The Nassau project.

Finaly! My Nassau brigade for Quatre Bras is ready for action.
I've just checked my own blog, and the first battalion of this brigade was painted more then 2 years ago. Shocking it took so long! My main problem is one that many wargamers have I think: being a wargame butterfly, and shifting from one period to another game. And sometimes back again. Just check my blog and see what I've been doing since I'm blogging.
But without further delay, here are the pictures.

1st battalion, 2nd regiment of Nassau. As all other battalions, this was a large battalion, consisting of almost 900 men. So 36 figures strong.

2nd Battalion, 2nd regiment of Nassau. Also 36 figures strong.

3rd Battalion, 2nd regiment of Nassau. Another large 36 figures unit. I gave these white trousers, such as they wore earlier in Spain. There are several discussions about the trousers of this unit. Prescription was green trousers at the time of the Waterloo campaign, but it is not sure if all units got green trousers in time. So just for variety...

And finaly a picture of the complete brigade.

3 Battalions of the 2nd Nassau regiment.

2 Battalions of the 28th Orange-Nassau regiment

1 company of Orange-Nassau Volunteer Jaegers

And  including their commander, Major-General Prinz Bernard von Saxe-Weimar.

That's a total of 4 large 36 figures units, 1 standard 24 figures unit and a tiny unit of just 6 figures.
As before, all from the loveley Perry Miniatures range.

I'm currently painting a few more things that were missing, to complete the whole 2nd Netherland infantry division. So, yet more Napoleonics coming soon!
With a little luck, even before the end of this year.

The Warrior Princess (and more).

It's been a while, I have been busy with other things. Real life interevened as they say.

There has been some painting at least. For those who are awaiting more Napoleonics, you just have to wait a bit longer, almost there...

To begin with, here is the Warrior Princess, age 7.

Cute, isn't she? This figure was part of a larger lot that I bought many moons ago from a website which also had a very active forum, FUUK. They held an annual sculpting competition, and the best figures got actually produced and were up for sale. This figure was part of one of those competitions. I should have the other figures somewere hidden...

And then there is this very famous but also slightly confused wizard.

It is not always easy to be the best at your core business.

Certainly when things happen that you don't expect, or are not meant to happen. Like dead people rising from the grave! Rusty and oxydated weapons and all!

There is only one thing more terifying, and that is a Witch-King!

About to die!!!

Just don't tell him, he doesn't know it. Yet.

That's it for now. Fantasy figures made by FUUK (?), Citadel (pre-slotta era wizard), Wargames Foundry (Greek skeletons) and again Citadel/GW (Death of the With-King vignette).

Next time probably Napoleonics.

Probably.

More coming soon.

It's been a while, but I just wanted to show what I've been painting recently.
Command bases for my Napoleonic Dutch-Belgian troops. As usual all Perry Miniatures.

Prinz Bernard von Saxe-Weimar

Nassau mounted infantry officer

The "wound" markers are also ready.

Three bases, one for each upcoming battalion of the 2nd regiment. Those are being build as "large" battalions in (our) Black Powder terms, so each regiment will be 36 figures strong.
Already two finished, and currently working on the third. once this is ready, pictures here!

My Dutch-Belgian devision, started many moons ago is nearly finished now. After this regiment, I only need to paint two more guns and two brigade commanders.
Since a few more club members showed interest in Napoleonics, I started painting my own again.
On the other side, I bought quite a few new unpainted Perry's at Crisis past weekend... Another post may follow about Crisis.

As a side note, I also painted a few loose fantasy figures, which will eventualy get there own blog post.

More Aureola Rococo Knights.

I've been painting historical miniatures for a while now, so it is maybe time for a short break. A few months ago, I could finaly buy the few figures I was missing to build another two units. Many thanks to Dave from Caliverbooks, who owns Miniature Figurines (or Minifigs for short) for bringing them back into production!
I believe my Knight s of the Silver Rose army is now finished, having at least one of each of the produced miniatures.

The new recruits are a unit of spearmen.

As usual the flag is a free download, originaly from Perry Miniatures' Korean range. I painted a linear B symbol on it, to show the ancient character of these troops, as I did with all other units before.

The other unit is armed with the fearfull (and magical) double action blowpipe.

This is the only unit in the army that doesn't have a flag, I think they don't need one since they use a shooting weapon and normaly don't come into hand to hand combat. Or at least they hope so.

That's it, my fantasy army is ready for battle!
Maybe some pictures of the complete army?

I hope you like the look of the army. It was a great pleasure to paint them. I finaly have the army I dreamed of as a 15 year old! It's only that I'm now ...51.

As always, any comments welcome!

That strange word again: Thureophoroi.

Yes, I bould another unit of thureophoroi! Build I said, because this time I used a box bag of plastic Victrix miniatures. I've seen boxes of Victrix before, but the newest releases seems to come in bags. Which is a bit harder to stock. Boxes can be stacked, but this is a bit more difficult with bags full of plastic sprues without danger of damaging them if put on a too high mountain of plastic.

For more info on thureophoroi, click here or on "thureophoroi" in the labels list on the right side.

But enough rambling. On to the real thing. I've bought a bag of Victrix Numidians after seeing them on a small local wargaming event a few months ago. I don't need Numidians, or at least not currently, but after a closer second look, I thought, wait a minute. These look usefull as thureophoroi too. In this set are two different sets of heads: One, the typical Numidians, and the other a helmeted version. There are also two different shields sets added. the well known round shield used by the Numidians as we know them, and a second set of larger thureos type shields. As the figures were not expensive at all (thanks to David Thomas!), well, lets give it a try.

The result is very pleasing I think. Especially as sticking the figures together was really easy. Glue on the right side arm, glue on a shield on the left arm, and stick a head on it. I used a very basic painting scheme: prime, basic colour and wash. Even with my extremely slow painting skills, they were build and painted in less then two weeks. I can see myself buying a second set of these in the near future. And probably more Victrix plastic ancients, as they are very close in size to my existing ancient armies (mostly Foundry).
My units of thureophoroi are 18 figs strong, and since there were 24 figs in the bag, I painted the other six as "propper" Numidians.

Thureophoroi, with withe shields, as it are mostly seen or discribed in anciet sources:

The other six miniatures as real Numidians:

Battle beasts!

More then a year ago, I discovered the extensive range of ancient figures from Aventine Figures, with thanks to Mr Simon Miller from the Bigredbatcave and his rules, To the Strongest . See here for the Aventine website.
Well, I could use some more elephants I thought, so I ordered a fully armoured elephant from their range. It is a multipart beast, and I stuck it together that same day. And then it stood there, on a shelf, for many months. And then after all this time, I ordered another one, also armoured, but a different model (they do have a very large range of elephants!). That one was also build rather quickly, but there was no place next to the other on the shelf of unpainted - still to do stuff.
Ah, what the heck, lets paint them both I thought. The result is rather pleasing, I must say.
You can judge them for yourself right here:
All pics are clickable for a higher resolution, if desired.

The Roman, dangling from the grips of one of the elephants was a nice extra, which I "needed" to buy when I ordered one of them. The shield on the ground is actually a left over from a Gallic plastic set, I believe from Wargames Factory. If you watched the pictures on my former blog post, you may have noticed that the elephants were already on the table there, in one of our double Armati battles.

More troops in the picture soon.

That took some time!

I should have done this a lot earlier. I've neglected my blog way to long. Shortly after my former post, some months ago, a few unexpected things happened in my live. At that moment, I stopped having time for wargaming and/or painting. Interest was also (temporary) fading.

When I had more time again for my hobby, we (wife & me) went on a planned vacation, so again no games nor painting. I did read some books while on vacation! One of which is part of the famous "Wargaming in History" range. It was part 8, The Austro-Prussian War. Very interesting, even if not my period. The battles replayed here really got me thinking about the way I play my games, and how to improve them. At that moment I was sorry I didn't have a few miniatures and paints with me...

It was already july when I could finaly pick up a paint brush, and start to play games again.
So the next few blog posts will be about what I did do since that last post in ... april. Not necessarily in chronological order.
Games, yes! That's what it is all about isn't it?
So why not start with a few pictures of recent games?

Recently we fought two different battles, using Armati II as rules. We used the "intro" scheme, because we wanted a game with two armies against two others, and used a 4' x 8' table.
For those who don't know the rules, it is a bit like DBA, in that each base is a unit on its own, but for the rest gameplay is totaly different, and may I say: more interesting. Armies are also slightly larger, around 14 to 20 bases.

A few photo's maybe? They are made with my smart phone, so quality is a bit less. The light is also far from perfect in our local clubhouse.

 Battle line of Pyrrhus with a smaller army of Galatians as allies.

 Battle line of the Late Macedonian army (with the same points value of the other armies together).

 Cavalry action at the flank!

The two phalanxes just before they clash.

The Galatians broke through on several places, taking a flank and and ending the battle.
The counters and minidice in the photo's are used to keep track of hits being taken, fatigue and undressed (loosing discipline) state of units.

A week later, a second battle was fought, this time a slightly more unhistorical battle between a Pyrrhic army with Carthaginian allies against a Antigonid force. At the end, the Antigonids won a very narrow victory. There was lots of action, with four elephant units on the table!
But see for yourself.

Battle lines before the start of the game.

Pyrrhus elite cavalry fight it out against Antigonid cavalry.

Antigonid elephants try to break through on the opposite flank.

Another photo of elephants, both from the excellent Aventine range.

Well, I hope you like the new blogpost. Soon much more!

Pike in 15mm.

I have not been painting a lot for a while, must have had a painting block (not to be confused with block painting!)
I lost my spirit because of working on too many projects and not finishing one.
What I did get ready for battle are my 15mm pike units. I finished 72 freshly painted Leukaspides (white shields), good for two units, and repainted two more 36 figure units. Each of the six units also got their movement tray for playing To the Strongest (TtS for short), the ancients rules set by Simon Miller AKA BigRedBat (see BigRedBatCave) . I bought these rules when they were just out and after playing a few solo games, tried to get my friends playing. I must admit that since then we only played one (1!) game.
Last year at Crisis in Antwerp I also played a game set up by Simon and friends, using 15mm figures, and that got me searching for my own old 15mm figures. Most of them are well over 30 years old, but who'll notice that, when there are several hunderds of them on the battlefield?
Anyway, lots of rambling by me, but here are a few pictures.

2 units of Leukaspides (White Shields)

2 repainted units. Argyraspides on your left, Chalkaspides on your right.

And all six units.

That's it for heavy infantry for my Seleucids in 15mm.

If you've never heard of Argyraspides, Leukaspides or Chalkaspides, don't despair! It are just the names of phalanx units, named after the colour of their shields. Spides is the type of shield. So Argyraspides are the famous Silver Shields (who also existed in Alexander the Great's army and were his elite phalanx troops). Leukaspides are the White Shields and Chalkaspides are the Bronze Shields.

I plan to build movement trays for all my other 15mm units now. This might take some time as I'm now trying to clear my painting desk of half painted units and loose figures...

More Trolls!

I promised before to show pictures of more painted Trolls. Well, here they are.

They are also made by Mithril Miniatures, and as you see, they have a large range of different models of Trolls. They have even more variants then I show you here. Going from cave trolls to the smarter and much more dangerous Olog-Hai.

Here are pictures of all six I currently have:

Sorry it took so long to post, I have been sick for a whole week. The year just started and my painting schedule is already a week late.

I'm currently working on my 15mm Seleucid army again. The plan is to enlarge it to a proper To the Strongest army. I have a plan with them...