28mm Church Warlord Games/Italeri

 Hello mates,

I recently bought a second hand Warlord Games Church. It is an Italeri 1/72 scale Church, sold by Warlord as a result of collaboration between Italeri and Warlord Games since the last few years.

I wanted this kit since I saw it for the first time, although is not as well detailed as resin kits from Tabletop World, it is a decent model and reasonably priced, and above all,  is perfect for  a Mediterranean Church for my WW2 Sicily project or my XVII c. battles in Spain , like my siege of Gerona 1684 project.

Its size also convinced me, because it is tall but not too big in its footprint (remember it is 1/72). I got my inspiration with smaller footprint buildings from Sidney Roundwood's blog.

By the way, I got it quite cheap and it also came already built in a second hand app in Spain, so the painting process began almost inmediately after receiving it at home!  With the church I also bought a couple of Italeri mediterranean houses, in 1/72 but perfect for 28mm , and they also came fully built although unpainted :)

I usually paint my scenery with airbrush and expensive paints and materials, but this time I wanted to try something different:

A quick'n dirty way to finish off the building in no time!

The church came built, so I primed it in grey.

1) first step was picking a wide brush and craft paints and basecoated in dark grey the stones and red the roof, although the shingles are not modelled as mediterranean shingles and look like slate plates, but anyway I wanted them red.

2) I then changed the brush and started painting individually some stone and bricks and shingles, randomly in different shades of grey or red.

3) After that, I washed the whole model in dark brown oil paint with White Spirit

4) 2 days later, I decided to paint different colors of oil dots in the the whole model, and then fading the dots with the wide brush moistened in white spirit, with vertical brush strokes.

5) 2 days later the fun began with the drybrushing stage, light grey and creamy color in all the stone parts, and light red on the roof.

6) then some static grass and matt varnish.

It was very simple and easy to do , and the result is satisfactory, although it is not an award winning piece of terrain, it does it job in the gaming table.

I hope you find it useful !

Mordheim: second Reiklander Champion

 

Hi guys,

I don't play Mordheim since a year or so, but I want to play a game soon with friends, so my band need to be reinnforced. In tha past few years I have painted a full Reiklander warband, but I managed to get all the classic metal miniatures so I will expand the bande with these new additions.

This one is a Reiklander champion,  a "tank" in the warband, the guy in heavy armour who delivers terrible blows with his double handed weapon!

The miniature is obviously from Citadel  Mordheim range, and was painted in a mixture of Vallejo and Foundry paints.  Buff leather and Scarlet triads are some of my favourite Foundry paints. Metals with Vallejo model air, and white with Vallejo greys and white. The flesh is Vallejo "Panzer Aces" flesh base highlighted with skin or Iraqi sand.  Then gloss varnish (Ammo Mig) in the metal parts and Ultra matt varnish (Green Stuff World) on the flesh and fabrics.

I hope you like it.

Bolt Action Fallschirmjager for Sicily and Mediterranean

 Hello guys,

I am still painting World War 2 stuff for my Sicily 1943 project,  this time, half a platoon of German Fallschirmjager, paratroopers for Bolt Action game, inspired by the new book of Bolt Action "Soft Underbelly"

The miniatures are Artizan Designs, from an out of production line of "Ramcke Brigade" paratroopers in North Africa, but I found them excellent for Sicily too, with their tropical uniforms, in summer shirts are so on.

I have painted six of them so far, deliberately changing the shades of yellow ochre on the different miniatures, in order to give more flavour to the unit.

the other 6 are just primed in brown, waiting in the painting queue ( I hope to paint them soon).

I already have a couple of Panzers of Hermann Goering division and another couple of Italian tanks in Sicily, some standard German infantry (in fieldgrey uniform) with mortar and HMG, but I wanted to add more "Mediterranean" feeling to the army with some Fallschirmjager in tropical uniform, and, in the future, Italian infantry too.

This is the Order of Battle of 1st Fallschirmjäger Division in Sicily:

 - Generalleutnant Richard Heidrich (commenced arriving by air on 12 July; the 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment was held in reserve at Naples)

3rd Fallschirmjäger Regiment

3x battalions

13th Mortar Company

14th Anti-tank Company

4th Fallschirmjäger Regiment

3x battalions

13th Mortar Company

14th Anti-tank Company

1st Parachute Artillery Regiment

I Battalion (3x batteries 7.5 cm GebG 36)

II Battalion (3x batteries 7.5 cm GebG 36; with the 1st Fallschirmjäger Regiment at Naples)

1st Parachute Machine Gun Battalion

1st Parachute Panzerjäger Battalion (7.5 cm Pak 40 anti-tank guns)

1st Parachute Engineer Battalion

1st Parachute Signal Battalion

Division Services

Bolt Action US airborne for Sicily and Normandy (old miniatures)

 Hi guys,

I am still in WW2 mood,  painting some scenery for Sicily 1943 and a platoon of tropical Fallschirmjager for the same theatre. But in the meantime, I took from the box some old painted Bolt Action miniatures like this US Airborne force from Bolt Action, mostly bought back in the day when the game saw the light.

This weekend I took some pictures of my small US force so far. 

It comprises a platoon of US Airborne, a Sherman tank and a 76mm gun.  The first two units are Warlord's and the latter is Artizan.

I recently bought 2 more Shermans and another Airborne platoon, also support weapons like mortar and Bazookas, in order to have the army more playable.

These were painted a looooong time ago, maybe almost a decade or so, but never photographed.

The infantry is not painted up to my today's standard of painting, these were painted using Quickshade splash on technique and then slightly highlighted, but anyway, I will paint another batch at some point, and expand the army.

The army was thought for Normandy, but I will use it for Sicily, although the tank has the wrong painting scheme and is not the exact version of Sherman... but , you know, it's a game :D

Another member of my Tercio skirmish force

 Hello guys,

It has been a while since last time I updated this blog. In August it was too hot to paint, and also some summer trips abroad prevented me from grabbing my brushes, but here I am again.

These past weeks I am in a World War 2 mood, so I want to re-launch my Bolt Action force for Sicily, Normandy and Far East, but in the meantime, I wanted to finish a miniature from "Tercio Creativo", a sword and buckler man, in heroic 28mm scale, so more 30mm than 28mm... I have a lot of these miniatures and really like its sculpting, but they are little bit too big compared to the rest of my collection, so I use them separately, in skirmish mode.

I painted him using the Foundry Triad system, and then matt varnish with brush... sadly I used a dirty brush (with some plaster from a terrain project) when applied the matt varnish, so there are some traces of plaster in the trousers of the figure :( but anyway, I am happy with the end result.

Now all the miniatures of this range I have already painted, plus Alatriste, from Anno Domini 1666. the difference in size is slightly noticeable.

Cheers!

XVII c. Marksman: sniper for the Tercio!

 Hi guys!

I hope your summer is going fine, despite this terrible hot weather...  now I continue in my Pike and Shot mood, so  I am slowly (as always) building a small warband of  a Spanish Tercio for skirmish games such as Donnybrook, or our modification of Mordheim, adapted to 30 Years War. 

Last month I painted Captain Alatriste, using a miniature from "Anno Domini 1666" miniatures, you can see it in this blog in the last entry of June 2022. And  I also have the standard bearer from "Tercio Creativo", which I will show to you soon, and now I have painted a sniper or marksman, also from "Tercio Creativo".

This brand is a Spanish company which produces some good quality resin miniatures for their sci-fi and alt-historical games like “1650 a capa y a espada” a fantasy game set in an alternate world with some factions inspired in mid XVII C. Spanish and French.

I don’t play that game, but I really like how their miniatures look, and some of them are very useful for historical games 30 Years War style ! 

So this miniature is called “Zurriago” in their catalog, but currently is out of production, but probably will be for sale soon. 

I instantly fell in love with the oversized heavy musket and the aesthetic of the miniature, the sculpt is very good, with no flash or bubles... so with those merits he is now the marksman of my warband or little skirmishes force. 

As you can see, it’s full of little details (very time consuming to paint). I painted him mostly in Foundry paints triads, I specifically like their brownish shades like conquer brown, buff leather, and dark African flesh, also use Vallejo paints, and this time, I resorted to Citadel Rakarth Flesh for the shirt of the soldier. In past times I used only citadel (from 2000 onwards) but their tendency to dry out inside the pot made my change my paint range to other paints.

The varnish is my new favorite matt varnish; Green Stuff World ultra matt varnish!

I hope you like the finish result :)

Battalion gun for Tercio Morados Viejos

 Hello friends,

I hope your summer is going great! After a week off, I came back home and finished an ad hoc base for a Tercio I painted some years ago... a battalion gun or "mansfelete" light gun of Tercio "Old Purples" or "Morados Viejos" for my Spanish army of 1670-90'.

I used an old Phoenix miniatures Spanish Musketeer, cut off his hands, musket etc, and replaced with GW plastic hands of artillery crew of the Empire great cannon! my Warhammer Empire bits box is extremely useful for all kind of medieval, renaissance or baroque miniature conversions.

The other artillery crew is a brand new Reiver Castings miniature from their nice Franco Dutch War range.

The battalion gun itself is a 15mm Napoleonic carriage with a 28mm gun from Blood & Plunder miniatures.

Both miniatures were painted with Foundry Paints and Vallejo, specially Royal Purple paint! 

And now the full unit:

Cheers!