Post 400: The Revenge of the Paint Table

Welcome to post number 400. Posting has slowed a bit here lately but I am trying to get things cranked up again. I am setting a goal for the Month of May, that I will post at least 4 times a week. With Easter coming up this weekend, there is no way that I can get much done before then. 400 posts is rather remarkable for me. The blog began in May of 2007. That puts this blog at 7 years old next month. I can hardly believe it has been that long. Enough nostalgia, on to the fun.

Finally! I got my paint brushes moving a bit and made some progress. Did I work on one of my existing projects? No. Instead I found some Late War Soviet vehicles that had not received any attention.

Here was my painting table at the middle of the week:

You can see that I have added several new items. I have a bunch of them from the Old Glory Dark Ages Baggage Train pack. Some Picts have been placed on the queue as well. There are 4 cavalry, 4 skirmishers and some spearmen that look almost identical to the javelin troops. There is a finished base of married Zulus and two Zulu leaders. Then there is the set of dead WWII Italians that need work.

Besides the above, there are some Late War Soviets that ended up receiving the attention. First is a set of 4 unprimed Ba-64 armored cars. Then there is one each of: T34-85, SU-100, SU-85 and SU-76M.

The T34 had hatches that would not fit. It was very frustrating. In order to make it work, I glued them on in an open position. That also did not look great so I went to the bits box to find some figure that would work as a soviet tanker. I found a Battlefront dismounted tanker figure. However he is rather big. I cut the figure down and got him in place. You can see his severed legs in the front right corner of the image. I did not have a suitable second figure and the other one's hand was overhanging the other hatch. So I left that one open.

All of the Soviet tanks are Old Glory/Command Decision figures.

I finished up the tanks last night. Here is the look of the painting table this morning.

And here are the tanks by themselves.

Lastly, you may remember that I had been working on terrain for a bit. One of the things that demotivated me was a slight disaster with a large wooded area that I was working on. The base of my woods fell in the garage to the concrete floor. It took me over a week to recover and pick up a brush again. I think I can fix this but it was definitely demotivating.

Well that is all for now. Take care and happy gaming.

Italians, Romano-British and changes in direction

It has been a productive week. I managed to move forward on two projects. The first is my East Front Italian project.

CSIR - Italians In Russia: 1941

I completed my second Infantry platoon. I also have another squad completed that will form part of my third platoon whenever I get around to painting that. Somehow I was under the impression that I had painted enough infantry for both 2nd and 3rd platoon. I was in error. Apparently I have no ability to count.

Here are some pictures of the miniatures. First up is the group shot of the platoon.

The platoon consists of the Tenente, his runner and two squads. Each squad is split in two parts - a nine man LMG team and an 11 man rifle section.

Here is the platoon leader and his runner.

What I did with this platoon is I changed up the basing. I left some dirt portions of the bases visible. The previous platoon began to look to me like they were walking on a golf course. Take a look and let me know what you think. Am I better off in covering the base with flock or leaving some of the dirt exposed underneath?

Dux Britanniarum

The second item is my 15mm Dux Britanniarum Romano-British army. I had been on a stuck point with this army for quite a while. I really enjoyed painting up my Early Saxons. But these guys.... Well I am just not sure what happened. The armored fellows were fun but the warriors just annoyed me. I like the figures, I just did not like painting them. Well here is what I have finished up.

First up are my nobles. In the rules, your starting are your lord and his two subordinate nobles. You also have a hero for the force. Well, I have not gotten to my hero yet because I wanted to paint up a priest first. Won't use him for the first few games but I liked the figure.

After the nobles came the Comanipulares or elite troops. These fellows are heavily armored and armed. Splintered light has some fun command sections that I included in this grouping. They play no role in the rules but so what. They are fun and look pretty good to me.

Here is another shot of them in a line.

Now I am still stuck on the Warriors. I have 15 of these poor fellows on painting sticks at about 70% completion. I should be able to knock them out this week. I had a radically different idea of what levy troops would be during the play testing of this than Rich placed in the rules. I created a levy force of peasant levy. These are farmers with various farm implements. Here are what I have finished. Eventually I will have three groups of six of these troops.

The more I look at them, I really like them but they need some additional rules to make them viable in the rules. I think I may tinker with this for a special (unless Rich beats me to it).

I am thinking of changing my force and separating out my warriors that I have into warriors (cloaks and/or helmets) and standard levy (shield and spear only) to match up with the rules better. I will need to buy some more figures from Splintered Light to finish this out if I go in that direction.

I have some Picts that are sitting in a drawer that I will not touch (no, honest, I really, really won't.) until I finish off these guys. I plan on having a small cavalry force to add to the Romano British with both light and heavy cavarly. At this point I only own 2 mounted figures for them. However for my Saxons, I have 8 or so mounted figures. That seems somewhat backwards to me somehow.

Speaking of Saxons, I am planning on getting some reinforcements for these guys too. I have my eyes on the Khurasan miniatures Germans with spear and francisca to serve as allies for my Saxons. Once the Picts make their way onto the painting table, they will serve as an entirely different army and as mercenaries for either side.

Lastly, I have decided to rebase all of my Dark Ages to put them all on US Pennies. Brian, who I am trying to organize a campaign with, is also basing his on pennies so that would make things line up a bit better.

Well that is it for this installment. Let me know what you think.

Dark Ages and other musings

So Rich and the TFL crew have come up with their play test of some Dark Age rules. Very nifty stuff. I just got the rules last night and took some time to read them through today. I must say, I am excited about these. Excited enough to change directions in what I am working on.

I will finish out painting my Italians that I have done as they are so close. But as soon as those are off the painting table, out will come the Romano-British. My Saxon host is done enough to get a game in. I really need to get going with the Britons now.

Of course, even though I have a pile of lead just waiting to be finished off, I started surfing for more minis. What I really want are some casualty figures. The only place that I found 15mm Dark Age casualty figures was on QRF's website in their Freikorps range. They have some Viking casualties that would work for heavy infantry casualties and possibly the Pict casualty for any medium infantry figures. I really want some dead peasant levy though. Any ideas out there?

I also started to surf around to look for some foederati mercenaries as supports. I spotted the Khurasan German range and thought that they just might work. Based on the rules, I should be able to get away with just 2 packs (Spear & Francisca and chief with standard). Take a look. These are pretty nifty. Khurasan Miniatures' Late Germans

Anyway, I was starting to get a case of the blahs about miniatures. But once again, the excitement level is back up.