And in the second week of quarantine....

I painted....

 Alexander III Megas, and two of his companions, 28mm Foundry.

 Some 15mm Warring States infantry, from Museum Miniatures.

 A couple of weeks ago I had painted two bases of infantry in armor. Group picture here!

 A logistic train! Ancient style, 15mm. Mules are from Museum the New Z sculpts, people from Essex.

 The Mules had been painted before the quarantine, and three also based. But the last one needed some two legged friends.

 1/300 Russian T-80U from H&R. Repaints of old stuff.

 USS Lexington and USS Ranger, and 4 Fubuki class destroyers. All 1/3000 from Navwar. Now the US Fleet pack is done, the IJN pack almost. Carrier decks are from Flight Deck Decals, and they crossed the Atlantic through the whole quarantine. 

 And the second USMC Squad. 28mm Warlord plastic. This ends the whole box!

Another week has passed, and I am still alive and kicking.

And in the first week of quarantine...

And in the first week of quarantine I painted...

A 28mm USMC squad, from Warlord Games. They are their plastic marines and they are very good, I liked building and painting them.

 Still from warlord...

 I finished their SPQR/Rome character box. Titus Pullo, Lucius Vorenus, Caesear, Gneus Pompeius Magnus, Marcus Antonius, et Lucius Licinius Crassus. Actually only Caesar and Anthony have been done in the week... but group pictures turned up nice!

 Still in Rome...

 Agema miniatures republican Romans. One sprue, thus two hastati, two principes, one Triarius. Shield transfers from Battle Flag, not as good as LBMS...

And now let's change scale...

6mm Cold War, a soviet naval infantry tank battalion for FFT/MSH with an attached rifle company.  All from Heroic and Ros. The BTR-70 are traditional sculpts, bought before the change in management, and I have to say that even older sculpts now look crisper.  They were leftover I had and received a repaint to put them in line with my current productions. The T-55AM2 are quite recent and accordingly impressive.

And then some ships... 1/3000 Navwar (except the Kaga, Skytrex). They are for a friend, but I cannot mail anything until the end of the quarantine.

I also did some other odds and sods, but for the first week of Quarantine in pictures... it is enough! (at the start of the week, before the announcement of the restrictive measures I finished that little group of Phalangites too!) 

See you again soon, and next Monday another update!

Success---ors!

Still alive,

and this time it is not an euphemism, like it or not the whole country is in quarantine and people is worried. But if you are locked at home and kicking, painting is a good way to employ your energies, especially when your lead mountain is enormous. I have launche a determined attack to my successors lead pile. Last year I basically painted all my old Navigator Miniatures (but I found some odds and ends recently...) and now I am attacking the additions to that army, mainly some Selecucid themed 1st Corps miniatures.

1st Corps successor range is both lovely and exhaustive. They are also on the smallish side of 28mm so they fit well with navigator. I had basically a 12 men group of Seleucid Pikemen and 4 Seleucid companions.  Here are the pikemen:

LBMS shield transfer from the 1st Corps range.

They are very nice figures, the casts are very crisp,  with almost no visible flash. The sculpts themselves are very nice, and in a bag of 8 line pikemen you have plenty of variation.  I have gone for a non-uniform look for them. They are not a formed permanent unit, but the standard recalled military settlers.  Probably I will add more pikemen to this group.  What I will use them for?

Obviously for a Seleucid force... as game wise, SPQR/Clash of Spear for Skirmish, and L'Art De La Guerre for bigger battles.  Now I know that some annoying people yell when you say pikemen and skirmish, but despite their inarticulate black and white vision of gaming (yes I am referring to that idiot on the Lead Adventure forum that basically spam other people threads complaining about this... and then even say he does not play ancients... so mr. Village Idiot?), no one really defined skirmish as type of engagement or size...

For me skirmish rulesets are not by default about skirmishes, but are played at a lower level that full battle games (another pet peeve... stop calling a battle game 'strategy' it is tactical... in the ancient world campaigns were strategic... but well this is a thing coming from stammering fantasy ad sci-fi game designers and players...). Being played a lower level nothing stops us to just focus on a limited area of a larger engagement. You can have part of a phalanx advancing on the table as a part of a scenario and still play with what people calls skirmish rules. It is like when you play a platoon level game set during the battle of Kursk (as in the excellent TFL pint sized campaigns for Chain of Command).  Yet, for some strange reasons some gamer seems completely unaware of telescoping approach to engagements... but let's be honest... some so called wargamers appears to have been produced without a brain... and this is not just happening in hobby wargames... professional wargaming is filled to the brim with them! (Any reference to that scam of KCL wargaming network and its crew of imposters is purely intentional...)

Anyway snarky comments aside, enjoy these pikemen!

US Navy Cruisers

I am not dead,

news of my departure are a bit premature... despite having seen my dentist too much recently... that and a general bout of sourness toward online wargame communities. I complained about facebook, but even fora are starting to look stale, annoying, and basically pointless. Being still alive, I am also able to show something here. Recently I found myself painting several US Navy ships I have... no particular reason, just wanted to paint some.  They are Navwar 1/3000 metal model bought 3 years ago.

Vincennes, Astoria, Helena, Boise. I am working on US ships deployed in the South Pacific Area in 1942.  The Astoria... is in the wrong camouflage. Should have been in Measure 22, but ended up in Measure 12Mod. Why? I was sure to be painting the Quincy! And the base was already labelled and 'watered'... even geniuses make mistakes, especially when they are still relying from medicines...

I think I am finally satisfied with my water technique.

As for the miniatures themselves... I like Navwar models. They are not detailed as the 1/3000 plastic ones from Fujimi, or some in FUD from shapeways, but the former are limited to Japanese ships for the moment, the latter.. well Shapeways had messed so much with prices that now only smaller scales are reasonably priced, and only if the designer prepare them in groups. Navwar are not bad at all, they have detail, and, the price is still reasonable. So they are a win-win combination for my USN force.

Tank Destroyer!

Just eye candy for this post, no history. I finally got the crew for my Rubicon M36. Painted them and fit them in the turret.

Romans!

Okay, a couple of quick posts to show my reasonably recent work.

First a small 12 men unit of Ceasarian Roman legionaries from Warlord. I bought them sprue by sprue in one of their sprues sale. Shields are LBMS.  I like them, and painting them was quite nice, but the annoying part was for the gladius armed ones removing the gladiuses (gladia, if my latin has not gone completely downstair...) from the scabbards. Now it was not that difficutl (advantage of plastic, easy to cut!) but when the manufacturer as pila and gladia armed ones on different sprues (and sold separately...)  you expect the the bodies are different. Instead only the arms are...

Anyway here are the chaps ready for combat:

I like the shields, I had to get used to a decent method to apply the LBMS transfer on the big spine shields but after a couple of different approaches I found the easy going one... I trimmed the whole shape carefully, did the hole for the boss, and then applied the transfer. Then when it was dried, I used microsol solution to soften it. It was much better than going with the two halves separately.  Then usual retouching with a fine brush. 

It is Battles time, again

Well,

the new issue if Battles, issue #13 to be exact, is coming next month. Game will be Solferino 1859 (from Vae Victis) in a new edition (oh well it is the trend of the day, second editions). Articles will be as usual aplenty, two of them mine. Here is a quick run down of the components provided by the publisher:

• Reviews: Montelimar: The Anvil Of Fate, Holland'44, Helsinki 1918, Mike Force, Radetzky's March, Albuera 1811, At Any Cost: Metz 1870, The Battle Of Blenheim 1704, '65, D-Day At Iwo Jima, Nemesis, Fortress Sevastopol...

• Back to: Empire Of The Sun, War Of The Suns...

• History: A Memory Of Many Solferinos

• Most Wanted: The designers talk about their coming games, Root...

• General articles by Charles Vasey, Elias Nordling, Tom Russel, Philip Sabin...And more... 132 pages!

IT sounds quite packed. I am looking forward to Metz (now that it is more difficult to get hold of it, I am getting interested!), and Blenheim. Not very impressed by the word 'root'... 

I know Battles has never been published with a steady schedule, but the reviews are usually (if we except the crap David Hughes writes...) top notch, on average better than Vae Victis' (the other French wargaming magazine) average. 

This is not to say that Vae Victis is bad, or that their reviews are bad, just that I found Battles one usually deeper.