The family is back from our yearly vacation in the lovely island of Sifnos and as work has not started yet for the neither SWMBO or myself I still have some free time left.Here's some pics of my orc and goblin warband for the Song of Blades and Heroes system. I think I'll be using the stats straight from the books for most of the minis but I still haven't settled down as to what I'll do with the warg.

All the miniatures come from Splintered Light. If you haven't looked them up, please do. They have some of the best 15mm fantasy miniatures available and they are very pleasant to deal with. There are several packs in the orc and goblin range, but I started off with the basic stuff (command, warriors, goblin scouts, warg and troll).Here is the command element. The Orc chieftain is an exquisite fig with plenty of available detail. So is the standard bearer. The shaman gave me a bit of trouble because I think I sprayed the primer on too thick. Still I think it came out OK. My only problem is the lack of a musician, but that's not a great problem. I think that a musician is available in the savage orc command pack.
The orc warriors and goblin scouts are pretty straightforward figs but they are exceptionally sculpted, with plenty of available detail. A pack of heavy orc infantry and another of orc archers have become available recently and they'll be in my shopping list for my next order (probably around Xmas).
Here is the best figure of the whole range in my honest opinion; the warg. Now, this is what a warg should look like. Big, bad and bone-chillingly frightening. If you are into 15mm fantasy BUY THIS MINI! I cannot recommend it enough. The amount of detail is amazing and the size is spot on for what is supposed to be a giant wolf that eats people with a single bite.

And here is the troll. There are two trolls available in the line and I'll be getting the other one at some time too. I'm not sure that this is close to my idea of a troll, but it is pleasantly big and mean-looking.

Eventually I'll add more options to my available figs for the orc and goblin warband. Savage orcs, goblins, orc slave master, savage hyena cavalry and so on and so forth. The options are practically endless.

That's all for now from windy Athens. Have a great night y'all.

Support Elements

A blessedly quiet Saturday evening with the young master out of the house and the mrs. engrossed in a new book allows me to catch up on my blogging. This is a bunch of figures I had finished about 3-4 months ago but with moving the office and going under the knife, I never had time to photograph. These are the support elements of my WWII German platoon.

These are all on-table assets and include a FAO team (minus their Kubelwagen of course), two sustained-fire MG teams, a Panzerschreck element, a sniper element and a 20mm flak gun.

Here is the FAO team, from SHQ Miniatures. The minis were fine, with good sculpting. Essentially they are an officer and a 2-man radio team. I find the use of anything over 50mm mortars as tabletop assets pointless in skirmish games, so these guys can call down fire from the company or battalion 81mm mortars or 75mm guns.

Here is my sniper element. Sniper and spotter come from Elhiem Miniatures. Lovely figs indeed, but I did not do the sniper's face mask much justice. Still, with a proper amount of cover, these guys can provide good forward intel or do harm to the enemy's C&C structure.

My Panzerknacker team is up next. Although panzerfausts were ubiquitous towards the end of the war, Panzerschreck elements provided most of the platoon-level anti-tank fire power for a good portion of it. These are again Elhiem miniatures.

A tripod-mounted MG-42 team. I have two of these beauties, again from Elhiem Miniatures. They come with gunner, loader and observer. I should paint a couple of Pegasus Models Waffen SS as ammo carriers, but it can wait for a bit.

Here is my final support element; a single-barreled 20mm Flak cannon. This comes from SHQ Miniatures and it was quite difficult to put together. The instructions and attachment points were rather vague (or non existent even), so the gun may not be 100% historically accurate. I don't think I'd get another one of these, not with the excellent Zvezda gun out there. It comes also with the ammo trailer, however this has not gotten painted yet.


In my last visit to IKEA, the mrs. found the perfect boxes for me to store my miniatures. I don't remember the exact name, but they are quite large, not expensive (around 5 euros each), fit an awful lot of miniatures, come with a hinged lid, and are stackable. What's not to like?

That's all from not-unbearably hot (for once) Athens. Have a great Saturday night y'all.

Paper Terrain

A few posts back I mentioned the paper models I got for the mrs and her arts class. She never got around giving them to the kids (one can only hope for next year), but I did find myself with several useful bits of terrain.

With the summer forcing me to take things slow at work (seriously, who wants to get their teeth done with this heat?) I have a bit more modeling time in my hands so I tried some of them. I first did them in relatively thin card and they proved very easy to build and quite durable. Dave, the guy who has designed most of the stuff I got, also said you can glue them to Bristol board and create extra-durable buildings. Now, I have no idea what Bristol board is, but I've worked quite a bit with foamcore and I like it. So I resized the Coach House model for 15-18mm figures, printed it on paper, glued it on foamcore and this is the result.It looks pretty good, especially if you consider that the whole thing from start to finish took a bit under an hour (not counting the time it took for the glue to set). The real kicker is that a lot of these paper models come with a variety of layers. Meaning you can have the same building but with a different finish, different doors or windows, weathering and so on. This particular building come in brick, stone and whitewash with beams. So buying a few buildings can help you build a small city or village real quick.
I'll be the first to admit that most scratch-built terrain may look better, but this is a fast and cheap way to get things done. I have 6 or 7 buildings in my stash and with these I can build my small 15mm fantasy village in under a week.
So look into paper terrain. It might help you out with your projects. Have a pleasant evening from hot yet pleasant Athens...

CIC Reports Numerous DRADIS Contacts

Back from the dead, or something like that. After moving my office (still have to finish with the bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork in Greece) and getting some intestinal surgery done, I'm back on the saddle, or sort of. Still can't find my airbrush, my figures are spread in a variety of boxes in my new office, home and a warehouse. So I've been exiled on a portion of Her Royal Highness' work bench, with whatever lead and plastic I have readily available. Hopefully by the end of the summer the situation will have rectified itself. At least I can sit on a chair again (which has improved my mood significantly) and get a bit of painting done.

I bought some (not) Battlestar Galactica miniatures from Studio Bergstrom a couple of months back. Drew definitely has the cleanest castings I've ever seen and he is a great guy to boot. Got myself a Battlestar and some inch-long Mk. II Vipers, an old Cylon (or Zylon as he calls them) ship and some old-school raiders. Drew has small (fleet-scale) fighters as well, but with the bigger ones I can also do dogfights. When I paint them all, find a set of rules that I like and have room for a gaming board again (not anytime soon as you can understand).



I bought a simple black spray from my local hardware store and primed the models. The Battlestar was drybrushed with progressively lighter shades of grey until I was happy with the result. Some red accents and yellow landing stripes later, the Battlestar was ready to defend the 12 Colonies of Cobol against the hordes of the Cylons. Total time, around one hour.



The Vipers took a little more time. They were primed and drybrushed so I could see the detail on them. Then they were given a base coat of a light blue grey (mixed on a spare plastic plate until it looked right in my eyes), red trim, blue canopy and yellow markings. All in all, another hour and a half or so. Now all that's needed is for me to get some clear mat spray, again from the hardware store, and make labels for the Vipers and Battlestar bases.

My WWII miniatures will be on the back burner for a while, until I can get my stuff organized again. I'll work on the Cylons, some Roman gladiators for Red Sand, Blue Sky and my Fantasy Rules! 6mm armies. At least the starships get done quickly enough in order to "cleanse my palate", or so to speak, for my more involved projects.

Have a great morning from Athens.

Nobody tosses the dwarf!

Here are some Eureka 18mm dwarves I painted a couple of months back. Although advertised as 18mm, they are closer in scale to 20mm so they are suitable for 1/72-1/76 gaming. At that time I still thought I would be able to wargame fantasy in 20mm. Alas, my efforts were in vain. As much as I tried, all I could do was dwarves, some few elves, some orcs and undead. No dark elves, no derro, no trolls, no nothing. I switched to 15mm fantasy instead where the pickings are anything but slim. These will be a bit tall for dwarves, especially in 15mm, but I'll deal with it. I ordered one pack of crossbowmen, axemen, spearmen and command. This set me back around 20 pounds (plus shipping and handling) but has given me enough dwarves for at least 2 warbands for the Song of Blades and Heroes game. Here is the first batch:

Miniatures in the Song of Blades and Heroes are divided into personalities and warriors. Personalities have special abilities that set them aside from the average fighter. They may be leaders, heroes, magic users, clerics, or just plain tough and mean.
In this case I painted 2 miniatures that can be used as personalities. Here is the leader (or hero) with his banner bearer and horn blower. The hero is the largest of all the miniatures. He is probably as large as old Airfix figs. Not quite dwarfish, but he looks good on the table. The banner bearer is a particularly imposing miniature and the dragon standard is very well sculpted. The other personality is a magic user or cleric (can be used for either). A 300-point warband will not have room enough for both of them, but he's a useful option, especially if you know you'll be facing undead.
The warriors are a mixed bunch. I've used axemen, spearmen, dwarves with hammers and a few crossbowmen. With the short movement, some shooting may be useful to whittle down the enemy some.
The figures took me about 10 days to complete. There was minimal cleaning up to do and the miniatures pretty much paint themselves. One of the axemen was a bit complicated as I could not figure out the layers of the armour, but that was the only difficulty I faced. I still have enough miniatures left to make another full warband and then some.
Here's some work almost complete; support units for my late WWII german platoon. Everything is almost painted up and the wash has been applied. After that, all I'll have left to do is highlights, painting up the bases and spray some mat varnish. I hope I'll be done by the middle of next week with them. After that? As you can see, plenty of work awaits me.
Have a great night from chilly (for once) Athens.

Armour

First post of the year... I hoped it would have been sooner, but there is this weird bionic flu making the rounds in Athens. It went through our home like Genghis Khan through Samarkand. As soon as I got better I tried to limit the number of vehicles in the stash, with some success.

First of all, the old Matchbox M-40 GMC. It's not a typical WWII subject, but since I can't find the Hasegawa Long Tom (plus associated crew) it will have to do. Not a hard kit to build, I had trouble with the painting. I used black acrylic spray as primer, let it dry for a couple of days and then masked with bluetac. Put two layers of Lifecolour Olive Drab and then removed the bluetac. The primer promptly was removed with the bluetac in most places. I brushed some black back on, washed, painted the details, dusted with British Dark Earth and then used mat varnish. Yet another disaster. For some reason the clear frosted. It should suffice that I swore in most of the languages I can speak (there were some choice bits in Hungarian). I followed what has worked in the past, namely a coat of Pronto. Didn't work too well, so I added tons of mud with an old brush and then used a different bottle of flat. Worked well enough. It should be noted that this can only be built with the gun at rest/travel position. Anything else and you'll need to do some surgery on the recoil springs.

Another old friend; the Matchbox Chaffee. Nice little kit, with some useful extras (an MG-42, a signpost, and a tripod mounted .50cal). I used the kit stars and a random serial number from another kit. I plan to build 3 of those to boost my recon forces. I had the same problems with the flat clear here as well, but the problem was mostly solved after I sprayed Pronto. I omitted the rear decking star, as it would not possibly settle down. These looked like older, stiffer Revell decals.
The lovely Pegasus T-34/85s. Untill now, the best bet for these were the old Airfix kits. Sure, Revell had an excellent T-34 but who wants to build kits with a gazillion pieces for wargaming (some people obviously do). The kits fall together by themselves. I used some Tamiya Extra-Thin glue and an old brush to roughen up the surface of the turrets. The only real problem I had is that the plastic is too hard and not so prone to melting if the glue is not "hot" enough, so that some pieces got unglued and had to be reattached. In the last Pegasus kits I build I used ModelMaster cement with no problems, but these were assembled with Humbrol and I think its not "hot" enough to handle Pegasus plastic. Or I might have screwed up somewhere. I glued some crates on the rear decking as I've seen tons of pictures of T-34s carrying supplies on them. After a coat of Humbrol 30 (gives the slightly bluer look of Russian Armour Green), wash and drybrushing, I used some flat with the above mentioned results. Thankfully, the tanks recovered. If anyone has built these, let me know if you had any gluing issues.
Finally the HaT Sdkfz 251. A lot of people have build this so there isn't much to say. I added some stowage in the form of tools and crates. I plan to build 4 of these, one with a 37mm doorknocker liberated from an Esci German Gun Set, to be used as the platoon commander's vehicle.

That's all for now. I'm off to take care of the mrs. who is coming down with yet another bout of the flu. The hazards of working in education I guess. Next up, figures. I have about 50 based, primed and ready for some paint. I'll probably do some fantasy first, to detox myself from all the guns and armour.

Giant Cat Spotted Fever

Happy Holidays all (or y'all as they would say south of the Mason-Dixon line). Work is over for a few days, I'm catching up on my sleep and more than catching up with my food. Blame my mother in law. Her cooking is excellent.

With work being hectic before the holidays I did not have much time to complete any of my ongoing projects. However, I did manage to finish painting and weathering one of Italeri's quick-build Panther Gs. Great kit, easy to build. My main problem was the lack of schurtzen, but that was easily rectified with plastic card.

I've opted to go with the late war "ambush" type camouflage. As usual, I washed with Devlan Mud, did some drybrushing with a medium grey, and some weathering with diluted British Dark Earth. I plan to make an almost full troop of 3 tanks. For games in the Western front, this will be very difficult for the Allied player, as Panthers tend to dominate due to their long range, good mobility and sloping armour. But for Eastern Front games, with those nasty T-34/85s in large numbers, a troop is not too bad. Two of the models will be the Italeri easy kits and one the more detailed Revell Panther G. It's a great little kit and very easy to build despite the large number of parts.
Here is the "to do pile" on my modeling desk. A couple of Pegasus T-34s, 2 Russian light tanks, some terrain, an Armourfast Hanomag and one more Panther G. I hope I'll get at least some of them done by the end of my vacation (although the Mrs. has other ideas as to what constitutes quality time).
Finally, this being Plane Month and all, I could not avoid posting a picture of an airplane, although this particular model was was completed a couple of months ago. This is an Airfix Hurricane Mk. II, a rather old mold (probably older than me) but a very satisfying build regardless. There are tons of Hurricane decal sheets out there and I have more than a few. This was done as an all-black Mk. IIb night intruder. If you have not build an Airfix Hurricane, go out there and buy one. With some TLC you'll have a great model for the shelf or the wargames table.

Now I'm off to get some some soda to help with the indigestion. Have a great night y'all from Athens.