Mini disaster

It has been a bad week for my mini's. Last friday our cleaner decided to pay special attention to my showcase. She thought it needed a real proper clean up and so she did.... It's clean as you can see. There is f&%^ nothing in it anymore because the complete inside collapsed in an attempt to remove some dust. Don't ask me how this exactly happened as I was not there when it all happened. My wife told me the cleaner was too shocked to speak at all. The showcase can be repaired and I consider myself lucky in a way. Lucky because only two things were in it at the time it happened. Usually I have some of my self proclaimed masterpieces in it but I removed those just weeks ago to take pictures for this blog. To celebrate the blogs ROI I will continue boring you here for at least another year.
 
The cleaning results:

Cleaned, worst thing is the head is lost. still need to check the vacuum cleaner

Age of Arthur Dux in former times...

Phalanx ready for action

Phalanx searching for shields and pikes

Most frustrating comment: oh, relax, you have so many miniatures, why bother. these are just a few. aargh, i have spent probably 40-50 hours on this figures..It hurts to see all the scratches, you will understand.
But again, this could have been much much worse...

Another disappointment today was the arrival of an order I placed at Warlord games. Couple of packs missing but most annoying was the Meetinghouse/Church from Architects of war. This was damaged beyond repair in transport.

No worries however because it looks as if
Warlord customer support is excellent.
Got a reply on my email to support in 5 minutes from Gareth stating they will reship the product and missing packs with recorded service and extra protection.


Last post I promised a report on a old west game we would play last saturday. Well, I'm sorry to say, another disillusion... we had a few last minute cancellations. So the town is still in the boxes. We did however play a small AWI battle for the first time testing some rules which was fun. As soon as I get the pictures from Rob I will post a report. Anyway because I like pictures, here is a preview...

Trixie & Al

Tomorrow I will host a game of Legends of the Old West. It's been a very long time since we played this and I am looking forward to it. Did manage to finish Trixie and Al from the Deadwood series by HBO. Report and pictures will follow soon. Then it's back to napoleonics and ACW, the main theme in march over here.

 
And another one I finished yesterday...

And for those of you who will attend; we can also play some cards

Snow basing tutorial and Winter War Finnish Platoon

It all started when we bought a snow mat. Think it was three years ago and it was delivered at our hotel while visiting Salute. Excited to do some snow fighting we got ourselves a box with pine trees and some other scenery. At home, in the middle of summer, I gave the trees a snow treatment and we were basically ready to game.  By then we realized we also actually needed some miniatures to play with. Lot of choice but since two of our group were doing russians at that time I made the decision to do Finnish troops. Posted before on a forum, now on the blog as I am slowly moving most of my pictures here.



For the 28mm figures I chose Brigade Games and Battle Honors. They go very well together and provide enough variation. The sled is from Copplestone and the ski guy from Warlord (Bolt Action)

So far it is just a small platoon. Since this is one of those projects that have never seen daylight apart from getting them out of the box to take pictures I doubt if they will ever grow to a full platoon.

Hopefully we'll get them in action in the next few months so I can shoot some battlefield pictures.

Now for the snow. There are plenty tutorials around on the net. Some use baking soda, others just paint. I decided to try this with  Scenic Snow bought from Antenocitis Workshop.
I am not releted to them in any way but do struggle all the time to find them because of the difficult name..

This product is really easy to use. They come with instructions so I won't reproduce these in detail. Basically you just use the bond and sprinkle the snow over this. Do this in several layers and you are done.

For the infantry I wanted a muddy snow effect reflecting the battlefield as I had seen in the movie The Winter War (Talvisota) . How I did this:

-Base the figure as you would normally do and paint it using a brown and a couple of lighter drybrushes

-Paint the area on the base you want covered in snow white. A light white drybrush around the edges is fine.

-Put the bond on the white and brown area you want lighly covered, using an old brush. Next sprinke the snow. Repeat untill you reach desired effect.



For the sled I wanted a deeper snow look. In this case you can just paint the base light grey or light blue if you prefer. Then you start to apply layers of snow until you have enough for the desired effect. Press in some footsteps, maybe sprinkle some icy sparkles (in the box) and you are done.

I found this very easy and it gave me the desired effect. Maybe it is even embarrassing simple and you can have the same effect with Woodland scenics and PVA glue or other materials. Anyway I can highly recommend this product.

Brigade Games Command Pack

 

Brigade Games Pack 1





Brigade-BattleHonors

 

BarttleHonors cut in half







BattleHonors

 

Warlord Games





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Border Reivers, faded fashion icons

on the catwalk of wargaming..

Wargaming is just like fashion. At least that is what I like to think on occasions. Especially at a party, in a bar or some other social gathering. You are there talking to that well dressed stylish good looking woman about women rights and solving world problems. Or just your favorite TV show if you prefer. At some point she noticed that flick of blue paint on your hand (yes from that last little thing you had to finish before you left) and there you are explaining the world of wargaming. Real simple, real easy, no nerd stuff, no dipping methods (do color wheel if you want to show off). Now most woman, if not all, are very interested (or polite) and you need to make sure you are not getting overenthusiastic. At that point you tell the fashion story.

You see, in essence we share the same passion. Wargaming is just like fashion. We have color trends, use different materials every year and follow designers of which you have good ones and the ones you don´t like. We also have big shows in London where new models are presented. OK, our models are

15mm DAK, 15. Panzerdivision

Once every 2 years or so we are hit by a 15mm virus. It suddenly arrives and once we bought all our stuff it's suddenly gone again. I've painted two armies and actually played Flames of War twice now. Maybe it was the force I played  (7th AD) but the game just did not do it for me then. I found it somewhat predictable. We will try again soon playing desert and see if this works for us. If not we will look at different rulesets. Next month I will give our verdict and write up some battle report together with pictures of Jake's 8th army.

For now pictures of my DAK, 15. Panzerdivision.
Miniatures by Battlefront with the occasional Skytrex figure thrown in for variety.

VIEW ENTIRE GALLERY

Age of Arthur, will it ever return?

When this WAB supplement was launched we knew right away. We HAVE to paint up an army for this. Colorful units, a variety of choice in models, shield decals to make life easier and a supplement that looked like lots of fun and with endless customization possible for the different armies. No time was wasted and in three months time we painted three armies and ordered some excellent painted terrain from Grand Manner. Never did such a thing happen that quick. And we even finished it.

Now, some years later, I sometimes look in the box were the army is stored. It got out two times for a quick battle. I think the scenery is used once and not even all of it. It's sad.

Time to put some old pictures in the gallery. To inspire myself and remind our group that we still have those. Search real hard guys and  maybe we can get them on the battlefield in the near future.


OK, some 28mm Romano British I painted and some battle pictures from the one time they have seen daylight. Miniatures by Gripping Beast. Only exception being the Dux from westwind. His standing horse is from Front Rank with saddle cloth added. Decals are from Little Big Man Studios.
For the Arthur fans: Gallery

Soon some more recent pictures of armies from my old website...

And I discovered a new use case for my Ipad. Blogging from a boring hotel while on business trip in Germany.

28mm Carlist War collection

One of the things I want to do on this blog is to get most of my and the club's miniatures collection online. Long way to go but it means I will switch periods rather radically in my posts over the next weeks or so. A bit like my painting. While busy on a project you think is the coolest ever you browse the web or speak to a friend and order something completely different. Goodbye focus and in the drawer all these nice extra pieces you bought for the army. And if you think of it. Were those specials not the reason I started it in the first place?

Anyway, I have posted these before two years ago somewhere so you might have seen them before...

We use the Sharp Practice ruleset for Carlist War as well. Works fine, we added 3 different bonus card for each side to reflect the differences in the armies. Very simple, for Carlist some modifiers for Fisticuffs and the Isabellino's better firing. Think we also use the Spanish relic cards.