Hobby Update September

 The end of the month is upon us. I thought I would update the latest in my hobby endeavors. Have not been gaming at all really. We had our SAGA summer league ending melee at the beginning of the month, but I have not gamed since, too busy getting prepped for vacation. Here are a few shots of the game. 

But, I have been getting some of the basing backlog done so here we go!

First up are some Pz 38T and a Marder. These were built from the Plastic Soldier Company kit. You get three models, and I figured two 38Ts would be good for a games such as Chain of Command. And well, I like Marders so I had to get one in. 

Then it was on to Greeks!

These are 20mm Greeks from FAA Miniatures. I was able to locate a Greek Platoon listing for Chain of Command and built from there. I'll want a little more support, and possibly a tank or two. I have some Vickers and FT-17 tank kits waiting in the wings so that should be covered. Just need another gun and maybe another MG.

And the there is more early war goodness!

Danes! Yes, they only fought for part of one day, but, they did fight! No early war collection is complete without Danes for April 9, 1940. These fellows are 20mm figures from Early War Miniatures. As far as I know they are the only ones to make then in that scale. I do need to pick up some support options, those motorcycles with the 20mm autocannon should do nicely, as well as an armored car or two.

Last but certainly not least are some early medieval monks from Sally 4th.

I got these from the recent Viking Kickstarter and had to get them painted up. Lots of character, and well the guys running away from Viking pursuers were just too good to pass up.

That is all for this time around. Hope you enjoyed it.

Starting Pavia for 2025

 So, my next big project is to put on a game of Pavia in 2025. It so happens that 2025 is the 500th anniversary of the battle. I have long wanted to do this one and I figured 2025, probably late in the year, would be ideal. This would give me the time to paint up the forces I don't already have. I do have a substantial force of 15mm Landsknechts, Spanish, and French from back in the day, based for the old Gush rules. They have not seen action in quite some time and I want to change that. The Great Italian Wars are a very interesting period to me, and I want to get it going.

First up is some research on the period. 

First up was the Osprey Campaign series on Pavia. It is a pretty good volume, though it would seem there is much that is unknown about the battle so coming up with a good playable game will be a challenge. I do think the maps provided will be what I use to formulate my battlefield though.

I just started reading this one, and it will become my alternate source. Unfortunately the OOB they list is for the campaign, and way earlier than the time of Pavia. I'll probably be leaning on the OOB from the Osprey book, and use this for a backup. Though, I still have some reading to do in this one. I am jumping ahead in this series, but that is a minor point since the earlier Italian Wars battles don't directly impact Pavia.

Now I have this little beauty, however, the map has to go. I am using the information in the scenario to help develop my OOB, but that's really all I will be using it for. Same with the Warlord Games Pike & Shotte Rules. Using it for a reference but nothing more.

Pavia is a pretty large battle with multiple fronts, weather, and fog of war really having an impact. Designing a scenario will be a challenge. I would like to give the scenario some flavor of the actual battle but still have it a playable game. But, that part is in the future.

For rules, I will be using Impetvs. With the recent release of Warbook 4, covering the period in question I should be able to set up a nice OOB.  So what is next? Developing an OOB to use with Impetvs, and getting together a list of figures I will be needed to buy to flesh out the armies.

That is all for this post, see you next time. There will be more on Pavia in future posts.

Hobby Update September 2023

 I certainly never intended to go this long between posts, but I had a serious case of hobby  something, not sure what to call it, I kept painting, but I was stuck on a particular group and had trouble getting by it until I had to since it was clogging up the works. And here they are;

In all their glory, The Sea Peoples. 400 points for Impetvs rules, figures are 15mm from Old Glory 15s. Biblical era armies can be a bit of a slog, especially with no cavalry and few options for chariots or any other thing that sucks up points. You are left with scads of foot troops. Yeah I could have gone lighter with them on the bases, but I wanted a certain look. The problem I had was that I would do the bulk of the painting and set them aside for touch up/clean up. About halfway through I was pretty sick of them, but I wanted them done and so the touch up pile grew till I had to just get it done. Then after getting going on another project I found a bag of foot command, and my generals to paint. Having started basing I had to pop a few figs off some of the bases to get the command guys on. So finally, I got this army completed and ready for battle. I am determined to not do that again. I'll break up a large army such as this with some other wildly different project.  

I have gotten a few other things done as well.

The top guy was an exclusive Footsore figure for Model Box, which was a subscription service, with a themed box each month.  These came from the Mortal Gods box. The lower character is Rox, The Model Box Fox, as a hoplite, which was a cool touch. The bases on these are from Alien Lab Miniatures which gives an added thematic feel to what will be SAGA Warlords. 

I also did a number of hoplites

These guys are all 28mm Warlord Games hoplites, with the exception of that random Spartan, he is Victrix. Shield transfers from Little Big Men Studios. The figures are mostly plastic, with a few metal ones thrown in. The plastic ones I had glued together some time ago and I learned a few lessons from that. It is hard to paint behind the shields, it is impossible to do the transfers if you glue on those skirt things first, and it is impossible to get the shield transfers on properly with the shield arms glued on prior. I applied these lessons to the few metal ones in the group, and found it much easier to get the edges of the shield transfers to stick down when I glued the arms on after. I still have over 100 hoplites to do, so, those lessons will save me a good bit of time. If you can see the tufts on these, I got these from Temu. They were about 16-20 a pack for $3, postage was free, so I thought I would try them out. A friend had found these for me. They are pretty good, at least the grass tufts, I wasn't too fond of the flower ones, too big, and the green was too dark. Probably use those more on building bases.

Then I followed up with these

These dudes are 28mm Victrix, from the Peltast and Slinger pack. Nice figures, easy assemble, only downer is that there are only 10 slingers in the pack, unless you are into converting, which I am not. So, since I needed a few more I went to ebay and bough some partial sprues. I'll be using them for the upcoming SAGA league at the end of September. They do come with these tiny shield which I chose to omit. They serve no visual purpose really.

Well, that is all for this round. I do have a ton of painted stuff I am working through basing. So there will be lots of cools stuff 15mm SYW, 20mm WW2 and SCW, as well as 28mm Greeks as I strive to get my SAGA army together. And, there will be a series of posts as I put together a game of Pavia, for the 500th anniversary in 2025.

Catch ya next time.