Curtgeld - Oberst Kurt Steiner from 'The Eagles has landed'

As usual I've been keeping one of the most important entries of the painting challenge for last:

The entry fee 'Curtgeld' miniature

Last but not least a couple of twins:

Both version of Col. Steiner side by side

Risk Taker - Han Solo

When the painting challenge started I had a look at the bonus rounds and all of a sudden an idea for the 'Risk Taker' theme stroke my mind. Who could be a better choice than daredevil who is bold enough to kick a hunk of junk hard enough to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs? Or the one who was stupid and daunting enough to pick a quarrel with a giant space slug supervillain?

As you see I chose Fantasy Flight Games' incarnation of this well-known scoundrel. It's a nice plastic miniature the company is making for their Star Wars skirmish game 'Imperial Assault'. The details are worked out crisp and clear and the casting quality is pretty good. Maybe not as good as we are used from top-notch miniature companies like Perry Miniatures, Warlord Games or maybe Games Workshop but nevertheless much better than one would expect from board game pieces. Probably the material limits the quality in a certain way. It's slightly softer than those historical hard plastic miniatures, bendable and thus more suitable for board games who might not necessarily be careful tabletop gamers as well. Altogether a nice piece and much better than those old soft plastic figures by Wizards of the Coast.

As usual I painted this chap with Vallejo colours and used Wargames Foundry for the skin tones. I kept the base pretty simple as with all my Imperial Assault figures: Just a dark grey base colour and three shades of drybrushing.

My gallant crew... Good morning! - Royal Navy Captains finished

The painting challenge is on it's last days now and finally I managed to finished to miniatures to complete the first bunch of Napoleonic seamen:

When painting those gentlemen I always swayed between the Horatio Hornblower TV series and a recording of H.M.S. Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan. Although the play is set in a slightly later period these sturdy officers reminded me of sorely afflicted Captain Corcoran. Simultaneously especially the left chap has the strict but fair look of Robert Lindsay's wonderful recreation of Captain Pellew.

Hart of Oak are our Ships, jolly Tars are our men... - More 28mm sailors

As one of my ridiculously small projects this winter I tackled some British seamen for the Napoleonic era. Six of them were my lousy output for January and some others had to follow until late February when Tactica wargaming show was scheduled. As you see it's late February now and I'm lucky to present more tars now:

Unit from both batches

Altogether there were eight more navymen that I finished during the last weeks. Actually once again lousily few figures but somehow my life hasn't hobby convenient lately. Anyway the following chaps are once again from Brigade Games's excellent range. The sculpts were from Paul Hicks and as usual they are full of character and detail. Although it seems his virtuosity with face increased since he made those figures they are absolutely brilliant and top notch among all other 28mm figures tackling this topic.

In detail those are the men I painted:

Rather a mixed bag of weapons as you would expect from a quickly assembled boarding or landing party. Once again I tried to break uniformity slightly with varying the colours of the trousers. I painted to of the dark blue and used different shades of beige for the other ones.

Anyway there were two very characterful figures I wanted to bring out:

The seasoned one armed veteran and the chap who is wearing a headscarf caught my eye since I started to clean the castings. Thus they acquired striped trousers. No piece of art but I hope you like the touch.

Altogether there are 14 finished sailors now 12 of which hit the board on Tactica wargaming show last weekend. But more on that in a couple of days...

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.

Nostalgia: Dark Angels Space Marine

Curt's call for a nostalgia figures was enough for me to dig into my old box with bits and pieces from earlier days. Inside I found a sprue of Space Marines by Games Workhshop. Since these were the figures I started wargaming with I found it appropriate for this theme round. Actually I started with one or two generations older Space Marines but no unpainted figures from the early nineties survived on my lead pile.

Anyway here we go for brother Nostalgico:

It's as far as I remember a piece of the third or fourth generation of plastic Space Marines. During this period of Warhammer 40K there were nice sprues with chapter specific parts. Thus brother Nostalgico is wearing a bone white gown as most veterans of the Dark Angels Space Marines do.

The paintjob was pretty straight. Meanwhile I don't have any Games Workshop colours anymore and employed Vallejo Model Colors instead. The green is based on Luftwaffe Camo Green and I applied it with my new airbrush gun. I even tried to do the highlighting with it but it didn't work on all parts of the figures. Finally I applied some blackish wash to underline the fine indentations.

The gown is based on a dark yellow tone and I highlighted it with a couple of beige and whitish layers. As you see on the back view larger folds are still not my cup of tea.

Although I gladly changed into historical wargaming a couple of years ago it was nice to go back to the roots for a couple of hours. Excellent idea, Curt !