Battle Brother Captain Solidus Mercesius and Venerable Dreadnought Ladislaus Crassus

I finished two more of my salvaged Space Marines, bought used from the Troll Trader. They spent a few months in the stripping tub and turned out quite okay after the painting process.

They join my Turul Rangers custom chapter. I know technically the terminator guy is a lieutenant, not a captain, but he's humble enough.

The Last Knight Ep. 1. - Red Fox in the Sheep's Pen

This month I promised myself to play at least one game. Naval and sci-fi games are preferred because they require less prep work and fewer models!

On my Battle Campaigns blog I wrote a small summary for a sci-fi space battle campaign featuring the forces of rebellious Mars against the oppressive Earth Government. Thus the time has come to launch that campaign.

In this first scenario, the squadron conisisting of MSS Phoibos (Cmdr. Ian C. Nisom commanding), MSS Sub Rosa and MSS Walkyr, without fighter support, arrive at a junction point in dead space where they expect much EarthGov civilian traffic. Their goal is to hurt EarthGov shipping as much as they can, without risking their own skins.

The theme of the entire campaign is asymmetrical warfare: the Martian Sphere squadron does not get replenishments and any damage made against them is permanent. EarthGov forces are dispersed but get a lot more reinforcements during the campaign.

I use pre-made Lego ships which I built from scrap parts of multiple sets, including Star Wars ones.

I set up a simple entry/exit point system: the MS squadron enters the table first, and then each turn a new ship arrives until I exhausted my current stock. I just set my existing models in a row and picked them up in a sequence for their order of entry. There are no EarthGov capital ships in this scenario. 

The entry points are numbered one to six, starting from the bottom right corner and moving clockwise. I roll a d6 for each ship's entry point. A civilian vessel may exit the table safely by moving to the opposite entry point (so 3 to 6, 1 to 4, 2 to 5 etc.). An EarthGov Navy ship may exit via the opposite point or its point of entry. MS ships entered the table at point 6 so that's their extrication point as well.

Let's see how the scenario goes!

The High and the Mighty

I missed the date for the Battle of the Denmark Strait with my scratchbuilt 1/2000 project, mainly because I have been working on other things.

However I just managed to complete the build for my version of the HMS Hood, and when I showed the Prince of Wales in its unpainted state the last time it gathered some interest, so here's the model before any primer is being added.

This time instead of PVA I used successive layers of acrylic paste and paint to make surfaces smooth. The ship is mainly built out of balsa and plasticard, and then some bamboo skewers, paperclips, broom bristles and Magic Sculpt. I also found a small decorative rubber ring that is just the right size for the turret rings.

I think most people know the story of the Hood, so I won't bother anyone with that. I won't say anything more than I just like the design.

 Off she sails to the painting table and then to join the already completed PoW.

'Red Contingent' for Gudugan Pudugan

I continue churning out painted 6mm lasercut figures from Commission Figurines, for my Gudugan Pudugan (that is Ancients era) project. I plan to have enough figures to field large battles.

I had to have some sort of organization system for the 500+ infantry and 200 cavalry, so I started colour coding them, this is the first batch completed, the part that is painted red.

Italian Wars - Milanese Horse and Landsknecht Arquebusiers

Continuing the Italian theme, this is the group of 28mm figures I managed to finish this month (including basing them): eight Warlord plastic Landsknecht shot and four Perry riders in Milanese livery.

Painting Tally May 2025

May has been rather productive despite a five day trip abroad. I managed to gather enough motivation to paint a large batch of 6mm Commission Figurines ancient figs among other things.

Finished:

28mm

5x Landsknecht command (they lack bases)

8x Landsknecht shot

4x Perry mounted MAA

6mm Ancients:

91 infantry 

50 horse

3 command

2 chariots

1/350

a pair of Christian block galleys

1/1200

3 Warfare Miniatures ships

Painted (requires basing and varnish):

6mm

72x infantry

30x cavalry

Primed:

4x Perry mounted MAA

Assembled:

paper proxy ships and a KiK block proxy army for Maurice

Purchased:

Only the books in Milan.

This brings my total Painting Unit output to 1046, a lot more decent than previous month.

Northern Italy Tour May '25

 

My wife and I spent most of the previous week in Italy, with a hotel room booked in Milan. We flew there on the morning of the 11th and came back on the 15th.

On the first day, we landed at Malpensa Airport, took a train to the city, and had lunch near the central train station. Then we occupied our room, and walked a bit downtown, checking the Sempione park and Sforza castle.

Additional Scatter

Here's some more terrain pieces finished. You can see smaller ones, like the hand carts I started building earlier, a few resin barrels from Green Stuff World; linear objects, two sections of different plastered walls and a fence; a group of stakes liberated from the Perry HYW infantry set; and then a gun emplacement of four gabions.

Besides the barrels everything is scratchbuilt.

 

The gabions are cloned with green stuff from a single master. I made a press mould of the master, but instead of using a two-piece mould, I cut the bottom off and made hollowed out casts from GS using the butt end of a brush to spread it inside the mould. The compression actually helps the green stuff cure to a very firm finish. Once cured I pop the cast out of the mold and that's it. It works well for cylindrical objects and saves you some resin.

I put some dirt and toothpicks on top and used successive layers of drybrush for the paintjob. The base is also raised a bit with pieces of corkboard so figures don't have to duck that much behind. 

I think they look banged up enough, unlike some pristine injection moulded gabions would. There is a recast Bloody Miniatures matchlock placed at the inside (you can see it on the first photo).

'Block Galleys' page added

I've made a lengthy tutorial on constructing 1/350 scale galleys and published it in a page format. You can reach it from the header at the top of the blog.

I will update the page with actual WIP photos at a later date, until then, please enjoy.

I'm going on a round trip in Northern Italy next week, and provided everything goes well, I'll also be able to see the full size galley replica at the Genoese maritime museum.

I have one further post programmed to be published during that time, and hopefully when I return I'm going to have some interesting photos to share.