Long promised.

 Yes, the end of the year is near. It was far from a good year for many, including me. The local wargames club has been closed for most part of the year. But let's try and make 2021 a far more better year!

I managed to take a few pictures of my long awaited 6mm Napoleonic army. The idea is that it doesn't have to be perfect painted, but it must be visible what the unit is representing. Flags help a lot with that! I have been painting on and off on this since march. All are Adler miniatures, and for this size, very detailed. All pictures are high resolution and clickable for a better view.

The above pictures show a complete Bavarian division. Two brigades of two line regiments (each of two battalions) and one light infantry regiment of a single battalion, ten battalions in total.

Each battalion is 36 figures strong, so that the complete division is 360 figures, plus mounted command of two single base brigade commanders and a divisional command of two mounted figures on one base.

Next is a cavalry division.

My four cavalry regiments are each 18 figures strong, so a total of 72 figures. I have three regiments of Cheveau-légers and one Dragoon regiment. I have yet to paint the commanding officers of brigades and division.

Off course, I have some artillery too!

That's two batteries of three guns. One foot battery and one mounted battery. The difference is hard to see on 6mm figures, white belts for foot and black belts for mounted artillery. I plan to make bases of moving artillery too, and caissons. 

Terrain is also needed to play games with the new toys. And while I have yet to start an enemy army (Russians? Austrians?) I made a start on 6m terrain also. 

For woods, I ordered a cheap (Chinese) packet trees, 100 in total. I have done some thinking with how to base them. At the end, I used some of the many left-over bases that I have from plastic 28mm Perry Miniatures boxed sets. I think they look good, but it was a lot of work, and I think I need many more...

The miniatures in front are for scale. If I order more trees, I might buy a few larger ones.

A few small villages are also needed, plus roads, rivers, ...

So I bought a few things from Total Battle Miniatures. The only one which is ready is a large impressive three part redoubt. 20cm wide, which is more then a battalion in line formation!

One of the benefits of 6mm is the little space it takes for storage. And the fact that you are able to play large battles on a regular sized table. The largest I can go at home is 4'x 8', so many possibilities!

Now I only need to start on the other army. And maybe some French?

Gauls, Celts and/or Galatians.

 After a way-to-long hiatus in posting anything new on my blog, I'm back. I have no idea if this is a one off post, or will become a regular update again. I will try to be consistant and keep to the second option, though this blog seems to be very irregular in appearance.

So, what is new and worth blogging about, apart from this nasty virus which ruins much of our wargaming fun with friends? Well newly painted miniatures then maybe?

For now I will only show a few figures that were painted for my Gallic / Celtic / Galatian army in 28mm. (I also have many of these in 15mm, see )

For last ancient games we played in our local club, we used To the Strongest. And to play it properly, each command, wing or however you want to call it (generaly 2 or 3) needs a camp. This camp takes up the space of one so called box, a table space of either 15cm x 15cm or 20cm x 20cm, depending on the scale of your battlefield. So I do need a few things like carts, camp followers, etc.

Figures mostly from Wargames Foundry, druid is Warlord.

I also have a few new warriors. Metal figures from Old Glory. Fairly old castings, but certainly good enough to fill the ranks!

As an experiment, I based them (all 12) to one larger base, instead of using my normal 3 figs a base.

Some archers. These are Warlord metal figures I bought at a second hand market.

Celtic archers skirmishing.

And ending with a few command figures for the same army. These are also Warlord, but in the new resin. I must say, I not a big fan of the resin figures, a bit too "bendy". They feel like the old Airfix figures from back then, but with a lot more detail on them.

That's it for now. 

What? No word of the long promised 6mm army? Well, not yet, but coming soon!

Buildings.

I hardly ever paint buildings or scenery for my miniature armies. Though I buy some now and then. With a bit of extra time, thanks to corona, I think this might be the moment to put some paint on at least some of them. The "victims" were two Renedra sets, Medieval Cottage 1300-1700 and Timber Outbuilding. Both are hard plastic kits, which should be glued together with your normal polythene cement. I use Tamiya (orange cap). The same I also use for my hard plastic miniatures. The kits fit together very well, and after letting the glue dry for a night, I painted it without undercoating. The usual techniques of highlighting and drybrushing were used, untill I thought they look good enough to fight over on tabletop .

Here you can see the farmhouse next to a few Perry French Napoleonic light infantry miniatures, just for size.

For the moment I'm working on something completely different. Here's a picture, so you might have an idea what it will be (or could become). It is yet another project / distraction I found somewere at the bottom of the dreaded Lead Pile.

That's it for now!

My new Saga warband.

So, I finaly finished my Norse-Gaels Saga warband. It took a while, but am very pleased with the result, they look good! I hope the pictures show that too.

On top of that, I also painted two more vikings. Just as the figures above, they are made by Footsore Miniatures (which used to be Warbanner). I enjoyed painting them a lot. Some of the shields have LBMS shield transfers, but only a few. Others are hand painted.

I still have a few more, which might be painted in the near future. Who knows, it might become a real army!

A wargames show in Belgium.

There are not a lot of yearly wargames shows in Belgium, only three I think. Yesterday, 8 february was the day for Warcon at Merelbeke, near Ghent. It is a lovely show organised by a few clubs who are based in or around Ghent. I visited this show for more then ten years in a row, and it seems to grow slowly but steady! it does not attract the storm of people you see at Crisis, which still is the largest show on continental Europe. Warcon is more the friendly "game a bit & meet old and new friends" type of show. Which does not mean there are no traders. This year there were several German and Dutch traders, next to the popular oversea (British) traders: Wargames Foundry, Dave Thomas and Warlord Games.

Me friends and myself put up a small game of To the Strongest with my old 15mm miniatures, representing our own club: HQ Gaming Club. And surprise, we actually finished the game before the end of the show, despite a few long pauzes as we talked to other gamers and scrambled the B&B! I had a few talks to other gamers who already knew the game. TtS seems to become more popular in Belgium too.

I made a small scenario, where the invading Galatians attack a small village, after they raided a supply post from the Seleucids. So the Galatians have that ancinet weapon of terror: scythed chariots! Now lets see if they know how to use it properly!

Setup

Galatians

 Seleucids

HQ Club banner

As the guys were starting their game, I took the time to walk around the show and take a few pictures. 

A fantasy block style game called Multiverse War, soon on Kickstarter

Schild en Vriend wargames club, with a 42mm toy soldier game.

Some of Phil's (Schild en Vriend) toy soldiers in action

More of Phil's figures

a quiet different view on wargaming: a spectacular Black Powder game

More of the Black Powder game

Lots of 28mm figures in this Black Powder game

A WW2 game, set up in the Belgian Ardennes I think, set up by Les Compagnies d'Ordonnance.

Lots of excellent detail in this game!

More of the same game

The other side of the venue. Lots of more games.

There was a lot more to see. For example the game set up by The Alde Garde from Venlo, the Netherlands. Unfortunately, I got into a talk with the club members, and forgot to take a few pictures afterwards. They had a 18th C game in 15mm where a battle took place in front of a well fortified town (Maastricht?) It looked very good, with over 1400 figs on the table! They used Honours of War (Osprey Games) as rules, and told it worked well with this amount of figures.

Many more games were played, I also noticed Warhammer Ancient Battles was again used. Maybe I should try to get this going again at our club also. We'll see if I can find some Chinese volunteers!

I had a great day out anyway. Grabbed a few things at the B&B (about the same amount as I sold off), and visited my favorite traders for some paint and a few extra figures. Most liked the talking to other gamers though. It gave me the mojo again to start painting again. Now, off to the painting desk!

Just one!

January past really quick! I had several other things to do, and the result is I only painted one miniature, a Troll. But is is a big one.

I have it for so long I don't remember from what company it comes. I bought it new, I remember, got it out of the package and glued it together. Then I painted it in a black basecoat and left it as is for a few years. So I finaly removed the dust and painted it.
There is one more picture. To show the size of it, I made a picture with a normal sized 28mm figure (Footsore Miniatures) next to it.

I hope february will have a few more painted models ready. My Lead Mountain is now so huge, I don't know where to start. After the second part of my Saga warband, that is, which is only 16 miniatures. I need to start working again on one of my larger projects. Either ancient Greeks/Macedonians or Napoleonics, not decided yet.

Next weekend I hope to finaly play a proper wargame also. That still did not happen in 2020!
Saturday I will put on a small demo game of To the Strongest with my old 15mm figures at Warcon, a local wargames show. Who knows I will make a few pictures to show here next time.