Back from holiday - Workbench snapshot

Ten days by the sea went by in a flash!

The family and me were in East Frisia since 11th August and spent a wonderful time of temporal deceleration there. The weather was rather fine and we enjoyed a couple of excellent day trips with the kids: Bicycle rides, a short cruise trip and a trip to the German shipping museum in Bremerhaven for example. About the last one I'll spread a couple of words here.

But now back to the workbench!

While we were on holiday my kit of a Hamilton gunboat by Laser Dreamworks arrived and I was very happy to find it on our doorstep just. So this MDF beauty will be one of the next pieces on my workbench. Nevertheless there is the next batch of NWF British to be finished before the ship:

As you see they are nearly finished but they need some highlights here and there and some finishing touches. Most probably I'll be able to present them later this week.

Until then enjoy your weekend !

More 72nd Highlanders

After a lot of zombies here is a post about a historical theatre of war again. Finally my unit of 72nd Highlanders fills the ranks having nine brave Scotsmen ready for action now. This meaning that yours truly managed to finish six new figures by now:

Paint Table Saturday - Highlanders and Zombies

Last week was more or less dedicated to Imperial Assault. Besides two Nexu predators I paintes the four model for the players also known as rebel scum. Those are to be presented during the next days but with the two posts about Imperial Assault and of course the Queen's birthday the blog seemed rather well-filled.

Anyway this weekend I'll try to spend some time with Zombicide figures and the remainig highlanders for my twelve figure unit 72nd Highlanders for NWF.

On Sunday then we'll have another Imperial Assault session with our local group and I'm pretty curious how they'll perform with painted miniatures. Until now the Empire performed better than the rebel scum...

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy the weekend !

Paint Table Saturday - Game pieces week

Probably most of you are in London enjoying Salute 2016 now. Green with envy I take the time to present an overview of the figures I was busy with last week:

Monty on tour - Hobby weekend abroad

Last weekend I had the great pleasure to attend a sublime hobby weekend. A fellow from southern Germany invited a couple of hobby enthusiasts to his home to share a weekend of painting, chatting and gaming with him. This time I had the honour to belong to the group of guest and thus on Friday afternoon I took a train to Stuttgard and gathered with Alex, Thomas, Christian, Michael and another Michael there.

It started with the wonderful and hospitable welcome at Alex's house and then we went to our first painting session. This time I was lucky enough to have Michael at my side who introduced me into painting with oil paints to paint horses quicker than before. The advantage of this kind of colour is that you can manipulate it for a very long time using little pieces of sponge or brushes moistened with turpentine. The horses aren't finished yet but for my taste the technique worked really well and granted a new experience to yours truly.

About 03.00am on Saturday morning we went to bed and took a snatch of sleep. After breakfast then we returned to the painting table. While the horses kept drying I started with my NWF 72nd Highlanders. It's a rather special unit because they wore the Indian Service Dress combined with reddish tartan trews. Most of you might know the pictures of them in the Osprey book about the British Army on Campaign:

Picture from the Maiwand Day Blog

Paint Table Saturday - Horses everywhere

Hobbywise last week was rather average. Although our preparations for Easter took a certain amount of time, I managed to finish my AWI Saratoga artillery piece. Anyway I haven't taken pictures until now so its presentation must wait a couple of days.

 

Meanwhile my trustful airbrush entered the stage again and I prepared a couple of horses for a kind of workshop I'll be visiting next weekend. A friend of mine asked me to come along to do some painting and he'll show me his way of painting horses. It has something to do with oil paints and sponges. Hopefully that helps me overcome my reluctance against painting horses. That would help me a lot since I'm a great fan of mounted troops...

 

However I'll keep you on the loop how it comes together. Until then enjoy the weekend and have a happy and blessed Easter!

 

Paint Table Saturday - Challenge finished... Artillery under construction

Finally I posted all of my entries for Curt's painting challenge. This year really few figures only but at least I managed to achieve my goal of 250 points.

Nevertheless there's no time for idleness with a lead pile like mine to handle:

Paint Table Saturday: Final week of the painting challenge

Well then... It's Saturday again and because we'll spend the afternoon at my parents' on my fathers birthday party I'm rather early with giving a view onto my workbench. As you see the projects are more or less the same as the week before but some of the figures are finished now. Namely my entry for the 'Risc Taker' bonus round of the painting challenge, Oberst Kurt 'Curtgeld' Steiner and his twin as well as two Royal Navy captains from Brigade Games wonderful range. Unfortunately I cannot present those figures now since they haven't been in the challenge until now but next week I'll feature them.

Then after the painting challenge I'll have to tackle some half-finished things. Two of them are on the picture as well: The AWI artillery of course and those more modern chaps near the grips. At least the first sqaud has to be finished and then maybe a sixpounder antitank-gun to keep things going. This actually is most difficult because there are so many ongoing projects on my workbench and upcoming temptations: North-West Frontier, War of the Roses, Late WW1, WW2 Paras, Desert Rats, Napoleonics, AWI... It seems I need a better structure... Or I should isolate myself more to avoid distraction...

Anyway meanwhile I started a new round of photography experiments. Actually most of the time I'm struggling with illuminating my workpieces well to take good pictures. No background looks disturbing, white background darkens the miniatures in front, gradual bluish print went missing weeks ago. Unfortunately I don't have space for a permanent photo box. So I tried a medium light blue sheet of cardboard from my daughter's craft stuff. To illuminate the scene properly I took two lamps with I covered with tracing paper to make the light more diffus.

The results were pretty much alright but you have to be patient for a couple of days since I only photographed the Navy captains yesterday. So this is my prieview for next week. Additionally of course the finished miniatures I mentioned above and maybe a report of my visit of the 'Maritime Museum' during our journey to Hamburg.

For now that's it.
Enjoy your weekend !

Paint Table Saturday - Navy, Artillery and Risk Takers

After a longish absence I told myself to come back to blogging more regularly. last year one of the embosomed habits of mine was the regular contribution to the 'Paint Table Saturday' group. So what could be better than coming back to that again.

Currently there are a couple of different project on my workbench:

The two chaps in the foreground are captains from Brigade Games wonderful range of Napoleonic British seamen. For now they'll top my collection off. There are a couple of seamen and gun crew to be painted but since they aren't bought yet I'll leave it with fourteen figures for now.

Behind them you see my piece for the 'Risk Taker' bonus round of Curt's painting challenge. I don't want to give too many hints but most of you should recognise that smuggler anyway. Actually he's finished already but he needs some varnish now.

Besides those I (finally) decided to paint my AWI British 6pdr gun and crew. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to finish them in time for the challenge but however it's time to get those chaps ready for action since I painted the limbered version nearly a year ago. Remember? Here.

Last but not least a couple of twins:

It's Warlord Games's interpretation of Oberst Kurt Steiner which some of you might know from the classic war film 'The Eagle has landed'. In this movie Sir Michael Caine plays the German Fallschirmjäger colonel who gets the order to kidnap or kill Winston Churchill during a secret mission behind enemy lines. He and his fellow soldiers jump off over Britain and try to get hold of the Prime Minister while he's spending some time in the county.

Since a couple of fellows and me want to play this story as a Bolt Action scenario I wanted to have the figure for my own and since Curt asked to have a 'Risk Taker' miniature as entrance fee (aka. 'Curtgeld') I decided to paint a second one right away.

That's it for now... Back to the desk...

Enjoy your weekend !

Imperial Assault: Card Boxes

Last week I put some work into my project for 'Santa Clause'. I found a really nice pack of four figures hopefully according to my counterpart's taste. During the last days I started painting them because they should be finished during the following week end be sent to the United Kingdom the week after. No problem for them to arrive before Christmas.

Besides that I worked on Imperial Assault. The games contains oodles of cards, tokens, board tiles and such stuff and it was time to get them sorted. Thus I made some cardboard boxes for the game:

But those boxes weren't the work of myself alone. Luckily some other geeks seem to have kept struggling with disarray in the Imperial Assault box and one of them prepared a set of templates for the prone tinkerer. He's calling himself 'Sir Willi' and is providing a great number of boxes for Imperial Assault, X-Wing, Armada and other games, most of them at least in German, English and French. Have a look at his blog to get an idea of his work. The templates are free and ready to print at home.

To make the boxes I used 240g cardboard. It proved to be thin enough to work properly with our inkjet printer but thick enough to ensure the needed stiffness for the boxes. Then I cut the templates with a sharp knife and a steel rules and glued them together with usual all-purpose adhesive. Really no big deal but afterwards I had some clean and tidy boxes to sort the different cards in.

Only the active cards of our current campaign are in a zip bag to have them ready for our next session. Altogether a simple and convincing solution in my opinion. Agreeing to this was our little one Anna who helped me to sort all the board tiles and the tokens. But especially the AT-ST caught her attention. Good girl!

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy your weekend !

Imperial Assault: Imperial Officers

During the last week I proceeded slightly with painting the miniatures of the Imperial Assault board game. After those Stormtroopers I took their officers to get some colour onto:

The figure are pretty straightforward. The details on the faces are nice for playing pieces but slightly behind high quality metal miniatures as we know them from Perry, Front Rank, Empress or other wargaming manufacturers. The figures clothes have no noteworthy details as you would expect from those rather simple uniforms.

Thus I painted them in a kind of quick and dirty undertaking during a really short time. As playing pieces they'll do well anyway I asume.

That's it for now, Please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

A happy first Sunday in advent !

Saturday News: Roofing done.

Last week I finished what I started the week before namely the roofing of my multi-temporal estate. Since the original roofs looked too modern to me and suffered some damage somehow some new roofs were needed. For this purpose I cut a couple of triangles from foam board. In addition I cut suitable rectangles from thick cardboard. Those parts combined I had some rather gables as base for the roofs.

Then the trickiest and most time consuming work came up: Tilling the roofs. Luckily Martin and Diane from Warbases are producing sheets of pre-cut cardboard roof tiles. Those were an incredible help. No idea how long it had taken to cut all those shingles myself...

Momentarily the last row of shingles is missing because I want to fit in the new chimneys I made from Depron foam. Actually that was much easier than I thought.

Thus I'm finally seeing the finish line with this project and I'm looking forward to get it done soon.

Until then please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Still building(s)

As the weeks before I'm still working on the buildings we'll need for our Plancenoit game at Crisis. At present I put the wonderful Stronghold Terrain ruins aside and pottered at another estate. One of my friends from the club gave it to me to modify it for the Napoleonic wars. Actually it was part of Grand Manner's excellent range but I think it's out of production currently. Since it was too modern I had to alter it here and there:

The coloured areas were parts we discussed whether they were appropriate for 1815 or not. Finally I decided to do the following major conversions:

• remove gutters (not on the picture)
• remove remaining parts of the broken fencing (green)
• remove the roller shutter front (green)
• make new roofs
• the plate may stay (blue)
• the decorative-moulding as well (red)

Now I don't want to bother you with too many details. There were a couple of other alteration on the gable end of the estate but I'll cover the whole project in a couple of posts as soon as it's finished. But this is the result I achieved during the last days:

Next will be the new roofs that I'll construct with cardboard and Warbases lasercut roof tiles. Afterwards some finishing touchs to make the scene more vivid. A wonderful inspiration was Pat's last piece of art that he presented on his blog 'Wargaming with Silver Whistle' (here). Don't miss this wonderful estate!

Besides that please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Imperial Assault: Painted Stormtroopers

Actually I reserved the following Stormtroopers for my habitual weekend post as part of the 'Paint Table Saturday' venture. But somehow things never turn out the way I expect. Once again our weekend was busy with meeting family and friends and I didn't find the time to get myself to the computer and set a an appropriate article. To crown it all the signs of age exacted their toll and evenings I was too tired to turn my attention to the bloggosphere. Obviously I'm getting too old for three days of gatherings, beer and sports but I wasn't able to resist Rugby, Hockey and American Football...

Anyway with no further ado here's the humble work yours truly performed on some of the miniatures from the Imperial Assault board game:

As you see I started with the easiest figures in the box: Stormtroopers.

Those were my start of choice because I wanted to see quick results and I didn't want to withdraw my attention too much from our ongoing Plancenoit project. With the game come nine Stormtroopers representing three squads. To differentiate them I painted the edges of the bases in blue, red and green.

Besides the coloured edge I held the bases as simply as possible. Since the game works with a couple of different board styles like desert, woodland or space ship interior I was afraid that textured bases might look disturbing when hitting inappropriate underground. Thus I simply painted them dark grey with some slight dry-brushing with lighter grey tones.

Painting the Stormtroopers themselves was pretty simply as well. After a neat coat of white primer I used a dark grey colour on the joints, blasters and other more or less black parts. Then a coat of thinned Armypainter Quickshade: Dark Tone and some white highlighting.

As a result the Stormtroopers aren't as clean and bright as seen in the films but I prever them a little dirty because it brings out the details on playing distance. However those chaps are probably far from my best pieces but as simply rank and file troops they'll do well I presume. Next will be either the drones or the Imperial officers. But first back to Plancenoit. My progress there is small but constant and I'll be able to present another intermediate state later this week.

Our game for Crisis: The battle of Plancenoit

Last week we had an extraordinary club meeting and had the blocking rehearsal for our rather large presentation game for Crisis 2015 in Antwerp. It covers the final episode of the battle of Waterloo taking place in the village of Plancenoit. Our fellows Bernhard and Holger conceived an L-shaped table of around 3m x 5,5m which came into being with the help of the whole team. The humble author is contributing three houses and a couple French figures as you may have recognised as attentive readers of this blog.

So here are a couple of pictures from the great day. Some of them are rather blurry since I had to use my cellphone and lighting is rather subjar in the club HQ. The few better pictures are by our friend Holger. Please klick onto the pictures to enlarge them:

Overall impression of the whole table. Some houses (e. g. mine as well) still WIP.

Prussian messanger delivering Blücher's orders to advance.

And so they do...

Frenchmen hastily moving through the village.

Prussian artillery support.

Tommies finished !

Finally I found the time to finish the six WW1 Tommies that were lurking around my painting table for a while. Actually they were the counterweight to the terrain piece I'm working on for our presentation game at Crisis 2015 but they're bringing my WW1 collection forward to their completion in 2016 or 2017. We'll see...

But now for the boys:

All six miniatures are from Great War Miniatures wonderful WW1 range. The proportions are really good and the poses are very dynamic. Excellent pieces by the sculptor who is - as far as I know - Aly Morrison. The paint them I used Vallejo Model Colours and some advice of helpful Mark Hargreaves of 'Over open sights' frame. His painting guides proves extremely helpful and Mark proved to by a kind and patient fellow. Many thanks to him!

However with those boys my collection rose to 16 painted models and sooner or later I could aim for a platoon sized game. We'll probably use Bolt Action since the system is very popular in our gaming group but with a couple of special rules for WW1 I presume.

Besides that the interior of my ruins are taking shape. The plank floor for the smaller one is nearly finished and the storeys for the larger one are in progress as well:

But for now please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy your weekend!

Paint Table Sunday - Slow but steady progress

During the week I painted a modern trooper for my Mordern Warfare side project but actually I'm still busy with terrain pieces namely ruins.

Since last week I worked on the outer walls and more or less finished them. Thus I started with the stones themselves and after painting them with dark red I drybrushed them with different brownish red colours. Finally a slight wisp of 'Pale Sand' to outline the edges of the stones and to connect them to the plastered parts of the walls which I drybrushed with different beige colours as well.

Although I've got window frames for the ruins as well I decided to turn my attention to some interior fitting first. For both ruins there are pieces of plank flooring to be painted and some storey floors as well. So I started with those pieces today and drybrushed the planks with different brown and beige colours to enhance the wonderfully carved out wood grain.

Since we'll need my two ruins for another game of Bolt Action next week I'll try to complete the next step until then. We'll see...

Until then please don't forget to have a look at the Google+ community dedicated to 'Paint Table Saturday'.

Enjoy your weekend!