Alberken Craziness

Found these on ebay recently and thanks to a trade, may swap a box of Russians for the Austrians to bolster my Russian forces.  Unfortunately they come in boxes of twenty, and I am unlikely to ever find unpainted Alberken miniatures to fill them out to a full battalion of 24.  I think I have some DK figures that I could convert into standard bearers and NCOs, but of course the challenge will be to mimic the painting style and aged finish of the originals.

The photo on top is of 2 mint condition boxes of Austrians and Russian Grenadiers (the excessive yellowing is a product of bad photography - though I will say the white paint has yellowed somewhat).  With luck I'll swap the Austrians for the Russian line battalion in the second photo (really having no use for Austrians in my army at present).  Have to love trying to make use of these old veterans!

40mm Role Playing with Melee and Wizard - TFT Kickstarter

I loved playing The Fantasy Trip (TFT) when I was a wee tike in high school (actually I was pretty big and sported a daunting beard back then, but no matter, you get the point).  Recently Steve Jackson re-acquired the rights to the game and has re-released it in a new shiny version through Kickstarter.  In preparation I am hastily painting 40mm Lord of the Rings plastic hex combat figures, as well as 40mm pewter Mindstalker miniatures, to be ready for a dungeon adventure this Christmas with the family.  Nothing says Christmas like Death Test II!  Here are some work in progress pictures of the figures:

 "Not Galadriel" preparing to hurl a fireball.

 I never like this sculpt in 28mm and it was even worse in 40mm, so I just chopped off the extended left arm and added a shield.  Better, but still not my favorite.

 Pewter Mindstalker figures, unfortunately out of print

Ancient German 15mm DBA Army

While Normally I pride myself on painting my own armies, recently I realized I simply have more lead than I could ever hope to paint, so I farmed some out to the talented paint brush of Paul Potter for painting.  I asked Paul to leave them un-based so I could match my own style.  Besides basing, I decided I wanted to pretty up some of the shields with Little Big Man shield transfers, so there is a nice mix of original painting and transfers in the army.  So without further ado, here is the result:

Rohan, the Men of Snowbourne

In the Peter Jackson film version of the Lord of the Rings, the men of Snowbourne are late to the rallying point before the Rohirrim head out to assault the orcs of Morder besieging Minas Tirith.  The only excuse I could see is that they must be from the outer reaches of Rohan.  When I received this selection of soldiers, painted by none other than Sue (Hurklecat).  I thought immediately that they could be fashioned into Rohirrim with just a little bit of extra love.  I added just one or two figures, customized some shields and added some banners, replaced old lead spaghetti spears and then based them to match my collection.  Thus my second army of Rohan was born, this time featuring more reds than greens, a consequence of their distance from the main plains of Rohan, and also why there are more infantry, as they live in the foothills of the mountains bordering Rohan (at least that's my story and I'm sticking with it.)  The magician is meant to represent Radagast the Brown, who has emerged from seclusion to lend a hand against the evils of Isengard and Morder.

Radagast was on of the few figures I painted from scratch and is from a Ral Partha half-elf collection I believe.  I thought his armor/coat was reminiscent of feather, hence he is based with an owl and eagle.

There were two of these included in the selection and they were a bit too Roman to serve as rohirrim, particularly this on on the armored horse, so I sculpted a horsehair crest for the helmet and added a sword to help disguise his Roman heritage.

Italian Condotta 25mm Venetian Reinforcements by Ral Partha

I added another few elements to my Venetian army for DBR using 25mm Ral Partha sculpts by Tom Meier.  These are fantastic old school miniatures from back in the 1980's, but also really show Mr. Meier at the top of his game!

Here is a link to another Post with the rest of the army, though I have apparently failed to ever photograph my Romaniole pikemen, resplendent in the red and white outfits typical of the landsknechte.

http://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2011/01/venetian-italian-condottieri-dba-army.html

A much needed additional element of heavy knights for the Venetians.

I added a few VVV decals to the horse barding to give it a little extra umph.

As far as I know Ral Partha only ever produced two variations of heavy knights for the Renaissance period.  I have incorporated a modest variety by varying the horses they are mounted on.

I Believe this heavy horse barding was designed to represent a metal exterior, but I have also seen period paintings of this type of armor with a close fitting tabard, so I think I could also paint this horse as if the barding were almost tapestry-like.

Crossbows were still in use, though getting rapidly replaced by hand gunners.

The simple and muted color combination of this unit I found surprisingly appealing.

The Venetians loved their eastern mercenaries, and here we have a unit of Dellis, stolen from the Ottoman line, also sculpted by Tom Meier.  Apparently they really did like to tack bird wings to their shields.

I'm looking forward to my next game with Terry, so that I will have a better chance of teaching his vile Milanese their place in the Italian states pecking order.

 

Celtic Auxilieries for the Marian Romans

Just a quick update this morning with some shots of what I hope is the last of the Roman Auxilia troops from allied or conquered nations.  Here we have some Gallic warbands fighting in Roman service.

Here are some links to other earlier posts about the Marian Romans.  As you can see the army is becoming quite sizable, for a DBA army at least.

http://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2017/05/dba-marian-romans-and-spanish.html

http://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2010/04/marian-roman-army-completed.html

The figures are 15mm Testudo Miniatures

Apparently the Gauls did lots of work on muscle definition, because these guys are jacked!

The shields are a fiddly combination of Little Big Man transfers and paint.  I would hate to have to do a whole army like this, because the decals must be pain painstakingly applied to each side of the central spine of the shield.  Frankly, though I love the fine detail you can get from the transfers, in most cases I think it would have been easier to just paint them.

 

40mm Miniatures for The Fantasy Trip Death Test

About a year ago I started painting 40mm miniatures with the idea of using them to play some of the old Metagames that were released as part of The Fantasy Trip.  Melee and Wizard were the first two microgames in this series and I have one of the self programmed adventures, Death Test II, that I would love to introduce to my gaming group.  

 As luck would have it, recently one of the creators of The Fantasy Trip, Steve Jackson, was able to regain the rights to the game and is re-issuing the series through Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/the-fantasy-trip-old-school-roleplaying

This is the very first Kickstarter I have decided to back, so hope it will go well.  I have the original rules so don't really need it, but I wanted to throw in my support and it never hurts to get a nice new box of toys.  

Here is a link to some of the other miniatures for The Fantasy Trip I have already posted to this blog:

 http://miniatureminions.blogspot.com/2015/09/mindstalkers-40mm-italian-medieval.html

No pictures, but I have also used a lot of the Lord of the Rings 40mm hex click miniatures to form the backbone of the dungeon dwellers.  I just pop them off their bases and pin them to either lead or plaster bases I designed and cast myself, to match the size of the Mindstalkers miniatures.

Below are some of the 40mm miniatures I have been painting to use with the game recently:

This is a Darksword Miniatures figure of a Game of Thrones lady in waiting.  Small for 40mm, as she only stands about 33+mm high, but not everyone is tall, so I thought she was well within the range for a smaller woman.  For what it is worth, I tried to paint her with a sheer fabric dress, but didn't want it to be obscene.

I picked her up a Nashcon in a bin of $1.00 miniatures, so she was a bargain, and then mounted her on one of my custom bases.

Needless to say she was fun to paint for obvious reasons, but I did have to take a lot of ribbing from my dear spouse!

As always, the sculpts by Tom Meier are full of character, and she is no exception.  The attention to facial detail in particular, is a hallmark of his sculpts.

The vikings are part of the VVV miniatures line and are cast in resin.  Beautiful figures, if a bit fragile.  The one on the right has already lost the bottom part of his scabbard to my ham-handedness.  The detail is really incredible though, so I have no regrets.

Most of the figures I have painted so far to represent player characters are heavily armored, so I wanted to do some more lightly armored figures to represent players just starting out, before they can afford those pieces of plate armor.

Here we have some bad guys.  The skeletons are part of the Heroes and Myths 40mm line of miniatures, which to my knowledge, is no longer available.  They are lovely figures for the Greek legends, so I hope someone brings them back to life.

The Troll is another one of Tom Meier's sculpts and is part of his line of 30mm Thunderbolt Mountain range.  These have also recently gone out of production, but I am certainly hoping someone has picked up the line to keep producing them!

The shields for the skeletons are actually from the plastic medieval Russians made by Fireforge.  I replaced the Greek shields to give them a look more suited for a western medieval setting. 

Lastly I am working on some scenery for the dungeon made from old Heroquest parts.  I have also purchased some of the Mantic Terrain Crate sets, which are a hair small for 40mm, but should fit in reasonably well nevertheless.