Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Maurice - SYW - II.Battalion of French Regiment LaSarre

Manufacturer:  FrontRank
Scale:  28mm


Hi, dear followers !

The second battalion of my French Regiment LaSarre has been finished. And here it is.




This time I also gave a disruption marker to this unit. As I don´t like to use the same disruption figure for every unit and want to have more diversity I just made a little conversion. This is the first conversion I ever tried. But I think it fits quite good.

First of all I had to find a suitable figure for the conversion. My choice was this French NCO.



After this I had to change some things. The sponton had to be replaced by a fusil, the base had to be cut off and some other parts had to be added with green stuff to let the NCO become a normal private. So the figure looked like this in the end.




Here are some pictures of the painted figure.




And here is a photograph of the whole regiment with its two battalions and their two disruption markers. Each battalion is a own unit for Maurice.


While I sit in my painting room I´m often visited by my little fellow "Tiger" who has his own pillow just next to my working table. 
Here he is able to relax from his adventures. Sometimes he looks like a disruption marker, too. 
The only thing missing is the numbers showing the levels of disruption. :)


Cheers

Mike

Sunday, July 29, 2012

SYW - First pictures of new figure range

Manufacturer:  Dreispitz Miniatures
Scale:  28mm


Hi,

here are two pictures of some figures of my own planned figure range for the SYW.


The figures are not sculpted by myself. I was searching for a good sculpteur and a good caster for quite a time. Seems that I found both of them.

The figures shown will be Austrian Fusiliers and Grenadiers. The heads are missing at the moment. The poses are kneeling firing, standing firing, kneeling ready for fire, standing ready for fire. Except the pose "standing firing" there are no figures representing "at the ready" on the market.




I would like to know how you think about the figures. Are the proportions of the figures and of the uniforms okay?

Please give me some feedback for I would like to release high quality figures.

Many thanks.

Cheers

Mike

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Maurice - Two Austrian units finished

Austrian Hussars of Regiment Nadásdy

Manufacturer:  Wargames Foundry
Scale:  28mm


Okay, okay....

I´ve posted six of these figures already a few months ago. But I just finished the last man for the unit today. 
So these troops are now at least ready for action for Maurice.






Austrian Infantry Regiment Wied

Manufacturer:  Crusader
Scale:  28mm


This unit can also already be seen on my blog. 
But it wasn´t ready for action for the basing wasn´t suitable for Maurice. 
So I had to rebase them. 
There are eleven more figures that already have been painted to build a second bataillon. 
I have to order the command figures from Crusader to complete these troops.





Thanks for watching the photos. :)

Bye

Mike

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Terrain - Building corn plants - Tutorial

Manufacturer:    it was me :)
Scale:   28mm


Hi all,

today I´m posting a little tutorial on building corn plants.

As I am also very interested in the American War of Independence I often have a look at several blogs dealing with that period.

On some of these blogs are not only shown very impressive paint jobs on figures but also beautiful pieces of terrain. 
The terrain I like most for the AWI is corn and I often searched for material I could use to build up a field of corn.

I´ve been to aquaristic shops to have a look at the plastic plants they sell for the aquariums. 
But these are often too tall or are looking too much like "plastic". 

Professionally I´m a sales manager and visit different customers for my company. 
So I often drive through the countryside of northern Bavaria and am able to catch a view on the current fields. 
At the moment there are a lot of fields of corn outside there. 
So the idea of making corn plants by myself was born.

Yesterday I started to follow this idea and built up two plants just to try if my thoughts would work. 
I think they did :). 
I have to apologize that his post won´t show a finished field. 
I just want to give some inspiration to other hobbyists who share thoughts.

First of all here is a photo of the material needed.
You can see some wire (which was left from shortened wired spears), caraway for the corn dolls and some adhesive labels you use for address labels etc.
That´s all apart from glue and paint.


First step:   glue some caraway on the side of the wire.


Second step:  fold the adhesive labels to give the later plant leaves more stability. 
The advantage of using adhesive labels is that you won´t have to glue the paper after folding it.


Third step:  cut the doubled label into strips of about 4-5mm.


Next:  cut the strips into two halts and give the smaller parts the look of a plant leaf.


Step five:  begin to glue the plant leaves on the wire beginning from the top to the bottom.


Fix the leaves with white glue.


Then bend the leaves a little bit to give them their characteristic look.


These steps took me about ten minutes. 
So not too much time at all.

After the glue has dried just start to paint the plants.


For painting I used the green color set of Andrea. 
I like those sets because they have six different shades of the chosen color, so setting highlights or dry brushing is no problem.


The penultimate step is to glue some grass material on the top of the plant and also on the corn dolls. 
I used the practical grass of "MiniNatur" (I think this is early summer).


The ultimate step is to set the plants into scene on the battlefield.
It could look like this.
I just leaned the plants on the fence for this photo so you can see the wire on the bottom of the plant.
I didn´t want to glue the plants onto the fence because I want to make much more of these plants to create a bigger field.


Maybe the plants are not perfect yet and maybe there is a much more effective way to produce such corn plants. 

But in my opinion the duration of making these plants (about 30 minutes including painting and the time to let the glue get dry) is not too intensive though it will take a lot of time to get a big field.

Every time I´m bored by painting the same uniform to finish whole regiments or even don´t have a quiet hand for fine painting I will make some of these corn.
Two of them each day - that´s also okay.

I like the result and what is nicer than to say that the terrain on your tabletop was built by yourself.

Cheers,

Mike


Thursday, July 12, 2012

Maurice - Casualty/Disruption marker for Regiment LaSarre

Manufacturer:   FrontRank
Scale:   28mm

I just forgot to paint the needed casualty/disruption marker for the regiment LaSarre I had posted a few days ago. So here it is.


As one of our club-members of VfZ 
(Verein freie Zinnfiguren-Sammler - http://vfz-ev.de)
used to say 
"Tote beleben das Schlachtfeld" ("dead one´s bring life to the battlefields") 
I´ll try to paint one casualty/disruption marker for each regiment I´m going to use for Maurice. 
I like these kind of markers much more than using paper markers or dice.



The rule system of Maurice says that each unit of cavalry and infantry breaks when it acquires its fifth disruption point. An artillery unit breaks when it acquires its second level of disruption.



Does anyone of you know various casualty figures for infantry, cavalry or artillery for the different armies of the SYW? Most of the manufacturers I know only offer maybe one or two different types for infantry (if you are lucky). I haven´t seen any markers for cavalry or artillery yet.

Please let me know.

Could be a market-consistent.  ;)

Bye

Mike

Monday, July 9, 2012

Maurice - First unit finished

SYW - French regiment LaSarre, I. battalion

Figures:   FrontRank
Scale:  28mm



Hello again,

here is the first unit finished and based for "Maurice". This is the first battalion of the regiment LaSarre.



As I mentioned in my penultimate post I had to rebase the figures of a already finished battalion representing this French regiment. 



As the former basing (5 cent-coins) didn´t allow to place 4 figures on a base 40mm x 50mm I also had to paint some more figures to complete the unit. 



The next unit on the workbench is the second battalion of the regiment LaSarre.



Please feel free to leave your comments or even critical notes on my blog.

May the dice luck be with you.

Cheers

Mike