Italian Wars… Progress

Tonight we had our friends over so I wasn’t expecting to get much done. I did manage to finish the knights and general’s…

I didn’t really have time to make a start on anything else, so as I had been showing them the 28mm Italian Wars too, then I thought I would make a short ten minute foray into doing them.

Alongside them are the remains of the metal cavalry. Two units of mounted arqubusiers, one or Reiters and a unit of Genitors. I have two metal wagons primed, with the base textured too, but that will be the metals all done when these are finished.

Hopefully tomorrow morning we are off to find a Viking Soapstone quarry. I will share the results tomorrow evening.

Imperial Knights

So another day of working from home has been and gone and still no PCR result, so it looks like tomorrow will be another day in house arrest. This evening however I managed to finish my knights and civilians as well as make a start on my general’s. Here we have said knights and civilians…

I know that them all having the same banner is probably historically inaccurate, but it does make them easier to recognise at a distance.

Hopefully I will get on with some more of these tomorrow

Spanish Pike and Baggage

Well today I have been under house arrest for at least 48 hours as my son developed a cough, he has Asthma, but he got sent homefto school yesterday so we were being careful and got him a test. The guy turned up at 12.30. So it is likely I won’t be back to work this week. Problem is I am not ill so I still have to work, so sadly no days of painting miniatures.

I was late getting dinner, so didn’t manage a huge amount of painting done, but any progress is still progress… funnily enough the pikes were a lot easier to paint tonight.

I still cannot get over the weird heads, but never mind. I also found time to slap some paint on a baggage cart…

It still needs a bit of work, but it is over the hump.thisvsmall cart is actually from the fantasy range.. jt’s designation is a ‘dwarf cart. I was going to try and get four bases of knights done, but it wasn’t to be. I even gota couple of civilian bases out too.

The printer has churned out eighty Pike strips so far. I reckon it should sort out my extra needs.

So my thought was to stop taking dates for finishing this weekend coming. This is not a catch and I reckon I can get a parcel pretty much anywhere in the world. So if you fancy joining in then give me a date. If you win, we can discuss what is of most use to you.

Landskecht Front Rank

Tonight I thought I had better crack on with things so I put Dredd on Netflix and did some painting…

So here we have the front rank for two Pike blocks.

I then made a start on the Spanish Pikes…

Now to differentiate the two lots I did these in less flamboyant colours on the whole. There are some bright colours in this lot, but also a lot more browns. Some of the heads on the Spanish are weird, they have a sphere with two holes in it. I am not sure whether it is some kind of weird helmet or if it is meant to be an unhelmeted head. To me a Spaniard wears a Comb Morion or something similar.

The one thing I was correct about… I already hate painting pikes! Only about 600 to go😬

Painting and Out in the Verse

We got another Firefly game in this evening and this time Joe’s luck improved, managing a good win.

I had a bit of time, so I got a wiggle on with the Landskecht, by wiggle, please read darkened the armour and cloth with a wash….

Since taking the above photo I also got the hats painted. They need to have the feathers repainted white and then some colour added. I can hopefully get these ones finished tomorrow. I will make a start on the Spanish tomorrow too. I have now printed another forty pike strips to add in the rear ranks. I will do another forty and see how I get on. Joe will probably need a pile more too.

I will start recording the finish dates tomorrow and will close the competition at the weekend, otherwise someone could honestly say tomorrow sometime in the future.

Making a Start

Today I got the metals undercoated ready to start painting.

The wind and rain stopped long enough to throw some white undercoat onto them. To be honest that was all I could be bothered to do, but I put District 9 on Netflix and made a start on the Landskecht….

Still along way to go, but a start is indeed a start. These will get a dark wash over them, or at least the armour.

So when do you think I am going to get the whole lot finished…let’s have a little sweep stake… closest gets a little prize. So for full disclosure, it will likely be 3D printed. In case you missed it… this is half the infantry…

So get your thinking caps on, how long will it take Stephen (the painting butterfly who flits from project to project) to get his 6mm Italian Wars army finished. The only thing not visible in the two photographs above is a couple of artillery pieces and crew.

I will have to do a bit of a diversion to paint up my 28mm Imperials for a game sometime in October, I hope it isn’t September!

If you recall, I decided to blast through the rear ranks by sort of just doing them simply to speed up the process.

If you want to join in add your finishing date in a reply. I am happy to answer any questions before you decide on a date.

Bitten off More….

There is the famous saying that someone has bitten off more than they can chew. … this evening I decided to get the metal and the resin infantry based on painting sticks and it was at this point that the enormity of the task ahead struck me…

What we have above are the miniatures for two of the four Pike blocks the guns in the foreground are for the Tercio as well as some Skirmish troops too. The pikes on the right are the front rank troops of the second pair of pike blocks.

Now technically from every stick of miniatures I will get two pair of pikes, meaning 120 miniatures or 60 pair, which will be able to go onto another base to make up the numbers. But even with this happening I am going to have to fire up the printer again and do some more pikes.

Typically I have plenty of arqubusiers spare… I think.

I did a test to see if my theory on the extra miniatures filling out the extra bases worked… it seemed to…

Here we have three quarters of an imperial eight stand Pike block, minus the skirmishers and doppelsoldners. To be fair it does look like a densely packed Pike block.

I have actually run out of lollipop sticks… I took a pile into work for the kids to make models out of… I am off to get them back tomorrow. I just have some more here, I just don’t know where they are.

I reckon with the bits and pieces I have left then I will be able to make a third Pike block, but will need more printed to make the fourth. As I am printing anyway, and have these already painted on the front rank then I might as well do the fifth unit… perhaps, or common sense will arrive and make me stop and consider things.

It is my daughter’s 13th birthday tomorrow, so I doubt I will get much done tomorrow evening. Joe is coming over on Friday for a game, so it might be a while before much progress is made.

Parcel in the Post

Well after starting to worry that something had gone wrong with the Irregular order … (probably because Joe had given me some money to order his when I ordered mine). I got back today to find this on my kitchen table…

Funnily enough I had just said to Joe that I hoped the box would be here before we had a game on Friday… I excitedly opened it and a mountain of lead appeared before my eyes…

Actually this is only half the stuff, I added the wrong photo!

Next up was: a… trying to remember what I ordered and b… checking it was all there. Unfortunately the PayPal page for Irregular was still up and that was the one that refused to work properly, so off I went into PayPal for my actual receipt. All things were present and correct, with a slight panic that the Spanish Pike were missing, only to find them in a separate bag.

So, like you do I set them out on the table…. and voila an army appeared before my eyes…

It kind of looks quite impressive until you realise that these aren’t based yet….

More impressive… in fact it is still missing three cannons, sixteen bases of Tercio shot and nine bases of skirmish infantry… I think that is all! As you can see from the above, the Pike have only the front rank in metal. The rest of the bases will be 3D printed. The shot etc will also be 3D printed.

The above is a 500 point army, a one thousand point army, even in 6mm, would be massive and probably twice the price too.

Obviously whilst messing around with this lot all evening meant no painting… I doubt the things I wanted to paint this evening are going be any less painted tomorrow. The plan for this lot is to get them, and the resin bits and pieces onto painting sticks ASAP so that I can get them undercoated ready for a mammoth painting session. Oh yeah, along with the 6mm Samurai, 2mm Ancients, 28mm Imperials, 10mm things too. I am going to pretend the 28mm ruins don’t exist!

Religious Zealots

Tonight I managed to get a whole lot done on my unit of flagellants.

I was hoping to get them finished, but sadly it was not to be. Hopefully I will get them done tomorrow. Now quite often I see these type of miniatures with pale skin, but they way look atitthey were out and about throughout the lands so mine are a bit tanned.

I also managed to get the ruins successfully printed at 18% size…

While was having a mooch for things to paint then I came across the trees too. I had printed some last nightwith the reduced sized cows… yes I really am that bonkers! The trees really could have done with some supportsas there are some pancakes on the bottoms, but,they still work, and to be honest they were a test to see if they would print.

As I have decided to go for 6mm Italian wars then, as you can tell by the blog, I have been reducing 28mm buildings to fitmy 6mm.this was because I couldn’t really find any suitable ones to print. Now if you remember, a while ago I found a guy making 6mm Samurai, I didn’t bother looking in the moderns section. Outof the blue today YouTube decided that I would want to watch one of his videos, lo and beholding January of this year he made Italian style buildings, so asylum can imagine I am quite chuffed and am printing a villa, church, some barns and smaller farm houses right now. I will photograph them tomorrow. You can watch the video below…

Italian Buildings from Project Wargaming

Small Windmills of My Mind

So today I did a fair old bit of slicingon the resin printer as the FDM one is having a bit of a lie down, looks like one of the back springs needs replacing.to be honest mostly it is still the stock setup.

So after a bit of a false start with the sails, I ended up with this little chap. As per normal he is 18% original size. Again an awesome little model from Iain Lovecraft’s ‘The Frost’ Kickstarter….

Amazingly enough I alsomanagedto print some treesto go with the 6mm forces. These are from the guys who did the 6mm Samurai and are a freebie… there were in fact a larger number of the trees, I chose two and because am paranoid I splayed out the base of the deciduous one in Mesh Mixer.

I will have to add the name of the designer of the trees tomorrow as I honestly cannot remember of find them again.

I decided that the Flintloque miniatures had sat there long enough so I did some more work in them this evening too.