Civilians

Hoi,

For some time I've had a lot of 20mm white metal civilian figures lying around. Some of these are from CPmodels others are from Elhiem. The civilians are mostly WW2 civies but mainly I am going to use them for my Great War games as scenery or scenario objectives. Their first outing however will be a participation game of All Things Zombie this Friday at the school where Mark and I work. There's a Christmas celebration of sorts in which teachers give "workshops" featuring their, non-school related hobbies" and so we decided to host two tables of ATZ games. The rules are easy to learn and will make for great fun!

Here are the pictures:

Male refugees:

Women and children:

Henchmen (these are really Gestapo officers but I will use them as henchmen for...)

The Doctor :

An as of yet still un-named hero...

Hope you like them!


Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Dance of Death" by Iron Maiden

Reall Compagnia Irlandesa

Hoi,

After a long absence I am more or less back. Here are some pictures of the last of my HäT Spanish testshots. I have painted these as a fictional regiment featured in the popular Sharpe series: the Real Compagnia Irlandesa. So yes I know these are not historically accurate but like them all the same. I hope to use them in some Sharpe inspired skirmish games in the future.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Re-Machined, a tribute to Deep Purple" by various artists

Over the Hills...

Hoi,

Work and family leave pretty little hobby-time for me lately. Yet in between serious stuff I've managed to paint up one of my Amera Plastics hills. This one I did up to use as mountain with Dystopian Wars or as regular hill with 20mm games.

Several more of these await painting, some I will paint up to represent arid terrain, like this one, and some more will be done to resemble more Northern terrain with snow-covered tops.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Good morning Saigon" by several artists

Blogger Awards!

Hoi,

Huzzah! I got nominated for the Liebster Blogger Award by Monsieur Rosbif at his fabulous blog. Thanks heaps my friend!

Rules for this stylish affair are:
Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.

1. Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.
2. Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!
3. There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do. 

Well, the less then 200 followers is a bit of a poser but here are my five nominees:

1) Number one should absolutely be Uwe from history in 1:72.I really like it when people try to contribute to the hobby by actually making a difference Uwe is one such person. He has provided countless of hobby-friends with colourplates on the most exotic uniforms and has started his own line of white metal figures of unavailable troops and periods. Big tumbs up!
2) Jan-Willem from Pijlie's Wargames Blog is one of my great gaming friends and is a true all-rounder, never seen someone who can host about ANY game, using truly ANY ruleset!
3) Peter from Peter's Cave is always inspiring and seems to eternally optimistic and good humoured!
4) Stefan from Monty's Caravan has a great little blog too and just reached 100 followers, congrats!
5) I also like to put in front of the Jury Matt from "Waterloo to Mons" who has been an inspiration and fun read as well for quite some time!

Enjoy these blogs and vote for your own favourites,

Cheers Sander

Lest we forget!

Title says it all really...

Crisis Antwerp 2012, a short story

Hoi,

Last Saturday, the highlight of my hobby-year came round: the Crisis Convention at the Waagnatie Hall in Antwerp. It was in several ways a "first-time" experience; for one the convention moved from a one hall exhibit to a big two hall location. Secondly we were travelling in a larger company then last year since apart from my brother Lars, our designated driver, and Mark, both of whom joined me last year, we were accompanied by Albert-Martijn from Groningen who had come to stay with us for the weekend.

Before I start with a smallish report of how the visit went, I'll start with my goals for the day. Did I have any? Yes I did, they were rather Limited but all the same here they are:
- I wanted to get some new brushes preferably  Kolinsky's
- I hoped to pick up the Freebooter 2012 Limited edition figure
- I wanted some MicroArt Discworld figures
- Don't shoot me but some GW space marines to finish off my DA's were on the list as well
-I secretly hoped to be able to get a box of Zombicide as well...

We set out around half past nine o' clock in the morning and arrived around eleven, Lars was able to park the car literally in front of the hall's entrance. I can still kick myself in the head for forgetting to make a group-photo of the four of us but what's done is done. We entered the hall and I must say I was caught up in the buzz of the event right away. Orientation was rather difficult because the traders were situated around the demotables and therefore I got distracted immediately when I was at a vendor's booth by a table or vice versa. I started of by going to the Crush The Kaiser table to say Hi to Paul and Ian and see the Marines I painted for them in action in the flesh. Lars kindly made a picture of the 3 of us and I made some shots of the marines in action.

                                                 3 poppies in a row ;-)

That's when the batteries of my camera decided to quit on me and none of the others had taken a camera along so for a picture report I have to refer to others Pijlie and Peter have some up on their blogs.

Paul and Ian did a tremendous job on the scenery as you can see and I think the marines are not too shabby themselves so one hell of a great table to see in the flesh. Supplied with a signed edition of the new ruleset I went on to see the rest of the hall. The first purchase I did almost set me off in the wrong direction: I own the Italeri Norman Church and want to use it for the Peninsular War, the biggest conversion I need to do to be able to use it hence, is to replace the slate shingles for Normandy with Spanish tiles. At a French-speaking vendor I found sheets of plastic with the right scale of tiles. Due to my poor abilities regarding the French Language I ended up paying €24,- for 6 measly sheets of the stuff...

Oh well onto the rest of the show. At most of these conventions the diorama's and demo-tables are of varied quality, let's be honest we all know this to be true. But this year at the Crisis all tables were at least of a very high average quality at the least. While I saw some shabby ones last year still, now everything was in very good order indeed. But there was nothing there, apart for the mentioned Dixmuide table, that really got to me like the Abyssinia table or the Nosferatu game did in recent years. 
That brings me to another point, upon completing 3 rounds of the two halls, we all felt we were ready to go home, it was by then 14.30. A very surprising fact considering we did 5 rounds last year and stayed till closing time... I have had the pleasure to speak to loads of hobby-friends while at the Crisis loved some of the games and demo's, for instance I now know that while I love the appearance of the new X-wing game, I will not start playing it because there's way too much paperwork involved, yet still I was completely happy to leave before time. The atmosphere of the new hall just was not cosy enough I guess.
I missed out on seeing some friends I knew would or should be there as well, Peter should have been around but I didn't see him, Sidney was sadly missing and I missed Tom (of CW toys) who should have been there with a stand as well completely I hope to see you next time mates!

What did I buy in the end?

- Four Kolinsky brushes: two 3 x 0 and two 5 x 0
- 6 sheets of overpriced plasticcard
- a spray can of brown basecoat
- a combat squad of space marines (in the secondhand fair for €10,-)
- 3 Discworld mini's: Granny Wheaterwax, the luggage and Death (who was missing his scythe, Micro Art has been mailed)
- the Freebooter Limited edition mini W00T!
- some 20mm WW1 Frenchies
- a KR Kaiser 1 bag with content foam.
- Opsprey's MAA ANZACS for WW1

Quite a nice haul I'd say and I am happy at that.

I will try the Crisis next year round and try to get more accustomed to the new setting.

Cheers Sander

P.S. Oh yeah I almost forgot: since my brother is not really in the hobby and was only there for the enjoyment of the trip it's not surprising he didn't buy anything, but Mark on the other hand did not, I repeat NOT buy ANYTHING! What wrong with you my friend? :-P You thought I'd forget to mention it right?

Listening to: "History Lessens" by Skyclad

Back into the fold?

Hoi,

It was about time I'd put up a new update. As promised last time; let's delve deeper into my hate-love relationship with GW. My love for historical miniatures out-dates my love for sci-fi and fantasy mini's and as such will always be the mainstream of my hobby-efforts.
That said my first gaming experiences were with Warhammer 40K when at high-school, somewhere around 1995 I came into contact with a few Tyranid and Ultramarines players.I still have very fond memories about that first game, which actually are a great starter for a future blog post come to think of it.
Starting out small with Space Marines of a home-made chapter, I soon turned my attention to the Dark Angels upon reading a White Dwarf containing some Dark Angel artwork showing Interrogator Chaplain Asmodai specifically. Over the years my Dark Angels army grew and both an Imperial Guard- and  Sisters of Battle army were added.

For about 8 years I have lived in Groningen in the North of the Netherlands and it was there that I was really initiated in the wonderful world of tabletop gaming. Thanks to Albert Martijn I started playing 40K and Fantasy (Dwarfs and Empire) in earnest, followed by Classic Battletech and a small and short-lived venture into Warmachine.Since I now had a regular gaming partner and an income of my own the GW ranges formed the mainstay of the hobby.
During the last years in Groningen my gaming network expanded fast and interest in the historical period blossomed accordingly. I found out about playable historical rulesets like Warhammer Historicals and The Great War.White Dwarf lost it's main characters like the Fat Bloke, Gav Thorpe and Andy Chambers and turned more and more into a full blooded catalogue with some méh-méh articles mixed in for not-so-good measure. The emphasis of my hobby started to shift away from GW's flagship games toward the Historical variants. What irked me the most were the facts that most GW armies leaned heavily on super-heroe- characters and pimped up über units with through-the-roof statistics, this while the WH Historical rules gave you just regular Joe's with crappy stats and even the elites were not thát great.Now instead of winning by compiling the most perfect armylist and not even shooting so much as one bolter, I had to rely on my wits and strategic insights. So I still lost big-time but I enjoyed it far more because I now had a starting chance when the game began. Another issue was that most 40K games and nearly ALL fantasy games ended in a draw, I really hate draws as a result specially when almost both your entire armies lie dead in the field.

Upon moving back to Roermond, the main audience of players was...non existent. Well I had not found anyone yet to game with. After a small time I met Mark, who's a staunch Skaven player and has, I kid you not dear friends: just ONE army... yes he just has this huge Skaven army but nothing else. Oh yes a small fleet of space ships but that doesn't count. So back I was with GW WHF but the great part was: Mark was just in it for the fun. His Skaven's motto is: I won't fight anybody armed with more then a kitchen knife so my Dwarfs have had a field-day by thrashing his rats around the field of battle and even occasionally charging in! Every 3 months there's this small gaming convention in Amersfoort, the DUCOSIM, where I was able to keep playing CBT and it was there I met Jan Willem (Pijlie) he was into just about anything cool. In whatever scale and setting that could be whipped up. He now turned out to be my new partner for anything historical, soon followed by Koen.

Now with that settled I ditched the White Dwarf subscription, changed it for a Wargames Illustrated sub, best swap ever, and am now safely entrenched in Historical gaming with Black Powder as main ruleset.
So why this whole tirade? Well lately I sold of pretty much all my Imperial Guard stuff and was left gazing at my Sisters of Battle and Dark Angels, to sell or not to sell, that's the question.Why sell anything in the first place you might ask? That's easy: I am narrowing my view on the hobby. It's impossible to keep on doing all different things at once. Not in the last place since I have a limited space available in my hobbyroom. The mainstay armies will remain the Historical ones; Napoleonic, 7YW and TGW. I sold quite a lot of loose ends already like the Assyrians and my ECW Royalists (who by the way will be featured as Spanish in a diorama showing the battle of Roc Roi at a museum in said place itself). The SoB's are just a brilliant and terribly underrated army and all these lovely metal ladies have been so painstakingly painted that I cannot say farewell to them at this point in time. 

My Dark Angels are just that; my little Angels, there's no way in Hell I'm going to part with them. Yes most of them are painted in a horribly outdated style and based even worse but they remain my first brothers in arms even though the existing codexes are shite I will not part with them anytime soon.

Recently the release of Dark Vengeance renewed my interest in them. Albert Martijn sent me the limited edition Chaplain included in Dark Vengeance and seeing the quality of the plastic I really new that a version of said boxed set would be obtained eventually. The renewed interest has led me to start painting up some of the Dark Angel models lurking in my cupboards unpainted for ages. I still had about 15 Deathwing terminators left. 5 of them old metal ones and 10 new plastic terminators. The former now are done and feature down below.

To cut a long story not quite short: let's finish what I have lying around and see what will happen in the future. The Crisis is just a week away after all...

Here's a shot of some of my old and already painted metal Deathwing, they're done over an ice-blue underground which turned out all wrong. Seeing my new ones I really need to strip these and get them re-based and re-painted.

Some of my old plastic terminators, the ones with the swivelling torso's, Space Hulk issue?

Now for the newly painted terminators. I used an Army painter Rat-fur basecoat and worked up from there. The models, as said, are old metal ones including two sergeants since one of the squads above misses it's boss.

I've done the bases the way I would for historical mini's and in hindsight I should have left off the flowers...

Some characters in terminator armour were already in my showcase, but now I'm wondering whether I should re-do them as well, what do you guys think?

Heroe:

Chaplain:

That's it for my trip down memory lane, sorry to have taken so much of your time, but hey you could have stopped reading ages ago ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Skyline" by Yann Tierssen