Category Archives: Historicals

Historical and quasi-historical gaming of various sorts. English Civil War and Thirty Years War, the Great War (World War One), the Russian Civil War and other interwar conflicts, and whatever else we wander into!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 5: Hunting von Lettow-Vorbek

Leave a comment

Week Five of the LAF’s Lead Painters League having just ended, here’s my entry. This was one of the bonus theme weeks; the bonus theme this time was “Africa”, with extra bonus points for producing an opposing team as well as your basic 5-figure entry.

I completely forgot about the extra bonus points for an opposing team, but that wouldn’t have mattered as I’ve no suitable figures anyway. I did manage to shoehorn the tropical British I’ve been painting in, as British and British Empire troops spent the entire length of the Great War chasing Paul von Lettow-Vorbek around various East African territories. They never caught him, he surrended shortly after the November 11 Armistice undefeated in the field.

lpl5_r5
Hunting von Lettow-Vorbek, Tanganika 1917 (Click for a full-size version, as always)

Unfortunately my British riflemen got done for by a group of zombie nomads on zombie camels, but I’m still pleased with the paintjob on them and the photograph.

The larger base they’re on, incidentially, is a CD covered in sand and fine gravel, then painted to mostly match the bases of the British and some of the other figures I’ve been doing lately.

LPL5 Round 6 launched Sunday, go check out all the great entries!

Historicals, Painting, Pulp

LPL5 Week 2: Command On The Frontier

Leave a comment

More goodness from the Lead Painters League, this time my Week Two entry, titled Command On The Frontier. The frontier in this case being the interwar Northwest Frontier, nominally. British officers and sargents attempting to control the volatile, dangerous border between what was then British India & Afganistan.

lpl5 r2
Command on the Frontier, 192-. More Pulp Figures goodness. As always, click for full size.

Unlike my winning Round One entry, Command got soundly and deservedly thrashed by a spectacular field hospital entry from Hammers. Entertainingly, both cover the same ground — British interwar army — and even the same theatre (!) so the random match generation had a bit of a sense of humour about the whole thing.

Once again, the figures were all from Pulp Figures, a mix of PTB-1 British Army Tropical Command and a few from PHP-18 Rugged Sons of the Empire.

Anyway, onto Round Three, in which I have a much better set of photos, more colourful figures and (Dog willing…) perhaps a less overachieving opponent!

Historicals, Misc, Pulp

A White Russian, And Other News

Leave a comment

A bit quieter around the Warbard right now; I’m having most of my gaming time sucked up by the Lead Painters League 5 and real life; Corey is however away for the weekend at the Dak-Kon convention up-Island and promises lots of photographs upon his return. He’ll probably be doing a run of Amulet of Fire at some point over the weekend, too.

white rus rifleman
A Brigade Games White Russian rifleman in fur hat, first of a unit. Click for full size.

I’ve been painting various things, most of which I’ll wait for the various rounds of LPL5 to reveal, but here’s one of my new projects – a small foray into the Russian Civil War with a unit of White Russian riflemen, figures from Brigade Games, paint scheme not completely historic but based on inspiration from the Osprey White Armies book and some of the great resources shared on LAF’s Back of Beyond forum. Expect to see five or six of his squadmates in a future LPL5 round!

Minor update, a few hours later: I posted this photo to LAF’s Back of Beyond forum and asked for feedback, and got some excellent advice from some of the local experts. I especially like the fact that Russian troops often had coloured cloth inner parts on their fur hats; this was news to me and it’s a chance to make them more colourful yet!