Donnington Louis XIV Infantry

Today, for your delight and delectation, we present a series of photos of a Louis XIV era infantry unit using Donnington figures, in the final stages of being painted and based:

This is the unit just block-painted. I've not really got a particular army to use them in as I have a very full Essex Miniatures Louis XIV army, but I just liked these figures. Potentially they might be some sort of Jacobite unit in an otherwise Scottish/Irish army?

This is after adding the coat of Army Painter Strong Tone (the middle one in the range)

The figures are from Donnington's WEC ranges, sold as singles.

I tend to paint a base coat of a patch of dark brown underneath the apostles, and then almost drybrush them on in a linen colour. With the Army Painter as well they can really "pop" out quite nicely.

That rogue 28mm priest keeps sneaking into the shot on the far right, doesn't he..?

This appears to be after they have been matt varnished, this  time with a brushed-on Testors Dullcote. With just one unit on the production line, spraying is a bit of a waste so the brushed-on Testors is a better option

Now with the base colour painted in. I am half-tempted to put an ink wash over the rather bland bases, however this would mean reverse engineering an awful lot of figures so perhaps not... Anyway, they are now starting to look almost finished.

And this is with static grass added

A nice colourful unit, with a reasonable variety of figures and poses.

And a final close up of the shooters.

20mm Modern Figures

Not really Easter-themed in any way, shape or form, but here are some pics of the most recent paint jobs and a game of Ambush Alley Force on Force (the "The Alamo" scenario from the Road to Baghdad book) to enjoy

I don't play this game anywhere near half as much as I should, especially now we have managed to get the rules into an almost intelligible shape at the club... but buying the figures sure is addictive! 

QR Miniatures Pancerni

Just realised that I'd not posted any pictures of the Pancerni after putting up some carbine-armed horse from QR of Poland.

Well, here they are (click on any photo for a larger version)

I added the rather oversized lance myself - I think the figures actually come with swords and stuff, but I seem to have mislaid some of the hands (which are separate)

Nice to see someone actually shooting a carbine from horseback

This shows them next to Old Glory Pancerni. They are a little less bulky in these shots, but on the table the difference is really not noticeable at all.

VEPA Figures added to the 20mm Moderns Directory

I've just been contacted by a relatively new company, VEPA Figures, who do a small and growing range of 20mm Moderns - so their website has now been added to the 20mm Moderns Directory on this site.

That means you can also go to the Directory and rate their figures on a 1-5 scale, and compare them with the other 18 (yes!) metal figure ranges listed there.

French Italian Wars Match Reports

A classic of the Renaissance era, as a French Italian Wars army takes on Ming Chinese, Scots, Caroline Imperialists and finally the Ottoman Turks in an early period FoGR competition held at Usk in January 2014,

Thrill and be amazed at what is rather embarrassingly somewhere north of 8,000 words of rather rambling prose and poorly thought out analysis all stitched together with a smattering of overly-flowery descriptive phrases plucked from the depths of dictionary corner. 

But at least some of the pictures are nice, and there isn't as much foreign-language-based swearing as in some of the recent reports either. 

Aquilifer added to the 15mm Renaissance Manufacturers listing

Italian manufacturer Aquilifer have now been added to the 15mm Renaissance listing, with their range of 12 Scottish and Highlander figure packs.

They now have their own website, which has also been added to their listing in the Ancients 15mm directory

Tiger Tanks!

Remember those two BergPanzer Tiger 1's that came "free" with the collectable magazines which I got in order to get 2 Strykers for Force on Force? Well, a bit of spraying and painting later, and adding in a couple of barrels and some filler and here they are:

Here is the front turret plate, rather poorly "drilled" out by removing the plate, drilling a small hole in the middle of the (blank) plate and widening it out by spinning a craft knife round in the hole. This allows the metal gun barrel I bought to be glued into the hole.

The tracks - an Airfix-style loop of black soft rubber - are removed, which ended up breaking the drive and guide sprockets at each end of the wheel assembly, needing them to be glued back on. This is a pain, but you need the tracks off to spray them in Dunkelgelb, or to be precise, Army Painter Desert Yellow.

The nude Tigers are now ready for spraying and painting. I really should have filled the gap in the front plate, but I didn't get round to it, sorry...

The two finished articles, with the base yellow, the green and the brown all done in paints from Army Painter (Leather Brown, Desert Yellow and Army Green).  The green looks a little light to me, but German WW2 tank cammo was a real lottery with different paint batches, field-applied paints and different mixers (from water to diesel), so this is probably as accurate as anything else...

Washed in a diuted mixture of a few brown paints and distilled water, then drybrushed

The details of cables and the like are picked out in separate paint colours. I did them deliberately to stand out more, to help highlight the model

The numbers are 15mm scale FOW numerals from the Afrika Corps set of decals that came with the GREIF / Rommel vehicle. Not a bad job for a "free" model I reckon...

PSC 15mm British Infantry

I've been painting some of these chaps, and very nice they are too. This time it's an experiment in painting on the sprue. The base colour is an undercoat of Khaki spray from Halfords, which turned out very pale, so I added two washes of Windsor and Newton Peat Brown ink, and then did the straps in Faded Khaki from Coat d'Arms. 

Here they are with a final coat of ArmyPainter Strong Tone, prior to matt varnishing

The bases need some grass to hide the figures bases I think

Plastic Soldier Company US infantry - finished !

The full walk-through and pictures of the finished troops now posted on the site;

Military Vehicles Magazine - finally got one !

I've been trying to find a newsagent with copies of the first few issues of the "partwork" magazine Military Vehicles for the last few weeks, and finally wandered into a branch of WH Smiths to see the 3rd issue on sale for £5.99

The magazine itself is of course a bit pants - Wikipedia and 2 minutes on Google could come up with more infor on the Stryker and Bergpanzer Tiger than the magazine contains, but getting two 1/72nd models for £5.99 can't be sniffed at, can it?

The main reason for buying it was to pick up a couple of Strykers for use in Force on Force, which I'll work on soon by weathering the rather shiny plastic kit seen here - but that leaves me with the challenge of what to do with two WW2 German armoured recovery vehicles of a type which may well not even have existed...

Having had a quick look at the vehicle itself, its soon obvious that the model is essentially a bog-standard Tiger I with the gun taken off and a winch and hook arrangement grafted onto what is otherwise a standard model - even the gun mantlet is still in place. It will need a bit of filling anyway - as you can see from this photo it may have been modelled on the Airfix Tiger I, as the hull front doesn't really join up with the underside of this one either!

So, rather than either waste the kits, or spend weeks trying to devise a credible scenario for Chain of Command in which the Germans are needing to rescue one recovery vehicle with another, I had a much simpler idea. Buy a couple of barrels and do a bit of quick conversion to turn the recovery vehicles into real ones! Luckily eBay has a couple of sellers of 1/72nd Tiger Barrels - these are machined metal barrels which modellers use to upgrade plastic kits to more accurate and robust versions (especially with the smoke diffuser end thingy on the barrel)

If you've picked up one of these magazines, maybe this is an idea to convert the Bergpanzer to a real Tiger rather than flood eBay with them! The barrels are onsale in the UK from Story Models and in the US from Small Military Models and More

FoGR Army Lists from Usk

Lists of the French Italian Wars, Ming Chinese, Scots, Caroline Imperialists and Ottomans (morphed from the FoG:AM Ottoman army) as seen at Godendag 2014 this weekend in Usk now all posted on the FoGR Wiki

• French Italian Wars, 
• Ming Chinese
• Scots, 
• Caroline Imperialists 
• Ottomans

Match reports to follow...

Japanese WW2 Snipers

I've added three snipers to my Japanese PBI army. These are Peter Pig figures, and are bedecked with various items of jungle foliage.

They are a little late for my PBI Japanese battle reports from last year...

 This isn't the most wordy blog post ever, but hey, I just finished them and wanted to share them with you all..

The pack has three variants in it, standing, kneeling and prone

They are painted in an Army Painter Leather Brown undercoat, with Coat d'Arms Japanese Uniform over the top, all topped off with Army Painter Strong Tone.

The Heroics & Ros Rapier Unit - assembled

Having needed a Rapier battery for some time to round out my Modern British force for Cold War Commander, I finally got round to buying a Heroics & Ros Rapier unit at Warfare 2013. This had sat in my to-do pile for some time as I puzzled how to put it together....

... and so eventually I asked for help from the nice people on the BKC Forum. Clearly several other people have been through the same thought process, and so I posted some instructions on this site to help explain how to put it together. Here is the outcome: