Russian to Conclusion (or not)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I really need to finish off this Macedonian/Successor army...and I doing that? Of course not!

With some available painting time, I decided to paint up a 6mm 17th century Russian streltsy unit. After I gamed the battle of Nyenschantz with Alex, I ended up buying 17th century Baltic armies for the Scanian War and War of the Deluge. I made some progress on Swedes and Danes but decided right now was the perfect time to dive into the Russian army (it really isn't the perfect time to do this... Macedonians need finishing). 

Anyway, here is the 3rd streltsy regiment "Bukhvostova" in their light green kaftans with raspberry caps. I'm pleased with how these fellows came out. Such an anachronistic look for the late 17th century and they will provide a nice contrast when fighting the Swedish army on the tabletop. 

Same regiment from the rear where you can see their impressive berdisch axes. In Tercios, the axes give them some kind of positive modifier in melee. I don't think I ever mentioned this elsewhere but my 6mm Tercios armies are based on 3mm thick bases (with 3mm rounded corners) from Litko. The base sizes are as follows, for full-sized infantry and cavalry units: 65x35mm, artillery and company detachments: 30mm squares and commanders: 20mm rounds. The 65x35mm may seem a bit random but I chose it because it perfectly handles a three-rank infantry unit of nine Baccus strips. 

I should mention the sculpts are Baccus streltsy from their Great Northern War range (GNR-12). The 17th century will be a bit Frankenstein in composition, pulling from Polish, Cossack, Russian, TYW and Ottoman ranges. The plan right now is to have about five infantry units (2 streltsy and 3 "modern" pike and shot), three cavalry (two units of boyars and one unit of reiters), a couple of commanders and a couple bases of artillery. A fairly modest-sized army but enough to give me a quick game of Tercios for a weekday evening. When I inevitably make another order from Baccus, perhaps I will add few more packs to beef up this army. I think the Ottoman armored cavalry (OTT-17) would make passable armored boyars to serve a "dvora" unit of elite boyars.

Right now I'm painting up boyar cavalry which are really Cossacks with a fancy paint job. Reiters will come from the TYW range and armored boyars will come Ottomans. 

Persian Diversion

I should be painting the last few remaining units to complete my 10mm Macedonian/Successor however I have drifted a bit in my focus. This always seems to happen at this stage of a project for me. As an example, I'm still staring at the last few partially painted government units for my 6mm Killiecrankie project. 

Anyway, I decided to paint up a unit of Persian levy who will ultimately be facing that Macedonian army. I just wanted to paint something different. 

I chose soft, dirty pastels for these guys. They don't look particularly "martial" in their appearance which is probably appropriate looking at their stat lines for To The Strongest. I suppose I'm happy with how they came out but the inking process left them a little "dirty". 

Here is the same unit from the rear. Getting back to that inking process and the dirty effect it left....i typically gloss varnish after painting and then let the varnish cure for a day before inking. For the longest time, I used Testors gloss varnish and it always seemed to cure hard and handle the ink wash well. Recently I've been using Vallejo acrylic gloss varnish (my hobby shop was out of Testors). I feel like the Vallejo varnish absorbs some of the inking to make the figures look dirtier. Perhaps it needs longer to cure than the Testors? I don't know....all that I know is that I need to finish that Macedonian army. 

A (musket) blast from the past...

While going through some old emails looking for hobby related messages, I uncovered photos and a battle report from April, 2015 with my old gaming buddy Frank. I decided to post this much belated battle report although the details will be fairly vague. 

The game was a refight of the Battle of Brandywine using Sam Mustafa's Maurice rules and Frank's 10mm Old Glory AWI armies. As a side bar, I once owned 10mm AWI armies myself...also Old Glory 10mm. I have to say that their 10mm AWI range is probably one of my least favorite. The figures were a bit 2-dimensional and felt flimsy. But I digress...

Here is the initial setup, I had the numerically superior but qualitatively inferior American army against Frank's British. 

Some more pictures of the battle. In an email posted after the game recapping the battle to my gaming buddy Rob, I stated the following: 

"It's tricky because it's a small battle table with a good amount of units compressed in there. The Brandywine "river" crosses the battlefield in the center. There are fords and roads but also lots of woods and hills. In Maurice, the only movement penalty for woods and the river is that you gain a disruption when you move thru it, which is huge (no movement distance penalty tho). ‎Also, units in different terrain types can't be included in the same "force". It really screws up both the attacking British and defending Americans. I was the American army and managed to fight Frank to a draw. He was about to crack my army morale but the store was closing and we had to call it. Both armies had "oblique movement" national advantage but the British also had "steady lads" and "Lethal volleys", plus they had some elite infantry units." 

I remember having a fun time playing this game, it reminds me that I really need to get in some more games of Maurice. Perhaps I should motivate myself to finish my French Revolutionary armies. 
Back in 2015, I was playing far more frequently at my local gaming store with old friends (Alex, Frank, Steve and the store owner Chris)...I hope I can return back to gaming that often sometime in the future. For now, I will continue to paint armies in preparation for future tabletop battles.

Slave to Success(ors)...

Lately, almost all of my hobby time has been devoted towards my 10mm Macedonian Successor army for To The Strongest. 

Having pushed through phalangite, hypaspists, hoplites, skirmishers and command...I only have a few more cavalry and elephant units to finish up. 

Sure there are more hoplites to complete but they are more for mercenaries to be used with the Persian and other armies. 

Having a brief free moment, I snapped some pictures of the progress and now I can share them with you. 

First up, we have the backbone of the army, six bases of phalangites. These fellas were serve as both hammer and anvil for most tabletop battle scenarios. I painted each base in its own scheme and I like the finished look. I won't go into too much detail because I've already spoken on these sculpts here, but I will say this as a tangent....I have a bad habit of butchering the pronunciation of ancient (maybe all) words. For decades, I pronounced these guys as " Fal-anj-ites" and recently I heard someone pronounce them as "Fal-an-geet-eez". I have no doubt I am wrong and they are right.

  

Next up we have two hypaspist units. I know there are different interpretation of this troop type. Old Glory have them sculpted as javelin/spear armed and they will be classified as javelinmen in my TTS armies. I added Macedonian sun burst designs on their shields, these are transfers from Veni Vidi Vici and are rather nice. To ensure I had enough transfers, I cut them in half and only used the half transfer on the portion of the shield that is visible. 

Here are our Greek mercenary hoplites (again I pronounce "hop-lights" and I'm sure it is "Hop-leet-eez"). I enjoyed painting these sculpts even if they are time consuming. I painted them up as individuals instead as uniformed soldiers of the state. No uniformity whatsoever. I used more transfers from VVV and they went on like a charm. I opted for a longer spear but still shorter than a pike.

The army has three sling and two bow armed skirmisher bases. Old Glory sculpt their slingers on 2 figure bases while the bowmen are individual. Painted plain but the bowmen have red headbands. 

And here are two units of cavalry, companions (yellow and purple) and Thessalians (blue and white). Need to paint up a couple more bases of these cavalry types. Like the phalangites and hoplites, the Macedonian cavalry require you to drill holes out of the hands and insert wire for spears. Much easier than it sounds like it would be. 

Nothing says Successors like pike and elephants. You saw the pike already and here are the elephants. Or rather elephant. I have more painted up but this is the only one bases right now. In TTS, these bases will represent "elephant screens" and will be less shock than pachyderms represent in other army lists. I plan to paint up a total of six of these bases. 

And lastly, we have some Macedonian/Successor command. I plan to have a couple mounted sub-commanders, a couple foot sub-commanders and a generic overall leader. 

I should add that almost all of the figures are Old Glory, the bases are Litko and the elephants and riders are 10th Legion (formerly Magister Militum). 

With two bases of cavalry, a few more elephant units and a command base left to paint....I'm not sure what I will to next. Should I paint up 10mm Persians and Indians to face off against Macedonians (and each other)? Should I venture back into my 6mm Tercios late 17th century armies (Jacobites, English, Scanian Wars, etc) or should I finish off my 10mm Fenian project? 

How the Sausage is Made...

I've been meaning to post some updates on the progress of my 10mm Macedonian army for "To The Strongest" rules however I haven't had the time to set up my "photo studio" for pictures (which is a gaming mat on my kitchen counter with some additional lights borrowed from my paint room). I've managed to finish all the phalangite units (six in total), half the hoplite units (3 so far), hypaspists (two units), light infantry (slingers and Cretan archers) and some command stands that will represent Alexander, Seleucus and a host of other Successors and pretenders. This Macedonian collection will end up representing a lot of different armies. 

Since I don't have proper photos ready and I wanted to post an update, I have decided to post some pictures of works in progress so you can see how I go about getting figures table ready. 

I'm currently working on some companion cavalry in a purple, white and yellow scheme and decided to fiddle about with some elephants for Successor armies. Simon Miller has tweaked/updated the rules and attributes for Successor elephants to better represent how they actually fought. No longer mobile battering rams, they are now mobile refuge for skirmishers and called "Elephant Screens". This change will affect how I base: instead of 2-3 elephants on a single deep base, I will have a single elephant and bow-armed archers around them. Indian elephants will remain battering rams and based as such, as will a stand or two for Pyrrhus' army. 

I am using Magister Militum (now Tenth Legion by Peter Berry) elephants for my TTS armies. I like their size and heft but they a bit fiddly to put together. I've decided to use elephants without howdahs for the screen bases since the howdahs are absolutely massive. For the pike-armed crew, I am replacing their cast-on pikes with wire (a bit of a challenge). I also pin the elephants to the base and pin the riders to the elephant so they are a bit secure without having to use heaps of glue. Some liquid green stuff is used to fill gaps.

After I finish the core Macedonian army so it is gameable, I'm not sure if I will move on to my remaining TTS armies of Persians and Classical Indians or I will take a diversion. Some possibilities are to dive back into my 17th century 6mm armies for Tercios (Scanian/Deluge War Swedes and Danes along with Muscovites, Poles and Ottomans) or something else. I'd really like to finish up some more gameable armies for Tercios (I already have armies to refight Killiecrankie as seen here) so I can play more games with my friend Alex.

I recently purchased an old Games Workshop figure from eBay. Specifically it is a House Cawdor heavy armed with a heavy bolter for the game Necromunda. I have old 90s miniatures for gangs to represent House Cawdor and House Delaque. This portly little fella is currently sitting in a bucket of paint stripper. I'm still vacillating on what color palette I will use for these gangs.

Hundred Years and Waiting...

At an HMGS convention long ago, I purchased a bunch of 15mm Donnington battalion packs for the Hundred Years War. I had envisaged me basing them on unit bases and using Kings of War Historical to game with them. I think the driving motivation was the fact that I really liked the look of the Genoese crossbowmen with the butterfly pavises strapped to their backs. Such a cool sculpt. I bought more and even added some packs of the Corvus Belli sculpts. 

Anyway, I painted and based up some units of English longbowmen and a unit of the aforementioned crossbowmen. I started on the mounted French knights with their caprisoned horses and I stumbled on the project and it never recovered. 

Here's a few pictures of the crossbowmen. The discerning eye might see some Corvus Belli figures who have pavises added to their backs. 

The plucky English longbowmen. I even add arrows in the ground and stakes to fend off pesky French knights.

I have a healthy sized collection of these figures but haven't had the heart to move on and sell them off. When I was in Scotland, I purchased the recently released Test of Resolve variant for the Hundred Years War and flirted with the idea of using these 15mm figures for the project. This was quickly scrubbed when I saw Wargames Atlantic was planning to release 10mm plastics for the HYW. Now as the release is likely mere weeks away, I have decided to share this failed project. Perhaps it will spur on the successful embarkation of a new project that will hopefully be completed. Fingers crossed. 

Modern Micro-Amor Musings

This post is delayed several years but as I was going through my old photos I noticed a few pictures of things that were meant to be in a blog post that never occurred. 

Several years ago, I invested in a mountain of 3mm micro armor. Some were WW2 North Africa and some were post-WW2 items. For the former, the plan was to build up armies for Sam Mustafa's Rommel ruleset and refight various campaigns in North Africa. Everything has been purchased, figures, bases, etc. I had planned to make a Rommel variant for the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965, complete with customized Ops Boards...this despite never having actually played Rommel. Anyway I just never got around to the project beyond acquisition and research. 

For the latter 3mm endeavor, I purchased a bunch of O8 3mm stuff to refight various battles (historical and hypothetical) for Operation Modular during the South African War in Namibia against Angola. I planned to use the ruleset Tank Wreck! and other than painting up a few bases of Angolan BTRs and infantry, this project also stalled. 

This is one of the 3mm BTR stands I painted up for the Angolan Motorized Brigade I planned to put together. I was pretty pleased with the results. It's something I need to get back to doing. Some day. 

The other item I meant to post on the blog was a battle report from the Russo-Ukrainian War. 

In 2021 or so I picked up a bunch of GHQ micro-armor for the 2014 conflict and soon thereafter the conflict resumed (as we all are aware of). Anyway, I painted up the figures in the summer of 2022, showcased here. The rules were Pz28's quick-play modern rules, my friend Rob and I played at Historicon 2022. . 

In the scenario, a Russian force of T-80s and MTLBs with infantry and ATGMs (commander by Rob) was tasked with taking a small village in the Donbas that was situated along a tree-lined road cutting through a plain. The village was defended by Ukrainian forces (me) equipped with T-64s, BMPs, BTRs and some ATGMs. 

Here is a layout of the table before the start of the game. Russians are on the left and the Ukrainians are on the right. I used "blinds" for the units as well as some dummy blinds to replicate some fog of war.  They were removed if successfully spotted, if the blind fired or if they came within a certain range of an enemy unit. 

From this view we have the Russian forces initially deployed on the bottom of the table. The village is about halfway up the table with some Ukrainian infantry defending and armor behind. 

I don't recall all of the details but the carnage was intense. Ultimately the Russians seized the village after heavy casualties. I really liked the simplicity of the Pz28 rules and planned to add some house rules for conflict specific flavor (drones, mud, etc). 

The Alchemist

As a hobbyist and wargamer, often times I'm not using products straight from the tin or bottle. Paints aren't always the exact hue that I want, inks and washes need to be diluted, etc. Improvisation and customization are commonplace. 

I've created many different formulas only to forget the exact ingredients and measurements once the initial batch is done...this leads me trying to recreate mysterious concoctions and makes me feel like some kind of alchemist searching for his recipe to make "gold".

Something as simple as variations in static grass or flocking turf for a basing project has caused me great headache. My WW1 1914 project has spanned several years. My original basing for my French and Germans featured a certain green flocking turf with ample amounts of shrubs (below). 

Years later, I tackled some Belgians for the project (above). I went with few shrubs (easier for gaming and markers) but I learned that I was out of the original flocking turf and went with an approximation that isn't quite a match. 

A similar incident happened with my Crimean War project. Some of my Turks have a vibrant green static grass while others have a dull and muted tone of grass. Not enough of an issue to rebase but enough of an issue to annoy me. 

I really need to start writing down these formulas for my various hobby "gold" recipes....

To the Strongest!!

Back in 2019/2020, I posted about the To the Strongest project my buddy Rob and I embarked on

 I managed to finish Carthaginian and Polybian Roman armies in the span of a year. They were initially purchased at the Wally's Basement flea market of Cold Wars 2019 and one year later, Rob and I braved the onset of Covid to play a battle of TTS with my freshly painted armies. We had a blast (as we constantly slathered ourselves in hand sanitizer) and later played them at one of the later conventions with our buddies Bill and Matt. 

At some point shortly after these games, I purchased more armies to build Macedonian/Successor, Persian and Indian armies. Time went by, Rob never finished his armies (I think his Romans were partially started), Bill purchased Gauls but these never got off the ground and the impetus for the project stalled. 

Recently Rob decided to try and kickstart his TTS armies and this gave me motivation to start painting my remaining armies. 

I love elephants and the Indians have them and chariots in droves. I love colorful pastels and the Persians offer these in the cacophony of colors their soldiers wear into battle. As much as I wanted to resume the project by tackling one of these armies...I decided the responsible thing to do would be to finish the Macedonians first. This army will do double duty as a generic Successor army with the inclusion of elephants and I can use them against the Romans and Carthaginians. From there I can move on to "guilty pleasure" armies of Darius and Poros. 

I managed to paint up my first Macedonian unit. I went with a unit of phalangite pikemen. These fellas represent a "silver shield" unit of veterans. They have red tunics and pikes since red is the color of war, white linen cuirasses and silver armor. I think they came out spiffy. I already prepped and primed two more like units and started painting one of them. I did some inventory and realized my Persians and Indians needed some additional units so I placed a few orders to Old Glory and Tenth Legion for cavalry/chariots and elephants respectively. 

The armies will compromise almost exclusively of Old Glory 10mm with the exception of the elephants which are mostly Magister Militum (now Tenth Legion) and Pendraken. Hopefully more updates will be consistently posted and this project won't languish again. Wish me luck! 

Some Scenery

I've had these scenery items painted for a month so now but I finally have snapped some photos of them. Scenery is something that I tend to neglect, I have a lot of unpainted items that desperately need to be painted. At any rate, let's showcase the progress I've made recently. 

These bases come from Total Battle Miniatures 3mm village and farm tile range. First up are some Western Europe farms and villages. These will make nice little objective and table scatter for 6mm battles from the 18th and 19th centuries. I have Baccus armies for the War of Spanish Succession and Wars of German Unification. 

Here are the Russian/Eastern European village and farm tiles. A bit drab in natural wood colors, I imagine I will use these for 17th century battles in the Baltic and surrounding areas. I have 6mm Danish and Swedes for the Scanian Wars and I plan to add Ottomans, Poles and Russians as well. 

Last up are some 15mm fuel and ammo caches for my AK-47 Republic Krapistan project. These will make nice game objectives for the various factions to try and capture. As I make more progress with my scenery I will continue to post my finished pieces. 

Norman Army (and 1066 Project) Complete!

Despite an operational pause during the painting for the weeks leading up to the Pendraken painting competition, I pushed through and finished the Norman army for Big Battle Ravenfeast. I need to see the scenery needed for the refights of the three battles of the 1066 campaign but I should have most of it and what I need (some Saxon buildings and army camps) should be minimal. 

Here is the full army with an impressive mounted contingent. I have to say that this was probably the easiest of the armies to paint. The Vikings for whatever reason, were the ones that were tedious...and that was the first of the three armies I tackled. 

The shock arm of the Norman host, their mounted knights. I developed a pretty quick .method for painting these fellas. The shields were pretty easy too. You might notice one knight with a green shield that is a bit struggling...he sits in his saddle at a nearly 45 degree angle. It seems he slipped a bit during gluing or perhaps he's had too much wine. 

Here are the Norman infantry, which are Old Glory's "Heavy Infantry".mostly chain mail and shields, I was able to breeze through these sculpts. 

The three bases represent the Flemish infantry under Bishop Odo's command. I opted for the OG "Medium Infantry" for these guys since they have inferior ratings to the Norman infantry. Out of the various sculpts within the Norman army, these were probably the most annoying to paint because of the shield position. 

Two bases of crossbow and two of archers represent the ranged capability of the army. The Old Glory crossbowmen only come in one pose, I would have preferred a second pose but I'm not too bothered. The archers actually have two poses and I painted a bunch of the standing pose but I couldn't find them ast the time of basing so I just used the firing pose. Good enough. 

And lastly here are the three command bases representing William, Eustace and Odo. I thought about converting the sword in Odo's hand into a wooden club but I just wanted this army painted and on the table. 

Now I just need to get in some tabletop battles with these three armies. With the completion of this project, the question becomes what is next up?