Defeat by Phillippe-Paul De Ségur

As I have mentioned before, I have been doing a lot of reading lately (and not as much hobby as a result).

Probably not a period picture...

Thanks to my local library, I have just finished reading Defeat by Philippe-Paul de Ségur, who was an Aide-de-camp during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and thus, was there to see much of what he writes about in this book discussing the Grand Army's invasion of Russia, and its subsequent defeat by winter and poor planning. This version of his book is a abridgment of the original two volumes (Histoire de Napoléon et de la grande armée pendant l'année 1812) published in 1824.

The book is full of vivid detail, although it tends more to salacious anecdotes than to detailed history, as might be expected by the publication date (and possibly due to the abridgment as well).  The author seems to have a poor opinion of Berthier, Napoleon's chief of staff and blames him in part for some of the disaster. By contrast, de Ségur, paints Eugéne de Beauhamis in a very heroic light.  (interestingly both Berthier and Eugéne were relatives by marriage to the King of Bavaria).  As might be expected from an Aide-de-camp, the more personal stories tend to be of arguments between the marshals, and not of combat action.

The book is full of great scenes like this one:

The terrain he [Napoleon] had to cross to reach Moscow presented a strange appearance.  Enormous fires had been lit in the middle of the fields, in thick, cold mud, and were being fed with mahogany furniture and gilded windows and doors.  Around these fires, on litters of dam straw, ill-protected by a few boards, soldiers and their officers, mud-stained and smoke-blackened, were seated in splendid armchairs, or lying on silk sofas. At their feet were heaped or spread out cashmere shawls, the rarest of Siberian furs, cloth of gold from persia, and silver dishes in which they were eating coarse black bread, baked in the ashed, and half-cooked, bloody horseflesh - strange combination of abundance and famine, wealth and filth, luxury and poverty! 


So, an interesting book, and you should check it out.

Gaming: As you might expect, the Perrys have a complete range of figures that would be useful for gaming the various parts of the 1812 expedition, both in the beginning as the Grand Army, and the disastrous retreat.  It has certainly increased my interest in the retreat, and in the following 1813 campaigns.

Eureka 28mm Chaos

Now that is Chaos

I am the egg man! 

Not just goat men. Coming out in the next few months from Eureka Miniatures, although they will have some stock at Salute.

Pretty good looking figures, and the one Eureka 28mm figure I have is a good size, so these should work pretty well with older GW Chaos figures.  Should also be good for inquisitors to hunt down.

Terrain

I have been thinking a lot lately about Terrain for wargames. Seeing posts like this one from Eric the Shed, and this one from Whiskey priest do not help.

I have some sort of crazy ideas to have a table absolutely packed with terrain, done up to model train layout levels...  so nearly unplayable and certainly illogical given the frequency of games around here.

On a more practical note, a couple of months ago now, I had a quiet afternoon, and while the kids were sleeping, I got out all of my various "nearly built" terrain pieces.  By nearly built, I mean that they are not really kits, and would require very little to finish up. (so not my large box of unbuilt Cities of Death buildings)

As you can see it is a pretty sizable amount, particularly considering that the board that they are sitting on is ~two foot by three foot.  Mostly various plasticville stuff, with the GW crashed Aquila lander and the old 3rd edition ruins.  I should be sensible and work on finishing some of this stuff instead of dreaming of blocks of art deco flats...

Been away

It has been two months since I have posted here on the blog.  Not for lack of interest, but rather from lack of material.  I have not finished anything lately, and indeed have been pretty short of hobby time generally. I have been reading quite a bit, but nothing that really motivated me to post.

So, yeah, still alive, and I will hopefully have something to post... soon.

Inq28 - The Sheriff of Slumpshire

A bit of a preview, as this figure is not entirely complete (and blowing it up to 400% on the monitor always reveals so so many flaws...)

but!  I do paint things from time to time, and here is the result:

Sheriff JB

Built over a long period, and spurred to completion by Asslessman's muties, Parts from five different kits, as is the only way for an Inq28 figure.

He has two fellows also painted, and also forthcoming.  If the weather behaves they are getting a dullcote spray this weekend, and hopefully a proper photography session. Bases will have to wait until I make up my mind on what to do.

INQ28 - Homine Piscis

A classic fishman, as needed by all right thinking scifi games.

This one is converted from a Reaper bones figure, with Kroot arms, various Eldar bitz, and a gun made from a number of sources. (including a Marine autopistol from when they had such things)

I am still undecided if I should give him a breathing tank of some sort, and if he needs a technological lamp to go with his organic one.

The Bones material does not photograph very well, being stark white and slightly translucent in extremities, but it is super easy to convert, as a sharp knife will remove any unwanted details (in this case his original arms).  I have only started to paint a Bones figure, so I can not say how easy it is over all, but it seems to take paint like normal, and of course it is super light and flexible.

Any thoughts on colors?

INQ28 - Venator

Prior to the release of the Necromunda game, Games Workshop had a set of rules released through White Dwarf that trod some of the same ground, and indeed featured skirmishes between rival gangs set in the Hives of Necromunda.  However, instead of gangs based on nation sized noble houses, Confrontation had gangs based more on profession, or social status.  One of those gangs was the Venators, or professional bounty hunters, as discussed here on the Leadplague blog.

Inspired by some discussion on how to kitbash a Venator, I created the following:

I still need to sand the putty again, and these are but hasty camera phone pictures, but you get the idea.

I used empire militia legs, a Bretonnian archer torso, an old Necromunda Orlock pistol, and a space marine scroll as the "warrant". The head is made from a 6th Edition empire drummer head, and half of a Sanguineous death mask.

For Inquisitor he is equipped pretty lightly with a Stubgun and a club, but most of the time I am sure that it suffices.

Ebay Score

I do not know about you, but there are some items that I "chase" on Ebay, always submitting the same low bids in the hope that someday an item will go unnoticed by others and I will win without having to spend much money. To help me do this, I have my Ebay feed set up to show certain items, like Bretonnians, Rebel Blockade runners, or Revell Gunships etc.

One of those items is the Warhammer Chaos Battalion, which as I have previously mentioned, is a rather good deal at ~$2.34 a figure.  Naturally, I wanted to pay less than full price to make it even more of a deal.

Just before Christmas I noticed a buy-it-now deal for an assembled Chaos battalion "with tons of extras".  I offered less than the asked price on the grounds that "the figures are already assembled, and the shipping is expensive" and they accepted...

I was not entirely sure what I was getting in the mail, but the day after Christmas a large, and extremely well packed box turned up.

Contents:
One Chaos Battalion partly assembled, (12 Warriors, 5 knights, 10 hounds, 20 marauders)
1 painted Nurgle Chaos Lord on a horse
20 6th Edition Empire Handgunners
10 current Empire Handgunners/crossbowmen with all bitz, un-assembled.
10 assorted Horses, primed
1 Empire mortar
2 Battle Master Cannons painted
Beastmen Bitz
Skaven Bitz
Undead Bitz
Bretonnian bitz
40k Chaos Marines Bitz
plus a bunch of truly random things like an Eldar Guardian body, or Gretchen heads.

Assembled Chaos Battalion

Bag of Empire Handgunner/Crossbowman Regiment

Boxes of random bitz

So yeah, I was am a bit excited.

What about you?  Have you ever had an Ebay score like that?

Christmas 2014

I hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I certainly did, although with two little kids, family events, and some illness, it was busy. 

I did not get much in the way of "hobby" materials this year, although I did get a Tau stealth team from my sister, and a Uniform book for the Napoleonic wars from my parents, which should be interesting reading, and useful for future projects. The final "hobby" item is a MetalEarth Eiffel Tower, which uses laser cut metal rather like photo etch to build up the Eiffel tower.  Looks like a fun challenge. 

The older kid got a ton of Lego, so we have been busy building all of that stuff too. 

And Happy New Year!  2015 should be very interesting.

Pro Gloria

As you might recall, Pro Gloria was running an Indiegogo campaign to get a plastic Landsknecht regiment box produced.  There was some sort of stall in the campaign, and rumors of a big announcement, and now it appears that Pro Gloria has been sold to Warlord Games.   Apparently Stephen Huber (the former owner of Pro Gloria) will remain connected to the project in some lesser way, which is good, since he seems to have a passion for the project.

This seems to guarantee that the figures will be produced, which is good, but probably at best annoying to those funding the Indiegogo.  This also means that Warlord is up to something like 15 different sculpting styles for their various lines, which is a bit odd.(although probably there is not that much interest in kit-bashing landsknecht bodies with roman legionary heads and soviet infantry arms, although now that I say it that way it does sound interesting)  

As another plus, this should make the existing metal figures cheaper for me to get here in the US...