AWI Units Re-Based Courtesy of My Brave Fusiliers! Blog

My good friend Mark from the My Brave Fusiliers! blog offered me the opportunity to purchase two of his superbly painted AWI American units. Mark wanted to fund a new project and offered me some of his figures. I still have a few units in my American force that I bought pre-painted that aren't quite up to the standards of the units I've painted myself. Mark's figures definitely are much better than those and will replace some of those units in my army. Mark paints at least as well as I do, and better in terms of style and historical accuracy. 

Mark had these labeled as Pennsylvanians, which I'm sure is accurate. Mark's units each had 30 figures in them. This matches up perfectly with my preferred basing of two six-figure stands and a three-figure skirmish stand. Each of Mark's units will create two separate units in my basing system, but can also be used en masse as a single larger unit as shown in the first photo above. To the left here is the typical way I'll use them when in open order. In line formation the center stand is removed to close up ranks. 

This unit in hunting shirts is very flexible in how I can use it. The flags give away the units identity to the extremely knowledgeable, but the popularity of the hunting shirt means I'm happy to substitute this unit for many others. 

A look at the back of the figures showing off Marks' excellent brushwork.  I'll be counting these units as twelve stands re-based in my annual painting totals. Thanks for the figures Mark!

Gale Force 9 Rocky Hill Collection

This is my collection of Gale Force 9 rocky hills from their 'Battlefield in a Box Essentials' range. Left to right this includes their 'Large Rocky Hill', 'Extra Large Rocky Hill' and 'Rocky Hill - 2 Pieces' sets. The latter I've had for almost a decade. For the lazy these come out of the box ready to use on the tabletop with a decent dry-brushed paint job. The kits come supplied with a small amount of flock for you to add. I used the two 'Rocky Hill - 2 Pieces' hills for nearly a decade without flocking them. Eventually I added some additional dry-brushing of my own to break up the monochrome palette and flocked them with my preferred ground covering - Scenic Express Farm Pasture Blend. 

After flocking the smaller pieces I realized how much I use them and decided I wanted the full set, so I ordered both other pieces off of Ebay. Unfortunately when they arrived, there was significant damage to both. The worst was the 'Large Rocky Hill' which lost several large pieces of the resin. Interesting this exposed the filler foam inside giving a glimpse as to how they're constructed. Rather than returning them I used some epoxy to back fill the area and pieced all of the larger pieces in like a jigsaw puzzle. I filled the voids with fine sand and waited for things to set up. 

After the repair I re-painted and used flock and grass tufts to strategically hide the small spots that were obviously repaired. Now that it's flocked and I've added my additional dry brushing, you can't even tell where it was broken. I'm hoping the epoxy back fill will provide a durable repair. I'm fairly rough on these pieces, and they will be handled often and figures will be placed on them, sometimes multi-figure stands.

The 'Extra Large Rocky Hill' had a fairly large four-inch crack all the way through the resin. It was still in tact, so I opted for a thin CA glue fill to re-bond the broken area. The repair was nearly invisible after drying, but I did opt to flock this area just for additional visual appeal. Dry brush, flocking and grass tufts were applied as I did for the other hills.

Again the repair is invisible. Hopefully the CA will hold through the pieces lifespan. If I have trouble with it re-breaking I'll go with the epoxy solution for this one as well.

This was a quick and easy repair and 'pimp up' of some excellent out of the box terrain.

 

28mm Iberian Infantry for Saga

I've had these Warlord 28mm Iberian infantry on my painting table for over a year. Early on in the project I had the figures painted up but the shields were not painted. I took a swing at hand painting the shields, but that was a disaster. I made homemade shield transfers, but those proved impossible to cut-in to the shields that had molded in spines and bosses. Finally I broke down, pried the shields off the figures, filed off the raised detail and applied the homemade transfers. Bob's your uncle. 

These will form two eight figure warrior units in my Iberian army for Saga Age of Hannibal, or two units for Clash of Spears.

These will count as 16 figures for my 2022 painting totals even though they were mostly painted in 2021. I count them only when they're finished, based, and ready for the tabletop! Next up on the painting table are some 28mm crusades era crossbowmen, some AWI figures I'm re-basing and some terrain.

Battlefield Debris by Warlord Games

Here are some of the pieces from Warlord Games 'Battlefield Debris' set that I've recently painted up. This is a fantastic set of miscellaneous detritus to scatter among your battlefields. The items shown in the photo to the left are what I've painted to date from this set. The paints used are a combination of Army Painter SpeedPaint, Citadel Contrast paint and traditional acrylics and washes. There's really nothing 'useless' in this box, and eventually I hope to paint it all up. It's all sized appropriately for Warlord Games Bolt Action line, but is also mostly usable for earlier periods with a few exceptions (oil drums, motorcycle, telephone pole). 

These items, the sofa, chair, table barricade, oil drums, motorcycle and the fantastically sculpted wicker chair barricade were painted a while ago, but never photographed and included in the blog, although they did make an appearance in a couple game reports for 1-48 tactic games I ran last year.

Reverse view of the sand bag emplacements, barricade of crates and the stone building fragment. The barricade of crates could also easily double as an objective for a scenario as a 'supply dump' with or without the oil drums shown above.

Group shot of the items painted this week. The wooden furniture is particularly fun. I might actually put a piece or two of that permanently inside one of my ruined buildings. I like that there are still dishes on the shelves. That's a nice detail, but also makes that piece not suitable for 'in the street' placement. I'm sure if that cupboard was moved to the street, the dishes would remain in pieces on the floor of whatever room it was removed from.

There are four all-brick ruined pieces, which could be put in a base as a single ruined building. I'm still deciding if I'll do that or keep the flexibility of having them individually mounted. There are also two other pieces with brick coated with plaster that obviously go together. 

The only regret I have about this set is that it doesn't include the ubiquitous stand-up piano you invariably see in nearly every WWII film with an urban theme. I still need to find one of those for my tabletop.  Maybe I can get a friend with a resin printer to print one up for me?

I'll be counting these as 20 'terrain/misc' pieces painted this year in my annual totals.

Falklands War with Dead Man's Hand

Last Friday I took a trip over to my friend Mark D's place to help him play test a Falklands War game he's going to be running at our club this upcoming game night. The rules used were Dead Man's Hand by Great Escape Games.

I haven't played this rule set before, but I was quite impressed with the elegance of the activation system. After the game I immediately ordered myself a copy of the rules.

We drew lots to see who got which side. I drew the British. They had a unit of paratroopers and a unit of mountain troops drawn from the military academy training cadre. My paratroopers had a sniper which was a fun figure to play with. Mark had the Argentinians. Our missions crossed paths in the middle of the board insuring conflict would be quickly manifested.

I had some excellent rolls early knocking out several Argentinians. Mark compressed his two squads together into a fire base and started to bring the casualties back towards even. During this time I pressed onto both of my objectives. In each case I secured the objective, then immediately had a casualty with the capturing figure. At the end of the game I had a narrow lead, although with a full six player game who knows.
 

The rules seem fun, the scenario is quite balanced. My only regret is I'll be running a game myself at the same game night so I won't get to play in this game myself when he runs it!

Hunt for the Goeben

 My friends at Wargames Tonight gave me the opportunity to participate in their on-line WWI naval campaign, 'The Hunt for the Goeben'. There's a great video by them below. Enjoy!

Color Samples for GW Contrast Paints and Army Painter SpeedPaints

Recently I purchased the 'Mega Set' of Army Painter SpeedPaints. These are augmenting, and for some colors, replacing my existing collection of GW Contrast Paints. For me the two products are fairly similar in their role in my paint collection for painting historical miniatures. They each have their pros and cons, but for me they're pretty much equivalent so really the tones and shades dictated which brand to keep in my collection.

As you can see in the first photo, I prefer to apply an actual paint swatch on the cap of each bottle to give me a better idea of exactly which color I'm grabbing from my collection. As you can imagine, my collection of various shades of olive green and military greys is extensive, so this is an essential time saver and prevents many paint selection mistakes. With Contrast and SpeedPaint, there is a shading effect that isn't well represented using this method. Instead I primed craft skull beads with white primer and glued each skull onto the cap of the paint. 

I then painted the skull with the paint allowing it to "do its thing" and shade the skull. I think the value of this is apparent in the photos.  

This second photo is the full SpeedPaint 'Mega Set' from Army Painter. The colors are vibrant and with the exception of the 'Holy White' color none have any solid white pigment in them, so they mix with each other well to make other colors nicely. In general they seem to be more heavily pigmented than the GW Contrast paints, which means the included SpeedPaint medium is even more useful in creating less saturated tones of the same color, all the way down to making color shaded washes with these.

Here are the colors from the GW Contrast paint line that I kept. Note that I re-potted these into dropper bottles instead of the awful GW paint pots. I did this before I came up with the skull color sample idea, but since they were in pots already, adding the skulls wasn't hard. I have seen people use the skull idea on the GW pots after I posted the idea to the GW Contrast Paint Facebook group. 

Of the GW paints I chose to keep all of the fleshes and browns, both turquoises, 'Voluptuous Pink' and 'Apothecary White'. The latter being just a shade lighter than the Army Painter equivalent. I might use both depending on the situation. Of particular note, the 'Gore-Grunta Fur' red brown is fantastic for ginger hair and some horses, and without mixing, there's not a good substitute in the Army Painter line.

28mm Crusader Heavy Cavalry #3

My recent foray into larger multi-player Saga games has put a slight strain on my figure collection. This has required me to press into service several mercenary units, with their more complicated rules. This is not what I want for a beginner-friendly multi-player game, therefore I decided to rummage around in the 'dead lead' box and start painting up the rest of the crusades figures I had in there. These nine cavalry are the first batch of that effort. There are two 'Warlord' figures on circular stands and seven 'Hearthguard' or 'Warrior' mounted figures. With an additional extra figure I already have painted up these will make either a single eight-man warrior unit or two four-man hearthguard units. 

Here are the two warlord figures. The Old Glory figure packs come with a few sword-armed figures. I figured these were the most appropriate poses for a warlord. The transfers are from Little Big Man Studios (LBMS). Although they're made for Gripping Beast shields, I was able to make them work with appropriate trimming. 

Here is a close up of the troopers - positioned to give a better look at the LBMS shield transfers. I have to admit, the transfers really make what are essentially speed-painted figures look a lot better than they have a right to. Well worth the money. I often make my own transfers, but these shields with round bosses in the middle make that very painful. The LBMS transfers come with the boss area already cut out in the decal. What a luxury!

The complete eight man unit with a reinforcement from the figure collection. This is how it will be used on the tabletop. 

Nine mounted figures, which I will count as 18 in the annual painting totals. Next up I'm hoping to finish some 28mm Iberian infantry that I've pushed to the back of the painting table for way too long. It's time I finish them up.

15mm WWII Recent Acquisitions

 I'm still fleshing out my 15mm American WWII force for Blitzkrieg Commander 4. Here you see some recent purchases. These include some American Ranger infantry and heavy weapons, two M-16 Motor gun carriage halftracks, five Shermans and four German Stug assault guns.

These figures took a real beating in shipping. The infantry probably was the best off with only a gun here or there broken off. I did some touch up painting on some of the heavy weapons and added grass flock to the barren brown bases. This was a planned 'to-do' when I bought them. My intention was to get them to more closely match my other American infantry.

The Rangers came complete with bazooka teams, command, 80mm mortars and .30-cal air-cooled MG teams. A nice complete force.

The M-16 motor gun carriage halftracks took the most damage of any of the vehicles. Both gun assemblies including crew were broken off. Fenders were irreparably broken and there was chipped paint everywhere. I repaired and re-painted what I could and left the irreparable portions broken and painted them up as bare metal 'battle damage'. The save makes them tabletop ready. Nothing to be super proud of, but serviceable.

 

The Sherman tanks are well painted. Three had their barrels broken off in shipping. I glued then back on and that was about it.

The Stug III tanks were by far the most well painted. Three of the four barrels were broken. Two at the 'snout' and one mid barrel. The former were relatively easy to repair with minimal visual impact. The latter, not so much. I did my best. 

These Stugs pretty much finish up my German force for Blitzkrieg commander.

My entire American force in 15mm.

Another Italian Campaign Bolt Action Game at Adler Hobby

Last Thursday I played another game in the Adler Hobby Bolt Action Italian league/campaign. This was scenario #9 from the main rule book. It was one of the attack & defend scenarios and again I was lucky enough to defend.

My opponent Barry was super fun to play against. He had wonderfully painted figures, knew the rules well and had a great battle plan. He overwhelmed my left flank with nearly all his assets with a flamethrower engineer squad filtering through the town to eventually assault the left most victory point. The game extended into an extra turn and the victory point changed hands twice as we each desperately threw units into the fray. The end it was a single panzergrenadier NCO re-taking what he was originally defending for the win.

 

It is hard to pick an MVP for this battle. My mortar disabled Barry's M8 Scout Car with a lucky drop right into the open top of it. One of my infantry squads held and eventually re-captured the objective, and my flamethrower heroically destroyed a whole infantry squad on its own. 

Tooth-and-nail fight for sure!