Wargaming - An exhibition within a museum

Hi,

there is a very cool museum about toysoldiers in Schmalkalden, Thuringia, Germany. It is called „Historicum“ and it shows about 25.000 figures of all periods of warfare and all kind of manufacturers. Each display is a little gem and if you ever have the chance to get there it is worth a visit.

The museum is owned by a private person and last year it had to be extended because the location got too small. So the owner, Stefan Gampe, took the chance to buy the house next to the museum and started to extend the museum.

Stefan also wanted to show a small exhibition about wargaming and asked a local wargaming club from Erfurt and also me to present some displays to fill this exclusive exhibition. I was honored and so I accepted.

Stefan told me about the measurements of the single displays and I got three of them to fill them with some wargaming themes. I phoned the club in Erfurt in order to avoid that they would do the same themes.

I never thought that it would be such a challenge to present a wargaming ruleset with its figures, the needed tools, the rules themselves and doing this in an appealing style, so that the visitors will have a closer look at the presented ruleset. It was even more a challenge as the space was very limited being 80cm wide, 30cm deep and 30cm high. I also had to test the settings at home for the Museum is about 200 kilometers away from my home. So everything had to be prepared at home to fit well into the displays of the museum.

I decided to show the rules of StarWars X-Wing, DeadMansHand and Muskets&Tomahawks.

Here are some photos of the test settings at home and also how the little exhibition looked like in the museum.

If you are interested into the museum and its great showcases just follow the link below.

Historicum

Cheers 

Mike

Trying to get an optimal overview on the ruleset of StarWars X-Wing

Trying not to get the display overloaded with information, but also enough for the
visitors to get the important and relevant information to get a feeling for the system.

How the display looked at Schmalkalden.

A test of the setup of Muskets&Tomahawks.

Another view on the test setup.

The final setup in the museum‘s exhibition.

The third chosen ruleset of DeadMansHand in its planning process.

Another view.

A total overview.

The presentation in the museum.

Some pictures of the displays of the wargaming club Erfurt.

There was also a display showing 1/72 scaled WildWest figures.

Napoleonics.

Some more napoleonics.

Of course Prussians mustn’t miss.

Checking the displays by a clubmember from Erfurt.

Busy actions during placing the showcases.

The corridor where the wargaming exhibition was placed is the connection
of the elder part of the museum to the newer part. 
While the club from Erfurt came with 6 members I was accompanied
by my little daughter to help me.

Dead Man´s Hand - WIP Part 4 and Final - Buildung a Ranch from Sarrissa

Manufacturer:   Sarrissa Precision

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

I finally got my Ranch from SarrissaPrecision done. Due to a lot of other projects I always had to put the model aside - sometimes for months. But in November I wanted to show it at an exhibition from my club, integrated into a battlefield using the rules of "Rebels and Patriots". Therefore it had to be finished. Sometimes some kind of pressure of time helps finalizing projects. :)

If you have already seen the other WIP´s on my blog, you will have noticed that I didn´t just want to build this model. I wanted to give it some more detail like wallpapers or real shingles for a better look. Though this was combined with very time consuming work it was also fun and I am proud of how it came out.

If you have not seen the other parts of the tutorial on my blog please feel free to follow these links. By searching my own blog about these posts I realized that the first part was published on May 28th in 2024. So it took me 18 months to get this project finished. I am a really lazy guy. :)

WIP Part one:  https://dreispitz.blogspot.com/2024/05/dead-mans-hand-wip-building-and.html

WIP Part two:  https://dreispitz.blogspot.com/2025/01/dead-mans-hand-wip-part-2-building.html

WIP Part three:  https://dreispitz.blogspot.com/2025/03/dead-mans-hand-wip-part-3-buildung.html

So here is the final result of my efforts on this model. 

Please feel free to share your oppinions about this building with me.

Thanks a lot.

Cheers

Mike

Before I got this result there was a lot of work to do. Here are some WIP-pictures.

I did not like the flat look of the roof - so I gave it shingles.

Cutting coffee stirs into small tiles...

...and glueing them onto the roof one by one.

In my opinion the roof looks more realistic with these shingles.

This had been a lot of work...

...but it was worthwhile.

Painting the roof sections.

The outcome after a first dry brushing.

A second dry brushing. Now the not yet painted windows had to be smeared
with white paint.

Also the edges of the walls, the brown middle section and also the railing of
the veranda still had their original brown that I didn´t like.

After all parts had been painted the roof needed some tufts and flocks.

Ready for action.

As the buiilding will be used for our games of "Dead Man´s Hand" it is
necessary that you also can play within the house. So it is nicer to have 
some wallpapers within the rooms. A look at the ground floor.

And another look, now at the first floor.

Yippieh - it´s finally done.

This is how the model looks like unpainted...

...and this is an example of Sarrissa how it could look like painted.

Another test with AI - "Boxing in the WildWest"

Used App:   NaukNauk

Scale:   28mm

Hi again,

can´t resist to bring my miniatures to life using the app "NaukNauk". Sometimes the app does not do what you want it to do. So often the result of the generated animation is not as you wanted it to be. But very often the animation comes out really funny.

So here´s another try of testing the AI app.

Cheers 

Mike

The app animated this photo into the following video...

Hobby in general - "Chicken´sTabletopCrafting" - very inspiring YouTube channel

Hi,

here is just another YouTuber who inspires me very much and it is always fun to watch him creating terrain or models.

I am often asked where I got some of my buildings from. They are often from Thomas Hahn, who is the creative person behind Chicken´sTabletopCrafting.

The following link leads to his newest project - building a Western house suitable for DeadMan´sHand or other similar rulesets. Like the videos of "Samy Model-Maker" it looks so easy, but I know that building terrain on your own to this standard is not as easy as it looks like.

Hope you enjoy the inspiring video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeAbAI_tick

Cheers

Mike

Dead Man´s Hand - WIP Part 3 - Buildung a Ranch from Sarrissa

Manufacturer:    Sarrissa Precision

Scale:   28mm

Hi,

today´s post is about my newest efforts on building or better finishing the Ranch of Sarrissa Precision.

This is how the Ranch is shown on the website of Sarrissa Precision. 

https://sarissa-precision.com/collections/old-west-28mm/products/ranchhouse?variant=7993282625580

Painting mdf is a always a struggle. Also the flat roof tiles with the sections where you can see the connection of the different parts are not real eyecandy. So I decided to pimp the model a little bit. I already did a similar work on another model of Sarrissa that came out quite cool.

https://dreispitz.blogspot.com/2022/03/muskets-and-tomahawks-building-trading.html

Thank you for following part three of this modelling tutorial. Here is the photo-session.

After fixing wallpapers to all of the parts I realized that it would look much
 better to add some inner window frames. 

One reason why the gap between the last WIP-post and this post was the fact
that it was quite hard to find suitable wooden sticks in the right size. I found
some on ebay but they didn´t work very well for they easily broke. After some
time I finally found not ideal but much more better sticks in a hobby store.

Painting the frames with an acryl pen is really easy because you have more
control on a pen than on a brush. But unfortunately the pen got empty and
lost its opacity. 

So I had to finish the painting of the frames in the old style by using a brush
and normal acrylic paints.

Assembling and painting the window frames room by room and fixing the
first parts.

Also the doors got a frame.

The finished and fixed first floor.

The three parts of the Ranch so far.
I will have to do the same procedure on the ground floor. I missed to fix
window frames inside here.

Work in process - outside some windows are missing.
That´s for I had to check how the shingles would look like and how their
height would influence the transition to the windows.

The idea I got was to give the windows and the roof another layer of wooden sticks to get a better
transition between the shingles and the windows. 

I also put on two sticks on the sloping edges of the roof.

After this I went on to put "shingles" onto the roof. Therefore I used coffee stirs.

Not perfect, but not too bad. The painting and also some flock will hide it.

The first of the three roof parts of the first floor is done. This picture shows the difference between the
original roof of the model on the left and my version of the roof on the right. In my opinion my version
gives more depth and effect. The shingles are not fixed in a straight line. This also will give some more realism to the model.

After about 3 hours of work the shingles from the first floor had been glued 
into place. Next step will be to do the shingles on the main roof. But that will
be done within the next WIP.

It came out quite well in my opinion.

The paintjob will be done after having finished the main roof.

To be continued ...

Cheers

Mike