Kategorie: Fraction

Hand Gunners from Frankfurt

My club Spieltrieb Frankfurt presented a medieval Impetus game during the Hamburgian Tactica 2012. We showed a local setting where the citicens of Frankfurt fought in a feud against nearby operating robber-knights of Kronberg.

Since the Perry twins did not have images of the miniatures in their story, I did not knew, that these models were that outstanding until I saw Antipater´s incredible beautiful Handgunners . He inspired my very much to quickly buy these models and add them to my city force of Frankfurt.

The initial plan was to have another crossbow unit prepared for the event. However sometimes good ideas are born, when something is not at hand. Although I bought three times at Perry Minitures I forgot to buy enough crossbow men. Therefore I suggested our project leader Lemming to use hand gunners instead. He decided to base them as skirmishers, which is more useful for different existing and upcoming lists for the period. But even more important was to me, that he suggested to achieve the look for two elements by using wounded and dead gunners, who sadly experienced the danger of new invented weaponry. So this idea was great and I designed an exploded handgun by using a cutter with a polystyrol rod.

I tried to position the miniatures in a way which makes it possible to put them right in front of each other. This is not very important for the game since skirmishers are used to screen the more important troops, but for display it´s not bad.

The leader of the unit is one a patrician from Frankfurt. Actually I do not know the name of the family, I just saw the crest on a church during a walk through my home town and painted it. The patricians were not noble, so I think that the leader is interested in new weaponry and maybe he understood how important the weapon will be for the future.

18. März 2012
Hungarian objective, third infantry platoon and mortars

Hungarian Medical Toldi Tank; Photo Credit: Csaba B. Stenge PhD; with permission

During my research for the hungarian army project I came along a picture in the Book „Magyar Steel“ which shows a medic Toldi tank, which operated 1943 at the river Don. Since tanks for Doctors are a very unique thing as far as I know I decided to make an objective with this topic. Since the picture in the book was black and white I am not sure wether or not the tank was painted in three colour camoflage. I decided to do so and added a red cross flag. I added a bag on the turret, which was shown on the picture. The red cross was painted on the turret, although I painted it on the other side of the hatch.

Then I painted the last infantry platoon for the hungarians in order to play an infanty company without tank support. Now I can field 30 infantry stands if I want to.

When playing an infantry company fielding mortars is very essential in order to fire smoke or to pin down russian infantry. Therefore painting a mortar platoon was mandantory. My club friend Thomas added lots of crates to his russian mortars, which I liked very much and copied that for differenciation on the gaming table. Moreover it seems more realistic if mortars are surrounded by ammo boxes. There is now only three bases missing for my mid war hungarians, the last platoon will be two Bofor guns.

5. Dezember 2011
Hungarian anti-tank guns and weapons platoon

The first gaming experiences with my hungarian tank company were devastating. I had the same experience the hungarians made at the Don in real life. The 38t tanks are almost useless when facing a soviet tank company, the few german tanks are to rare (expensive pointswise) and the missing stormtrooper move is very hard since the russians have usually more than 12 tanks in a company. In five games I was far away from even achieving a draw.

The last burning ten hungarian tanks brought me back to the painting table. Having both the option to play tanks or infantry gives you more options in a campaign. Therefore I added the very important anti-tank guns. I have chosen the 7.5cm PaK97/38 option, which was recommended by my club mate thomas. These guns come with medium bases and are perfect for ambushes. The huge PAK40 with big bases is far more difficult considering the positioning of ambushes.

Once more I painted transports although they are rarely used. I decided that the 6 different transports I painted in this run are the last for the company since usually only a couple of them are used. I removed the bases from my Botond trucks because I do not like based vehicles in FoW. Hungarian vehicles can be seen on several war time pictures and I think the camo was often different. This time I decided to paint the canvas in british uniform, which is similar to the Battlefront painting scheme.

Everyone who thinks about an hungarian infantry company which is capable of fighting against the soviet tide has to think about a weapons platoon, which provides additional firepower for the combat platoons. 3 HMG teams, two anti-tank rifle teams and two light mortars should give you the option of strengthening the points where an attack is very likely.

The hungarians used the Schwarzlose MG M.07/12 and the Solothurn S-18/100 you can find pictures of both weapons in my gallery of the Military Museum in Budapest.

The weapons platoon got soviet Beutefahrzeuge. I painted two ZIS-5 Models from the special order, since I really like the models. As far as I know is the variant with two axises was stopped in production 1942, so this car was a veteran, when captured by the hungarians. I added no markings for the case that I decide to have a soviet company, too.

When playing with an infantry company in FoW, it is always useful to be able to distinguish between the different platoons since an intermixing of e.g. anti-tank guns and infantry is very useful. Therefore I added slices of an polystyrene rod wich were glued to the base. These werde painted in different colors. I started with the combat platoons in the colors of the hungarian flag, then I added colors without context. For sure painting a circle would have been enough, personally I like the 3-dimensional style. Moreover I have painted the same colors on the bottom of the base, since I put the models upside down in the model case.

26. Oktober 2011
The Feud of Kronberg: Heavy Cavalry from Frankfurt

My second Impetus element for our club’s presentation for the next Tactica wargaming show is an element showing Johann, Herrmann, Henne and Siegfried von Holzhausen, all members of an mighty patrician family with their mercenaries. The family crest shows three roses on black. I designed the banners in order to look similar than the on the crest showed in the Dome of Frankfurt.

My plan was to show the patricians on their way to the battlefield. Therefore I depicted a country road and showed the group in loose marching order. In my imagination the only good fighter in the group is the infantrist with the huge falchion walking behind the rich citicens of Frankfurt. His job is to secure that falling off the horses will not end in instant death. As far as I can imagine a patrician was not as experiencend in fighting than their opponents, the knights of Kronberg.

Good to know that the family pevailed some more centuries and wasn´t extiguished during that battle. Adding some local spice to hobby project was again much fun and I will definetly go for more crests out of the region. However I am sure that the base can be used in any other conflict in that epoche like the 100 years war.

30. August 2011
Honvéd nap – Day of the Hungarian Defence Force 2011

Magyar Huszarok

Magyar Huszarok

By chance my wife went on the castle hill in Budapest on the Honvéd nap, which can be translated as the day of the hungarian Defence Force. The event took place on the 21st of April. It was a short event with some military music, a small parade of the cavalry and infantry and some shots out of a replica cannon which is located in the narby Military Museum.

Stupid me – I did not join my wife to visit the castle hill and missed the event. But she did very well to take a lot of pictures with the camera of her sister. As an miniature painter it is very interesting to see real pictures of military of former times since we have developed a phantasy way of imagining soldiers which sometimes interferes with reality.

Especially horse eyes are an example. I often see painted horses which remind me of „My Little Pony“ Illustrations. I think it is very interesting to look at real animals and persons in order to paint more lifelike.

8. Juli 2011
Hungarian Assault Pioneer Platoon – Utász

In our Club we are going to start an Mid War FoW Campaign very soon. In order to have some valid thread to russian Tanks I painted one Platoon of Hungarian Assault Pioneers, called Utász in hungarian. I was a little bit unlucky with the decision of converting some models, since Battlefront did a platoon with modeled pioneers, too.

However now I have my very own version, which is pretty much similar to the version of Battlefront. I decided to show the Pioneers by adding german mines, barbed wire and some craters. I modeled the mines with grey stuff and made a tiny mold of it. There are two versions of the mines, a bare mine and one in a wooden carriage box. I used the box to convert the pioneer truck.

Painting was this time a little bit quicker but more precise than I did with the first infantry platoon. Currently I think the amount of work should be chosen carefully. There are a lot of 15mm based miniature painters, who are very specialised and paint an incredible quality. Chevalier de la Terre had an excellent Blogpost on inspiring FoW painters: http://cracdeschevaliers.blogspot.com/2011/04/sources-of-inspiration.html, but I must admit, that personally I paint FoW miniatures less intensive, since there are too many other miniatures to have a detailed painter eye on it e.g. 28mm.

2. Mai 2011
Birch Ent

The birch ent is my next base for my Impetus Phantasticus Rohan army. I used the plastic set by Games Workshop, which is quite nice. However the paintjobs I have seen so far on this model looked very simple an I did not like the plastic leaves. Therefore I decided to paint a special tree, which I like very much – a birch.

As a tiny detail I used a squirrel from the „Kleintierset“ by Busch, on which Massive Voodoo wrote a very nice article. The model is very tiny, the effort the pro painter Roman aka jar put in is incredible.

Moreover I used MiniNatur Birch foliage, which is the best material for tree foliage I know. The ivy is by MiniNatur, too, but I bought it in a small set distributed by Army Painter.

The tree stump was modelled by me, I made a silicone casting mold and casted it in resin. Initially the model was made for our „Kaiserschlacht“ WW1 Club project.

The axe was taken from the Gripping Beast Hirdmen Plastic Sprue, images of the sprue can be found here. I bought this box in order to have variations for both Dunlendings and Rohirrim and to have options for battlefield debris and a camp model.

The rocks are casted plaster rocks made by Rusus. These are perfect for basing models since they are flat at the bottom. I bought a whole bunch of that rocks, since it makes cool looking bases in a very fast and light way.

I primed the model white, since it is very difficult to have a smoth white color when you prime in a different way. The stone painting was done in a simplified way of Elladans way to paint stone. He uses several steps with thinned airbrush colors like brown, black, green on light primed stone models. I started with white.

During the next game I will give the modified ent profile a chance. I am curious how monsters will work in Impetus, personally I do not like the way they are integrated in War of the Ring and Lord of the Ring Strategy Battle Game.

21. April 2011
Armoured encounter: Eastern Front

We are just beginning to have a game in the club. Thomas is fighting my Hungarians. We agreed to play with our light tanks only. Thomas did attack with his heavily armed Recce on his right flank and payed a lot of blood on his tank assault on my tanks which took defensive positions behind concealing terrain.

When Thomas concentrated his fire on my Nimrod, the poor guys, who were in charge of tank defence rather than aircraft defence, he were lucky and knocked out one of two. This was quite important sice the remaining Nimrod dominated the centre.

I decided to both let the infantry and the artillery enter the game risking, that 5 tanks will not reinforce the game. Thomas was lucky when rolling for reinforcement. I did not manage to get my last platoon on the table. Thomas won using the sheer amount of russian tanks and infantry wisely whereas I could not stand the flood. I knocked out approximately 20 tanks, more than I had on the table. Eastern front is really a complete different feeling to the Africa and Italian theatre I played before.

26. März 2011
Kronberger Fehde – Infantry with polearms from Frankfurt

In our club we started recently to play Impetus, which has the very nice effect, that you can design diorama bases with your miniatures. I really love to collect that kind of army, interesting to know is, that there are guys out there, who play DBA with that kind of bases as well.

However I do like the Impetus gameplay so far, since I do enjoy games, if they are surprising at some point. If I am a little bit more experienced in Impetus, I will talk more on that. I always wanted to have a medieval army, and I urgently needed to have an excuse to paint the Perry´s Agincourt to Orleans Range.

The conflict we want to depict is the „Kronberger Fehde“ a local conflict between the City of Frankfurt and the knights of Kronberg, which had quite an impact to the decline of might of the free german cities. If you follow that article you will find a painting of the battle which took place in spring 1389.

The miniatures I used wear gambesons, chainmail and partly plate armour, since the germans still used a lot chainmail during that time. Lemming told me, that the german chainmail was of such a quality that it was still used in contrast to the french and english armies of that time.

I definetly was inspired by Antipaters excellent Impetus Bases, which also are shown in the Extra Impetus book, he made me look at that system. He supported me with detailed information on the armour and clothing of that time and his literature list was an excellent starting point. Thanks again for that, Antipater!

I modified some of the miniatures, since the Perrys depicted some of them as suffering from dysentery and therefore leaving their trousers down the heel, always prepared to shit. That was not exactly my expectation for the force of Frankfurt, although they failed in the battle due to loss of morale, as far as I know. El Comandante therefore will show some of them with their trowsers down.

The rock was made by Rusus, it´s made from Ceramofix and is an phantastic material, since it looks like real stone, but is absolutely flat on the bottom. I used a very similar painting technic as told by Elladan using airbrush paints to ink down a white rock.

The banner was inspired by the medieval painting depicting the battle of Kronberg. It shows the Eagle of the Holy Roman Empire on red. I used an illustration from Wikipedia to create the banner. The printed paper was glued and afterwards I painted and highlighted the red. Since I want to use a lot of banners, I prefered to use the printed banner technic. For sure I will paint some Knights banners by hand, but that motive is very detailed.

24. März 2011
Fighting Uruk-hai Multibase for WotR or Impetus

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.

16. Dezember 2010