FIW Civilians

When I sold off my FIW French I agreed with the buyer to paint some Redoubt Miniatures civilians. I've had these in my lead pile for a while and it was nice to finally paint them up even if it was for a commission.

The sculpts are a bit hit and miss to be honest. Some of the heads are comically big and some of the poses look a bit weird. Also, the gun stock on one of the models was slightly miscast. Nevertheless, I think they have a certain charm and they do paint up nicely.

They'll soon be on their way to France (very fittingly), to join the rest of the force.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend everyone!

Project F: Early Medieval Soldiers 2

Just before New Year I previewed the first miniatures for Project F – the still "secret" project set in the early medievals, master-minded by the ever industrious Dalauppror. Now it's time for the first proper batch for this project and the last miniatures to be finished in 2015.

The miniatures are a mix of mainly Gripping Beast Normans, with some Black Tree Design 2nd Crusaders used as commanders. All very nice minis.

I'm using a bit of a "speed-painting" approach to this project, utilising a 3-tone technique in the Foundry style and cutting a lot of (small) corners. I pretty happy with how this has turned out, and while the miniatures don't look too good up close they look fine from a distance.

The shields are hand-painted, and some of them look a bit rubbish but I'm hoping these won't be too noticeable when all the units are done. Yes, there are more cavalry coming ...

You'll notice there are some flags missing, and this is because I still haven't decided on a design so I'm saving these for last.

After the mounted minis were finished, I did the painting tally for 2015 and realised I was just three miniatures short of an even hundred. So I picked three foot minis that were quickly painted up.

I'm quite pleased with how they all turned out, cavalry and foot, and I'm itching to continue with this project.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend everyone!

Projects for 2016

Out with the old, in with the new. Time to look forward and lay out my plans for this year.

FIW Civilians
As part of the deal when I sold off my FIW force, I agreed to take on a commission to paint 12 civilian models. This will be my first project for 2016 (in fact I've already started painting) and should be a rather quick affair.

Project F
The still "secret" project set in the early medievals, that was started back in December. There are a fair amount of models to paint and after the FIW models are done, this will be my sole focus for the first couple of months.

15-hundreds
My long neglected Italian Wars project. I just can't stand having this unfinished for another year so I've come up with a new plan: I will use this force for Dragon Rampant. They should fit perfectly as a not-Warhammer Empire army. By my calculations there are no more than 30 models left to do, including gendarmes/cavalry, artillery and commanders. With talk about Dragon Rampant gaming at the club this will hopefully give me the incentive to finish this project.

And maybe, just maybe, something else for this period. Yes, a new project! However, this depends on finding suitable miniatures, something that has proved to be a bit of a challenge so far. Maybe I just have to bite the bullet and do some conversion work – though I'm not too keen on doing this for the majority of an army. We shall see.

Fantasy
I've long wanted to do something with my old Citadel lead. With the release of Dragon Rampant, I think I've found the perfect excuse to do some fantasy gaming. Apart from the Italian Wars army, I have more than enough models for at least two opposing forces (good and evil) but realistically I can only finish one during this year.

I also have an idea for a multi-player, small scale fantasy skirmish/RPG hybrid that I really want to do. As always, time will be the limiting factor here.

Operation Winter Storm
I'm planning on finishing this project during 2016. What's left to do are the whole Soviet side, a pretty sizeable project on its own, and a fair amount of terrain including buildings and woods, together with smaller stuff like jump-off points, trenches, roadblocks etc.

I'd better stop here before taking on too much. These projects should keep me sufficiently occupied during this year. At least until something new and shiny comes along and makes a mess of these carefully laid out plans – we all know how these things go!

2015 in Review

A belated Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a good ending to 2015 and have had a great start to the new year.

Well, I know I say this every January but gosh – is it already another year? Doesn't time fly? As is customary, I thought I'd look back at the year that passed and see what I achieved – and didn't.

The year started a bit slow hobbywise, as we tried to find some balance on the homefront with the new baby. Miraculously, I managed to keep up my painting routine for the most part, but gaming was a bit scarce during the first couple of months. Luckily, during the spring things began to settle down at home and I could take a night off here and there for some gaming down at the club. After the summer I've more or less been back in the old groove, with regular games almost every week.

As for painting, the year started fairly well, but really picked up after the summer thanks to me being on paternity leave: I've even been able to get some extra painting done during daytime once in a while! Naturally, this has worked wonders for the productivity which is evident from my output from August and onwards.

As usual, I made some plans for 2015 and it's time to take a look at how I fared:

Italian Wars French
Failed!
Once again my great shame ... The plan was to finally complete this project after having failed to do so in 2014. Well, I managed to finish the two pike blocks – they even got used in a game! – but that was unfortunately it for 2015. Too many other things taking priority over this one, due to a severe drop in motivation. However, I'm still intent on finishing this project, so it will follow me into 2016. Hopefully for the last time.

Håtunaleken 
Finished!
During 2015 I finished a 24 point medieval host for our club project Håtunaleken. I had already started in 2014 with the first unit completed and the second unit partially painted. In 2015 I added some foot knights, a unit of allmoge/foot yeomen and a unit of bidowers. Ironically, the first (and only) time I fielded the complete host they stood around for the entire game and achieved almost nothing. Still, I'm very pleased with this host and I'm fired up for some more Swedish medieval gaming.

Great Northern War Swedes
Finished!
I missed the deadline by about a month, but at least this unit got finished. We have played one game in our club campaign and it was a gloriously fun and chaotic affair. I think the Swedish side won? Anyway, I'm looking forward to more GNW games in 2016.

Operation Winter Storm 
Partially finished!
I had to face the facts and revise my original, and (overly) ambitious, plan to something more manageable. After this revision, things rolled on and I did complete all the German infantry and vehicles necessary to play the complete campaign. The Soviets and the terrain will have to wait until a little later this year.

Of course, I couldn't stick with these original plans but had a couple of side projects during the year:

Frostgrave Warband
Finished!
After play testing this fun little fantasy skirmish game, which seems to be all the rage at the moment, I was so inspired by Dalauppror's kit bashing I had to build me a warband of my own. This was a nice side project, with some really fun modelling and painting. Of course, I have yet to play a game with these models ...

Trees and bushes
Finished! 
It's safe to say I made a fair amount of trees this year. The first batch was a bit of a test, and as they turned out OK I went ahead and made another (bigger) batch. For the second batch, I wanted to take the quality up a notch so I sculpted some roots, varied the colours of the leaves and worked on the bases some more. After getting some nice comments about the trees from my club mates, I also did some bushes.

I have yet to take some snaps of the second batch of trees and the bushes, but since they've featured in some of Dalauppror's latest AAR:s so you've probably seen them already.

Rohan Warband
Finished! 
In anticipation of Dragon Rampant I rebased and touched up some old, speed-painted Rohan miniatures for Lord of the Rings. This project seems to have fizzled out before it began in earnest, but there are talk of some other Dragon Rampant gaming at the club which I'm very much looking forward to.

Project F
The still secret early medieval project took up most of December in a frenzy to finish at least one unit before the year was over. I narrowly made the deadline and will soon post some pictures of these final models of 2015.

Looking at the actual numbers, I painted exactly 100 28 mm models (19 of which were cavalry). In addition to these I also painted 56 15 mm infantry models and 7 vehicles/tanks and made a huge amount of trees and bushes. Overall, I'm fairly happy with the output but as always it could be better.

Now I have officially closed the hobby part of the year 2015 and I will be back in a day or two with my plans for 2016.

Finally, I want to thank each and everyone of you who read and comment on my posts – it really means a lot to me! I hope you all will have a great year.