Italieri Country House Finished

While I had my light box out recently, I thought I would grab some shots of some work completed earlier this year but never shown here during the blogging doldrums.

This is the ever-popular 1/72nd scale Italieri Country House (Product # 6074), a mainstay of many wargames tables.  Made of sturdy plastic, with an easily removed roof and second floor, it’s a gamer’s delight, and easy to assemble, though I confess that I bungled the upper floor on this model by putting two of the supports in the wrong places and not noticing until the glue was dry.  Not that you can tell, from this view, and the floor still works, but it is the annoying sort of mistake that comes from being overconfident.

I am not sure if this model is still in production, as it doesn’t show on the Italieri website.

 

I painted it more or less to match its cousin, the Italieri Country House with Porch, which I assembled and showed here in 2014.  I think this one came out a little better than the first.  The vines on the walls are a laser cut painted paper product from a model railroad store, supposed to be Virginia Creeper, I believe.   I thought it halped the rustic vibe.  As with the first model, the walls were copiously washed with Army Painter Light Tone from a tin, then sprayed with Dullcote to get rid of the shine that product leaves.

 

 I have seen photos on the inter webs of some of these models lovingly and effectively based, but I think for now it just goes in the box with the 20mm scenery items.   It may be useful in 28mm games as well if you don’t look too closely.

 

My Italieri village thus far.  That’s Luigi, the Fell Catbeast of Mordor, in the background.  

Italieri also makes a church in this scale, which like the country house models could pass for anywhere in Southern Europe.  Would be nice to have, and I see today there is also a ruined house and a stone house model in their range, so maybe one day.   As I finished this model I sometimes wondered why I do WW2 in this scale when I do it in 15mm and 28mm.   That seems like a rationalization to kick down the road for another day.

Thanks for looking and blessings to your buildings!

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 56; Mounted Figures: 8; Buildings: 2; Terrain Features: 4

20mm:  Buildings: 1

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

Meanwhile, in Isengard - 2

Here are three more “waaag riders”, as the late Sir Christoper Lee so wonderfully puts it, for my Isengard army.  The two chaps on the right are metal castings, from the now OOP Games Workshop Warg Attack boxed set.  The archer on the left is a plastic figure.

The mounted archers give this army a skirmish cavalry capability to go against the Riders of Rohan.  In Dux Brittanorum/Rohirrim or Dragon Rampant, I can rate them as skirmish cavalry with the evade option.

 

Desperate and smelly hard riding fellows.

Pretty tough troops, but they aren’t able to go everywhere (poster in NYW by street artist William Puck).

 

These fellows got used in a recent monster game of Dragon Rampant .   Stephen hosted with his big gaming table, allowing us to put five armies a side.   My Isengard force went to another player who narrowly drove off a samurai war band.   I fielded a Rohan-based force at the other end of the table.  At 24 points per war band, I spent most of them on two 6 figure units of Elite Riders, one of them with bows.   I took three foot units, a  12 figure Light Archer unit and two 6 figure units of Scouts, using my elven warrior nymphs in an unlikely role as allies of humans.    Scouts are basically Bidowers in Lion Rampant.  At full strength they shoot with 12 dice, they can flit through woods and bad terrain, and they can Skirmish/Evade.   God help them if they get caught in melee, but they can do a lot damage before the enemy can come to grips.

 

Towards the end of the battle things got pretty funky.  In the centre of the last photo you can see an actual dragon, trying to catch the nymphs in the woods with his flaming breath.  The chaps with green dots on their heads are hapless orcs, who walked into a wall of arrow fire and got badly shredded.   A bone-lich rides a boney steed centre left and tries to keep the dragon alive.   This sort of scene shows the range and kookiness of fantasy battles with DR.  Of the eight fellows in the game, only two had played Dragon Rampant before, and everyone felt it was an easy game to learn and a fun game to play. 

 

 

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 56; Mounted Figures: 8; Buildings: 2; Terrain Features: 4

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

Die Autos

I wanted to title this post Das Auto and see how many visitors I got thinking that it was about Volkswagens, but I think Die Autos is grammatically correct, since there was more than one.

Got to the wargames club last night hoping for a good scrap.   It was racing cars instead.   Len had ordered a German game, Das Motorosportspiel, via ebay and as far as I could tell he got a map in a tube and six quite nice little racing cars.  The rules were in German and there was a translation which left us scratching our heads a bit.


but as far as we could tell, each player gets to role three dice.  Two of the dice are normal d6 and 1 is a D6 that only goes from 1 to 3.   Players can decide how many dice they will roll ahead of time, and they can adjust each die by flipping it over.   You can’t go through a turn with a die whose number is higher than the number printed on the map beside each turn, or bad things happen.

We played the game collectively, working together to decide the best use of the dice.  However, the game comes with a sand timer that gives each player only 30 seconds to adjust their dice and plot their move before making it.  That would be fun, I suppose.  We got through the game without making zoom zoom noises.
I know there are other car boardgames out there, such as GMT’s Thunder Alley.   I am a little meh about race cars, and get enough driving on my commute to work each day, but es war amusing, ich dense.  If it was more of a Europgame, each driver would have had to collect sets of tires, motor oils and carparts and sponsorships in order to develop their garages. It would also have been better if the cars each mounted a machine gun.
Blessings to your driving!
MP+

Why My Big Brother Is Still My Hero

That’s my big brother, the Mad Colonel, in the green shirt, looking like he’s not really enjoying the fact that he’s riding in an EFFING T34/85 TANK, FOR GOD’S SAKES!

My brother volunteers at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, and took part in their Tank Weekend last weekend, which I sadly missed.  As you can well understand, I am sure, he is still my hero.

Two Weird War Scientists (Mad Or Otherwise)

These two 28mm figures are part of my slowly expanding but yet to be used Weird War Two collection.  The Nazi chap is a Pulp Figures mini from Bob Murch, and the carrot-top civvie is by Artizan.

The sinister fellow in the lab coat is Herr Dokktor Bruno Jaegermeister, head of research for the sinister, occult dominated portion of the SS that specializes in sinister, occult matters.   Perhaps he helps the SS Vampyrs to animate corpses, or he works with the Wulffentruppen on breeding better monsters - he'll be useful in either capacity.   Almost certainly he had a dodgy academic transcript but then denounced his supervisor as a cosmopolitan Jew, stole his research notes, and then made a name for himself promoting the superiority of Aryan genes.   In other words, a total cad.   He will be a high value target for S Commando.

The fellow in the nice cardigan is Dr. Hamish Montfort McGonnigle, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Science and Professor of Science at the University of Edinburgh, who is now the head of research for Project Alice, Britain's secret line of defence against the darkest forces stirring in the Reich.   He's smart, cantankerous, and a hardheaded believer in good science, empiricism and skepticism.   He may find himself forced to accept the existence of some strange things before it's all over.

 
Dr. Jagermeister has a bit of a secret base starting to come together.   I've assembled one of the two MDF quonset huts I got from Sarissa.  I am thinking of painting it in Germany yellow (dunkelgelb) with a camo pattern, as presumably a secret base needs to be hidden from the air.  To the right is a Sarissa MDF searchlight and generator, which could also be used as a death ray projector, I suppose.   Behind that are some resin crates from 6 Squared, since a secret base needs some sinister shipments to secretly stockpile (see what I did there?).

I have some 1/48 scale vehicles for the Nazi secret base thanks to my chum James, and some more Sarissa scenery to add to it.  A backkburner project, but it's slowly coming together.

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 56; Mounted Figures: 5; Buildings: 2; Terrain Features: 4

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2

Can I Afford My Dream Army?

The latest edition of Foreign Affairs magazine is currently in my Professional Development reading queue, meaning that it is on my desk, rapidly getting buried under other work.   I thought the cover illustration was quite clever.  All of us, I am sure, have done the same thing in hobby stores, whether real or virtual.

The first article in this issue notes that the US spends three times as much on defense as its nearest competitor (China) and amounts for one third of global expenditures.   Fortunately the same drive to outspend our hobby opponents doesn't apply to us - does it?

MP+

Meanwhile, in the Elven Woodland Realm, or, Paint Me Like Your French Elves

It’s Saturday evening and my sermon for tomorrow is finished.   Time to go take some pictures of naked ladies.

Yeah, that didn’t sound very good, did it?   Better not let my bishop know about this post. 

These figures are by Wargames Foundry, from their Elfen Collection series.  These figures were OOP when I ordered them last winter, but the very kind Diane Ansell of Wargames Foundry found some blisters from that range for me.   Since then, I noticed that they are now available again as single figures on Foundry’s Warmonger Miniatures page, here.  I liked this line when it first came out, it had a sort of strangeness and classical fantasy vibe to it that  reminded me equally of the Pre-Raphaelites and old school swords and sorcery artists like Boris Vallejo.

 

One might think that these figures would have been easy to paint, but in fact they were anything but, and it was quite intimidating trying to get the skin (so much skin!) right.  I used a base of Citadel Cadian Flesh, a wash of Army Painter soft tone, and then successive layers of watered down Cadian Flesh mixed with Citadel Elfen Flesh, and a final coat of Elfen flesh by itself.  I notice that the archer on the left has a quiver, but not the lady on the right.  The old Foundry line also included a mix of cherubs, sprites, butterflies and other odd beasts, hence the little fellow by the archer on the left.

More challenging flesh to paint.  

So what am I going to do with these figures, you may ask?    My goal is to use them to augment an elven army that I am slowly building.   They may be a somewhat fanciful force to oppose Isengard’s incursions into Fangorn forest, or they may be a subset of the armies of Lorien, perhaps a special forces unit known as Galadriel’s Grrrlz?    Here are the ten figures I have done so far.  A small start to a Dragon Rampant war band, though I think they may pay penalties for lack of armour protection.

 

More figures waiting to be painted, thanks to Diane’s help.

I suppose I could flesh these out (no pun intended) with additional figures from other fantasy lines, including these war maiden archers from Casting Room that could be painted up as elves - any suggestions for other lines that might complement these figures?

These figures bring my 2016 totals to:

28mm:  Foot Figures: 54; Mounted Figures: 5; Buildings: 2; Terrain Features: 4

6mm:  Mounted figures:  36;  Buildings:  2