Finnish Sturmi

The Bits

 Sometimes - more fool I - I get to work early, sometimes I can't be bothered getting up from my desk on my lunch break. So what to do?

Make a plastic model kit of course! The Airfix StuG III has always been one of my favourites and despite being more than fifty years old, holds up pretty well today. Oh sure, the details may be a bit soft here and there, but dimensionally, the old girl's pretty good. Well, in every way except the weedy main armament.


The Bob

 So, a quick fossick in the spares box and we have one of many PAK 40 barrels left over from all those Opel Blitz kits and we are sorted.

Next step, while enthusiasm was high was to take the pin vise and drill out the wheel holes - all eighty-four of them. While the pin vise was still hot, I carefully drilled out the PAK 40 muzzle-brake.

So, a few words on the kit - it's a StuG III G, late production type with the cast "sow's head" mantlet. A fair basis on which to produce one of the batch of 30 the Finns took delivery of in 1944 and then modified on the basis of their own experience.

For me this means concrete armour on the drivers and loaders positions, an armoured shield on the drivers visor, extra applique armour on the lower hull sides, adding the tool-box rack over the rear engine deck, fine mesh grills over the engine intakes and then of course plastering the while thing with zimmeritt.

The first step then will be to assemble the hull and get those applique plates on.

PS - This morning whilst at home I got cracking on a dozen of the 20mm Garrison Phrygians to go with some of the new chappies - using these latter as painting models. Lovely kit.

Well, well, well. Look what we have here.

'Shun!

So, after teasing you all unmercifully with hints on reception commites and so on, they have arrived.

I had been talking on and off for months about acquiring these from an enigmatic and doubtless wildly eccentric gamer, rules writer, raconteur and general man about town. It was a long dance, but finally we took the plunge*, and I certainly am delighted to welcome these and other figures to my own ancients collection. I will be doing a few more posts on the RM collection as we go on, so watch this space.

Today we have a neat little phalanx of Rospak Greeks. I've been an admirer of the "Rospak" plastic ancients for some time and am glad to say they look as good in the flesh as they do in various images I have pored over in the on-line world. So far as I understand they were only relatively briefly available in 1981-82 from Heroics and Ross and are therefore fairly difficult to find nowadays.

*OK, I finally extracted my finger...

Welcoming Committee 2

Not the 300.

Perhaps waiting for some Persians? Who can say. Rose Prestige Greeks from Garrison Miniatures. Shield decals are from VVV and the wire spears are from North Star. The rest is all me. And I think I need to invest in some microset and microsol. And some gloss varnish.

The Shape of Things to Come

I got a couple of nice packages in the mail yesterday. One from TVAG with my 4.7" guns in it, and another all the way from Sweden. Now apart from the Emperor Napoleon I and a small selection of the Grenadiers of His Imperial Guard, there were also a few nice British bandsmen.

I am holding myself from doing anything more than cleaning and priming them at the moment as there are another 8 Greeks in the queue ahead of them, but the weekend is starting to beckon.

Plots and Schemes

What's that Sahib?

One has as ever too many projects on the go. You may have noticed over the past couple of weeks images of old Rose Medes, Traditon Redcoats and so on. These are part of my two principal projects at the moment. On the one hand I'm getting an ancients army off the ground. It's looking like it'll shape up as Greeks and Persians, so I'm assuming Marathon and Platea will be on the cards at some stage. I've just knocked out a dozen Skythian/Saka archers and for the first time in a really long while I am really enjoying the painting. I'm just about to move onto a 24-strong Greek Phalanx (first of about 6 or 7, I think) who are also from Garrison/Rose and they are proving to be good fun as well, so things are looking up.

With regard to the bengal lancers above, I want a Britains-style army in 30mm, so off to the lead-pile and the Tradition catalogue I went. I had the Bengal lancer castings knocking about for quite a while - they'd been looking for a job and nothing quite seemed to fit, but this just might do. I'll add to them more cavalry from the "Crimea" range. Hussars first; led by Lord Cardigan methinks, and why not? Then some infantry - from the Corps of Drums range, I'm looking at three 18-strong units, with an option on the HR Grenadier Guards and some of the Household Cavalry, too.

Artillery is tricky, but there is a 4.7" in the Houston's Guns range at TVAG, and I think the Conoisseur Colonial 9lb might also do the trick. Gunners will need to be worked up from the Stadden infantry figures, or perhaps from the Indian Army range?

Anyway, give it six months and I hope to be out in the backyard with a smart brigade facing off against my Alzheimers and Prussians with a clockwork train and a monitor to boot - all in time for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Reception Committee

Led by Hornaphernes the Mighty, the Medes stand ready in reserve

Awaiting new arrivals are my 30mm Rose Prestige Medean infantry. A lovely figure and so easy to paint. The next block of 8 is ready to be started. 24 down, 16 to go!

Test Shots

Stadden 30mm British Infantry 1890

 A valiant Toy Soldier marches by. I wonder how this might look with some of the Houston 4.7" on Land Carriage that TVAG are selling. Hm.

Yes, I lost the left arm

And now that I see him, the piping on the tunic needs a tidy up, I forgot the piping on his collar and - ah - shouldn't the cuffs on his tunic be of the "jam pot" variety? Still, I do like the way the jacket, trousers and equipment came up. Checking my Osprey, it looks as though his personal equipment was very accurately done, too.

The View from the Cubby House

I thought I'd drop by and let the world know what is passing over my painting desk at the moment.

First along in the current queue have been some lovely Rose Prestige Medes. Sixteen in all to start forming the core of a Persian army. More on this project as we go on. Pictures to follow.

I have been painting a great deal of US and Vichy armour and softskins of late. Not too sure why, but it has been very enjoyable. I'm looking at the Torch landings - perhaps the Safi scenario from the first Rapid Fire! book.

FT-17s with purely speculative markings!

Airfix M3 Lee with patent saggy tracks.

Two utterly pointless purchases from Tradition - 30mm British Corps of Drums and Grenadiers of the Garde Imperiale led by none other than the Emperor Napoleon I. Heaven knows why, or what I shall do with them, but by golly they do scratch a very persistent itch.

Finally, in closing, I note the passing of Mr Don Featherstone. I won't go into his seminal influence upon the hobby, his often reported kindnesses and generosities. There are better writers than me doing that in a hundred blogs and magazine articles. I would wish though that his final moments were filled with memories of his children playing in the sun on one perfect day.

Out Black Spot!

For the past month or so I've been afflicted by the hobby Black Dog. A strong case of the can't be bothereds. I've been slleping in rather than getting up and painting. Watching a video in the evening instead of assembling placcy bits.

Terrible.

But I think I've broken out. I painted a bakers' dozen of Camel Corps this week. And assembled an Airfix jeep. That's got to count, eh?

But to make sure. To make really sure. To make really really sure I'm taking part in a painting challenge. From the 30th of this month to the 30th Novenmber. 90 days. 90 days to paint... something.

I'm thinking of four Charge!-sized units of foot. What a good opportunity to make use of my old Saxon Army. I think i got about 30 figures into that. So, lets see, about 170 to go. We'll see if I can get through that and perhaps throw in some cavalry and guns too.

Can it be done? Only one way to find out.

Hold On To Your Bounce Sticks

A man and his Stick

Whilst watching an episode of Dexter tonight, I took out a piece of quarter-round beading and manufactured a measuring stick to go with my fast-play Sudan rules "The Quickie and the Flame".

I quite like little devices such as this. They combine the fun of gizmology with a handy reference in the quick of the fight.

Someone needs to lose some weight.

Fife and Drum Kickstarter Project Goes Gangbusters

It's really good to see such a worthy and high-quality project like Jim Purky's AWI Kickstarter getting the support it merits.

While AWI is not really my "thing" I've put my money where my mouth is and bought in.

Buy some of his artillery and train equipments while you're at it. They are designed by one of the best regarded researchers of the 7YW out there, Mr Christian Rogge.

Go Jim.

Sudan Campaign - Move 1 Completed.

If you are so moved, I have finished the first move of my new Sudan Campaign.

The wrap-up may be read here:

http://www.bloodreddesertsands.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/move-1-wrap-up.html

The short version is that after one small battle in Western Sudan and a few small skirmishes in the North the rebellion is somewhat in decline. North Sudan has - for now at least - been pacified. The beseiged garrisons seem to be holding out well enough with plenty of supplies laid in.

Let's see what Move 2 has in store!

Those Blood-Red Desert Sands

I have spent the past few days quietly re-painting the basing on my Sudan collection. It's been built up over the past 8 years or so, and over time as my style and paint stocks have varied, they have taken on a pretty motley appearance.

In working on them, I have decided to undertake a small Sudan campaign.

It's not terribly historical and telescopes the events of the Mahdi Revolt into 20 campaign moves. Still, I hope it reflects some of the flavour of the period.

The campaign system is that Steve Winter published on his old "The Colonial Angle" wesbiste.

I'll be preparing and putting up my materials over the rest of this week and hopefully kick things off this time next week.

If you are at all interested, please come and walk with me over those Blood Red Desert Sands.

A brief diversion

On my front doorstep (which we never use and hence what follows) a few weeks back was a parcel that had come to me from the UK. I opened it and it turned out to be the copy of Duncan Head's "Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars". I had ordered it in February and promptly forgotten about it. I am sure it arrived with all despatch and had waitied there patiently for me to notice it.

A pleasant surprise you may say, and indeed it was. Even more surprising was the fact that the snails had deigned merely to nibble lightly upon the envelope before nicking off in search of some lettuce instead.

 Well, I was flicking through it today - these books are extremely flick-friendly, you understand - and what a treat it is. Three-paragraph battle descriptions, sections on the composition and descriptions of the Armies and so on.

Then you come to Ian Heath's illustrations. There are 188 of them.

Fair use, yeah Ian?

I invite you to admire them and then ask yourself why no-one seems (that I can see) to have picked up on their "look" to do a range of 30mm miniatures. The only thing with which I can compare them is the work of the German flat engravers. Such clean lines. Such nice anatomy. Such uncluttered simplicity.

UPDATE - OK there are these from Garrison:

Rose Prestige Greek - buy them in huge quantities, they are gorgeous.

But that's about it so far as I can tell. Someone... anyone.. please!

Weekends' Output

Fifer, Poseur and Spanish Pikeman

Dreadful lighting for photography and thus my apologies.

The collection is building apace. Apart from these, I dug out and renovated a half dozen cavalry. It will be time quite soon to examine the question of basing.

Spanish Lancer

Converted from the Willie mounted Arquebusier that they never seem to supply an arquebus for!

Sword and buckler guy and a few whores and powder monkeys.

From the current 1565 collection, L-R, a sword and buckler man, the baby-eating Bishop af Bath and Wells and Pizzaro.

A few new recruits

Landsknecht Pride Marchers

 Obviously the Herr Obrist has been out shaking the can for the Fähnleins!

Spanish Pike

More on the painting table.

How Much is Enough?

I was home with a nasty head cold yesterday, so after Amy had taken the kids off to creche, I slept most of the morning. Rising at lunchtime (oh, how bohemian of me) I decided to make good use of my time and get some more painting done.

I ran through the next five Landknechts and Spanish then prepped up the next three figures for painting. What fun.

Later in the day I bought a Me 109E-4, one of the lovely new-tooled Airfix kits. No good reason for it - I was just in a Battle of Britain sort of mood.

Looking for a place to start building it on my workbench led me to try to clear things up.

Oh dear.

No room.

And my storage spaces are pretty well fully utilised.

Now, this ghastly situation has resolved* a looming cloud of gloom.

No further major projects?

Perhaps. I could see a time where I'd dabbled with most things that interest me. I have WAS/7YW armies for Europe and North America. I have fair sized WW2 forces for North Africs and Barbarossa (and aren't the new Miniairons T-26s nice?). I have the various incarnations of the Duchy of Alzheims' armies for the 16th, 18th and 19th centuries. There are Warhammer Dwarves, Melniboneans, Pan Tangians, Riders of Rohan, High Elves of the First Age. There are huge numbers of Egyptians (160 and counting) and Mahdists (300?). There are various odds and sods of British Colonials in Home and Foreign Service Dress. There are a few dozen Britains 1914 French. There is a large chest of drawers stuffed with plastic model kits - were I an honest man I would also admit to the plastic tubs stacked in the car port filled with various kits and bits. I forgot the 25mm Tradition ACW collection. You klnow, the one I actually have the odd game with!

There is even a largeish stash of Napoleonic lead for the eventuality that I ever go to the Iberian peninsula.

Do I need to add to all this? Will I ever paint those Xyston galleys? Or the dozen or so Langdon ships that I have in baggies to go with the HMS Agamemnon (74) and the HMS Lydia (26)?

Can it be that I cannot conceive at this time of adding any new projects to this lot? Sure, some projects may gain an extra branch - most likely the 7YW Brits getting some Jacobites to brawl against at Prestonpans - but entirely new growths? I'm starting to wonder.

So there you go - perhaps my Slovaks and Landsknechts are the end of the road for me. Nothing is ever certain in life, and I feel that there are Ancients lurking there somewhere, but I feel that this may yet come to be.

*In the sense of brought into focus.

Test Figures

Alzheimer Landsknecht Officers

 I've spent a little time this weekend painting a few test figures. In the inevitable blue are "die Blauen" of Alzheim. All painting has been done with acrylic colour washes on a white, sprayed-on, undercoat. My main inspirations for this method are Richard Marsh's "wash-and-line" technique and the excellent work of Doug Crowther. Everything old is new again!

Spanish Pike

I took a leaf out of the GW playbook for painting large units of non-uniformed troops so they look fairly unified. I chose red and yellow-ochre as a tip of the hat to the Spanish flag. These are likewise Willie Landsknecht figures, but wearing Pluderhosen.

Comments are always welcome.

Setting a First Milestone

As you may have realised, I like to set myself milestones in assembling a collection.

Ross has kindly put forth the germ of a scenario and considering that I know little enough about the period and what may or may not be plausible I have decided to go with it.

Why not?

So then:

Spanish
General
Company of 8 Arquebusiers
Company of 8 Sword and Bucklermen
24 Pike
Troop of 8 Mounted Arquebusiers

Alzheimers
General
Company of 8 Arquebusiers
24 Pike
Troop of 8 Gens d'Armes
1 Cannon and 6 crew

This talk of Spanish troops leads me to thinking about my "Great Siege" collection such as it is. The figures that went into it would feed this project quite nicely and vice versa. Plenty of whores and powder monkeys there for Stokes, too. Monks, bishops, all the usual lovely clutter.

Costings

So, the next step of the project is costing it all out.

What am I committing to buy here?

Totting things up, I can see I am looking at 160 Landsknechts, 72 cavalry, half a dozen guns and about 20-30 gunners to service them. Then there are the stray command vignettes, assorted whores and powder monkeys, the odd casualty figure and so on; say another 20 or so. Half a dozen artillery pieces.

Costing up the foot figures - there are in the region of  210 figures. Thats GBP315 at GBP1.50 each.  Here though I am in the happy position of already having about 20 in hand already, so that lessens the pain somewhat. 30-odd pounds worth of pain relief, in fact. So lets say about 285 pounds for the Foot.

The cavalry - 24 are Willie "specials" from Tradition of London and will set me back somewhere in the region of GBP90. Hell. Although on the bright side, the first 8 have already been bought and paid for, so another 60 to spend. The remaining 40 will set me back another GBP116.

Lets say another 25 pounds for artillery.

Potentially a few buildings, items of fortification and so on, but some can be drawn from stock and others will not be needed immediately, so that can be put aside for now.

So what are we looking at at this point? If we total it all up we find we are at about GBP486.

Considering I'll be buying all this in dribs and drabs over the next year and a half to two years, I probably won't be getting any postage discounts, so add another 30%. GBP631.80.

Converting this to Australian dollars at todays' prices, we see that the project will come out at something in the order of $1036.01.

This seems like a lot of money and to tell the truth it is - about half a new hot water service. It is also about half of my annual hobby budget, at a guess, especially if I take into account what I spend going up to CanCon for our demo games. Still spread over two years it's not so bad, about a quarter of my annual spend, and amortised over the lifetime of the pleasure I shall get from them the price starts to seem less and less.

Policy Framework Document

Without adding an extra 16 figures per unit at this stage (notwithstanding a permanently open option on doing so in the future...) I think I have an outline for a "Landsknecht Project".

Something like this:

The Good Duke Sigismund von Alzheim
One 80-strong Landsknecht "Regiment". Die Blauen. For hire. Reasonable rates, satisfaction proffered. Mostly. Looting? Well, if pay is sufficiently in arrears.

The not so Good Freiherr von Herkheim
One 80-strong Landsknecht "Regiment". The Black Band of black-hearted knaves.For hire. Reasonable rates, satisfaction proffered. Under the right circumstances. Looting optional.

Ritter von Gaustadt, a man who enjoys a good time (ein geiler Bock* in the common tongue).
One 24-strong Gens d'Armes Regiment. "die Unaussprechlichen". Ahem.

Franz das Kamel.
Master of the Esoteric Order of the Artillery. A captured town's church bells are his, by ancient right.
An amazing medley of gimcrack cannon of all kinds.


*OK, yes, I did just find a German slang glossary online. Happy days.

UPDATE: Since my last go at this post, I've taken another close look at the Willie Catalogue and it seems to me that the ECW Cuirassier might also do as either a Reiter or as a ... Cuirassier - ie, a chap in 3/4 armour with a fully-enclosed helmet. Also, the Spanish Mounted Arquebusier from the Conquistador range has uses both as a mounted arquebusier and  as a light, lance armed cavalryman. A dozen of each type perhaps? Is that another four units of medium and light horse? Hm. Hm. Hm.