Buck's Blog

I keep a running log of the figures I paint during the year.  Because of the six-month deployment and the month prior and following it, my output for 2010 was pretty low.  These are the last figures I painted in 2010, finished around 0900 on the last day of December.

Chris and I have been painting Eureka frog and turtle figures for use with G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.  In early December, Chris discovered these Dark Sword Miniatures figures.  They are VERY expensive.  They do not have all the figures you might need to create units of frogs, but they do have some nice personality figures.  To the right is the Frog minstrel, who will lead my North American frog army to victory over Chris’ south American frogs.  There are few things more stirring than the sound of the bagpipes leading men (and in this case, frogs) into battle.

To help gain and advantage over their foes, my North American frogs have enlisted the aid of the court wizard.  Note that To Be Continued… by GASLIGHT includes elementary rules for magic to support witch doctors and other supernatural elements of Saturday afternoon movie serials.  This wizard is old and grizzled, but I imagine he’ll be able to produce some smoke and light that will cause Chris’ frogs and turtles of scamper away.

I’m not sure what religion frogs have, but it is surely under less attack than Christianity in the US.  I have no idea what impact a bishop will have on my frog army, but the figure was too cool not to purchase and paint up.  If nothing else, he can just be an unattached Main Character and go around beating people with his big stick.  I’m thinking that he will have a positive impact on the morale of whatever unit he is near.  On the other hand, perhaps his sermons are so boring that he will actually decrease morale!

Eureka makes a very nice frog being carried on a sedan chair by four retainers.  Though all of my frog and turtle games have involved both my figures and Chris’ figures, moving around as much as I do means I must have enough figures to play both sides of any potential game.  I needed a second king to lead the other side if I have to break my army in two for a game.  The cape on this figure was separate.  I really like the flintlock his retainer is carrying.

Last, but not lease, is the queen frog and her retainer.  I really like the dress with the Queen Elizabeth I looking collar.  In retrospect, I think the pink dress was meant to be frog skin and should have been painted green.  I like the pink.

Buck’s law states that the first time you use new figures in a game they get smucked.  I can’t wait to put these figures on the table and see how they do.

The last group I painted consisted of 12 dismounted Napoleonic cavalry.  Many years ago, Eureka Miniatures released a cavalry unit on penny farthing bicycles.  They never released the dismounts.  Dismounted Napoleonic cavalry is very difficult to find.  This year the freebie at HMGS East Fall In was a sprue of two plastic dismounted cavalry.  Chris was able to scrape together five of them for me, and an additional sprue came with Miniature Wargames one month.  Note they are not an exact match for the mounted figures, which have a cuirass.  I guess they take off the armor for dismounted work because of the weight.

I lost a lot of weight while in Iraq and have managed to keep it off since returning.  As a result, few of my clothes fit.  For Christmas I got a basic load of pants from my wife in various colors — along with a Perry the Paltypus T-shirt for hanging around the house.  Chris Palmer, however, gave me a German infantry company conducting a river crossing.

The boats are Pendraken.  Chris cut the legs off German vehicle riders and glued them into the rubber boats.  He did a really nice job with the bases.  He has a twin company, so after Lvov we’ll start planning a France ’40 or Russia ’41 river crossing scenario.

Today is Christmas Eve Eve.  We are prepared for the holidays.  Christmas shopping has been done for some time; although, we bought a few last-minute things two days ago.  (The kids’ stack seemed small to me.  It happens every year!)  Last weekend I met my parents, sister, and brother-in-law in Lancaster, PA.  We saw the Christmas Spectacular at the American Music Theater in Lancaster (great show!), wandered around a number of specialty shops, visited the National Christmas Center (a must see!), and got our picture taken with Santa.

We hope that everyone has a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.

I finally finished the cavalry for my Burgdorfreuthenheim legion.  The last unit is the Duke of Burdorfreuthenheim’s Own Hussars.

I decided to go with an art deco teal uniform with pink facings and trousers.  I made the horses a variety of colors.  The cavalry are wearing cuirasses.  The standard bearer is a “converted” officer figure.  I put “converted” in quotes, because all I did was cut off the pistol and drill a hole in the hand for the flag shaft.  The flag is hand-painted.  The flag is based on Bavaria, but is purple instead of blue.

This is a slightly closer view of the cavalry, taken from the left side, rather than the right.

In this close-up view you get a better look at the pink collar, turnbacks, and trousers.

Initially, I planned to paint all the horses grey.  Since I primed the figures in grey, this seemed like cheating, so I ended up painting the horses five different colors.

The legion of Burgdorfreuthenheim is now fully formed and ready for action!   As the Duke would say when initiating a charge, “Narf!”  (Let’s see how many readers will get that obscure reference!)

I finished the Burgdorfreuthenheim artillery battery a week or so ago.  All I have left is the cavalry.  I’ve decided on teal uniforms with pink facings.  If it doesn’t look too bad, I’ll post some pictures soon.

I decided the artillery would be in grey uniforms.  Note that the officer is in a slightly lighter grey.  The officers are not provided uniforms; they procure them from local tailors.  Thus, officers’ uniforms are often off by a shade or two.

I decided not to paint the barrel of the cannon bronze.  I think the black looks good next to the garrish blue.  I can always go back and put metal on it later, but I like the black.

NQSYW is a Harford Area Weekly Kriegspielers (HAWKs) club project involving 40mm home-cast figures.  Each of the HAWKs has been building their own contingent.  HAWK Rob Dean even ran an Email campaign once in which the battles were fought on the table.

My contingent is the small duchy of Burgdorfreuthenheim (berg dorf roith en heim).  I completed two units of infantry many years ago.  I don’t see them much as they are usually in the possession of Rob and others.  A complete infantry regiment consists of three infantry units, so I’ve recently completed my third.  In addition, my “legion” will include a cavalry unit and an artillery battery.  I’ll start on the cavalry tomorrow morning before the family wakes up.

These are fun figures to paint.  The hardest part was trying to match the colors of these new figures to ones I painted several years ago.

I’m trying to decide on the color scheme of my hussars.  I’ve been thinking that I’ll either go with gray uniforms with forest green stripes and facings or instead use art deco turquois and pink.  Hmmm.  Decisions, decisions.  You can see from the pictures that the forces of Burgdorfreuthenheim are typically dressed in subdued colors.  The line infantry is in olive and khaki.  The jaegers are dressed in black.  I’m not sure if the cavalry will be equally subdued or “go gaudy.”  I’ll post some pictures soon.

Almost all of my figures are in 25mm or 28mm.  My only dalliance with other scales was a brief excursion in the mid-80’s with Mike’s Models 15mm British Colonial (little cartoony fishing sinkers with feet) and with 10mm/12mm figures for Look, Sarge, No Charts: WWII.  While painting these 40mm figures has been fun, and while I enjoy the HAWKs NQSYW games, I don’t see myself doing a lot in this scale.  They take a long time to paint and require a large amount of space to store.

Hinterland Miniatures makes a line of interesting female Hussars.  I like the fact that they are obviously female without being R rated.  I like the hair in a bun like in the original GASLIGHT Girl figure.  The sculpting and casting are both very clean.  The figures painted easily.  There is a lot of detail, more than my skills do justice.  The poses are good.  Except for the “army builder” pack, all the poses are different.  I like the officer figures quite a bit.

My painting and these photos don’t really do justice to these really nice figures.

This unit is fictional.  I was therefore free to paint them any colors I wanted.  I got inspiration from the Hinterland Web page as well as an Osprey book on Napoleonic cavalry.  If you go to Hinterland’s Web page, my favorite painting scheme was olive and khaki.  I used this blue scheme, because my 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War Burgdorfreuthenheim infantry uses khaki and olive, and I didn’t want to seem unimaginative.

The Maxim crew is quite nice.  I really had trouble getting a good closeup of these figures.  I took a dozen shots, and only one didn’t come out blurry.  I think I would have had better luck outside or in a better lit room.  The Maxim crew is a new set.  I found them by accident when I went to their page to look for some painting ideas.

By the way, the service from Hinterland is excellent!