Paint Table Sunday - Ruins and Tommies nearly finished

As usual I'm a bit late for the Paint Table Saturday. Actually signs were good yesterday to get the post online in time. The pictures were taken and cut to the right size and when unmatched Mrs Monty asked me to watch our currently admired TV show 'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell' after the girls went to bed I thought afterwards should be enough time for a nighthawk like me to do my blogging duty. But life wasn't fair. After no more than 15 minutes sleepy Mrs Monty was carried away by sleep. Thus I decided to give 'No Country for old men' a chance instead of turning my attention immediately to my humble writing. This proved to be a fatal mistake since the drama drained my wakefulness deeply. Finally I had to postpone my PTS (Paint Table Saturday) to Sunday again... Sorry.

But nevertheless some tiny steps were taken last week and things are going well with the ruin and the Tommies:

Actually I realised once more what a lousily slow painter I am. Only six Tommies to paint and a single ruined building. But anyway I'm satisfied with the result. For the ruin I'm using the same colours as I used for its predecessor since both will serve on the same tables most of the time. For the Tommies I use a painting scheme based to the wonderful work of helpful Mr Mark Hargreaves of famous 'Over open sights' blog. He's kind enought to present some of his painting guides on request and I found his detailed remarks unatterably worthy. I only simplified some lesser details to accelerate mass painting.

Sooner or later I expect about 100 Tommies for my WW1 collection. Mostly infantry by Great War Miniatures but some vehicles and artillery pieces from other companies as well. We'll see.

For now that's it. As soon as the ruin or the Tommies are finished I'll present a longer review on the

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

Enjoy your weekend!

Visiting Celle - Part 2 - Waterloo diorama and Celle's city centre

Part 1 is here.

Although it was very exciting and interesting to roam between the historical exhibition pieces the centrepiece of the exhibition was a huge, two-piece diorama of the battle of Waterloo. It was built by a group of German wargamers and consists of about 15,000 28mm miniatures. Frank one of the organisers gave some details about the diorama on his blog 'Figuren und Geschichten' but honestly you don't get an idea of its size when you haven't seen it. Thus with no more ado to the pictures (please click to enlarge):

Viktoria and me observing the French cavalry charge.

French heavy cavalry (Carabiniers) on the charge.

Visiting Celle - Part 1 - Exhibition KGL at Waterloo

Last week we spend a couple of days with my aunt and took the chance for a day trip to Celle. Celle is a town of about 70,000 citizens in Lower Saxony and besides its wonderful castle Celle inhabits the Bomann Museum. Currently there's an exibition about the Hanoverian and KGL troops at Waterloo taking place which caused my interest. Thus we met there with a dear friend of ours. Viktoria, Niclas and me spent a couple of interesting hours between exciting exhibition pieces and countless 28mm miniatures.

Niclas, Viktoria and me in front of the museum.

The exhibition is accomodated in the cellar of the Bomann Museum and admission is really fair with 5 EUR (app. £3.50) for adults for the whole museum. The special exhibition itself covers one large room which is dominated by the huge diorama made of 15,000 28mm miniatures. Alongside there are a lot of glass cabinets with exhibition pieces and a lot of pictures on the walls. All of them precisely described (though in German only) which makes it rather easy to follow the common threat. Here's a small selection of some of the pieces. Unfortunately the glass of the cabints proved really reflective. Maybe because of the soft lighting. Anyway feel free to click the pictures to enlarge them:

Colour Sergeant of the 7th Line Battalion KGL

Altogether they have a wonderful selection of uniforms there. Especially outside the UK it seems rather difficult to get a view of British uniforms but since the KGL used more or less the same dress code the chance in Celle was unique for me. Although there are some excellent books about the KGL and British uniforms of the Napoleonic wars it's priceless to see the pieces in reality.

Sergeant of the grenadier company of the 4th Line Battalion KGL

Paint Table Sunday - Another Ruin and some Tommies

Actually I was busy enough with sorting about 500 pictures from our recent trip to Celle but besides I started some new workpieces yesterday:

Namely it's another ruin from the wonderful range of Stronghold Terrain. Mirco and Elmar presented it on Tactica this February and I was lucky enough to grap one of the pre-release kits they brought. Once again a wonderful kit of a severely battered building. Architecturally it's rather versatile. My piece will serve as part of our Plancenoit game on Crisis this November and afterwards I'll add it to my WW1 / WW2 collection after I finished the interior details with kitchen and water closet.

But besides the large area paintjob I wanted to have some detail work as well. Fittingly a friend of mine revived my efforts for the WW1 range of Great War Miniatures. We're planning to setup some game with altered Bolt Action rules but for that I'll need some more painted Tommies. Thus I put six of those brave sons of the Empire onto my painting table to see them coloured as soon as possible.

That's enough for now. Dear Mrs Monty and me have the unique chance to go to the cinema this midday and thus I have to hurry now, since we have to bring the girls to my parents previously. Unfortunately they show nothing else than the Minion at the cinema that early but never mind.

Enjoy your Sunday as well !

Back from (short) holiday and archers finished

Many apologies for my sudden absence. We spent a couple of days with my aunt and internet access was rather basic there and thus I wasn't able to enter the bloggosphere since Saturday morning. During our visit we take a day trip to Celle. On the one hand it's a beautiful city with a wonderful old city centre but on the other hand at the Bohmann Museum there is a very interesting exhibition about the Hanoverian and KGL troops at Waterloo taking place. It's a small but excellent exhibition and really a priceless source for those devoting themselves to these German soldiers in British service. The exhibition is there until 11th October so if you get the chance to go there soon do it!

But more about that later. I'll feature our trip to Celle as well as the Waterloo exhibition with its enormous 28mm diorama (15,000 figures!) in one or two posts this year. Probably two since I took so many pictures that it'll be simply too much for one post.

Anyway the figure I finished before our holiday were five archers for the Wars of the Roses period:

Painted in blue and red they shall represent some men from Yorkist retinue. Because of my very limited freehand skills I decided to omit livery badges thus they could serve for any of the Yorkish boys either Edward IV, Richard III or their brother Clarence. I'm pretty satisfied with the result on those wondrful Perry plastic miniatures. Nevertheless I should improve my photography setup since the pictures were heavily underexposed. My adjustment work with the GIMP graphic software is of questionable success as you see...