Of Jade Falcons and Blood Spirits

Hoi People!

The city of Groningen, in the North of the Netherlands, has been my home for 7 years and so I still have great friends over there. From last Monday 'till yesterday I have visited them and played 2 super games of classic battletech. My Jade Falcons had to recon Blood Spirit forces and then, in the second battle, had to break through their defences. I succeeded in the first objective but failed in the last.

As these pictures show the battles were pretty intense. My gaming buddy and me have devised a fast-play system and so the games excelled in speed and slaughter.

What I love is that we have also devised elaborate background stories and since our pilots gain experience points with each game they are evolving characters and make for a fun game.

Cheers Sander


Listening to: "Icky Thumb" by the White Stripes, simply brilliant.

Testshots

Hoi Folks!

Today I bring you an intermezzo from my commission work. I have told you already that I received some of Zvezda´s new Cuirassiers and below are some pictures of my version of the 8th regiment. These are for a friend of mine, hence the lack of wargames bases.

Next up is my painted version of the HäT Russian WW1 Putilov gun and crew testshots. The uniforms turned out a little too brown and should be more greenish but I kinda like them this way. Being a testshot something is always wrong and this time it's the size of the gun. It looks a bit too small, I suppose this will be corrected in due time.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Best of John Foggerty" guess by who!

Cuirasiers; first pictures

Hello Folks!

Quite a lot of you have been wanting to see pictures of the painted Zvezda Cuirassiers. Well even though they are not finished yet, I still need to do their boots, some details and the horses, I decided to put up some WIP pics. But it seems that my photography skills are by far not good enough to get decent pics so these are the best I can do at the moment, admitted they are not great at all. The pictures that is, the mini's are great!

Back view

Command front view

Front view

Hopefully this gives a little impression of how the figures are going to turn out!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Roots" by Sepultura

Cuirassiers arrive

Hoi there,

Just a short text update to tell you all that, due to a good friend, I have received some of the new and highly awaited Zvezda Cuirassiers! They sure look great in detail and poses. The only minor whine I have about the set is that there's no pose of a trooper at rest; it's all full in the charge.

But well I can live with that perfectly.

Watch this space some painted examples might crop up soon!

Cheers Sander

Italian Commission

Hoi There!

Today's update brings you a picture of more of the commission figures. This represents the Italian Napoleonic Foot Artillery. Now I just need to paint the horses, limbers and a caisson. That will finish all the artillery figures and than all that's left is a regiment of Early Italian Foot.

On a different note here's a picture of my AWI Royal Artillery. I used Revell and IMEX figures and gave them Italeri Light Dragoon heads, this way they represent the RA in Light Infantry caps.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Small Gods" a Terry Pratchett Audiobook read by Tony Robinson

Napoleonic Ponderings...

Hoi Everyone!

The latest HäT testshots arrived here and they include the new Napoleonic Austrians and 28mm Prussians. These have forced me to think about what kind of armies I want to do for the Napoleonic period. They are all so immensely cool that I cannot possibly start building armies for every country. So I have come to the following conclusion:

for wargaming:

1) Early Nap. Period:

- French (of course), around 1812 period so I can combine old and new uniforms and use the army for both early and late period
- 1806 Prussians
- 1806 Russians

2) Late Nap. Period:

- Waterloo campaign Dutch/ Belgians (including Nassau en Brunswick)
- Late War Russians (small force)
- Late War Prussians ( for Waterloo Campaign)
- Waterloo Campaign British (mostly Revell Infantry and arty and HäT cav)

3) Peninsular War:

- I am going to do the 1812 British army with Portuguese allies (no Spanish because they became a large part of the Allied army later on)
- French Allies like Vistula legion and such who can also be used for earlier German Campaigns


For Diorama Building:

1) Still Salamanca 1812:

- Same British as for above but only the 3rd Division in a 1 : 5 ratio.
- French Maucune's Division in same ratio (I am probably gonna build them of the HäT chasseurs set entirely by converting them to line infantry)

Biggest problem for the Peninsular War is the great lack of Portuguese Infantry and British cavalry and RHA. 

 Just to let you know :-)

Greetings Sander

Listening to: Punkorama 5

MOC

Hoi Peoples!

Since I am still painting away on my commissions There's relatively little new to tell regarding figures, so I thought I'd show you yet another one of my passions: LEGO.
Ever since I was a boy I liked LEGO a lot, the possibilities of building are great, of course after a certain age you stop playing with the stuff. If you go on "playing" with LEGO it becomes designing or model making and you become an AFOL (Adult Fan Of LEGO) rather then a kid playing with bricks. When small I used to really want to own and play with those Star Wars action figures but they were already pretty expensive then and I didn't get any.  In later life LEGO came out with the LEGO Star Wars range and I fell for it immediately, well the OT range at any rate. So I dived into the world of AFOLism and have been steadily building a collection of OT sets.

My brother is a big fan of GIJOE action fans and since we used to play with those a lot when kids I got a hit of that too. Now when I stumbled along the possibility to make your own custom minifigures of GIJOE I was hooked and decided to make my own.

Here are my first few MOC's :

The top pictures shows my version of Lowlight and the Baroness, the second shows Flint, Bazooka and Scarlett. All their heads need new, custom faces but I made a mistake of printing the decals on white backed decal paper and have now to wait for clear paper in order not to get a white spot behind the facial features.

The decals I got from: http://www.minifigcustomizationnetwork.com/store

The weapons are from www.brickarms.com

Some of the helmets and other stuff is from www.brickforge.com

It is amazing what kinda stuff is available. I am waiting for really red hair for Scarlet and a beret for Flint. Watch this space for more customs in the future!

Cheers Sander

Listening to: Alanis Morissette MTV unplugged (yeah I know...)