Goliath hand cart (first attempt)

Here's my first attempt at making the hand cart. I think I have the design down but I think I need to use a finer grade of brass wire... what do you guys think.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone out there in Blogger land.

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pioneer's and Goliath’s

Slowly over the last 6 months I've been working my way through a German pioneer company for Flames of War. As with all my flames armies i look for something different i can do to add a certain spark to the army so when my opponents look at it they go “wow” or “hey that’s  neat”. With tank armies this is often easy – do up some nice stowage and a good paint job and most people are happy.  Unfortunately when it comes to infantry armies most people get wowed by fancy bases and the miniatures themselves are often overlooked in the face of flashy bases with lots of silflor grass tufts and little flowers (don’t get me wrong these things are cool).  As this army is for next years MWGT in Auckland i really wanted to add some character to my army and up until today i didnt have a clue what i could do. At lunchtime i was struck with inspiration – a few months back id been reading up on the German wire controlled bomb: the goliath, and vaguely remembered a small note about pioneers carrying the Goliath around on a hand cart. I thought to myself that might make an interesting infantry stand in my force as the Goliath is meant to be represented in the game on a medium base until it is unleashed upon an unsuspecting enemy tank or bunker.  With this idea in mind i decided to do some more research and found some pictures for reference as to what this hand cart looked like.

It would seam from these pictures that it can be pulled along without too much trouble by a pair of Pioneers and has several different wheel variety's.
Whilst researching the hand cart i also discovered that the Kettenkrad was also often used by pioneers on the eastern front to quickly move a Goliath into position.   However finding a real photo of this seams to be difficult and so far all ive come up with is pictures of a Tamiya kit that is available. If i can find some historical photo’s of a Kettenkrad pulling a Goliath on a trolley then ill maker some of them as well. 
Watch this space for pictures of my first attempt for this model conversion.

Flames of war EW Game

Just had a great game of EW Flames of War with my mate Mark. Mark Took a nice swanky new French tank force (so new, it was shiny metal without guns ) up against my German Czech tank company. 
We played Cauldron – a mission which i know a lot of people don't like. Personally i think its a good mission (although i will admit as the defender it was hard going for me).
Was a fairly bloody game with me losing most of force but only ending up losing one platoon in total.  Mark faired worse as i managed to destroy 3 of his platoons. Unfortunately attrition meant that i didnt have enough tanks left on the table to defend both objectives and Mark managed to take one of the objectives from me in his turn 9 with the game ending in a 4:3. The way i see it if you have to lose a 4:3 is the way to go so I'm not too upset by the loss.  Both of us had up and down luck in the game (i think i need to pray a bit harder to the dice gods because in the first 3 turns of the game i was rolling a truckload of 1’s and 2’s).
Overall great fun and looking forward to our next EW encounter.
- Sorry there are no pics, was too caught up in the game and forgot to take any shots.

New 35pt Troll List

Tomorrow me and the lads will be playing Warmachine/Hordes all day long.  This time ive decided that im going to stick to one list for a few weeks in a rob and see if i can make it work.

Here's the list i will be using:

Epic Madrak
Swamp Troll
2x Impalers
Fellcaller Hero
6 Pyg bushwackers
10 Pyg Burrowers
Stone Scribe Chronicler
Trollkin Champion Her0
6 Trollkin Fenblades with Officer and Drummer Attachment.

So there ya go, 35pts of troll goodness.  Let me know what you think. Ill post some pics and combat results tomorrow night.

New Android Phone Gaming APPS

Although not officially out in the NZ market the HTC DESIRE HD is available from several parallel importers for not too much more that you will pay for a Samsung Galaxy S (next closest phone in NZ to the Desire HD).  I had been agonizing for weeks over which new smart phone to get as my 1st gen IPhone was starting to show its age and i have to say that paying the extra and getting the HTC desire HD was the right choice (at least for me).   I'm using it on the New Zealand Vodafone network and I'm having no problems at all.  My only complaint would be about the battery life but i haven't had it long enough to test it fully I'm guessing it will be comparable to my first gen IPhone (needing a charge every 2nd day on moderate use and once a day on heavy use).

Id be keen to hear if any other bloggers out there have got this phone and what they think about it.  Any tips on getting the most out of it would be most useful.

AWESOME GAMING APPS FOR WARMACHINE AND HORDES

The real point of this post is the two great gaming Apps from the Android Market place for fans of Warmachine and Hordes.

The first I'm sure many gamers with iPhones will have heard of IBODGER. 

iBodger is a free application for creating army lists for Warmachine and Hordes, two fantastic tabletop games of miniatures combat from Privateer Press. iBodger supports all factions, special forces, and rules up to and including MkII Trollbloods. It also includes links to Battle College and many of Chris Walton's sketches.
iBodger includes full support for both MkI and MkII rules (including all Theme Forces), along with the option to convert armies between the rule sets. It also lets you keep track of your collection of models.

The second App is BATTLE TIMER

A free turn timer/counter specifically for Warmachine and Hordes players.
Keep track of turn length and count game time with this handy timer.

This is very useful if you play Hard-core tournaments or just like to keep your games short so you can get in more gaming in a day.

So there ya go two great apps that are free to download and use go and give them a try and let me know what you think

For Sale

Added a few items into the for sale page. Not sure what these are worth so if your interested drop me and e-mail me what your prepared to offer for them.

More stuff going up over next week or so.

Cheers

Mark

Not a lot happening!

Well as the title says – not much has been happening lately, heaps of half finished projects sitting on my desk but nothing being finished.

With the NZ Late War Grand Tournament for Flame of war just around the corner I've been working on an IS-85 list (this should be finished by the end of the week all going well which should leave me some free time to finish up some other projects.

One other semi interesting thing is I've decided that FOG is a bit too slow for my liking and too that end I've decided that I'm going to make up my own set of rules using FOW as a basis and mix in a few elements from other systems that i like and see what i get.  What I’m aiming for is too create a much faster set of rules to play whilst hopefully keeping the flavour of ancients.

If anyone has any ideas about this let me know as id love to know what you think.   

Katyusha’s

 

Hi Guys

Here’s some models i finished a few week packs for a friend.  I rather like how these turned out.

Russian BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launchers, based on a ZIS-6 trucks.

EW Panzers

Hi Everyone

Been a busy first couple of weeks in the new job but im loving it. Making terrain and writing articles beats customer service any day :)

My Early war army is finally finished - Yay!! (Well actually its just the first 1500 points but its a good start. Im looking forward to trying this out at Rallypoint in Hamilton in November.  A couple of games in and ive already noticed a few things the army is lacking. (Pics of the upgrades will follow in due course.)

I painted this army up for work - the first article can be seen here:  http://www.flamesofwar.com/Default.aspx?tabid=53&art_id=2146

 

Command HQ of 2 Panzer 38(t) with 18T Recovery vehicle.

 

Panzer 2 c (early) platoon.

Panzer 38(t) Platoon 1 and 2.

8 Rads. 

 The full 1500 Army.

Im Very happy with how this force has turned out, (considering it was painted over the last couple of week during my lunch breaks) Check out the Flames of War web site for lots of close up pictures.

Let me know what you think.

War Pig

 

I've started work on my Farrow force. As soon as i learnt that the Farrow were being expanded by a Warcaster and a couple of warbeasts i knew i had to collect an army of these piggies!

I’ve decided that every model will have a sculpted base – it seams to be a common theme on the forums and i figured what the hell ill give it a go to. :)

Here’s where I'm at so far:

   

Here’s a couple of close ups of the green stuff work on the base:

Next to come will be a modified Lord Carver.

Kromac the ravenous.

 

Today i decided to start work on something other than my beloved troll bloods.  Chris had ordered Kromac intending to use him as his warlock for his circle army but had changed his mind after he had ordered him. I decided that although I'm unlikely to do a circle army any time soon i would really like to have a go at painting him (at least his human form).

I’ve started work on the base. As I was doing this more as a display piece than a gaming piece i put some thought and effort into the base.  Kromac’s pose lends itself very well to standing atop something staring into the distance.  I played around with several ideas. A fallen standing stone or a cliff face were two options i seriously considered. In the end i went with the idea of Kromac standing on the stump of a long ago fallen tree near the edge of a marsh. I started sculpting the base. At first i went for quite a high base which would have had Kromac well above most other figures but after looking at how this looked i decided a much lower tree stump was more practical option. (As knowing me i will one day undoubtedly start a circle force.)

this is where I'm at so far:

Not the best photos but I'm sure you can see what I'm aiming for. A small amount of water will sit between the rock and the stump and will pass under two of the tree roots.

Hopefully ill have this all painted up before the end of the day.

Update: Saturday 28th August:

Managed to get the base finished and put the starting work onto Kromac’s skin and clothing.

Still a long way to go but i like how the base has turned out.

Change is in the Air!!

Well ive been pretty quiet over the last week and this is mainly due to a massive work load brought about by taking on too many contracts at once - silly me, (you think after all these years id learn!)

Anyways ive also just got a new job - Yay :)  After working in sales and customer service for Battlefront Miniatures for the last 6 odd years i finally have managed to get myself a job as part of the studio team and will be taking on the Hobby Support Manager role.  This basically means ill be making all the scenery that will be used in photo shoots for books and web material - exciting stuff, i finally get to be creative.

I have a pile of Warmachine and Hordes Projects on the go at the moment as well - hopefully this weekend i will get a chance to take a few photos.

WIP TROLLKIN LONG RIDERS

 

Yesterday in the mail i received my Trollkin Long Riders. I’ve been waiting for these for a while and was slightly disappointed that of the 5 i received 4 were the same miniature.  Not a huge issue though as i like to convert and sculpt so this was a great opportunity to get in some more practice.  So far I've managed to modify two of these big bad boyz.

 

The first one seen in the picture about i decided to reposition the head so it was looking more up and to do this i needed to pin the head into position and then re-sculpt the whole neck. Quite easy and took maybe 20 minutes if that.

 

 

 

For the second bison i decided to pose him more like he was just butting something with its head. To do this i had to hack the leg off and pin it in a new position and then re-sculpt some of the muscle shape and hair.  I also bent the position of the rear legs slightly and had to tidy up a few areas which had been damaged during this process. (the material the Privateer Press casts there miniatures out of is pretty tough and large models like these are difficult to bend without applying a lot of force!!).  For this model i also decided that i wanted the head of the rider to be different so out came my trusty clippers again and i clipped off the head and replaced it with an armoured Kreil head that i had spare from my Kreil warriors box. A little bit of putty to rebuild the neck and it was done.

Overall I'm happy with how these have turned out. I will probably modify one more of the long riders so that all 5 miniatures are different. (after all I'm unlikely to ever do up a second unit so i might as well make them look as good as i can.)

- after noticing how bad the pictures turned out here are a couple of quick close ups.

Keen to know what you guys think.

IM BACK!

 

xtranormal is a little program i just discovered. You just choose a scene and some characters and type a script and it renders it all for you. Pretty basic but lots of fun to much around with!

Im not dead

Hi out there to anyone who follows my blog - im not dead, ive just currently got no internet at home.  I swear you dont realise how important it is till its gone - i feel like im living in the dark ages!!!

If i ever manage to get connected again ill have lots of new pictures to put up.

Finished Dug in Markers

Here’s a couple of quick shots of the Dug in markers finished.

Big Cats

 

Just finished these three King Tigers for a friend. Figured id get a few shots before they go to their new home.

     

I think they have turned out really well.

Dug in Artillery Marker

 

A work mate asked me if i could build him a couple of dug in markers for his German Artillery Battery he’s intending to use at an upcoming tournament.

Here’s what I've come up with so far. Its late so i wont explain the process at the moment but anyone who wants to know feel free to ask and I'll tell you how i did it.  There aren’t finished yet and still needs a lot of detail work etc but i think they are looking good so far.