Unfinished-armies.de

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  • Birch Ent

    Birch Ent

    Birch Ent painted by Tankred

    Birch Ent Base Detail with dead orc painted by Tankred

    Birch Ent painted by Tankred

    Birch Ent base with dead orc painted by Tankred

    Birch Ent base with Squirrel and dead tree stump painted by Tankred

    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.

  • Counter Attack: Eastern Front

    Counter Attack: Eastern Front

    Currently we play Fow with Thomas, Jonas, Martin and me in the club. Finnish and Fallschirmjäger vs. TwoTankovy Companies.

     

  • Armoured encounter: Eastern Front

    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.

  • Kronberger Fehde – Infantry with polearms from Frankfurt

    Kronberger Fehde – Infantry with polearms from Frankfurt

    Medieval Infantry with pole arms in service of Frankfurt am Main, painted by Tankred, minatures by Perry Miniatures

    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.

    Troops from medieval Frankfurt, 28mm miniatures painted by Tankred

    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!

    Frankfurt medieval infantry from the back, painted by Tankred

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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