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Norman Spearmen First Crusade

These Norman Spearmen are my first attempt in painting for medieval 15mm wargaming. I did already paint Perry Spearmen for WAB, but to be honest the game does not interest me enough to get motivated. The look of WAB is not interesting enough for me, because I have a very visual approach to the gaming rather than mere gaming.
A very good wargaming friend of mine, Frank Bauer, did recommend Field of Glory a lot. Since I share a lot of attitudes toward the hobby with him and learned a lot of about wargaming from him, I bought FoG quite a time ago. Moreover I had the chance to play FoG twice. One game with Mikko in our Frankfurt am Main based gaming club, one with Frank. Both games were excellent and interesting, and maneuvering was far more important than army lists, which is very important for me.
After the first game with Mikko I spontainously bought some 15mm Normans since Mikko has several muslim armies available. The first crusade is very fascinating for me, which can be seen at my nick name.
In the first run Neldoreth inspired me with his Norman minatures to buy Khurasan miniatures, later I got to know Legio Heroica, an italien miniature designer at the Field of Glory Wiki, which is also a great place to surf at. The Legio Heroica models are really outstanding and they were a big fun to paint.
The models were based with rare earth magnets in plastic card, so that the bases are not very thick. Moreover I added steel spears from another manufacturer and added some Khurasan round shields in order to have the look of early Crusader forces.
The Flags were designed by me using a computer and printouts. They are based on a illustration in “Norman knights” by Osprey Publishing showing flags of the famous Bayeux tapestry, which I gladly were able to see with my own eyes severel years ago.
28. July 2010
What I like today
Plastic Viking review:
Neldoreth wrote an great review on Gripping Beast and Warlord games plastic Viking miniatures.
Events:
yesthatphil visited the Festival of history and shows modern coverage and English Civil War stuff. Great pictures and videos.
Scenery:
Frank Becker presents his excellent Pegasus Bridge Gaming table using lasered models by Jens Najewitz.
28. July 2010
Battlestar Galactica – The Battlestars
In my last Blog-Post I introduced my civilian fleet. For a fan of the television series it was a big challenge for me to paint the Battlestars and Basestars.

For the paintjob I used Vallejo Gun Metal in a 2:1 mix with different highlights from Vallejo German Grey to Vallejo Cold Grey and Vallejo Stonewall Grey.

The models were easy to paint and I finished all 4 models on the same afternoon. I hope you like them.
The model dimensions: Galactica 3.75″, Pegasus 4″, Basestar 5″
As explained in my last Blog-Post the models are from Ravenstar Studios and the stands are scratch build.
Greetings
Glorfunzel
24. July 2010
What I like today
Parking lot gaming tables:
Zac rants about GW 40K gaming tables. He is absolutely right. Aber sowas von (emphasis for our german readers). Don´t miss his finding on infantile gaming style here.
Water Effects:
Massive Voodoo has an very nice article on water effects.
Song of Samurai…:
Frank Becker is working on a Samurai setting for “A song of blades and heroes”.
15mm scenery:
lewchips made a wonderful 15 mm dark age village terrain piece.
20. July 2010
What I like today
German Eastern Front Fortifications:
Excellent Website article on german bunkers, dug outs and security concepts.
Eastern Front Pictures
Impressive Picture Gallery made by a tank artillery regiment.
Zombietown:
If you ever planned to build a Zombie game table you definetly should visit Zombietown! It reminds me of Grimm´s atomic cafe, which should be appreciated too!
13. July 2010
Hungarian Panzer IV
In our upcoming campaingn there is already one thing for sure: The axis has to cope with a lot of russian tanks, since most club members start their force with a tankovy battaillion. I will have a game this week against 11 KV1s. Therefore I urgently need heavy gun options. The Panzer IV for sure is one option against heavy soviet tanks.
I decided not to fix the gun barrels to the turret permanently but to use rare earth magnets for that purpose. Since the hungarians only may chose one platoon of Panzer IV, having three tanks with 6 barrels is an excellent choice.
I tried whitewashed camo with these, but I am not very happy with the result. To be honest I plan to paint another 3 tanks in german grey. White washed models are quite difficult if they should look realistic. Tipps are appreciated!
Unfortunately there was a mistake in the model painting by battlefront since Wayne painted red crosses with green background in the hungarian markings. So did I. However he mentioned his mistake in his painting article. Foehammer from the Battlefront forums was so kind to tell me that detail. However the decals will see a change to green crosses in the near future. I am too picky to live with that mistake, although there may have been red crosses as well.
13. July 2010
What I like today
Outstanding Theoden (besides the strange balustrade):
Massive Voodoo Author Der_Ben showed an really impressive Theoden. Remember that this model is true 28mm!
Realistic futuristic weathering:
A cool future vehicle designed by Antenociti, painted and weathered by dwartist. The 28mm vehicle looks really impressive. Weathering with pigments is not as easy as it seems to be, so look how the pro does it.
Early war preview by Battlefront:
The new Flames of war boxes really look excellent!
Ebobs 1:700 Battleship model:
Excellent tutorial on building waterline ship dioramas.
9. July 2010
Airbrushing sprayed camoflage with paper masks
Usually I do not care about WIP posts. Personally I do not like WIPs when they show miniatures besides the painting technic is somewhat special. However I decided to show you my Toldis and Csabas before they are finished, because I managed to airbrush a quite good 3 color camoflage. Frank Bauer and Lemming told me in the german Sweetwater Forums when they saw my Famo trucks, that the scale of the airbrushed camo is not right.
For sure I did understand their professional critisism, but first I had no idea how to achieve the scale. That was for the reason that I assumed to airbrush it with free hands. However on my desk chaos there were some paper register cards I bought for learning vocabularies. However when I saw them it came to my mind that with some holes which have no sharp edges I could mask perfectly the borders of the color edges. You can see this in the following pictures.

So once more a discussion in a forum led to a better painting result. Thanks a lot for challenging me, Frank and Lemming!
5. July 2010
What I like today
Scenery
Cianty has a nice post on model supplies for furniture, markets and inn signs in 28 mm.
Tree Tutorial
Frank Bauer did an excellent Tree tutorial in german. However pictures should help you to understand the tutorial, I can help if you guys have questions. By the way Frank used the italian Houses Rusus and I designed in 15mm.
Science Fiction terrain
Rémi Bostal did post marveless pictures showing alien minatures in his scenery.
Painting Knights
Antipater continued with his Basic impetus project. Thank you Lord! Please do not miss his outstanding work and his researches.
Lord of the Ring Amon hen gaming table on the spanish Games Day
The guys of La Guerra del Anillo showed an gaming table masterpiece!
5. July 2010
Hungarian Artillery
This platoon has seen a somewhat funny story: I painted it in order to support either my hungarian tank company or motorised infantry. For sure artillery is important and the german 10,5 cm guns can provide a means against russian tanks in artillery bomardments. To field a hungarian platoon means, that you have to buy two blister guns, a hungarian artillery crew blister and the towing vehicles as well. A lot of money if you consider to field alternatively mortars for the infantry company. However I always liked the sprayed hungarian 3 color camo, therefore I decided to paint the guns in that version. I found several picturs showing the german guns in this painting scheme.

I wanted to have the teams in a dug in position since the hungarian troops were forced to cover in field works since the russians threw massive attack after attack against them. Therefore I modeled three different base sizes. The first attempt with the artillery base was to small for the huge guns, so I designed another one. After that I made a silicone form and made some bases with resin. The result was really nice. I cut off the bases of the infantry models and glued them directly to the designed base. One nice effect on this technic is, that the base ground is less thick. For sure there will be models to be fall off in future, but I can repair this.
The crews are mixed between germans and hungarians, the main difference is the boots of the germans. I just painted them as trousers and I think it is hard to pick them out if you want to search them.
The strange thing on this platoon is, that within our campaign we do play with the exeptional rule “Across the Volga” which means that you may place your artillery outside the table – you do not need to paint it…
27. June 2010