Tanks for Sicily 1943: Semovente 47/32

 Hello guys

Sorry for the lack of activity in the last months, I got married in late April, then came the honeymoon,  a new job, I moved to a new home... so a lot of non hobby stuff as you can imagine, so now, very slowly I am recovering the mood of painting again :)

I wanted to add more tanks to my Bolt Action,  Axis force for the Battle of Sicily 1943. 

as shown previously here: https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/2021/03/bolt-action-italian-tanks-in-sicily-1943.html

Italian armour in Sicily consisted of the captured R35 tank,  the Semovente 90/53 and finally, Semovente 47/32.  I already painted the first two models, so now I have finished the little Semovente 47/32.

These little tank destroyers after the fall of Tunis in 1943 were stationed in Italy, with units attached to the “Black Shirt” Divisions  and Livorno infantry division in Sicily. They saw action in defence of the island when the Allies invaded in  1943 with Operation Husky.

Unfortunately for the Semovente 47/32, when they entered service, they faced newer allied tank designs, with better armour and firepower. The 47mm gun was ineffective against medium tanks like  M4 Sherman, and barely adequate against smaller allied light tanks like the M3 ‘Honey’ Stuart at normal fighting ranges, so I will use the tank carefully in my games, trying to keep it safe under the protection of heavier German tanks or guns.

The model itself is from Warlord Games, resin and metal, but the quality is good and had no flash. The crew was also included, and was mandatory to paint them, as the tank would be absolutely incomplete without the crew, as it is an open top vehicle.

The painting process was the usual;

1) airbrushing the colors, giving them some cenital highlights

2)  gloss varnish

3) decals  

4) gloss varnish again in order to protect the previous work

5) color filter by Ammo Mig

6) Oil dots for color fading

7) Pin wash in the recesses with dark enamel by Tamiya

8) 2 color chipping

9) rust, streaking grime

10) dust effects, mud, and then matt varnish

11)spilled grease/oil , basing and finished!

I hope you like this little vehicle, cheers!

30 Years War: French cavalry squadron

Hello guys,

I have finished another unit for my French army of the 30 Years War, a cavalry unit this time.

The unit is "unkown" so I will use as generic French heavy cavalry or demi cuirassiers in the 30 Years War and Franco Spanish War, 1635-1659.

I use this flag just because I like the design. I downloaded and printed for free from this fantastic site:

https://www.tercios.fr/2020/05/26/guidons-de-cavalerie-francaise/

this flag, amongst others, are taken from the painting "The Capture of Privas" (May 28, 1629) (Château de Versailles).

The miniatures are an odd mixture of Perry ECW cuirassier command miniatures and Bicorne ECW cavalry in cuirass and helmets. The spare Bicorne troopers I bought painted a while ago, were repainted to match my painting style and give them a French look with the white shases.

 I know a couple of the helmets are very "English" but I used them anyway, who knows wether they were used in the continent, and very similar lobster pots and burgonets were definitively used by all sides during 30 Years War.

I painted them in Vallejo and Foundry paints and then ultra matt varnish in most areas but some of the metals. I am not quite happy about the result of the blackened armor of the leaders and flag bearer, but I will do some experiments in the future with NMM black armor with just edge highlighting.

I have to add at least another squadron to this small French army, but now is playable, with 2 cavalry squadrons, 3 infantry regiments and one more half painted, plus an artillery piece and command base.

I am looking forward to give this army its baptism of fire with Pike & Shotte Epic rules adapted to this scale.

I hope you like them!

Cheers

III century Romans: Legio II Parthica

 Hello guys,

After a looooooooooong stop, I painted another unit for my 3rd century Roman army.

Middle Imperial Romans are one of my favorite armies, they have a mixture of early and late antiquity features, chainmail (lorica hamata) and segmented armor (lorica segmentata),  spears and pilum,  gladius substituted by spathae... Old style Gallic helmets with newer designs like Niederbieber helmet, oval shields and rectangular shields/scutum. So very interesting and funny to convert!

It is also an era with lots of wars and even more enemies, being the most famous the Sassanians, Palmyrans, Goths (well, barbarians in general) and frecuently, Romans vs. Romans. 

It is an army that can play conflicts from Marcus Aurelius to Diocletian, roughly 100 years, If you are not a "button counter" of course. So lots of flexibility in my humble opinion.

Here is the first post about III century Roman miniatures in the blog:

https://spanishleadpainting.blogspot.com/2022/02/3rd-century-romans-project.html

Now my second unit fully painted and based: Legio Secunda Parthica:

                                   

Miniatures are a mixture of A & A miniatures with plastic Wargames Atlantic miniatures, which are very easy to paint and well sculpted. 

The most boring part was  hand painting all the shields, following the design of Legio II Parthica, at least in all the illustrations I have seen, you can see some in the previous post about 3rd century Romans here in the blog.

I added some 3d printed bits like some helmets , like the officer in the front rank, and a miniature in the back row.

I hope you like these little legionaries!

30 Years War French army : Catalan regiment 1640-52

Hi guys,

I played a very small game a couple of weeks ago using Pike & Shotte rules with just a couple of units per side.  I think I will switch to Pike & Shotte Epic rules, in order to have mixed units of pike and musket , and not a unit of pikemen and 2 units of musketeers like in the original Pike & Shotte. 

As I am expanding my 30 Years War armies, I need at least 4 infantry units and 2-3 units of cavalry per side (Spanish and French). For the battles taking place in Spain itself, I added this unit to give some flavour to my French army.

Some years ago, I bought an English Civil War regiment, painted by Peter Walker ( here is his blog : http://peterw3169.blogspot.com/ ).

I removed all the minis from their previous bases, and started rebasing them. This time I decided to make a regiment or tercio of rebel Catalans fighting for France against the Spanish, following the Catalan uprising in 1640.

The context of this unit is a small rebel Catalan "army"  inside the French army that operated several years with mixed results. It's name was the "Batalló". Its size and importance declined throughout the conflict, and the number of Catalans joining the loyal/royalist forces under the Habsburgs increased.

The Catalan revolt of 1640, also known as the reapers war, the war had its roots in the discomfort generated in Catalan society by the presence of the royal army (made mostly of mercenaries and troops from different nationalities from and outside the Hispanic Monarchy) during the Franco-Spanish War between the Kingdom of France and the Monarchy of Spain as part of the Thirty Years' War, as well the opposition of Catalan institutions to the centralised policies and new war taxes of Spanish prime minister Count-Duke of Olivares.

Catalan authorities maintained contacts with France, in order to establish an alliance between the Principality of Catalonia and this country. By the pact of Ceret, French promised to help the Principality. In this way, the States-General presided by Pau Claris proclaimed the Catalan Republic under the protection of the French monarchy, on 17 January 1641, which lasted a week until 21 January 1641, when they declared the French king Louis XIII count of Barcelona. Catalans would discover very soon that their new French masters were even more centralists than the Habsburgs.

The threat of the French enemy establishing a powerful base south of the Pyrenees caused an immediate reaction from the Habsburg monarchy. The Habsburg government sent a large army of 26,000 men under Pedro Fajardo to crush the Catalan Revolt. On its way to Barcelona, the Spanish army retook several cities, executing hundreds of prisoners, and a rebel army of the Catalan Republic was defeated in Martorell, near Barcelona, on 23 January. 

In response the Catalans reinforced their efforts and the Franco-Catalan armies obtained an important military victory over the Spanish army in the Battle of Montjuïc on26 January 1641...

A Franco-Catalan army under Philippe de La Mothe-Houdancourt moved south and gained several victories against the Spanish until 1644, When the tide turned and the Spanish and Catalan royalists started the reconquer of the Principality from 1644 onwards, gaining important victories at Lerida in 1644, 46 and 47 against Condé, and Barcelona in 1652 or Camprodon in 1658.

Coming back to the miniatures, I re used the ECW painted minis,  added a commander, with black sash, It seems they wore black sashes and or plumes.

The miniature is from  Avanpost, painted in Foundry paints.

I also painted a standard bearer by Steve Barber miniatures, with the flag of the Rebel Tercio of Barcelona.

I downloaded the flag from this fantastic blog about XVI and XVII c. warfare: http://alabarda-pica-ymosquete.blogspot.com/2023/01/banderas-del-ejercito-franco-catalan-en.html

Cheers!

Yet another classic 80' Chaos Warrrior

 Hello guys,

I painted this Chaos warrior of Nurgle in December, but with the Christmas holydays and a trip and other real life stuff, I did`nt manage to update the blog until now, late January 2024...

What to expect from this blog in the near future ?

Well, I am painting now some III c. Romans and I have played several games of Warhammer Quest, so some miniatures of fantasy will come here in the near future, some Sassanids too, and of course, my beloved XVII century stuff like 30 Years War and 1670-90' miniatures for sure.

Coming back to our Chaos warrior, It is a 1980' miniature by Citadel , of course.

I used Vallejo paints, Goblin Green with ivory in a lot of consecutive highlights in a "Foundry triad" style painting. 

As I don't play Chaos, this miniature, along the previous post's Chaos Warriors, is for Warhammer Quest games.

I hope you like this tiny update.

Oldhammer Chaos Warriors for Warhammer Quest

 Hi again guys,

I have just finished a couple of veeeery old Chaos Warriors from the eighties, I want them as enemies of the adventurers in Warhammer Quest. I will paint at least a couple more warriors , amongst them, the famous "Slambo" with his two axes... Here you have a catalog  with the miniatures, sadly I paid  more than the 1,95 pounds for 3 miniatures !

http://www.solegends.com/citWDAds/citwd1986/images/WD818609p58CWarriors-01_01.htm

I am really having much fun playing Warhammer Quest lately and I desperately need more (painted) enemies to fighy with, and a random event card with 1D3 of 3Chaos Warriors will decide the game at certain points, or they can appear at the main room of the dungeon, protecting a Chaos wizard or something like that.

I am new to painting Chaos warriors and this kind of armor, I like more the result of the black armor using edge highlights of grey over black on the left warrior, but the full metal armor guy on the right wasn`t too bad, I painted him much quicker, also using drybrush with lighter shades of steel and silver paints by Vallejo Model Air. 

I really like the style of the Oldhammer miniatures, I know modern sculpted plastic Chaos warriors are bigger, better sculpted, with a lot of details... but I still love these models, maybe because of nostalgia or becuase they have a special flavour that modern 3d designed miniatures lack.. I don't know, but I will stick to these kind of models for my games, as long as my pocket can hold!

I hope you like this little update. Cheers!

More Warhammer Empire classic halberdiers

 Hello guys,

As every year, from November to January, I enter somehow in a Fantasy mood and always paint Warhammer related stuff.  During the lasts weeks I have been playing classic Warhammer Quest (1995) with a friend, and next month I will have at last a game of Warhammer Fantasy 5th edition (aka. Herohammer or Middlehammer) with another friend, so I had to expand my Imperial forces.

My Altorf regiment of halberdiers had (until now) just 10 men, including command, so I have to strengthen it until 15 soldiers and later 20.

Here are the last 4 troopers available to recruit.

As you can see, these are classic monopose halberdiers, the first plastic miniatures available for the Empire in the early nineties. 

I painted them with Foundry paints (reds, blues, browns) and Vallejo model color and model air (flesh, blacks and metals) then ultra matt varnish for clothes and flesh, and shinny for the metal parts.  The shields were painted (all 20 shields at once)  a while ago with airbrush and masking tape, then shinny varnish, decal , very old decal!  then more shinny varnish and then matt varnish to seal it.

I hope you like them.

And the unit so far:

Cheers!

Warhammer Empire army is still growing: Knights of the White Wolf.

 Hi guys!

Just a quick update,  after some weeks painting ships, I went back to my origins, I am coming back to my good old Warhammer Empire army from 4th-5th edition , made up of old metal models, mostly, from 1992 range. Also painting some Tercios, but that will be shown in future posts.

I bought  some time ago some Knights of the White Wolf, and as I wanted to play with them quickly, I  commissioned them to a freelance painter, after he finished them, I re-touched them,  and re-painted here and there, added the flag, bases, varnished the models (matt in some areas and shiny in the armor of the rider and the horse) and that's it. Of course following the  original painting scheme by the 'eavy metal team back in the day.

Cheers