Half tracked, half tricked

Finally, after a long production run, I finished eight (8!) Sd. Kfz. 251 half tracks. These iconic transporters were needed for my Tsecho-Sovjet army(!). Captured two or three of them will be used by a spetsnaz unit, leading a spearhead attack into enemy territory. Two 251's are for this purpose 'masked'' with canvases (of Heer46 make). Serious trickery!

Spetsnaz under the canvas?

A while back I was at the receiving end of such an attack at a tournament. My opponent used a spetsnaz unit to lead a group of nine (9!) T-34's. That meant that after turn one they were in assault range, threatening a objective defended by a lone group of panzergrenadiers. Only a ambush of Pak 40's saved my day...

Command group

Besides the two 251's with the canvases there are two ridden by commanders, one with the characteristic framework antenna and one with a 3.7 cm Pak cannon, to annoy Russian tankers.

Crowded, must be rush hour

One thing that I found out when placing miniatures in the vehicles is how crammed they are. Having been a passenger aboard a real 251 once, I had not remembered that. At maximum I managed to place six soldiers on the benches; this were the smaller plastic soldier passengers, battle front soldiers are a bit more bulkier.

Top view: Spot the differences between PSC and Battlefront 251's

The unit consists of five Plastic Soldier Company and three Battlefront vehicles. They mix well, and I used the stowage of both kits on 251's of both builds. The canvases of Heer46 fitted the battlefront vehicles better, so they were used on that ones. Machine guns were standardized by using the Battlefront ones, a matter of taste.

Assembly line: Half tracks in half...

All in all a very nice, but as usual more time consuming than planned, project. In a few weeks the captured ones will been seen in battle at a tournament in The Hague. And a few weeks later the whole group will probably join my german force in the next tournament.

Hopefully they will do a good job (if only they had a commander who knows what he's doing...) And now: Time to paint my Frostgrave wizard!!

Dipping Ottomans

(Disclaimer: This article has nothing to do with any financial (other than my own wallet) crisis in Greece nor any current event or state of affairs concerning Turkey at all. )

Last weeks I started paiting some miniatures that were hidden in the closet for quite some time. Every year this idle collection grows a little due to purchases made a Crisis, but now the time has come to at least give some a bit of color.

Years ago the idea popped up to start playing medieval battles and to keep the cost manageable, to do this in a smal(ler) scale. At Crisis the Kallistra stand turned out to be a treasure chest filled with nice figures that fitted this idea and some blisters were purchased. A ritual was born, and every year some blisters were added, but to no further action.

But now, despite lots of other 'parallel' projects (Adding more stuff to my FoW late and mid-war armies, painting some Warhammer models (perhaps this one could be cancelled now the Age of Sigmar has arrived), starting a Frostgrave warband, building an early war (but which) FoW army, learning to use the airbrush, starting playing X-wing, euhmmm. ) my Ottoman models made it all of sudden on to the painting table.

Because of my frustratingly growing backlog I decided to try out a quick and dirty method to paint these small men and I'm very pleased with the way they turned out! The photographs give an indication of the result, which for my taste/abilities is rather good and achieved within a limited amount of time.

Kallistra Medieval Ottoman Standard Bearer (Command blister)

So here's my recipe, just in case (Note: All paintwork was very very basic, more or less like a colourbook, filling the surfaces..)

- white (GW) basecoat
- black or brown (GW) wash (whose names I cannot recall and are due to change anyway...)
- painted flesh parts
- painted clothes/armour
- painted some details (arms, shoes, etc.)
- painted the bases
- some cleaning up
- adding the wonder stuff: DIPPING the miniature with Quickshade

Post-dip

Pre-dip

Panthera pardus

Finally my Flames of War Panther are finished! Just in time to support my good friend Tom at the tournament next saturday. And off course just in time to kill off my T-34's and JS-2 when we batttle it out at this tournament....

Originally (and in the long run they will certainly be used for that) they were intended to support my 'legion of the damned' dutch waffen ss army. And in the first battles of this army they actually fought, in mono-color mittel gelb bare skin.

The idea was to give the Panther are worn out and 'dirty' look, in the process of loosing their winter fur... 

I find it's hard to create 'realistic' damage, dirt and soil in this scale and imho it's a bit overdone.But I had a lot of fun doing so :-)

Painting OOP dwarves

Got me a set of OOP metal dwarfs from fellow #warmonger @Woutertje_l. It is nice to exchange some old models lying around now and then. I happen to find an old Rhino he was happy with. In this way these miniatures get some paint and playing time, who otherwise were left in the dark in some storage box waiting for better times.

Ok, back to the dwarfs, some very nice old marauder dwarfs, but also a set of metal Ironbreakers there! I love the models that were there before the new plastic kit and already had a set of 10 painted. When playing I mostly added dwarf warriors to the ironbreaker unit to proxy a larger unit but now I can really field big Ironbreaker units! Woohoo!

Started painting some dwarfs from the sit just one by one. When looking at the OOP dwarfs the models are characters in themselves although being for example just dwarf warriors. Therefore it is nice to just pick a model and start painting. One of the first ones is this piraty wooden legged dwarf with the crossbow strapped to his back. I found this the ideal model for playing in Mordheim warband but also at the front of a Dwarf warrior unit. Started painting him and actually quite quickly this lad was done only missing his shield and a matching base to the rest of my dwarfs (stone tiles cast with hirst arts moulds).

The finished result is something that looks like the following. 

Miniswap 2014

Something as the miniswap 2014 is stuff that gives me something new to paint and to break existing paint structures. I am busy painting away at Ogres for some time now and before that it were dwarves for years. The occasional other model comes by, but it is difficult to paint something completely different since it will not fit your army or game system you are working with. The miniswap is the ideal event to do just that and even have it a bit of a surprise to see what model it will be.

A painting challange for myself is nice but is also very interesting to see what your “opponent” will paint and how he paints it. What is his choice for paint scheme and how will his paint techniques work out.

All in all a great event to participate in. For me I sent in an Ogre Butcher. It was an old model I had lying around for some time now, it came from a collection I bought in 1 go and needed to be repainted. I stripped the paint and sent in the model. I am paired with @NigelSBartlett and he sent me an Eldar Farseer. It couldn’t be a model farther away from my safe paint environment of Ogres and Dwarfs. Not only another army but also another game entirely (still GW though). I painted some tyranids maybe 15 years ago but that was it for me painting Warhammer 40K stuff. The Eldar are something I’ve played against, but that was also 15 years ago and the closest I got to the elder. Now I was holding a farseer! Great model, nice and sleek, Elfy (also big contrast with my Ogres and Dwarfs).

Now is the time to come up with a paint scheme. I actually did some research on Eldar in general, color schemes and craftworlds. In the end I settled for blue/turquoise with white and brass accents. The cloak is something screaming for a nice painting on it, so I will have a go at painting a nice big wave on it with a small wave trail along the edges.

Plan in place, start painting! Progress was a bit slow due to some holidays here and there, but suffice to say I finished the Farseer. A nice paint project and in the end the base gave me to most problems, creative wise. It is a readymade base that comes with the model. Discussed with Nigel that snow fits the army. Therefore a stone to be painted and some snow to be added but nothing much more then that really. I must say with the white snow and the white in the model it fits the complete picture nicely. 

Personal Development, No Plan

At the start of this year I (re)found work at a foundation in my beautiful home country. And as an employee in the Netherlands there's almost no escape from the compulsory ritual that's called 'persoonlijk ontwikkel plan' (personal development plan) or 'POP'. In such a plan employer and employee agree on targets and intentions for the next working year. Hammered in stone these targets are (depending on company, boss and/or HR department) used to assess the contribution toward the company's and your private goals...

Anyways, in this case the writing of my development plan was a process of filling in a excel sheet with a not entirely transparent structure, in which 'smart'goals were given 'weights' (in percentages) that resulted some work spaces and lots of excel scripts later in a very objective judgment of yours truly. Since I stepped in a few weeks after the deadline for filling in the excel, one of my first tasks was to fill in all categories satisfactory.

So I started out, sending in 'alpha' and 'beta' releases of my plan to my boss, who then returned my versions full of his remarks. This process repeated it self for quite some incarnations of my plan until it turned out all of a sudden to be 'ok'. During this workflow no goal, intention or other fiction was left untouched, except for one item, counting for one (1) percent of my personal development: Painting Waffen SS infantry for Flames of War. Being approved by my manager and HR department, I faced this challenge!

Having painted a Flames of War Czech-Russian tank army, I had become familiar with the practice of painting 15mm scale miniatures. The SS panzergrenadiers were however quite different: Instead of some tanks there were nearly 200 miniature men to be painted...
So actually it was a blessing in disguise that I managed to sneak in a little (bad) joke in my 'POP'. The pressure was on and I finished just in time!!

Let me know what you think of the paint job!

Regards and a happy wargaming filled 2014!

painting Mournfang

As mentioned in the previous battle report my mournfang are finished painting. It took me a while but they are done. I tend to like to start up multiple paint projects with models I like, ending up with 4 projects progressing very slowly. Plan to paint is good thing here and I put away 3 other projects in a shoebox (literaly so you can't see them near the paintstation) and focussed on the mournfang. This proved good tactics since they were done in 2 weeks (just painting half hours here and there).

The base of the mournfang was done by airbrush. Great stuff to paint the hide and add cool highlights. Finished of with a wash and a final highlight with the airbrush. This was done in say 2 hours. I also undercoated the riders and the saddles separately. In total 6 parts to paint separately (2 riders, 2 saddles and 2 mournfang). The mournfang itself finished quickly after the airbrush session. The saddles as well since only leather painting needed to be done. I did the tusks and bones on the saddles with a colorflow from brown to red to yellow to white. They are more magical creatures and this gives them that look I had in mind.

With the mournfang ready I started work on the bases as well. I wanted these simple and snowy to focus attention to the model. Simple layers of snow were added with watered down pva glue. I also added clumps of snow and put drops of watered down pva glow on them so it could soak through. It gave nice patches of thick and thin snow. With some added rocks covered in snow, for now it's done.

Meanwhile the ogre riders were started. Mainly your basic ogre although I wanted to give a nice print to the pants. It became a cloud pattern that works well. The troop is now called the cloudriders and the entire ogre force named: skytitans of null. Always nice to see this naming following from the models and paintschemes themselves, works more organically that way.

A lot of work went into weathering the armour and waponry. The first order to make it less 'clean' and further more to give more color to the model that has a lot of reds and browns. Green-blue oxidation on brass is great here.

Fianlly assembly of each model with the 3 parts finished and then all comes together. A quick layer of matt varnash and the models are done. Good to see how focussing the work leads to quick and good results here. Next up is the stonehorn but maybe I'll do 1 leadbelcher in between to do something different then furry brown beasts.

Like I had nothing left to paint ....

Sometimes you don't see a single miniature for over a month, and then all of a sudden they start to appear out of nowhere. I had that same experience today.

This morning I bought a standard ogre box to create the maneater mordheim warband. Some greenstuff required but that will be all fine. I already assembled parts of them today, removing a little of the points where the ogre's where attached on the sprue. Also they all have their slippers on and are ready for combat.

So what happened when I emailed Arjan to check if the Open Fire box was already in? Indeed, "it's on my desk a.t.m.".

That's even MORE to paint :D . I made a deal with arjan where I could have the rulebook and the US troops (though they are mostly Brits in the box), along with some counters and dice, where Arjan would have the rest. We split the cost and all was well.

I am a bit dissapointed with the build quality of the tanks though. The entire left side, top and bottom are great, but the right side is completely out of shape, for all the tanks (did not assemble the FireFly yet). Have to do a lot of shaving there. Also a lot of greenstuff required, but ah well.

All in all.... painting and assembly time!

plan to paint everything

it has been a while is a sentence I have been busying a lot the last couple of posts here. Luckily my fellow gamers are entering posts here and there. With me using my social media mostly in the form of twitter (and facebook coupled to it), this blog is lagging behind. I had plans to post numerous battle reports (there have been enough actually), and multiple posts on the progress off a lot of painting projects. Actually I finished a lot of ogres that already went to battle as well. They all did not appear on this blog.
At this point I was painting a set of parallel projects and got into the mood that nothing finishes. A good point to reflect. Is painting Ogres becoming dull? Ia painting not a challenge any more? Is playing becoming more interesting than painting? Might be some truth in all of those but probably it is lack of focus. With that in mind I am now making a plan in what order to paint all this stuff cramming my paint station. With planning came a thought to put all this reflecting into a blog post. All restored!

What has been entering the realm of painting then you might ask. Actually not so much. I got a bit greedy to play mournfang so bought a set of those. Also when coming across a stonehorn I wanted that as well. I have a nice airbrush set so painting the big beasts shouldn't take that much time right? As a matter of fact this is true, only the details take up a lot of time. With the big beasts come big bases, so they need time as well, since the big mini's need to make an appearance on the battlefield of course.

Aside from the ogres I seem to be collecting all kinds of scenery on my painting table. I have stuff already painted, but with the airbrush comes the possibility of painting it nicer! :) Get everything up to the same standard. All in all an unduly task.

THe painting table is thusly collecting a lot of half painted stuff and nothing gets finshed since I start with everything at once. Or maybe in the end everything is finished at once (but this might be a while!). Therefore I cleared the desk, put to the task only the mournfangs for now and take it one at the time. Actually taking 2 mournfangs is slow going, but a lot faster than painting a stonehorn, a wood elf hero, an imperial marksman, 4 ogres, 90 gnoblars and a set of trees at the same time :)

Hopefully my painted models output will rise with this and you will find more posts on the blog about them. Now how many tanks for flames of war should I order and start painting.... :)

More Ogres!

After painting loads and loads of dwarfs and them being so tiny, I started with some Ogres. Just to be on the other side of the spectrum. Not only painting wise but also gaming wise they are a complete different army. Not less fun to paint however. The set of Ogres I got needed some painting to do, I can field approximately 4000 points of Ogre menace not including magical items but the amount of models involved equals by nearly 2000 points of dwarfs! Should the painting go that much faster was the first thing I asked myself and first impressions this was the case. Of course painting something new induces a new drive to paint and thus taking more time to paint, hence more output in painting! Still good, the ogre army expands rapidly and I got a couple of games already to play with them. I still have to develop a feel for how to play, but each game gave me some valuable learning points and rules I forgot about to play. Also this is an army with magic opposed to the dwarfs, also something new to consider and hell of a lot of fun. The ogres are fast, hard-hitting but can still be outmaneuvered. Magic is good, leadership is rubbish. Stuff to keep in mind :) On to the painting then, I started of with a tyrant just to get a feel for ogre models and to have something nice to paint. A set of leadbelchers followed and the Tibet style color scheme proved good and clean on the ogres (clean and ogres in one sentence?). Also in the set of Ogres I bought was the best model ever: the old scrap launcher. A big contraption pulled by a large beast. Loads of gnoblars everywhere on the model to give it the lively feel of chaos and mayhem. That was the next to paint. The wood was quickly done, however I kept touching up on the wood. It had to be more grainy, more red, more yellow, but in the end it got good enough. The wood was fairly quickly done and I got the idea that only painting some gnoblars was not that much of a work. It is when each individual needed to be picked out with its own set of colors and devices. There was also the amount of metal on the model. I wanted it to be a seemingly random mix of iron and copper with its corresponding corrosion. In the end not en easy task and took a while, but worth it. The cloth where the scrap launcher rests had to be some captured flag or something so I painted the imperial eagle on it that was also on one of the shields that is being loaded as scrap to be shot at the enemy, all in-keeping with the model. I myself am happy how it turned out, however I keep on seeing stuff that can be improved. I put it aside for now and I'm moving on to next models and ways to paint, since I got me a nice airbrush set and just started painting the skin of a...GIANT!

My first Ogre

It's been a while since I last posted about painting. I got a good deal on an Ogre army that a friend had lying catching dust. Parts sparsely painted and all undercoated, it was a great painting project.
Ogre painting has started! The first I got to the painting table was this tyrant. Much trial and error on painting loads of skin. My first oxidation on copper painted, in short a lot of firsts and a lot of new techniques to be learnt. I have now something of a paint scheme: Tibetan style ogres on ice they are my working title. The ice\snow bases are somewhat under test still, but they will get there.
Be prepared to see more Ogre posts on the blog. More important, be prepared for my first Ogre battle! I have 3500 points of Ogre goodness and the first painted Ogre skirmish army should be finished soon.

My opponents be warned, one of these days I field my Ogreeeeees!

Pink is my new obsession

When I started painting my Battlefront IS-2 tanks, a plan to do one as the (in)famous Pink Tank from Prague got stuck in my head. Years ago, around 1991, I visited Prague and I remember seeing the tank, that was in those days still on it's original location. Nowadays it is displayed in the military museum of Lesany (which I still have to visit :-P )

After painting four IS-2 tanks in a 'normal' Russian green scheme it was both nice and a bit tricky to do this one pink, without transforming it into a Slaaneshi type of equipment. The idea is to use it in Flames of War as an objective (and as fifth IS-2 tank in case of emergencies). So it had to be a sort of 'realistic pink'. Well the results are down below, feel free to let me know what you think...

Dark elfs take over: another dark elf sorceress painted

Well isn't that something. Again a dark elf post and not a dwarf post. Painting progresses quickly with the dark elves. Of course this is the case when painting only single miniatures and this is no exception. Still good fun to paint. I'm starting to get the hang of skin tones and magical green stones and wands :) Also painting very small arcane lettering is becoming better and better. And now for the showcase, her she is:


What should be up next. Yesterday I bought a dark elf assassin and 3 sets of old school dwarf miners. Also on the shelf are the 9 old school dwarf rangers that are begging me to paint. What to pick up for the next show case (and #miniaturemonday on twitter!).

Latest dark elf pictures

After painting a lot of dwarfs it was time to do something completely different. Of course the dark elf painting was present here and there, but recently I've been painting 2 dark elves in a row. Dwarfs are awaiting some paint on my paint station.
Painting the dark elves gets the creativity flowing because it requires different paint schemes and techniques. A "start" of a new war band/army lets me experiment more with painting techniques as well. Thinking about colors and what will work. Thinking about bases and settings and scenes really gives you the creative kick you nice in a while need for painting the army you are busy with.
Good news for the dwarfs that is! They will get all the new ideas and paint schemes and whatnot...when I start painting them again that is. 16 dwarf warriors are only base coated and awaiting the paint treatment, they will be picked up sooner or later :)

For now the dark elves. I already painted Malus Darkblade a while ago and now was busy with a dark elf sorceress on a cold one. My background for the dark elves will be cold ones. The more cold ones the better! I was a bit stuck with dark elf sorceress but got further with some tips and tricks here and there and here are the most recent pics!


Started with another sorceress but this time without cold one. Actually I bought the model under the impression it was a fine cast model (my first, a first test it had to be), but it wasn't. Just a detailed plastic model of a dark elf sorceress. Fun to paint. Started to evenings ago and this is the current work in progress. The occult markings on the cloth are there. They will get a bright green edge to them (this is only the outline layer).

The face needs the eye and mouth done and the brass only has its first 2 layers. They will be worked up to gold with mithril silver sparkle edges.Base is going to be stone with ice/snow just as with other dark elf sorceress on the cold one. Ice and snow will be the setting for all future dark elves.

I bought myself another cold one with a dark elf knight the other day. The local hobby shop had 3 blisters for the price of 2. Couldn't resist buying some old school dwarf rangers and tipped in the cold one knight as the "free" blister! Coolness!

To Prague

At the start of the year I made one (of many) resolutions: To paint a Flames of War army in time for the late war tournament in Huissen. However, due to some calendar issues (carnival) the tournamens was moved a week. Because of this I won't be able to compete, since the tournament now coincides with our holliday trip to Prague.

However I'm very happy and proud that my paint resolution was completed in time and with good result. Four IS-2 ("Stalin") tanks are now ready for action and with the new Red Bear rulebook just two or three would (pointwise) fit in my army.





On the internet I found a very nice picture of the same type of tank of the Czechoslovak tank army driving into Prague. I hope mine miniatures will do as good as this ones!

One of the sites I was hoping to visit in Prague was the Lešany museum, to look at the real thing. However it turns out that the museum is closed during the winter.... (Which gives another good reason to visit Prague during summer again :-)
So Í'm probably not going to see a lot of tanks in Prague, since even the famous pink one is also located in the museum nowadays..

SideProject: The Luggage

Of course our full focus is on the Mordheim border town burning campain, but painting nice miniatures is always nice :).
I came across this mini of the Luggage (for all you Pratchett fans a know figure, otherwise just a nice box with feet :) ).
This is the result of painting the little bugger:

Pony wagon projects

It's been a while, posting on the blog but it has a reason! I just became a father of the coolest baby boy named Jonas! The painting projects are a bit on low priority the last couple of weeks. This week there was actually some time to paint some stuff!
I was already busy with a pony wagon for my dwarf treasure hunter warband and now finished it.

Yesterday I got a pair of ponywagons as a birthday present from one of our blog contributers Arjan. This got me a good idea on creating a pony wagon train with a pair of ponys. Since my dwarfs will be collecting gold and goodies to amounts they can't carry alone, wagons are in need! I assembled and converted the ponywagons to create the following:

Some conversions were needed. The two ponys need to be next to each other. Easy enough a dummy piece was placed where usually the single pony is.

From above the pony wagon set will look as follows:

The other conversion is the link from the second wagon to the first. The cutaway pieces of plastic frame provided nice pieces of plastic to to fit as a T-piece that will be the couple piece to the first wagon.