Orks and Ork Accessories

I bought some used Ork Boyz a while ago, then stripped and painted them. A few of them were posted here before, but not the entire band. The rest are still available from the same place, so I might just buy more.

They also found a sort of VTOL ground attack craft and made it more orky.

The Mighty ZS Lakardo (Not Quite Charles Martel)

As part of my ongoing 1/1000 scale Trashy Fleets exploits, I'm finally done with the almost Charles Martel, she is joining the Zinqaguri Navy, a peripheral minor power in my world of imagi-nations. Being quite fancy AND a battleship, she is going to bear the fleet admiral's flag.

Steaming alongside the Charles Martel, or as she will be known in Zinqagur, the ZS Lakardo, is the small torpedo boat destroyer TB-1 Marsal, modelled after the real world Claymore-class French ship, so they are kind of matching.

The only ahistorical element of the battleship is the fact that I left a tier of the main deck out, so the fore and aft main turrets are on the same level, while in fact the rear one should be placed a bit lower.

Battle of Pavia - 500th Anniversary Refight

Last afternoon (technically one day before the anniversary of the battle) we refought the Battle of Pavia, to commemorate its five hundreth anniversary, using my homemade unit blocks, makeshift terrain and a modified version of One Hour Wargames. My wife commanded the French and I the Imperialists.

You can view the locations and initial dispositions on the map above, we are at the early morning hours when the Imperial arquebusiers are already occupying Mirabello castle and the pike blocks had deployed on the near side of the walls of the Visconti park.

The Second Batch of Steel Fist Knights

Finished four more Renaissance lance-armed knights produced by Steel Fist Miniatures. They are excellent sculpts and painted up well.

Trashy Fleets WIP #2

Inspired by, among other things, Archduke Piccolo's recent posting about his scratchbuilt pre-dreadnought battleships, I dug out my own work-in-progress hulls and proceeded a good deal with building them.

The Swedish coastal defence ship Äran got a full paintjob, all she needs now is a layer of gloss acrylic medium and finish on her base (and gluing the hull to said base).

The not-quite Charles Martel (forgot an extra layer of superstructure) also starts to look like herself, finished all twele turrets (the French designers just got a little bit overboard with that aspect) and installed the cabin windows, stacks and upper platform. As you can see I also did a little bit of pre-painting on hard to reach areas. Her main hull will be finished in dark grey, upper structure yellow ochre and the deck a linoleum color.

There are also a few hulls of Tordenskjold-class monitors in the background, more on them at a later time.

Hakkaa päälle!

These are three Warlord plastic cavalrymen, with minor conversion work. For my Pikeman's Lament (or other skirmish) games I wanted some sort of cavalry other than your usual harquebusier/cuirassier, badly equipped, untrained but motivated, all in all, something like the Finnish horse serving under Gustavus. 

Of course there must be a way then to discern these from their more respectable colleagues, so one of the figures received a Bloody Miniatures head swap with a fur hat, and the other two got copies of the same fur hat instead of a helmet or soft hat. The back of the figures' heads did have the end of a lobster tail sticking out (which the soft hat would have covered), so I put some extra green stuff there to cover it.

I think they look fierce enough, and will do their duties well until I can get some Cossacks or Croats. They have no pistols, and wear a basic brown buff coat.

The Whole Bloody Regiment

First post of the year, so happy New Year to all of my readers.

These are actually the leftovers of 2024's painting queue, as I ordered most of the figures back in April I think, so they took a while to complete.

Anyway, here's the entire batch of Bloody Miniatures foot figures, kind of looking like a rag-tag Swedish unit from the Deluge period (at least that was my intention) in an impromptu set-up of two wings of seven shot, two blocks of nine pike, extra officers and Spötte the dog.

By the way I collected the pebbles that decorate the bases in Stockholm (they use this kind of grout there for extra traction when it snows or freezes as far as I can tell), so the figures are definitely extra Swedish.

The Berber War Galley 'Aga Pasha'

Soon after I built the 1/1200 scale galleys I started thinking about larger ships for the same period. My rule set 'Block Galleys' sort of counts on removable parts, and after some theoretical sketches I came up with a list with all the features required for my test model:

• avoid the 'blocky' look that some gaming pieces have (the model should preferably have the true proportions of a real galley)
• show the crew and not the bare decks (always found it weird at larger scales that the ship sails herself)
• preferably 1/300 to 1/350 scale, to go with Zvezda's 1/350 Armada offerings and Black Swan
• removable prow and forecastle
• removable aft structure
• same for masts and two sail options (to show sailing or using oars)
• and preferably a removable section of oar bank

Then I turned towards designing paper templates for quick construction, and soon I worked out the entire process, the result of which is the Barbary pirate galley, the flagship of the infamous Pasha Aga, you can see on the image above. Of course not all the desired features were executed, but that is why this was a test piece, to see which is feasible and which is not.

6mm Ancients Test Basing

I made a larger order with Commission Figurines in September/October. I'm actually kind of slow on reducing stockpile, the Bloody figures I bought in April are just being completed. Anyway, half of that order was about eight hundred 6mm lasercut Ancient figures, infantry and cavalry. They are meant for the late Republican Roman period, but what I really wanted was some generic bods for my Gudugan Pudugan rules.

There are seven troop types in Gudugan Pudugan (which can of course be used to fight historical battles as well), and once I had the figures and the bases required, I set out to try my basing concept which would help discern the troop types and give armies a unified overall look.