Natholeon
eldannardoI’ve been quietly working on this for the past 16 months. A bit here and a bit there. He is a Front Rank figure that I got for my birthday. He doesn’t currently belong to an army, so painting him was purely a labour of love for my favourite general of all time.
Oops! Just realised I hadn’t painted the eyes on the horse. Better go do it now!
Nate
The Persian DBA army was finished off last night. They are all painted in Black Line technique. After observing a professional Black Line paint job, I decided that my biggest problem with the style was that I wasn’t leaving enough Black showing through. I believe that these Persians are an improvement on the Macedonians for that reason, although I’m still not happy with the horses.
Without further ado, here is the Persian DBA army:
My variant has 1x 3Cv (Gen), 2 x 3 v, 2 x 2LH, 4 x 4Sp, 3 x 2Ps
Close ups:
General, 3Cv, 2LH, 2Ps
4 x 4 Sp, 2 are Greek Hoplites, 2 are Persian.
And finally a scene of Persians vs. Macedonians. Viewed side on (above) and from behind the Persian lines (below).
Next I plan to get into a couple of Napoleonic units again. At the moment though I have a Warhammer character under the brush – Wulfrik the Wanderer. Hopefully I’ll get him finishedand post a picture soon. Next DBA army will be Philistines to fight Dan’s Hebrews.
Nate
Technically I’ve already painted 5 DBA armies, including an Alexandrian Macedonian. But I’ve sold 4 of them, and Dan and I aren’t gaming in the Marian Roman period, so in a sense, this is the first of a new DBA era.
You might have gleaned that Dan and I have become very fond of this little game. In fact, aside from a Flames of War game, the last time he was here that was all that we played!
Here is the Macedonian army in all of it’s glory. The figures are largely Essex ones that I bought second hand. They were basically painted in thick Humbrol paint and needed stripping. The repaint is better, the first time I’ve used black line technique for my figures, although it won’t be winning any awards! The General is a Museum Miniatures figure, and towers over the Essex to a degree, but he does stand out as a heroic general should. The pikes on the Essex figures were warped when I got them, and they are now as straight as they will ever be. There is something to be said for empty hands and brass rod!
A close up of the Macedonian Phalanx
The subtle complexity of DBA belies its apparent simplicity. As Dan and I get a handle on the basics of the game we have started to think beyond getting a single long line to outflank your opponent (although it doesn’t hurt). We now give greater thought to our opponents strengths when we deploy and look at support. We’ve also learnt to use terrain a little more strategically. In one game last week I took Italian allies to fight his Carthaginians. I broke up the board with rough going to give my Auxilia a nice advantage. This was screwed up by my Built Up Area being in his deployment zone. Dan used three spear elements and threw himself against the walls. The first two became spear shaped smears, but the third was successful in the 3rd bound (the luck of threes I guess). Losing a BUA and the Spear element garrisoning it meant an immediate loss of three elements. Despite manoeuvring well and making his army break up into about 7 groups (difficult for command and control), I lost 1 more element and the game. Never mind. In another game I chomped his general and won fairly quickly, so it all goes in swings and roundabouts. The beauty is that you can get so many games into a day that eventually you have to win one!
The Macedonian Army with the backdrop - it is starting to look a little too pointillist. I might paint a new one on card instead of polystyrene!
I’m currently painting a Persian army to fight the Macedonians, and I’ve finished 4 elements already. I think that I’ve really got the hang of this black figure technique as you’ll see when I post pictures of it, hopefully this weekend. It isn’t fantastic and I’d never use it on 28mm figures, but it is extremely effective for these little fellows. After the Persians it will be back into the Napoleonics- 1 British and 1 French unit. Then another DBA army. Should keep me sane…
Nate
Filed under: Legends of the High Seas and the Old West, Terrain, Wargaming, Weird War Two
After looking at my mate Scott’s blog and seeing his mines of Moria terrain, I decided to have a go at something similar with some of the polystyrene that I’ve got cluttering up the place. I found a toy skull in a pirate game in a $2 Shop, and bought it on the off chance that it could be useful. Well of course it was useful! It became the inspiration for this – the Mummy’s tomb:
The polystyrene had bark glued to the outside, and then the whole thing was brushed with a mixture of watered down polyfilla, railway ballast and some black gesso. This dried to a light grey finish. I then watered down the gesso and gave the whole thing a wash so that it turned out dark grey. Finally I gave it a drybrush of Resene interior house paint, the light grey hermitage colour.
Some old railway flock (the sawdust type) was applied and a couple of bushes of lichen, and Bob’s your uncle.
For the interior I cut up cardboard rectangles and laid them down as paving stones. I coated the polystyrene walls with A4 computer paper, in order to make sure that I didn’t get the dappled effect that straight polystyrene gives, and built a balsa sarcophagus with a Games Workshop Ork hand holding on to the lid. The colours were again Resene: Desperado for the base coat lightened with a couple of shades of Rob Roy.
And there we have it. The tomb’s primary purpose is for our Weird World War Two games (if we ever get so far as to make some rules for them), but I can see it turning up in a few Legends of the High Seas Pirate games too!
Nate
Here’s three elements of Victrix Brits that I’ve finished. One box of Victrix gives me 4 units of 12 figs, and I’m waiting on the flank companies box to furnish me with the 4th element. They should be just about on their way as far as I can tell – Caliver books was expecting them in.
I’ve combined the same poses into one unit, but with the different bodies there is still quite a bit of variety.
Compared to the Perry Miniatures these figures take a long time to prep and put together. They are truly multi-part kits, and I have to say that I was quite lazy with seam lines and sink holes. No putty was used in the hats where there were slight indentations. I’m not overly concerned, as I’ve always believed that a good paint job will hide a multitude of sins, and the worst of the offending flash was removed. The other major clean up job was clipping down the big rectangular bases to make them fit onto my bases without their bayonets ramming into all and sundry.
I put the models together completely, aside from leaving the drum detached from the drummer, then sprayed them in Chaos Black undercoat. I touched this up, as usual, with Tamiya Acrylic flat black.
The rest of the painting was in two tone aside from the overalls, which were three shades. One remark about painting British is that they are quite a bit more involved than Napoleonic French. This isn’t because of the extra lace, as this is just a little bit more white to paint. The difference I think was very much in number of colours required for the accoutrements such as the rucksack and the water bottle. This meant that they take, on average, a little longer to paint than their nemesis.
Painting them alrady built was actually easier I think, as the arms could hide spots that required extra detail, notably the bastion lace on the front of the tunic. As I have 2 marching battalions to paint with open fronts, we will see if this makes the painting any more onerous.
During the process a bayonet broke off, as I paint on a multiple base and whilst painting one figure, knocked the figure on the other side against the painting table. The flimsiness of the bayonets is one worrying thing about these plastic figures. However, as predicted in my post about the French, The bayonet proved very easy to reattach with a little bit of TamiyaModel glue. It even reattached when I broke it a second time from doing exactly the same thing! In all, I wouldn’t say that this is a major problem though. Although this bayonet did break, I actually bumped others in the same way several times and they remained firmly attached.
One of the Shakos is missing its plume, as I broke it off in removing the head from the sprue. I would have reattached it, but dropped it and it is now nowhere to be found. Never mind – campaign dress.
So would I recommend Victrix British Infantry? Pros are: I believe that the sculpting is excellent. The faces have a lot of expression and character. The multiplicity of poses available are excellent, and even if you prefer all of your figures in the same pose, you can get 4×8 identical figures per box. 5 boxes would give you 4 battalions of 40 for 100 pounds (NZ$250), or in my case 8 battalions of 16 from 3 boxes (NZ$150/GBP60). So they are cheap. Painting them is a pleasure (mainly due to the final results).
Cons: They take a decent amount of time to take off the sprue and put together – significantly more time to prep than either single cast metal figures or the Perry Plastics. The bayonets are a little bit sensitive (though not prohibitively so), and for those demanding all figures in the same pose this is not the set for you.
Overall: My British infantry are all going to be Victrix. Partly this is an issue of cost, but I genuinely like the figures. I’m not looking forward to putting them all together (2 boxes to go), but then I’m not really looking forward to painting them either (I am looking forward to them being painted…). Should I have waited for the Perry British? I don’t think so. I would have had to cut all the heads off and swap them for Peninsular heads anyway, so I doubt I’d have saved any time. As stated before, Victrixfit well with the Perry figures. So in summary, I like them and recommend them.
UPDATE 7/2/09
It has been brought to my attention on TMP that my drummer would not be yellow if the regimental facing colour is green. I kind of knew that drummers were in reverse colours, but did not think that the Brit drummers were ever in green. As I was shown otherwise, I have repainted my drummer to match the facings of my regiment! I’ve wargamed Napoleonics for 21 years and read countless books on the period, so to make such an elementary error is a bit embarassing. Still, I guess it goes to prove that no-one can know everything about the Napoleonic era in just 21 years!
Here is the repainted dummer. Not the best photo, but gives you the idea!
Nate
Wow! No action for almost a month and then two posts in as many days. It must be the Holidays!
A couple of pictures of some Flames of War figures. These are just a scene I set up, not a game. I call it the attack on Sainte Rue-Merde.
Brits assaulting a German position.
Nate
The holiday period is usually quite slow for me. We go away for a week to the beach (this is the southern hemisphere we are talking about), as well as have the whole family shindig at Christmas time. The upshot is that not a lot has been completed in the three weeks since my last post saying that not a lot has been done. But I have finished off the second battalion of Perry French, as well as put together a box of Vixtrix British. I’ve also ordered cavalry and guns for the French from Elite Miniatures, and 2 more boxes of Victrix – 1 of centre company and 1 of flank company. That will give me enough figures for eight battalions of Brits, and I’ve already got 8 battalions of French to face them.
I’ve got hold of the beta version of some rules being developed by a guy named Andrew in Aussie. I’ve read through them a couple of times and I think they are exactly what I’m looking for. They are kind of like Shako, but also reminiscent of Warhammer Ancient Battles and Flames of War. They have plenty of character, but the great thing is that they are designed with 16 figure infantry battalions and 8 figure cavalry regiments in mind, and for games of about a division a side (in fact they are designed for Brigade sized engagements in tournament play, but I like the divisional option). One of the reasons I like the 8-10 battalions and 2-4 cavalry a side sort of game is that this fits with the scenarios that Charles Grant has in his scenarios for wargamers book. True, I believe he envisaged slightly bigger battalions being used, but I’m one of those people who has too many wargaming distractions to sit down and build 48 figure units!
Anyway, latest pics with the basing for the Tactics and Gloire rules:
The first battalion of the 18eme Ligne, and:
The second battaion of the 25eme Ligne. I haven’t put the white dot in the centre of their pompom yet, and the command stand will actually be used in the first battalion when that is painted. I’m waiting on some Elite minis for all the greatcoat figure commands, and they will, of course, have the fanion, not the eagle.
How I painted them
I’m quite used to using black undercoat, so if something works for you, try something new! I felt that I wasn’t getting quite the finish I wanted on the white bits with the first couple of figures, so I went and bought a GW Skull White spray can and sprayed the figures still on the sprues. I had previously already sprayed them black, and it ended up giving some interesting shadow effects. No detail was obscured, but I wouldn’t recommend doing this as it is a bit of a waste of spray!
I then popped the figures off their sprues and cleaned up their mold lines with a blade, just scraping them down. On some of the figures I left them, and with others I touched up the white of the undercoat. In the end I only touched up the trousers, as it is quite possible to paint solid colours straight onto the plastic without priming. Cleaning mold lines on these guys takes about 20-30 seconds a figure. Plastic is really easy to work with in that regard.
In order to pick out details and give myself some shading, I used the GW Badab Black wash, and washed the figures all over. This provided the shading for the white undercoat, as it comes out in a convenient grey-black if diluted a little.
I then applied paint, using mostly Vallejo colours but the uniform blue is GW Midnight blue highlighted with Regal Blue. The faces are Vallejo Dark Flesh, with GW Ogryn Flesh Wash and then highlighted with Vallejo light flesh. The eyes are not my best work and I think that my hand is not as steady as it once was, or I’m less patient than I was. They are black lines with 2 white dots added.
The white parts were picked out in solid white for highlights (I use vallejo white), but the washed undercoat was left as the shade. If I felt it was too dark or not looking right, i touched it up with soem Vallejo London Grey.
The Backpacks were painted seperately glued on after the figures were finished. The reason I did this was to ensure that when drybrushing the light brown on the backpacks I didn’t have to go and touch up anything else on the figure later, and because with a white undercoat it is really noticeable if you miss any of the detail between the backpack and the figure. Incidentally, the backpacks are the only kit to glue together on the average figure. You need to add and arm to the officer (with the sword), the eagle to the Eagle bearer and the drum and arms to the drummer. I put all of these together before painting. I’ve only used a couple of skirmishing figures, but they are not much more work than the rest, just needing the arms glued on.
Would I recommend them? Yep. Cheap, nice, no more work than metal figures. I haven’t had a broken bayonet yet, and that could be a possibility, but unlike metal, broken bits reattach with just a bit of Tamiya model glue, and I anticipate any problems of this sort being easily fixed.
Compared to the last lot of metal figures that I seriously painted, Great War miniatures Brits where I was clipping and filing flash for hours, these guys are a dream to prep. Last comment would be that the plastics will hold the paint better than metal in terms of taking knocks. It doesn’t take much for chips to start appearing, even on varnished metal figures after they’ve been handled in a few games. I don’t think chipping is an issue with these boys, unless you want to take a chisel to them.
The Victrix British are a different story, and I thought I might try and paint a battalion of them next. They take a while to put together as they are a bit more multi-part than the Perrys. I will also go back to Black undercoat with them, due to very little white being needed. I should say that if you look through my blog you’ll see several different painting styles, and I don’t think I’ve managed to stay consistent through a whole project yet! I have no doubt that there will be a little more experimentation before I am settled on painting Napoleonics!
Note in the background there is a backdrop which I whipped up today. Expect to see it more often. I also have a new camera and am going to get a tripod to make sure that all of my pictures are as good as I can make them in the future.
Next I should have some Flames of War pics to show off. And of course, another Napoleonic battalion should be painted soon.
Nate
