Kategorie: Miniature Companies

Transylvanian Task Force

I am painting since more than two years on my transylvanian force for By Fire and Sword. In the meantime I have enough painted troops to play task force games. I had only two games until now, but these were really fun. As you already might have learned from me I have a faible for Hungarian topics and for forces, which went into really deep trouble, as did the forces of I. Rákóczi György.

I am really happy with my choice, since the transylvanians historically met the Osman Empire, Sweden, Polish-Lithuanian Commenwealth, Holy Roman Empire, Cossacks and many more on the battlefields of the 17th century. In the following I will show you my troops in pictures by unit.

Household cavalry or Enlisted lancers

I will start with the best troops of the Transylvanians. The lancers were recruited among the noblemen of the country or their fellow bannermen. In the game you can field them as household cavalry which are elite cavalry, or as enlisted lancers. If you field these models as enlisted lancers, they do not have the elite cavalry rule and hence must move in close order. The lances and estocs are powerful equipment and make these troops very valuable. I painted two units so far, a third one is in the making.

Mounted Haiduk Section

The Haiduk (or Hungarian Hajdúk) were recruited at the borders of Transylvania and usually consisted of very rough people. In BF&S they have the rules Dragoons, Robbers and Skirmishers which describes this unit pretty well. I based the Haiduk for v1 of the rules, the recommendation for the upcoming v2 seems to be to base Dragoons on cavalry bases. I like the idea. Interestingly the Haiduks can be picked for the Vanguard troops, which is a very interesting choice for task force games.

Kurtany Squadron

The Kurtany depict steppe riders in transylvanian service, they are supposed to be of Wallachian or Moldavian origin. This option is also interesting for your Vanguard choice, since the riders can shoot the bow, they can fire a massive wall of arrows or they can engage in combat, at least once. Personally I find them difficult to manage, since you need to be able to change their order at a specific time. Im my collection I have models from Wargamer and from Totentanz miniatures, which are OOP.

Light Household cavalry

The light household cavalry is passionately hated by your opponents in v1 of By Fire and Sword. These troops can shoot from horseback with arkebuses and, when given a defence order, they can disengage from a charge. The provide hence a really interesting option to cover your flanks or fight down an opponent which tries to charge more important parts of your battle line. I painted them as the green light cavalry of Rákóczy György II.

Mounted Szekely Squadron

The Szekely provided one of the biggest ethnical group within Transylvania. Their origins are not entirely clear, during that time they spoke a hungarian dialect. In the game you can field them as dragoons which adds again towards the mobility of the transylvanian forces.

Seimeni Sqadron

The Seimeni depict Moldavian troops in transylvanian service. This is one of the few solid infantry choices you have as a transylvanian player, since they come with good quality firearms. The downside is a bunch of special rules like robbers, insubordinate et cetera, which let´s you suffer for having an actual advantage. Just kidding. If you field a household task force, you have better infantry options.

Commanders

So far I have three command bases in my force, the box came with very nice choices for officers and musicians and I could get my hands on the special miniature of Rákóczi György II (in the middle).

Artillery, camp followers and wagons

The transylvanian range also got specific sets for light and heavy artillery and two models of dancing camp followers. The wagons are general purpose but nevertheless very nice models.

Gaming Markers

By Fire and Sword comes with nicely designed gaming markers, I painted both sets for the transylvanians. Also I created some markers for orders, since I prefer to have these on the table top.

Conclusion

If you ever consider to start with Transylvanians, I would advise you to start with painting lancers and comitatus cavalry. The latter is still wip on my desk and I kind of regret that. After that you should pick Hajduks for your Vanguard, Seimeni for your core and later on some light options like light household or Kurtany. The Skirmish box is a good start although the light cavalry is not the best choice for small games, where you need to be at two places to win a game. With Transylvanians you usually have the better reconnaisance and can pick disadvantages for your opponent. Also it is the perfect army if you like to move a lot and if you prefer to pick battles at places you want. For sure, this army can´t stand on the ground for long under fire and needs to take advantage of everything at hand.

24. Oktober 2022
Azande Warriors for Congo

A while ago Fréderic Machu did invite me and some friends to do some minature photo shooting for his upcoming rulebook Congo. Tilman was so kind to recommend us to Fred, since he knew about our Darkest Africa Campaign a while ago. So we did some pictures for the rulebook in two sessions with our friends with Africa miniatures. It was really a great time and we were very happy to see most of the pictures in the wonderful rulebook.

Personally the rule book really hooked me and I am preparing my own African Kingdom column with the wonderful miniatures by Wargames Foundry.

Here you see a quick shot of my first models, which are my first test for dark skin and african soil and vegetation. I think there is still some more color expression possible, but I will try to improve that with the next models.

The shields are painted on both sides, an important detail I luckily read on Dakka Dakka.

So the first Warriors were really fun, the shield designs were inspired by real Azande shields. Since this is roughly 20% of a full column I am pretty sure that we can play soon.

30. September 2016
Pilgrims of the first Crusade

With the publication of SAGA Crescent & Cross plans erose to beef up my Norman SAGA armie with some Crusader elements. First addition are the pilgrims. I have chosen to paint armed and umarmed pilgrims and some models from other blisters of the Perry Crusader range. It was important to me to depict them as strange group of people with various backgrounds including some, who own at least a shield and a spear and some who just carry a sleeping bag or some wealthier guys who actually want to see Jerusalem. All should look somewhat fanatic as they were.

29. Oktober 2014
Bavarian MG 08

Boys, it has been a really long time since the last post. Actually has to do something with the little fact that 2 little girls are living with us now. My twin daughters are 10 months old and I am kind of busy since their birth. However here is a paintjob I did for the 100 year anniversary of the start of the Great War. We decided in our club to reactivate our trench gaming table and to learn how to play „Through the Mood and the Blood“ by ToFatLardies Gaming Club. We are not sure if this will be the system of our choice, but it is a start.

We already had one game but we made plenty of mistakes so it is to early to give any comments on the system. Here is what I have painted.

The MG 08 is a model by Great War Miniatures I painted them as a late war unit since the machine gun is painted with camo. The helmets should have the same pattern but I decided to go with grey ones, since this would look to busy. Sometimes I make decisions based on design.

20. Mai 2014
World War 1 picture background

Way back our club Spieltrieb Frankfurt presented a WW1 game on the german Wargamingshow Tactica. I painted some additional models since we plan to play „Through the mud and the blood“ by too fat Lardies. Once I painted the new models I was tired about my green background which was not appropriate for the historical background of the late war models.

Therefore I created four elements for picturing my models: A background print, which is a colored version of an historical image, a hill segment with barbed wire, a trench section with a fire step and a wall section with sandbags on top.

The first photo shooting was quite good. The elements profed to be quite variable, it is possible to use them in different angles and combinations.

The trench raiders rally before the assault.

The Stormtroopers march to their assault perimeter.

The Stormtroopers are assaulting.

The aftermarth, medics and wounded.

19. Oktober 2013
The Hobbit – Goblins

After I painted my first Goblin from the Goblin King Box by GW, Finarfin showed his colorful versions of the Goblins. This was an eye opener for me. Before that point I headed for darker and dirtier versions than those which could be seen in the movie. Personally I did not like the Games Workshop paint job as I found them to clean and to light. Finarfin showed the quality of the miniature design by simply adding Orc colors – and I mean Tolkien orc colors.

These four version were painted by me recently because Glorfunzel and me played a game of LotR SAGA with lists from Frank Becker. This is really a fun to play and so those miniatures came again in my mind.

4. Juli 2013
Spieltrieb Feud – Heavy Cavalry First Element

This is my first Impetus element for our upcoming club campaign game for the german feudal medieval era. I have chosen the outstanding Legio Heroica miniatures. Much inspiration for the whole project came from Antipater´s Konradin army. I am very happy that my gaming club Spieltrieb Frankfurt decided to play Impetus in 15mm on a regular basis in order to have another common gaming system available to most members. FoW is still our basis, but we wanted to add more variety and since we have had much fun with Impetus in 28mm, we decided to learn more about the game in detail within a club campaign. This usually leads to more skillful players.

I have chosen an army which represents the forces fighting for the Abbey of Fulda in the 13th century. The town I was born in belonged to the Abbey in Fulda. They tried to get more power and land during that time and hence fought a lot. The knighs represent the Knights of Riedesel zu Eisenbach and the Hutten. This family has nothing to do with Jabba, but mabe the name derived from that family. The Hutten took care of the salt mines of the Abbey of Fulda.

The idea of having 3 knights or seargants with the same colors was taken from twreuter a club friend of mine who already planned his army including all colors and coat of arms of his troops. I liked his plan a lot and copied the idea. What I like a lot in 28mm to have an entire base themed for a specific troop. They get character during the game and you know automatically what they achieved and where they failed. In 15mm the amount of miniatures is higher but I hope to have a colorful army with many bananers too. So this is the approach and we will see how this works.

All lances are again made from plastic broom bristles, the banners are computer printed and painted over. I included 4 rare earth magnets in the flat hand made plastic card base so that I can transport them in a metal box or my magnetic transport cases. Again I am a supporter of very flat 1mm bases, which I sand down at the edges. They are still a little bit flexible which works fine with the Vallojo Acrylic Sand paste I use for basing in addition with some sand.

9. Mai 2013
Hartmut von Kronberg

This unit was painted for our Club´s presentation during Tactica 2013. It depicts the german knight Hartmut von Kronberg who earned money with robbery in the Area of Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt. The basing is again for Impetus, Miniatures are designed by Perry Miniatures.

The lances are flexible and were hand made by me. All banners were printed out and painted over.

The tent was designed by me, I used various materials to design the master. This is actually a copy made with dental plaster. I have made a few more which showed the siege area on the gaming table.

7. April 2013
Container and Boxes for SciFi

During Tactica 2013 (see my Tactica image gallery on our club page here) I bought some very nice boxes and a container from Pardulon Models. For years I searched a reason for buying some of this great stuff but I lacked a gaming system which fitted. Pardulon provides models for Fantasy in WH style, for post apocalyptic games, for modern settings and for SciFi settings. None of them are played right now. However I started to play the RPG Shadowrun and decided to paint some obstacles for our tactical paper board, since we often play on maps. The plan is to have one small peace of scenery available for every gaming session, which rarely occur. For sure having some scenerey for Infinity is also good, since our friends from Tabletop Club Rhein Main e.V. want to show us the game.

The model itself was a fun to paint. I airbrushed the model on a black priming with white spraying from high noon sun position. Adding red with the airbrush left much of that structure. A tipp which was told me by Glorfunzel. I took me almost 20 years to get to know the basics of airbrushing…

I used the sponge technic to add damages and added rust pigments. A last finish with smoke from vallejo and the black ink from GW added oily spots and dirt.

The logo shows the fictional Shadowrun Corporation SAEDERKRUPP which operates in the story in the area which used to be germany. Since we play in that area, this was the first choice.

28. März 2013
Hungarian Bofors, Hetzer and Field Kitchen

Actually this is one of the first finished armies on unfinished armies. The last two units I wanted to paint are the hungarian Bofors and a second objective.

After collecting hungarians for now three years I finished my mid war hungarians with the core troops for a Lorried Infantry company and Tank company.

The hungarian Bofors for mid war need to get an head swap with the german or hungarian heads available from Battlefront. Meanwhile there are Bofor Anti Air Emplacements available, which have special rules for late war. Painting these models is very time intensive, since the guns have many peaces, and I painted ammo boxes, crews, gun carriages and guns separately.

The hungarian Bofors seemed to be used without the gun shields. Battlefront wrote, that there were some shields which looked different from the british versions coming with the miniatures. In Flames of War the two guns with the command team are available for 50 points, which is very attractive from a army composition point of view.

For the Bofors I painted a present from Ekimdj, who designed this excellent emplacements or dug in markers for FoW. They were a fun to paint and show oil barrels, wooden boxes and sand backs with a very realistic look. I need to get more of them, since they add a lot of flavour to the scenery.

When playing hungarians it´s very essential to dig in to cope with the overwhelming sovjet mass. Hence it´s very good to have markers for this special hungarian skill available. Hungarians may repeat their dig in roll.

Another detail modeled by Ekimdj are the three oil barrels with the camo sheet on them. I painted them in the typical hungarian camo style.

For a very long time I planned a hungarian field kitchen as my second objective for playing FoW. I wanted this because in german field kitchens are called Gulaschkanone which literally means Goulash cannon. Although the famous goulash soup is a national dish in hungary but the phrase Gulaschkanone is not used. I couldn´t resist and had to build this model by modifying the horse cart model by battlefront. I added a chimney, which could be folded down and some round devices on my scratch built cart construction.

The original battlefront cart can be seen on the right. It is covered with a tarpaulin in hungarian three colour camouflage.

Since my mid war collection for infantry and tank company is finished, I painted some models, which are suitable for late war. I always liked the german Hetzer from a design perspective and urgently wanted a unit of them. Since mid war is done, this is the first late war model in my collection. The king is dead, long live the king.

21. Oktober 2012