"Speedpainted" Austrian Tercio and Spanish Command

Hello again

This week I finished a couple of mini projects. The first one is an Imperial Austrian Tercio for 30 years war. I used 2 bases of Quickshade painted musketeers, and a base of spare pikemen I have, I painted a standard bearer, all miniatures from Warlord Games plastics, and a generic flag included in the box. I spent a little more time in the standard bearer in order to draw attention to him and the flag and not to his tabletop painted companions.

here the last base painted

Now, If I combine the 2 musketeers wings I intended to use for commanded shot or storming party, with this pike block... Voilà, we have a brand new Tercio/Regiment for the Imperials, to fight along his Habsburg cousins in Madrid against the Swedish at Nordlingen 1634, or support the Army of Flanders against Dutch or French. 

As I said, just tabletop quality, but effective, with nice base and flag, Quickshade method is not unpleasant to the eye. Of course most of my units are and will be painted with more elaborate techniques or just highlighting over the Quickshade.

The Second part of this post is the continuation of the test my friend did with the 3D modified miniatures. The next 3 miniatures are Mars 1/72 "Later Spanish" enlarged to 30mm... of course the lack of quality is evident, the miniatures themselves were poorly sculpted in their  original scale, so If you make them bigger, their shortcomings become bigger too, but nevertheles I have made a command base  for a battalia with them.  Just for fun. I hope you like it!

Spanish army showcase (League of Augsburg War)

Hi again,

As you may know, I am very interested in the armies of the League of Augsburg war, following an advertisement that I saw in a magazine, then I discovered the forum and decided to start a project in this period.

Being Spanish, I wanted to investigate a little about the participation of my country in the war, the sources are scarce, and in Spain, few people have armies of this period, since it is less glorious for us than other moments of the 16th and 17th centuries.

My main project are the Spanish Tercios in the Catalonian front when France invaded it in 1689. Of the three armies that Spain deployed during the war (in Flanders,  Milan and the Iberian Peninsula, the army of Catalonia is the most colorful and mixes good quality units, with militia and the famous “migueletes”. Their uniforms also show unique features and characteristics different to other European armies like the front lapels of the justacorps or the “Chambergo” hat.

My initial army is not very big;  I have painted so far 4 Infantry tercios, 1 militia unit, 1 Migueletes skirmishers, 2 artillery guns, 1 cavalry unit and a tercio of dragoons.

My intention is adding two more cavalry regiments, and 2 or 3 more infantry.

here you can see the section of Milan cavalry regiment, and infantry the Tercio of Seville “the old purple”, Tercio of Madrid  “old Reds”, Tercio of Córdoba “old greens”, Tercio of Toledo or “old blues”, besides dragoons (tercio viejo de dragones) and skirmishers migueletes and a regiment of local militia.

Some of these units already have a post for their own, and some will have it later on.

A couple of officers

 Spanish gun

Tercio de Córdoba and Tercio de Madrid in the background

Tercio de Sevilla and Tercio de Toledo in the background

Tercio viejo de dragones

Militia and Miquelets

Trozo de Milán

Tercio de Toledo

I have painted more units but for Flanders, like Dragones de Valanzart or some converged grenadiers, and another gun (plastic, Wargames Factory , now Warlord Games). I will so those in future posts.

Speed painting ? Airbrush+Quickshade

Hi mates,

Sometimes I just dont want to paint tons of miniatures at a high standard, or spend too many hours on a single unit, when you have a lot of simultaneous projects.

I have used Army Painter's Quickshade before, using a similar technique to the one used by Master David Imrie aka Saxon Dog, in his old blog, with very good results, it saves time, but not that much.

This time I have tried a simpler method. Just airbrush the dominant colour, and paint  some miniatures in various brown tones, then block in the different colours, basecoat stuff... boring but you have to do a clean paintjob.  After that is done, the Quickshade's turn arrives. I used the "splash on" method... with a cheap brush, mid to large size, cover the entire miniature with the Quickshade, and then re touch it with a damp brush with White Spirit or turpentine, in order to remove the excess Quickshade, this is a matter of practice, you will know over time how much you have to remove or touch...

After 24-48h  you can paint over it a few highlights, just 10 minutes per miniature, nothing too fancy, and then spray matt varnish.  In my case, I had troubles (hot weather) with the varnish and it became whiteish, almost ruining some miniatures (Thank God they were cheap plastic Warlord´s ECW storming party figures)

In the next pics you can see the some samples before and after the Quickshade.

and now after... (OMG this is horrible! ... No wait, we all think the same at this stage)

Now matt varnish and a couple of brush strokes. the are near decent for tabletop standard

In my humble opinion, you can achieve decent resolts if combined with a good basing and nice flags. In this case, you can se a musketeer wing, using cheap plastic miniatures. I would not use this technique on more expensive or better sculpted miniatures, but I have at least 2 complete Pike & Shot units that I will paint quickly this way. I think it works better with earthy tones, so Thirty Years War miniatures are perfect for it.

Regards!

Classic GW Empire halberdiers

Hello,

This time some old school painting... Yes, the box of Warhammer Empire Altdorf  halberdiers came to me. Over the past few years, I have been collecting most Empire miniatures of 4th and 5th editions all over the internet, and started a childhood project, painting a high standard Empire army. In a future post, I will showcase it here, but today, I will post some pics of my "w.i.p." halberdier regiment. I have 20 miniatures with the metal command, but have painted only 10 for now. They show their age, but are nice miniatures, with that old flavour GW had in its "Golden Age". 

I painted them with GW paints, Vallejo and Foundry triads. The decals, although old, fit perfectly and add a nice touch to the unit.  The banner is printed, I am horrible at free hand banners I'm afraid.

I hope you like the minis, I  personally like them a lot, and I'm quite pleased with the result.