Warlord Games plastic Soviet Infantry painted for Winter War

Back when I pre-ordered my copy of the 2nd edition Bolt Action rule book, Warlord Games were giving away a free box of infantry with pre-orders. Unfortunately the Winter Soviet Infantry weren't an option, so I went with the regular Soviet Infantry box. I figured, given the supply difficulties the Soviets had at the start of the Winter War, it would be fine to have a couple units in the army without greatcoats. A lot of the options in the box aren't useful for a Winter War force, but I tried to get the most I could out of it, mixing in some extra heads I had from the Baker Company Winter War Kickstarter.

What I ended up with is three units. I made one unit of 12 in padded jackets and helmets, including a light machine gun. I made one unit of twelve in caps, a few with molotov cocktails. This will act as the "free" unit of green infantry with anti-tank grenades allowed in the Soviet army list. I also made one unit of NKVD border guard with three sub-machine guns. Have a look at the results below and let me know what you think.

Kingdom Death Monster - Olympus Year 10

A single King's Man is spotted approaching the outskirts of Olympus. The settlement's inhabitants remember when a group of these monsters came and executed Ares, with no reason or explanation. This time, they would not stand idly by and allow the armored stranger into Olympus. And they would do their best to avenge brave Ares.

Icarus, Helen, Hades, and Hera quickly put on armor and grab weapons. Icarus, the red savior, carries a cat gut bow and claw head arrow, but has only some cloth and a screaming horn helmet to protect him. Helen, the green savoir, carries the powerful counterweighted axe and wears a screaming coat, skirt, and bracers, along with a skull helm. Hades carries the butcher's cleaver and a bone axe, and wears a full suit of rawhide armor and a cat eye circlet. Hera wields the scrap sword and also wears a full suit of rawhide armor. They prepare the best they can to confront the menacing figure of the King's Man.

Kingdom Death Screaming Antelope Armor Survivors

I have now finished magnetizing and painting the Antelope Armor Survivors from the Kingdom Death: Monster core game. This was an easy and straight-forward kit to magnetize. Everything fit together well. There aren't a lot of antelope weapons, so I included some of the White Lion weapons in these pictures. As for the painting, I just painted most of it the same way as I painted the fur on my Screaming Antelope. I suppose there isn't much else to say about them. Have a look at the pictures below and let me know what you think.

Kingdom Death White Lion Armor Survivors

I've finished magnetizing and painting the Lion armor kit from the Kingdom Death: Monster core game. This set presented some interesting challenges when it came to the magnetizing. The first was the inclusion of a bow. I used some of the empty hands to hold the quiver and the two different kinds of arrows for use with the bows, rather than attach the quiver to a body. I think this works pretty well, though not all of the arm positions are really suited for a bow wielder.

Another issue I had is that the big collars make it impossible to fit many of the heads on these bodies. The major issue, however, is those little claws at the wrists of all the arms. They make it very difficult to fit some of the weapons, and this is compounded by some of the weapon hands being awkwardly positioned and difficult to make look natural to begin with (such as the cat fang knife and the katars). In retrospect, I should have just cut those little claws off at least half the models so I would have at least one male and one female who could hold pretty much any weapon without them getting in the way. Honestly, I may eventually go back and cut them off (maybe all of them) and just touch up the paint job. It would probably be worth it.

The painting on these was pretty straight forward. I just tried to paint them pretty much how I painted my White Lion. I tried to make sure there was enough difference between the flesh color of the survivors and the color of the lion skin so that they stood out from each other. I gave the one head orange hair because I thought he looked like Lion-O from Thundercats.

Unlike the other armor kits, this one came with five sets of body/legs. Two of the pairs of female legs were identical, so one of them I posed leaning way forward to make look different from the other one. The problem with that is that her head is facing down and she's not looking where she's running. I wish I had thought of that before hand and put the magnet in at a different angle to have her looking straight ahead.

Kingdom Death Phoenix

I have finally tackled painting the Phoenix for Kingdom Death: Monster. I wanted it to look more colorful than in the official artwork, and more colorful than the other monsters I've painted. I went with a red/orange/yellow look to the feathers, which also goes well with the name of the monster. I did a really simple paint job on the feathers. I base coated the whole thing white, then painted bands of red, orange, and yellow ink, with some overlap in between. It worked pretty well, but in retrospect I should have done some dry-brushing or stippling where the colors meet, especially the orange and yellow, to get it to blend together better. Obviously it could have looked better if I had painted the feathers individually, but I wasn't going to spend that much time on it. For something quick I think this looks decent, and maybe I'll go back and blend it together better sometime in the future.

After I finished the feathers, the rest was pretty straight forward. Most of the rest is painted a fleshy color, with the little sores or whatever they are in a pinker shade. I don't think I've ever painted something this big that wasn't terrain, so it was interesting trying to paint the huge areas of flesh. But I just painted them the same way I would paint any area of skin, including a wash at the end, and it worked fine. I don't know where to get a 100 mm diameter clear acrylic base, so for now it is temporarily on a plain black base. I think the branch he is standing on is supposed to be up in a tree anyway, so I think it would look a little strange no matter what kind of base he was on.

Have a look at the pictures below and let me know what you think.

Leven Miniatures 6mm ACW Buildings

I recently finished painting up a few 6mm resin American Civil War buildings produced by Leven Miniatures. I bought mine from The Wargaming Company booth at the Little Wars Convention.

Since my American Civil War miniatures are 10mm, the 6mm buildings do represent something of a compromise between the figure scale and the ground scale. Because of this they look too small for the figures, but take up a more reasonable amount of space on the table. I thought 10mm buildings would just take up too much space and dominate the rest of the terrain. Even with 6mm buildings, obviously each building needs to represent more than one building given the amount of ground it takes up. For convenience, I intend each building to represent enough buildings to be occupied by one regiment during a game.

I think the end result looks pretty good, given that there is almost always going to be this compromise between figure scale and ground scale for buildings. Even playing games in say 28mm where each figure represents an individual, buildings tend to be in scale when it comes to height, but take up a much smaller footprint than the actual building would.

This was my first time painting small scale buildings, and it was a challenge. I'm sure there are just some different techniques that could be used to make small scale buildings look a lot better than these, but I'm not sure what they are. Below you can see some pictures of the newly painted buildings along with some of my roads, fields, and an infantry regiment. Have a look and let me know what you think of the painting and the scale difference.

Black Powder American Civil War Battle Report: Daybreak at Hangman's Creek

I finally got around to trying out the American Civil War scenario from the Black Powder rulebook. Daybreak at Hangman's Creek sees a small Confederate division advancing on the town of Hangman's Creek at dawn. A small Union division is in the area, but they are not expecting trouble and most of them start off the table. All of the Union officers start in the town, and they will have to scramble to get their brigades moved up and deployed once they realize they are under attack. To the Union left of the town is a large Union camp. To the right, across the river, is a gun foundry. The Confederate objective is to capture the camp, town, or gun foundry, with a greater victory earned by capturing two or all three of them.

At the start of the game, one Union regiment is deployed in skirmish order in the fields north of town. They are allowed one free initiative move each turn until they are given an order, but the Union commanders (in the town) are not allowed to issue any orders or move until the alarm is raised. The alarm is raised at the end of any turn in which any unit fires or fights a round of close combat. The Confederates split their forces to attack all three objectives at once. They will need to advance quickly on their objectives before the Union officers have a chance to organize a proper defense if they are to secure victory.