Goblins Galore!

Hoi,

Well so far I am surprising myself with this Goblin Army of mine. This might actually be the first army for which I am able to paint the mini's within weeks of buying them and only have a backlog of just 1 or 2 mini's left unpainted... As I have developed a distinct dislike of GW policies as told here many times before, I will not buy their products at regular prices. I have been asking the mini's for birthdays or buying them at reduced prices at conventions and so I am now the proud owner of:

- horde of 40 Night Gobbo's with spears and shields
- 20 Night Gobbo archers
- 20 Goblin Spearmen
- 2 Shaman
- 3 Squighoppers
- a blister of Squig herd
- about 7 or 8 fanatics
- a Doomdiver catapult.

All painted, at the moment.

The archers were the last to be finished with the Doomdiver awaiting basing. Here are some pictures.

To be honest, and I think I've said this before as well; these are not my best work ever. I just want to build up a force of these little critters ASAP to be able to fight friend Mark's Skaven in a "Who turns tail first?!" battle. Mark's Skaven have a motto saying: "We won't fight any enemy armed with more then a kitchen knife" so I must be able to win some time with them Gobbo's, I'd guess.

Cheers Sander

Listening to some cd by Tool.

Regiment Oranje Nassau

Hoi,

Since I had some HäT Nassau Napoleonics left over I thought I'd turn them into the regiment Oranje Nassau. A regiment raised from the German mini-State of Oranje home seat of the Dutch Royal House of Orange-Nassau (Oranje-Nassau), which was part of the Allied army facing Napoleon in the 1815 campaign.

I am not entirely sure whether this regiment carried Nassau standards, but I am very sure that Dutch and Belgian regiments carried NO standards so I thought I'd give them a Nassau ensign just to err on the right side ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Goodbye Saigon"a collection of 60 and 70's songs

La Garde Meurt...

Hoi,

Today I received a message from friend Uwe http://historyin172.blogspot.com/ featuring picturs of the latest release of Schilling Miniatures. They have now launched a series of 29 poses of French Guard Grenadiers for the Waterloo Campaign. Some pictures were included:

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "To the Faithfull Departed" by the Cranberries

Württemberg Update

Hoi,

In the last Black Powder Battle report I posted I mentioned I had to use a Württemberg detachment to supplement my French forces.I am actually building a brigade sized force for them of 3 line infantry regiments, each with a stand of grenadiers, and a separate light infantry regiment. The latter is the last to be done since yesterday I finished the last Line Regiment featured here.

Enjoy:

What's great is that you can make this 4 regiment brigade from just ONE box of HÄT Württemberg infantry for about €11,- beat that! ;-)

 Cheers Sander

Listening to: :"The Best of John Foggerty"





 

Feuer! Part II

Hoi,

Today's update brings you an Austrian 7YW infantry regiment. While researching uniforms for the Austrian army I stumbled along the site of www.kronoskaf.com/ which I have mentioned here before. There you can find about any uniform used by most of the major, and even some minor, nations involved in the conflict. There I found out that several regiments were raised in the part of the Austrian Empire called the "Austrian Netherlands" that's most of present day Belgium and the Dutch province of Limburg where I have been born and raised and live now. So logically I am going for some regiments from this detachment.

So I hereby present the Sachsen-Gotha Regiment:

About almost everything on these uniforms is WHITE, I hate painting white... oh well, I guess they turned out pretty well enough. While reading up on the 7YW, quite a lot of comparing with the Napoleonic wars is unavoidable. I was amazed just how large a part of the armies of those days consisted of cavalry, being used to Peninsular British amounts of cavalry. Also tactics seem indeed to have been pretty straight forward. Anyway I am looking forward to the release of the new HäT Prussians in order to paint them as British- and Hanoverian units. Until that time I can just make do with all the Austrians still awaiting paint.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Immersion" by Pendulum

Feuer!

Hoi,

Let's talk a bit of painting and collecting psychology today. When I started collecting figures I was pretty much solely interested in the history of the British Redcoat in the period roughly from 1700 up to 1900. Specially with Napoleonics I was mainly delighted to paint redcoats and neglect all the other nations. I absolutely hated painting all the French infantry units being uniformed exactly alike without even the slightest variation to distinguish between the line regiments. Couple this with an inability to paint white uniforms and a hatred of painting French troops was born.This only changed with the release of HäT's 8095; 1808-1812 French Infantry big box. I painted some testshots http://www.hat.com/Othr6/Sander04.html and had to do some more research to get them modestly right and so I was struck by the many ways you could paint them, specially when using campaign dress, and tried some of these with black basecoat and so black-lined shadows for the first time. Now I have 3 and a half showcases of figures of which 1 is entirely dedicated to French Napoleonics and their Allies.

The same is now pretty much happening to me regarding the 7YW Austrians. I still hate doing white uniforms but the Revell 7YW Austrian, all 3 sets of them are just so darn good, that a simple paint job will get the best out of them. I only ever started to collect them to convert them to Brits and use them as enemies for the Brits, but now I like painting them just for the fun of it. Some time ago I showed you my combined regiment of grenadiers and now here are my first 3 bases of artillery. Judge for yourselves!

When observing these chaps closely you'll notice that there are red-faced- and blue-faced uniforms. The red ones depict the actual artillery crew members and the blue ones are train personnel oft pressed to help serve the guns to replace casualties or to supply the guns with ammo from the caissons. Two of the guns are the Revell supplied field-guns and one is a HäT Austrian Napoleonic howitzer. I intend to make some limbers and caissons for them as well.

Hope you like them as much as I do.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Garage Inc" by Metallica

La Haye Sainte Revisited, Part I

Hoi,

Holiday is over, sadly, but I still have found some hobby-time. A long time ago I had a version of the famous Airfix La Haye Sainte farm building. I put it together, rather inexpertly, and used it in early wargames and mucking around with toy soldiers. At some point along the way it got wrecked and I had to throw it away. Last year I was really getting into building scenery for the gaming table en got a put-together La Haye from Martin from www.miniatuurwereld.com. I decided to revamp it and get some decent detail on it to make it look better then the original kit. While researching the real building I found out that the kit doesn't resemble the actual building by a long shot. So in the end I decided to still revise the building but use it as a more "all-purpose" farm rather then the La Haye Sainte pur sang.

Here are the first pictures of this project.

First up the building as I got it from Martin:

The main farm house revised by me, mind you it's still pretty much a work in progress so not finished by far:

To be honest, I guess it well take me ages to complete the total structure but I do believe the end-result will look pretty nice.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Vive L'Empereur" military marches from the Premier Empire