New Heroes/Personalities packs from Splintered Light

Some new releases from Splintered Light Miniatures are up on their site - and I have to say I can't wait to get my hands on some of these! As I prefer skirmish gaming (mostly Ganesha Games' SOBH at the time), I'm especially keen on their new personality packs for dwarves, dark elves and wood elves. If anyone still has any doubts regarding whether you can have really unique character miniatures in 15mm - take a look at these (bald, cigar-smoking dwarf? hell yeah!):

Some 20mm WW2 terrain for sale

As I'm making some 15mm buildings right now, I've decided to do some spring cleaning and get rid of 20mm ones I've been using a few years ago for playing Operation Overlord (now Operation: World War II). You can visit the post on TMP Marketplace by clicking HERE

Inspiration: Bruegelburg

It's 28mm actually, but those are one of the most interesting minis I've seen in a while. Lead Adventure just gave a great answer to the question about where to look for inspiration for 'dark early modern' (read: Warhammer) miniatures: paintings of 15th/16th century flemish masters! Click the picture below to see the entire range in their store.

Modular board on the cheap

There always was a thing that bothered me in terrain making: making the gaming board itself. 

Back when I was living at my parents' house, I had some space at the attic where I could store two 4'x4' boards for some Warlord and Necromunda games - but when I moved out, it really was no longer an option. So it became obvious that I will have to make a modular board of some sort.

The results up to now were less than pleasing - the tiles you could see in my previous posts are far from perfect: cutting the styrofoam to size (especially for the larger modules) is pain in the ass, and no matter how precise I try to be there - the pieces never fit perfectly and because every tile is ~24mm thick, they make quite a hefty pile when put on top of the other.

But it seems I came up with a solution - at least for the time being. What is it? This:

(people working at the toy stores seem to be quite suspicious about what a bearded grumpy man is doing there. You have been warned ;-) )

These are large (about 1'x1') jigsaw puzzle mats you can get at a toy shop. They are made from an EVA foam - a soft material a bit similar to rubber. A package of 8 pieces goes for about $5 - so it takes $10 to have enough pieces for a 4'x4' board and half a package to make a 15mm skirmish table (2'x2'). And if you want to make a modular hill like the GW one that could be easily fit together - it's a nice way to go too.
After getting the pieces out from the package (mind you: the smell of the foam is awful), I covered a test piece with brown elastic filler to add a bit of weight to the module and to make sure that the happy turtles (or blue foam, as I used the back of the piece) won't stare at me should the PVA and sand fall of somewhere. After that it was an usual coat of PVA and sand, followed by brown undercoat.
The module was then drybrushed earthly brown and khaki and after that I've glued on some grass and flock (taking the chance to cover the areas where I overdid the drybrush). Here's the final result along with two pieces waiting to be flocked and painted too:

(click to enlarge the picture)

Hope you guys like it. Happy gaming!

You encounter: A family of radscorpions (and some WIPs)

Once again real life is keeping me away from the hobby - with a large project at work and a deadline for conference papers coming, I had little to no time to paint this week. Nevertheless, I managed to take some pictures of what I'm currently working on - please let me know what you think! (as always, the photos are clickable)

A family of Radscorpions confronts some wasteland adventurers. The larger scorpions are Dust Scorpions from Reaper, the smaller one is from 15mm.co.uk

The 15mm Warrior Priest. His right eye obviously needs some touch-ups.

 

An Averlander with Zweihaender. The mini comes from Venexia Miniatures landsknecht command pack - and it became one of my favourite 15mm minis ever as soon as I laid my hands on it.

Etoiles Mortants at various stages of completion. As you can see, I've decided to exchange the hand-made swords for plastic bayonets from Warzone Imperial infantry, as I had a bunch of those in my bits box.

Finished Averland sergeant/hero

Warrior Priest of Sigmar in 15mm

My order from Vexilia Ltd. has arrived on Thursday - containing mainly some of the Mirliton and Venexia infantry I plan to use as my Imperial characters in Mordheim/Warmaster/WFRP. I knew that there will be some spare weapons included with the minis, but at first wasn't really sure what to do with them. 

Seriously? No. 

When you're doing an Empire army in 15mm and you get your hands on some nice warhammer bits - there's only one way to go:

(I still need to finish the hands and add a scarf around his waist - but he's about 85% complete)

Of good things that come from Denmark

OK, some of them may be more fun (like LEGO), some of them - more important (like writings of Kierkegaard), but wargaming-wise, one can hardly imagine something cooler than this:

Yes, that's a bunch of Empire army regiments marching to war - with uniforms, icons and stuff recreated as carefully as when we're talking about 'historical reenactment'.

Praise for Critical Mass Games

Last month I've decided to make my first order from Critical Mass Games - I've been oogling their combat walkers and ARC Fleet Heavy Infantry for a long time now and decided that the February sale was a good opportunity to finally place an order.
Not only were the miniatures sent the next day after the payment (which is not always the case...), not only the quality of the figures themselves is exceptional, but Craig at CMG did a splendid job to make sure that everything was right with the order.
As there was a single part missing from one of the sets, he not only was quick to apologize when I've noticed them, but in a few days I've received the missing part and a bonus sample pack (which, considering I had some doubts about how their other figures would fit in my collection, was more than welcome) with shipping paid by the guys at CMG.
I know that it's probably a standard procedure - but the speed, great contact and the will to correct any mistakes made surely deserve a mention.

WIP Sergeant

I know that devoting a third post to a single miniature can be pretty annoying (and perhaps says something about my absolute lack of modesty ;-), but - despite all the flaws that I am totally aware of - I'm just really proud of this one. So here are some work in progress shots:

On Painting Averlanders

If there exists a circle of hell intended for the wargamers, I believe one of the more common tortures involves painting yellow over black undercoat. 'Nuff said.

Finished Averland sergeant sculpt

I've finished sculpting the Averland sergeant yesterday and must say that I'm quite pleased with the results. I did some major conversions before and tried to sculpt a few minis, but this one is actually the second complete sculpt of mine (the first being my 15mm Aragorn). There are some things I'm not really happy about: mostly the blade of the sword (I have to get my hands on some brass sheets as shaving the ProCreate putty can be quite tricky), the hilt of the dagger on his back and the armor on his right leg. The facial features may also seem shallow when you look at the photos - but they came out much better IRL.

WIP Averlanders

Just some quick sculpts of Averlanders for my Mordheim/Warmaster gaming. I plan to use mostly different Landsknecht/Swiss/Burgundian miniatures as the bulk of my army - but as there are few or none militia/free company type troops available, I decided to sculpt a few myself. The dollies I use are from Splintered Light Miniatures (not available on the site, but you can order them by dropping Dave an e-mail with your order).

An old archer

Sergeant (he will be armed with sword and shield).

Fences & WIP ruined tower

Some time ago I've picked up a H0 scale railing set from Auhagen (Auhagen 42558). I bought it mostly for the bridge railings I use as ladders on my sci-fi terrain pieces (see here), but I thought that I will eventually find some use for the other two types included in the pack. I guess I was right:

Those are probably the most simple terrain pieces I've ever made - it took me less than half an hour to make the above pieces - and most of that time was spent on painting.
It gets down to the following:
1. Cut two strips of fieldstone-textured decorflex, 20cm long and 1cm wide.
2. Glue them back-to-back with a bit of PVA glue.
3. When the glue is still drying, push the plastic fencing between the two strips of Decorflex. As the fencing is slightly longer than 20cm, you may want to cut the last bar with some modelling clippers.
4. Cut a strip of 1mm plasticard or PVC, 20cm long and 1-1,2 cm wide and glue the wall to it. This will make your fences more stable and sturdy.
5. Paint to match the rest of your terrain.

I've also started to work on a bigger piece: a ruined Mordheim tower with an overstreet bridge - the pictures below show the very first stages of building the tower, but I guess they give an overall idea of where I'm going with it: