Saxon reinforcements aka the final Painting Challenge entries

With the painting challenge over it's time wrap up with my final entries. In the last few weeks I focused more or less solely on painting some Saxons. Our 1813 campaign is rolling forward and they will all be needed soon. And it doesn't hurt that they yield quite a few points while still being relative fast to paint ;)

All of these units are from the second Saxon Division. I've almost completely finished the first one, it's just missing the Leib Grenadier battalion which will need some green stuff work as their uniform differed slightly from the normal grenadier uniform. And after these I'm only missing 3 more infantry battalions from the second division and then that's completely finished as well! However they might have to wait a bit longer as I'm actually missing some line infantry miniatures and will have to wait for reinforcements. I have enough figures for one more battalion and if I use casualty figures on the bases then for maybe another one after that. I was going to order the missing Hussars and command figures and the final two batteries of artillery so it isn't that big of a deal.

First up combined grenadiers of battalion von Sperl.

 

Then we have Regiment Niesemeuschel in their red facings as well as a casualty base. I really need to crank out more casualty bases as well. I've only done this and all the light infantry ones until now so there will be quite a few to paint up!

 

And finally the two batteries of 6 pounder guns  that were attached to the second division. I still need to paint two batteries of horse artillery and two foot artillery batteries that were in the Corps reserve. Quite a lot of firepower with 8 batteries in total for two divisions and their attached cavalry.

And finally some rats! These were actually painted in late December, but were without bases as they were waiting for the rest of the unit to be painted. I never got around to it during the challenge so in the last evening I figured I'd just make some quick bases for them to get the finished. As paint test minis their main point was to see which would please my eye more, fur or skin shade, on the arms and legs. The clothing is also fairly dull and not the bright bluish green of Clan Mange that I'm going for. But I think I'll reserve that shade for just small details on the basic rats and use it more on characters and units like Stormvermin.

The bases are super simple as there will be far over a 100 of them so I need something that can be done fast and in bulk. The bases were just covered with dark brown Vallejo pumice, an assortment of pigments and then mostly covered with fallen leaves that I made with an assortment of different Green Stuff World leaf cutters. I'll also probably be adding different tufts and maybe some still water on some of the bases, but to be honest I didn't have the time on these guys. The PVA wasn't actually 100% dried when I was taking the images and it was already getting fairly late.

Saxon Light Infantry

After painting a bunch of rats I got back on track with a project that I started during the sixth edition of the Painting Challenge, the whole Saxon Corps for the 1813 campaign in Germany. I'd originally planned to have the whole Corps painted up by the autumn of 2016 when we were going to start our campaign, but life has a curious way of disturbing even the best plans. One gaming companion got deployed overseas while another moved to the states for a little over a year so our Napoleonic gaming got put on hold for a while. That coupled with my general lack of painting mojo lead to the whole project being tucked away in a storage box for a while. With the 205 year anniversary of the campaign coming up and the whole crew back in the same country we are finally moving on with the campaign so it was high time I dug up my Napoleonics project box and got painting.

Until now I've done a bit over half the Line infantry as well as heavy cavalry and artillery. To be honest painting all that white on the infantry is bit of a drag so I figured the next in line should be something at least a bit different. Luckily the Saxon's outfitted their light infantry with green uniform and equipment that had black leather straps! I can say that this was pure joy compared to the white uniforms with white strapping that all the line infantry and grenadiers had for the Saxons. Considering that I really don't like painting white, I still don't really understand how I ended up deciding to paint a whole Corps of them.

AB minis as are all of my other Saxons (nobody else seems to make them at this scale). Great sculpts, but they are hindered a bit by the fact that there are only 3 different poses for them. Luckily it's not too bad as they were mostly used in a skirmishing role so I just based them two minis to a base instead of my normal three. Spread out a bit on the table it shouldn't look too bad. I also had 4 minis left over as I hadn't taken into account officers in the units, but as we are using small dice as tokens to indicate different fatigue levels and other effects in game they offered a great way to spice up my dice trays for the units.

The two great coat wearing officers have a small conversion on their shako. They normally had small pompoms, but I thought they would look a bit funny with everyone else having a tall plume so I quickly rolled some suitable plume shaped rolls from green stuff. They ended up a bit too tall, but from a distance look quite nice.

Painting wise I cheated a bit compared to how I normally paint my 15mm Napoleonics. For all the brighter colours I've tended to paint all the colours, add a dark brown or black wash and then highlight the minis, but with these guys I just skipped the whole highlight step and left them at it. The only addition I did was the red piping on their uniforms to make them stand out a bit.

Finishing up 2017

This post has been a long time coming, but I guess better late than never.

Even though I haven't been posting anything, I wasn't completely idle in the last few months of the year. I ended up finishing my Soviet project, painted a few battalions and batteries of Napoleonics as well as got started with a quick few minis in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. The end of the year also saw me switch jobs, which lead to a rather busy December and start of the new year trying to get on track with new responsibilities and new products in an industry I haven't worked before.

Numbers wise 2017 wasn't too impressive with the lowest numbers of miniatures painted and games played in years. My painting slump that started in the last half of 2016 continued through 2017 and I didn't really start to get my painting interests back until the autumn. As well as a distinct drop in the quantity of games played the variety also came down as my schedule didn't really fit our Wednesday gamedays which included more varied game systems and mostly could just fit the Flames of War gamedays in and those only partly out of responsibility as I'm one of the guys running them and opening the club for others. 2018 should hopefully bring a change to that with a new Napoleonics campaign finally starting as well as changed schedules at home allowing me to participate more in different game days at the club.

To finish off the post a quick gallery of the  stuff that I managed to finish up in the last couple of months as well as a group shot of the whole Soviet project. 11 more T-34s, a Katyusha battery, the two battalions of Prince Anton Regiment and two batteries for my 1813 Saxons as well as some wild animals that I started my Painting Challenge with.

Painting Challenge entries 14-16: Teddy Bear Romans, Saxons and Commandos

Phew! It's been another hectic three months with the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge going on. The last week saw me rushing to finish all projects that were still underway.

The first to finish was my Curtgeld entry. Being a product development engineer I did what I do best and that is copy others and improve :) No time for ingenuity with managerial pressures on your back and a need to get things done! So I went ahead and copied our challenge overlord Curt's first entry of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. I'd actually been struggling to think about what kind of a risk taker I should do, but when I saw the Teddy Bear Romans sculpted by Mike Broadbent I knew that was the thing to do. With them being manufactured by Eureka it was simple enough to add a few to my Saxon reinforcement order.

Next up were yet more Saxons with two more battalions from Regiment von Steindel. With these done I have all the line infantry finished from the first Division and about a third of all the infantry done. As Fighting 15s still hasn't got new moulds for light infantry and grenadiers I'll have to stick to painting line infantry for a while still. Slightly annoyingly the distribution of poses in my last batch was horrible with over 80% consisting of only two poses, and only a couple of examples of one of them. I threw in a mounted officer and a casualty to account for the issue, but I have a feeling in the future I need to start doing some conversions as well. Even with an even distribution of poses there's still only 4 different ones so probably some minor conversions to French figures are in place.

And lastly my Secret Santa gift from the exchange organized by Ian of The Blog With No Name fame and his wife Catherine. I received a blister with a Warlord Games Commando Mortar team. A bit underwhelming as I don't really have any Commandos and it came in an amazon package, but nevertheless it's fun to receive unexpected hobby gifts! These were really a breeze to paint as there's basically just two main colours covering most of the minis. So base shades and a few highlights later they are ready for battle. I've given them to a clubmate who has Commandos so they did find a good home quite fast!

Painting Challenge entries 8 & 9: Black Plague Survivors and Regiment Prinz Maximillian

I'm lagging behind a bit on posting my challenge entries here, but I guess it's better late than never!

First up the six basic survivors from the new Zombicide Black Plague box. I'd promised myself not to buy anymore Zombicide as I have all the boxes and quite a few extras from previous kickstarters, but then those dastardly guys decided to do a medieval version! The sculpts seemed a lot more characterful than the previous "modern" Zombicide sculpts and there were plenty of great looking heroes and special monsters. When they showed a few Monty Python themed sculpts I was finally sold and pledged for the whole deal!

The basic game arrived just before christmas as they had the boxes ready and apparently wanted to give an early christmas gift to the backers with the rest arriving in February. Not surprisingly in late January we were informed that items wouldn't arrive before June/July and the main boxes would go on sale at stores already.

I hadn't painted any Zombicide stuff previously, but figured that these medieval versions deserved a bit of paint. I'm probably going to paint up all the heroes at some point when they show up. I went for a simple paintjob as they are only really going to be used with Zombicide and not in normal miniature games. So block painting, a brown wash and a single highlight on the largest items. Finally some blood and slime effects thrown on the weapons and ground.

The second entry of last week was another Saxon Regiment. This time Regiment Prinz Maximillian and it's first battalion. After this unit it's Regiment von Steindel and with them done I have all the line infantry of the 1st Division finished. Not sure what units I'm going to paint after that. A change from the line infantry could be nice so I might try my hand at converting some Uhlans from regular Chevauxleger miniatures.

Painting challenge entry 5: Regiment Rechten

Back to the Saxons with another Line Infantry Regiment. This time the 2nd battalion of Regiment Rechten. It seems that only the second battalion took part in the 1813 campaigns with the rest of the Saxon army so I have chosen to only paint that up for this project.

Nothing special to say about the paint job. Pretty much the same as the previous Saxon infantry, albeit this time with my least favorite colour to paint, yellow. White and yellow both cover other shades horribly so I tried to be a bit tidier during the block painting sessions than normal. Quite fast to paint up and finished over last weekend with a few hours of painting done on both days between other obligations. The Saxon army is growing at a slow, but steady pace.

I've used a new flock for these minis as I ran out of the old one when doing the armored rifles. I couldn't find the same mix I've used previously so I picked a few different bags of model railway flock. This is the brighter one with some colourful strands mixed in to represent small flowers. Looks quite nice, but maybe a tad bit too light for my taste. I'll have to try mixing in some darker green to tone it down a bit. Though it does make the whole unit look a lot more colourful.

I've now also received another care package from Fighting 15s containing some much needed reinforcements. My initial order only included a few Regiments and some cavalry to see what the minis looked like. I had been planning to buy the rest of the first Saxon Division, but unfortunately Fighting 15s can't deliver Grenadiers or Light Infantry until sometime in March, so I had to settle with just ordering more line infantry. I now have enough for most of the normal line battalions I need to paint up. Would have been nice to paint the green uniformed light infantry in between all the white uniforms, but those will now have to wait.

Now I'll be taking a few days off from all hobby related activities. This weekends Flames of War tournament did take it's toll and I don't really feel like gaming or painting at the moment. Still a rather good weekend with 4 wins out of 5 and one point from the first place. I ended up tied for third. The second place player had the same points as me, but had won 5 of his games. So after all 4 players with only one point difference between them. Pretty close and it all really hang in balance until the end.

Painting Challenge entry 3: Zastrow Kürassiere

My next entry to the challenge continues on the same lines as the previous one. This time some Saxon heavy cavalry in the form of the Zastrow Cuirassiers. The second heavy cavalry regiment during the 1813 campaign in addition to the Leib Kürassiere Garde it was virtually annihilated during the Russian campaign, but reraised in time for the 1813 campaign to fight alongside the Leib Kürassiere Garde, which had stayed in Saxony. The unit fought with distinction throughout the campaign and was one of the last to defect with the rest of the heavy cavalry and the guard.

Once again AB minis. Very nice sculpts, but once again the poses could have been a bit more varied. Luckily the horses are separate on all but one sculpt so they can be used to add a bit of variety. I find horses very tricky to paint as too much contrast makes them look blocky and just plain weird, but then too little just makes them look bland when looked at an arms length. I tried to put in a bit more contrast than usual, but I think I still should have gone further with it. Still turned out quite nicely and will hopefully make a striking appearance on the battlefield.

Next up back to Flames of War with the final infantry unit in my project. After that I think I'll need some quick interlude at another scale than 15mm. I love the smaller models for gaming, but they are no where near as fun to paint as 28mm and larger.