I know it’s nearly Easter, and that I should have posted this in early January, but life got in the way. I can’t help myself and wait until next Christmas, so I thought I might as well release this now . In the past couple of years, whenever time allowed it, I made customised gifts for my loved ones: doll houses for my nieces, a vignette for my brother, and this time it was a surprise for my gaming friend. Since he is a long-time fan of Runequest and his favourite monsters are the broos, the choice was obvious. When I found the Brash Horde, the Brash Horde 2 and the Brash Master miniatures fr ..read more

Painting a fleet of spaceships has been on my to-do list for a long time, but the complexity of a fleet and the sheer variety of ships I saw in most ranges were baffling. Luckily, GZG’s Ravagers seem to be a manageable challenge: there’s a Light Carrier, a Cruiser, two types of Raiders and an Attacker (these are approximately the equivalent of destroyers and frigates or torpedo boats) and that’s all. Experienced players might find this range of ships insufficient, but for me, it seems to be the perfect starting set. After removing the mould lines and cleaning the ships with washing-up liquid ..read more

Our WWI aerial combat game did take off. After half a dozen sessions, we had several memorable moments with tense dogfights, unbelievable luck and unluck, smoke and fireballs in the sky… In the current stage of the campaign, Fokker Dr.I became my favourite. This distinct looking aircraft has a good range of manoeuvres, it’s armed with twin machine guns and it’s fairly reliable and durable. Apparently, I needed more of these 1:144 triplanes, so I ordered five of them from Decapod Models on Shapeways. Since these are gaming pieces, I did not aim for historical accuracy, but I still tried to keep ..read more

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been fairly busy in the last few months and one of the reasons for this, has been a massive hobby project: painting a customised base for my 15mm minis. I have a whole platoon of infantry with a matching battlemat and the next logical step was adding a set of buildings to my collection. There are many options available on the market and it was difficult to pick one, but in the end, I decided to buy the research station set from Brigade. I wanted to clearly show that these buildings are in a hostile environment where though the air is breathable, a pro ..read more

My blog has been pretty quiet lately, because the last few months have been exceptionally busy on all fronts: work, life, painting and playing, but now I have much to share. The Spider Drones of Ground Zero Games have been a long time favourite of mine: I have plenty of them waiting for me in different stages of unfinishedness. A six-legged spider-like drone with a rotary gun – yes, that’s exactly what I’m thinking about when I imagine a sci-fi battleground. When I ordered a few more of them recently, Jon was kind enough to ask if I wanted the new version. Is it possible to say no to this? He ..read more

How did I end up painting 1/144 scale aircraft? The answer is simple: my friend surprised me with a box of 3D printed WWI fighters, and two 28mm figures that he designed in Heroforge, which had not been painted. He’s been painting minis for a WWI aerial combat game for a while, and by now he has an impressive fleet with more than 100 fighters. He was keen to see how I would paint the same minis. The single-piece minis were printed in PA12 plastic, required no assembly, only the propellers had to be glued to them, which I did only when I finished painting. There was an Albatros D.Va, a Fokker D ..read more

After watching the classic “The Blue Max” movie – which I can only recommend if you haven’t seen it yet – two things became obvious: I had to add an ace pilot to the German starfighter squadron that I had painted earlier this year and this fighter had to be red, just like the Red Baron’s fighter. The stout design of Brigade’s Galland Attack Fighter, which somehow reminds me of the fighters of The Great War and its characteristics, made it the obvious choice for this role. I planned to paint the fighter red, using white and black as spot colours and bronze for the metallic parts. But there was ..read more

Playing a tactical starfighter game has been on my list for a while, so painting a set of them was long overdue. I chose Brigade’s 1/300 starfighters that can be used for Squadron Commander – but I’m sure that dozens of other options are available too. My squadron has six Hornisse Interceptors, four Galland Attack Fighters and four Kondor Strikeboats. Assembling the minis was very easy, I have not come across any issues. I like the colour scheme shown on Brigade’s site – grey and red is a simple but dynamic combination, so I made only minor changes. The steps: After cleaning the minis with wa ..read more

I took my first steps in the world of 15mm wargaming a year ago, when I painted the first squads of my OutRim Coalition army. I collected and painted several assault troops and support weapons (plasma guns, missile launchers, snipers) since then, so it was time to add the heavy weapons as well. Luckily, Ground Zero Games has the complete range available for an ORC army. The Heavy Plasma Cannon, the Twin Gauss Autocannon and the Twin Rail-Mortars teams are all in the quality you can expect from GZG: well sculpted minis with lots of details and no mould lines. Every set comes with two heavy weap ..read more

When I started painting minis and when model paints finally became available, the most commonly used option was enamel. It wasn’t the most friendly material: it was smelly, it dried slowly, it could re-activate the layers under and correcting mistakes with it was also difficult. Some of the more experienced miniature painters had used oil paints, but that seemed to be even more challenging, so I have never considered oil paints as an option. Acrylic paints made everything a lot easier, and when they appeared, I was convinced that enamels were gone for good. Apparently, I was wrong: I have seen ..read more