New Beginnings

Hello,
as you might know I recently moved to a new place. That was the main reason why I haven't done a lot of hobby stuff lately, but now that we are settled in to our new home I have to sort out my hobby room!

(Well, I have to share it with the wife's sewing machine and knitting supplies, but that's a small price to pay, isn't it?)

I thought that would be a good opportunity to show some of my collection, although very little of it is actually finished.

Let's start with some 6mm Cold War Commander armies, i.e. Syrians, British Army of the Rhine and IDF:

Next, most of my Bolt Action armies: 8th Army, Early War Soviets, Hungarians and Late War Germans

 As you can see there is a lot to do, I need to paint/repair a lot of the 8th Army vehicles, and the Soviets should get some reinforcements soon since we are going to have a big Bolt Action battle again at the start of December. In the background you can just make out a GAZ AA, Komsomolet and some Black Tree Design infantry.
Well, and the Hungarians and Germans are not even half painted... One day I will finish the 44M TAS and Rohamloeveg in the fictitious ambush camo pattern I want.

I also plan to venture into 1/35th territory:

I love IDF armor, and the Meng Production figures are awesome! I hope I won't get too annoyed by the tracks with multiple pieces per link...

I also decided to expand my 6mm Germans for Blitzkrieg Commander:

I guess a fine drill and some steel wire are in demand to fix these barrels... Anyway, I am planning to paint those units and some infantry as part of a P500 on the German Tabletopwelt forum. This is a nifty little event they have every year in which you pledge to paint a full army with each 500 points block being finished in 6 weeks. It's a great way to get feedback and motivation, and I think this kind of "pressure" is very good to get me doing something. And since one of those Jagdtigers is already worth 280 points, I also decided to double the points per block to 1000. More about this project soon, it starts on November 1st!

Community Service

We were looking for new ways to promote our hobby (and club) and got into contact with the local library. They were very keen to put up a display, so I volunteered some of my 8th Army!

\
They needed  work anyway (a lot of transport damage...), and this was a great reason to get it done.

Some of my infantry, supported by a Matilda II, 2 inch mortar and a 2-pdr ATG. The 2-pdr is from Perry Miniatures and so fragile that it needed its own support base - sadly I haven't had time to paint it :/

M3 Grant (in the 4-tone camouflage as seen on the one at Bovington), SAS jeep and troop and a squad of Sikhs.

I count those towards my goal of getting 200 miniatures ready - 38 down, 162 to go!

Spray and Pray

I started with the 15mm SciFi diorama and painted the vehicles.

First, I used black spray paint as a foundation:

Then I apllied the the Anarchy Models stencil vinyl:

 

Next was a layer of light grey:

And more stencils:

Follwed by the main color:

The Tamiya spray is pretty good and the layers are reasonably thin. Now came the most exciting part - removing the vinyl bits:

I am quite pleased with the results. Of course the Anarchy Models masking vinyl is not designed to be used with spray cans, but the "stepping" is not too bad. The vinyl left some residue, I guess because of the rather hot temperatures around here, but those rub off easily. I think that the paint from the can is more likely to get under the vinyl than paint from an airbrush.

Now I should go back and paint some 10mm Normans - they need to be ready by sunday ;)

Tiny Normans Part I

Hello,
first, sorry for the long break. I wanted to post this last week, but then I had some trouble with my laptop and so it took a lot longer to get this one done than I wanted.

With a new DBA tournament coming up in early December Inow  started to build my 10mm Norman army.
Because my Normans are 10mm I am going to double base everything (i.e. use 6 miniatures on a 3Kn element) which I think is a great way to make the army even more impressive.

With what I have I can easily make enough elements to play Western Franks / Normans as well as Eastern Franks.

The spearmen line up very nicely into a solid block:

As do the bowmen:

These are two element of psiloi with crossbows (I fixed the "upright" weapons by now and removed the surplus metal bits):

But of course the main bulk of the army are the knights:

I had to cut the bases myself because I only got 40x20 bases. Front right is a base of camp followers.
Talking about the camp, I also started to build a Norman wwatchtower/keep:

 I'll add some windows and a gate made out of plastic card.

Most of the bases still need to be done, and of course there is the small issue of painting the 107 miniatures in the army... Well, at least I've started already ;)

I also did some work on the 15mm SciFi vehicles I showed a couple of weeks before. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures soon!

Anarchy from the UK

So, time for a new post. Real life got in the way of my hobby time a lot recently, and I started to work on a german version of the Afterlife rules, so I am just going to show some new hobby material that arrived at my doorstep: Stencils from Anarchy Models

They are designed to be used with an airbrush (which I don't own) but I am pretty confident that they will work with Tamiya spray cans. I'll use the digital camo on the 15mm miniatures for the display I was talking about before.

The material is vinyl, which makes them quite adhesive by themselves, and there is a lot of stencils on each sheet. They are supposed to be reusable, but I don't think that will work out if I use a spray can. Here is a picture of the actual diamond grid sheet:

The stencils above are all from the HD series. There is also a HS series which has thicker, less flexible material. That makes them easier to clean and to last longer:

In other news, a friend of mine who's running his own painting studio outsourced some basic work to me, so I have to take care of a bunch of Sigmarines this week:

Summer Project - 6mm Late War Germans

My forum of choice is the german-language Tabletop Welt, although it started to struggle about year ago after a sub-optimal software update and a change of ownership which came with a new staff of admins and moderators, too.

Anyway, some of my favorite things about this forum are the Project 500 and the Summer Project.

Both are friendly painting competitions aiming at motivating gamers to finish a project within a given timeframe. The Project 500 usually runs from November to April and includes 4 "blocks". Each block is 6 weeks long and participants are supposed to paint at least 500 points of miniatures within each period. So after 4 blocks you'll have painted 2000 points. There are slightly different point limits for different systems, but over all the 500 points work for most games.

There is nothing at stake, you just do it for fame and glory and the motivation.

The Summer Project is a "Project 500 light" and only runs from June to August with three blocks of one month each. And because people are less likely to spend a lot of time painting when it is 35°C outside, you only have to paint any 6 miniatures to pass a block.

My summer project for this year is 6mm late war german armor for Blitzkrieg Commander (or Spearhead, which seems to be more popular around here). More precisely Kampfgruppe Peiper of Battle of the Bulge "fame".
The local wargaming club bought a huge collection of 6mm WW2 miniatures from somebody and sold it to the members for very little money, so I was able to get around 120 vehicles for 25 US-$. And they still made a bit of profit from that! The quality ranges from GHQ and CinC to things somebody might have carved out of a block of lead with his bare hands.
But after some sorting and paint-stripping I am very happy with this purchase ;)

So painting six 6mm vehicles in a month isn't much of a challenge, especially when it is not 35°C outside (I live in the southern hemisphere and rather have the problem that I can't go outside to use spray cans due to rain and/or frost). Anyway, it is a nice motivation to sit down with a brush at least every other week and get some painting done.

My project is roughly based on the marching order of Kampfgruppe Peiper. It was lead by the 1. Abteilung SS Panzerregiment 1 with Panthers and Panzer IVs, followed by the SS Panzergrenadierregiment 2 and all the way at the end, the Tiger IIs of Schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501 (Peiper didn't believe that these massive tanks could navigate the narrow forest tracks with sufficient speed and was actually not too enthusiastic about having them in his force).

The first two blocks are finished by now:

Block 1 consists of a CO element (Panther and Sd Kfz 251), three Panthers and six Panther IV H/J.

Block 2 has a HQ element (Sd Kfz 250 and Schwimmwagen), 3 Sd Kfz 251, 3 Maultier halftracks and 3 Grille SPGs.

The final block will be another HQ element (Tiger II and Kubelwagen) and 6 Tiger IIs.

I quite enjoy painting those tiny miniatures. In the past I painted modern Syrians and IDF as well as some 1980s BAOR in 6mm, and it is much more fun than one expects!
Another interesting part is that late war german vehicles offer quite a lot of variety in color. Base color can be sand, olive green or oxide red, depending on production date. Most vehicles show a simple striped camouflage or the rather elaborate "ambush" pattern, but mixing in some less often used schemes is a nice way to make painting more interesting and challenging (all patterns shown are "authentic", although some have been borrowed from Eastern Front units).

Half way through the final block I only managed to put base color on the Tiger IIs, partly because I spent some time trying to replace the rather "bendy" gun barrels (don't try it. It is a horrible idea and you will curse yourself for even trying...).

Also shown are three Wirbelwind AA tanks and a Kettenkrad. The turrets are not primed yet, but I will paint seven Krupp-turrets and three additional Porsche-turrets for variety.

Frostgrave - First Steps

One of my latest acquisitions was Frostgrave by North Star Military Figures and Osprey Publishing. Frostgrave is a Mordheim-style skirmish game. The background is pretty simple: a bunch of wizards hire some soldiers and go adventuring in the ruins of a long-lost legendary city.

Today, I'll just want to share some pictures of the miniatures for the game.

Up first, the Chronomancer and his apprentice. Chronomancy is the youngest of the magic schools and considered to be a short-cut to power. Of course, with great power comes great resp... eh, risk.
As masters of time their spells are all about slowing down and hastening. If they are really ambitious, they can even try to store some time for later use.

Next a pair of Soothsayer. They are specialists in awareness and mind control, revealing secrets and making their opponent forget spells.

Last, but not least, Witches. Curses, potions and controlling nature is their speciality, and if all goes downhill, they can shoot some poisoned Bone Darts at their enemies.

Wizard have access to a lot of different henchmen, called soldiers.

Thugs are the lowest in the food chain. They are just some rabble armed with hand weapons. I made two groups of Thugs from the plastic Soldier kit:

To make them a bit more distinguishable I arme one group with swords and one with axes. This is a purely cosmetic choice because weapons do not grant any special rules.

Thieves are faster than Thugs, but only armed with a dagger. I built two, and decided to make them twins:

Archers are the cheapest way to add some ranged attacks to your warband. They fight as well as Thungs in close combat, but also have leather armour:

Infantrymen have two-handed weapons and leather armour, making them better and more resilient fighters than Thugs. Their two-handed weapons give them a bonus on damage, too :

Men-at-Arms have leather armour and shields, giving them a very good armour value. They are armed with hand weapons:

I also received some metal miniatures as rewards for pre-ordering the game, i.e. a Knight and a Templar.

A knight is an excellent fighter and with shield and mail armour he has the highest armour value of all soldiers. But he also costs five times as much as a Thug.

 The Templar changes the shield for a two-handed weapon which makes them the best damage-dealers in close combat. Next to him a metal treasure marker:

Talking about treasure markers, the pre-order deal came with five generic and three special treasure markers, too:

The weapon rack is broken due to a bubble in the resin, but nothing that won't be easily fixed.

My first impression is very good. The miniatures are well designed, although the plastic Soldier kit has a distinct lack of useful left arms, making it necessary to use parts from the bit box or to have some repetition. This is a general problem of this box, for example three of the four Thugs with axes are converted in some way.
On the other hand, the set was designed to be compatible with Fireforge Games boxes, and mixing the Frostgrave soldiers with a box of Foot Sergeants will give you an excellent base to build you warband(s). Alternatively, Gripping Beast's Dark Age Warriors or Arab Foot Soldiers shoudl work fine.

My plan at the moment ist to build and paint two warbands (I always try to get two forces for each new game, it is much easier to get people to play that way ). One of them will have a black and red color scheme, the other one (most likely) white and blue.

Here is a WIP of the two Thieves:

The faces need some more work...