Fall of the western Empire 6: Early Saxon Levies

I've been a bit lazy over the holidays so I didn't paint up that much but finally finished a group of saxon levies for SAGA/ Dux Britanniarum. Miniatures are all from Westwind Miniatures out of their great arthurian range and I've to say they were realy a joy to paint. The casting is crisp and the miniatures have a lot of details. Unfortunately Westwind doesn't seem too eager to promote them in a way that would do them justice. I also realy like the separate head system from westwind as it grants a lot of variations.

Fall of the western Empire 5: Second Group of Palatinae

Just finished another bunch of four guys from the scholae palatinae. Today I had a bit of a hard time as I decided to do the varnishing by airbrush. Unattentively I grabbed the varnish and started spraying. Much too late I recognised that I was just spraying Vallejo's 'Decal Fix' instead of the matt varnish I'm generally using. After some drying time I recognised some parts (propably I applied too much on these areas) of the miniatures started turning greyish. Fortunately I was able to cure it by painting over the affected areas with matt varnish by brush.
On the other hand the areas that didn't turn greyish became absolutely matt what I really like. But next time I have to think twice before almost ruining my miniatures.

How Fireforge Footsergeants match up with Gripping Beast Plastics

As by Dalauppror requested some pictures mixing up miniatures from Fireforge Games and plastic miniatures by Gripping Beast.

First I used head and arms from the "Mounted Sergeants" box and glued them to a saxon body from GB.

I think it makes up for a great standard bearer. The only thing I don't realy like are the mail gloves which look a bit odd to me.

DUST Tactics: New Walker & Squad

Recently I didn't come round to paint up as much as I wanted to. So I decided to finish some minis which were sitting on my shelf almost battle ready for too long. As it was one of my goals for 2012 to get my Axis Army for DUST Tactics done it was not a totaly futile task.

First of all a Kampfläufer 2-B "Ludwig"

A Review on Fireforge Games' new 'Foot Sergeants'

On Friday I recieved a package from Italy sent to me by Francesco from Fireforge Games in order to do a small review about their newest release. So who Iam to deny the request :-) ?
As always you can find the german version over on GW-Fanworld.net. As I already did a Review on their 'Mounted Sergeants' in German I think I'll soon translate that one and release it here too.

Releasing the 'Foot Sergeants' there are finally some footsloggers in plastics available from Fireforge Games.

Liebster Blog Award

The "Liebster Award" is going around the Blogs and I feel realy honoured to be nominated by actually two fellow bloggers.
The first one was Chris from Bunker Hill a realy pleasant contemporary I had the luck to meet. I think he owns more miniatures painted to the highest levels, than I could ever even buy (don't want to talk of his great terrain-collection).
While the second nomination was from Alex running the alea iacta est blog I realy enjoy following. If you're looking for artfully painted miniatures covering Gladiators, Dark Ages, Napoleonics and lots of other Stuff it's the right place to go.

The rules of the award are:
- "Copy and paste" the award on your blog, and talk about it a bit.
- post a link back to the blogger who gave you the award
- Select for the award your five favourite blogs with less than 200 followers, leaving a comment on one of their post to notify them that they have won the award. You need also to list them in your own blog.
- Enjoy the moment, knowing that you have just made someone's day.
- Of course, there is no obligation to pass the award, but it is a good deed really.

My favourite Blogs (following the rules mentioned above and naturally besides the two which nominated mine) are:

• Musketeer Miniatures - Bill in my opinion does the most amiable miniatures for Warfare in the late antiquety/ early medievals. News on his blog almost always mean a expensive purchase to me :-)
• Þorsteinn á Heiðini - I realy like this blog. Frequent updates on whole bunch of projects combined with lovely painted miniatures
• Tsuba Miniatures - A semi commercial Blog again and one I absolutely enjoy following. Not only for the great sculpted miniatures (ouh yes... I own some^^) but also for the richness of historical background concerning the miniatures released.
• The Closet Gamer - A blog I just stumbled by some days ago. Looking at theold but lovely painted miniatures makes me feel a bit nostalgic sometimes.
• A League of Ordinary Gamers - Stunning blog with lots of fond painted miniatures... unfortunately I never came round to leave a comment here. Now that's over :-)

There are lots of others I would like to nominate but rules (and a good part of laziness) don't permit it :-)

Fall of the western Empire 4: First Group of Palatinae

Recently I needed some distraction from painting the limitanei so I decided to draw my attention on the scholae palatinae. As they wear the lorica hamata they were easily painted up and much fun to paint.
In terms of SAGA they are counting as hearthguard worth 1pt. for 4 miniatures.

Flames of War "Open Fire" Review Part 2

As I promised a few days ago I did the second part of the "Open Fire" review.
For everyone who missed the first part *here* you can find it.
As always you can find the german original over on GW-Fanworld.net.

As I already already advertised in the first part today it's all about the miniatures and tanks the "Open Fire" starterset contains.

• 3 StuG III Ausf. G (late)
• 2 Sherman Firefly VC
• 6 Sherman V
• 1 V1 Flying bomb terrain feature
• 2 PaK40 Anti-Tank gun
• 32 U.S. Paratroopers
• 73 Panzergrenadiere

On the first glimps the tank sprues don't look that bad and because of the different colours (grey for axis, green for allies) even a layman can easily identify which faction the tanks belong to.

Fall of the western Empire 3: More late roman limitanei

This week I had a bit sparetime so I started painting up the second unit for my late roman SAGA warband though I only finished four of them. Again these are limitanei counting as levies for SAGA.

Flames of War "Open Fire" Review part 1

As my hobby time was somewhat restricted this week I didn't paint up enough worth of showing it here.
But as I did the first part of a review on the new "Open Fire" Starterbox for Flames of War I thought I should post it here too.
As always you can find the german original over on gw-fanworld.net.

Freikorps Werdenfels: An short review

For readers preferring german for reading thie review, just head over to GW-Fanworld.

The "Freikorps Werdenfels" are the newest range released by a small but nice miniature company from Germany.
Paul Hicks, a well known sculptor, is accountable for designing the models of Tsuba Miniatures.
Up to now this company especially produced miniatures covering the "Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905". With the Freikorps available now they do a range covering the period of civil disturbance following the end of World War One.


Especially in Germany the Freikorps represent an delicate subject. Following World War One the Deutsche Reich according to the "Treaty of Versailles" had to reduce the strength of the Reichswehr (Reich defence) to 100.000 soldiers and about 4.000 officers. Lots of former german combatants didn't willingly accept this fact and therefore the Freikorps arose. Particularly because of their reactionary ideology and brutality they made their mark in german history. Some of these paramilitary organisations later merged into Hitlers Sturmabteilung (Assault Division) the so called SA. Markus from Tsuba Miniatures released lots of informations and bibliography on his Blog: http://tsuba-miniatures.blogspot.de/


Now to the important part, the miniatures:

Up to now the range is made up of 19 miniatures in five sets. You can get your hands on Command (including an dachshund under license from ebob), Specialists and Riflemen advancing or firing which are sets made up of 4 miniatures at a time. Also there's an HMG team consisting of gunner, loader and teamleader.

Unpacking the miniatures the quality and crisp details instantly stroke my eyes.
There's virtually no flash and displacements misshaping the figures.

Writing my own SAGA 2: Another two buildings

As I'm realy excited by the quality of the Dark Age buildings by Gripping Beast I finished the other two dwellings sitting on my table and waiting for some paint for much too long now.

Writing my own SAGA 1: First building ready for battle

As I haven't had time to start working on my second gang of limitaneis for my late roman warband I decided to start painting my first building.

Fall of the western Empire 2: Late roman limitanei

First of I decided to continue the Blog in English to the convenience of my non German speaking readers. As I'm no native speaker, please don't expect to much of me :-)

Back to Business:
Today I finally managed to get the first bunch of 12 Limitanei ready for battle and 12 more already on the workbench. In SAGA they will count as Levies just as they were used during the last days of the western empire.
They have been based on 20mm Squarbases in order to achieve a more "Shieldwall" like look. Not that easy with a little overdynamic miniatures, but I think it worked quite well.

center 

Fall of the western Empire 1: Late Roman General

So, mein erster Post und um das gebührend zu würdigen auch gleich Bilder eines neuen Armeeprojektes: