King Henry V

So it's the final days of the challenge and two entries to go for me. Here's one that is very near and dear to me:

King Henry V

of England

Actually this figure has been lying on my lead pile for ages. I've bought it a while ago when I saw that wonderful sculpt by Alan Perry but I didn't find the time to paint it. But since Henry V by Kenneth Branagh is one of my - if not just my - favourite movie I always regretted not paying attention to it.

Now after our ACW project came to a temporary end I took the time to splash some paint onto Harry. The figure is part of Perry Miniatures' AO01 set from their Agincourt range. He's a mounted 28mm figures of two parts: Horse and Harry. Since I didn't like the original horse delivered with my set I changed it to a more 'royal' breed with nicer horse tack.

Focussing on the single miniature was pure joy again. The sculpt is tremendously detailed and Alan even managed to work out an indication of Harry's coat of arms. Thus it was difficult but at least possible to paint his surcoat properly. I hope you like my humble piece of work.

Last but not least let me deliver the two scenes I watched / listened to over and over while painting this figure:

That's it for now. Besides: God for England, Harry and Saint George!!

Union Troops for Tactica

Main part of my winter efforts were troops for our presentation game at Tactica in Hamburg in February. Namely ACW Union troops. Somehow I didn't manage to post the units step by step so I'll present them all in one go now.

Infantry

For our game we needed several units of Union infantry. So I promised my friend Holger to deliver two 24 men units respectively four units of 12 figures. One of the units was painted before the Painting Challenge started but the other was to enter and leave the painting table around Christmas. Here it is:

The unit is made of 24 figures from the Perry Miniatures plastic boxes. Here obviously mainly skirmishing poses from box ACW120. Of course it's a bunch of work to clean and assemble all those parts but they deliver a wonderful variety of combinations to create unique units.

Two bases carry the colours. One the Union flag and one the regimental flag. They are by top-notch flag maker GMB Designs who delivers some of the best flags on the market. I decided to split the colours to have them truely in the centre of the unit when fielding all six bases. When using two 12 men units then each of them keeps one flag. To my mind that looks better than having two flags in a smallish unit of three bases.

The whole unit is based with for figures per 40mm x 40mm base. Somehow that took root as our standard basing for Blackpowder games.

Artillery

Every infantry brigade need a certain amount of artillery support. Thus I prepared three guns and four crew men per piece.

Two of the guns were based properly and with its crew properly attached to the base. The figures and guns are again by Perry Miniatures and come from their excellent plastic box. It contains enough parts to build three guns, three limbers and 18 crew. It is also versatile enough to produce either Union or Confederate artillery.

With the describtion from the leavlet it's possible to build figures according to the ACW artillery drill which I did more or less.

The third battery is kind of unfinished. The gun itself is painted as the other pieces are but the crew is kind of substitute. All four figures are completely painted but actually they are the remaining crewmen of the first two guns. They are meant to operate the limbers but in this time of dearth they were ordered to handle the third gun. Thus they haven't been based yet...

Command Vignettes

Those reliable Yanks needed some commanding officers of course. For our game I had the honour and pleasure to deliver a brigade commander and a divisional commander. The first one was made from the plastic sprue that the Perrys deliver when ordering Blackpowder 2 from them:

Actually I wanted to give him a standard bearer aside but then I noticed that this plastic figure is significantly smaller then the metal cavalry figures. Thus he had to stay on his own and I mounted him on a rund 40mm base. Nevertheless it's a wonderful frame. It has enough parts to build a Union or Confederate officer and has a large variety of options. Additionally it's compatible with the plastic boxes delivering even more options. For this very special incarnation of a Union colonel I used the plastic figure as a base, assembled another head and made shoulder straps and collar from greenstuff. Actually the figure comes with seperate plastic shoulder straps but I cut them when I tried to loosen them from the sprue so I had to sculpt new ones.

However our division needed a commander so I made another base representing this honourable officer:

Here we have three mounted soldiers. All by Perry Miniatures as well: One mounted general, a standard bearer and a trumpeter. The officer comes from one of the mounted generals sets while the soldiers are actually cavalrymen in sack coates. From my humble point suitable enough for an escort.

This time the flag isn't by GMB. It's rather a product of yours truely himself because he forgot to order the correct standard and didn't realise it until it was too late. Thus there was no other way then printing the flag by himself. Anyway I'm rather satisfied with the result.

Summary

Well that's it. In addition to the priorly painted unit all the stuff I brought to Tactica and main project this winter:

• 24 men unit of infantry. Flags by GMB only glued to shape and edges repainted. Whole unit based on 40mm x 40mm bases with four figures per base.
• 3 artillery pieces and 12 crewmen. Two guns with crew based on scenic bases, one gun and four crewmen unbased.
• 1 mounted brigade commander. Based on 40mm round base. Multi-part plastic figure with converted head. Collar and rank insignia resculpted with greenstuff.
• 3 men divisional command vignette. Three mounted figures. Standard self-made. Based on an oval base of 100mm x 50mm

Having finished those in time really made me happy and maybe kind of proud. Although my club fellows brought more figures by far, it was the largest amount of figures I provided to a presentation game until now. We'll set up ACW for another small convention in Germany again and I'm looking forward to seeing my Yanks on the field again. In Hamburg they earned their stripes and helped to win the day twice.

Members of the Unicorn Club for SMOG - Rise of Moloch

For this theme round I've held back a couple of miniatures I painted at the very beginning of the painting challenge. Those figures are from CoolMiniorNot's board game SMOG - The Rise of Moloch and are representing a couple of members of the honourable Unicorn Club.

The Unicorn Club is a secret society of ladies and gentlemen gathering their powers to tackle down the forces of evil (vulgo the Nemesis) and hamper the return of Moloch a demonic world destroying creature of unspeakable cruelty.

Some of the gentlemen are inspired by Imperial literature like brave Peachey Carnehan from The Man who would be King (above, left hand side).

Others are inspired by pure fantasy like Mr Fox (above, right hand side).

Anyway the game comes with an incredible lot of wonderful figures. Unfortunately I didn't dare to go all in on Kickstarter so I'm missing the expansion The Wheel and the figures from it. Darn, it's not released for common buyers yet!

The figures are made from the usual semi-flexible board game plastic but nevertheless cast crisp and clear with a wonderful amount of detail. Unfortunately some of the faces appear rather flat so some of the figures proved difficult to paint in that behalf.

As said the club consists of men and women. Thus I was eager to paint a couple of honourable damsels as well to contribe something to Sarah's Choice finally.

After all it was really great fun to paint these figures, They are well-detailed and full of character. Fortunately the Kickstarter campaign provided enough figures to live on for many painting sessions.

As usual for CMON games SMOG is played on board tiles rather then real wargaming terrain. Thus I was on the horns of the dilemma of how to base the miniatures. They had those mandatry cast on discs below their feet but I wanted to have them more flexible and not arranged for a certain type of underground. Thus I cut and grinded away as much from those bases as possible and replaced them with clear acrylic disks. It was a dirty and labour-intensive job but I'm very happy with the result nevertheless.

So that's it for the last bonus round and Sarah's choice then. Next week I present my ACW troops which saw action in Hamburg and maybe I'll finish the Curtgeld orc I digged out of my lead pile. Anyway the challenge is heading to it's home straight and I'm really curious about seeing what you other fellows have left in their quivers.

Cheers
Stefan

Cruel Seas - Type VIIc Submarine

The last have been quite but I wasn't passive. I've been preparing Union troops for our Tactica game but nevertheless I made provision for the water theme round:

As you see it's a Type VIIc submarine for Cruel Seas. The Type VII was the most common German submarine in World War II. It's based on the WW I Type II submarine and was build in many different versions. The VIIc was the workhorse of the submarine fleet and 568 units were commissioned.

The model is based on a 1/350 model kit by Revell. Actually it's a full hull model so I needed to cut it down to waterline. Unfortunately it didn't go as smooth as necessary so I based it on thin plastic sheet and applied some waves with greenstuff.

Afterwards I painted the boat with Vallejo paints as well as thinner based washes by AK. To give it a similar look as my former Kriegsmarine E-Boats I mounted one of the flags that came with Cruel Seas. A bit fiddly but after all it worked.

By scale the u-boat is slightly smaller then the 1/300 kits by Warlord Games but nevertheless it fits in very well. Actually it's recommended by Warlord to use 1/350 kits for larger ships.

After all I'm really happy with the result and I hope you like it as well. Anyway during the next weeks I'll present my ACW troops but that's it for now. Nearly because I cannot close the post without delivering the most iconic u-boat theme of all time:

Rebel Troopers for Imperial Assault

As some might have noticed, some friends and I have been playing Imperial Assault for a while. For a certain amount of time I had the idea to follow the releases to bring the whole Star Wars universe to live but luckily for my wallet Fantasy Flight Games (and in Germany Heildeberger / Asmodée) were too fast for a slow painter and volatile hobby fellow like me. Thus my efforts ended with those sets which are represented in the Imperial Assault app meaning the first wave at the moment.

Therefore I had a set of three rebel troopers lying around and somehow I felt it was time to splash some paint on them. Rather soon we want to continue with our campaign and we might need those allies to fight the fierde forces of the Galactic Empire.

 

The set contains of three troopers in the well-known uniform featured in the iconic opening sequence of episode IV. They are all nice and clean casts although all three figures are identical.

Colourwise I left the greyish 1970s schene a bit and went for the more colourful blue and khaki scheme wich the computer game Star Wars: Battlefront delivered.

After all those models were truly fun to paint. The details all crisp and clear, the facial expression easy to follow and a simple uniform which allowed a quick painting style.

As usual I used Vallejo paints for most parts of the figures and the Wargames Foundry skin coulours for face and hands.

Only the bases are bit of a problem. Imperial Assault may be set in various surroundings from the wooded areas of Endor to the dark and grimy hangars of an outer rim space port. Therefore I didn't find a good solution for shaped bases and left them greyish. So I applied some dark grey and added a series of lighter splashes.

 

Nevertheless I'm still pondering about changing to clear acrylic bases but I haven't brought myself to re-basing my whole Imperial Assault collection yet.

Cruel Seas: Schnellboote ahead !

Lately I presented a some Vosper MTBs for Cruel Seas and of course they need some enemies to fight with. Although a friend of mine started to collect some German navy boats I had a couple of E-boats lying around from the starter box. So why not paint them to have some stuff for both sides ready...

The starter set comes with two sprues with two E-boats each. One S-38 design and one better armed S-100 version. Firstly I painted the S-38 boats in a standard greyish colour scheme. Somehow I wasn't in the mood for fancy camouflage. We had a game scheduled two days later so time was precious.

The boats are armed with a 20mm gun forewards and a 37mm gun sternwards. Pretty heavy compared to the British Vospers which are employing a 20mm gun only (besides some machine guns which have the German boats as well).  In addition the boats are faster than their British opponents. But more expensive in points as well.

The later S-100 version has a armoured bridge section and is better armed since it comes with an additionol twin 20mm gun midships. In addition it has the option to mount either the 37mm gun or a quad 20mm gun sternwards. But here Warlord really blundered. The E-boat sprue comes with only one 37mm gun which you tually need to equip the S-38 boat with. But then there's no 37mm for the S-100. Looks like somehow hasn't thought really deeply while designing that sprue...

Nevertheless those boats are as nice models as the Vospers are. As you see I painted the S-100s with a darker deck based on a picture I found in an Osprey book.

Torpedos los!

Cheers

Stefan

Cruel Seas: Armed Trawler

The fleet boxes for Cruel Seas really provide a nice selection of models. The Royal Navy for example come with the mandarory Vospers, some Fairmile MTB and an Armed Trawler. After rushing through the Vospers and E-boats I took the trawler as a more special model and painted it during the last days:

It's a large ship (though 'large' in 1/300) that comes in resin with metal parts. Overall the parts fit very well. Only the masts needed some deeper holes to fit in the hull proberly. A really nice add-on is the metal crew. They come in strips of three seamen but can be cut into single crewmembers or pairs easily. Since there were more then enough seamen for the trawler I transfered two of them to one of my Vospers to man the bridge appropriately.

The flag is again from the generic Royal Navy flag sheet by Warlord Games. But this time I used the Red Ensign instead of the White Ensign. Although I know that the Red Ensign is appropriate for British merchantmen I didn't check it on historial material. I just followed Warlord Games example...

Anyway, the ship comes with two 3" guns and appears properly armed to scare some E-boats. The guns are nice metal pieces as well and have crew figures on them. Very nice little bits. I'd wish to see them available individually to have them available for the plastic boats. Making the guns available individually would - by the way - solve the problem with the missing 37mm gun in the German E-boat sprue...

As usual I used mostly my trustworthy Vallejo paints. Starting with a basecoat of Uniform Grey spray primer (by Armypainter) I applied VMC 70.924 Russian Uniform WWII. It's a rather light greyish green because I wanted to try a different colour scheme on the trawler. On some Warlord Games pictures their trawler looks slightly greenish so I chose this colour. Anyway the result looks even greener then desired but I'm happy with it anyway. After the colour was dry I applied some of the AK washes to get some shadows. Then drybrushing with VMC 70.821 German Camoflage Beige and VMC 70.884 Stone Grey. Finally some more AK washing for weathering especially on the lower parts of the hull.

That's it for now. I hope you like it.

Cheers

Stefan

Star Wars Legion: AT-ST Walker

It was about a year ago when Star Wars - Legion caught my attention. First I was annoyd because Fantasy Flight Games chose another scale than their Imperial Assault game has. But afterall I wasn't able to resist the seduction of airspeeders and full-scale Imperial walkers. So I acquired the starter box as well as an AT-ST. Although I assembled it a while ago it sat on my to-do-shelf for a pretty long time. Now with the first bonus round of the AHPC themed 'Reconnaissance' what could be more obvious than a vehicle bearing 'scout' in his name?

This interpretation of the well-known All-Terrain-Scout-Transport is a huge beast. Therefor some 32mm stormtroopers for size comparison. It has a hight of over 20 centimeters with slightly bent legs. It has more or less the same size as the good old 1/48 kit by Bandai.

For painting I used my airbrush gun to apply a medium grey base colour and light grey highlights. Afterwards I applied a selection of washes: Nuln Oil by Citadel and several of the thinner based washes by AK. As a finish I added some rusty brown and charcoal black pigments at several places. E.g. the feet (dust) and the shoulder gun (grime).

For the basing I wasn't able to decide which theatre of war I'd use the walker for. Star Wars has so many interesting places which reach from the icy planet Hoth to woody planets like Endor or desert worlds like Tatoine. So how to base a model properly to suit all these different requirements? For me it became crystal clear when I checked some aftermarket articles and stumbled over some clear acrylic bases offered by Sarissa. So I ordered enough for a small Imperial invasion force and some appropriate heavy armour.

Well that's it for now. I'm lucky to have contributed something to this first bonus round between the bunch of ACW and Cruel Seas stuff I'm working on. Hope you like my humble contibution.

Cheers

Stefan

Cruel Seas: Vospers and eels

Ahoi Jack Tars and Landlubbers,

finally my first entry for this year's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge:

Vospers and eels

Shortly before Christmas Warlord released their new WWII naval skirmish game Cruel Seas. Frankly for a long time their wasn't a release that I was so much looking forward to. Anyway my pre-order didn't arrive in time and more than two weeks of desperate wainting overshadowed my december. Anyway shortly before Christmas the starter set arrived and I couldn't resist painting enough boats for the first couple of scenarios. So here we go with the Vospers first.

Actually the basic games comes with six Vospers but until now I've painted only four of them. They are all in 1/300 (6mm) scale but very detailed. Due to the thick plastic they appear a bit bulky but nevertheless really nice models.