Unfinished-armies.de

Kategorie: Unfinished Armies

  • 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.

  • Pine, birch and spruce trees

    Pine, birch and spruce trees

    During the german wargaming convention Tactica 2011 in Hamburg we will show a Flames of war gaming table depicting an Eastern Front scenario. We want to show the area at the Don bow next to Stalingrad. Since the fight took place at the country side we focus on realistic looking trees. These here are the prototypes for our woods. The first tests using Flexibark by Green Scene and MiniNatur tree foliage made us quite happy.

    These trees were made by El Comandante and me and the creation was far quicker than we expected. Using flower wire as a basis with flexibark on top proofed to be very effective. The MiniNatur material is quite expensive but bring outstanding results if you ask me. Especially the pine foliage (called Kiefer in German) is a very effective material and you get a lot of trees out of one box. The Material for the spruce is not that effective, one box was enough for three trees.

    Custom made model birch tree

    Custom made model spruce tree

    Custom made model pine tree

    The painjob was done by priming with brown ArmyPainter Primer, after that I used a mixture consisting of Vallejo Brown Wash and Brown and Black ink. After drying I drybrushed the wood with a lighter brown. That´s it.

    I used foliage in fall colors and green and brown pine foliage which was simply applied with white glue.

  • 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.

  • Grand Fleets – The Battle of the Denmark Strait

    Grand Fleets – The Battle of the Denmark Strait

    When I bought the game Grand Fleets from Majestic Twelve Games I always wanted to replay the famous hunt for the battleship Bismarck. So I bought many World War 2 ships to replay this scenario. My ships are from Hallmark in the 1:6000 scale. I bought them from Magister Militum. On the picture above you can imagine the size of the ships compared to the 5ct coin.

    The German ships

    I was a long time uncertain how to paint the models. I studied a lot websites in the internet to find the correct camouflage pattern for the Bismarck. But the camouflage pattern was mainly grey, so I decided to paint the two ships in the pattern of the testing period in the Baltic Sea. I don’t like Swastika on my models so I tried to paint them in the style of the movie „The Great Dictator“ by Charles Chaplin.

    Later I want to replay submarine battles, so I bought a blister of German submarines, too. (This models were not involved in the hunt for the Bismarck)

    The British ships

    I like painting ships with a camouflage pattern and find it more interesting than all grey ships. So I painted the British ships in some of their camouflage patterns, too. Most patterns are from later periods of the war.

    The Game

    Grand Fleets is a very flexible game. It has rulesets for different scale sizes and you can play the game with a hex grid or with measurement tape. I decided to play the game with a measurement tape because it is much easier to find a game board: You just need blue fabric! 😉

    We replayed the Battle of the Denmark Street (Hood, Prince of Wales vs. Bismarck, Prinz Eugen). I was a bit worried because I did not know if the gameplay would work with such few models. But the game is great. You should use the option of simultaneous movement. Both players write their moves on a card and after that move the ships as written down. It is very fun to fool your opponent with an unexpected move into a very good fire position. The game mechanism allows it easy to integrate more players. We played 2 vs. 2 and had a lot of fun. After a good opening for the Bismarck, the two British ships became more than a match for the Germans. After the Bismarck has been sunk the Prinz Eugen startedt two final torpedo attacks on the Hood but the ship became itself sunk. So the two British shops won the battle but were heavily damaged. It was a great game.

    I hope you like my models. In a few weeks I will write a review of the rulebook.

    Greetings Glorfunzel

  • 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).

  • Norman Spearmen First Crusade

    Norman Spearmen First Crusade

    These Norman Spearmen are my first attempt in painting for medieval 15mm wargaming. I did already paint Perry Spearmen for WAB, but to be honest the game does not interest me enough to get motivated. The look of WAB is not interesting enough for me, because I have a very visual approach to the gaming rather than mere gaming.

    A very good wargaming friend of mine, Frank Bauer, did recommend Field of Glory a lot. Since I share a lot of attitudes toward the hobby with him and learned a lot of about wargaming from him, I bought FoG quite a time ago. Moreover I had the chance to play FoG twice. One game with Mikko in our Frankfurt am Main based gaming club, one with Frank. Both games were excellent and interesting, and maneuvering was far more important than army lists, which is very important for me.

    After the first game with Mikko I spontainously bought some 15mm Normans since Mikko has several muslim armies available. The first crusade is very fascinating for me, which can be seen at my nick name.

    In the first run Neldoreth inspired me with his Norman minatures to buy Khurasan miniatures, later I got to know Legio Heroica, an italien miniature designer at the Field of Glory Wiki, which is also a great place to surf at. The Legio Heroica models are really outstanding and they were a big fun to paint.

    The models were based with rare earth magnets in plastic card, so that the bases are not very thick. Moreover I added steel spears from another manufacturer and added some Khurasan round shields in order to have the look of early Crusader forces.

    The Flags were designed by me using a computer and printouts. They are based on a illustration in „Norman knights“ by Osprey Publishing showing flags of the famous Bayeux tapestry, which I gladly were able to see with my own eyes severel years ago.

  • Battlestar Galactica – The Battlestars

    Battlestar Galactica – The Battlestars

    In my last Blog-Post I introduced my civilian fleet. For a fan of the television series it was a big challenge for me to paint the Battlestars and Basestars.

    For the paintjob I used Vallejo Gun Metal in a 2:1 mix with different highlights from Vallejo German Grey to Vallejo Cold Grey and Vallejo Stonewall Grey.

    The models were easy to paint and I finished all 4 models on the same afternoon. I hope you like them.

    The model dimensions: Galactica 3.75″, Pegasus 4″, Basestar 5″

    As explained in my last Blog-Post the models are from Ravenstar Studios and the stands are scratch build.

    Greetings

    Glorfunzel

  • 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.

  • What I like today

    What I like today

    Outstanding Theoden (besides the strange balustrade):
    Massive Voodoo Author Der_Ben showed an really impressive Theoden. Remember that this model is true 28mm!

    Realistic futuristic weathering:
    A cool future vehicle designed by Antenociti, painted and weathered by dwartist. The 28mm vehicle looks really impressive. Weathering with pigments is not as easy as it seems to be, so look how the pro does it.

    Early war preview by Battlefront:
    The new Flames of war boxes really look excellent!

    Ebobs 1:700 Battleship model:
    Excellent tutorial on building waterline ship dioramas.