Jul 8, 2025

My crew is big and it keeps getting bigger


The Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago plastic crewmen set is kind of useful. The figures work well with swasbuckling adventure type games, and you get a lot of spare parts per sprue in the set you can use to kitbash other things. 

While they are kind of monopose and a bit on the smaller side of 28mm, and also require more prep work than, say, a Perry plastic figure, they are on the other hand easy to paint.

Jul 4, 2025

The Power of the Heimudbär


These four are Heimudbär-class sea-going monitors, in 1/1000 scale, and are mostly entirely fictional. I finished them a little after the Charles Martel / ZS Lakardo.

They are sort of inspired by Norwegian/Swedish traditional monitor warships of the ironclad age, continuing to serve in various capacities well into WW1. As you can see some of them are modernized, others are not.

The small fleet will be part of the Nordsburian Navy in my imagi-nations setting, an up and coming power in the far off colonies, away from any main conflict. Their primary adversary will be the Zinqaguri Navy. At the time when Nordsbur commences a campaign of agression on Zinqaguri merchant shipping, all they have are these, a few coastal defence ships and armored cruisers. The Zinqaguri have two very capable battleships, but as Cape Zinqagrech divides the waterways between two major oceans, they have to split their forces.

The models are just pieces of 2mm balsa sanded to shape, and coated in a dark grey. Various bits of plastic offcuts were used to create the minimalistic superstructures. Most of them have short-barreled big guns, but the pair in the middle has some more modern smaller bore pieces. Were they blessed with decent speed they could be used for commerce raiding - provided there is a flat calm sea.

Jul 1, 2025

Painting Tally June 2025

This was a very productive month. I finally managed to gather my hobby strength and work through a bunch of projects!

As probably mentioned before, I try to focus my hobby time and set forward no more than five wargaming-related projects each month to complete. My goals for June were:
- paint 6mm figures
- continue the Trashy Fleets ships
- prepare for my 'Siege of Fortress Diken' campaign
- play at least one game
- start the 'Last Knight' space battle campaign

Of this only the Fortress Diken one hadn't got fulfilled (I counted the last two for the same game, the one of which the AAR I posted here a few weeks back).

On to the numbers:

28mm

Completed:
15x Warlord plastic TYW/ECW pikemen
8x Warlord plastic TYW/ECW shotte
10x Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago crewmen
16x Warlord plastic Landsknecht pikemen (they are varnished and glued on a unit base, so I cheated here a little bit)

Painted (not varnished or based):
1x Wargamer Octavia Piccolomini (more on that later)

Primed:
12x GBP plastic Arab light horse posing as Cossack/generic Eastern European cavalry
1x Wargamer Eloise the Musketeer

6mm

Completed:
96x Ancients infantry
42x Ancients cavalry

192x SYW infantry
72x SYW cavalry
40x SYW artillery (counting both crew and guns)
7x SYW command

Primed:
48x Ancients infantry

224x SYW infantry
56x SYW cavalry

(I came to really like the method where I just sit down with 6mm figures and prime as many in one go as I can)

Other

Completed:
1/2000 HMS Hood
1/1000 RHN Lemnos

Assembled:
A Lego Invisible Hand starship I got as a birthday gift


All this brings my Painting Unit value to 2285 for the month, which is about double of the best output of the year so far.
I don't think I'll go further than this as actually my unpainted stock is greatly reduced. Perhaps one day the unimaginable will happen and I'll have all of my figures painted?

Purchases
I made an order with Wargamer.pl for two female figures of their own design, along with a box of the aforementioned GBP Arab horsemen, mostly because they have a flat postage rate and it was thus more economical to purchase more things. Wargamer has a nice line of female figures in appropriate clothes for the 17th century period. The conversion of the GBP horsemen to Cossacks is not my idea, I "liberated" it from a Hungarian fellow wargamer. As far as I can tell only TAG and Foundry make Cossack cavalry (if you don't count the Warlord Games metal Croats which pass from a distance) and twelve plastic horsemen in a box is more bang for your buck.

Jun 30, 2025

Holy League Block Galley Flotilla


I managed to paint three more 1/350 scale galleys during the previous months. Being scratch-built they take a rather long time to assemble, but I think they were worth the wait. From left to right, they are: a standard Venetian galley with a single mast (sail furled), a Spanish lanterna (or the big 'un), a Maltese standard size galley.

I experimented more with colour printed decorative elements to save a bit of time on painting. Their masts, prow, forecastle and stern can all be removed from the models to show damage, so those pieces are painted in subassemblies. Making the masts removable helps with storage, too.

Jun 26, 2025

Steaming towards the Denmark Strait


My 1/2000 scale HMS Hood is now complete and joins the Prince of Wales to hunt for the Bismarck.

Since posting the WIP picture I added the AA suite on the main deck as it was quite featureless.

The paint job is based on the information available on the HMS Hood Association website and is mostly matching her last description before the battle. Maybe I should have added the reddish brown linoleum to the grey parts of the top deck, I'm not sure.


All I have to do is actually build the Bismarck so they could find her...

Jun 23, 2025

Trashy Fleets - When Life Gives You Lemnos...


I started working on the USS Mississippi-class pre-dreadnought battleship that later became the RHN Lemnos a while before the Hood and I managed to complete both at about the same time.

My main concern with US-made warships was, of course, modelling the lattice masts. This is not a problem at smaller scales as I just make a tapered conical rod and paint on the detail. However, in 1/1000 scale this was not feasible.

Delving into the internet somebody on some forum mentioned plastic nets in which they stored fruit in supermarkets as lattice mast material, so I first got some oranges and tried to use the net they were stored in, but it proved too big. Next I bought some garlic in a similar package albeit with smaller gaps in the netting, and it worked just fine!

So I know technically the Lemnos had her main mast switched to a traditional battle mast later, but for experimental purposes (and to make the pun in the title) I had mine retain both.

Jun 16, 2025

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.

Jun 13, 2025

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!

Jun 10, 2025

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.