FIW French 3

This will be a short update without pictures I'm afraid, as this past week has not been very good hobby-wise due to both me and my son coming down with the flu. As a result I've not gotten very far on the unit of canadian militia, just priming them and drybrushing the bases. Although to be honest, the priming was done last weekend while waiting for the varnish to dry on the compagnie franches de la marines.

I've also drybrushed six of these nifty irregular movement trays from Warbases. Originally I planned to use them for Dux Britanniarum, but thought they looked good when Dalauppror used them for his Mohawks and I've also seen a couple of battle reports were they were used for Muskets and Tomahawks, so I thought I'd give them a go.

Now that I'm feeling better, it's back to the militia. Hopefully I'll be back with a new update during the weekend, this time with pictures.

FIW French 2

I've finally finished my first unit for the French and Indian War project, the Compagnie Franches de la Marine. As I spent some extra time on these, adding three highlights (or rather a re-applying of the basecoat and then two highlights) after the washes was applied, coupled with the many fiddly details, they sure took their time. I went for a new approach with the bases, giving them a little more attention than usual, to make them look more forest-like.

Both the miniatures and the bases came out quite nice I think, so in the end it was worth the extra time spent on them. I'm particulary pleased with the whites and off-whites on the shirts and capotes, even if there are always ways to improve my painting. I'll also keep experimenting with the bases as they still could use some extra details to make them look even better.

Anyway, here are some closeups.

 

All miniatures are from North Star Minis.

Now it's on to the next unit – the miliciens.

And finally, a warm welcome to my new follower CLAM. Thanks for joining up!

FIW French 1

Right, that's all the fun and games over with for now – it's time to get back to business.

As I wrote in my Projects for 2013 post, I will be doing a 200 points starter force for the French and Indian War rules Muskets and Tomahawks. After some back and forth, I settled on the following list:
10 Compagnies Franches de la Marine
1 Compagnies Franches de la Marine Officer
6 Canadian Milicien
5 Huron allies (ie Indians)

This is a (not very good) WIP shot of the first unit for project, The Compagnies Franches de la Marine.

The miniatures are all from North Star.

The "de la Marines" were, contrary to what the name might have you think, not marines, but rather colonial infantry troops under the command of the Naval department, tasked with protecting the fur trade and the civilians of New France. They were experienced in the small scale, guerilla like warfare, first practiced by their more local brethren the Canadian militias (milicien). These tactics were initially very successful against the numerously superior British troops, who used tactics more suited to the open battlefields of Europe, and gave the French the upper hand in the beginning of the war.

When posted in the wilderness, the de la Marines often discarded their impractical uniforms and instead adopted the dress of the colonists and of the native Americans of the area.

As you can see these are really nice miniatures, with a great ragtag look. To get some sort of unity, all the headgears are painted blue (except for the officer's tricorne). The only problem with the models are the details – there are so many of them it takes a good while to paint them all! I've also decided that since there are so few miniatures in the starter force, I will spend a little extra time on them and do an additional highlight or two, which of course takes even more time. To be honest, I'm beginning to get a little frustrated with the slow pace of this project – as I've now gone back to work I have to fit in my hobby time on the evenings. This is not helped by the fact that my opponent Dalauppror seems to churn out those Mohawk warriors like there's no tomorrow. But still, if I continue at this speed I should be able to have all the miniatures ready by our mutual deadline of the end of February.

Finally, let me welcome my new followers: Baconfat, Ellie Great, Justin Penwith, Lee Hadley, MrJ, Schrumpfkopf, TamsinP and Tony. Thanks for joining up! I hope you'll like the blog and drop by for a comment or two from time to time.

And the Winner Is ...

... danmer! Congratulations! Please contact me directly with your address and I will send you the miniature: jonas[dot]mockelstrom[at]gmail[dot]com

This was fun! There were much more participants than I had hoped (12 in all). Maybe we'll do this again in the future – who knows?

Thank you all who participated and congratulations once again to danmer!

Reminder: Prize Draw Ends Tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for participating in the prize draw is coming up tomorrow, January 7th. In other words: If you want a chance to win an anglo-saxon painted my me, there's still time!

Please take a look at the original post for all the details.

Projects for 2013

Right then, I hope you've all recovered from celebrating the new year and are eager to get back to your brushes and gaming tables. With 2012 all in the books it's time to look forward and set some goals for 2013. I've already talked about two of them in my 2012 in retrospect post: keep updating the blog once a week and play 26 games during the year. Those should be fairly easy I think.

As for actual projects there are three I'm planning to do, in the following order:

French and Indian Wars

As reported by Dalauppror we will both do a starter force for Muskets and Tomahawks. He has opted to do an all indian force – Mohawks, who conveniently was allied to the British – while I'm going to do the French. We will start with 200 points each, and if the game proves fun we'll probably expand our forces up to 400, and then maybe even 600 points. We're also keen to try out "La Longue Carabine", the FIW supplement for Sharpe Practice, but that will have to wait until we have enough miniatures painted (I'm guessing around 40-ish each should do).

The miniatures for my French arrived before Christmas, and I have started painting the first unit. This should be a fairly quick project, or at least the first part of it, as there's only 22 models in the starter force.

Baltic Crusades

Yes, I've been lured into Dalauppror's exciting Baltic Crusades project! Actually, I had plans to do this myself before I got in contact with him, and started to read up on the period before the project was put on hold in favour of other things. But now when we got talking about it, it wasn't too hard to convince me to jump aboard this one.

I will be doing a force from the Swedish archenemy of the period – the republic of Novgorod – and I'm very much looking forward to this, not in the least because the models are really cool and it will be my first time doing a winter-themed army. Also, it will be great fun to try out Dan Merseys upcoming rules, Lion Rampant, as I really enjoyed his Dux Bellorum.

Dark Ages Raiders

Back to the Dark Ages then. I'm going to do a force from the forthcoming Raiders supplement for Dux Britanniarum, but I'm not telling which just yet. All the miniatures are purchased, and the force will also contain some fun "bonus stuff" to add a bit of extra character. This project was originally planned for December, but as the Welsh dragged on (and got interrupted from time to time) it got pushed back (on the other hand, the supplement hasn't been released yet so I'm in no hurry).

Well, I think that's more than enough for now! Of course, I have a couple of more projects that I want to do, but in the small chance I get the time to start them this year they will have to be a bonus surprise for you all ...

Happy Birthday and Prize Draw!

Here's your chance to win a free miniature painted by some bloke in Sweden!

Today my humble blog is one year old – happy birthday to A Conflict of Interests! My, how time flies. To celebrate this joyous event I have decided to have a prize draw were one lucky winner will be sent the miniature pictured below.

The miniature is a Gripping Beast Anglo-Saxon warrior from one the command packs, painted by yours truly. You could use it as a starting point for a new warband in Saga or perhaps as a Champion in your Dux Viking Age games, or maybe to throw at your opponent when he or she can't stop bickering about some detail in the rules; the choice is yours.

The rules for the prize draw are very simple, just the way I like it:

1. To enter you must be a follower of this blog (just use the Google gadget somewhere on the right if you're not already hooked up).
2. You must post a comment below.
3. And that's it!

I will then randomly draw a winner and let you know who it is in a new post on the blog.

The deadline for participating is a week from now: Monday January 7th 2013 at 12:00 am GMT

Good luck everyone!

2012 in Retrospect

In just a couple of days, 2012 will be over and it's time to look back and try to sum the year up, hobby-wise. It's now almost exactly one year since I started this blog. My aim was to use it as a log for my different projects with the ulterior motive that posting about them on the Internet would force me to finish what I started. To this end I also made a list of projects that I wanted to finish during the year. Looking over the list I'm quite happy that I managed to accomplish most of what I set out to do. The only exception being the Wars of the Roses project for Basic Impetus in 6 mm (let's not talk about that one ... or the "bonus projects"), but on the other hand I did paint a lot of other stuff I didn't put on the list so it's all right I guess.

In total I managed to paint 171 28 mm miniatures this year, 8 of which where cavalry. I know there are some very fast and producive painters out there, but for me, 171 miniatures in one year is a lot! Unfortunately I bought more miniatures than I painted, so in the end the dreaded lead pile did grow rather than shrink.

As I said, my thinking behind this blog was primarily to force myself to finish projects as during 2011 I accomplished very little (though I think becoming a father for the first time is a valid excuse for this). In retrospect I do think that the blog worked out as planned but in the end there were probably three other factors that had a more profound impact on my productivity.

The first of these factors was my paternity leave, especially after the summer when my boy and I got into a good rythm of me getting some hobby time when he was napping most days. It's amazing how productive you can get with one or two hours regular painting time each day. Alas, all good things must come to an end and as I will be getting back to work in the beginning of January, my productivity will drop considerably. However, I'm determined to get at least some hobby time each day – be it just 15 or 20 minutes – just to keep the momentum up.

The second factor was the simple fact that I finally found a way to achieve a "table top standard" I'm satisfied with and which don't take too much time. I've always been a slow painter, and so last year I started experimenting with the Army Painter dip to try to speed things up. While the results were generally OK to my eyes, the process was a little too messy and fiddly for my taste. After some more experimenting I finally settled on the tried and tested "basecoats, washes, highlights with basecoats"-technique. I'm really happy with this way of painting, as it produces "good-enough" looking miniatures with a minimal of hassle. I've yet to try the technique with anything other than Dark Ages miniatures though, and perhaps I will have to adjust my approach slightly for other periods (then again, maybe not!).

The third and probaby most important factor, was me getting in contact with a gaming club and getting a regular opponent. By the summer I was actually on the verge of quitting the hobby altogether, as I couldn't see the point in spending money and time on something I'd play once or twice and then never use again. I decided a change was demanded or I would put my miniatures and paints away – for a while at least. More on a whim than anything else I shot off an e-mail to Dalauppror as I knew he was also living in Stockholm, was also into Dark Ages stuff at the moment, seemed like a really nice guy and was a member of an active club. Well, not only did it turn out that he was even nicer in real life than on his blog, I also started to hang out at his club regulary and played some really great games, such as the Dux Viking Age campaign, Saga, Hail Caesar and Dux Suecia.

Getting some regular gaming really did boost my painting morale, not at least because I got some strict deadlines due to booked games. A tight deadline apparently works wonders – who would have thought?

It's a funny (or sad, depending on how you look at it) fact that since late August I actually have played more games than since I took up the hobby again in 2008. Every year, my goal was to have at least a game a month, but it always fell apart after a couple of months. This year I have played 16 games in total (15 of those since late August). Next year I'm aiming for another 10, for 26 in total (or one game every two weeks, or twice a month) which shouldn't be too hard. But we will see!

Speaking of goals for 2013, I've been thinking about the blog for a while: I think A Conflict of Interests, its purpose and topics, is working as it is so no need to change any of those for the next year. My ambition during 2012 was to update the blog at least once a week, which I most definately did not manage during the first 7-8 months, but since after the summer I think I pretty much nailed it. An update once a week shouldn't been too hard, and thus the goal will stay for the next year.

Looking back at 2012 it was an excellent year hobby-wise and I'm very much looking forward to 2013. It promises to be another great year with a couple of really nice projects lined up (one of which I've already started), and possibly another one also on the horizon (time permitting of course).

I'd like to thank all you readers and followers, especially those of you who have commented on my posts, for your kind words and support during the past year, it really means a lot to me. Let me wish you all a Happy new year – I hope it's a good one, hobby- and otherwise!

God jul – Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone – or as we say in Sweden "God jul"! I hope you have a happy holiday wherever you are, and however you celebrate it.

I will be back in a couple of days with some thoughts about the soon-to-be-over 2012.

Until then, take care and I hope Santa brings you lots of hobby-related goodies ...

Dark Ages Welsh 10

Well, here it is – the final batch of models to be finished for the Dark Ages Welsh project. These are eight Teulus/elites, the Welsh lord's or king's personal companions. To be honest, when painting the first unit I was lazy, leaving out some details to save time. However, this time I was willing to put in a little extra effort and have at least a couple of these new Teulus with tartan patterns. I think they turned out pretty good and so it was definitely worth the extra time it took to finish them. (Hm, maybe I will go back and add some patterns on the finished characters at least?)

On Tuesday, I fortunately received the order from Little Big Men Studios I put in last week, which meant I didn't have to wait until January to finish off the last details like flags. This in turn means this project is now completed – woho!

I really struggled with photographing these models, as I'm depending on natural light and there aren't much of that here in Sweden at the moment (it being the winter solstice and all). But eventually I managed to take some OK close-ups:

 

The miniatures are all from Gripping Beast, and the shield transfers as well as the flag are from Little Big Men Studios.

I'm very pleased to finally have such a big (for me anyway) project finished, and within my deadline of the end of the year too. Now I need to arrange to take some pictures of the whole assembled force, but this will have to wait until January when I'm back from my Christmas holiday.

Of course, I have already started on my next project but won't tell you what it is for a while yet, not until I have some miniatures to show. For now, the only clue I'll give you is that it's something like 1300 years between the Arthurian era and the era for this new project ...

Last of all I'd like to say a warm welcome to Phil and wish you all a great weekend!