Tactica show this weekend !

Unbelievable that not only days but once again weeks have passed since my last post. I'm deeply sorry that I was absent for such a long time again but somehow I haven't been able to turn the corner and get myself back to regular blogging. The first weeks of 2016 were simply too stressful at work and too busy at home...

Hobbywise I had a few games that I took pictures of to write some short AARs but even didn't manage to do that. But promised rather soon here'll come some pictures from Star Wars X-Wing and Armada. On the other hands the chaps from the THS club and me were preparing our presentation game for Tactica wargaming show which will take place this very weekend in Hamburg. This time we'll lead our highly appreciated audience to Egypt and show them a battle between French, British and Arabian troops during Napoleon's Egypt campaign. It's a skirmish level struggle for which we use an excellent variant of the Lion Rampant engine. It'll be featured in one of the upcoming Wargames Illustrated but we were lucky enough to do some advance play testing with them. They went really smoothly and allowed us some exciting and joyful beer and prezel matches. Exactly my cup of tea!

Anyway for this game I promised to contribute at least a unit of British tars. You saw six of them in my very last post and six more left the painting table last week. I'll feature them in a later article because they'll have to participate in the naval bonus round of the AHPC (Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge) but here a quick group shot:

Old and new tars

But now I have to get my stuff sorted because we'll head to Hamburg rather early tomorrow and some family duties have to be fulfilled before.

Enjoy your weekend!

Maybe I'll see some of you in Hamburg...

A British tar is a soaring soul... - 28mm seamen

During the last weeks it was rather quiet on my painting desk. Different things kept me away from paint and brushes and somehow I was lacking kind of 'painting mojo'. Last week I was lucky enough to have some free time and started painting a nice set of figures which I ordered last December from US manufacturer Brigade Games. Lon has a very nice of Napoleonic figures for different theatres of war starting with the very early Egypt Campaign but covering the Peninsular War and the War of 1812 as well. However there are some very nice sets of British seamen which were sculpted by master sculptor Paul Hicks. I wanted to have them for our upcoming participation game at Tactica Wargaming Show and of course for the 'Navy' bonus round of the painting challenge. Some more tars on my workbench make sure that I'll not miss the bonus round but after two weeks of absence I though a sign of life in the form of a sestet of those jolly good chaps might be appropriate:

The figures are from different packs of the range but I decided to paint more or less the command figures first. The centrepiece of this bunch are a dashing lieutenant and a seasoned boatswain.

Followed by two young and eager midshipmen:

This first batch is completed by two able seamen accompanying their leaders:

Altogether a nice range of highly detailed sculpts. The poses are very dynamic and realistic. On those chaps I tested the colour combinations and stayed to blue and white more or less. For the other 'common' seamen I'll alter this colour sheme slightly to depict the inconsistency of 19th century navy dress. Since the seamen were responsible for most of their clothing they had a really mixed bag of shirts and trousers. Merely for the jackets I'll stay with a uniform blue tone to create some cohesion in the unit.

However I hope you like the paintjob.