Kategorie: Unfinished Armies

Battlestar Galactica – The Civilian Fleet Part 1

When I first saw the television show „Battlestar Galactica“ I was a little child. I loved the episodes and dreamed about reenacting the adventures of Apollo and Starbuck with miniatures. A few years ago I saw the re-imagined show and was really impressed that the series got even better than its parent.
It is now my favorite television show an last year I started searching for tabletop miniatures of Battlestar Galactica.
A few month ago I found the miniatures from Ravenstar Studios and I ordered them. When they arrived I started painting these great models. For the first steps I painted some ships of the civilian fleet of the show to get a feeling for spaceship painting. Most of the paint job was drybrushing the models in few steps and painting some highlights an details. The miniatures are very small (see the coin in the picture above) and I like how it worked. The pictures are an enlargement of the real miniatures.
For information of the ship names I used the Battlestar Wiki which is a great resource for the television shows. They have a lot of iamges of the spaceships, too, so feel free about comparing my models with the real ships.

When I finish my fleet, I want to use the models for the tabletop-game „Starmada“ from Majestic Twelve Games. The game is very fast but still detailed and has a great physical movement model which is best for playing in science fiction universes like the Babylon 5 and the Battlestar Galactica universes. It has a ship build ruleset which allows to add any spaceship concept to the game. Later my friends and me want to add some playsheets for the BSG ships. In the next weeks I will write a review of the rules on this site.

Below you see a better lighted photo of the „Cloud 9″ on my gaming mat. The stand is scratch build of 2mm plasticard with a metal pin. I varied the pins in 0,5cm steps for all my ships in the fleet. There are only 2 models with the same pinlength. The base is 3.5cm long and 2cm wide. So it fills out one complete hex of the gaming mat (1.5“ hexes).

In the next week more ships of the fleet will follow.

Greetings

Glorfunzel

8. Mai 2010
Nimrod anti air tank

When collecting a force I especially like the models which are very typical and special for the force I paint. The hungarian army fielded some very individual models, one of them is the Nimrod, although it is an original swedish design built in licence in Hungary. However there the unique hungarian mixture is very interesting, therefore I startet with the Flak tank.

Having airbrushed the hungarian Stukas gave me the skills to airbrush these tiny tank models. They came out really excellent. I produced my own decals using decal printing paper and a color printer.

The camo scheme is typical hungarian with three colors. I used exactly those mentioned in the Flames of War publications considering the Eastern Front: Reflective Green,

26. Januar 2010
Teutonic Winter War

Darrell Hindley shows us in this great article a demo game made by Gripping Beast and Comitatus Miniatures at Crisis. Very athmospheric gaming table. via darrellhindley.co.uk

12. November 2009
WW1: 6. Bayerisches Sturmregiment

My gaming club is currently preparing for a participation game at the annual german wargaming convention Tactica in Hamburg next year. We are going to present a Great War gaming table depicting the so called Kaiserschlacht in 1918. We preparing a 28mm gaming table showing a trench which is manned by the Ulster Division and attacked by the 6th bavarian Sturmregiment.

I decided to paint miniatures and vignettes for this project. Therefore I am working on color schemes and dirt, blood and mud on the models which is not an easy thing to paint.

However I think I can still add more dirt, as you can see. 6 of the models are cleen, because they were the first models to paint. The next 6 models look far more dirty. I must admit that I forgot to paint dirt on the helmets….

9. November 2009
Images from Military Museum in Budapest

I would like to share some pictures I made in the Hungarian National Military Museum (Hadtörténeti Múzeum) in Budapest. I visit the museum on a regular basis since my wife is from Budapest and we visit this beautiful town often.

The museum is one of my favourite places there. The presentation is a little bit old fashioned, but you get quite a lot of information about all epoches of hungarian warfare. The second world war is looked at in four rooms. There are also quite bix exponates like a Heeresanklopfgerät PAK 36 with Stielgranate and a Schwimmwagen. Not many texts are translated, especially in the older exhibitions. However if you are in the topic this should not stop you.

Currently I start painting a Hungarian FoW army, so I brought back into my mind these pictures.

If you visit Budapest you can easily find the museum on the Castle Hill in Buda.
The Military Museum at Google Maps

4. November 2009
Fallschirmjäger Pionier Zug

Now I am very close to have a finished army, although this blog has a different name. The Fallschirmjägerpioniere will only be followed by one complete platoon and maybe another 6 flamethrower teams. For sure there is one single option more which could be added after I model a light mortar team which is the mountain gun platoon. The values were changed in North Africa so the Fallschirmjäger artillery is now an option worth painting.

However I am very pleased with the performance of the heavy mortars. Adding another light mortar team, bearing in mind that the HQ has an option for light mortar teams too, this should be enough.

Currently I was interested in having flamethrowers in the game since my club colleges often field tanks. The anti tank rating of pioneers sound very attractive, too. If I put an opel blitz truck from the various trucks I have on the table, I have a pioneer support truck, too.

In order to differenciate between my infantry platoons I decided to paint olive jump smocks. All other platoons have Luftwaffe splinter camo painted on. It came out very nice. Koch came with this blister too. In our club heroes are not very popular since the rules are somewhat exaggerated. van der Heydte for example, the lord of the living dead, is really ridiculous. Therefore I manned his team as a command team with 3 miniatures. He has the Luftwaffe Schiffchen hat and a splinter camo jump smock. Some of the models have rank insignia of Leutnant and Oberjäger, Koch himself the Oberstleutnant rank.

I have chosen an Glider assault platoon blister for my pioneers and painted some additional teams manned out of my Bitz box. Since Glider assault teams have MG42 teams, too I added one. If I don´t need them they can be treated as mere infantry teams. Usually we agree in the club to allow such minor proxy gaming.

Doing the photos it came into my mind that the drop canister is not needed for a glider assault team. However the platoon could now be fielded as an airborne pioneer platoon, too.

8. Oktober 2009
Two houses for Rebellion

Two years ago I bought from Ebob this two houses for my Rebellion gaming table. Have a look! 😉

The big cottage and some English soldiers

The main building

The tool shed

The small building

The buildings are made of some foam. The only thing you have to do is to paint it properly and flock it with some gras and foliage.

I plan to add a vegetable garden in the small yard of the big building and maybe some moss on the walls. Do you have another idea for improving the look of the buidlings?

I think it is a nice and cheap terrain piece for games in Scotland or a similar area and the paintjob is done very quick. If you like these buildings you can order them here.

Greetings

Glorfunzel

14. Januar 2009
Tunesian Village

I just made some photos of my new Tunesian Village for Flames of War and want to share them with you.

The complete village

Some small buildings

A two-storied building with a courtyard and small building with a dome

Another two-storied building

A mosque

I bought the models 2007 on the Salute Convention from Kerr & King.

Assembling the models was very easy. You only need some glue and a bit putty for some gaps. The modelkits allow you to assemble the houses in multiple different ways and you only need yome minutes to build a whole village.

I painted the houses with Vallejo Game Color.

For priming I used Earth. A basecoat was drybrushed with a 50:50 mix of Earth and Bonewhite. Highlights were added with more bonewhite in the mix and later a mix of Deadwhite and Bonewhite. The last hightlight was a very light drybrush of Deadwhite. The doors were painted with a mix of Charred Brown and Cobra Leather.

With a bit work you get a very nice Terrain Piece for your Flames of War desert gameboard.

I hope you like my new Tunesian Village.

Greetings

Glorfunzel

10. Januar 2009
The Beginning of a Fallschirmjäger Company

Playing the United Kingdom for years now I finally started to build a new axis Flames of War army. To have an ideal opponent for my british forces painted for the italian theatre I have chosen a Fallschirmjägerkompanie.

I start to show you my efforts with a heavy Fallschirmjäger MG Platoon although the first platoon to be painted was a Fallschirmjäger Platoon. Usually playing a british Motor company I just could not imagine that the germans have more than 6 teams in a platoon. So I forgot to glue and paint three teams of my first Jäger Platoon, I will show it soon.

I decided to paint all teams with a splinter camo smock and tropical trousers. Many pictures from italy show that kind of combination for italy 1943 and I think it really looks good.

I wanted to paint this army somewhat quicker than my british army. Therefore I changed the grade of detail. Moreover I wanted to paint without Blacklining. I like Blacklining on 15mm models but on the other hand I want to test how realistic an army can look if you paint in a different way.

In order to differenciate between platoons I painted little platoon markings on the bases as well as Luftwaffe rank insignia on the command teams. The markings are the same the platoon´s weapon container is painted with. Although the italian theatre saw not many jump actions I painted them since I would love to play the Death from above mission. The marking itself is taken from my imagination since I only found pictures showing parts of the weapon containers. If somebody can provide some information I would appreciate.

Finally I made some battle markers to replace the plastic markers with text on them. The „Frankfurter Schule“ i.e. the spirit of wargaming in my home town once told me that there should be no disturbing elements on the gaming table. I liked that idea from Decebalus and Tellus and finally made Models for „Gone to ground“, „Dug in“, „Moved at the double“ and „Pinned“.

Currently I work on the second Jäger Platoon and on an Marder II Platoon.

12. Juli 2007