Short round up of 2013 and a Happy New Year!

Well, with the long dreaded arrival of 2014 imminent it's time to make a short round up of the year gone by.
Therefore it's probably useful to  look what I was planning to do in 2013:

• First of all I definitely will be completing my late romans. I'm not that happy with my output over the last weeks as I was hoping to get these guys done in 2012. At the moment there are still 24 footsloggers and four men of cavalry left.-Fully achieved, in fact I did a bit more-

• Second I'm planning on doing some 28mm crusaders for IMPETUS. As I already have some plastics knights and footsergeants from Fireforge Games the headstone for the project has already been placed. With my decision to do base these for IMPETUS I'll be leaving the solid ground of single basing my miniatures for the first time. On the other hand by using multi bases it will be possible to tell a little story with every unit I think. -Big Fail. I did exactly two figures and decided to sell the stuff-

• Third  there are some 15mm Germans and Americans waiting for beeing painted. These guys will be single based again as they will (hopefully) see battles using Bolt Action, Battlegroup Kursk and (or more likely) upcoming supplements as well as Agis Neugebauer's Victory Decision. Why using 15mm for all this? Over the past months it became more and mor obvious to me that I'll never be able to paint up as much 28's for WWII as I would need in order to play the rulesets mentioned above as they need too much time to be painted up to a standard I'm happy with. -Epic Fail. Infact I had to admit I'll probably never get rid of  my addiction to 28mm.

• Fourth I'll maybe (a monstrous maybe) dive into the American Civil War as it's a very interesting setting to me. -Well what else could I say then failed? I did four figures before deciding to turn to other projects.

• Fifth I would like to start a small late WWI german army perhaps using the great 15mm miniatures from Bluemoon Manufacturing. -I'd say success. I didn't go for 15mm but purchased quite a bunch of well painted 28mm figures and am still adding some stuff.

• Sixth there are some Perry Normans laying around for some time now, waiting to complete my norman warband for SAGA. -Fail again. I think they'll probably won't see daylight for quite some time as my interest in Normans suddenly faded.-

• Seventh I'm planning to replace my plastics saxons from Gripping Beast in my saxon SAGA warband with some Westwind saxons and goth/ germans from Musketeer Miniatures as I don't like the look of the plastics any more. -I wouldn't say success but I did some figures and will paint some during 2014 to get them on the table for Dux Bellorum.-

Well, you see... most of my goals for 2013 were abandoned somewhere along the road. But I'm sure most of you will know this problem called shiniytus :-)
All in all I did manage to paint some 179 miniatures. This number includes infantry, cavalry, casualty markers, Artillery pieces armoured cars as well as some tanks. So I think I can be quite happy with what I did in 2013.

What am I planning to do in 2014? 
I have to confess I'm not too sure about it yet. But there are two or three things I really want to do.

• First and foremost I want to get all the stuff painted I prepared for Curt's Annual Analogue Hobby Challenge. This includes some Fallschirmjäger, British Paras for Bolt Action (500 pts. worth of), some more early Saxons, some republican Romans and some odds and ends.

• After the challenge I want to add to my Late Romans and the Early Saxons in order to have two well sized forces for Dux Bellorum and later on Impetus. Actually I think I could already field a 32 pts. Roman force for Dux with 5 or 6 points of allied Saxons. Though there are so much nice figures out there...

•  And as my second big goal I'm aiming at completing a Great War Russian Army to fight my Germans. As an aside I want to use the Russians as Whites to attend to Partisan-Con in 2014. That's a small RCW/BoB Con in Mannheim Germany. You can find some nice pictures from the 2013 Con *here* (text in German).

So you see I'm not as ambitious as for 2013.
Now there's nothing more to say than:


I wish all my followers and fellow bloggers A Happy New Year and may 2014 see you completing all your goals!

Impressione: Saga 'Clash of Empires'

Last week Chris (Aka Axebreaker) and me had a game of SAGA. He pitted his new Early Saxons (using the Viking Battleboard) against my Late Romans (using the Anglo-Saxon Battleboard). We played the 'Sacred Ground' scenario from the basic ruleset. In this scenario you have to accumulate as many victory points (VP) as possible. These you gain by the number of troops you have on the three terrain features and of course by killing the troops of your opponent. For the Warlord on the terrain you gain three VP's, every Hearthguard warrior gives you one point and every second normal warrior or levy generates one point.

A Wicca Priest as guardian of the holy grove  .

Dark Age Civilians - 2nd Painting Challenge Entry

For the first bonus round I frantically rummaged through my lead mountain as I couldn't remember if I've ever bought any civilian-like figures. The first thing I came over was a set of carts from Gripping Beast unfortunately lacking the drivers. Some time later I discovered these three gentlemen. 

Cross of Iron 'Hauptmann Stransky' - 1st Painting Challenge Entry

Well after more than 24 hours have expired I now can show you the first figure I painted for the Painting Challenge and thereby bring back a bit of life into this very blog.

I'm starting into the challenge with my entry fee figure. Seemingly opposed to all others I didn't go for the Wild West theme but decided (after Curt pointed out to me the film is from Peckinpah also) to do 'Hauptmann Stransky' from Cross of Iron. 

Ludi incipiant! Let the games begin!

Sunday is approaching fast and so does Curt's 4th Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. The whole blogosphere seems vibrant with expectancy and there's lots of chatter about it on the various blogs. I've been told there's even a group on Facebook for all the participants. As I'm not on FB and don't plan to do so I can't verify these rumours but I think this alone tells a lot about the importance of Curt's call to the brushes for the blogging wargames community. So don't stand aside but join the fray and help to encourage us participants by comments, praise and constructive criticism.

Having finished the scope yesterday I decided to put the brushes aside, clean up the painting desk and take a shot of what I plan to do in the next three months hobby wise.

So I'll take a break from painting (well, I originally intended to take a break of at least a week) for the time remaining till the challenge starts. Later on the updates will come a bit belated here as all I paint will be displayed on Curt's blog first and only later on here on the blog. So if you want to stay up to date and see lots of fantastic painted figures by more talented painters then me than keep an eye on Curt's blog!

Fall of the western Empre 16: Saxon Scop

To be able to play Dux Britanniarum against my brother or some friends at the local club normally not too much into historical wargaming I decided to continue with my saxons for Dux.

As there are already some unarmoured guys these will form two units of warriors so there is still a unit of six warriors, two groups of six elite hearthguard, two nobles, one champion and one Lord to do.

At the moment totally useless but great to paint was this little guy I finished today:

The Great War Project #4: Beware the Snipers

There is some very strong leaning at home towards easy victories in unimportant theatres with small casualties and no real results. How on earth one can hope to beat Germany by killing Turks or Bulgars passes my comprehension. It is like a prize-fighter leaving the ring to trounce his opponent's seconds.

Brigadier General John Charteris, General Headquarters, BEF
Taken from 'The Great War: 1914-1918' by Peter Hart.

Following last weeks heavy weapon teams I now managed to get some snipers and a guy with an Anti Tank Rifle done. I don't know when I'll ever use three snipers but the models were too great not to be painted.