End of year raport

Well, it's just a couple of days left in 2017 and I did manage to squeeze one more unit out of the year.
I did try and finish it as I noticed I had 1 post more this year than last year, but this year I did the end of year raport for 2016 in January 2017, so it was really even. But with this post and a new unit, I did beat last year.

I'm actually supprised I only beat 2016 with 1 post, I did 9! Napoleonic blog posts in a few months. I felt really productive, yet I beat 2016 with just 1 post...

Let's just get going with the new unit.

This is a sort of generic second/3rd line unit, it could be Nyland 5 mennige regiment, that is what I planned it should be, but apparently, that unit never numbered more than 100.
Or it could be the Åbo/Nyland/Björnborg 3-mennige regiment, they did use grey coats in 1700, but they also used karpus, while this one has a mix of tricorne karpus.

So it's both and neither. The reason for the unit is that I've gotten a bunch of free "damaged" Swedish figures that are missing their bayonets.
So I just bought the command pack, I think I even got the flags for free so the unit ended up costing me a whopping £8.5.

I got a second Swedish battalion in the works and it's about time the Swedes got some love, last Swedish I did were back in February.

So what else did I do this year.

12 Numidian cavalry
12 Medieval mounted knights.
24 SYW cavalry
18WSS infantry
6 WSS cavarly

Some half finished unit, that are:
HYW infantry,
SYW infantry,
WSS infantry
WSS cavarly.

But the year has been dominated by the two period Great Northen War and Napoleonics.

 48 GNW cavalry(18 Swedish, 18 Danish and 12 Saxon dragoons.
62 GNW infantry(40 Saxon and 22 Russian)
3 Swedish command.
3 Saxon command.
1 Saxon Gun with 5 Crew.

The Napoleonic score ended at:

120 Infantry(72 French, 24 Prussian,  24 Russian) (plus 12 more Prussian in a half-done unit)
36 Cavalry(24 French, 12 Russians)
3 French Guns.

Both of these periods I have several hundred unpained, Same goes for SYW.
I think/hope these three periods will dominate 2018, But I suspect my HYW period will get some love too.
I'm running out of space, and I want to scale back my other periods. That mostly means getting rid of my Ancients and pike and shot stuff, sadly it's hard to sell stuff when living on the end of the world.



So here are a few pics to show of 2017.

 Saxon force

 French Guns, fun project, involved finding guns from all over the world and my first proper conversion.

 French Force

 3rd battalion Azov regiment

 One of two WSS units this year, French Ponitau

 Second WSS unit, Dutch  Saxe-Heilburg.

 My first unit of Warfare Russian infantry, expect to see A LOT more of that next year.

 My Anti-Swedish coalition army, since then several units have been added to it.

 My SYW project this year mostly saw cavalry, Prussian Cuirassiers 

 2nd Dragoons the Scots Greys.

 Allied Pricipes

 My Swedish army reaching the half way mark.

 The first unit I started on for my  GNW project, started late 2015, finished it in February 2017 the 48 strong Småland cavarly regiment. 

And so far my only Danish cavalry regiment. 

My Danes need more love both in cavarly and infantry.

Warfare will soonish (I think) release Danish infantry, I also hope they will release their dragoons in tricrones so I can do some Danish(and Norwegian) dragoons.

So 2017 is coming to a close, the world is still here(bearly) 

Besides Miniatures, we've added two dogs to our pack. Dalbris she was born in April this year, and Polaris who is just 11 weeks old. 

Numidian cavarly

So  I finished these 2 "small" units for Hail Ceasar. They are the lovely Victrix plastic set.

 I started out painting  them in the classic but wrong dark African skin  tone,

 But after seeing how other did north African skin, I  managed to find a way. In the end, the skin was made with  Foundry  Chestnut A and B then Citadel Agrax Earth shade, then a second highlight of Chestnut B.

 It did take a couple of tries to find the right color, So, in the end, there is 4 different skin colors in this unit.

I'm kinda anciented out now, I have to try and finish my elephant and Spanish cavalry.  But I mostly want to get back to my  18th-century projects. Not sure if GNW or SYW will be first out.

Allied Principes

 I had to check my  post about planes for the year to see if I actually mentioned I wanted to do Ancients, and yes I  did!

I  painted some 250-300 ancients before I moved, they did survive the move, but through the last 2-3 years moving the boxes as I was looking for other boxes etc. They got weaker, and the box finally   gave out, taking out over 50% of them. I  lost all my romans except some velites and one triarii unit.
I also lost my Tarentine cavalry, my thuroperos.

The survivors are  Geroge the Elephant, my two units of phalangites, the aforementioned roman units and a unit of Carthaginian veterans. So I'm trying to save them by stripping them and repainting them. I'm now working on one such unit some roman cav.
But I also got some spare unpainted stuff laying around. And I managed to get aa unit of allied principes done. No shield decals sadly. So instead I went with the M&M approach. Also, they seem to have the same mix of colors as the new colour coded Daleks.

Quite a lot of work on these, I think they take 50-100%  longer than my GNW figures, lots of little details.

I've also given up on the "few big bases" approach for my ancients and instead gone with  my now standard base side of 60x60mm

Looking back and looking forwards

So this is the obligatory what I did and what I plan on doing.

In my personal life,  I got my first car(cargo van)  still don't have a license to drive. I  got married and I lost my grandmother. She died just a few weeks after the wedding,  Looks like she held on until I  got married.  It was not a sad death, She was 96 years old and she died in her home of 60 years. She had a massive heart attack a couple of years back,  at her age she could not get any surgery. But she lived another two years,  eating what she wanted and drinking her delay cream.  She died in her home happy with her gossip magazines and tv. I near had any other nanny than her, she lived 5 minutes from where I grew up. So not a sad death, a natural death after a long good life. But it's strange not having her around and missing her.


The Wedding was perfect,  we were told by a fellow student of Anita that June 4th was going
to have wonderful weather,  as her husband's birthday is on June 4th and he always had nice weather on his birthday. And she was right. It was probably one of just 4 good summer days this summer.

Wedding on the terrace of the inlaws summer home.

Anitas best friend is her maid of honour  and my dad is my best man.

The day  was perfect with good food and good people, After the wedding dad in law drove us with  his  boat to a resort  where we stayed in  the honeymoon suite 

So we also had a new litter, Freke and Naisha went on  a date. And we got a litter, We kept one we named Huldra.

Huldra!

Hobby  wise, I    have been quite productive. I managed   to paint some 230 figurs for my GNW/WSS project, I still have quite a  few unpainted  laying around, but loost steam. I have also painted some 105 SYW figures, again  a  few laying  around waiting to be painted. Add some Russian and Prussian Napoleionics and a few 30YW I'm not far from painting  450  figures this year.

After an intensive first 8  months the steam started to go empty. The last few months I've painted sevral things not having finished  them, I have painted  12 French Legere, that was supposed to become a 30 figure unit,  I painted 6  troopers and 9 horses for some Chasseur a Chaval,  also not finished.

So I don't have much to show, But I have this.

Had some random  British light infantry I painted up and ordered a movement base from warbases.

I did however, have a late year project. The theme of this year's Christmas gifts was homemade.
Antia made some wonderful embroidery with the names of our nephew on and we put them in some frames. It took a long time to make, She also embroidered some Christmas oven mitts for her and mine parents.

So  I decided to make Anita's gift too.

And  Here it  is:

I made a little diorama of Anita and all of our ten dogs. The miniatures are Copplestone, with some wood glue and white flock, some random ebay  trees, A picture found online and glued  to a background. I tried to paint the dogs as the look, with their markings.  Some of our dogs are quite similar, painting it so that Denali, Beriniga and Fjellbris  look different is quite hard, Beringia at least got white spot on her neck. Some of the models got a slightly curly tail,  So I  gave those tails to our dogs I know got a little curl on them. Orca while black has that curly tail and his shoulder is very  white, so it's easy differentiate him from the other black dogs, luckily our dogs are color coded. So I simply gave  their harness  their color. From bak to front. Orca and Stjerne, Gaia and Såga, Huldra and Naisha,  Freke and  Denali and finaly  up  front Fjellbris and  Berninga.


So that's what I've done 2016, now looking forward.


I  do plan on continuing my WSS/GNW project, as well  as my  SYW.
While I'm  tempted  to do more Napoleoincs  I think   I'll only have the attention span to do  a few figures at a  time. I also want to   try yet again to do ACW,  but we'll  see.

I'm also concidering doing more Ancients and Italian wars.

But first up is a new project(new year new project)

This will be early 100 years war. This is something I've wanted to do  for some time. Mostly because of  the figures from Claymore. The style is just so  cool, a mix of leather, gambison, mail and plate. I do find the full plate kinda boring...

Now there are sevral complications. First Claymore so  far only have only have a  few packs.
They have french foot knights, crowbowmen and pavisers. Naturaly not enough  to do a proper force. So  I much go hunting. I have orderd some Front  Rank mounted MAA,  they seem  to  be about the same period. I also orderd some  Kingmaker knights. Now the kingmakers are probably a little to late for the first 20  years of the war. so my  early 100 year war project will be slightly generic stretching  from 1337  to about  1390. So some units will be post 1360(like kingmaker)  While FR and Claymore will be more very  early part. But I'm mostly staying away  from  the later Perry ranges ect.

Another problem is the style. Claymore is very animated  and very detailed. Not that many  other figures mix well.  Black tree desgins make figures that look quite good and they are for the right period of the war, but they look stiffer, less  natural  in poses. And from  the picutres they look slighter in style.

My first unit  will  be a big unit  of knights and infantry. I'll  have 2 ranks of knights in front so 24 knights and to ranks of infantry. So a big unit of 48 figures. So I'll repurpose the pavisers, by giving  them none paviser shields and giving them a few other weapons then spears, they'll become infantry.

So  that is the plan.

I hope to  have something more intresting to show soon.

Belated Marry Christmas and a  Happy New Year.

Hat-trick

Wow, three posts in less then a month.
Well both my hoplites and vetrans are as done as I can get them untill I get more flock.

So it stopped raining so I got some nice outside pics of the hoplties and vetrans

 A couple of vetrans got celtic plaid cloth for their tunics. I noticed one had the on the outside of the box, so why not. a nice way to get rid of the bordome of painting white and red.

Also some better pics of some celtic cav I did just over a year ago today.

Woo, just 12 days

Sorry for the bad pics, but I said I would try and update a little more often. So bad pics. becaue 1. I'm out of my flock so the unit can't be totaly finished, and two there are 5 wild pupplings in the yard, can't risk taking pictures out side as long as those run around.

So these are wip. 24 carthagenians spearmen/hoplites. These are primaraly for HC so the hoplites needed 3 ranks, the box comes with 24 hoplites(including command) So that means 3x8 figures.

I'm not that pleased about the slip box, I would have preferd 60 figure box of Vetrans and one of Hoplites, not split in 24/24 pluss light infantry. Now I see the spanish boxes will be 24 figures to,(well 26 with command)  Why spanish get 26 figure boxes and not 60 with 24/24 split I do not know.

Depanding on how you would rate the spanish(warband ect) you might need 4 ranks of spanish, that means you need atleast 2 boxes to make a propper unit, Also £18 for 26 figures is 0.75 pr figures, alot more then the 0,45 pr figure in the 60+ boxes. But I guess still alot cheper then £1.1-1.6  the metal 28mm costs.

Enough bitching, lets get to the figues, there has been very little pics of any of the victrix boxes of late, I do find romans, but even greek hoplites and especaly the carthaganian figures are hard to find painted. I even had a ahard time getting info on just what was in the spures, I had to as on a forum to find out if the spear arms could be used for both type of soldiers. But they can't the arms are designed for either hoplites or vetrans, so all vetrans will be in a more dynamic stabby stabby pose, all hoplites will be in a static waiting for the bus pose.

I've found that painting linothorax is plastic is a pain in the ass, I have painted Aventine linothorax and those are nice and easy to paint, I then painted Warlord phalangites and fround the plastic linothoraxes to be a pain to paint, shallow details, so much time spent on tidying up my sloppy painting ect. I thought it was just warlord plastic beeing warlord. But no the linothoraxes from victrix are also a paint, they are better to paint(mostly because of the pose I think)  but still hard to put details on them, lots of gonig back to fix mistakes ect. I guess it's just a fact of life, the tunics, the command figures, faces, spears, shields ect, are great, It's just plastic and linothoraxes equals pain to paint. I have painted 5 of the vetrans and working on another 5 now. They are great, the mail is so easy to paint, So it's not lack of quality or skills of the sculptor. 

I would have preferd my hoplites in a more dynamic pose, to me hoplites should be in battle formation with spears over shield!  

So bad picutre! The have mostly white linothorax with some red trimming, some have colord sholder parts, one has all red chest part.

The command figures are great, Very fun to paint.

But it brings me back to my trouble with the box, I really don't need hoplites, I only really need the vetrans, But the price of the figures almost double if I don't use the hoplites. So I guess they will be used for Punic forces in Spain and africa or Battle of Trabia ect.

Hastati Done

 So my Hastati unit is done. I still have enough figures to do another unit.
But I realised I allready have a finished roman legion, and so I could consentrate on my roman allies. So if I have the money next week, I'll order 3 boxes of victrix roman allies a box of hoplite mercs(for pyrrhus) With 3 boxes I could be able to make a full legion 1 unit of triarii 2 of pricipes and two of hastati. And a shitload of velites. I only actualy need 16 velites pr legion.

So This unit is done, 2 hastati. Quite happy with them. And I want to thank Corso from starship pullo forums for his 3 recipes for yellow! They work great.

 While the hail caesar rules actualy prefer the manipular romans to have sevral small unis. For simplicity I simply devide each "line" in a wing. so each normal sized unit, represent 5 manipelers or 600ish soldiers.

Black linothorax test figure

 I normaly don't so single test figures, but I had an idea and only a few hours to test it out. It started when I played rome 2 total war. The game is not historic at all, it's very gamey, but were els do you get to se thousands of people fight. I do play carthage and rome now and then, but I am and allways will be a pikeman. So I prefer to play the hellenic forces, mostly Macedonia, Selucids or Epirus. It's kinda cool watching 3000 pikemen marching is possision. Anyway the original game is not that good, so I play it with mods. and one of the mods I play with ads lots of new units. Most of them somewhat/totaly fancifull. I was playing a battle as Macidona and one of my units had black linothorax with gold trim. looked cool.

So a unit based on a not realistic mod for a none realistic game...
I highly doubt any unit looked anything like this. But they will be my pyrrhic royal guard.

 Black linothorax(painted with very dark gray)
Gold trim and gold plaited shield.

Also gold trim on the sword with black scabard.

More Romans

 Half done, half done with this unit, today I will start on the second base, with the command figures. The victrix  command figures seems less "epic" in style then say Aventine, that got some very cool command figures, that are super fun to paint,

I have done a few things with the second batch, I feel the faces are much better. Also I knew better how to make the paint more pop out, so on the whole the figures are just more clean and better.  I pulled out the first batch and put them in the second rank So the first rank is now the latest ones.

 I will try and squise 2 units out of each boxs, but I only have 32 shield transfers  and I need 40 figures. With 2-3 command pr unit, that is down to 34 with regular shields, so some of the shields will be all black. But thats good value, for 30 pounds I get 2 units of close order infantry and two units of velties. In metal this would be £70

 But I honestly care more about quality then price, and these are as good as the best metal romans(like aventine)

 I'm very happy with the faces of the new ones, I looked at the faces in like 5000x3000 pixeles, were the nose on the face is almost as big as the whole figure in real life. And still the faces looked good