Unfinished-armies.de

Kategorie: Painting

  • Fighting Uruk-hai Multibase for WotR or Impetus

    Fighting Uruk-hai Multibase for WotR or Impetus

    Uruk-hai Multibase painted by Tankred

    Uruk-hai Multibase painted by Tankred

    Uruk-hai Multibase painted by Tankred

    Uruk-hai Multibase painted by Tankred Uruk-hai Multibase painted by Tankred

    Currently I have a lot of fun to rebase some of my oldest miniatures with War of the Ring sized Multibases. I am sure that my technic will shock some players of WotR since I cannot remove the captain nor the banner bearer. However I don´t care about that. There will be Markers for this. For sure I will be able to put some single based miniatures, Saruman for instance, on the multibase.

    Far more important for me is, that I can collect from now on little battle scenes or dioramas. I always intendet to have a collection like this. I will be able to play skirmish in future as well since I own enough LotR miniatures.

    With this third Multibase I tried to model a rock or a tiny hill on the base in order to have the great Captain model, which I really like a lot, and the brand new banner bearer on top of that hill. The banner bearer was modified by me since I prefer paper made banners, as they look more realistic. The new model from the new Uruk-hai command is absolutely stunning since the pose looks very dramatic and realistic. The banner bearer walks up to a rock, which I did not use. But it profed perfect to be used on that hill. I painted this one yesterday whereas the other models date back to the year 2003 or 2004.

    A very simple conversion was a Uruk-hai killed by an Rohan spear. I simply drilled a hole in it and glued a spear on the model. However this simple conversion made a stunning effect.

    On this multibase I tried to have some of the Uruk-hai feet in the air to depict a dynamic state of an attack. These models were sculpted so good, that their look is really great when combined in a diorama.

  • Impetus phantasticus and War of the Ring Multibases

    Impetus phantasticus and War of the Ring Multibases

    Rohan infantry multibase

    Currently I am working on Multibases for my Rohan and Isengart armies in order to have a nicer look when playing War of the Ring or Impetus Phantasticus. I always had the idea that wargaming in Middle Earth should be done with a couple of Dioramas with battle scenes. Therefore I rebased some of my oldest miniatures in Impetus style, but in the size of War of the Ring bases, which only differs by some millimetres.

    The idea of using the relatively new gaming system Impetus for gaming in Middle Earth was inspired by this article at Geek Tactica. I had two test games with the rules and I am very pleased with the fast and interesting gameplay. I really hope to have more games like this in the future, since War of the Ring has some severe problems with duells and magic which are not the most interesting aspects of wargaming for me. However I do want to play more than one systems with these miniatures.

    Rebasing off the fat GW bases to the 1 mm thin plastic card with some additional rare earth magnets opened my eyes. Yes, this is the way I want to go in the future. I am thinking of interesting scenes and situations. For sure I will combine some bases with round flat based magnet bases in order to have some of the models variable for War of the Ring.

    Huge banners are absolutely important for me. I designed a triangular variant of the well known Rohan banner elements and built my own one only using paper and glue. The banner staff was made with Perry steel lances.

    In the last picture you can see how scenic basing goes together with my variant of flat magnet basing with WotR multibases. Since you only need one of these for the formation and I rarely use more than 16 Models in a Skirmish army of the same type this will work good for me when playing LotR, WotR and Impetus.

  • Hungarian Recce troops – Csaba and Toldi platoons

    Hungarian Recce troops – Csaba and Toldi platoons

    This week I managed to finish the hungarian Recce troops. Some time ago I mentioned the paper masking airbrushing technic I used to spray the camo scheme. I am very happy with the finished troops. The tanks looks somewhat simple, but I would like to mention some special things in order to let you know how much work these tiny armoured vehicles were.

    First of all every turret was fixed with rare earth magnets to the chassis. Then I added some commanders and one soldier talking to the platoon leader while standing on the rear of the tank. I added at least one piece of stowage to each vehicle. Then I added two typical round aerials which can be seen on many photos showing the Toldi troops. I used wire in a strength which prevents future damage.

    After that I constructed my own Decals. My first attempt with white decal paper was not that precise, so I decided to let them printed out by a service which is able to print white colour, too. To do this we had to provide a pdf with two pages, one with all color information, one with the white information (in black). The Service called Druckeronkel (german page) did an excellent job to reasonable prices. I designed the correct version of the hungarian Balkenkreuz, since I did the same mistake like Battlefront´s author Wayne, who mentioned it in his excellent painting article. Unfortunately I did it wrong with my first batch of hungarian decals.

    Now with the correct version I added registration plates, hungarian coat of arms, hungarian armed forces coat of arms, a double cross insignia for the Cabas, an Eagle insignia for the hatches of the Toldis and some other details. My employee, who is in trainig of a graphical job, did the printig version of the insignia. It takes ages to produce a printable version since you need vector construction skills, knowledge on colors in print (although RGB without profiles was needed) and you should be able to save PDFs. I took us three approaches to get the file right for print. So if you consider to produce your own decals don´t blame me that you did not know that that is hard work.

    For making the fire and smoke markers I used exactly the technic introduced by Elladan in his excellent Fire and Smoke article. Since I read it some years ago I wanted to test that. Strange but true it took me really a long time to get into a pet shop, a artist´s shop, get red ink, a good yellow paint and magnets for the bases. But now it worked excellent, thank you very much Elladan for sharing your work with us!

    The fire and smoke markers will be very important for our upcoming Tactica 2011 gaming table depicting Eastern Front 1943, since many hungarian and sowjet vehicles were destroyed during that time.

  • Wargames Factory renders Orcs depicting an illustration by Angus McBride

    Wargames Factory renders Orcs depicting an illustration by Angus McBride

    Orc Design by Wargames Factory

    Denizens of the dark Wood with Title illustration by Angus McBride

    In the german Sweetwater Forums, I read that Wargames Factory will design orcs. Murphy posteted a picture and DonVoss mentioned that the design reminds him of an Angus McBride Illustration. Wargames Factory notes: „Sculpture by Tim Barry. Artwork by Diego Gisbert Llorens“. Personally I think there is one reference missing: The Illustration from ICE´s Merp Supplement cover „Denizens of the dark wood“ by Angus McBride. The illustration by Diego Gisbert Llorens looks very exact like a compositon of two of the orcs on the above cover.

    I always admired Angus McBride and a post on his death was the first Blog Post I ever made. Therefore I would like to see that artists and companies that seek inspirations to mention the origin of the inspiration. For sure Angus McBride was not the first artist to paint orcs like these, but the similarity of the design above is stunning, isn´t it?

  • Preparing for the Uryv Bridgehead

    Preparing for the Uryv Bridgehead

    Currently I am working at my Mid War Ostfront hungarian company. At the very beginning of our campaign I will just be able to field a hungarian Tank company as painting an whole infantry company simply takes a lot of time. However my first games will see 7 38t tanks, 3 Panzer IV, 3 Panzer III, 3 Stuka, 2 Nimrod, an motorised infantry platton, and a 10,5 cm artillery battery. The force consists of elements which actually were present during the attacks against the Uryv Bridgehead in 1942 the Sovjets established on the hungarian controlled banks of the river Don. Battlefront did write two good articles on the operation of the Hungarian 1st Armoured Division: Karotyak Bridgehead and The Battles For Uryv. Both give an interesting Overview. Online Ressources for this two Battles are rare, please drop a note if you have more Links for this topic to provide.

    All units I have chosen so far were used in the Uryv Bridgehead. Obviously there were a lot of Pak 36 guns which could not provide an anti tank capacity against the T-34 and KV1 tanks which were brought in the battle by the 30th tank regiment. Since I had some really bad experiences with that kind of anti tank gun, even with the Stielgranate, I do not want to paint this gun type for my Hungarians so far.

    My first army composition feels good against infantry with 10 tanks, 2 armored vehicles with high Rof, a good artillery and aircrafts. However I think my club mates will make the same decision: Let´s start with a tank company – it is less to paint. Therefore I have to think about the threat of some KV1 or T-34. The only tank which is valuable against T-34 are those 3 Panzer IV. That is not that much. The only weapon against the KV1 are my Stukas. Usually I do not like airforce choices since the performance usually is very variable. Sometimes they rock, usually they don´t especially when there are anti aircraft guns available.

    A nice inspiration is an hungarian motorised infantry company painted by flak36.88 in the Battlefront forums. (Login needed).

    To be continued

  • Finished army: My Easterlings

    Finished army: My Easterlings

    Tankred´s LotR Easterling army

    This image in bigger size.

    It´s done, finally. I painted a War of the Ring army for really a long time, now I am really fed up with Easterlings having painted the last Hero Options for this army of Middle Earth. I want to start with this family picture, later on I will write an documentation article on this army on our LotR page. However I am quite happy with the result although I cannot stand the GW plastic bases anymore. The company bases are even worse, therefore I built my own multibasing system.

    Now I can play War of the Ring. I did play twice with this army and was defeated in a really hard way. The magic bullshit with War of the Ring really drives me crazy. Moreover the heroic duell is broken, too. However in this army I have the means to use both, a third Ringwraith was recommended to me. But to be honest, I prefer to play with friends and a few magic (the gathering).

  • Hungarian Panzer IV

    Hungarian Panzer IV

    In our upcoming campaingn there is already one thing for sure: The axis has to cope with a lot of russian tanks, since most club members start their force with a tankovy battaillion. I will have a game this week against 11 KV1s. Therefore I urgently need heavy gun options. The Panzer IV for sure is one option against heavy soviet tanks.

    I decided not to fix the gun barrels to the turret permanently but to use rare earth magnets for that purpose. Since the hungarians only may chose one platoon of Panzer IV, having three tanks with 6 barrels is an excellent choice.

    I tried whitewashed camo with these, but I am not very happy with the result. To be honest I plan to paint another 3 tanks in german grey. White washed models are quite difficult if they should look realistic. Tipps are appreciated!

    Unfortunately there was a mistake in the model painting by battlefront since Wayne painted red crosses with green background in the hungarian markings. So did I. However he mentioned his mistake in his painting article. Foehammer from the Battlefront forums was so kind to tell me that detail. However the decals will see a change to green crosses in the near future. I am too picky to live with that mistake, although there may have been red crosses as well.

  • Airbrushing sprayed camoflage with paper masks

    Airbrushing sprayed camoflage with paper masks

    Usually I do not care about WIP posts. Personally I do not like WIPs when they show miniatures besides the painting technic is somewhat special. However I decided to show you my Toldis and Csabas before they are finished, because I managed to airbrush a quite good 3 color camoflage. Frank Bauer and Lemming told me in the german Sweetwater Forums when they saw my Famo trucks, that the scale of the airbrushed camo is not right.

    For sure I did understand their professional critisism, but first I had no idea how to achieve the scale. That was for the reason that I assumed to airbrush it with free hands. However on my desk chaos there were some paper register cards I bought for learning vocabularies. However when I saw them it came to my mind that with some holes which have no sharp edges I could mask perfectly the borders of the color edges. You can see this in the following pictures.

    So once more a discussion in a forum led to a better painting result. Thanks a lot for challenging me, Frank and Lemming!

  • Hungarian Artillery

    Hungarian Artillery

    Hungarian Artillery, Models by Battlefront, Painted by Tankred

    This platoon has seen a somewhat funny story: I painted it in order to support either my hungarian tank company or motorised infantry. For sure artillery is important and the german 10,5 cm guns can provide a means against russian tanks in artillery bomardments. To field a hungarian platoon means, that you have to buy two blister guns, a hungarian artillery crew blister and the towing vehicles as well. A lot of money if you consider to field alternatively mortars for the infantry company. However I always liked the sprayed hungarian 3 color camo, therefore I decided to paint the guns in that version. I found several picturs showing the german guns in this painting scheme.

    I wanted to have the teams in a dug in position since the hungarian troops were forced to cover in field works since the russians threw  massive attack after attack against them. Therefore I modeled three different base sizes. The first attempt with the artillery base was to small for the huge guns, so I designed another one. After that I made a silicone form and made some bases with resin. The result was really nice. I cut off the bases of the infantry models and glued them directly to the designed base. One nice effect on this technic is, that the base ground is less thick. For sure there will be models to be fall off in future, but I can repair this.

    The crews are mixed between germans and hungarians, the main difference is the boots of the germans. I just painted them as trousers and I think it is hard to pick them out if you want to search them.

    The strange thing on this platoon is, that within our campaign we do play with the exeptional rule „Across the Volga“ which means that you may place your artillery outside the table – you do not need to paint it…

  • Hungarian tank platoon (Harckocsizó platoon)

    Hungarian tank platoon (Harckocsizó platoon)

    38t tanks by Battlefront, painted by Tankred

    I managed to finish the core of my hungarian tank company. The core was not very hard in history. When the 1st armoured division fought at the river Don in 1942 their T-38G tanks were absolutely useless against most of the tanks the Sovjets threw at the hungarian controlled sector. The main gun was to weak to cope with T34 and for sure with KV1 tanks. The models are really tiny compared to other german Tanks, e.g. Panzer IV. However the history and the fact that this troop is underpowered against Russian standard troops are very interesting for me. I wanted to paint a force which ceased to exist in 1943 sindce the Russians simply wiped them out. In wargaming the aspect of modeling a unit the day before it was defeated is for me a very interestin one.

    I decided to add just some stowage parts since I did not find a lot of stowage on historical pictures. Moreover the models are very small, so they would look somewhat overdone if they had to carry too much. As usual I used magnets for fixing the turrets. The antennas were made of goat hair from a brush. I printed the decals and the registration plates by myself and I was very pleased how it came out.

    Hungarian T-38G tanks by Battlefront, painted by Tankred

    Panzer grey is not a favourite color for me. This time I started with a brown primer. After that I airbrushed german grey on the tanks, in a second step I highlighted with the airbrush and a lighter grey. After that I just sprayed water on the models and used Vallejo black Wash to bring the details back to visibility. A light dry brush with neutral grey was a good finish for the models.

    For the bailed out markers I used german tank drivers and one hungarian officer. The hungarian tank drivers wore leather clothes and the characteristic hungarian uniforms. Just painting the models in a different way worked excellent.

    Now I am somewhat curious which role these tanks will play in our upcoming campaign. Light tanks as the core of a company will be for sure ver y hard to play but I hope interesting and rewarding.