FINiatures

Kauzenburg 2012 Picture Galery

2012-01-21T09:53:00.000+01:00

A comprehensive article on the event has been published on tabletop-hdr.de. The article is in German, but more than 150 pictures speak for themselves: Kauzenburg 2012

Impetus at Kauzenburg 2012

2012-01-14T01:00:00.000+01:00

As I feared, most of my pics turned out to be blurred. The Kauzenburg wargaming weekend takes place in the caverns of the Kauzenburg in Bad Kreuznach... People in the Middle Ages didn't spent much thoughts about illuminating their castles to enable miniature photography. Considering that I used a cheap digital camera that can't compete with the high tech equipment of the more talented photographers, I'm still quite pleased with the results.

Frank Becker, one of those more talented photographers has already presented some better pictures of the event in his hobby blog: Figuren und Geschichten

I am sure more will follow. At this point, I will focus on the Impetus presentations at Kauzenburg.

Some of the Impetus Armies at Kauzenburg 2012:

Martin's (El Commandante) Warhammer Fantasy sellswords,
based for Impetus Fantasy.

David's (Azgul) Knights Hospitallers

Frank's (Tankred) beautiful LotR Rohirrim and Uruk-hai,
based for Impetus Fantasy.

Frank's Rohirrim Camp

Thomas' (Rusus) Kleve army

Some great Crossbowmen, painted by Frank for the
Feud of Kronberg presentation at Tactica 2012.
The troops in the background are intended for the same scenario
and were painted by him and various other artists.

My Personal Highlight at Kauzenburg 2012:

The first battle of my Westerosi. The 100pts contingent, led by Robert Baratheon himself, fought alongside a large 13th century army, led by Count Diedrich of Kleve. Our enemy was another ragtag army composed of Italian sellswords, some unfaithful Lannisters and armed citizens of Frankfurt. I shot a lot of pics, but only a handful turned out good enough to present them here. I hope they can convey some impression of the amazing gaming atmosphere at Kauzenburg.

Norbert, the captain of the enemy sellswords is planning
something evil with his cannon battery...

...and opens fire on my general. I don't think there ever was
a ceasefire for poor Robert.

Kerstin, moving the Frankfurt contingent. My left flank had
recently started to attack the treacherous Lannisters.
Choosing between close combat and constant cannon fire,
it wasn't as if they had a choice...

House Stark: Skirmishers

2012-01-10T17:27:00.003+01:00

The Kauzenburg gaming-weekend is over and I am sad to say, that I have taken far less pictures of the gorgeous terrain and miniatures, than I intended to. Instead I mainly focused on my first Impetus battle with my Westerosi, of which I will show some pics soon. In this battle I played a 100 pts battlegroup of a 400 pts army and so, I had to finish another unit beforehand: Skirmishers of House Stark.

Skirmishers belong to my favourite units in Impetus. They are no use if you intend to charge the enemy and deal few to none damage with their ranged weapons, but can be a pain in the ass for your enemy if he wants to weaken your valuable melee troops with bows or crossbows.

The miniatures used here, are a mix of Foundry, Perry Miniatures and Ebob Miniatures and were painted in pale colours, fitting to the Lords of the North. The small banner was not planned from the beginning, but made sense to me because the base had no real eyecatcher...

Kauzenburg 2012

2012-01-06T12:51:00.000+01:00

Today starts the annual Kauzenburg Wargaming Weeskend in Bad Kreuzach. My bags are packed and I'm hoping to see some action with my Westerosi. See you there!

Btw: Magnets rule!

Ours is the Fury!

2012-01-04T00:05:00.000+01:00

I have finally painted my version of the Young Stag. I really love the Darksword Version of this character and had to use it although it is slightly taller than the other miniatures I used. The dying horse on the base is a 5th edition Bretonnian horse, the standart bearer is an English heavy cavalry man, sculpted by Ebob.

I tried to depict Robert in the heat of the battle. His horse has just been shot beneath him and is kicking in vain while the Usurper is now pushing on on foot. The rider on his right bears his personal standart, the black stag of house Baratheon.

Again, I used Tamyia Clear Red X-27 for the blood splatter. This stuff is really great. The mud on the horse legs was coated with gloss varnish to achieve a wet look. Actually this technique can't convince me yet... I might rework this at a later point.

They Have a Cave Troll!

2012-01-03T10:19:00.002+01:00

I found some time to paint my copy of the Darksword Gregor Clegane. As I told you, the model itself is way to big to use it alongside "proper" 28mm miniatures. I nevertheless based Ser Gregor the Impetus way.

I chose to use the monster rules of the fantasy expansion of Impetus. This should fit his character pretty well.

Painting the Mountain was a lot of fun. I used Tamyia Clear Red X-27 for the first time to create blood splatter. I had seen this technique via an article on MassiveVoodoo and was pretty impressed by it. I don't think there is an easier way to get such convincing results.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T01:15:00.003+01:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

I'm very sorry that there had been no updates recently. Real life had claimed a lot of attention lately. Nevertheless, I have been busy painting last days and there will be some updates soon. I currently work on some more Ice and Fire troops for Kauzenburg 2012, a small but very nice wargaming convention in Bad Kreuznach, Germany.

Last year there had been some great Middle-earth based Impetus Phantasticus games. This year a lot of players have announced to bring Medieval Impetus armies! I'm really looking forward to this!

What a Beast!

2011-10-24T18:44:00.001+02:00

I ordered some of the awesome Dark Sword Miniatures to see if they would fit in with the miniatures I use.. Although I had already heard that they were slightly taller and a bit more subtle, the result surprised me:

I don't see much problems with the Robert Baratheon miniature, as he is described being some strong young man at the time of the revolution, but the Mountain is just MASSIVE! He looks way taller than the 8 feet that are described in the books. More like 9 or 10...

I'm tempted to base him as a monster for Impetus Fantasy. We'll see.

Impetus Magneticus II

2011-10-05T14:00:00.000+02:00

One of the main problems with Impetus bases is, that they are a bit bulky when carried around. They won't fit in any of the miniature cases I usually use for my single based miniatures.

Therefore I bought some metal-boxes from a certain Swedish furniture store, which are large enough to take even the longest flagpoles. Instead of using rubber foam to upholster the miniatures, I used Tankred's basing method, which he described at the German LotR forums, and bound some 5x2mm magnets to the bases.

As you can see, 4 of them are strong enough to hold a 12x6cm base with 10 metal miniatures in position, even in most adverse conditions.

As High as Honour!

2011-10-04T19:10:00.000+02:00

Jon Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Warden of the East, has rallied his banners to put an end to Targaryen tyranny! Here you can see the elite troops of the Eyrie, Jon Arryn's personal household guard, always accompanying their commander in the vanguard, led by their skilled captain Ser Vardis Egen, offspring of a noble house of the Vale.

These battle-hardened veterans carry the coat of arms of House Arryn. I found two descriptions of the arms:

- "A sky-blue falcon soaring on a white moon, on sky-blue."

- "A white falcon volant and crescent moon on a blue field."

As you can see, I somehow merged these two descriptions and stuck to one of my preferred interpretations of House Arryn's colours as it can be found on the title of one of the German translations of ASoIaF: Das Lied von Eis und Feuer 8: Die dunkle Königin

I like the depiction in the series as well, but the symbol used there is too far from heraldic correctness, even for my purpose.

Ser Egen carries his family's arms: A yellow sun, white crescent moon, and silver star on blue chief above white.

All the models used, are old Bretonnian Men at Arms, sculpted by Alan and Michael Perry.

Oak and Iron, Guard Me Well,...

2011-10-01T01:00:00.000+02:00

... or else I'm dead and doomed to hell!

I painted the next Westerosi knight. Some might already have gotten it from the title or recognized the coat of arms (a green shooting star above an elm tree proper on sunset), others (even those who have read the books...) might still be guessing who could be meant. May I present:

Ser Duncan the Tall and his pert squire Egg, sometimes better known as Dunk the Lunk (thick as a castle wall) and, well... those of you who have read the Hedge Knight Novellas of GRRM will know what Egg stands for. I don't want to spoil those who haven't come accross Martin's Ice and Fire short-stories (or the Hedge Knight graphic novels) yet.

Some thoughts on the model: Well, I don't know what Egg has done, but somehow he has managed to fall off Maester (the mule). Now, he's trying to catch up with him.
Maester on the other hand doesn't care. He's heavily laden with a cask of Arbor Gold and the luggage of Dunk and Egg and quite satisfied being rid some of the weight.
We can't see the face of Ser Duncan cause of the helmet, but it's quite probable that there's a big grin. He just spurs his horse, hoping that Maester will follow him. Egg has kidded him the whole day, so that's what he earns...

The model used for Ser Duncan is a 5th edition Bretonnian knight, slightly converted. The horse is from Ebob. Way better than the GW ones. The mule Maester started his life being an Ebob pony. I did some minor conversions here as well. Egg is a Foundry model with a plasticcard-shield added.

Since all heroes in Impetus are regarded as being mounted (most heroes in Westeros are knights, so this is ok for me...), I decided to base most of my cavalry models on half-width bases. Gaining some interchangability, it will be a nice way to to show the unsteady allegiances of the Westerosi nobility.

I promise there will be more mounted knights on the bases to come... Not less than three miniatures of which at least two are knights seems to be the way to go for me.

Some Photoshop-voodoo. Sorry guys, but I had to practice...

Roadside Shrine

2011-09-20T13:40:00.000+02:00

Just finished the roadside shrine with the Warrior's statue. Hope it will give the games some Westeros-flavour.

I'm thinking of doing a goodswood next. Does anyone have some spare GW trees? They would make great weirwoods...

WIP: Ours is the Fury!

2011-09-17T11:49:00.001+02:00

I couldn't wait working on the general of my Impetus army, Robert Baratheon, Lord of the Stormlands, known as "The Usurper". Base-model is the "Count of Vendome" of the Perry Agincourt range. I sanded off all the heraldry, resculpted the livery and added his famous warhammer and antlers.

I'm still uncertain about the antlers. These are just taken from a 5th Edition Bretonnian knight and don't have the "aggressive" look I aimed at.

Making a Terrain Mat

2011-09-15T21:11:00.000+02:00

Sweetwater forums' fabulous thread about Terrain-Mats motivated me to try this method myself. Conducting a test run, I built a simple photography-mat without fancy structures.

Unique about these mats is, that they are built really quick. This one took me just about 1,5 hours, including the time for searching the materials (which I fortunately all had at hand...).

Base material is stretched canvas on a 70x70cm frame. The one I used was already painted, but just because it was a leftover of a painting session... Unpainted/unprimed canvas would have been better.

To give the mat a realistic strucure, I mixed brown acrylic paint, sand and coffeepowder. Coffeepowder was a tip from the internet. Well it works, but the mat smells like a Starbucks...

Acrilic sealant was added to the colour-paste. For the whole mat I needed less than a half tube.

The paste was spread over the canvas. It works as well if you directly mix the paste on the mat.

The paste was smoothed, using a palette-knife/ spoon/ fingers/ whatever you have at hand...

Next step already is the greening. I used several flocks and static grasses to produce an irregluar basis. The trick is to spread the flocking material over the mat at random and just press them into the wet acrilic paste. Since the grass will stick to the paste you neither need glue, nor need to wait for the surface to dry.

This "basecoat" was further worked on with some MiniNatur tufts, some Atenociti foliage and brown spray paint. At the end I highlighted some parts with Galeforce 9: Summer Flock.

Done in less than two hous. Last thing that's needed is some patience to let the Acrylics dry. Afterwards you can cut the mat off the frame to get a terrain that is more or less resilient, can be rolled up, needs little place and still looks as great as a regular terrain board.

I abandoned this option since I just wanted a surface to take some pictures on.

Hope you liked it. Credits have to be given to the guys over at Sweetwater. Having in mind how easy this was, the result is truly stunning.

New Banner

2011-09-12T18:30:00.002+02:00

As you can see, my blog has a new banner. I finished my photography mat today and couldn't wait taking a picture and try some of this Photoshop-voodoo that makes all the other miniatures over at Sweetwater or the LAF look so cool.

Yeah, works for me... I never tried picture editing before, but in my eyes, the new banner itself is worth the effort.

At least it's way cooler than the old one, done with Microsoft Paint.

The Warrior Protects

2011-09-10T12:00:00.000+02:00

After I sculpted the saint's statue for Rusus, I did another one for myself:

The Warrior. He represents one of the aspects of the Faith of the Seven, the primary religion of George R. R. Martin's Westeros.
Funny little guy. Reminds me a bit of the figures of the "The Settlers" PC-games.

A Lannister Always Pays His Debts!

2011-09-07T12:53:00.000+02:00

Centuries ago I promised Rusus to sculpt a little statue for his roadside shrine.
I nearly forgot this until yesterday, when I found a copy of the shrine.

Well, a Lannister pays his debts and I felt obliged not to dissapoint Rusus, so here it is:

The statue measures 10mm and is loosely based upon a statue of Elisabeth of Hungary which can be found in St. Elisabeth's Church in Marburg.

Hear Me Roar!

2011-09-06T10:27:00.002+02:00

Inspired by these great Stark bannermen made by Frank Becker, I am hooked on the whole Ice and Fire topic and have given some thoughts to ASoIaF-themed Impetus dioramas.

My first intension was to paint parts of the Stormlands army of Robert Baratheon during his rebellion against the Targaryens. Meanwhile I will go for a rather all-purpose "army" consisting of some major houses which will be able to cover most battles from the Blackfire Rebellion to the War of the Usurper.

After sorting my lead-chamber for fitting miniatures I found my old 5th. Ed. Bretonnians which will make great Westerosi knights. I painted one of them as a test-miniature, since most of my miniatures will consist of the Perry "Agincourt to Orleans" range but are still in the mail.

The miniature pictures a member of House Lannister. As I said, my army will consist of contingents of every great house, mixed with heroes of the Blackfire Rebellion and the War of the Usurper. This lord suits as Damon or Tywin Lannister and might be used in both periods. He is accompanied by a squire who carries a great wooden chest with unknown content. According to his posture and the fact that his master is a Lannister it's probably gold...

The miniature is based on 1,5mm plasticcard with the measurements 6x8cm which relates to Impetus Fantasticus hero basing. The paper pennant is adopted from Tankred's Feud of Kronberg cavalry.
The reason for using armour styles around 1400 is to be found in this letter from GRRM himself, which can be found in the "So Spake Martin" section of westeros.org. I actually will try to stay closer to the 15th century as the author himself did, but thats my personal preference.

Last but not least: The famous words of House Lannister, embroidered on the lord's crest.

Pimp My Cardboard Building - Part III

2011-09-04T21:06:00.000+02:00

I finally painted the buildings:

All in all I spent two evenings with this project, casually watching TV. To my mind a quite acceptable amount of work.

Pimp My Cardboard Building - Part II

2011-09-01T14:54:00.000+02:00

The farm-house is next:

Again I started with the wooden parts. I cut some balsa stripes with 3mm thickness and remodelled the framework printed on the building. Of cours you could do this technique with evey other skeletal structure as well, but the printed surface of the cardboard helped me as a beginner to get used to the sizes and measures.

The half timbered work was filled with Efaplast Light, an air drying modelling clay. You dont ncessarily need to use the light version. Classic or Terracotta would probably work as well, but this is what I normally use for basing my miniatures, so I had it at hand.

Next I had to get rid of the chimney. I didn't like the position and wanted it to bit a bit smaller. I rolled out some of the Efaplast and let it become touch dry. I cut some bricks from this and masoned a new chimney from that. Wasn't even as hard as I thought. Maybe I'll try this method with castle walls some day...

Last step: The roof was done with paperboard shingles.

And done... Never thought terrain building could be that easy... Maybe the most anoing part is the roof, because it takes centuries to affix every single shingle, but I like the scattered look of it and that's probably worth it.

Pimp My Cardboard Building - Part I

2011-08-31T17:29:00.007+02:00

I never built a lot of terrain for my games... Most times I use the tables of friends because my terrain building skills are really not that evolved...
So far I only painted some of the plastic ruins from the LotR Starter Boxes and built the cardboard houses from the 5th Edition Warhammer Starter Set which I found again last week, when clearing out the lumber room.

These buildings were no beauties, but I used them a long time, since I was not talented enough to build something on my own.
Forunately I found this article from graphixx at the German LotR forums. graphixx uses a simple but effective way of modifying cardboard models into great looking pieces of terrain.

I tried this method with the old houses and it proofed to be an ideal way even for terrain-no-skillers like me...

First, I worked on the shed. I simply glued some stripes of balsa wood to the walls. The printed surface of the paper model already tells you, how to do it.

For the broken door I added some hinges cut from plastic card.

The roof was made from thin cardboard (I used the wrapping of some chocolates...).

Done...

Great Source of Inspiration

2011-07-28T15:06:00.004+02:00

I have a soft spot for George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire since he released his 5th book A Dance with Dragons and HBO aired the first season of A Game of Thrones. At the moment I search for fitting miniatures to paint some of the characters of the books and will presumably be using the GRRM-Masterworks range of Dark Sword Miniatures or converted War of the Roses/Hundred Years' War miniatures from Perry Miniatures.

In search of inspiration I found the books The Art of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. These books (two volumes up to now) contain illustrations from Fantasy Flight Games' various board and card games.

Whereas I was a bit disappointed by the first volume since most artists did not meet my expectations of late medieval Westeros, the second volume was much better. Especially the double paged artworks of Tomasz Jedruszek belong to the best depictions of Martin's universe I have seen up to date.

TYW Imperialist Officer

2011-03-05T16:33:00.003+01:00

Yesterday I painted this Imperialist Officer for the Thirty Years War. The miniature itself is from Warlord Games and was painted for a user of the tabletop-hdr.de forums.

I'm sorry for the crappy pictures but I had to use the camera of a flatmate.

Impetus Magneticus I

2011-01-26T17:00:00.005+01:00

Only a small update today. Finally the polystyrene sheet and the magnets I ordered for my Impetus bases have arrived.
The Impetus bases for my infantry will measure 11,4x6cm. Most players glue their miniatures to the base and use them for Impetus only. If they want to play the LotR skirmish system theyuse other miniatures. Unfortunately I'm such a slow coach when painting, that I decided to magnetise my miniatures.
Now I have the possibility to use them for the skirmish system and Impetus. If I strictly place 8 miniatures on one infantry base, I can even use them for WotR.

Of course all you can see, has to be considered "work in progress", as I still have to see, if it works out with the scenic Impetus bases.

Sneak Preview of My Next Army

2011-01-24T18:45:00.005+01:00

Hello everybody,

I'm in a hurry, so there are just some pictures of my first paint scheme testers and conversions I'm currently working on.

The army is intended for Impetus Phantasticus, so the round bases are just a temporary solution.

Enjoy.

The Orc-Host is Ambushed in Brethil

2010-12-26T00:30:00.005+01:00

I just foraged my favourite Tolkien artists for inspiration and found this beautiful painting by Ted Nasmith:

The Orc-Host is Ambushed in Brethil

I love the scene and the great design of the First Age armament, but I'm still not sure which faction the attackers belong to... Are they men of the House of Haleth, who live in the Forests of Brethil? I never pictured them as that highly developed. Or is it possible that the picture shows an Elvish force? Sindar Elves from Doriath maybe?

Does anybody of you know what Ted Nasmith wanted to display? I searched the web for information on this picture but did'nt find anything?

Ghosts of the Past

2010-12-20T22:19:00.008+01:00

No, it is not the Ghost of Chrismas Past, but some pictures of Elves (and a Bretonnian) I found on my hard drive. As promised, I have searched for a pic of my old High Elves army. What I found, were some well hidden treasures that bear witness to the progress I made in painting and sculpting over the years. Enjoy!

Picture No#1 shows the first miniature I ever painted. It's a Bretonnian archer of the 5th edition Warhammer starter box. Looks quite decent and probably took me ages to paint it...^^ Unfortunately I can't tell you when exactly I did it. Has to be sometime 1998ish.

Next are the High Elven captains I told you of. Do you recognise the guy from the drawing?
Back then I used Milliput Super Fine White, an utility knife and a needle for my conversions. Didn't know there were better things to use. Although I would do some changes nowadays, I still like them. Crimson plumes and High Elves definitively fall into place.
The picture is taken in 2004 but I'm quite sure they are older. Late 2002 - early 2003...

Next one is an Êlnaith, an Elven Knight which was converted from an archer and a Rider of Rohan. It was the last miniature I did for my elven army and I never finished the whole squad I originally planned. As you can see, the sculpting and painting is already much smoother than that of the captains. Nonetheless I wouldn't use my old technique for painting white anymore.^^
The miniature was converted and painted in Summer 2004.

After a longer break I sculpted this female Elven archer in January 2006. I did it after I had some great days on the Kauzenburg convention, a gathering of users of the tabletop-hdr.de forums. I had some great chat with Ebob there and he encouraged me to do some more sculpting, and so I did.
This miniature was supposed to be the first official "FINiature". A company called "Noha Studios" was about to cast it, but unfortunately the miniature broke during the moulding. Nevertheless they managed to make 2 copies of it. One has been painted and was gifted to Ebob, the other one is still with me, but slightly damaged, due to the ruined mould...

Last Elf I did, was this banner bearer. He was made as a trophy for the winner of Kölns Klamm 2006 (Cologne's Deep), a tournament of the LotR Strategy Battle Game. Although I'm not quite confident with the paint job (the highlighting on the banner is much to strong), I think the sculpt itself was pretty good... I really should have made a copy.

Hope you liked this nostalgic trip to the past although I don't know how someone could benefit from these wooly thoughts. Perhaps I just got carried away...

High Elf Trumpeter 28mm - WIP

2010-12-20T14:05:00.010+01:00

...and even as the Moon rose above the darkness in the west, Fingolfin let blow his silver trumpets and began his march into Middle-earth, and the shadows of his host went long and black before them.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Silmarillion

I love this scene from "The Silmarillion" and it ispired me to sculpt this trumpeter. The High Elves were my very first and still favourite Lord of the Rings army. It's a shame that GW always neglected them. My Elves contained several conversions with sculpted helmet plumes, so I decided to keep this fine tradition.

Actually the miniature is to be regarded WIP. It still needs to be sanded and cleaned and I even spot some areas I might have to redo. Hope you like it anyhow, but I couldn't await getting some feedback on it.

The idea of attaching plumes derived from a drawing I made back in 2001 or 2002. It shows "Finarfin", my RPG character for MERP. I even translated this picture into a miniature (just a conversion, no scratchbuilt) and used it as a captain of the High Elves, but unfortunately I don't have the miniature here to take any pictures.

FOR PONY!

2010-03-12T16:07:00.014+01:00

I moved last week, so unfortunately my paints and brushes are still lost somewhere in the depths of my junk room. It was a lucky twist of fate, that I found my sculpting tools first, cause I just recently thought about a character I would love to see as a miniature… Well, I'm quite confident with this new Finiature. It still needs some sanding, but all in all I like the result. The miniature is in 28/30mm scale (close to the Discworld figures).

Allow me to introduce Richard. Chief Warlock of the Brothers of Darkness, Lord of the Thirteen Hells, Master of the Bones, Emperor of the Black, Lord of the Undead, Lord of the Dance, Mistress of Magma, and mayor of a little village up the coast.

For those of you, who are not familiar with Looking for Group: It’s the pale guy with the hood who likes to kill things…Besides, if you didn’t know this comic up to now: Read it! It’s totally worth it. For those of you, who don’t like reading, this vid might convince you that Richard is a great guy!

Enjoy, err… For pony!

Today's Gonna Be a Good Day

2010-03-07T16:24:00.004+01:00

Great news! Found out that my local newsdealer sells "Wargames Illustrated", when buying some buns for breakfast.

Results up to now:
- Research papers written: 0
- WIs read: 1

Théodred

2010-02-17T17:08:00.003+01:00

Every army needs its leader. I don't really think he is the man of choice if I'll be taking the guys to a tournament. I'm afraid that his lack of faith makes him hardly competitive... Anyways, he's not the guy who wins the battle. All he's got to do is to win his charge. What happens next is recorded in the books...^^

Actually it's much too early to philosophise about tactics. All I want you to do is to enjoy the pictures. I modelled some extra armour for his horse. The standard plastic mount didn't seem to be appropriate for the king's son. The base got some extra detail as well. I added the dead Rohirrim which originally was part of a Grimwarg miniature. Maybe I shouldn't have used it... It could be seen as some kinde of foreshadowing...^^

Hope you like it. The last picture is a comparison of today's Fin and ancient Fin again.

The Muster of Rohan

2010-02-17T15:04:00.005+01:00

Thinking back, the Eorlingas were my really first wargaming army. Before FotR was released I had a small WHFB Breton army. Their leader was painted in green and his shield wore my first freehand ever, a white horse painted in green. Of course I used to call him Eomer...^^

Understandably enough I immediately had to get my hands on these guys when TTT was announced and I started painting a small force of around 300 points. Although I love their literary background, their historical references and their visualisation in the movies, I actually never played very much with them. Maybe that's the reason why I almost completely forgot their existence in the depths of my miniature cases... Until now...

This semester I took a "History of English" course at university and among others had to struggle through several dialects of Old English. I like its "archaic" and "native" sound and immediately had to think of the Rohirric names I read in the Lord of the Rings so often... Back home I searched for my old Horse Lords, but realised that their painting was much worse than I had in mind. Hardly surprising because they are about 7 years old... Therefore I thought it might be a good reason to start over with some LotR models once again. It's a shame, that I can't even tell when I painted my last LotR miniature... Even after assembling the first miniatures I couldn't escape the feeling that I smelled horses... You gotta love these models.

Well, long story made short, here are the results. I hope you like the painting. The last picture shows a comparison between the two eras of FINiatures...^^ Feel free to leave some comments.

Otto von Bismarck

2009-04-09T18:13:00.000+02:00

It's me again... Contrary to my expectations I managed to spend some hours at the desk to paint a new miniature. I chose Otto von Bismarck, the official miniature of "Hamburger Tactica 2009" cause I wouldn't have finished a whole FOW-platoon in the few hours I had.

On this miniature I tried to do the highlighting in dependance to a fixed light source and added some blue to the skin colour to imitate more natural looking shadows. Considering, that it was my first attempt in this field, I'm really confident with the result.

By the way: Is the uniform I painted historically accurate? I really have no clue... My only inspiration were some black and white photographies.

Long Time No See...

2009-03-31T21:22:00.000+02:00

Frak!
I'm sorry, probably there won't be any pics the next three weeks... The pioneer platoon is nearly finished, but my work load doesn't allow me even to get a glimpse of my paints...

New Base Design

2009-03-04T18:40:00.000+01:00

As I told you, I bought some basing material at Tactica 09. I couldn't wait using it and spent some time on the flak 38 again.I used "Summer Flock Blend" (GF 9 92007) from GaleForce Nine Hobby Scenics and several variations of autumn grass from MiniNatur.

What do you think? Does the new foliage fit or is it too much?

Flak 38 Platoon Finished

2009-03-03T16:40:00.000+01:00

Strike... My first FOW platoon ever is finished.
I'm quite confident with my first try, although there are some things I'll try to do better next time.
In fact finding the right way of painting great amounts of 15mm miniatures is the most challenging part of the job...^^

After the criticism on the colours of my first miniatures (many said they were a bit too bright) I tried to darken them a bit, without softening the contrasts between the colours too much. My efforts to adjoin some more shades were not succesful. I used thinned down Vallejo shades but am not confident with this method. Next time I'll give the new GW washes a try.

The basing is not definite. I finished the platoon last week, but visited the Tactica (a german wargaming convention in Hamburg) on saturday and bought great basing materials there. I have to try it out on the next platoon.

WIP: First Tries

2009-02-19T18:07:00.001+01:00

Some first pictures of my Fallschirmjäger Army. The pictures are miserable, sorry for that.

These are the first FOW miniatures I ever painted. Don't have a close look on the details, I just tried to find a proper paint scheme. ;-) Im still not confident with the blank jump smocks... shouldn't they be more "green"? I used Vallejo "Green Grey" and added some white for the highlights.

Sign of Life

2009-02-16T22:00:00.000+01:00

As promised I started my work on the FJ yesterday. I already did some tests for the colour sheme of the jump smocks last week, but I guess that doesn't count...^^

I chose a more or less "generic" paint sheme: Fieldgrey trousers, jumpsmocks in Splinter camo or plain "green" (I used Vallejo "Grey Green", so it's rather "grey") and helmets in all kinds of colour. My plan is to field this force as a Mid War company based on the first FJ airlanding operations in Tunisia and I think this sheme will just work (as far as I know they didn't wear the tropical trousers in winter).
When fielding the company in Late War matches, the sheme will work for Monte Cassino as well.

Yesterday I painted the first 4 miniatures of the glider assault platoon... Well, I really have to increase my speed if I want to finish this project some day. Today two FlaK 38 followed. This weeks primary aim is to finish at least the FlaK platoon.

No pics today, cause I'm dead tired. Sorry for that.

Fresh Supplies

2009-02-02T18:18:00.000+01:00

Hey, the first wave of new miniatures and paints arrived at Fin's Fortress of Solitude.

I'll spend the next months organising and painting a FoW Fallschirmjäger Army, but actually I have to finish my exams at university first... :-(

So, there's nothing new I could present.
My copy of the "Afrika" book and some more tin are awaited for tomorrow, but painting starts presumably on February 15th. (65 years after the destruction of the monastery Monte Cassino... well, that's mere chance...)

Star Wars - Alliance and Empire

2009-01-22T21:26:00.000+01:00

Again some miniatures, that you might have already seen before at Kauzenburg or on the net.

The Rebel Alliance Commando Squad was the first unit I finished for SWMB. In preparation of the Kauzenburg I redid the basing and added some fern and mushrooms to the bases. My plan is to paint 2 more commandos so I can play them as 2 squads with 5 soldiers.

There are some conversions I did for representing the squads specialists. You may have already found the sniper levelling his gun. The the coloured female with the backpack is the squad's medic, whereas the girl with the antennas at the right is equipped with a comlink, which allows bringing in some off-board-artillery.^^

As the opposing force for the elite soldiers of the alliance I created an Imperial Army Squad with some armoured cavalry support.
Of course these guys are not "Emperor's Finest". I imagined them as some kind of local system garrison of a retarded planet somewhere in the Outer Rim. Forgotten by the Empire, they started feeling comfortable and let themselves a bit down.

The Imperial Army is famous for the firepower of its support weapons. So I had to add some Walkers and a heavy repeating-blaster. Because Grenadier never published a gunner miniature in army-uniform, I took a model of a Navy-gunner, filed down the helmet and parts of the uniform and used some Green Stuff to convert him to an Army Trooper.

The Walker support comes in shape of an AT-ST and his little brother, the AT-PT.
Whereas the AT-PT is an original Grenadier model, the AT-ST was a plastic toy I found at the attic. It was originally produced by Action Fleet/Galoob, but matches perfectly with the 25mm miniatures.

In ignoration of the Tarkin-doctrine I gave the vehicles an individual nose-art. I think it works very well on them, cause it gives them at least a bit of detail, which these "all-greys" are usually missing.

Star Wars - Villains

2009-01-21T17:26:00.000+01:00

News from our current Star Wars Miniatures Battles project. Those of you, who have been at the Kauzenburg 2009 Con may have seen these miniatures already, but unfortunately I didn't find the time letting them see some action on the battlefield.

Jabba the Hutt was a perfect proband for using the new Citadel washes. The model itself is quite funny from our “modern” point of view. It is really flat, lacking detail and seems a bit small compared to the other miniatures of this range (which have only 25mm as well). Well, in fact it were the sentimental feelings I had about this fig, which made me paint it and not its incredible beauty.

When I started painting, most parts of the body were given a green priming. After that I used Thraka Green to wash the entire body and finished the green skin with some highlighting, using the base colour again and mixing some Pegasus Tanned Leather to it. The fleshy parts were painted similarly (using flesh tones and Ogryn Flesh wash).

Next miniature on my workbench was a Boba Fett miniature, who had some manufacturing errors. On account of this I tried to convert the damaged parts using some Green Stuff and gave him a custom paint scheme. As a result I got a nameless Mandalorian mercenary, who will be quite useful if we accomplish some roleplaying-based campaign games.

That's One Small Step for Mankind,...

2009-01-21T16:09:00.000+01:00

...one giant leap for Fin.

Hi everybody,

welcome to my first weblog. You don't know what this place is all about? Well, at least it's my own miserable attempt to create a space for introducing my miniatures to the world.
At the moment my main systems are Games Workshop's The Lord of the Rings and The Battle of Five Armies, Rebellion by Ebob Miniatures and the West End Games system Star Wars Miniatures Battles.
Of course this list may be expanded with some figs and systems the next months and I hope you'll find something of interest.

Enjoy!