Space cowboys,

...or why I hate Mark and Toby. This story is a very recognisable one to me and perhaps to many of you gamers out there. Once there was a game called Warhammer 40.000. I got to hear about it from a very strange boy (metalfan and all) in class when I attended higher secondary education. I swore never to get involved since he was really very strange and if strange people played this game it couldn't be much good.
Fast forward an odd 10 years and 3 large 40K armies into the future and there we find my good friend Albert-Martijn, he was really into mechwarrior and Classic Battletech. After an introductory game of this not very simple game, I was heard yet again to be uttering the famous last words of: I will never play this game...

Fast forward 10 odd years and 4 sizeable Battletech forces and up comes Fantasy Flight Games' X-wing game... can you sense where this is going?

This time Mark and Toby are to blame. Mark had been ogling the game at the Crisis in Antwerp last year and Toby actually bought the game and kept badgering (yes Toby BADGERING) me that I'd like it very much. Of course Toby knows most of my gaming weaknesses which are: good fluff, easy to learn rules and well it's Star Wars right? Can't go wrong there, as long as you leave the horrible Episodes I till III out of the equation. Well I persevered, said I would never start to play this overpriced monstrosity and that was that.

So at the Impact convention last May, Mark and myself laid some cash together and bought the starter box of X-wing. This was all fine since the box reclined at Mark's and did not catch my eye nor mind that much. Some weeks ago we played a few games and something started to stir which should have been let alone.

Suffice to say I have ordered a TIE-interceptor and A-wing from an onlineshop which have not arrived due to backorder problems. After being bummed out about that I ordered 3 more fighters from a different webshop and they delivered the very next day!

I now own a X-wing (I have repainted it to resemble Rogue 9's CorSec X-wing, pictures will follow):

An Y-wing (I have painted the stripes on it red)

And my absolute favourite: Darth Vader's TIE Advanced:

Yes folks; I am well and truly hooked! I know what all my wish-lists for my birthday and Saint Nick's will entail :-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack" by John Williams

Battletroops

Hoi,

At the Impact convention last May I obtained two Scotia Grendel Nemesis Assault Bipeds for the total price of €5,- Yes that's right just 5 euro's. From the start I knew I was going to convert them into mechs for the Battletroops 25mm scale. When I actually got time to do this, the problem was which Battletech mech would come closest and ergo cost the least amount of converting. In the end I settled for the Raptor light mech. One of the Bipeds had bean painted partially already and I took this one to experiment with and this is what I managed to do to it.

And a picture with my latest regular CBT mech as a size reference.

If you were able to guess the origin of the parts used you're a toff ;-)

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels" the soundtrack

Some 28mm Napoleonics

Hoi,

As a rule I do not paint 28mm figures in order to create historical armies, yet a fair amount of figures of said scale finds it's way to my paintdesk.
The two pictured below are special edition figures obtained by buying the Waterloo and Peninsula source-books for Black Powder direct from Warlord Games.

The ensign is supposed to depict a Foot Guards officer, I didn't paint him like that as you can see. To me the yellow faced Redcoat is the quintessential British soldier for the Napoleonic Wars. As he's wearing a stovepipe I've done him up in campaigndress complete wit repair patches to his trousers and jacket.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Random Access Memories" by Daft Punk

More Classic Battletech

Hoi,

Sometimes you get lucky in your E-bay purchases; I recently obtained an unseen Shadowhawk battlemech through E-bay. The mech missed some parts, most notably shoulder-mounted weapons and was hideously mutated by his previous owner. It had a WHFB longbow in it's left hand and the ppc had broken off. I removed he bow and replaced the ppc barrel and voila:

The original version with revised barrel and cleaned base:

My adapted version:

And with his friend the Razorback:

The paint-scheme is that of my Aragon Borders of course.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Roots bloody roots" by Sepultura

More Battletech!

Hoi,

One, if not the most, beloved of the Sci-Fi wargames I play, is Classic Battletech. This game not only has a decent ruleset, it has tons of background-material in the form of sourcebooks, Tech Read Outs and novels. Next to the regular CBT tabletopgame there's also a RPG and a 25/ 28 mm game called Battletroops. For this game these Draconis Combine forces are made. Now no longer in production I bought some DC and Steiner troops from Pijlie and have started painting them up in earnest. More updates will follow surely so watch this space.

Also Battletech related is this 'mech. It's an Unseen model as far as I know and sold to me as a Shadowhawk. But on the latter I'm not sure: is it a Griffin? The present production model doesn't look anything like this and all pictures I found of Unseen shadowhawks show a Rocket launcher on his right shoulder. Also as you can see, it was badly painted when arriving here from ebay. So I will re-paint it, probably in my Aragon Borderers scheme. The mechs laser weapon had broken off during transit and I replaced it with the muzzle of a 40K Imperial Guard lasgun. Why? well the original laser had a nozzle on it's end and just putting in a copper wire just did not look right therefore I fixed this solution.

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "The Best of the Who" by The Who

Chevau-legers de Berg

Hoi,

Zvezda has done a very nice set of Polish Lancers of the Guard and due to some friend's generosity I have enough for about 9 tabletop regiments. I have finished the Polish Lancers of the Guard, which you can see elsewhere on this blog, and now I've done up the Lancers of the Berg regiment. This uniform has been one of my favourites ever since I got hold of the brilliant book Soldiers and uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars by F.G. Hourtoulle (free DOWNLOAD). This is about the best uniform book I have and worthwhile for every Napoleonics enthusiast.

Anyway, as I set out to paint the regiment I was feeling elated to finally have a go at them. This elated feeling dissipated quickly when I realised I had  used the wrong green paint as base. Redoing it was no option and therefore I now have a regiment with a mediocre paintjob...

Judge for yourselves:

Cheers Sander

Listening to: "Dookie" by Green Day

100 followers!

Hoi,

The title says it all really: with the signing up of mister Amos, at Happy Valley,  as follower the counter has reached the magical number of 100. When I started this blog I could have never imagined any 20 people interested enough to read let alone follow my musings on the internet but I guess I was wrong.

To all you followers: thanks for all your time and kind replies over the years, I'll try to keep it going for some time yet.

Cheers Sander