Painting at the Beginning of the Year

Well, my attempts at blogging more this year have been relatively dismal. I have been hard at work none the less. I always seem to wait too long to base, meaning I usually have several hundred figures to get done up. Between getting them on bases, flocking and flags it usually takes a bit of time. This round was no different, and neither is the next one, though they are all on bases so far. But you are not here to have me blather on, so lets get down to business.

The first offering are some Chindits by Warlord Games. I really liked painting them, and I liked the fact they are metal. These guys will be great for my CBI project. 

I have some Gaddis Games Chindits coming up as well. It will be interesting to see how they compare. I do really like these Warlord figs though

Next up are some skeleton halberdiers from Skull & Crown Miniatures. I love these guys from the Triumph of Death Line I thought I had painted them, and then I found more halberdiers, plus crossbowmen. The trials of being a miniature gamer. Those other guys may show up on the blog soon.

I also added to my Andalusians.

I also painted my long neglected Tibetans, well what I have anyway.

These guys are from Khurasan Miniatures nice looking figs and definitely 15mm. Based for Impetvs.

And them there was the big project for the first part of the year, War of the Roses Yorkists. The following pictures are just a sampling since there are over 200 figures and I photographed them in smallish batches. The figures are from Peter Pig . The larger flags are from Pete's Flags. He sells on ebay and has a Facebook page, and the smaller flags are from Citadel Six . They have a wide variety of lords for WOTR. The only downside for me is that they are self adhesive.

I kind have these based for Bloody Barons, but, I think they will be fine for Never Mind the Billhooks as well. Either way, they turned out pretty well. That is all I have this time. The next painting post will have SYW, WSS, Vikings, Romans, and Gauls.

Thanks for stopping by.

Winding Down A Productive Year

 Well, it has been several weeks since I posted last. Things have been hectic. Work has been blowing up, plenty of construction going on in the Kansas City area and we are going to be really busy in the field next year. The end of this year has been crazy for me. Being the only trim estimator in KC, well technically the only estimator, but, our team in St Louis picks up the framing and siding we do. Regardless it has been a busy end of the year, yet I have had plenty of time to paint. 

I continued my 1815 project with some Prussian Landwehr. 

These are all 15mm from the Alternative Armies Brickdust range. I painted these as the Westphalians. Most likely they had no flags, but Fighting 15s makes some nice ones to use for the Landwehr. That way they don't look so naked. I had decided to use this line for my 15mm projects in Spain and for the 100 days. They are the old TTG line. I am really enjoying painting them and I am looking forward to the time I can get them on the board. I just got my Black Friday order in from AA that is the balance of the stuff I need to complete the Prussian first and second corps. I have them based for Napoleon's Battles.

Next up are a collection of samurai.

The top two pics are Uesugi Kenshin from the AW Miniatures Kickstarter. I had gotten him, Oda Nobunaga (from my last post), and a seated Takeda Shingen. Takeda hasn't popped up in the queue as yet, but that is ok, as I need a break from samurai for a bit.

The next three pics are all Footsore's Warring Clans range. I think I received these figures as promotional addons, the single figure coming with the Test of Honour 2nd edition bundle. Somehow I ended up with two of the one pose, no problem they are nice figures, just gave them different outfits. I just got my copy of Sengoku for Test of Honour in the mail today, along with the Seven Ronin pack. You can look forward to seeing them on the blog next year some time.

The last 4 pics are all Old Glory 28mm samurai, ashigaru, and monks. It's funny, I always seem to get intimidated painting samurai, until I get into them. Then I just cruise through and enjoy the ride. I should have some nice samurai armies once I get them all done.

Next up are some El Cid period Andalusians.

I had bought these second hand some time ago. I don't recall what company they were and I have not been able to find the poses anywhere. I thought maybe Gripping Beast. They were fun to paint. Having bought them second hand they were missing spears and shields. I ordered the  Andalusian shields from Artizan Designs through Northstar of course, and I had the Northstar spears on hand, so I got them all kitted out. I am pretty close to getting this project done. I need to paint up my Spanish knights, and the Berber Black Guard, and purchase some missle troops.

One project I have been consistently working on has been my 1940 project. I have a ton of Dutch and Wehrmacht so I had decided to start on some SS. I have been using a lot of FAA Miniatures for this project, as well as SHQ, EWM and a few others. I had purchased the Liebstandarte figures from FAA for this project because they have them listed as 1940-43. After looking at them I noticed they mostly have smocks. Now it is my understanding the the SS units in 1940 were probably in the regular uniform, sans smocks. So, I was a bit disappointed at first. But then I did a bit of research, and found that it was possible that they could have had smocks in the Plane Tree design whether they actually did or not. I do enjoy painting the German camo for the most part (exception is splittermuster) so I tackled them with great relish giving them the Spring Plane Tree design.

These guys were really fun to paint, and I am looking forward to the next batch coming up soon. I was also delighted that FAA was casting this winter so I got an order in at the last minute to finish the SS and also do a couple Belgian platoons.

 In keeping with the 1940 theme I also got more Dutch completed.

Again, the Dutch are all SHQ. Which BTW are really nice, crisp figures. 

The last entries for our post today are a couple of dwarfs. I got these guys in a modelbox For those of you that may not know, Modelbox is a monthly subscription service. You get a box of miniature hobby stuff, figures, paints accessories, bases and what not. It is themed, and does include an exclusive miniature each time. If you are curious, there are a couple guys that do unboxing videos each month on youtube so check it out and see if it is of interest to you. I really enjoyed them, I did discontinue, not because of the quality, but because I was accumulating too much stuff out of my gaming interests, as well as too much paint. I decided I needed to focus my purchases on finishing my existing projects. 

This first guy is Baggronor the Mighty from Titan Wargames He was a resin figure and pretty fun to paint. Not really anything I will be using in my gaming (that I know of anyway), but, a fun figure to paint none the less.

This second character is a dwarf again (hence the theme of that box). This time he is from Atlantis Miniatures This guy is really animated. Again he was resin but his arms were separate so there is some room for variation without chopping him up. Though, if you like to customize your figs you could certainly do that as well.

He was a really cool figure, very animated and some interesting equipment attached to him.

I did make some serious headway on my 15mm Confederate  repaints and I also rebased my Classical Indian army for Impetus. I didn't take any pics because the ACW stuff I am just painting over the existing, and the Indians I painted probably 20+ years ago. So nothing too exciting to see there. I already have a boatload of figures ready to base, and I anticipate doing them over one of the two holiday weekends. I will most likely post them along with a year end roundup in a few weeks.

Wrapping up 2018

2018 was a time of change and transition. I left my life long home in Southern California for the Kansas City area. This disrupted even more, an already disrupted hobby. It took several months for things to get sorted out. I am still sorting some things out, but, overall, my hobby space is set up and I am ready to blast into 2019 full bore. I found a group of people to game with, and there are several gaming conventions in the area each year. In addition there are a number of historical sites I have yet to visit and, all the other activities a large city has to offer. 

Painting 

I had previously posted  some things I had painted this year. Here I will add to it. First up are some Old Glory 25mm Japanese Monks. These guys are fairly simple, since they live an ascetic lifestyle their clothes are devoid of much decoration, though their outer smocks tend to be brightly colored.

I did have a good time painting them. I plan on using them for the Ronin/Diasho/TOH trio, as well as larger battles with a Lion Rampant variant. I also did some Ninjas of Iga for ToH.

 I liked painting these as well. I wasn't too sure on dry brushing the black but it turned out decent. The next group are for my 15mm Mexican American War project. Here I have the Mississippi Rifles militia unit for the Americans, the cuirassiers of the Mexican army, and some dismounts for the US Dragoons. The militia are Minifig, the cuirassier and the dragoons are Musket Miniatures.

Net up are some El Cid Spanish foot for Saga/Lion Rampant. When I bought these the person had them listed as Saxons. So when I had painted the first batch back in 2017 and posted them, someone pointed out that they were Crusader Miniatures Spanish. That was fine with me anyway because I had already started  collecting cavalry for that army.

Next up are some 20mm Fallschirmjager. They are FAA figures. Since they are all wearing "Bone Sacks" I painted them up for Crete. There are some later war armaments in there so those guys can't be in Crete, but, everyone else can.

I plan on using these guys for Bolt Action and Chain of Command. I like this scale rather than the 28mm, though I do have 28mm armies as well, it just gives a better look as far as ground scale goes. Next, are some 20mm SCW Carlist Requetes.

 I really like these figures. They are from the HPC line. Unfortunately they are really too big to mix well with the Minairons figures. Since I have a decent quantity of the HPC figures I plan on playing more Bolt Action/Chain of Command games with these, and using my Minairons stuff for Bayonet & Ideology. Hopefully the guy that has the HPC stuff gets that back into production before too long. Last, but not least, are a few French and Indian War Coureur de Bois.

These will see use in Musket & Tomahawk games, and who knows, maybe the new Osprey rules that are coming out soon.

Looking Ahead to 2019

There is lots to look forward to in 2019. We have a trip to northern China planned for the fall, The Nelson Atkins Art Museum in KC has an exhibition on Napoleon, plus some possible trips to Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge. As far as my hobby, I definitely have plans and goals to set. First off I plan on doing the "Ultra Pledge" put forth by Mark Severin aka Extra Crispy. Said pledge consists of not purchasing any miniatures, or terrain in the coming year. You can buy basing materials and such but no actual minis or terrain features. While there are some things I would like to pick up, I need to do a reset on my hobby and get it to the point where things are not backed up for years. My painting will continue to be somewhat eclectic, at least for the first half of the year, as I clean up all my odds and ends stuff that was lying about. But, here are a few goals that I have ready to go and in the painting queue;

15mm ECW Rebasing for Baroque and finishing the rest of my figures

Finishing my 28mm WW2 Japanese project

Finishing my 28mm WW2 Warlord Chinese army

Rebasing my 15mm Feudal French and Classical Indians for Impetus

Put together my Gangs of Rome Starter kit.

Assemble and paint my 28mm Shogunate Japanese buildings

Play a game at least twice a month. (board or mini)

Finish basing my SYW project

Base/Rebase my 6mm Napoleonics for Grande Armee

Blog much more

Improve my writing, so it is more enjoyable for you lot to read.

In addition I should be able to at least start my 15mm WSS  project, continue the Mexican War project, and maybe delve into ToH as well. Looks like it will be a busy, but fun, year ahead. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you found it interesting. I hope that you all have a wonderful and blessed New Year!