Viva España! - Some terrain for SCW

Well, to be perfectly honest I actually should be sitting on my desk and paint some WW2 Italians I promised to get done for a friend. And actually most of them are more or less done already... just the finishing touches. Ok, who am I kidding here?
Truth is I got distracted by Pats (Wargaming with Silver Whistle) *latest blogpost* about his upcoming book Setting the Scene 2. Loads of wonderful pictures to get inspired by. And inspired I got...

And while I'm at it I might just as well mention another source of inspiration, who's work provided the starting point for todays blog post:  Richard Clarke of TooFatLardies fame who, a while ago, built a *Spanish village* for use with his Sharp Practice rules. For his village he used, amongst others, buildings from *Charlie Foxtrot Models* (as did Pat in his post I mentioned above) and this was when I first stumbled upon that company.

At Crisis 2017 in Antwerp I had the chance to have a closer look at the offerings of bespoke company and while I did like what I saw I still held off. Actually I'm not completely sure why, but it must have had something to do with my reservations towards MDF buildings in general.

Be that as it may, I finally took the plunge and after a short e-mail conversation with Colin from Charlie Foxtrot Models, a nice bloke if there ever was one, I ordered two of his kits. Colin really went out of his way to make sure I'd get the cheapest possible shipping rate to Germany.

The kits arrived in no time and I got cracking straight away. The kits went together smoothly and without any fuss. The pantile roofs and other smaller resin parts really help to lift these kits above your average MDF kit. The only 'problem' I ran into was one of the roofs not sitting completely flush on the walls. Something I did almost expect to happen with resin parts that big. As the hot water method was no option, due to the sheer size of the roof, out came my trusty Dremel.
A few seconds later the offending piece was removed and I was a happy weasel again.

To add a little more flavour to the buildings I glued them to 3mm MDF base plates and added walls and pave stones made from styrene sheets.

For prepping and painting I kept to the excellent *tutorial* on the Charlie Foxtrot Models page. A little more detailing was achieved by adding glass to the windows and the one or other flower pot on the window sills.

And while I was at it I also reworked a Ziterdes ruin I had sitting around for a while. I was never quite happy with the look of the ready made piece with its bright green grass and plain grey walls.

The green grass was completely scraped off and my usual mix of grit and fine sand was applied in its place. Walls and floors were given a lime stone colour to give it a slightly more south European appearance.

The tiles of what I perceived to have been the former main hall were painted in a checkerboard pattern, examples of which I've seen in a few early and middle medieval churches and palaces around the Mediterranean. With a stretch this piece should be good for service from the later Roman period till today.

And finally the only two staged shots which came out reasonably well. With the unusual good weather for the last few weeks it's rather difficult to get the right lighting for photography.

Enough of my ramblings for now. Have a nice weekend and keep on painting!

Chain of Command - Somewhere in Holland 1944

Just a few snapshots of a recent game of Chain of Command we had at my place. It saw an American advance column facing off against German Fallschirmjäger somewhere in Holland late summer 1944.
Both forces were regular and had minimal support, i.e. no tanks or other flights of fancy.
The Germans started off with a Force Morale rating of 10, where as the Americans had to make do with a mere 8.

The attackers table edge

SCW - Yet more Republicans

It's summer. And as in every summer thus far the hobby is placed on a backburner while other things get priority. So these guys were sitting on my painting table for quite some time now. To be perfectly honest it wasn't only the summer though...

Back to late antiquity

I haven't painted anything for my Late Romans in a while and, truth be told, even todays offerings were finished quite some time back in 2017. But I've finally got in gear and took some photos.

First off my new mounted Warlord/ Tribune. Figures are Westwind Miniatures with heads taken from Wargames Foundry. Westwind do some very characterful figures, which fit nicely with Footsore and Gripping Beast, but some of the heads can be a little hit and miss unfortunately.

Sightseeing 500 A.D.

I've been running a small competition on the German Sweetwater Forum. The goal was to create a small vignette.

To see the other entries I encourage you to visit the link above. Some really nice scenes there.

Have a nice sunday!

Ludi incipiant!

I hardly have touched a brush since the end of the challenge, thus I finally took the opportunity to take some pictures of miniatures I already painted last year but didn't come round to post.

First will be my small collection of Gladiators.

remember to click for a bigger picture

Miniatures are from the superb Crusader Miniatures range and were a real joy to paint. I even took the chance to try to hand paint the shields. I'm rather chuffed I have to admit.
In my opinion Gladiators also offer the perfect chance to try out some recipes for different skin colours.

I still have some more of these in the painting queue but these will have to wait till I feel a little more like painting again.

Till next time!

Some 15mm for a change

After having painted a sizable US Paratrooper force for the Battle of the Bulge over the last two years, I decided it was about high time to give them some opponents...

... oh well, bugger that.

No, in fact I started work on some US Army guys ready to invade Tunisia/ Sicily/ Normandy. Figures are the current Battlefront plastic offerings. I got them for a steal which meant instead of painting up some Brits for a change, I was stuck with US... again.
The figures are OK-ish. Better than most of their metal ones but still there's the odd miscast in the mix.

Bring on the armour!

Having had a few days off this last week I decided I'd would probably make best use of it by painting up some of the armour, that was sitting unfinished on my shelf for months now.
While I generally like painting armour I need to be in the right mood for it, as firstly I actually quite hate airbrushing and secondly I'm always worrying about overdoing the weathering.

Soviet Tank Rider Squad

Who would have guessed? Three consecutive entries in just as many weeks. Seems like while the challenge slowly but surely is drawing to a close my hobby boat is finally taking up some much needed steam.

This week sees me back at a project I keep returning to time and again, but never quite seem to have the stomach to see it through. 

Fallschirmjäger Support & Volksgrenadier with ride

Just a token submission today as life has once again got rather busy around here. I won't bore you with the details as I know you all will be familiar with such moments in your hobby lives.
After having just recently made the switch from Bolt Action to Chain of Command -and not having regretted it for a second- I felt the need for adding a few items to my Fallschirmjäger force.