Marine DM

Hello my childrn, it's been almost two weeks since last I posted, no I'm not dead or if I am dead I havn't noticed.

The problem is I havn't realy painted anything, I got into one of my moods, were I just had to paint more modern, but I didn't have any modern, I had orderd some, but it took longer then expected to get them, so I havn't painted much. I have played lots of computer games tho. I'm gonna make a post about one of them later.

So this is my US Marine Designated Markmen.
He is empress miniature which is odd since americans never had an empress. The miniature is superb, I got a bunch of american infantry, that is going to be a few squads of marines, I also got a few red star russians, one anoying thing is that almost all of the americans and russians needed glueing, arms, heads and weapons ect. I use white would glue, it's strong and works on metal, but take a good 18-24 hours to really harden, that means a good 24 hour were I just have to wait for the glue to harden. Lukely there were a few figures not needing glueing, and this is one of them

 American DMs usualy use M14s, tho 417s have also started to be used, some are stuck with M16s, normaly a M16 is perfectaly good DM weapon, in that it has a range of some 400+ meters, far byond most ranges seen in urban combat. But the 5.56 dosn't pack the punch of the 7.62, the 7.62 can actualy punch through some brick walls, and it always works. Some times the 5.56 dosn't work, if they bullet dosn't get enough speed, the bullet dosn't react like it should. It needs the speed to kill. While the 7.62 is fire and forget, dosn't mater what length the barrel the gun has, you hit, they go down.

This DM has a M14, which is one of my favorite guns of all time, sure not that good at full auto. But even an old M14 can kill a man at 600 meters, a DM version or Sniper Version(like M21 and M25) can take out a man at 800 meters. Really you need a Bolt action like M40 to see a more acurrate 7.62 weapon.

Again thanks to 14th Brooklyn for the techinqe, it works just as well on marpat as ACU.

I did the M14 with green syntetic stock, the vest in brown/tan.

It's here

So there is a HUGE amount of pictures in this post.


You all know, the structure of a roman republican legion, so no need to go into that.

I have only 8 Velites which is not alot, really with 1200 of them pr. legion, I should have atleast 40 of them, but given that these light troops were generaly not super effective, having 40 of them would be total over kill, but even so 8 is not alot, so I might make 8 more.



Here we got my Hastati, painted in a blue/white theme

Then we have the Principes, done in yellow/white theme.

And in thee 3rd line we got my triarii in red/white them, these are only one unit, since they are only 600, while the hastati and principes are 1200 they both got 2 units.

And finnaly the cav, who small cav units.

And all togeather now.

So it's very nice to have this one done, granted in the grand schem of things, 121 figures is not a huge amount, but there is alot of detail, so it's nice to be done.

Next up I'll finish my second pike block, 20 more figures for those, and then I'll do the second Thureoporoi, So two and a half more units, after that?

GAME, I'll do a test game of Hail ceasar, a single legion vs, my pike block suported by thureoporoi. The game is a little to small to be a propper game, but I think the scale is perfect for learing the game.

Tamopol 1st battalion Finished

So it's finnaly done, well not 100% done, mabye 99.9999% done, as the flags are wrong, I have to order the correct flags, but Iwanted flags on my unit when I took the "finished" photoes, so I just took two random flags that came with the boxset.


I think this is a very good looking unit, it surpasses all my other Napoleonics, and mabye even my Ancients.

Sadly the standard did all a little with the last base, the command was kida hard to get right, mostly because to them beeing in pices, you had to glue them togeather, and the glue didn't take , so the head fell of one of the standardbarer, and when I glued it back on, after I had finished painting them, the glue coverd some of the paint and it was just a massacre, luckely both standardbarers could be hidden in the second rank.

The second problem is that I suck at free hand painting, so the drum om the drummer looks crap.

It did take a lot of work to do this, I wasn't sure I could finished it yesterday as I got a monster cold, and woke up with a mega headache, but luckely it went away and I did get to paint.

Well it's been 5 months

Well 6 months if you concider only 28mm, but I'm back to painting Napoleonics.

I got myself some warlord plastic russians.

The box is rather od, while some of the figures are really great, others are not so great, because the figures are mostly one piece, some of the details get lost on the side of the figures, now this isn't that big of a deal, since the sides are mostly coverd by the figure next to them.

But there is one of the 4 plastic figures that is quite bad, on this figure the detail on the arms are gone.

I bought both the 1809 and 1812 types, I think one brigade will be 1809 another 1812.

I bought this at my local game/nerd store, the box cost 249kr, that's about 7.8kr a figure, or 2kr less then metal figures, but almost 3kr more then what the same box would cost directly from warlord. The question is how much do I save from shipping, Warlord is quite cheap when it comes to shipping, so I don't think I save that much on shipping.

I'm very happy with these, I think they look good.

I did alot of work on these, jacket and breches got 3 coats, same with the winter coat, musket got 2 layers both metal and wood. Flesh got 3 layers plus a layer of wash.

Union v. 2.0

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

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

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.