Somebody stole it, raced it and brought it back!!

I have been very busy for the last few months.  My wife and I have a new addition to the family.  

This little guy's name is Theodore.  He had some complications at birth.  After being in a NiCU for a few weeks he had some lung complications.  I am happy to say he is past all that and can breathe on his own.  One nice thing about having kids is that if you wait long enough you may have a dedicated wargaming partner and painter.  

Since I am on display here I will share a few pictures of my daughter Madeline.  She will be 2 in October.  Madeline is all energy and is constantly on the move.  It is a surprise to me I have accomplished so much hobby wise while having a family.  My advice to you younger guys is that you do get some down time.  It is not a often as when you are single.  But I would rather have a family then being single.  I work my hobby time around my family.... it is not the other way.

I have finally completed my DbA Athenian II/5 army.  It was a long time coming.  The first picture is what the Athenians get as a core.  There is a General Spear stand, 4 Sp stands, 1 Psiloi, 1 Light Horse and 1 Cavalry.

This photo shows what your options are for the force.  The first photo are the mandatory 8 stands.  Every Athenian army has those guys.  You get to choose between 3 Sp or 3 Ps and 1 Sp or 1 Ps.
I mixed up the 1 / 1 choice with some Peltasts.  The 3 Psiloi are supposed to be Athenian sailors wielding slings and javelins.

Here is one army option with lots of Spears and minor Psilio support.

The next option has the minimum Spear units and lots and lots of Psiloi.  This is a great force for defending lots of difficult terrain.

 Here are the Athenian Cavalry.  I had much more fun painting this unit than I anticipated.  I used to try to paint 28mm cavalry and I hated it.  6mm is much more satisfying per time invested on the models.

This last photo shows off some Thracian Peltasts being supported by Athenian horse.  I made the choice to not paint designs on their shields.  I felt like the army will lose some of it's character if every shield is an elaborate design.  These guys did not care about that.  I still need another 9 stands of these guys to complete the DbMM list.  I can always add more detailed shields.

A friend of mine showed me how to make my own storage boxes from cardboard, foam and hot glue.  He used a white box used to hold magic the gathering cards.  They are very easy to make and very inexpensive too.  The foam gently grips the models and keeps them in place.  This design could survive any bump or impact.  

See how to foam grips the models and secures them.  My friend's design is great.  I will never have to spend 100s of dollars on foam army cases.

This box stores the entire army.  I wrote the army list info on the box for easy reference.

In other news I have also finished my Hordes of the Things army.  This borrows from the Greek Athenian army.  What you are looking at is quite a time sink.

This is the sacred grove that serves as the stronghold for the Greek Heroic army.  Think of the old Fairy ponds from Zelda.

Here are the Cyclops that serve as a behemoth in the army.  They were recruited by Zeus on the grounds that they have to behave.  Any casualties or spoil are free game to them after the battle.

These models are from the 15mm Magister Militum fantasy range.  They are actually Ghouls.  I modified them slightly to make them more mono-eyed.

 The last showcase is my slow project.  These stands are going to be in my King Triton HoTT army.  You have already seen Gary the Octopus.  I also have a Behemoth water elemental stand.  It is from MM's 15mm fantasy range.  The last stand is a scratch built Aerial / flyer stand.  It is a group of Tornadoes.  I cannot remember the ones that form over water.  King Triton has enlisted nature itself to wreck revenge on the surface dwellers.  This army is going to be mainly custom built stands.  So it naturally will have very slow progress.  It will have lots of angry crabs and lobsters.  I tried to think of other creatures that could attack up on land.  It was hard to come with other options outside of crustraceans.  If anyone has any ideas please let me know.  The theme here is that King Triton is pissed that surface dwellers keep polluting his oceans and depleting his seas of life.  He has decided to wage war on the ungrateful surface dregs who dared to defile his domain.

This stand is a Lurker / Water Lurker (depending on the amount of water terrain) of Mermen.  I am not sure how well this stands looks.  My Mermen were supposed to be a bit lighter shade of blue.  It does make sense that their skin gives a natural camo in the water.  Their bows and the one little guy with a javelin are made from whale bones.  Their culture is akin to Native Americans in that they do not carelessly kill or waste any creatures they hunt.  In this case one whale can make a lot of arms!!  Given that they cannot walk on land they are forced to lurk near shores.  If anyone is foolish enough to get within bow shot they will be dead.  The models are supposed to look like they have just popped out of the water and are about to let loose the first volley.  The water effects did not come out the way I wanted them to.
I would not go anywhere near the water if King Triton was waging an aquatic war against dry landers.  I must mention that King Triton has a bodyguard of Gillmen Blade stands.  I have not yet found a good model for them.  KT will be riding a massive war Lobster and is a Knight General in game terms.  I do have some bipedal aquatic invaders.  I did not want to over do it with gillmen because they are a treacherous lot and only agreed to help KT because of an ancient agreement made centuries ago.  King Triton does not want to many of the gillmen as they may turn on him after the fighting is over.

I have my next two mini projects on the board.  The first one is some baggage stands for the Athenian force and the Thessalian force.  I am also going to make another Cavaly stand to replace the current Athenian Cavalry stand.  My DbMM army has 6 Reg Cv I.  I have decided to use the more lightly armed Thracian horsemen instead of the other guys (the ones pictured above).  

The next project is the other half of my Greek army pack.  This is the Thessalian army for DbA.  The blank stand is going to be replaced by the Athenian Cavalry stand.  The Thessalians get a Cavalry general.  This picture has the entire force pictured along with the baggage for defensive games.  Once that is finished I can start warring for Greece with all painted forces.  I am excited. 

I need this brain for secret, undercover, aquatic training.

I have been away for some time.  Doing this every week is fun but life can get busy.  In the time since my post I have been really busy.  I moved my painting and hobby table into a small laundry room area.  During this transition I rearranged the entire area to be what you see in this photo.  I will put up some pics of the entire area some other time.  This setup gives me 300% more room than I had before.  Instead of two lamps I have three lamps.  You need a lot of light when you paint.  I really love my setup.  Notice the top center of the picture.  My Samsung tablet is mounted on two thumbtacks.  I like to listen to youtube videos while I work.  

This new setup is awesome.  It even has the Onion page a day calender.  I suppose Dilbert calendars are not available.  

 This top picture features my current all encompassing project.  I have made DbMM and all it's glory my current wargaming project.  My entire 400 point Athenian Later Hoplite Greek 2/5 army is here.  Well, the bases are here.  I have not purchased all the models.  It is a pretty big army.  Irregular Spears are pretty cheap points wise.

 These guys are my "currently finished" Hoplites.  The center stand has a general on a white horse.  The back stands are still in the process of being finished.  I am about halfway done with those stands.  They look pretty good.  My shield painting will get better and better.  I picked ten images that Greek warriors painted on their shields.  I made each rank have a different image.  It looks good and I can see where I started and where I finished with the designs.  They keep becoming more elaborate.  The completed army should look stunning because I will have gotten much more skilled at painting the shield designs.

 This leads me to unveil my next side project!!  DbMM and DbA have a fantasy variant game.  It is called Hordes of the Things.  The game is much more flexible with unit choices.  You get 24 points and can make whatever you want.  Since I have a bunch of Greek Hoplites I figured "Why not" and made a Athenian / Greeky host.  The above picture is the completed 24 point force.  Some of the models are primed but not ready.  It has been a lot of fun designing this force.  I do love conversions.  HoTT lets you do that in abundance.

 The first guy here is a God stand.  Or Zeus as he is called by mortals.  You may wondering why Zeus has orange hair and bronze skin.  I designed the image based off of John's interpretation of the angel in Revelation.  I imagine that lowly mortals cannot fathom Zeus in his true godly form.  So they see a giant man with gleaming bronze skin and a head of hair that looks like burning fire.  Zeus' lightning bolts are mere javelins crackling with mysterious energy.  When he throws them they look like massive bolts of lighting.  I am not completely happy with how the javelins turned out.  They did not have much surface area and that made it hard to make more crackling energy effects.  I would say the the models generously gives the +6 combat resolution.

 This is a behemoth stand.  I made this a few years ago as an experiment.  My rock golem was made from a couple of pebbles I found on the ground.  I think there are a few rocks from my fish tank and some fresh kitty litter scrabble. Total cost on this guy is probably 10 cents.

 I am not using him for my Greek army.  It seemed like a good time to show him as he is mounted on a 40mm by 40mm base.  I was thinking ahead when I based him.  Hooray.

 If you ask any of my friends what kind of animals I like they will probably say Lobsters.  And if they do not say that they will say Octopi.  Yeah, I know Octopuses is wrong.  I read a book by a biologist who studied giant squid.  He is a leading authority on them.  In his book he called the plural of the cephalopod with eight arms "Octopuses".  It does not really matter what you say.  Language is all about context and I think people will know what you are saying when you say Octopuses.  If you say Octopi you will sound fancy.

 That is an odd segway into my aquatic Lurker stand.  This guy comes up out of the water to grab terrified Greeks.  Do not piss him off because he will eat you.  I actually made this for my Poseidon aquatic army.  I am going to add more later but for now Gary the Octopus will do.  He was lots of fun designing and painting.  I feel like he will chew up the furniture by being a lowly Lurker and not a more terrifying behemoth or whatever.  My advice is to steer clear of any water based terrain.  Gary is salt water friendly but he can live in fresh water.

 Check out the blow hole on the right side of his head thing.  I really like that touch.

 Aquatic Lurkers are fairly limited if there is no water for them to hide inside.  I should explain how Lurkers work in the game.  They are not deployed on the table at the beginning of the game.  They appear once an enemy stand moves into or on the edge of an aquatic piece of terrain.  I decided to make some aquatic scenery to give Gary some stomping grounds.  Here is a swamp that I made.  Look at all the lurking possibility.

 Oh Noes!!!!!  Some foolish Greeks decided to take a short cut through the swampy ground.  Gary is eating good tonight.  Those poor guys do not stand a chance.  They may beat Gary back but he can always come back later to cause more trouble.

 These Centaurs are hard to see.  But I think that reflects their nature.  They are my Rider stand.  A Rider is a unit of lightly armed fast cavalry.  They focus more on charging up to the enemy line, letting loose some arrows and then running away in tactical order.  Centaurs are a woodland creature so they would not be impeded by rough woody terrain.  These models are from MicroWorld games.  They are great and I recommend checking out their fantasy range of 6mm models.

 The only downside to the models are that they have one pose.  I made one guy with his bow lowered and pulling out another arrow.  I had a terrible time getting a decent shot of him.  The models are still great and I am excited to work on the two horde stands of fauns.

I had so much fun working on these models.  I hope you enjoyed looking at them.

Who wrote "The Moon rules" in the side of my car with a key? You know someone who'd do something like that?

Hello again cyberville.  I have been away for a while.  Life is very busy.  I got to accomplish a lot of stuff in the interim.  The first bit are my Colonial government regular infantry forces!  They are a mix of different ranges and I believe they work well together.  The regular infantry platoon is the typical 3 squad format with 12 men per squad.  The colonial government has purchased weapons from countries in Europe and the Israelis. Each squad has several Uzis and a Russian light machine gun for support.  This is the first half of the squad minus the team leader.  I am going to add the leader if I can ever get to the hobby store.  The load out for a typical squad are the Fn-Fals, Uzis, the RpK and LaW AT weapons.  The standard camo pattern is Rhodesian camo.  I plan on mixing different patterns in as I imagine that a country fighting for survival does not always worry about everything being uniform.  Parade or garrison discipline is replaced by something more worthy.   

This tank is my great idea.  I had these pz 38t czech tanks laying around.  Gone were my plans to game early war ww2 in 15mm.  What could I do with these Russian made plastic tanks?  Well, inject them into my pseudo African nation.  After the war ended, the colonial government grabbed up as many tanks as they could get their hands on.  They needed them for defense of the interior.  Over time the tanks were replaced by more modern models.  These relics were handed over for training purposes.  For the last 20 or so years these old Czech survivors were used for training of the colonial army.  Now that the country is fighting a very real and terrible war supplies are in short supply.  A resource staff officer requisitioned them as second line support tanks.  They provide mobile pill box duty for the infantry.  These tanks are kind of a death trap but the crew has found ways to cheat death.

I actually finished a project.  Here are the ships that participated in the Battle of Cape Spada.  This was a resounding victory for the Australian Navy.  The Italian historians write it off as a morale victory because one of the cruisers got away.  

This battle started with two Italian light cruisers chasing 5 British destroyers.  The destroyers were actually leading the Italian cruisers into a trap.  A mean ol' Australian light cruiser and a little friend were sailing straight for the Italian bullies.  The Italian ships saw the cruiser and tried to break off.  The Bartomolei Colleoni took a fatal torpedo hit and was sunk.  The Bande Nere barely escaped.  

 The first picture is on the Bartomolei Colleni and the Giovanni delle Bande Nere.  They are the earliest class of Condoterri light cruisers used by the Italians.  This particular class, the Guissano, was at the time the fastest surface ship in the world.  That speed came a price though.  The ship had very weak armor.  The cruisers topped off at 40 knots.  That is 44 miles per hour.  In nautical terms that was booking... I guess.

This picture is the HMaS Sydney, a Perth class light cruiser and an H class destroyer.  The destroyers present all had H names but for the sake of basing and painting 30+ destroyers I labeled them all "H" class destroyer. 

Here are the rest of the British destroyers.  They are all H class ships as well.  The British named their new classes of destroyers after a letter of the alphabet.  It makes thing more simple.  I would be really nervous to be on a ship with a letter designation for a class.  It implies the ship you are on is extremely expendable...which means you are extremely expendable.  Yikes.
I do not have any more naval wargaming plans in the immediate future.  I would like to one day have the entire Italian and German surface fleets in 1/6000 figurehead ships.  Please note that my ambition will be from capital ships and scale down to destroyers.  I will not be basing torpedo boats or submarines.  There are far to many of them to collect.  Destroyers are pushing it actually.  The German fleet of WW2 only had around 20 capital ships and a handful of destroyers.  It would be easy to collect the fleet in 1/6000 scale.

Next up is my Chinese DbMM project.  No, this is not Taiping rebellion stuff.  I am also experimenting with a Chinese army from a much earlier era. This particular base is a unit of C'hin conscripts wielding Ge dagger axes.  The weapons are really cool.  I suggest looking them up if you are curious.  I used Baccus Japanese Retainers as guinea pigs.  The Ge were made with straight pins, superglue and plasticard.  I have also made some ge using brass rod and simple soldering skills.  I am still new at soldering but I hope that with time I will become proficient at it.  Soldering is an interesting skill.
This base is a Irr Bd (I).  The other base I made is a Reg Bd (O).  I also need to make Reg / Irr Aux with spears and shields and Reg Bw and Irr Bw wielding crossbows.  I think the Bd stands are the most challenging because the Ge require the most technical know how.  The Aux stands will need putty made shields and straight pins for spears. I have done stuff like that before.  Crossbows will be a challenge b/c I am not sure how to do that.  I will tackle that later.  China really liked their crossbows.  I have not even started on the C'hin chariots.  This dynasty is famous for the terracotta soldiers that have been dug up.  The Regular troops are made from Baccus Ashigaru.  Their armor looks terrible similar to the C'hin armored warriors minus the goofy headgear.  I had to sand down the helmets.  I am still on the fence on how to model the head gear of the armored C'hin warriors.

This is my old creation from almost two years ago. They are fantasy bolt shooters for a High Elf army.  One day I will actually make this army for Hostile Realms but for now they are resting.  One day... one day.

The last bit of the day are my disruption explosions for Spearhead.  These little mushroom clouds mimic actual explosions photographed during WW2.  They are on the largish side for 3mm models.  I do not care as they were fun to make and very easy if time consuming.  I just need another 40 and I should have enough for all my games of Spearhead operational combat.

The Russians are coming...The Russians are coming!!!

Yep.  The Hungarian in me is cringing in fear and dread.  I have been very busy lately.  Since I have been out of work due to a car accident I supplement  that desire to work with painting and modeling. 

I have some of my DbA Greek Athenian stuff done.  The beauty of this game is that you only need 12 stands to have an army.  I suppose I need to add a few camp / stowage bases.  My goal for now is to finish these hairy, oily Greeky guys.  When I finish we can all have a big barbecue with food and ouzo liquor.  
So far I have a stand of light horse and a Psiloi bowmen stand completed.   Psiloi is a fancy word for a group of Skirmishers.   Those horsemen will double as a horse archer stand in my DbMM Athenian force.  I know they have javelins.  Bows were supposed to be rare in this Era of Greek warfare.  I will try to use a suitable archer stand for the other units. 
I actually had a stroke of inspiration with my Greek cavalry.  The Athenian force uses Regular Cavalry Inferior.  It is abbreviated Reg Cv (I).  The game de bellis magister militium (DbMM) has a unique rating system for the 15 or 20 units in the game.   The are rated as regular or irregular.  It has to do with command and Control issues.
Units range from Spears, Pikes,  Blades, Bowmen, Psiloi and many more.    Some units cannot be irregular or regular due to type.   An example of this is warbands.  Warbands HAVE to be irregular.   Think of a bunch of frothing Wisconsiners screaming "We're going to dairy queen!".  That is the amount of control you could have over a warband.  There are different quality ratings for each regular or irregular unit.  They range from superior, ordinary,  inferior and fast.  They each have different effects in combat.  Fast moves more quickly but fairs worse in Combat.  Inferior are even more brittle and while cheap tend to crumble in combat.  Commit them at your own peril.  Superior are well, superior.  These guys know what matters most in life.

             "Crush your enemies.  See dem flee before you.  Hear de 
               lamentation of de wimmen".

I got a bunch of these Greek horsemen with the floppy hats and the spears.  The Athenian is able to take Reg Cv (I).  I did not have enough of the more heavily armed Greek cavalry for a Thessalian DbA force.  I decided to use the light horsemen as Cv inferior!  Greek horsemen in this period were rare and not Hungarians in the saddle.  I see that as the horsemen being unarmored and not well motivated.   They are not willing to commit to an engagement and are fairly skittish.
I got so many light horsemen in the army pack that I was afraid I would never use them.  Now I can field a Thessalian DbA force with 3 cavalry units and proxy them as Light horse (you get to pick 3 Cv units or 3 Lh units).  One unit gets to do triple duty.  They are light horse and cavalry units in DbA.  They are also Reg Cv (I) in DbMM.  Hooray.

I also have the first batch of Hoplites finished.  I am waiting to do the shields because I want to do all of them at once.   I have around 120 guys to paint.  This batch before you is 21 strong.  It took me all day to finish.  I should get faster once muscle memory sets in.

I have finally gotten around to painting my 3mm ww2 stuff.  They are mounted on 30mm x 40mm bases.  I find the shape of rectangular bases to be more pleasing to the eye than yucky old square bases.  This batch represents an almost complete early war Russian independent tank brigade.  I am missing a KV1 stand and the brigade command teams.  Each battalion had a kv-1 platoon, a t34 platoon and two platoons of t26s or bt-5/7 tanks.  Bear in mind that some units were in short supply of vehicle at the start of the war.  Some units had no tanks at all.  I would hate to have been one of those tankers.  I could probably substitute the kv1 stand for a t34 stand. 

I want to dispel the myth of German tank superiority.  When Germany launched operation Barbarossa in '41 they were deficient in the armor department.  The KV 1 tank was a monster for the Germans to handle.  The tank was almost unstoppable against the guns the German tanks had when they crossed the border.  As time went on German tanks were continually up gunned and improved.  In '43 the Panther was issued to front line units as a response for the t34 problem.  I consider this thr first real heavy German tank.  There were some Tiger tanks floating around in the early war but I think there were not enough of them to make a huge diffrence.   The workhorse of the German army was the Pz III.  It started the invasion with 37mm gun and went up to at least a higher velocity 50mm gun.  I think I went higher but for me I ignore the tank after the pz III J.  This was a good tank that accounted well for itself.  In the early war the Germans had to employ better training and doctrine to defeat the Russians.  Stalin really hurt the officer corps by purging all the good officers.  They were replace with politically sound but untested officers.  He also did away with vehicle radios.  Soviet tank doctrine was to button up all your hatches and watch the lead tank through the view scopes.  I guess they fired as they had time.  Tanks were seen by Stalin as nothing more than metal cavalry.  They drove across the field in giant waves hoping to overwhelm thr enemy.  This might account for why there were so many soviet tank losses. 

I do want to add some labels to more easily identify the units.  I feel like the stands pop.  It always helps to have quicker IDing of units. 

I also painted some 3mm trucks on 25mm circle bases.   Spearhead allows infantry platoons to be carried in trucks.   Once the infantry reaches a certain point they dismount and continue on foot.  In the rules the trucks go to the rear and the infantry is on foot for the rest of the game.  Instead of making infantry with trucks based together and stands with no trucks I decided to make the trucks attachments.  An infantry battalion has the trucks piggybacking on the infantry bases.    They give the infantry truck movement until the infantry takes Fire or dismounts.  Infantry mounted in armored fighting vehicles will have the half tracks mounts on the stand.   Those vehicle linger in the rear giving support with machine guns, etc.
I have not decided whether to mount support teams with trucks or do the attachment thing.  Their transport does not go away like Infantry transport. 
I am waiting on more bases.  I have a lot more 3mm Russian models to base.  

Thanks for watching.  I hope I was not to boring.  Please feel free to nicely correct me of any of my facts are wrong.

The last pic is my work cart.  I found this in the dumpster.  It was taped up.  I think someone moved and decided to toss it.  I wiped it down and use it all the time.  The misses likes it because i do not clutter the table with my stuff.

The Taiping rebellion "T 'uan Lien" part 2

This is the next installment in my Taiping Rebellion project.  These guys are local groups of militia that defended their specific region.   I believe that this would be the main enemy of the Taiping rebels early in the conflict. 

I imagine them as having some flags that they have hung on to for decades.  The flag with the character is the leader's banner.  Some units had a banner with their officer's first initial on it.  The first commander of the ever victorious army had his own banner with his first character in chinese.  Since I do not speak chinese this may not be a first  character.  I hope that a Chinese speaker will correct me before I make to many mistakes. 

I realize I may have set the bar to high because the peasant unit has three flags.  How many flags should an Imperial Chinese regular unit have?  I am in luck as each unit is battalion sized.  Each unit is actually 4 stands large.  This painted experiment is actually a quarter of the peasantry.  I think the "leader" unit can have an extra flag.   The other stands will probably have one or maybe two flags.  
The regular units will have more flags...maybe 4 or 5.  The more flags the better.  The Chinese loved flags.  The main tactic of the period was to wave the flags,  scream, bang on musical instruments really loud in order to spool the oppositon.  Apparently whole battle lines clashing in a bloody Melee was considered reckless.  The general rule of thought was that if you do not die you can fight again tomorrow.   It sounds cowardly to western minds but it made sense to the Chinese of the time.  It is considered better to be cautious then to throw lives away in futile assaults. 

That was not always the case.  The Taiping rebels had special black flags.  When these banners were flown the Taiping rebels would fight to the death.  This terrified the Imperial forces and they usually gave up the field. 

Even with the reluctance the projected casualties were only beaten by the ww2 scale of death. 

I plan on adding more stands in the near future.  I just need to finish my baccus 6mm Greek DbA army.  It is only 12 units but those Hoplites take time to paint. 

You can see them looming in the background base coated and menacing.