Samurai in the Snow

Hi all,

December is traditionally a very tense time at my office - everyone expects me to finish all those projects that nobody was really interested in for so many months before. So I have to be a busy bee, and (as I had anticipated) painting progress for the painting challange so far is quite slow - but my masterplan is to make up for this lack of progress during and after the holidays!

My first entry to the painting challange is a Samurai of the Perry range - indeed I had this backtrop of a beautiful Japanese-gardens-calendar, and this inpired me to paint a fitting figure to use for the "cold" special theme of the painting challange.

It was really great fun to paint this Samurai, especially without the typical armour. I'm going to paint some more of these...

Have a nice holiday everyone, and thanks for your great support in 2014. I hope you get a lot of shiny toys under the Christmas tree. for me it will be the new Perry Azincourt-Range, and I'm really looking forward to these figures!

All the best,
Tobi

This took some time

Hi all,

yes, the hibernation of this blog is finally over. 2014 had some rough patches to navigate and it was no good year for the hobby - so at some time I had to decide wether I'd use the sparse free time I had to actually have a hobby or only to talk/blog about wishing to have one. Thank you anywhere for bearing with me.

I'm otpimistic there'll be some more activity on this blog rather soon as I have enlisted in the Analogue Hobbies 5th annual painting challange, and I'm planing on honouring my goal of 500 points worth painting!

Until then I'd like to show you some more pictures of my ever growing crusading armies. These beauties have scored two big successes tis year: First, two pictures of my Crusaders have had the honour to appear in the new and quite exiting SAGA Crusades-supplement. Then, I've won "best painted" with my Moors at the very well organized and truly entertaining Holmgang SAGA tournament. Thank you again Patrick for the organisation and also thank you to everyone how has voted for my troops.

OK, with no further ado - here they are. First: The Crusaders.

Perry Miniatures Crusaders

More Perry Miniatures Crusaders

And here are the Moors/Saracenes:

Cavalry with a mix of several companies - mostly Musketeer, Black Tree, Gripping Beast and Artizan

Thanks and until next time,
Tobi

Crusades reloaded

Hi all,

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and Santa has brought you all the shiny toys you'd hoped for. For me it was great - the festivities, but also the addition to the lead- (and book-) mountain.

Chief among the presents was a new supply of Perry Crusaders, and this gives me the reason to talk about one of the projects I have worked at during the "quiet" phase of this blog between May and October. I was considering rebasing and enhancing my Crusader army for quite some time now, but with the mass of new rules and the lack of a real favorite set it was hard to decide on a basing system.

My Perry Crusader knights attacking

 
The most flexible variant of course is the DBx-basing scheme that is compatible with all but skirmish systems and has a 6cm front for 28mm figures. Yet the 4cm depth for mounted always requires some squeezing and 4 figures to a base is not as visually impressive as I'd like. The 12cm front of Impetus on the other hand can look very impressive if furnished with enough figures, but you need a large playing field and indeed tons of figures if you want to play anything else but impetus.

I've tried several options and came up with this one finally: 8cm front. Essentially I double the standard DBx/FOG-base-sizes for 15mm, so I can play DBx with them as well as any other system like FOG, Hail Ceasar, Dux Bellorum, Impetus and others. The basing system gives me 6cm depth for horses and 3cm for heavy infantry - and thus it very conveniantly solves the depth-problem for mounted bases:

My Perry Crusader general with his loyal Syrian bannerman

For specially trained horsemen (knights superior or cavalry superior in DBx-terms) that fought in dense formations, I'll put four figures on a base:

Military Order Knights - again all from the Perry Crusader range

 For infantry the increased width and depth gives room for some limited diorama-building and story-telling. I double the figures required for DBx - give or take one or two figures.

Two bases of Crusader Spearmen - some Perry, some Foundry, some Magister Militum

This system is visually attractive, especially "en masse": The five bases of spearmen you have in your Crusader DBA army really does look like - well, not an army yet, but more than a few figures at least.

5 bases of spearmen - mostly from the Perry Crusader range

And this is the complete DBA-army: 12 bases (5 spear, 4 knights, 1 bow, 2 crossbows). Now I'm going to treat the Syrians the same way and test the new basing scheme wth a game of DBA. I certainly won't rebase my extensive ancients collection, but if it all works out well I may define the scheme as my standard for the medieval era.

I wish you all the very best for the new year and thank you for your continuing support and interest. Take care and see you in 2014,

Tobi.

A long road to Longstreet

Lately I had the oppertunity to play a game of Longstreet. It's no secreet that up to the first announcement of Sam Mustafa with some promising details on that game I neither had any interest in the period nor a special fondnes for the figures. I had bought some ACW cavalry when they first appeared at the Salute (for it was the first set of historical figures made from hard plastic), but sadly I have long since tradet this pack for I don't know what. Thus my lead mountain - as large as it looms - was up to date clear of any figure representing a soldier after the date of 1815.

Now this has to change, because Longstreet is - as I had feared when I had read the announcement of Sam - just and planly great. It is great fun to read and even more fun to play, and the same way I've catched the Napoleonic plague with Lasalle, it seems it has happened again.

So I gave in, and have since heavily invested into this period. Now the first regiment is ready for the fight, and I couldn't wait to show it off.

Perry ACW Union Regiment

Since I don't know to much about the period, I have chosen a nondescript regiment of volunteers ("Smallville's finest"). I'll add a few historical regiments at a later date, when I have read more about it - Don Troiani has already been ordered...

 

For the whole project, I've chosen to use exclusively Perry Miniatures. Many of them I'll paint myself, but given the size of the project I've already contacted some trusted painters as well. 

I'll keep you informed about the progress. Until next time - and thank's for dropping by!

 

Great Games at AttritiCon

My club's annual event, the AttritiCon, was tremendous fun again. The con was well recieved (we had something of a hundred participants and visitors this time), and it was a very relaxed and joyful atmosphere with people having big talks about little figures and playing old and new games. For me it was a first that I didn't play any tournament but helped staging two demonstration games - the best decision I could have made, as it was truly great.

One of these games was a big 400p Impetus demo in 28mm with Christopher aka Axebreaker. Christopher is a very nice person and a gifted painter, and the army he put on the table certainly has a very lasting "wow"-effect. Here he is, sitting in the middle and explaining grand strategy to the players:

Facing each other on the Spanish plainland were my Andalusians (which you already know)... 

28mm Andalusians

... and Christopher's fantastic El Cid army:
 

28mm El Cid

The Scenario was a historical one, but we took liberties with the set up and added a Spanish Version of La Haye Sainte:

In two large battles the armies fought it out who would rule this part of Spain...

... and there were plenty of heroic moments like with this mercenary knights in Andalusian service (bottom centre), who survived turns after turns of onslought by a overwhelmingly outnumbering enemy...  

...or simply massive, optically overwhelming fighting scenes. 

I can only say thanks to Christopher, who (since it was one of my first times playing Impetus) had the hard work of involving and explaining, while I was free to enjoy the figures and role some dice. What a great game it was. We're considering to do something like this again in the future, but for the moment we're both glad that we finished everything in time (and we both shrink back even from the thought of another such huge project...).

The other game was much smaller in figure-numbers but not in matters of fun. In our own adaption of the SAGA rules, Patrick alias "Wraith" and myself prepared a little scenario set in the end-struggles of the Imjin war: A Japanase colony is attacked by a Korean army, and in a limited number of seven turns the game is decided by the number of buildings burned by the Koreans or defended by the Japanese. For those interested, I have made available the Korean Battleboard for download.    

The setting: A little Japanese village built by the invaders

 Patrick is a very nice person and great fun to game with, and his Samurai troops are truly a feast for the eyes. Here is the master of the games...



...and here you can see some of his very beautiful troops:

Perry Samurai painted by Patrick

I myself added the scenery (the buildings are John Jenkins Design) as well as the Koreans:  

Perry Koreans

The scenario was played five times that day. Everytime the fighting was tough...

 ...and both the scenario as well as the battleboards proved to be well balanced, as the results of the battles were quite different. The only thing that didn't differ was the fun the players had: 

Here are some more shots of the battles in progress:

My heartfeld thanks to my both co-organizers and hobby friends - as well as to all the players joining in. It was so much fun!

Now I'm back at my painting table, and it feels so good to be free to paint anything I want without having to keep a shedule. Alas, as gaming events like these are known to be the petri dish of hobby inspiration, a new plan and shedule will emerge soon enough... But more of this some other times.

All the best to you and thanks for your visit,
Tobi