Of flags and Princes

After sitting on my painting desk since May, I finally finished up Il Principe Giuseppe Martellato or Prince Giuseppe the Hammered. The third son of the Duke of Libation, Giuseppe is an accomplished field commander and patron of wine vendors the world over.



After spending a bit of time looking for available flags in 28mm, I've decided upon utilizing Thirty Years War Swedish ones. More generic in nature, I chose to have them in both Green and Blue, because those happen to be the two main colours of my uniforms. I have selected flags for every unit except for my skirmisher one, which does not have a standard.

Coat of Arms of the Duchy of Libations

National Flag of Libations

Reggimento di Fanteria di Sambuca

Reggimento del Granatiere dell' Amaretto

Reggimento di Fusiller di Campari

Grappa Proprio Reggimento Ussari

Projected Lancer Regiment (Using Bosniac Lancer models)

ImagiNation introduction

Not exactly a productive week painting wise, but lack of sleep and a full academic schedule will do that do you. On a non painting production front, I've managed to finally fully flesh out the background to my current project. While the progress is not enough for me to be comfortable about posting, I was bored yesterday and coloured in some uniform templates. These templates are from the blog "Not by Appointment". Unfortunately, Not by Appointment does not have a template of Aussian mounted Grenz, which is the figures I am using for my Hussar regiment.

Reggimento di Fanteria di Sambuca (Infantry Regiment of Sambuca)

and

Cacciatore di Galliano (Chasseur / Skirmishers of Galliano)

Reggimento di Fusiller di Campari (Fusiller Regiment of Campari)

Reggimento del Granatiere dell' Amaretto (Grenadier Regiment of Amaretto)

In all, I plan to have five different units. Two line infantry regiments, one grenadier (which is actually half the size of the line infantry ones), one skirmisher (like the grenadier regiment, only half) and one unit of Hussars. I plan on painting enough models to have the skeleton of each unit (see Grenadiers two posts below) and once the base of each unit is completed, I will expand the grenadier, skirmishers and hussars by a single group of 8 figures and the two line infantry units will be expanded by two groups of 8 figures. This is the plan to allow me to play even when my units are not fully up to strength.

More ImagiNation

With my current painting spurt, I'm quickly running out of figures to paint for my project. After about four months of having them sitting on my painting desk, I am slowly finishing my first order from Front Rank. All thats left is a pair of drummers. Recently finished the commander of my Hussar Regiment, Giovanni L'Ubriaco or Giovanni the Lubricated. I painted the eyes to be looking out of the left corner. This is to be paired with the head holding hussar.

ImagiNation musing

Starting ImagiNation projects seem to be all the rage in my extended group this year. ImagiNation in a nut shell is alternate world wargaming, but for history buffs. Create your own country, units and uniforms and play against other like minded individuals. Given that I'm a history major, sometimes I get tired of having to do research into exact uniform patterns and colours and with ImagiNation, its nice just to sit down and paint what I want.

For this project, my nation is set in the mid-18th century (Seven Years War) and uses mostly Crusader USA figures with a smattering of Front Rank for command and cavalry. Why Crusader? Well on top of having fantastic sculpts for the price point, they also come in packs of 8 figures, which happens to be a group with the Too Fat Lardies rule set Sharp Practice. While I do find that Crusader figures happen to be on the larger side of 28mm ones, they rank up alright with Front Rank ones, with FR being slightly smaller, closer to Perry Miniatures.

Last weekend I managed to break my painting rut by finishing off a trio of command for my yet to be ordered line infantry. From there I cruised to finishing off the whole Grenadier Regiment. While only 16 line and 3 command, its not exactly a ground breaking in term of volume, but its a start. After I finish painting the skeleton of each unit, I will expand each of them slightly to bring to full strength. In the case of my Grenadier regiment, I will simple add a third unit of 8 figures.

ImagiNation and a fourth month long painting rutt

It's been quite a while since I've last posted and unfortunately I don't really have much to show for it. After painting up a storm for about three weeks in which I started and sculpted / painted 95% of a space fleet and received the start of my ImagiNation project, I've been stuck in one of the worst rutts of my short painting carrier.

I liken myself to a mercurial Russian hockey player, my point (painting) production comes in short, but vary effective, bursts. But to my dismay, once that burst ends, I go into month long slumps.

In an effort to end this rutt, I've attempted multiple cures and while I've not been able to pick up the brush in a while, I've managed to get a lot of administrative work for my various projects done.

Another cure I'm going to attempt is to post more on this blog and I'm going to bite a couple of other blogs I usually read and insert Beer and other alcohol reviews along with my figures.

To attempt to end my drought I set up a makeshift photo booth and took some snapshots of what I currently have finished for my ImagiNation project.

Primo Squadrone of the Grappa Proprio Riggimento Ussari

Figures are Front Rank Seven Years War Austrian Mounted Pandours.

I'm quite fond of this figure, when paired with the command group for the regiment its as if he is showing the head of the last commander to the current one.

The first test model I painted to get the color scheme down. Hungarian Seven Years War model from Front Rank. Going to be one of the officers in my line infantry unit.

French Toast

A few weeks ago Dan Hoyt and myself played our first Great War game. Because right now, neither of us actually have enough figures to play on the full eight boards, we set up two and hashed out a basic scenario. German trench raiders had taken over an allied observation post and British and French units moved to retake it. Two sections of Germans with a flame thrower team stood against a section of French, two sections of British and a Lewis gun team. And without further fluff and filler, the pictures:

The Canadian and French in all of their glory

Smaller in number, German stormtroopers are destructive in close quarters

The two boards with added tank carnage for fun

The first section of Stormtroopers rush into position

The deadly flamethrower team takes position

The Canadians, arriving after the French, take position in the second line of trenches

In a daring move, the second section of stormtroopers leave their trench to assault the waiting French. Unfortunately, a Canadian squad was within range and came to help their cheese eating allies. The close quarters combat ended with the total loss of the storm trooper section and a couple of French casualties.

The euphoric victory in hand-to-hand combat was short lived as the flamethrower appeared from around the burning Whippet tank.

The flamethrower proceeded to have a devastating effect upon the French rifle section, killing all but it heroic Sergeant.

In a last hurrah before being shot, the Sergeant adopted a "Come at me bro" stance.

The flamethrower team also had a short lifespan, as the Canadian rifle section "lit" them up.

The game ended with only a single German storm trooper section remaining and its commander while the Canadians still had two rifle sections, its Lewis gun and a platoon command.

Double ... trouble

During the school year, I had very little time to actually sit down and paint models, thankfully, now that I'm done and have about 2 weeks of absolutely nothing at all to do, paint paint paint! Another rifle section of Great War French are ready to hit the table. Both sections are missing an infantryman equipped with a rifle grenade, which will be added when ever I get around to ordering some more figures. I'm rather happy with how they have turned out.

Première Section de Fusil under the command of Sergeant Chagnon.

Deuxième Lieutenant Gendron, the fearless leader of the Demi-Section A.

Deuxième Section de Fusil under the leadership of Sergeant Robin

More Ships for The One

Having no exams for five days strait allowed me to work quite a bit on my wargaming projects. I still have 18 or so more ships to do, but overall, the project has been advancing at a blistering pace, considering I started working on all of this less then three weeks ago and had to contend with six of the most difficult exams university can throw at you.

The unwashed horde

I had a chance to take a few snaps of my 15mm Russian Continuation War project. All I have left to paint is 1 76mm Regimental Gun, 4 T-26 tanks and a company command stand. Even without the support of additional tanks, my Russians have been able to absolutely crush their Finnish opponents every single time. I doubt this is due to my incredible ability to command my unwashed horde (yet I seem always to have the worst of luck when playing historical games... T_T ), but more to the fact that the Finns (owned by Dan Hoyt) do not have any sort of support weapons. The 15mm collection is low on his priority list, with 150 plus Great War models left to paint.