28mm Mitanni Chariots - Army Complete!

Well after literally YEARS I've finally finished my 28mm Mitanni army!  When I started this army I was playing WAB extensively and my goal was to use this army for that game.  But with the ultimate demise of Warhammer Historicals at the hands of Forgeworld/GW and the hose job they gave to people that put in a ton of time on products that will never see the light of day, I'm done playing WAB and have moved on to Clash of Empires.  It will be for a game of Clash of Empires that this army will see the table for as I've got a game lined up next week.  If I remember, I'll take my camera and get some pictures of the game.

The chariots for this army are a collection of different manufacturers.  All but two of the chariots are from Old Glory with the other two being from Newline.  The crew area mixture of Foundry, Newline and Old Glory.  I think they all fit together just fine.  The base painting on the chariots and horses was done by Tim K. at Saguaro Painting Service and the crew were painted long ago by Fernando Enterprises; I added extra detail to the chariots & horses and did touch ups on the crew as well as the basing.   

It feels good to get another project checked off of my list.  Next up is a bunch of basing projects along with some painting for a friend...updates to follow on both of those as I make progress.

28mm Republican Romans - Project Complete!

Well, it's taken me a long time, but I finally completed painting up Mike's 28mm Republican Romans from Crusader.  I should have been done a long time ago, but between other gaming distrations, real life, and just plain not being in a painting groove for so long I just kept putting off finishing the painting.  The good news for me is Mike is very patient and I hope he likes how these came out.  Now we can get in some games of Clash of Empires!

48 Roman Princeps/Hastati

 Close up of Roman Infantry

 15 Roman Cavalry

 Close up of cavalry

So, what's next on my list?  Well, it's completing another 28mm ancients force that has been languishing incomplete literally for years!  I should have it done in a week or so and will post at that time.

Tom O

Looking Back & Looking Ahead

It’s that time of the year again…a time to look back on the year that was, and a time to look forward to the new year ahead…

Looking back, I have to say that 2011 was a “mixed bag” on the hobby/gaming front. It had several positives like:

Finishing 2nd in the Gathering In The Desert LOTR tournament which earned me an invite to the GW sponsored Throne of Skulls event in Vegas

Getting in a lot more games than the previous year. In 2011 I played a lot of Lord of the Rings and also a significant amount of Flames of War. I also played 15mm ancients using Might of Arms, got my feet wet with Clash of Empires using 28mm ancients, played some 28mm American Civil War, played Warmaster fantasy, 15mm Napoleonics, and a fair number of Command & Colors Ancients and Combat Commander board games.

Playing in my first Flames of War tournament using the 2nd edition rules (and now 3rd edition is on the horizon), and actually finishing 2nd which qualified me for the US Nationals; I will be going to Adepticon in Chicago in April to play in the Late War Nationals.

Contracting out some painting work to help clear up some of my pile o’ lead resulting in me having a large 15mm Mongol army as I posted on this blog and a really nice 10mm Orc army for Warmaster, both painted by Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service (with pics of the Orcs on that blog), as well as a nice 15mm German Panzer Company painted by Robert as documented on his Drunken Samurai Painting blog.

Clearing out some armies and misc. hobby stuff that I know I’d never use again.

On the negative side of the “mixed bag” for 2011 are the following:

As of yet not finishing the 28mm Republican Romans I’m painting up for Mike; the good news is that I’m working on the last of the infantry and have the cavalry all prepped & primed and ready to go.

As of yet not finishing the 17 chariots for the 28mm Mitanni army I’m working on; I had Tim K at Saguaro Painting Service base paint the chariots and horses for me and now I just need to go through and add some extra detail and color, mount the crews and do the basing and they will be done…after years of languishing…

Throne of Skulls LOTR tournament; as I previously posted, I like seeing a lot of the regular LOTR players, but really was disappointed in the scoring, the scenarios, and some of the cheese-ball army compositions that were there.

Not posting as much to this blog as I would like to; I would like to do more battle reports and post more pictures of stuff I have.

Not deciding upon a “Tom Project”. Let me explain this one…at one point in my gaming life I had a couple of projects that were mine…I could bring everything needed for the game from terrain to all of the painted figures needed to play, and I could host multi-player games in doing so. I can still supply both sides and terrain for games like Flames of War or LOTR or 28mm & 15mm ancients, but none of these are unique to the group of guys that I game with most frequently. I spent quite a bit of 2011 looking into various projects such as Eastern Renaissance/TYW, 10mm or 15mm WWI, 10mm or 15mm Russo-Polish War, and 15mm modern “what-if” or ”imagi-nation”. Maybe I’ll finally decide on one of these in 2012.

As for the year ahead, I think it’s going to be a good year. I hope to continue to game on a regular basis like I’ve been with the games I’m going to focus on for the first few months of the year being: Flames of War (with the new edition coming out and having to get some practice in for the Nationals in April), Clash of Empires in 28mm (I want to play more often and get some more of the locals interested if possible), Command & Colors Ancients – Miniature (several of the guys are giving serious consideration to doing 28mm forces to convert the board game to miniature and I’m jumping onto this and will be doing a Greek army for this project), and 28mm American Civil War (once I get the Rebs based up and ready to go I plan on getting in more games of Action Front and give Black Powder consideration too). After spring has come and gone, I’ll see where I’m at and take it from there; I have a lot of armies started that I need to finish as well as armies that I haven’t started that I would like to, and then of course there is always terrain to do…it never ends. As for acquiring new stuff in 2012, I’m sure I’ll pick up figures for at least one more project with the leading candidate right now being 28mm Napoleonics; I purchased the Waterloo set of rules and want to give them a try. Another possible candidate is doing some smaller fantasy games using 15mm minis with a set of rules like HOTT or Basic Impetus - Fantasy or ??? Only time will tell what I end up accomplishing in 2012, but I'm fairly confident it will be at a minimum the same amount as I did in 2011...

28mm American Civil War - Samples

Well, I'm finally emarking on a project that I've really wanted to get to, 28mm American Civil War. My goal is to be able to do a refight of the Peach Orchard at Gettysburg on the upcoming anniversary. This will take a lot of figures, so with that in mind I painted up some samples to send off to a painting service to get painted. While doing this I realized a couple of things: one being the Union troops, though boring to paint, are very easy to paint due to the limited color pallet, and the other being that artillery crew for both sides are also easy to paint because they don't have a lot of equipment on them. As a result of this, I'm going to send over 200 Confederates and just one unit of Union infantry to get painted, and I'll paint the bulk of the Union and artillery crew myself.

So, here are some pictures of the samples I painted.

All of the models are from Sash and Saber which are very nice castings; very clean, with little if any flash and good detailing.

So with my decision to paint up the bulk of the Union and artillery crew, I've decided to send a fairly large 28mm Byzantine army off to get painted as well. I've recently started playing Clash of Empires and my interest in 28mm ancients has been sparked again.

More updates to follow as I work toward finishing up some projects and starting some new projects.