Wet Paint: dwarven heavy metal

As always, attending a wargames convention (Warcon 2020 in this case) gets the wargaming mojo going again and I've spent an enjoyable few hours at the painting table. This resulted in these cheery fellows:

Say hello to the artillery section of the Watch of the Seventh Deep. Those with deep memories (or good search fu) remember their crossbow toting brethren, whom I painted over 7 years and one house move ago. At this rate, I'll have an army of them ready to play by the time I'm retired and living in a care home somewhere.

Like the crossbowmen, the figures are plastics from the Kings of War range of Mantic Games. Here's a few other angles of them:

Wet Paint: Thirty Years' War musketeers

These are 6 Warlord Games Thirty Years' War musketeers, just off the painting table:



They are going to be part of the Yellow Brigade of Gustavus Adolphus' army, whose other figures have been languishing in the 'painted but awaiting completion' box for a very long time now. I brought them out for a group shot just for fun:



The new musketeers will be joined by another 6 in firing poses so I can make up two more stands of shot. I can then use the full brigade as two units (of 2 pike / 2 shot) or make one big pike block with two wide shot sleeves.

I am using new paint recipes for the new paint jobs, as I switched from Foundry to Vallejo paints again. As a result the new figures look a bit brighter than the ones painted earlier, probably because the Foundry highlight paints might be the base colour with white added, so their saturation goes down. I'm not going to be bothered about this, though - let's assume these are new recruits with less campaign weather beaten clothes :)

Wet paint: 20mm British Airborne sniper team

I'm in the process of doing a bit of a refurbish / reorganisation on one of my very first wargame armies -- 20mm WWII British Airborne. I am reorganising the figures into units which are suitable for use with Chain of Command (although that will not preclude their use with other rulesets of course), as well as redoing their bases to have a single basing style. These figures were painted over many years and based in many different styles, so the rebasing was needed.

In Chain of Command, the platoon HQ section for a British Airborne platoon has a sniper team, for which I did not have any figures painted up yet. This is hereby corrected:

As you can see, the 'wet' part of the title of this post is to be taken literally - the ink on the base was freshly applied when I took the photo. The figures are from FAA (the sniper is part of the assault party).

As an aside, I am now officially getting old. Seeing details on these black undercoated 20mm figures well enough to paint them was impossible without magnification. I think I'm going to need reading glasses :)

Wet Paint: Württemberg infantry regiment Von Phull, 1st battalion

It's been a while since I posted to our blog, which has mostly been due to a distinct slump in hobby enthusiasm. We've all been through these phases where the hobby flame, for various reasons, is burning low.

That said, things seem to be picking up and I have started painting figures again. Here's the finished (not yet based) 1st battalion of Wurttemberg regiment Von Phull, as they would have appeared in 1809:

When going through my notes, I noticed that the first of the figures in this battalion were painted late 2016, so the entire battalion took over 2 years to paint. Some slump indeed :)

This also means that these figures are subject to my switch back to Vallejo paint. Two of the stands (which correspond to companies, BTW) have been painted with Foundry exclusively, one is mixed and the fourth (which I finished today) was painted with Vallejo only. Can you tell which is which (don't cheat by looking for the previous 'Wet Paint' posts :) ).

One final remark on flags. The figures are Front Rank, bought as a battalion pack. The pack comes with two ensigns, so I had to improvise for the second flag (Wurttemberg regiments carried only one flag in 1809). I chose to use the ducal (and, in 1809, royal) colours of yellow over black for the second flag. That flag is home made on wine bottle cork wrapper foil (how's that for compounding words), the battalion flag is from Maverick Models.

Wet Paint: mimic

Here's a few shots of a little mimic that has been hiding three-quarters finished in my painting box for a while before I finally finished it tonight:

The miniature is another Reaper Bones one. Even though the mimic has long been on of my favourite 'classic' D&D monsters, I think I've never used it in one of my adventures so far. Time to correct that oversight, I would say :)

Wet Paint: mushroom men

These guys are Reaper Bones miniatures which I got as part of either the first or second Bones Kickstarter (I forget which). In the deep background you can see the first of the three mushroom men, whom I painted quite a while ago -- he made it back on my painting desk as a painting reference for his two friends :).

All three mushroom men will form a part of my growing 'it came from the forest' fantasy force.

Cairion sul Viridis, Master of Bough, Leaf and Crown

I featured this figure in a Wet Paint post earlier, but here he is again, all based and dolled up for your viewing pleasure:

As an interesting aside, the tree is one I 3D printed using the STL files from Printable Scenery, with Woodlands Scenics clump foliage glued on as leaves.

Deir el Tarfa - pictures

As Phil posted earlier, we did a first playtest game of Rommel last week -- Counterattack at Deir el Tarfa. I refer you to his post for details, but here's some pictures taken during the game:

Wet Paint - forest mage

Allow me to introduce: Cairion sul Viridis, Master of Bough, Leaf and Crown, Keeper of the Azure Flame and Guardian of the Furthest Reaches:

I am (slowly) building a fantasy force with a forest theme, and this guy will be its commander, and he might even show up in my roleplaying campaign. I have no idea where I got the figure -- it was of some boutique fantasy miniature webshop somewhere. All I know is that the figure came in two parts (the main body and the hands and upper part of the staff) and is in resin. If anybody recognises the figure, give a yell :).

Ah yes -- the little guy sitting in front of him is his familiar Fred. He's a fungus. Fred the Familiar Fungus, as it were :)

Update: I found where I got the figure. He's the Scibor Miniatures elf mage.

Wet Paint: IR 30 - De Ligne

These guys have been on my painting table for so long that they have featured as background for numerous 'wet paint' shots, but here they are finally finished. These are Austrian Infantry Regiment 30 De Ligne. I chose these to paint because they recruited in what was later to become Belgium but was then the Austrian Netherlands. I also lived very close to a Prince De Ligne street back in my Leuven days, so there's some connection there as well :). The figures are Perry plastics and the flag is from Maverick Models.

Saxons intercept Romano-British supply convoy - mayhem ensues

This game was played a while ago at my place, before Crisis somewhere in October. It was an Ancients game using my Romano-British and Saxon/hairy barbarian collections in a scenario from one of CS Grants excellent scenario books. The scenario was 'Wagon train' and involved the Romano-British attempting to get a wagon train of supplies to a hill fort while the Saxons must prevent this. The rules used were Hail Caesar. Phil played the Saxons, I played the Romano-British. Scroll down past the photos for the result of the game :).

The game ended in a Saxon victory, after the Saxons broke the final Romano-British unit between them and the wagon train -- the comitatus itself. During the game, it looked like the Romano-British cavalry would sweep all before them, but they took to long to recover from a breakthrough and march back to the main battle to prevent more Saxon infantry to break through the comitatus and capture the wagon train. Oh well :)

Gandalf and Hobbit Children

When you're in a bit of a painting funk, which I definitely am at the moment, one of the things that can help is to radically change what you're painting. In my case, I switched from historical figures to something more fantasy like:

That's the old Gandalf and hobbit children from Mithril Miniatures. I bought it decades ago in our Lonely Mountain period in Leuven and it has been laying around unpainted ever since then. Now it's painted :).

Terrain archeology

Just off the painting and flocking table:

This is the venerable Grendel Ruined Acropolis, a set which probably every wargamer of a certain vintage has lying around. This particular set has sat in its box since the early Lonely Mountain days of Schild en Vriend and has seen at least four house moves with me. So I decided it was high time it got painted :).

Then and now II - 17 years of painting redux

I'm currently setting up an Ancients game on my wargame table using one of my oldest collections of figures - Post-Roman Britons and Saxons. IIRC, Post-Roman Britons and Arthur were my second army, just after building a Gallic DBA army.

Setting up these figures, I inevitably come across many of the Arthur figures in my collection, including the one I posted about earlier. This figure was painted in the same colours as one I painted way back in '97 (which got a silver medal at the Crisis painting convention of that year, IIRC). It's interesting to show the more recent Arthur (painted in 2013) and that first Arthur together in the same photo, much as I did for some 20mm British paras earlier:

In the photo above, the figure on the left is the more recently painted one, the one on the right is the one from '97. One thing that is different from the first '17 years comparison' photo is that both figures in this comparison have been painted to the full extent of my painting ability.

Looking at the figures side by side, I was actually surprised at the higher contrast on the more recent figure. It is probably logical, given that the figure on the left was painted up from a black base coat, while the one on the right used a grey base coat. Still, I had the idea in my mind that these two figures were much more similar in painting technique than they actually are.

So, what do you think of these figures? Which one do you think is the best?

Wet paint: some Cossacks

These were painted many months ago but were not featured on here yet (they did get varnished recently, so it still qualifies as 'wet paint' :)):

They are good old Foundry Cossacks (Seven Years War types nominally, but a Cossack is a Cossack regardless of period) and will be used in my Great Northern Wars games.

Wet Paint: some more Wurttembergers

These were actually painted a week ago, but only posted now - some more Wurttemberg Napoleonic chaps:

These are Wurttemberg grenadiers (one out of the two battalions per regiment had a company of grenadiers in the 1809 Wurttemberg OOB). They are painted up as belonging to the 1st Regiment (Von Phull). I have a source (well, uniform plates found on the net) which has only their cuffs and turnbacks in the regimental colors (yellow in this case), with the facings in the standard Wurttemberg dark blue. So that's how I painted them up.

The figures are Front Rank Miniatures.

Quick photo report: GNW reinforcements game

Last night we played a GNW Black Powder game. I'll post a more detailed report later, but here's the photos from that game:

The evening ended after five turns of the game, with lots of action in each one. The result was not quite clear enough to call the game, but the Russians had a slight advantage which might still be overturned.