use British cav, there is a good chance it's a one time all or nothing thing.

Now that I actualy got time to paint, the quality is much better then the heavy dragoons, yet I still suck at painting cav.

The horses ofcourses look crappy.

1st KGL finished

2011-10-11T23:00:00.003+02:00

So I finnaly finished this unit, and really finished it to, with colours and everything.

It does look good when done, a propper bastard unit.

As mentioned sevral times what helps the unit is the very nice trousers, can't say enough how happy I am with them, take particular note of the Sergent.

My new brush did ofcourse crap out on me after only 2 days, and I had to use sicors to get into usefull for the last details. But I don't think it is good enough, so I have to get a propper brush before weekend when I'm gonna paint more.

The figures are very animated, looks like a very livly unit

The Flags are on the cheap, warflag flags, but they look just fine.

95th Screening the 1st KGL

KGL part 3

2011-10-09T21:07:00.005+02:00

So did two bases to day, or 11 more figures, since the officer dicided to be a asshole and break apart with arms flying everywere. So I had to glue another figure togeather but it wasn't dry while I painted these.

So tomorrow I'll paint 7 figures, to complete this unit. It's going to be the 1st KGL, one of the best units at the anglo allies disposal. It didn't see that much action, acoridng to Waterloo companion, the whole division lost only 19% Ofcourse 19% castualties today would be a massacre. But for a Napoleonic battle that was as hardfought as Waterloo it's nothing.

So the command figures were a little hard to do, but the drummer turned out ok, and I really like the Sergant.

Also I found that a all firing all loading base didn't look right, also I could only get 7 firing figures in the whole box, thats very few, so instead of having a single base fiering and the rest loading, I debased my figures and spread the firing figures around.

So when I'm done with these I'll get working on my Royal Horse guards "the blues"

More KGL and some more musings

2011-10-08T19:11:00.002+02:00

So Another base done, this one is in fireing pose, I have noticed that Perry british are alot easier to get to geather then Victrix, Goes much faster.

I did have problems fitting the fireing figures to the base, it got very crowded.

Also I'm very sad, it had dawned on me over the last few weeks, that I'm no loger a 15mm Wargamer. I looked at my lables, Only 60 15mm post, while the 28mm are now well over 100.

I have always thought of my self as a 15mm Wargamer first anything els second. But now I'm almost never painting 15mm, espacaly 15mm Napoleoincs. It's sad, it was what I've started with at first I was just going to do 28mm for AWI useing perries. Then it snowballed on me, but it became clear I wasn't a very good 28mm painter, so I just stoped painting them. But I've gotten better and now my my 28mm are genraly higher standard then my 15mm.

So I'm no longer a 15mm wargamer first, which is stupid, since my table is to small for any propper 28mm battle.

I love it when a plan comes together

2011-10-08T00:45:00.002+02:00

So I have found I can be a really good painter if everything comes together, I got the right colors, right figures, right brush ect. Now a gifted painter can make any figure look fantastic, thats not me, I need some help, I've seen people do wonders with Old Glory 15s, I wouldn't be able to make them look good even if I spent 20 hours on a single figure. In 15mm I need AB or CGM, I hope the new blue moon napoleonics will be up there and let me do good work.

So these figures were the resault when everything comes together. I destroyed my favorite brush, it had lasted a year, over the past months it has lost hairs, but it just made it better at fine detail, however, today it lost to many hairs and became useless. I don't take care of my brushes so they only last so so long. But this one had stayed with me for a year.

I had to go down to the nerd store and get some new brushes, I also needed a bigger brush to aply lots of paint, when I do the first cover before I highlight ect. they didn't have the exact fine brush I wanted but I got one that was ok.

Started work on these rifles last night, the shade is russian green, the main color is apple green shade, with apple green as highlight. It worked really well, there isn't much left of the shade, there were very few deep folds, so only on some rinkles in the back is the shade still visble.
I liked how these look, Good clean look, nice green color. I have found that when I get the right color mix, I can do prety good work like these. They were supose to be 8, but the last one fell down from my desk and hasn't been seen since. were it has gone I do not know, but I think I might have a micro black hole under my desk that eats minaitures, becasue this isn't the first or last figure to go missing after falling of my desk.

These are Perry plastic rifles and I just love them, they come in four stadard variations, standing up with rifle at side, standing up with rifle in both hands, half crouched with rifle at side and half crouched with rifle and both hands. Thats like the four variations, but by doing very small variations, the arms with rifle in both arms, can be glued in many many diffrent angles, basicly letting to make dozens of variations, very small variations but you well notice them. So of these 7 rifles, I don't think any are in the exact same pose.

But this was just the apatiser. I did even better work on my redcoats, I'm particularly proud of the trousers. I think I found just the PERFECT colors to mix, in fact I was so happy with it, I didn't bother to add a third highlight, they just looked so natural and nice as is, and I don't see a point of using EVERYSINGLE color you got just to say, "oh yeah I used 7 diffrent greys on these trouser" It's about the resault not the number of colors you actualy use.

I've decided to paint these as KGL, it's a nice cop out, you get to paint "british" with out them actualy beeing british. I think I'll have 3 battalions in this KGL brigade, later I'll make an Havoverin brigade to, so my "British" Will only actualy have 4 british battalions(two of which is scottish) Then 3 KGL and 5 Hanvorain, I'm giving the hanoverian 5, becasue they are going to be mostly militia second class. So I got the hardcore British, the equally good KGL and the less good Hanoverians. So thats actualy 12 battalions, a nice semi large division, With 1 9pdr battery

It will have a Cav divsion in suport, a small Heavy brigade, some 700-800 heavies. A bigger light, with some 1500 light dragoons and hussars. This will give my Two divisions just under 9000, not quite a corps, or a very small corps, I know some french corps were just around 10 000.

So since I'm braging so much about these, lets take a look.

I love the trousers on these(yes I said it again) There is just something nice about the red and grey, they ofcourse got their blue facings since they are KGL Again these are perry, at first I was like "WTF, only firing figures" but they are lovley figures, lost of action in the poses. nice detail, they just look so good painted up. I've decided to do these in a old style platoon fireing thing, one base loading another fireing. If that dosn't look good, I'll switch the bases with another unit, and make one battalion just fireing another just loading.

And incase you are wondering, yes there are two layers to the trousers, it's a very delicate diffrence between the shade and main color. But I do think you would notice if I just did one coat.

The one problem I had was painting the lace on the jackets, the muskets beeing in the way.

Evil Nazis and some musings.

2011-10-06T19:27:00.002+02:00

Did a few Germans, I really like how they turned out, the pictrues did not turn out that well.
I used vallejeo german grey as the dark color and highlighted with with tank blue grey.
I worked verry well.

Well now thats done, lets muse a little. I have now sniffed on or done like a dozen periods, and the funny thing is even tho I really like some periods, I never seem to get the projects online.

I do one of two units and then I get bored, some times I can't even finish a single unit.

Some examples include AWI, ACW, 7YW, 30YW, While I want to game all these periods I just can't seem to paint much of them.

Now lets take Napoleoincs, a period I've litterly painted thousands of these, close to 2000 15mm, some 800-1000 28mm, and I've lost count of 6mm, but probebly close to 4000.

This happens time and time again, I do some other period, and with in 20 figures I want to go back to Napoleonics, this happen just today, after painting a few germans I had a WSS british unit that is almost done, but can't bring my self to paint any more, I just want to paint some British line infantry.

We are also going to have a new Napoleoinc game the 30th. Me and Briefspite are again suplying most of the figures, some of the others might get done with a unit or might buy finished figures, but it's uncertain if any of those figures will show them self on the table.

Briefspite will work on prussians and french cav, I'll work on british.

I hope by the 30th to have two more british battalions, both 30 figures strong, I hope to have lots of skirmishes, since we had a big hole in our skirmish screen, I hope to paint both british and french skirmishes.

And finnaly another heavy dragoon unit.

I have run into a problem, all my figures are based on small table size, so most of my figures are 24 strong or 12 strong for cav, now 12 strong cav is bearly above one and a half quadrons, Briefspite wants his cav units to be 20+, so if my cav is going to put up a fight against the french, I need to ad atleast two bases to my cav units, I'm going to add 3 bases to my heavy dragoons to bring them up to 21 strong and then I'm going to add 2 more to my so far unpainted "the blues" to get them up to 18.

And as I said my two upcomming british battalions will be 30 figures, thats 600 soldiers.

Another problem is how to get my figures to the game, the stuff I used last time was wholey indaicvat. Infact I don't want to bring my figures to another game untill I got a propper way of transporting them.

First Game

2011-10-02T17:16:00.006+02:00

So after years of playing with my self, I got to game a propper game, well wasn't totaly propper, non of us knew the rules that well, only one of us had the Deluxe Rules of General De brigade, I had ofcourse some knowlage since I had the original game, and played it a few times, but there are a quite a few new things to the rules. It was a slow start, but the turnes went faster and faster. We were 5 guys Three on the Allied side and two on the french, most of the figures were mine, but a good portion was suplied by briefspite. The french devided their forces into two "brigades" it was mixed cav infantry brigades, The allies, were devided into 4 brigades, I controled British cav and two protugese battalions on the left flank, the british inf was commanded by another in the center, he also controled the C&C and artillery, and on the right a third player controled the prussians, in a mixed brigade.

The Allies were on attack, but didn't take long for the french to start and advance, mostly becasue the table was only 4 feet deep and if they had to retreat, they would end up off table. So saftey in the middle of the table.

I ofcrouse did splendely I was perfect, Infact I only had 3 castualties the whole game, it might also have something to do with that my flank was dead space, except for one of my portugese battalions that got to fire a couple of volleys I didn't do anything exept march my cav and figures forward. The center ended in a slugfest, with french and british shooting eachother to pieces. It all came down to the right flank, first the badly painted french hussars crushed the nicely painted prussian hussars. Leaving the prussian flank in the air. The landwehr surived a massed charge by 2 battalions and the hussars, but only one battalion actualy made contact, the gave the landwehr a licking. The hussars charged the fleeing landwehr, destroying them, this mean a brigade break test needed to be taken, they failed and so the right flank was no more.

We ended the game there. I was about to charge my heavy dragoons into a french square, hoping for double six, and then rolling up the whole line of french. But that wasn't really a realistic option. So in the end my three cav regiments did NOTHING, ABSOLUTLY NOTHING.
Neither did the French cuirassiers or french dragoons.

We did fiddle around, my two brigades got suport order, so I just moved them to suport the two other brigades, we then failed order change meaning we lost a turn when we did nothing.
We also did a few bad order, like the order was to move oblicly right, but we ended up going straight ahead.

This is the table at the start. A ok, table, not as lush as I like but keeping it simple was a good idea, only forest were rough terrain, and mostly we just moved our units around them, the hills and fields had no effect on movments, but the field were used to block line of sight.

Also to keep things simple, everything were middle class, all unis were line, all generals were avrage. It did mean a little boring fights, but it did helt ALOT to keep track on stuff. So the two hussars fighting were down to dice, since they were carbon copies of eachother. British did get thier +1 in line when fireing.

We also learned that it sucks to move lines around, they don't move that far and they are hard to wheel and stuff. On the other hand, having a firefight in column also sucks, so Basically, The allies hard problems moving, while the french had problems shooing, because it took A LONG Time for them to get room to deploy into line.

As I said the center became a bloody firefight, the British did ok, untill the French got their artillery with canister zeroned on the Highlanders, then the casualties went up fast.

Most of our firefigt was long range and with skirmsih screens, once the screens went away and we got into close range firefights with canister, bases started to have to be removed.

The table was about 8x4, so we had a decent length, but it was very shallow, so we had no reserves.

Lost of mesuaring, and we ofcourse had to check the QRS all the time.

It was a gentelmently game, no body were cheating or trying any shortcuts, we talked we laughed. And we scrached our heads. We should really have had a small table for the rules book and dice, it's not propper game with rules on the table and dice flying all over the place pooking out eyes and such.

Also since I'm a lazy fuck, and havn't botherd to paint any skrimishers, we had a shortage of them, we did have like 25 jegers, that protected the british and prussians, but we only had 6 french, so we deployed a full legere battalion as skirmishes, but simply moved the bases apart.

The French feel a good defence is a strong offence.

Here we see the prussians try and get their unwhealdy lines to move right, with a mix of obliqe and wheeling moves.

Here they british try the same, our master plan was for me to hold the left, while the center and right moved more right, mashing the flank of the french and winning. This didn't go well as I said the British just ended up in a firefight.

And the prussian advance stalled and actualy went backward becasue of EVIL BAD DICE, that crushed my nicely painted prussians. Briefspite suplied the dice to it's totayl possible that he loaded them, after all he looks shifty, I woudln't put it past him. But no I think we were just very unlucky.

So now two prussian battalions faced 2 french battalions and a badly painted french hussar unit.

The brish made good targets for the artillery, bunching up like that. the back battalion got sevral casutalites with out even firing a shot, simply by bounce through.

Here the french are closing on the prussians

Still in colum, they simply planed to charge and bash thier way to victory, and it worked, so who am I to say anything.

Firefight all along the center, here is the only thing my brigades did all day, on the far left of the picture my portugese unit did get to fire their muskets.

The french on our left had been in squre most of the game, a good idea concidering I had 36 cav just on the other side of nomans land.

The french almost won right, here, two battalions ready to charge and a cav on the flank, luckely only one battalion passed the charge test. But it only posponed the end by a couple of rounds.

I'm still stuck, my order was to suport and not move further then that lump of trees.

And finnaly the order is changed, the protugese are still stuck, becasue we simply forgot to change thier orders, but my cav is moving. But it's not all fine and dandy, there is a square infront of me, and if I chage it, the cuirassiers will do the same to me, chances of beating a square with cuirassier suport is close to nill.

For some reason I didn't take pictures of the collaps of the prussians.

This is why you should never trust the germans, if you take your eye of them for a second, they loose the battle or start a world war or something.

Well that was it. At the start we problebly spent like half an hour pr. turn. At the end we were probebly down to 10 minutes even tho alot more happned in the later turns.

So it only took 4 years from starting with 15mm to get a 28mm half game done. we are planing on having a game every 7 years like Vulcans do. We don't want to overdo it.

The horrors of time crunch

2011-09-30T16:32:00.003+02:00

So change in plans. Instead of the allies beeing russo-prussian they are goona be, Anglo-Portugese-Prussian, A totaly unhistoric mix, The british are Waterloo period, The prussians are 1813 period, and the portugese are ofcourse Peninsula period.

We decided to use british instead of russians, becasue of cav, I have only one prussian hussar unit, and thats it. No russian cav, but I got 2 british light dragoons, But we needed a heavy cav unit to counter the french cuirassiers. So now I'm painting heavy dragoons. And I'm painting highlanders, and I have to paint reserve infantry, finish the bases for these three units, and also the bases of generals and all the bases for my portugese.

LOTS to do, this means I have to sacrefice a goat, I mean quality for quantety.

I normaly paint either 3 cav or 6 infantry, Now I'm painting 6 cav and 12 infantry.
I don't make simplery figures, I just do it faster, leading to sloppyness.

Here's the first 6 heavy dragoons, and they are a mess.

I didn't know wjhat exactly was supose to be painted in the facing colors, so I painted random stuff in the facing colors, I tried a fast google search but they didn't say what exactly was supose to be in the facing colors. so I just looked at bad pictures and guessed. So there is a BIG possiblity that they are kinda fantasy unit.

Sloppy work, the horses got just two shades, didn't do anything special with the metal on the helmets ect. All the horses are the same color to, I usualy do atleast two diffrent colors.

Luckely the saddles are very simple stuff, no fancy saddle blankets with decorations.

And here's a badly done base of highlanders with bad kilts.

Time limit

2011-09-28T16:44:00.002+02:00

So I'm back on the Napoleonic waggon, and for the first time, not competely by choice, I would be quite content to paint my WSS and 7YW figures for quite a while still, but I got a date with two fine gentlemen, we are puting on a small game at the local nerd store, they got tables and sutch, it's a very rag tag thing, we are just useing the figures we got. I'm suplying 7 french battalions, 1 french battery, 2 french cav units, two prussian battalions and a prussian cav unit. As well as sevral battalions of russians. But I still need to finish some ods and ends.

So this is what I HAVE to finish before sunday.

Basing for 3 russian battalions.
Basing for 3 russian guns.
baseing for a russian general and prussian generals.
Baseing for 4 french guns.
Finish a russian battalion.
This is a must, and I'm running short of my white glue I use for basing scenics.

Stuff that would be REALLY nice to finish. Russian hussar unit, prussian reserve battalion, and another russian gun.

So for the first time I acutaly got stuff to do before a deadline, another russian gun would be nice, since I think the french might get two batteries, which means they will outgun the russians, which is quite unhistoric. But 3 russian guns is more realistic then four becasue it would match a perfect russian half battery.

I got one base left of russians to do, I'm then going to start on the russian hussars, since the french are going to have quite a nice suply of cav.

Anyway I just finished another base for the russians, it took like 2 weeks to do this one base, it's been laying around for most of that time, half done, I only had musket and straps let to do.

So far the OOB looks to be.

French.

Atleast 11 french battalions

Atleast 3 french cav units.

Atleast 1 battery of 4 guns.

Allies

4 battalions of russians

Hoefully two prussian hussars units.

Unknown number of prussians, I got two finished, and we got 1 more finished, as well as 24 jeger skirmishes, that should give the allies quite a big skrimish advantage

3 russian guns

So what I hope to add to that is 1 prussian battalion and a russian hussar unit.

The other guy is suplying the terrain, Take a look at his blog www.briefspite.com

We are going to be 3 players, useing atleast General De Brigade deluxe. Mabye we have time for Shako 2.

Hopefully some of the nerds in the place will like our game and if we are really really lucky(but highligh improbible) we might get som convert.

Scots Fusiliers 2

2011-09-27T19:16:00.002+02:00

Another base done, this time the command base.

THis is fast getting to be my favorite unit, the only thing I noticed is that with out the bayonets, the muskets are so short, that the back rank kinda disapear, unless you got a very good angle, the back rank just isn't seen, the muskerts don't stick out over the heads of the front rank.

Again the drumm is just a generic one, I painted it red and yellow, since the figures have yellow vests.

Even at this angle you don't really see the muskets from the back rank.

This is a first.

2011-09-26T21:41:00.003+02:00

So I painted up some scotish fuslisers, later named 21st foot. As I painted them I was quite satesfied with them, but I didn't think they were quite as good as my french, almost but not quite. But then I took pictures and for the first time EVER!! my figures actualy look better on the pictures then in real life, every other time I've painted quite a good figure, the pictures never quite do them justice, but this time the pictures actualy look better then real life, not HUGELY better, I mean the real figures dont look crap, but I think some of the red in real life stand out to much, the diffrence from the shade to the main color is a little to drasitc, but in the pictures they blend really well.

So since this is a "scottish" unit I gave them a red headed scottish officer.

I bought quite a few figures, 3 24 figure battalions of british and 2 24 figure battalinos of french.

I decided to make lots of diffrent types of units. In my napoleonic projects, I keep most in marching pose, simply becasue figures that are in a fireing line looks good while in a line, but silly in a column, basicly they would point thier muskets in the back of the soldiers infront.

But since these figures almost always were in line, atleast on my small table. This lets me paint some more intresting figures, I've also noticed something, while these figures are single pose, that is the the bodies are clones, all figures pointing thier muskets have the same body, but unlike the prussian 7YW, the heads are slighlty diffrent, I notised the face was difrent, the hair was diffrent ect. It does give the units not the complete clone look.

So in my brigades, I'll have marching units, units in fireing line, I'll have two diffrent fireing lines, the one we see here, soldiers in the back, while the front rank, holds fire.

The second fireing line, is both standing and crouching figures are at the ready to fire.

I really like how this first base turned out.

Command base

2011-09-25T16:08:00.002+02:00

So I did the command base, which was fun, since the musketeers are single pose, they all have the exact same fold in the uniform, so shading and highlighting gets tiresome, but now I had 3 new types of figures to shade and highlight, The officer was fun, tho I'm not completly satefied with the lacing on the border of the jacket. His face did turn out very well tho. The standard bares were ok, but nothing more, the drumme had some nice folds and stuff to shade and highlight so he was fun, and again I just made a fantacy drum, since I was to lazy to find the propper drum.

I've also decided that, yes I am gonna sell this unit.

Bascily I'm goona try and sell it, for a set price, If I don't sell it, I'll take that as a sign from ARONRA that I was ment to keep it.

God Damn It

2011-09-23T19:17:00.002+02:00

Sorry for the strong langauge in the title but this is pissing me off.

I orderd 24 Prussian Musketeers, thinking I'll paint them up and sell them for a nice profit, I wasn't planing on getting rich, just that if I sell one unit on ebay I get enough cash to buy at least 3 more units for my self for my many many projects.

All was going swimmingly untill I was almost done with the unit, then I thought to my self, I can't sell this, I like it to much. so instead of having figures to sell I now have a new project.

GOD DAMN FUKCING HELL.

This was totaly not in my planes. I bought FR 7YW figures simply becasue FR are the figures I can paint the best, and 7YW is not my all time favorite period, but I can paint it. It was totaly un expected that I would "fall in love" with my own work like this. So Now if I'm gonna paint some units I'm gonna have to paint a period I really don't care for AT ALL, one that I don't want to game, I have thought about Crusades, I can paint some generic sergant at arms, There is one advantage.

1. the units are smaller I paint 12 figures as units, ofcouse that mean I have to sell 2 units to get the price up to one other.

But sevral disadvantages.

1, I have to learn how to paint chainmale, and armor.
2. I THINK the market for crusades is alot smaller then any 18th centuary or Napoleonics, meaning it will be harder to sell the figures.
3. With smaller units, the price of shipping will be bigger meaning less money for me as I plan to offer free shipping. One way of countring this is to sell 2-3 units at the same time.
3. I think most 28mm Medieval figures are now more higher in price then FR, I choose front rank becuase they are fantastic figures and as cheap as 28mm metal goes for these days.
I havn't looked around but if I rember correctly most other 28mm are now more expencive. so agian less money for me.
4, the quality is probebly not on par with FR, another reason I choose FR is that I simply do my best work on them. I do not know how this is going to be with Medieval.

But enough swearing and bitching. Over to the figures.

These are probebly one of the oldest sculpts from FR, I'm guessing this becasue they are smaller, my WSS figures bearly fit on these bases, while these have plenty of room. Also the muskets are alot simpler, and THINNER!! But they are still superb figures, quite nice to see that FR started with good figures right of the bat, probebly why they have to many fans.

These are like most FR one pose, with my WSS i managed to give some varaiaty by adding some at the ready and standing figures with my marching.

I used Foundry "austrian White" triad on the waist coat and breechers. It's not totaly white, but looks the part, I did give some of the figures a very very tiny highlght of real white, but very little, The BIG cross belt was given foundry austrian white "light" and then a highlight of propper white.

The blue is Foundry French blue triad, it's probably to light for propper prussian, but I think it looks quite good.

I just can't bring my self to sell these, I'm painting up the next 18, and then I'm goona buy some austrians.

Keep it simple stupid

2011-09-22T22:48:00.004+02:00

This is the mantra of the SAS, even super soldiers can get in trouble is the plan is to compliacted, the simpler it is, the bigger the chance of succes. I have borrowed this mantra for my russians. After looking at painted FOW figures on the offical site I notised they used a technice I used before on my napoleonics, namly the black only shade. It's a very simple way of painting figures, atleast in theory, it does take some practice to get it right.

So I realised my prevous figures were to busey, while AB Napoleonics will take as many layers of paint you put on them, these might need you to go simpler.

So I tried the black only technice, and I think the resualt was much better, they are simpler yet they look more neat, more pro.

I've gone very basic with these, just black shade, no highlights, I think it's a huge improvment.

So I like the new versions much better then the previous.

More Evil Reds

2011-09-21T14:24:00.003+02:00

The Red horde is taking shape, if I'm goona use Blitzkreig commander, then each base is a platoon, 3 platoons is a company and 3 companies pluss a heavy weapons company is a battalion

It dosn't take up much room so I'm gonna need lots of figures to have a big battle.

Whats this, commie bastards on my blog

2011-09-20T17:11:00.003+02:00

So I was playing Red Orchestra 2, for those that don't know it's a extremly realistic computer FPS, sett in and around Stalingrad, it lets you play as Soviet or German infantry and tank crew.
Unlike standard FPS, here you don't know how many round you got in your gun, either you have to count your rounds or you can check the weapon, and it tells you if you got more then half, less then half or is almost empty. Thats it. Also you don't see your health bar, not that you need it, becasue a single round from even a pistol can kill you. There is no cross hairs, so the only way to aim is to use the iron sights.. You can get lucky and hit some one at close range from the hit, atleast with automatic weapons.

You can also climb over obsticals, so open windows or fences is no problem to climb/jump over.
But what does this have to do with pinko bitches(my favorite line from Die Hard 2) on my blog, well I got this condition, a syndrom if you will, if I get inspired by media, movie, games ect. I have to paint it. So this means yet another project.

I've been trying to do WW2 for a long time, evey time I've basicly try skirmish gaming. but I've come to the conclution I HATE skirmish gaming. I've tried it in WW2 and Napleonics and I don't like it.

So What I'm trying to do is to make a WW2 version of a Napoleonic Divisional game. So instead of controling a squad or platoon, you control a regiment or division or even more. It looks like BlitzKreig Commander is the rules to use. This also means that for the first time I'm doing WW2 in 15mm.

So I give to you the first three platoons of commie scum, I choose Easter fron, becuase, well I'm playing RO2 and becasue it lets you have big sweaping large scale battles, on a relativly flat battlefiled.

I put alot of effort into these, I painted them as 28mm, as much as the FOW figures let you do that. The uniform got 3 colors, main, shade and highlights, the rifles got two diffrent coats of wood, the metal in the LMGs and SMGs got two coats of metal. The helmets got two coats. The field caps got two coats. The faces are a let down I tried to use flesh wash but it didn't work on the 15mm figures. So next time I'll use the brown wash.

I decided not to flock the bases, I just put down single tuffs on brown sand.

I think the genral uniform color, is about right, but I did have problems with gear, the webbing was wine, not that there was much of it showing in the figures, but the backpack, breadbag and Trench tool cover was harder, I did look at orignal gear and it did look quite yellow, so I used a yellowish sand color.

I don't like the bases on the FOW figues, they are really massive and very high for so small figures. they should really be at most half that massive. These figures are much smaller then AB napoleonics, yet their bases is 3 times as tall and massive. Not only that but they are often very uneven, meaing te figures en up crocket on the plastic bases.

I bought these FOW figures just to have some russians to paint, I have orders lots of Peter pig figues that will make up most of my forces.

These figures remind me of OG Napoleonics, lots of "hu" parts to the figures, Sevral times I've asked my self are those webbing straps or just folds in the uniform?

Still got AWI figures for sale

2011-09-17T15:04:00.004+02:00

I still got 3 units of british and hessain 40mm for sale, the price is 144 pr, unit or $432 for all 3, if you buy all 3 I'll pay for shipping

Holy Crap, finished a base

2011-09-16T16:31:00.002+02:00

So I've now painted like 150 figures with out actualy finishing a single base. But I finnaly did it.

Just the basing left

2011-09-15T16:53:00.005+02:00

So this is almost done, just the basing left, like I said 18 figures is a little to little, I need to expand it to 24 at some point.

This is easly shaping up to be my best unit ever.

Review: Last Argument of Kings

2011-09-13T18:05:00.002+02:00

So this is a supliment to the Original Black Powder, some might say, why pay 200kr for a supliment to a book that allready cost 350kr. But I'm a computer gamer, I'm used to having to pay for expantions of games/rules.

I wasn't that overwhelmed by the original BP, I allready had good rules for AWI and Napoleoincs and even ACW, I wasn't doing any colonial, and I wasn't really doing any tactical things for early to mid 18thC, I did have project for 7YW but that was for a grand tactical game using Might and Reason. BUT BP did have lots of beutifull photoes, I often just looked at the pictures.

So when I saw Argument of kings at my store I bought it for no other reason then pretty pictures.
What I got was something much more, instead of covering 200 years it covers about 80 years. It dosn't deal with machine guns or rifled artillery. Muskets, cannon and sabers is what we have to think about. The book is devided into the big wars of ther period, War of austrian succession, Great Nordern war, War of austrian succession, Wars in britian and Seven year war.

Each war gives a short intro into the background to the war, how it went, and gives background to one army of the period and a commander. Armies you get stats and info on include, russia, Sweden, Britian, France, Austria, Prussia and even ottoman. Each war also has a battle the guys at BP has set up and played. Some of which are very big and took a lot of planing.

I was mainly intrested in WSS since this is one of my new projects. But the rest of the book also get me hooked. As with the Original BP there are plenty of pictures, but this time no pictures of stuff I don't care about like colonial. The best thing I can say about the rules is that they make you want to paint figures, The only other rules I can say that about is Lasalle, what lasalle does for me in 15mm Napoleoincs, Last Argument of kings does for me in 18th Centuary. The rules gives you all you need to get into any period of the first 80 years of the 18th C.

The Unit stats looks to work great, the AAR are wonderfull, for one of the BIG battles they put on, you also get a how to manual on how to put on a BIG game with your club.

They are very nice rules, I recomend them to all that want to be inspired to paint their WSS or 7YW figures, I say buy it even if I weren't completly sold in the Original Black powder rules.

WSS French De la Reine

2011-09-13T14:27:00.002+02:00

Hope I spelled it correctly this time.

So it's amazing what the right tools will do, over the last year or so I have used light brown wash on the faces, it worked ok, but this time I tried to use flesh wash, I have tried to use it before but it just had the same color as the flesh, but I let it stand upside down over the night and now it works wonder, it brings out the details perfectly to the point, were I could actualy paint the eyes while leaving the eye lids.

This is the command base, I got an officer, drummer, standard barer and sergant, and two musketeers.

I'm really happy with these, now I just need 500 more of them.

I have orderd 2 more french battalions and 3 British.

It's funny way back when, when I started to paint 28mm, I didn't like the FR style, or chunky style, but they are so nicely made, so much detail. Best faces you can get.

Now the drum, I don't know if it's even close to right one, I was to lazy to find the sources, or I could have asked on TMP someone sure would know. But I was in the zone and didn't want to stop painting while waiting for answer. Thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

This is going to be a small unit of just 18, I find that is to small they don't look like a line then, so I've decided that my next units will be 24 strong, later extended to 30.

More russians

2011-09-11T21:27:00.004+02:00

First I want to thank people for all the comments on the last post, always nice to check out the blog and see 5 comments.

So this is sort of mix and match, I don't know why but the grenadier in coats have gone way from the foundry site, I thought I managed to find then but when I opened the package it was the standard greandiers with out the coat. So for my two units the grenadiers have decided not to cover up in the cold and fight like real men.

This is also not that corrent when it comes to company structure, with the big 4 companies, the grenadiers should be 6 strong on this unit and not 4, but they are 4 simply because of money issues.

If I wanted 6 figure grenadier base, I would have to buy 2 packs of grenadiers, but then I'm stuck with 4 I don't need, this way I get to use up all 8 on two units, becasue of the price of these I had to really squize every penny, no left over figures here, in the end I got just 1 figure short of two 24 figure battalions, but I got a left over officer that will bring the total up to 48.

If I ever get these finished, I'll have 5 Russian battalions, 2 jeger 3 musketeers, or one battalion short of half a division. I also have to finish the hussars and artillery, right now I have 3 guns ready, that can be fielded.

If I get the prussians done I'll have 4 battalions of them, pluss a hussar unit. That can give me a what if force of 9 prussiand and russian battalions, two small cav regiments and a big russian battery.

I'm expecting my local store to stock the warlord russians. I'm not sure about these, the warlord landwehr were not exacly fantastic, I hope these russians are better, it would save me a lot of money if I could fill out my russians with them. or I might have to wait for the perries.

Russians in coats

2011-09-10T21:49:00.002+02:00

So I'm almost completly happy with these. The white is looking good, I used the austrian white triad which is actualy quite good. The brown coats were harder to get, it's almost pefect color mix, the highlight is a little to light that is all, I got a good shade/main mix but the highlights are a little off, almost there.

They are quite fast to paint, I did these with out any facings, I have seen people painting these with red collars and red cufs, others with out, I don't know which is the historic right, but to me it's dosn't look right with colored facings.

That does ofcourse mean these are a little bland, compeard to other Napoleoinc figures, especaly compard to the highlanders seen in the background.

I've also decided to try and improve the faces, not sure how yet, but I'm gonna use this unit to try and get them right.

The Bad and the slightly better

2011-09-10T16:53:00.004+02:00

So I got my russians, one regiment of hussars, 2 battalions in greatcoats and 4 generals.

So I started on the hussars yesterday and they did NOT turn out well, I did save them from total ruin but still.

First I was disapointed in the sculpts, all the horses are basicly the same pose, so are the hussars, only the angle of the head is diffrent, and the pose it self is very static. I don't know if the perrys did these or if they were made later by others, but they are defenatly not up to modern perry standards, but they are still not bad figures, just a little let down after the great russian infantry. And then we get to my stuff, first you had those damn triangles on the horse blanket. That ment free hand painting, which I'm horrible at. got one side of one figue almost ok, the rest are very badly painted. So comes the riders, I first screwed up in the color selection, so I had to repaint, it did save the figures from total ruin, but still not satesfied.

The hussars are painted as Akhtyrka hussars, brown chessnut dolman with dark blue trousers.

To make things more anoying, there is a lot of yellow on them, which means first I have to paint it white before I use yellow, as yellow never overs unless you got white under.

Now over to something a little bit better, a Russian infantry general. Everything is better on this guy, better horse, better everything.

I painted this officer for a couple of reasons, 1 I have about 10 units half finished, so I wanted something I could paint and finish in a day. Second another chance to try out the russian green.

New blue part 2.

2011-09-07T18:35:00.003+02:00

This time with a little better pictures.

Finished another base to. Painting calpe is a realy joy, there are no other figures that take to the paint like Calpe.

The new blue is fantastic, so realistic and nice.

It's gonna be cool to have all 3 battalions done when ever that happens.

New Blue

2011-09-06T18:14:00.002+02:00

This bascily is proof I'm just a young boy in a very old mans body.
I got new foundry colors yesterday, one of them was the french blue triad. and like a little kid, I HAD TO PLAY with my new toy. Problem, what to paint. I tried it on my 15mm French, but they are to small, the pictures didn't show any diffrence from the old blue I used.
So I went down to the store I wrote about in prevous post, and they had just sold the last french perry box, I was planing on painting them as legere to get the most blue.

I did buy the 18c supliment to black powder last arguments of kings, and a bottle of black.
As I was pouting over not getting to paint with my blue, I rememberd I had Prussians, one reserve battalion and one landwehr, so I primed the reserve and started painting, it was quite late, but I almost got them done, so today I only need straps, facing and bronze color.

I love this blue, sadly it's been shitty weather in Oslo for the past 6 weeks, and as it's closing on winter, it's quite dark, the sun don't set untill around nine thrity, but it's just a grey soup, and not much light, so I'm having a hard time getting good light.

Like most foundry triads, two of the colors are almost the same, with the russian green, it's the shade and main color, with this blue it's the main color and highlight, I did highlight it, but I can't see it. I was afraid the color would be to light for the prussian, which did use a very dark blue, but the end resault is just dark enough. But the color is much better then my old blu, this makes the uniforms look like they are actualy made of cloth, they don't look painted, but like they are actualy wearing clothing. The blue also some how, makes the red stand out more, givng a more crisp color to the red. Togeather with the new musket stock brown, these are starting to look very good.

All in all I think this will be a very good looking unit, when it's done.

Not sure when it will be done tho, I got to fix and upgrade my computer, have to work for my parents to get the money to upgrade my computer.

A dream almost furfilled

2011-09-05T19:39:00.002+02:00

So when I started wargaming 4 long years ago, I had to buy all my stuff online, historic wargaming was dead in Norway, all you had was Warhammer, I dreamt of going to my local gaming store and buy a few packs of AB Napoleonics talking with the owner about new and upcomming figures and rules. and by dream I mean DRAM, I acutaly had this reccuring dream of just that.

So for years I painted my figures, had nobody to play with, just painted and painted in the void that historic wargaming in Norway.

Then I started to get in contact with one guy, that was building quite a force of french and russians, buying them ready painted.

About the same time, the local nerd store, that had sold wargammer for years and years suddnely started to sell the new boxes of plastics, First Victrix then Warlord, they got a nice suply of warlord Pike and shote, aswell as Romans and roman enemies.

After a while metal 28mm Bolt action started sell, then Creamian metals, then last week they started to sell Perry plastics, ACW, Medieval mercenaries, and ofcourse napoleonics.

A few months ago, another Norwegian contacted me, he had been A napoloeinc wargamer, but historic wargaming had died out, and he ended up with warhammer, now his back with a vangence, he now paints both 15mm and 28mm and paint them very very well.

So it looks like my isolation is about to die out, mabye finnaly I can game a little.

The only thing that is a little let down, is that the store only sell boxes, if it dosn't come in a box, they don't sell it. So there is no Victrix metals, or Perry metals. you can't buy a single pack of 6 metal perry figures, it's only boxes. And no 15mm, 10 or 6mm figures.

It does limit a little, also they don't go whole heartedly into it. there is a little corner, that sell historic boxes, and some sci fi, while a much more substantial part is devoted to warhammer.

And this isn't a game store, it's a nerd store, they sell lego, bad pulp fantasy fiction, comic books, roleplaying armor and weapons. and boardgames. So historic minaitures is a very small part of the store, I don't think they make that much money of it. So basicly for them, it's about selling a few boxes now and then, making a little extra money, but nothing worth going in deep with metal and big ranges.

You see this with how avalablity is, basicly the don't have much in the back room, what you see in on the shelf is what they got, I whent there today just to get a perry infantry box of french, but they were sold out, and don't know when they get more.

So the dream is almost furfilled, but not quite.

Regiment de la Raine

2011-09-03T20:35:00.002+02:00

Well part of it anyway. Did the first base today, I decided to do it as de la raine, becasue it got a little color, couldn't stand painting all grey infantry. These are Front Rank and are wonderfull figures, I've never been a fan of chunky figures, but they are so easy to paint, and have so much detail. And the faces are the easiest of any 28mm to paint.

I really like the WSS uniforms, there is just something so fancy about them, after the 30 YW some 40 years earlier, were the clothes were lots of leather and it was after all a renesance war, so it's almost medieval in look, it's kinda like it's not medieval but kinda is with the armor ect.
But these now we are squarly in the age of enlightenment, the uniforms are so fancy they are borderline femenin, the long coats and vest looks almost like dreses, and with the white shits under, fleaing out. It's just something od about soldiers dress like they are about to go to a ball, going out and killing eachother.

I also like not having to paint bayonets, it gives the whole unit diffrent look when not having those spear likes bayonets over their head. and ofcourse the tricorne is the best looking hat ever. Lasted in fashion for like a centuary, starting around the turn of the centuary 1700 and leasting in one from or another in fashion untill the dawn of the French revolution.

While the Napoleonic uniforms were colorfull, they still had this kinda military feel. these are just so ponsey, must have been a bitch to fight a battle in.

It dosn't show up, but there is infact a 3 layer coat on the jackets, medium grey, horse tone grey and elven grey, I think they look great, the blue vets sticking out give them color, the breaches are red, but bearly visilble. The blue and red got two coats., for the blue, deadly nightshade, and royal blue, for the red, brick red and russet red. It took quite a while to them, there is alot to paint, faces take concentartion but I think they will look very good when the unit is togeather, this may be my best unit ever.

I did enjoy painting them, even tho I don't want totaly grey units, I did nail the grey on these, they look very good in person. Now I need like 16 of them, pluss atleat 8 cav.

Also if anybody can recomend any books either covering the whole of the WSS, or just the French/British campaigns, I would be apritriated.

Lowering price

2011-09-02T18:01:00.000+02:00

Lowering the price of the trench to £200 pluss shipping

Close call

2011-08-30T22:39:00.002+02:00

Damn close call, after painting 28mm for a long time now, I got this super duper urge to get some 15mm and paint them, I had about $250AU worth of AB ready to buy, when two things stopped me.

1, half of the figures I was gonna order were 1812 russians, BUT Blue moon figures are about to release their Napoleonic range, and while they probebly don't come close to AB, the unpained russians looked fantastic, I might have thought they were AB if I didn't know they were BM.

So if I wait a few weeks I can get lots of russians for half the price or less then AB, the french didn't look that good, so I'll probebly still order AB french, the BM french were in gaiters, I'm not a fan of gaiters on my french.

I also almost bought a box of the new Man at war figures, they are cheap as dirt, and look quite nice, but I have heard they are made of very soft lead, so I might have to stay clear of them. Also they are 1815 style, so if I buy them my french won't match any of my other 15mm.

2. I rememberd that I got some 15mm AB laying around, I really wanted to paint french, and by chance I got a single unit of french, getting to paint these figures probebly saved me sevral thousands NOK.

So I think this unit looks quite good, the faces are a little bland, just huge black holes in the eyes.

The white turned out quite nicly, I just did a simple to tone, elven grey shade with white over, the blue was also a two tone, deadyl nightshade with royal blue over. I gives a nice dark deep blue.

I'm also slowly getting more spesifc colors, my coat d'arms works well for a lot of stuff, but they do have some bad colors, their "wood" brown, dosn't cover black very well, and just looks off. So I got foundry Musket stock brown, as usual the shade is useless, it's to dark to use on muskets, the muskets aren't detailed enough to warrent 3 layers,, but two layers work great, It's quite dark, so you do NEED to use the highlight, but when you do, the muskets looks great, and very realistic.

Also new is that I managed to border the red facings with white, it's easy to do on 28mm, but this is the first time I did it on 15mm.

3 more bases to do, I think this is going to be my best 15mm unit so far.

Selling WW2 trench system

2011-08-30T17:54:00.002+02:00

Ok, just a short notice, I'm selling my grand maner ww2 trench system, it's beufitfully painted by them, it cost me £350 back when I never use it, it just takes up alot of space.

I'm selling it for £250 pluss shipping, this is a big thing, that weighs alot, so shipping is going to be expencive, be warned.

Take a look at it, just click on the WW2 tag on this blog and the first post will show the trench.

Highlander 2, the second film in a series of 4 films

2011-08-29T18:50:00.002+02:00

So I did another base for my highlanders, this is shaping up to be a very nice unit. I did the command base, 5 command figures, officer, 2 ensgins, 1 piper with bagpipes and a sergant.
The officer is actualy in hussar boots, wasn't sure if I should just give them a green highlander color or in the facing color, in the end I gave them simple green, to match the sash. These are actualy very nice figures, the face got more detail then other perry figures, the perry plastics and perry AWI have very plain faces, these have more of everything, making the face easier to paint and give character.

I tried to get better pictures, I put the unit in the window to get more light, but it's overcast and dark, it did help.

I'm trying to figure out how many figures I can get, I got two boxes of perry british, they are in those damn fireing poses, but I got them so I guess I can paint them. But I need more grey primer.

WIP 92nd highlanders

2011-08-28T21:29:00.003+02:00

So in a rare happening, I can say I'm very happy with them.
I'm particulary happy with the red, I got this really nice shade and highlight effect, infact the effect was so good with just two shades, I just used the 3rd highlight in a couple of the figures were it was needed.

Now just becasue I'm verry happy dosn't mean they are perfect, the kilt is well it is what it is, it looks like a kilt, and you should be able to see which tartan it is, but thats about it, nothing great about it.

The second problem is only a problem on the pictures, I did not see it untill I got to see the full size pictures after I uploaded them, and that problem is that the grey primer shows through a few places, especaly in the area were the neck meets the chest in that triangle, it's very grey.

I'm also quite happy with the looks of the feather cap, the square, "tartan" under the feathers look good, it's basicly just small red, white and green squares, But they look good.

Useing grey primer has some advantages and some disadvatages, one of the advantages is that red is much easier to paint, I just paint the jacket in brick red, go over with russet red, and on a couple of figures I gave an extra highlight of angle red. One of the disadvantages are that you have to paint stuff you normaly don't have to paint, the black feathers(or a shako if they are wearing that) you have to paint the backpak, but worst of all is the shoes, I don't know what it is, but the shoes are just kinda od to paint.

Even the faces turned out ok,(well 3 of them) the 3 not so good ended up in the back rank.

These are perry metal, and very nice, lots of detailes on them, easy to paint the details to.

I see on the pics that I mixed up the figues, all the elite company figures should be on the left, I have fixed it now, the glue wasn't dry so it wasn't a problem.

Cuirassier WIP

2011-08-27T19:16:00.003+02:00

So I got this BIG order of perry stuff, metal and plastics. and this is the first unit of that lot painted. Well not unit, half unit, I still need 6 more painted. all my cav units are 12 strong, it's the smallest I can paint and it still looks like a unit. Anything less just looks like small detachments. The problem is that 12 figures is 240 troopers, and 240 is kinda a od number, 200 is the biggest for a single squadron, so 240 has to be to quite small squadrons. I do 12 because of space problems, 12 figures allready take up 24cm, I would have liked to have some random sizes, it is kinda silly that every single cav unit in a battle happend to be 240 strong. a few bigger units would be cool.

So now I hate when you paint a a new types of figures, I always spend the first 20 or so figures just getting to know them, Were do the details go, were can you get the best effect here and there ect. in the end they look perfectly ok, the horses are fine, I did alot of detail on them, giving them socks, face marks, shading them, even painting the hoofs, it helps the unit looks better, more well done.

One thing I suck at is free hand, on the saddle blanket and painting the regimental number on the cloacks packed on the back of the horse.

This is all for today, my chicken is done, food time!

Russians so far

2011-08-26T21:26:00.004+02:00

So I've run out of Russians to paint, just as I got the foundry paints.

This is going to be one strange force, the first one painted are the ones in greatcoats, some year and a half ago, they are a totaly diffrent style from the one I use now, faces totaly diffrent ect.
Then not that long ago I painted one jeger unit, again diffrent style, faces diffrent, they are quite badly painted actualy I had an off week when I did them, the second big jeger unit, is more or less my current style, it got alot more detail then the first jeger unit, mostly thanks to a guy known as Greystreak, his wonderfull russians that I think is the definate russian 28mm out there, was perfect, I used his stuff as a painting guide, ofcourse I couldn't replicate his quality, but it did show me all the little detales needed to be painted, like the red stripe down the trousers of the jegers, a nice detal I added to the second jeger unit, not on the first, another was the red stirpes on the tassles on the short saber. Basicly these jegers had tonnes of more small details then the first.

But then I got the russian green from foundry, while I wasn't sure about them at first, after paint those last 6 figures, I'm actualy quite happy with it, the shade ect. don't show up on pictures, they look very nice in person under good light, a second bonus with this very dark green is that other colors stand out more, the red facings, the yellow shoulder straps ect. Red against this green looks very good.

Anyway this is the force so far, it's quite spread out, one battalion from one brigade, two battalions from the jeger brigade, and a single base from the last brigade. As well has half the artillery. No officers so far.

The first unit I painted for the russians, the first of a brigade of musketeers, this brigade is going to be all greatcoats, I got two more battalions on the way, as well as two generals.

Half the jeger brigade, one old and one new,

Artillery, or half of it anyway

Freshly painted, now the green just looks black here, but I did use all 3 colors in the triad, and while I'm not really sure what the point of the grene shade is, since it's basicly the same color as the main color, but the main color with the highlight looks really good in person.

Again the face looks crapy on the photo, but in person it looks fine and even got diffrent characters in there.

As I said I ran out of figures, so these guys are gone be alone until Foundry come back with 20 or 30% sale. I wanted to see just how much a single unit of 24 figues would cost, 65 fuckings pound, thats more then a unit of 24 front rank 40mm figures(alot more) It's really should be iligal to be that raw capitalistic, I'm sure Penn Jillete would be proud of them.

Jegers.

Damn I want to paint more figures with my new russian green, but I don't have any.

Russian artillery

2011-08-25T20:26:00.004+02:00

So I havn't been doing much of anything of late, I did the last base for the 36 figure russian jeger battalion, I tried to use the authentic russian green triad from foundry. In the end I used the highlight green as main green color, and just shaded them with the russian green. Now a great effect.

So I treid it again with some artillerists, and the resault was alot better.

Anyway here is the old style artillery, both the gunners and gun is painted with just random colors I had.

And here is the new version, russian green for the gunners, and aple green for the gun. with bronze barrle triad for the tube.

Here the old on the left and new on the right.

It's gonna take some time to paint this 6 gun battery.

More Militia

2011-08-18T18:07:00.002+02:00

Well another base done, the figurs are fantastic, love them, and while I love them in just shirts, I do think there is a slight unhistoric thing to them, from what I've rember back then and well into the 19th centuary, a man did not go out in just a shirt, it was conciderd underwear, you needed a vest at minimum. But that is small potatoes, they look very good, I did add a little color to the command base, the officer got a nice blue vest, the drummer got a red vest, and one of the milita got a yellowish breachers. but there is still mostly gray and white.

I really like how the shirt came out on the standard barer, I got the folds just right.

2011-08-16T17:44:00.003+02:00

So I'm selling my 40mm AWI but I got lots of 28mm AWI, and infact I just got an package from perry with more.

So these are southern milita in shirt sleaves, I love these guys, and I recomended for anybody wanting to find the right mix of gray/white for shade and highlight, they got great shirts with deep folds to shade, these are mostly white, white shirts and breeches, with some gray breeches and brown and gray vests.

I really like the shade effect on both the white and the gray.

Also I got 18 finished 40mm ACW, if anybody want them the cost $108 pluss shipping. they are on top of the 40mm lables, so you can see if you like them, also I got some 70 un painted ones that I can paint up, at $6 a figure, so any number of figure between 12 and some 70 rebs can be painted for money, I also have some 20-30 Union to that can be painted if you want them, same price.

Ok, sale so far

2011-08-14T18:56:00.002+02:00

Ok, this is the deal so far.

All the Napoleoincs got sold fast and to one guy, I have to unbase them, which is a bitch and takes a long time, but they should be done by next week and ready so ship, beeing loose figures I hope to get the shipping cost down a little.

With the AWI it's a diffrent story, I know 800 would be ALOT for one, so I got a request for dividing the figures, I'm lazy guy so I wanted to just send them to one guy, but can't have everything.

So now all my painted Americans are sold, 4 units of painted americans.

This means I now have 2 british and one hessain left on the painted side, price for those are $432
Now that I have to devide my sale, the free unpainted figures are no longer free.

That means that I got 18 FR militia in hunting shirts, $45
I got one gun with crew americans from S&S $15
12 S&S milita $24
25 British infantry in roundabout and cut down hat, $45
30 FR american militia in fireing line. $75

FR are priced at $2.5 pr. figure, S&S are prices just under $2 pr figure.

I need your money

2011-08-08T18:08:00.004+02:00

GIVE IT TO ME

Ok, I got a big thing going on,(not miniature related) and I need LOTS OF CASH.

So I'm selling stuff.
I wanted to do this by ebay but this is expencive stuff so they won't let me with out becomming a reputuble seller.

So I'm doing it this way, I'll post this blog post on the TMP market place.

I got two lots, both are worth quite alot of money.

1. 40mm AWI I hate to sell this becasue I love them, but they are probebly the most valuble collection I got.

The lots is a mix of sash and saber, front rank and minature service center.
There is a total of 138 painted figures all based. I've put the price at $6 pr. figure, that might sound like a lot since I'm not a great painter or pro painter, but these look quite ok, and since the price on avrage is $3 for unpainted 40mm, I think $3 for a paint job is quite resonoble.

But at $6 thats still $828 to make it easy I've put the price at $800, now shipping is going to be a bitch, norwegian post is corrupt and evil and the shipping is going to be atleast $100
BUT because of that I'm sweeteing the deal, untop of the 138 painted figures, you get 60+ unpainted AWI 40mm figures.

The breakdown is as follows.

Painted
24 figuers of 23rd fusiliers FR
24 figures of 33rd regiment of foot S&S
24 figures of von bose MSC
18 figures of 1st maryland FR
24 figures of 5th viginia S&S
18 figures of militia in hunting shirts. FR
6 militia in civilian clothes. S&S

Unpainted.
One cannon with crew S&S
5 riflemen S&S
13 Militia in hunting shirts FR
12 militia in civilian clothing S&S this is the other part of the 6 painted, I never finished the unit.
30! FR miltia in fireing line

That should make the price of shipping less of an evil.

As said the price is $800 pluss atleast 100 more in shipping.

For pictures just look at my AWI and 40mm tags in the blog. should be plenty to see there.

OK next.

I'm selling all my 28mm Napoleoincs bought from reenforcment by post, they take up alot of room and they don't fit with what I'm doing in Napoleoincs now anyway. Has nothing to do with the quality.

I payed just $2 a figure for these, but it's quite alot of figures. As follows.

4 BIG battalions of 40 figures of Austrians in shako Thats 160 austrians.
4 battalions of french, 3 32 figure and 1 40 figure 136 French, these are full dress 1809 style with black gaiters, these are damaged with sevral bayonets broken, I've fixed some of them with varried degrees of succsess,(this means discount for you the buyer)
3 Peninsula British battalions, 2 32 figures and 1 24 figures. 88 figures
2 battalions of prussian line infantry post 1813 uniforms, both 24 figures total 48

This is 432 28mm figures paited by the pro's at reenforcement by post, at $2 a pop thats $864
Because they are used(well not very used) and mostly becasue of damaged french I'm selling them for $500 pluss shipping, which is again going to be atleast $100

If you got lots of money give me a shout in the comments, and will sort things out, payment is done by paypal, first the price of the order, then I'll go down and see how much the shipping is going to be, then I'll go back and tell you the shipping price to.