Painting Challenge entry 13: ACW Union Cavalry and Artillery

I finally got my cavalry and artillery units finished for our ACW campaign. Luckily the game got postponed so these are easily in time for the new date. After these guys I still have 5 regular infantry and 2 zouave regiments left. They are not needed for the first few games though so it might take a bit of time to get them done.

Nothing special to say about the painting. Coloured basecoat and then just adding details. 5 Artillery batteries with their limbers, 2 mounted and 4 dismounted cavalry units and 3 command stands. These are quite fun to do as you can build sort of mini dioramas quite easily without the bases starting to look too crowded. Like the destroyed cannon on one of the artillery bases. It was broken in the bag when it arrived from Baccus so I just decided to use some casualty figures around it to create a slightly battered battery :) I guess I should try building some walls etc. on some of the bases to show the troops being in cover.

I tried a different background with the photos this time. A black background instead of the regular light grey or the scenic base that I normally use. Seems to bring out the colours quite nicely and finding proper settings for the camera was easy. Might use these instead of the grey backgrounds in the future as I like the effect more.

Painting Challenge entry 12: Ensign Kennedy

For the casualty themed fortnight challenge I converted and painted Ensign Kennedy of the 1st Royal Scots from Waterloo. Other entries and the voting is up at Curt's blog so go there to see what everyone has come up with for this theme!

After being mortally wounded at Waterloo carrying the King's Colours in front of his Regiment a Sergeant attempted to take the flag from his hands. Refusing to let go off it the sergeant picked him up to carry him back. Impressed by the deed the French stopped firing until the two got safely back to the British lines.

As I already told earlier this was the first bigger conversion that I attempted. The previous ones had only included some filling of gaps after changing arm positions etc. For this one I needed to change the pose of the ensign heavily by mostly redoing the legs and the torso. I also redid the hair to show it hanging down.

Parts are sourced from Victrix British Line infantry box, their artillery box and the Perry British Infantry box. The top part of the flag staff is from Warlord games.The whole setup is mounted on a Warbases casualty base to allow tracking casualties.

Challenge progress

I'm getting my painting mojo back as the Olympics are drawing to an end and not much else to watch except for hockey. I got my casualty entry finished and sent of to Curt this morning and now I've been finishing more Union ACW stuff. They are now all painted up and waiting for basing. 66 infantry, 24 cavalry, guns, limbers and some casualties. Probably going to finish them up tomorrow and get them game ready for next Saturday.

I've also been painting more Finns for Winter War with all of the remaining minis having their faces finished and snowsuits with the first few paint layers. After a quiet week with my entries I'm hoping to catch up on my points target next week as I have quite a bit nearing completion at the same time.

It's also looking up to be another Finnish Hockey Proudness moment with the guys leading 5-0 against the USA in the bronze game. Too bad we lost against Sweden in the semi-finals, but they were just so much better as a team. I guess Bronze is fine too and should be a great ending for the careers of the Finnish hockey veterans like Teemu Selänne and Kimmo Timonen.

(c) Scandinavia and the World

Ensign Kennedy, sculpting finished!

Finished my version of Ensign Kennedy on monday and finally the green stuff has hardened. I think it turned out quite nicely as it is the first major conversion that I've done. Previously I've only really just filled minor gaps that were left after some repositioning of limbs etc. He's now waiting for a basecoat and then painting to get him finished for the Casualty theme round.

Right leg looks maybe a bit akward, but no time to start redoing it anymore.

Flames of War games

Had my first "real" Flames of War games yesterday playing two 1250pt games with my US Paras. I've tested it quickly before with the Open Fire box contents, but these were really the first games with someone who knew the rules. And I pretty much got my ass handed to me by both opponents.

First game was Fighting Withdrawal against Germans with a armored recon, 2 King Tigers, scout cars, tracked arty and a small infantry platoon. Started out quite nicely with one para platoon destroying two of the recon vehicles and the mortars pinning the infantry down. However after that everything went pretty much south with me first failing a skill test rolling a 1 to dig in followed by losing the bazooka team of the platoon. This was followed up by the King Tigers attacking and again I failed a skill test to counter-attack rolling another 1. Finally being pinned I rolled another 1 and couldn't move the platoon to contest the objective ending the game. Fearless Veteran Paratroopers fighting bravely against all opposition...

As the first game ended in less than an hour I played another one against a Hungarian armored company with two platoons of assault guns, some recon tanks, nebelwerfers, heavy arty and three german tank destroyers. This time we rolled Surrounded and I decided to sit at both objectives with the paras and try to hurt them with bazookas and the Guards armored platoon. I lost my Firefly straight into the game and after that I wasn't really able to hurt the assault guns only bailing them out with the bazookas. My lack of knowledge of the rules started heavily kicking in at this moment as I didn't realize I could have assaulted the bailed out tanks being able to destroy them quite easily that way. In the end after 7 turns of grinding fire one of the platoons went under half strength and I promptly rolled 1 on a motivation test again losing the platoon. I wouldn't really have been able to move anything useful next to the objective anymore so we decided to stop there.

 

Ottoman Special Operations Service company list

Finally finished the company list for the Special Operations Service company. It's partly based on the Ottoman company from Heroes, Villains and Fiends, but I wanted to make it better suit the Lead Adventure minis. Some stats taken straight from there while some are slightly changed.

You can download the pdf from here.

On another note I've had some progress in painting and sculpting. My casualty entry is ready sculpting wise and just needs some paint. Nurgle Daemon Prince is also coming along nicely and just needs some finishing touches. I haven't really gotten anything completely painted as I've been doing a few projects at the same time. 6 units of cavalry and 5 artillery batteries with limbers are mostly done and they only need a few details and a wash. I also got started on the rest of my Winter War Finns when I got fed up with 6mm's and now I have two squads and a 5 man ski team from Warlord basecoated and with the first paint layers on their snowsuits.

Painting Challenge Entry 11: Ottoman Special Operations Service

Finally got the Ottoman's finished. Took a lot longer than I expected as they just have ton's of detail and working by painting one colour at a time on all minis didn't really work out as I always noticed that I still need to do something else in that colour on the minis when I had already moved on. And getting carried away watching the Olympics didn't help much either :)

These are really nicely sculpted with a lot of detail and nice touches with varying equipment. I used quite a bit of ink washes on the clothing and backs to speed things up a bit and I think it worked out quite nicely. Nice distraction from the main projects that I have going on.

I'll be posting the Company roster sometime when I have time to finish it up. Loosely based around the Ottoman's from the INHM supplement 'Heroes, Villains & Fiends'.

Leading the company is Colonel Mehmet Pasha. Serving as the Ottoman Military Ambassador in Prussia he saw how effective the Society of Thule and other secret services were in furthering the agendas of their respective governments. After returning to the Sultanate he persuaded the Sultan to let him form a team of Janissaries that were especially trained for special operations. Keeping order in the company is Sergeant Yahya who proved his skills after leading a company in a desperate last stand after all the officers had been killed. He lost his arm in the process, but as thanks for his services he was gifted a mechanical prosthesis crafted by the best engineers in the Ottoman sphere of influence.

Responsible for heavy support in the Company is Corporal Seyit. Famed for his strength this former lumberjack has been known to carry large 240mm gun shells by himself when his weapons ammunition lift broke down during battle. Now he is keeping the enemies of the Ottoman Empire at bay with his grenade launcher. Normally meant for a weapon team of two to three soldiers, Sayit is able to carry the gun into battle by himself freeing the rest of the members for other tasks. Medics in the company don't carry any weapons instead of relying on their surgical knives to deal with any threats on the battlefield as well as with those who have fallen casualty.

The rest of the company are Veteran Janissaries who have survived many battles with the enemies of the Sultan. They have access to the best gear that can be procured and are thus able to outfit themselves for whatever mission needs to be carried out. From automatic rifles to machine guns and and toxic gasses, there is nothing that can stop them from dealing with whatever threatens their beloved Sultan and his Empire.

Now for something completely different

As my Ottoman's are still waiting to be published I have a filler post coming along :)

Just narrowly missed the podium in the last Fortnight Challenge ending fourth. Have to step up the game a bit for the next ones to grab the glory :)

I didn't feel like painting after I was finished with applying shade onto all of the hoplites so I dug out a few boxes of FoW US Paras, cleaned them up and stuck them onto their bases along with some scenic additions. I don't think I'm going to paint them for the Challenge. Just going to base them and give them a black basecoat so I'll have my whole army based and with at least a basecoat done so I can get in a few games.

The main task of the evening was playing with greenstuff though. I've now gotten my casualty figure mostly finished, with only the head and some minor details missing. But the main hero of the day was Danny the Dino. 2 euros from some cheap trinket shop and as my better half would say a great price-per-happiness ratio :) A bit of green stuff to fill all the gaps and a new paint coat should make him ready to go after any daring adventurers in our Steampunk games. ROOOAR

Challenge progress and speed painted Greeks

I got the Ottoman's finished on the weekend and now waiting for them to go up on Curt's blog. Meanwhile I decided to do a check-up on my progress and I'm actually keeping quite well to the schedule to reach my target of 1200 points. I was a bit nervous about reaching the goal, but taking part in the Fortnight challenges helps thanks to the extra points :) Painting the rest of the Winter War Finns should help also as they are quite fast to do.

I also finally continued my Greek project by finishing minis that I had started last August. They had seriously gotten sidetracked by pretty much everything else so now that we have a Hail Caesar game coming up on Wednesday I promised to finish them up for that. Previously I had gotten the cloth and skin areas painted along with the shields. So after some frenzied painting and decaling on sunday I now have 30 more or less finished Hoplites to join their already finished brethren.They are still lacking Army Painter shade, but that's a quick job after the main painting rush. Painting all the leather, wood, hair and metal onto 30 guys at one go was a bit harsh, but I guess I've never gotten anything finished this fast. Shows in the quality as these are probably some of the worst I've painted since I got back into the hobby, but still good enough for gaming. But I guess I should put a bit less effort onto some of the mass armies anyways.

On the background the Yanks have gotten the first few layers of colour. Uniforms and skin are done and next up are all the horses and the equipment for the soldiers.

Ottomans and tiny yanks!

Still working on the Ottomans. I've got pretty much everything except for the embroidery, facial hair and wood parts done with at least one colour. Not sure if I'll leave the jackets as they are or still apply a further paint layer. Speed painted them by applying a wash over a basecolour that had been lightly highlighted. Works great on the read and green, but I'm not so sure about the blue.

I also basecoated another batch of 6mm Yanks for our ACW project. The first game is coming up next week and I really need to get these done to complete our OOB. 6 Cavalry regiments and 5 Artillery batteries waiting to get to the battlefield. My painting method should be a bit more refined after the infantry batch so hopefully they won't take too long. Infantry basecoated with the main blue colour, arty and equipment with black and all cavalry and horses with a suitable brown. I'm planning to pick out a few horses with a different colour to bring some variety to the units.

And finally I received some weapons bases from Sarissa to use for the heavy weaponry in our Winter War project. I also revived a long lost British Red Devils project. I was originally going to start Bolt Action with these and painted up a few of them before Napoleonics got in the way. I stripped the old minis of paint and bought a few more blisters to get them up to 1000pts. The miniatures count stays nice and low when all of them are Veteran troops so I might try and get them done during the Challenge. Unless some other fancy strikes me and I get carried away again...

I base all the weapon teams so that the weapon and 1 team member are permanently on the base. This way I can remove the others as the team takes casualties. No need for markers!

Painting Challenge entry 10: Poilu

For my hero category entry I painted up a Forgotten & Glorious Poilu that I had received from them as a free sample. Voting and everyone elses minis are up at Curt's blog so go there and cast your votes!

I originally wanted to paint up a bunch of Finnish Ski troopers, but the Warlord ones that I ordered from one of their retailers took ages to arrive from the UK. They arrived with brilliant timing just after I had submitted this to Curt so they were left to be submitted later. Still I think this lone French trooper portrays my original idea, that ordinary soldiers are the real heroes in war, quite well.

I went for a really muddy and wet look on the base and the mini to try and get the feel of him attacking yet again through no-mans-land that has been turned into a huge mud field after months of rain and heavy shelling.

The miniature itself was great. The quality that Forgotten & Glorious has managed to achieve is just amazing.crisp details, nearly non-existent flash etc. These are really a pleasure to paint and if I ever get around to painting more WW1 minis these are definately the way I'm going to go. The bayonets could be a bit thinner, but then I'd guess they'd be snapping of all the time when playing.

Painting wise the light greyish blue was bit of a pain to paint, as getting a natural contrast between the shadows and highlights seemed quite difficult. I went for a smaller contrast to make the mini look a bit more natural. If painting for tabletop, I might go with a higher contrast. The mud turned out a lot better on these guys than the Finns I painted last week. Might have gone a bit over the top though as it's hiding some of the great detail I did on the legs and puttees :D

The base is done with a mix of Flat Brown paint, PVA glue and sand and then just slapped on around the mini. I used Army Painter strong and dark tone inks to add a bit of variety to the tone. Finished it off with a bit of gloss varnish in some spots to get them to look wetter.

Challenge progress

A quick update on all things hobby like. I finished up my Poilu a couple of days ago and should have it up here when the Challenge entries go up on Curt's blog. Otherwise I haven't been very active with painting the last couple of days. Even though I didn't feel like painting yesterday due to recovering from Friday I did manage to get some sculpting and converting work done to get ready for the next few Fortnight Challenges.

For the casualty entry I'm continuing my Ensign Kennedy project that was forgotten in my bitz box last spring. Last time he only really had the basic shape fleshed out so now I continued by finishing the jacket and his legs. I also added an arm for him and hands for the Sergeant. I still need to sand down some details and sculpt the young Ensigns sash and modify some bare head to look like his hair is dangling down.

For my "favorite character" I'm gonna go with a Nurgle Daemon Prince. He is converted from bitz off the Plague Drones and Daemon Prince kits. I'm still trying to figure out if I should use the fly head from a spawn box or one of the Daemon Prince heads with this guy. Using the fly head would be easier as I don't really need to sculpt a neck for him, but we'll see how I feel when I'm finishing him up :)

I also fixed a couple of NCO's arms for the Winter War project. Their arms come separate and really need some filling to get them looking natural. And on the background you can see the Turks going along. Blockpainted the basic uniform colors and all the metal parts. Next up painting all details.