From ByronM - 28mm WWII Canadians, 15mm Thirty Years War, and Epic 30k ( 133 Points)

A few things to post up this week, that are all over the map, I really wish I had seen and entered that "squirrel" challenge.

First up I have a squad of WWII Canadians from Warlord.  These are the metal figures and are great, with a ton of character in the faces.  In addition to the squad itself, I have included a command figure.

While the pink flowers may look a bit odd at first glance, they are there to be my unit designators.  This is a pink squad, later will be followed by purple, blue, red, etc.  That way as units get mixed up on the battle field it is always easy to see which one belongs to which squad.

The figures were done pretty quickly, but turned out pretty well.

Next up is my first submission of a new project, I plan on painting several armies for the Thirty Years War, and this is the first few bases for a Swedish cavalry skirmish group.  The figures are from Wargamer LLC who publishes the rules By Fire and Sword.  While not specifically targeting the 30YW period, they are aimed at the late 1600's just following the 30YW and not much tactically had changed during that time, so I plan on using their rules for the period.  If they don't work out I can always fall back to the tried and true Pike and Shotte rule set.  Regardless of the rule set I end up using, the figures are amazingly good and I strongly suggest them. 

I tried painting these figures initially, but was just not coming up with something that I liked.  I paint way more 28mm than anything else, and was using a 28mm paint method which was taking way to long and not showing well on the figures.  So, having Greg in the area, and knowing that he can bang off amazing looking 15mm figures with ease, I invited him over to give me a painting lesson!  Sure enough, he had a completely different way to paint 15mm figures than what I was doing.  It involved way more contrast than I was using, a different order of painting, and looked way better with way less effort.

While I still don't have it down solid, and my version of his painting does not look as good, I am getting there. So thanks to Greg again, but don't judge these figures and reflect badly on him, it's just my first attempts at his style. If you look closely, you can see 3 figures that look much better than the rest, those are the 3 he did that night to teach me how.  I am still not super happy with my results, but hopefully I get better as I paint more of them.

The bases for By Fire and Sword and Pike and Shotte for 15mm should be 40mm wide for 3 figures and either 20mm or 30mm deep depending on infantry or cavalry, however I found that a bit cramped and since the basing doesn't really matter (as long as both forces are done the same way, and I plan on doing both sides for games) I expanded the bases by 10mm in both directions.  This allows a bit more room for groundwork and to protect the models.  It also allows infantry a bit more room for Muskateers to spread out, or to add a few more pikemen onto a base to look more like a block of men.

Also shown here are 3 test figures for Musketeers of any nation.  These I believe are Bluemoon sculpts, but could be Khurasan as well.  I bought a pile from the three different suppliers and then cleaned and primed them all together, so no real idea which are which any more.  They all look good though, the only issue I have with the Bluemoon figures is that they come in bags of 50, but only have 3 different sculpts.  The price is right and they are the cheapest and look good alongside the other two companies, they just have very little variation, so can not really be used by themselves.

Lastly, I have a small squad of Epic 30k vehicles that I forgot to photograph last week.  The squad is made up of 5 scimitar jetbikes and a speeder.  They are great little sculpts and while they will provide almost no use on the battle field, being way to fragile, they look awesome and I could not resist.

That should give me a little bit of a points boost, but I have been struggling to paint this year, so I am not all that hopeful about meeting my goal, I really need to get working!  Oh, and 3 of the Cavalry should count to Greg's points as he painted 3 of them, so 12 points to GregB as well.


11x 28mm = 55 points
15x 15mm cav = 60
3x 15mm inf = 6
6x 6mm vehicles = 12
Byron's total = 133

3x 15mm cav = 12
Greg's total = 12
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TamsinP:

Ah, yes, the switch from painting 28mm to 15mm can be quite difficult. The same applies the other way, as I can well attest.

Excellent work on all of these sets Byron. And Greg for his three 15mm cavalry.