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.

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 !

Imperial Assault: Droids, Imperial Guard and the Dark Lord himself

Probably you've notived that a certain Star Wars mania had taken possession of Monty's Manour. Thus it suggested itself to start the Painting Challenge with a couple of Star Wars miniatures namely more playing pieces for Imperial Assault:

Actually very nice figures but somehow not the quality we are used to have from those top-notch 28mm figures by Perr, Front Rank, Foundry, Empress and other suppliers of metal miniatures. Some pieces could be more detailed and some parts are kept rather easy. Nevertheless they represent the figures from the Star Wars universe very well and were fun to paint. This week I prepared three lots of figures for our Wesdnesday night Imperial Assault session:

Firstly three probe droids. Those little bastards are always useful to scout the way for the stormtroopers. Within the game they proved rather handy and dangerous. As for painting I stayed very simple. Just a couple of grey tones over black primer. Really the quick and dirty kind of miniatures. For gaming reasons I kept the bases simple as well. Some light drybrushing and a colour marking to differentiate different squads in game.

Two sets of Imperial Red Guardsmen. In the game they serve in pairs and thus I prepared two with a red and two with blue colour markings. A pretty simple paintjob as well. Black primer, three layers of different red tones and then some darktone Armypainter Quickshade.

Highlight in a special sense was the dark lord of the Sith himself: Darth Vader.

A figure which seemed rather easy to paint but black is always special somehow. Of course I didn't want to turn him too greyish and therefore I chose to hold back with highlighting as much as possible. Only some dark and medium grey drybrushing on the cloak and some more efforts on the body armour. The lightsaber and the control panels of the Vader's suit were nice details and meant a nice diversion. The base is once again kept slate grey with some gentle drybrushing in medium and light grey.

Reviewing 2015

January means not only a new year but another blog birthday as well. Yours truly posted his first article on January 5th 2012 and thus it's now four years of blogging behind me and I enjoyed each and every post of it. Really there were time when blogging kept my hobby spirits alive and maybe I would have turned my back to wargaming without our virtual community. Meanwhile I've become a core member of a wonderful club but nevertheless I'm still enjoying to present my or our humble projects.

But now back to 2015. During these twelve months I added 84 posts to my blog. That's slightly less than in 2014 but slightly more than 2012 and 2013. Thus I'm satisfied with the creative outcome of my writing.

Meanwhile the number of registered readers 'followers' reached 249 and Monty's Caravan collected more than 240,000 hits. Many thanks for your constant support and usually encouraging feedback!

Here are some impressions of the year: