15mm Afghan Warlords

 In a previous post, I showed some pics of a T-55 tank I painted up as an Afghan warlord battlewagon. I finally took some pictures of the other Afghan fighters and vehicles. I envisioned two competing factions: one a typical warlord and the other a religious fundamentalist faction. I am nowhere near finished this project and its pretty far on the back burner at the moment but here is some of what is painted up:

BMP-1 (courtesy of Battlefront's Team Yankee range) in the service of the religious fundamentalist faction. I planned on placing a flag for the faction draped on the front fender. I had intended to make the BMP look more ragged  and battle-worn than it ended up. I added random baggage, put some dings in the armor and removed some of the side skirt. Good enough...

Another angle of the BMP, showing the crewman and the other rider. The rider is in the black of the religious fundamentalist faction and is sporting some sneakers (trainers to you Brits). The crewman is a whittled down figure from Flytrap Miniatures and the riders are from the Old Glory modern range.

Peter Pig Toyotas converted to "technicals" with the addition of Old Glory heavy weapons and crewman. The red and blue technicals have .50 HMGs and the white one has a single barreled 14.5mm KPV.

Another angle of the technicals showing the Toyota emblazoned tail gates. The crewman for the KPV was a doozy, I had to perform some frankenstein-style surgery to get the gunner to fit on the seat. The gunner in the blue Toyota had a head swap to give a slightly different look.

Some of the traditional warlord faction fighters. These guys are a mix of Flashpoint, Flytrap, Irregular and Old Glory. I painted them up in off-whites, khaki, greys, reddish browns and grey blues.

Another angle, showing off the different poses and the assorted array of small arms.

Closeup of some RPG gunners. I think the standing guys are Flashpoint and the kneeling are Flytrap.

Some of the religious fundamentalist faction guys in their predominantly black kit and very serious disposition. I gave them a "dushka" HMG for a little extra firepower.

10mm Romans for TTS!

 As promised in my aforementioned post on the Carthaginians, here are their blood enemy - the Romans. I painted up Roman and Allied Latin legions and differentiated them with red and yellow shields respectively. I believe all of the figures posted here are Old Glory.

The first units up are some allied cavalry, pretty basic fellas. I believe they had a clutch of multiple javelins in their hand but I mistook them as mold lines and filed them down a bit. Yikes.

And here are some proper Roman cavalry. How do I know they are proper? The red shields and cloaks of course.

Here is another shot showing the cloaks. My reading indicated the Romans wore a mustard yellow cloak and I added in some dark madder red to color it up a bit.

Some velites, really neat little sculpts and simple to paint up.

Another view of the velites, showing off their fur wolf cloaks. Mixed in some brown fur to get a little color diversity going.

The hastati, Roman and Allied. I gave them a black plume to differentiate them from the princeps. From the back, you can see the hastati are unarmored save for their helmet and shield. From the front its difficult to tell the difference and I like my opponent to know who he's fighting.

Front view of the hastati. These sculpts are angled forward like they are running to get at the enemy. I guess that's what makes them hastati.

Princeps showing off their lovely chain mail armor and their red plumes. In TTS, the hastati and princeps can form a unit with special abilities. I think it gives a nice field for the Roman system of combat in a simple way.

The veteran triarii. These fellas are nice little sculpts. The long spears were separate and attached by means of drilling holes in a dimple on the sculpt's hand. Much less fidly than you would think.

A rear view of the triarii. These guys can straddle squares in TTS and act as a reserve for different units in front of them.

Lastly we have some generals on foot and mounted. You know the drill, yellow are allied generals and red are proper Roman command. I cut up some of the strips to give them more dynamic looks.

Closeup of the Roman army commander. The one chap even has a nice "caesar" cut. How appropriate!

Closeup of an allied foot general.

I have yet to finish their army camp, its halfway done. I have a feeling it may end up a bit underwhelming...we will see.

10mm Carthaginian Army for TTS!

Back when we had wargaming conventions, I watched my gaming buddies played in a game of To the Strongest! (TTS) at Cold Wars 2019. We were really enthused with the ruleset and as luck would have it, my one buddy Rob found a steal of a deal for unpainted Roman and Carthaginian armies down at Wally's Basement. We bought the lot and split it up. The bulk of the figures were Old Glory 10mm with a smattering of Magister Militum and Pendraken. I subsequently purchased more figures to flesh out the armies. They've been painted for a while (still need to finish the Roman army camp) but I just managed to photograph them. Here is the Punic contingent:

My Carthaginian camp, its kinda sparse but I wanted it that way. We have a pack elephant (Magister Militum), some pack horses (Pendraken), a trumpeter and standard bearer (Old Glory), a general (Magister Militum Vignette) and a tent (Pendraken). One big, mixed, happy family of manufacturers!

Another angle of the army camp, situated near the standard bearer are some loose shields that I snipped from excess Old Glory Romans.

The pride and glory of my Carthaginian army, my elephants! TTS allows two bases of these magnificent beasts If my memory serves me right, the elephants with the draperies are Magister Militum and the bare elephants are Pendraken. I believe all the riders are Magister Militum.

Another angle of these fellas. I kitted them out with some Libyan skirmishers (Old Glory) so they would be considered "escorted" in TTS, giving them a little more staying power.

Here are my Celtic swords (and spears) for hire. The vast bulk of my infantry and cavalry are Old Glory. The majority come in strips with the exception of the skirmishers and cavalry. I wanted these guys in a bright cacophony of colors and stripes. OG provides several different strip variants in their Gallic infantry bags. They wanted these guys chaotic and diverse!

Here's another snap of the Celts with a look at their back sides. Alot of bare flesh here for these proud warriors. The Celts are one of the only groups in this army where you will see blues and greens. I thought it was important to mix in some stripes to give them that Gallic feel. The Celts are considered "deep" units so they have a deeper base and an extra rank of soldiers.

Now my Spaniards. Probably my favorite units because of their shields. I wanted certain uniform but irregular palettes and themes for my different units. The Spanish have a hodgepodge of  red, black, white and yellow. These guys pop with the colors.

Here is another pic showing their back sides. I should mention that the majority of the OG strips are shields in the front and tunics in the back. It makes painting them very quick and easy. The Spanish infantry had a neat little leather helmet with a plume on them. 

Not nearly as sexy but still kinda cool. Here are my Libo-Phoenician veterans. White shields with red and black trim and design work. Palm trees and Tanit designs to give them that punic feel. I used Micron pens to do the design work.

And their backsides showing the plain tunics and helmets.

Here are my Libyan javelin skirmishers. These are grimy little buggers with dark earth tone hues and mohawks.

Carthaginian foot general stands. These are "Greek" command strips from Old Glory, slap some Tyrian purple on them and you have Carthaginians. There you go!

Old Glory army commanders from their "Greek" generals with the obligatory Tyrian purple. Mago, Hamilcar, Hasdrubal? I dunno, whoever you want them to be. The gent on the right is a Spanish general from Pendraken.

And what respectable Carthaginian army would go without Numidians? Not this army! Here are my Old Glory Numidian cavalry. I really like the sculpt of the rider, he just looks so cool and calm and confident in his riding and fighting ability. Unfortunately, its the only sculpt in the bag. I tried to base them like they are wheeling about like Numidians do...

The Numidian rears, I should mention that I littered the bases with an occasional red or white shield. These were clipped from Roman "legionnaires" or something like that from the OG Gallic Wars range.

My Celtic cavalry. Say hello again to stripes, blues and greens and some blonde hair!

The Celts showing off their backsides and striped robes. I believe there are 3 or so different rider sculpts in this bag of Old Glory figures.

Spanish cavalry, more reds, whites, yellows and blacks. An obligatory shield on the ground.

And they wanted to show you their back sides as well!

That's the Carthaginian army. I should add that I only snapped pics of some of the figures from each contingent. I will have to go back and snap an army picture so you can see they are all one big happy family (provided they are getting paid). Its a pretty decent sized army and I am both happy and somewhat surprised to have finished them. It was fun to paint and I went with speed over paint quality. I quickly prepped them with a file and nippers, rinsed the metal dust and finger grease off them and primed black. After that I gave them a drybrush of tan to show off the details and block painted the base colors. They got some very basic and crude hi-lights followed by a light wash and varnish. I will post the Roman army next...

 

64 Projects (*)

This past weekend I conducted a cursory inventory of my various wargaming projects to get a better handle on how much lead (and plastic) I had in my "lead pile". The idea is to create a spreadsheet to capture those projects, the scale of the project (miniature size) the size (or scope) of the project, the state of its completion, the priority in which I want to achieve it and some other assorted notes. 

At any rate I was a bit shocked and depressed when, after the dust settled, I had tallied up 64 (*) incomplete projects! The asterisk is because some were several small projects bundled into one. For instance, I listed 1/700 Aerial Combat as one project even though it actually comprises of multiple wars from WW2 to the Falklands. 

The inventory allowed me to come to grips that I have a lot of redundancy; For late 17th century I have offerings in 6mm, 10mm and 15mm. I probably own more 1/3000 ships of the line than ever actually sailed the seven seas! Suffice to say that there will be a culling of the herd in the near future and an organized and deliberate attempt to finish projects. 

I also intend to post more eye candy of my different painted figures on this blog. Stay tuned and wish me luck!

10mm Argentines Falklands War

Started working on some 10mm forces for the Falklands War. Figures are Pendraken and they are based for Five Core Company Commander.

 

10mm Chilean Atacama National Guard 1879

I had painted these this past year or so. They are from the Pendraken 10mm War of the Pacific range and depict the Chilean Atacama National Guard Battalion from around 1879. The soldiers wore a black uniform with red cuffs and collars. I really need to paint up more of this project.

 

6mm Soviets and Mujahadeen

I started two small Afghanistan projects around the same time, one in 6mm for the Soviet invasion and one in 15mm for the period after when various warlords vied for control. I figured I could use alot of the same scenery for both as it would be scale agnostic, small hills in 15mm would become small mountains in 6mm. While the 15mm project has stalled a bit, I managed to get gameable forces painted up in 6mm. The figures are based for the ruleset  "Hind & Seek" which is available online and has some very interesting concepts to give a fun asymmetrical game. Anyway, here are some snaps of my 6mm project. 

Here are some Soviet motor rifle infantry. The sculpts are all Heroics and Ros and I was very impressed with them. They are tiny with nice details and easy to paint. The picture shows four rifle squads on 30x15mm bases and two light machine gun bases on 15mm squares. The tiny dice trays are from Pendraken and will house dice to track casualties. You may notice a gloss finish, I have since sprayed them down with matte varnish for a better look.

Some of the Soviet vehicles -  a few transport trucks, some BTR60s and two T-55s.

A closeup of the T-55s, very nice little sculpts.

And now for the helos. Two Mi-17 Hip and two Mi-24 Hinds. The Hips are kitted out as attack variants but will assume the role of either troop transport or attack choppers depending on the scenario.

The clear flight stands were pirated from Games Workshop and the rotor discs were ordered online from some plastic laser cutting service. They were fairly cheap and I used a small tool to find the center of the discs and drill a hole to attach them to the choppers. Much easier than I thought it would be and I am happy with the appearance.

And now some Afghan mujahadeen forces to include rifle squads, HMGs, sniper, RPG teams, AA guns and a stinger team.

Closeup of the sniper team and a twin barreled ZPU-23.

Close-up of a mujahadeen rifle squad. Sadly, I am slacking in the construction of terrain and villages but I hope to rectify this and get in a game of Hind and Seek.

Lastly, here is a comparison picture of (L-R): Heroics and Ros infantry, an H&R T-55, a GHQ T-80 and Mainforce infantry.