15mm Ancients & Buildings

Here's the latest figs I've completed. There's two parts to this post: 15mm Ancients and some 15mm buildings. After building my New Kingdom Egyptian and Hittite armies a few years ago I had a bunch of partially empty packs. I just decided to make some more bases because you can never have enough units and realistically, what else was I going to do with them? These figs are all from Old Glory 15s. They're based up for Impetus, Sword & Spear and Hail Ceasar. First up are bases of Sea Peoples infantry.

Next up are some Nubian archers.

Next is a pair of Egyptian archers.

Here's a lone base of Egyptian heavy infantry.

And finally is a pair of skirmish slinger bases.

I also managed to paint up some middle eastern buildings. These resin buildings are from Forged in Battle's War & Empire range. This is the Eastern Village set with a Minaret Mosque Tower. I know Islam wasn't around at the time of the NK Egyptians and Hittites but it will find use in the Arab medieval armies I'll be working on later.

Germans and Hoplites

My post this week will start off with a bunch of early-World War 2 German ordinance. All these German figs are 28mm metal from Warlord Games. First up is the sIG33 150mm howitzer.

Next up is the leFH18 105mm medium artillery piece.

Next is the 75mm leIG light artillery piece.

And finally is this medium mortar team.

For my smaller pieces (mortar, infantry guns) I usually glue a couple crew to the gun base and then have the extras on individual bases. Unfortunately when I glued the kneeling crewman onto the mortar base I didn't notice that he's carrying a shell that will not go into a mortar. I didn't notice till the figure was almost completely finished. Oh well!

And finally is a base of 28mm mercenary hoplites from the plastic Victrix Mercenary Armoured Hoplites boxed set.

I finished them and realised that I hadn't picked up any decals but I dug out some older Veni Vidi Vici decals I had. I really hate putting decals onto domed shields. Just blech.

Next week should be some German and French early-war tanks.

Carthage, Monsters and Points

Recently I finished off an eclectic group of figs and pieces. First up is a set of 28mm plastic Carthaginian Citizen Infantry from Victrix. Nice simple figures.

You may notice that the commander has a decal on his shield and no one else does. Well, cover your eyes children, this post is about to get R-rated. I had a nice set of decals for them. They were a set that was designed specifically for this set of figures. They were from Little Big Man Studios so they should be awesome. 

The problem with this shield design is the decal has to be cut in half to go on each side of the shield boss. Well, once that was done, it was utterly fucking impossible for me to get the plastic cover off the decals without destroying the goddamn decal itself. So the whole fucking lot went in the bin. I can't believe how shit those decals were. So then I tried painting designs onto the shields. That would've turned out better if I got a drunk lobotomized chimp to do it. At this point one of the figs fell onto the floor and I honestly had to stop myself from just crushing it underfoot. I actually contemplated throwing the lot into the garbage.

So instead I just painted them a couple shades of white. Yuck.

The next set of six figures are metal fantasy figures. First up is a set of monsters.

The figure on the left is a two-headed troll from Reaper Miniatures. Nice figure, although I'm not thrilled on my green paint scheme. The other two figures are a pair of Violent Fungi from North Star Military Figures Frostgrave line.

These human figures from left to right are Hans Bullman from Reaper, Hercules also from Reaper and a Barbarian Chief from the North Star Frostgrave line.

Finally as I'm running a War of 1812 game at our "not Mayday" event this Saturday, I needed some deployment points.

I scrounged these from various bits I had laying around. The barrels I think I got from Michaels, the cannon balls are beads from a necklace, the logs are from an old Italeri set (I think) and the bases themselves were part of the sprue from some MDF set. They came together quite nicely but are obviously only for 54mm. Beside a 28mm figure, the barrels would be monstrous.

Germans and Carthaginians

Just finished a group of two sets of figures. First group is two units of Carthaginian cavalry. These 28mm metal figures are from Renegade Miniatures. The base on the left are actual Carthaginians, whereas the one on right are Gauls in the service of Carthage.

Next set of figures are a trio of World War II German Panzer IIs . These figures are from Warlord Games.

Up next is probably some fantasy figures I started before last Christmas, followed by some more Carthaginians.

Numidian Cavalry

Recently I finished a set of Victrix 28mm plastic Numidian Cavalry. Figures were easy to assemble and dead-easy to paint. Transfers are from LBMS.

Partisan, Slingers and 2017 in Review

The other day I completed a couple sets of figures covering two vastly different periods. First up is a batch of plastic Victrix Greek slingers. 

I have these based up for either Impetus, Sword and Spear or Hey Seize Her! (Hail Caesar). These are part of my ongoing Carthaginian project.

Next up is a small patch of World War 2 French partisans. These are the Group Franc pack from Crusader Miniatures.

I'm adding these to my final tally for 2017 as the vast bulk of them were done in 2017.

Rolling of my paint table is a group of Dropfleet PHR ships and they should be posted up sometime on the weekend. After that I've got a batch of 25 Frostgrave cultists on my paint table. I'm going to be hopefully pushing a fair bit of figures out in the next few months as I'm partaking in the Analogue Hobbies Annual Paint Challenge https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.ca/

The second part of this post is my review of 2017. In January I set myself the following goals:

1. 28mm World War II French - complete this army.

          - I still have a fair number of pieces to complete as I picked up a bit more last year

2. 28mm World War II Germans - get at least the starter box completed.

          - this was partially completed

3. Frostgrave - paint up the small assortment of figures I do have.

          - this was also partially completed

4. 54mm War of 1812 - paint up at least the bulk of what I have left.

          - I only painted up one unit, still a bunch left

5. 28mm Samurai - paint up at least 2 bases of figures.

          - this goal was accomplished

6. 28mm Carthaginians - do up at least 4 base of units.

          - this goal was accomplished

For 2018 I'm setting myself the following goals (similar to 2017):

1. 28mm World War II French - complete this army.
2. 28mm World War II Germans - paint up at least half the figures I currently have.
3. Frostgrave - finish all the figures I currently have
4. 54mm War of 1812 - paint up at least 1 unit
5. 28mm Samurai - complete one side (probably only need a half dozen more bases at the most)
6. 28mm Carthaginians - complete this army so I can eventually start on the Romans
7. Sarissa Terrain - paint up at least some the Sarissa Precision buildings I have

It's a fair bit to get done and motivation is my main problem for not getting it done. Hopefully 2018 will be better than last year. 

Hoplites and Bow

Yesterday I finished another four bases for my Carthaginian amy. Although these bases could be used in various other ancient armies as they're not specifically Carthaginian units. First up are two bases of hoplites. Figures are from 1st Corps with shield transfers from LBMS.

The LBMS transfers are really nice, but I'm finding that the edges start to peal away from the shields. I've resorted to brushing on Crazy Glue f I notice them starting to peel. Kind of a pain in the ass.

The other two bases are skirmish archers. These figures are from War-games Foundry.

Sitting on my paint table right now is a batch of robot figures that are almost completed. After that I have a pile of figures that I'm using as Xenithians for my Mayday game and a pile of wizards and apprentices that I'm painting up for Terry's Mayday Frostgrave game. Need to get my butt in gear!

Carthaginian Libyan Spearmen Finally!

It's been a while since I've posted anything up. As I take all of December off work I was expecting to get a lot of painting done. Unfortunately the opposite was true and I got very little done. I did finally complete my Carthaginian Libyan spearmen as show below. Figures are all plastic Victrix from their excellent Warriors of Carthage boxed set. Shield transfers are predominantly Little Big Men Studios with a handful of Veni Vidi Vici thrown in. The LBMS are really nice but were a pain to put on the domed shields. My application of them was less than stellar but at arm distance they look good.

I also finished up an old GW terrain piece. I believe it's supposed to be some sort of crashed flyer/gunship thing. It can easily function as some sort of crashed spaceship.

Recently I picked up a copy of Amerigo from Queen Games.

I played this game at Fallcon last year, so I've had my eye on it to pick up for a while. In the game you have your goal is to establish trading posts and little colonies all over the randomly generated map. A turn is composed of a handful of phases in which you pick one action to carry out like: construct buildings or move your ships. What actions you can take and how many of them are defined by a neat mechanic of using a dice tower, or in this case a small cube tower. It was this mechanic which probably drew me to the game. I know they use it in one of their other games: Shogun. Overall, the game went pretty quickly and once you've played it for a few minutes, you'll have it mastered.

On my paint table right now is the last fleet for War Rocket, the Valkeeri. I was hoping to have these down this year but I doubt I'll get them down in the next day. After that I'll probably do some more ancients. And I'll have a 2015 review in a couple days.

Robots and Javelins

This week saw me complete two batches of figures. First up are 4 bases of skirmish javelinmen for my Carthaginian army. These figures are plastic figures from Victrix.

Next is a batch of assorted Robot Legion figures for Retro Raygun. Figures are from Hydra Miniatures and are all metal. These figures are ridiculously quick and easy to paint. First is a group of 8 Minibots.

Next is a trio of Robot Legionnaires (from left to right): Heavy Support Legionnarie, Centurion, Optio (squad leader).

Last figure is Warbot Destroyer.

Here's a size comparison shot of the 3 sizes of robot figures.

Sitting on my paint table right now is some more Retryo Raygun Galacteer figures and some more Carthaginians. Next weekend is also Fallcon so I probably won't get anything else done this week.

Toltec-Chichimec

Today I finished the last DBA army I was painting for Dennis. This is a Tarascan/Toltec-Chichimec army IV/19(a).

I believe the figures are all from Black Hat Miniatures. This army is predominantly a bow army with some blades and a war band thrown in.

Next on my paint table is some Martians and more Carthaginians.