The Brigadier & The Galactic Patrol

Keeping in the spirit of getting things off my painting desk, I bring you a Prussian general and some space dudes. To be honest, the brigadier is a new purchase but the other figures have been sitting on my desk, collecting dust for over a year (or two) and it's a relief to see them done and ease my guilt. And for that reason they can be first on the bill: 

These figures are Galacteers from Hydra Miniatures. I bought them a long time ago when I was doing a lot of pulp wargaming. I started painting them a long while back but I didn't enjoy it. They look okay now that they're finished, but they were horrible figures to paint in many respects and I don't really like them. Unfortunately I have another squad of five to paint. They've been prepped for a long time so I put them on the desk last night and I'll take my time painting them.

These figures were really difficult to photograph. I think it's becuse the colours I chose are pretty vibrant and the white is very white and it was reflecting into the lens and causing problems. I ended up photographing them in daylight because artificial light made them glare even worse. As a result most of the shading isn't coming through. On the actual figures there is definition and shading on their muscles but it just isn't showing. 

Anyway, that brings us to Herr Brigadier... I needed an extra brigadier for my Lutzow's Freikorp cavalry element. The Freikorps was very difficult to command with only one officer for both the infantry and the cavalry. This figure is from the Perry Prussian Mounted Officer set and I think he really looks the part. As I was adding the final touches to him I thought I should have painted up a hussar officer in the spirit of Von Schill. No worries though. This fine chap will do sterling service, I have no doubts!

And that's this week's update. Not much but even if it's only small steps it means that I'm getting back into painting and slowly getting out of my wargaming funk.

Cheers, and thanks for reading.

Prussian Cavalry ~ 3rd Dragoon Regiment

 Back again but not a soon as I'd hoped. I was hoping to post something sooner but the the troops I chose to paint took longer than expected. I've had a box of Perry Prussian dragoons assembled and and undercoated sitting in my cupboard for months so I decided to paint them. They came out okay and I'm going to do another regiment in the near future. 

As you can see there are 18 of them. That's more that a single box. Prussia had large cavalry regiment so I decided I needed more figures which meant I had to wait for the post to bring them to me. That was the first delay. The second delay happened as I was basing them and I decided that I wanted bases with3 figures. I had 16 figures painted and I needed another two. So I painted two more.

Anyhow, here they are. As I was starting this job I found that I had a set of Flags of War flags for the 3rd and 4th dragoons, hence these guys became the 3rd Regiment and the 4th will follow soon so that I can field them as a heavy brigade. I might make the 4th regiment larger (24 figures)

Getting these photos ready I noticed that I got some of the base colour on the front hoof of the officer's horse. I fixed it up later but it's annoying to have in the photo's.

And that's it for the moment. I've now started work on a Prussian infantry battalion that was also sitting there assembled and undercoated along with the cavalry. These shouldn't take too long. As far as Napoleonic's are concerned; Prussians are on the easy end of the spectrum.

Rowe's Brigade ~ War of Spanish Succession

Greetings folks. Once again it has taken me a while to get back to this blog and make an entry. As mentioned in previous posts I lost my wargaming mojo and couldn't motivate myself to get into the hobby room and do any sort of wargaming related stuff. I tried several times but I just wasn't feeling the love I once had.

However, it seems that my mojo has come back this time and I'm finishing off things that got left half done on the painting table. I'll post some of the other things later some but first off all I want to post this one...

This is Rowe's Brigade. My first 10mm English brigade for the War of Spanish Succession. I actually started and competed all the infantry within a week or two near the start of the year. I was going to post them here and realised I didn't paint a commander (Brig. General Rowe). My intention was to paint him and some guns and then add them to the blog. Unfortunately that's when my funk hit home and they sat there, partly done, for months.

As it is, I painted and finished them all in one night. I got back to painting by doing some French Napoleonic's and just kept going to the painting table every night to finish them. Then I started on these guys.

My choice of Rowe's Brigade for my first English brigade is because it includes The Welch Regiment. My grandfather was in that regiment for 30 odd years, from WWI up until being evacuated from Dunkirk. That's them up above with the blue standard with the red dragon.

I don't have any real idea how to base these figures. These battalions have 7 bases with 5 figures on each. This is to give the effect of a longer, thinner line to represent the English formation for firing by platoons. By comparison, my French battalions have 5 bases each with 6 figures which give a shorter more compact impression to represent their deeper formations.

The guns have limbers which can be placed to represent the guns being limbered or they can be placed behind, and facing the guns, to represent the ammunition train when the guns are deployed. They look good too.

And that's it. All the figures are Pendraken 10mm. I have more to make and I think the next lot will be some horse. The next infantry brigade won't be English but I'm not sure what they'll be at this stage. I'll do what I generally do, which is to find a brigade that looks pretty, with flags that I like and that I can easily reproduce in 10mm. I also have to see which grenadier figures I have available so as to determine what country I can do next. That's not really a consideration when doing French but it is when doing other nations. 

I figure that one more infantry brigade, some horse and some dragoons will be enough to start doing some games. Although I'm still looking for the right set of rules. I found a set of rules in a folder on my

pc. I read them and they sounded like just what I want. Then I realised it was a set of rules I wrote myself a long time ago.

A New Boss and Some Other Boring Figures

I'm still painting bugs and building my xenomorph army. I'm enjoying painting sci-fi stuff at the moment. It's easy and gives pretty good results for minimum effort. This week I wanted to paint up the big 3d print critter that bought. I wasn't really sure what I was doing but it came together okay in the end.

It is a great figure with very nice detail. I wasn't sure if I could do it justice with the minimalist colour scheme that I'm using for my bug host but I think it came out all right. Here is is with the other bugs I currently have. It seems suitably huge to me. It's on an 60mm base... The other regular sized bug on the right is on a 40mm base.

I also put together and painted the second box of Mantic Reapers (at least I think they're called Reapers). Horrible figures to put together but they do look weird and scary. I like them and, as mentioned in my previous post, I'm calling these Xenomorph Hybrids. I now have 20 of them and here they are with the new boss.

And they other thing I made during the past week are some Firefight Enforcers - once again from Mantic. These figures were pretty easy to construct but I think they're a bit boring. They were easy to paint too. I didn't bother doing much detail on them as I found the sculpts to be ill-defined and sort of indefinite. They are not really very crisp and lack something. I don't find them are very inspiring although they do have hard-sci-fi look about them.

Having said that I think they came out okay and it should be an easy task to build and paint up the rest of them.

And that's what I did last week. I also played a Napoleonic game over the weekend. I played General d'Armee 2 for the first time. It was an interesting game but, strangely I found it to be a very "gamey" set of rules and a bit of a departure from the original rules. Maybe I'm wrong - after all is was my first game.

Thanks for reading,

IanKH

Still Got The Bug, Bug ~ Mobile Cosmonaut Legion

Greetings folk!

I'm still moving ahead with my bug related modeling and over the past couple of weeks I've added a few more figures to the swarm as well as working on their opponents. I mentioned in my last post that I got a a bit ill: well that turned into a major infection in my sinus and chest which knocked me out for a while.

First up are my revamped Mobile Cosmonaut Legion. 

These were originally my GCPS for Firefight but I haven't played the game for a long time and these figures were looking a bit sad and forlorn in their box so I gave them a rejuvenating lick of paint. They came up looking quite nice. Their original colour was black with a drybrush of Prussian blue which made them very dark. When I originally put them together I needed them quickly so I opted for a very simple and intimidating palette. The green makes them look a bit more interesting.

I also topped their bases which were plain grey. I decided to base them the same as my bugs because that's who they will be fighting. I have a platoon with some support options and I'm writing a set of beer & pretzel solo rules based around a single platoon fighting bugs with the option to add support options. Very similar to how force building in Chain of Command works. - (For example: Roll a couple of dice depending on the scenario. Add them up and you may select that many points worth of support options to help out your platoon.)

One of the support options is below: Elite Jump-Troops that can drop into the action and cause trouble with their heavy weapons and things. I still have a bit more work to do to get the rest of the supports up to scratch.

How they originally looked: The actual figures are Warlord; Beyond The Gates of Antares figures. I got them cheap several years back. They're really nice figures and I've heard that the game was really well done but it never took off and I think the whole game has been defunct. Shame.

Next up are these guys:

These are from Mantic and I think they're called Reapers (or some thing like that) ~ I'm calling them Hybrid Bugs. They look great with paint but they were crappy to assemble. Seven of them are made out of the weird plastic/resin stuff that Mantic often use and the other three are resin. I picked them up cheap but apparently Mantic are now making them in plastic on sprues. That sounds like a good move on their part. However, I have a second box of these cheap ones to make before I move on.

And last but not least I got this model in the post a couple of days back. She will be my Queen-Bug. I bought this figure from a small one-man business up in Queensland that does 3d prints. It's a nice big model at a very reasonable price. 

And that's it for the time being. I'll keep painting and get back to writing up my rules. And when I'm finished the bug wars can begin.

Bug In or Bug Out!

 A short Space Bug update.

I have a bug at this point in time. I'm coughing and full of snot. Hot lemon and honey with a shot of whisky is the only cure. At least it's the only of which I approve!

Anyway, enough of my misery and complaining... I've continued to paint bugs and I've managed to finish two of the larger bugs that I bought - the Ankeg 3D prints I recently bought. They took a bit more effort than the others and they came out looking great. I might see if I can get my hands on a couple more. At $20 for a pair they're pretty good value compared to other "space bug" miniatures on the market.

Compared to the Wargames Atlantic, Harvesters they are about twice the size. So they will be perfect for representing larger/tougher bug species or unit leaders etc. I mounted the harvesters on 40mm bases and these bigger guys are on 60mm bases. I wasn't too sure about the ivory coloured mandibles and claws but that's the way I did them and I'm not going to change them now. Since I took the photo's I have noticed that I forgot to paint their eyes but that's an easy fix.

I also took some pics of my other bugs. These are metal figures from Khurasan Miniatures from their 15mm sci-fi range. I considered getting more but I looked at their site and saw a Bugswarm Pack which is what I bought. It has 30 of the green bugs so I must have anther packet of 15 somewhere. I know I've seen them but I can't remember where they are. I don't want to order more in case I find them. I like the idea of using these as something like a large locust swarm, so lots of them would suit that theme.

I'd order more of these but they come with 4 flying and four on the ground and I only really want the flying version. What sort of fool would want flying critters that aren't flying? Not this fool!

So that's it for the moment. I haven't found the big beetle figure from my previous post. It came as part of the Bugswarm Pack. I know I still have it but it's a matter of locating it amongst the various boxes of various armies in various locations around the house and garage.

Thanks for reading,

Ian KH

P.S. The whisky was Jack Daniels for those interested.

Space Bugs Are Coming To Town

Another day and another post about Space Bugs.

I finished off my first box of Wargames Atlantic, Harvesters during the week. There are 20 large bugs and 10 smaller ones in each box so I decided to make them into units of 5 models. As a result I have 15 normal bugs and 5 with ranged bug bio-weapons. That's 20 bigg'uns and 10 little'uns.

As you can see in the photo above they make up a good starting hive. You may have noticed that I stated above; "my first box..." which implies that I have more. This is true. I ordered another box and it's on its way. Two complete boxes should make up a pretty intimidating bunch of bugs. I'll probably change the ratios and squad sizes when I get more models to play around with. I'm not sure yet so we'll see.

Here's just the new ones I added (3 regulars and 5 bio-weapons, 10 little ones). I added some fluro green to the bio-weapons to give them a bit of extra colour. It's not very evident in the photos.

I'm not sure how to classify these small bugs. They are a decent size (the bases are 25mm) so they're not small when compared to a 28mm human. I mean... If you saw a bug that size coming at you I'm sure you'd need a change of underpants. Especially if there was a small swarm of them. I know I would!

I still haven't figured out what game to use these for. I made up a Xenos Rampant list but it doesn't really scratch the bug-itch that I have. I much prefer the Firefight rules but it's difficult to add bugs into it. I can make up my own list but that would only be for my own games. As it is, they will work for either or both set of rules.

That's all for now.

Cheers,

Ian KH