Scatter

I've had some spare Renedra bases which were of a not very useful size, along with some bits that I thought I could use for scatter terrain in 28mm skirmish games. 

I've got two bases for barricades, made of plastic and homemade resin barrels (some are copied with Blue Stuff); a torn-down wall with a pile of junk covered with a tarp and some bags; and two bases of wooden crates. 

They were done as simply as possible, a basecoat, a wash, some highlights here and there. They will blend in with the terrain nicely I hope.

Steel Fist Knights and some Old Friends

A while back I ordered eight lance-armed knights from Steel Fist - a rather hefty amount of white metal if you ask me! 

I finally got to finish the first unit - the basing is for my own games, in which pikeblocks are on 120x120mm bases and every other troop type on 60x120mm to accommodate the figures well and have enough blank space for mini dioramas.

As the Perrys I finished earlier joined the Imperial side, I chose these to be French men-at-arms, but generally just went with over the top colours and a moderate amount of white armor.

Frostgrave Crewmen Conversions

Mention was made of these fellows before, the North Star plastic figures box for Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago. With some kitbashing work, the figures work just fine as 17th century unarmored bods, highwaymen, robbers or other rabble characters. They are also good for pirate skirmishes - I experimented a bit with making a planked base and a dirt base for each figure, but it did not really work that well.

Now the figures are a bit stocky and there are large mold lines to remove, but they are at a decent price and can be purchased from within the EU (this box is from Fireforge Games).

Warlord plastic and Bloody Miniatures metal accessories were used to create this first group (the rest will mostly include Arabic/Berber types so less conversion work is required). I included explanations for each figure on the picture below:

Now that I have Blue Stuff at my disposal, I can also make resin copies of various headgear I can use with other figs, mostly big hats and morions from the Warlord figures which are destined to arrive soon.

Empress/Bohemian TYW figures

I purchased a smaller group of figures from Empress Miniatures a little while back: two cuirassiers, four artillerymen and seven foot combatants. The first lot is painted - these are earlier TYW types.

They include a caliverman, a veteran musketeer, four pike and an officer with rotella and sword. They are going to supplement my existing continental TYW forces. 

They scale well with Warlord plastics, less so with Bloody Miniatures, which are about half a head taller on average. But, of course, such height differences occur between real people, so sometimes I don't understand the hassle with trying to make every single figure of a uniform height and body size.

Proud of PE

This is just a short post to let you know I'm working on the Snowman Model 1/700 scale SMS Derfflinger (post-Jutland full hull version), and I think I'm starting to get the gist of properly placing photoetched parts.

Most of the ship is going to be built straight out of the box, but the three bar rails around the bridge are third party, first shaped, then primed and painted, glued in place, and finally touched up a bit.

The fun thing is I'm going to cover all of that in canvas, as per the reference image I posted earlier on this blog, but it's still satisfying to know that all that brass is there.

I'm going to add a few more ladders and staircases once this subassembly is placed on the hull (as some of those connect it to the aft funnel, there is no point in doing them right now).

So no, PE this time does not mean physical education.

WIP - G-93 Kontot Kombatot Armored Company for Jazygia 1919

I recently found out that I have a bunch of WW1-era vehicles and figures hidden in various parts of my stash, so as a side project, I began building suitable vehicles for an early 20th century Jazygian conflict.

You might remember the Kontot Kombatot G-93 from my earlier posts, a handsome and utilitarian vehicle I originally designed for toy soldiers - well, this is the 1/72 version of that very same.

On the left is a G-93c Astaba version with a one-man turret and auxiliary MG. It has additional track links on the front and rear for extra armor protection, a stowage bin on the right side and a pair of logs on the left (mostly to cross ditches).

The other one is the G-93b Ozmot, which will be the company commander's vehicle, the commander being the driver in one person, one further crew member servicing the 3pdr anti-tank gun, and a third one manning the hull-mounted LMG. I converted two spare Napoleonic figures for the crew, and also have a Zvezda female partisan somewhere, she will be the company commander. 

The large pointy things on the front are not factory spec, they were added by the crew to tread down hedges and barbed wire.

A standard Jazygian armored company consists of four vehicles, the rest of which I'll build to be a standard version, and the anti-armor hardtop variant, the G-93b Korkodil.

My Plans Are Thus Thwarted

I'm on a decidedly tighter budget this summer, saving up for a possible vacation during early fall. So I tried to challenge myself and tackle some of The Heap of unpainted/assembled/primed figures that's starting to gather at my corner of the living room. Seeing painted figures and The Heap decreasing warms everyone's heart who has been in the same situation.

Of course that's when I found the Warlord Games summer sale.

After doing some maths, I decided to purchase some more of their plastic ECW/TYW line, three sprues of infantry and two of cavalry. I especiall saved a lot on the infantry, as I don't need command figures from the 40-figure box right now, and the price per figure is very favourable this way.

This brings my European forces for the period up to a decent standard, a bit short of two hundred figures. The only trouble still present is that fact that much of those are unpainted.

I also bought a sprue of Marlburian artillery, with the nasty intention that, as the sprue has two barrels and only one carriage, I can copy the carriage with Blue Stuff and make some more. Also, gun barrels are generally easier to scratchbuild than carriages, especially wheels. The sprue also has two powder barrels, copying which (with Blue Stuff again) I can make a decent amount of barricades and other scatter.

Now I swear I won't spend more money on plastic...

Suffering the Block

I bought a bunch of 17x20mm wooden blocks at Kik (a retail store of German origin that mostly sells cheap rubbish, but has a creative department). First I thought of building pike and shot armies out of the blocks, but then the project sort of stalled. 

I sold my 6mm Lace Wars / Tricorne collection some time ago, but thought about getting back to the period. So finally I used some templates from Junior General and designed the appropriately sized paper covers for the Kik blocks, sort of Commands & Colours style, with the blocks upright instead of being laid down flat. They are sturdy enough so that they don't topple over at the first touch. I might also add base extensions later.

Three blocks constitute a unit, usually with a command base at the center. This is enough to represent line, deep order and march column. Troop types are denoted by the 'figures' themselves - there are dragoons, cuirassiers, Croats and a Guard regiment on the above photo. My plan is to use these for Maurice (which requires four bases to a unit, but shall work just fine with three). They are also easy to bash together at times when I do not have the motivation to paint.

So far I designed a white, blue, red and green army (with the Rebel Lands Campaign running on my other blog in mind), and some Poles, Cossacks, Ottomans and other irregular units. I have refought the battle of Kliszów with 6mm figures once, and might just do that again soon. By the way, the scenario I designed for Kliszów using Maurice is available from the "Scenarios" page in the header if you are interested (along with a lot of others).

DIY 28mm Wasteland Reavers / Chaos Cultists / Generic Baddies

Now I wanted some opponents my Oldmarines can slay. Fortunately there are plenty of tutorials out there to show how to make Chaos cultists and such from pink foam and tissue paper, and while I did not follow them to the letter, I came up with a quick and inventive way that won't reduce one's pocket money as much as, say, buying used plastic models.

Here's how to do it:

1. Cut a block of 4mm balsa to roughly human shape
2. Cover it with tissue paper soaked in PVA, creating folds and such
3. Make a Green Stuff mask (or make their cowls really low and just paint the recess black)
4. Add some weapons
5. Paint it

One figure on the above image is a Chaos Lieutenant, a JARMY toy figure from Tesco, with shortened legs and a GS breather added. The rest were made using the method described above. Three have bamboo stick firearms and the fourth a cardstock shield and a spare Frostgrave crewman's sword arm. 

I plan to make more of them in different colours so they can fight each other.