Your Mission.... should you choose to accept it!

So 2016, the year of celebrity mortality is dead and buried. Who of the following list has done more for social justice in the world than Mohammed Ali? (oh yeah, he did  some boxing as well). We lost David Bowie, George Michael and Prince, Pete Burns who spins us right round baby! Gene Wilder (sob), Richard Adams (of Watership Down (loved Captain Campion) and The Plague Dogs (loved Snitter) fame), Rick Parfitt kicked it, Zsa Zsa Gabor finally gave up the ghost, Peter Vaughan (and if you dont recognise this bad ass, look up the name and you will recognise him from everywhere!), Ronnie Corbett finally joined Ronnie Barker, Andrew Sachs (Fawlty Towers), Kenny Baker (R2D2). Alan Rickman, what a loss to the British acting pantheon... and perhaps most crushing of all to any of us who were growing boys (oooh errr) in 1983 we waved good bye at the last gasp to Princess Leia, and then to add icing to this bitter cake her mother Debbie Reynolds within a day of her passing, followed her. A very very sad year.

Me in Krakow, drinking in what can only be described as a Communist Fan Club!

Its OK though guys, I made it! I'm still here...although Im sure there are a few of you who will be cursing 2016 for not finishing the job! :D

However, in this year my painting went into overdrive and I managed to knock out quite a bit of stuff that I am quite chuffed with. I think that 2016 was my most productive artistic year of my whole life to date (turns out that loathing some of the people you are forced to spend your time with in the day is one of the best incentives to use painting and modelling as a destress agent!)... however it isn't a cross I think I want to carry any longer. I don't think my significant other would survive it :D So with this thought at the forefront of my mind I think its best that I pick a limited number of projects and concentrate on them.

With 2017 promising to be a most excellent of years (I wonder how much of that is because I am now surrounded by stand up people who don't have an inbuilt need to turn a daily routine into a circus sideshow? Hmmm may have to think more on that one) I said to myself 'Self, we need to set some targets!'

So here is what I am going to aim to do (modelling and painting wise) in 2017... and this is obviously in no particular order.

i) The Polish 10th Motorised Brigade (i.e the Black Brigade) for Flames of War. I have been itching to do these bad-asses for ages but a lack of appropriate miniatures has held me back. This year Im going to make sure that a lack of vehicles will no longer be a problem

Colonel Stanislaw Maczek (wearing beret on right), commander of the 10th Bk accompanied by his chief of staff (Beret on left) Major Skibinski. There are mountains of misconceptions surrounding the 10Bk... but studying military records and photographic evidence is half the fun of modelling military projects right?

ii) Finish off a sizeable proportion of my PHR for Dropzone Commander... just because I love looking at my Tron-esque miniatures and my UCM need an opponent.

Some 10mm PHR goodness! 

... and of course some more 10mm PHR goodness... more where these came from!

iii) Start turning out scenery for my Dropzone Commander games.  Being more of an aesthete gamer, bad scenery REALLY turns me off playing a game and the cardboard box buildings that are provided with Dropzone Commander has done just that. (I know JD! Don't shoot me yet!). I have decided that 2017 is the year where I start churning out scenery which will demonstrate why I want to game on attractive tables.

A Dropzone Commander table... NO!!!!

Another Dropzone Commander table... YES!

iv) Gruntz! I have two armies for Gruntz. One straight out of a Khurasan Miniatures box set which should be relatively quick and easy to paint, I just have to settle on a scheme and another which is a project I have wanted to attack for at least a couple of years; a 15mm Genestealer Cult Army! The cult army requires a lot of sculpting and casting BUT this is the year to start it. I wont finish it this year BUT I will make some attractive progress I think.

Has there ever been a better picture showing just what a Genestealer Cult actually is?

v) Another Corp for Archduke Charles Austrians... I just need to keep chipping away at this behemoth of an army or I will never see the end of it... and they are just SOOOOOOOOO pretty when they are done! I think I was a Magpie in a former life! :D

Loads of bayonets here! 

vi) A Napoleonic French Naval Squadron. My Napoleonic ships created a stir when they were revealed at my local club BUT all of the ships were painted between 10 and 22 years ago. I want to take a stab at another squadron for the Warhammer Historical game 'Trafalgar' just so I can see where my skills lay currently when compared with Ye Olde Dayes

Turns out 'England expects... quite a bit!'

vii) A Zulu War army in 10mm. These guys have been pulling at the back of my mind for years, and I do mean YEARS! It was the very first period of history I chose to wargame myself back at the dawn of time (which contrary to popular belief was actually after 1879) when I was 13 and after leaving them behind so many years ago I have finally decided to do this period in 10mm. I can get large armies and store then in relatively small spaces. I'm going to start with the Zulus who it turns out, were a hell of a lot more organised than a pack of natives charging with spears. Small wonder they whooped the redcoats THREE times in as many months!

Shit is about to get real. Not a single redcoated soldier escaped the field of Isandlwana in 1879. Underestimate the Zulu war machine at your peril!

viii) Learn how to become more refined in my sculpting techniques. My Black Brigade, which will be my signal project in 2017 has an abject lack of vehicles produced for it by anybody, and those that are, are deplorable. I find myself needing to produce these vehicles myself... and with that in mind I will need to sculpt them. You will already have seen the Vickers E tank that I have done. Not so bad if I dont say so myself, but there are a LOT of softskins that need to be done as well... I aim to complete them ALL by years end!

Yup... this one!

ix) Learn how to cast miniatures. I already own a brand spanking new vacuum pump and I know the theories and (I hope) most of the pitfalls of casting but there is no teacher like failure and experience. This year Im going to nail casting to the point that I will feel comfortable selling the casts that I make! These will cover mainly Polish vehicles, Armoured Trains and Riverine Monitors that were used by Poland initially and then by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union... really, I just want to stack out my own collection with weird and wonderful stuff!

The Polish Riverine Monitor 'Horodyszcze' in 1939

x) Learn how to Photo Etch Brass. The more detailed my modelling becomes the more I am finding the need to provide myself with custom made elements to bring my pieces to life... and one of the things that I have seen somewhere is small ships of the Napoleonic era (1/1200 scale) with CREW on the decks. Yes ladies and gentlemen; CREW! The most tiny of tiny people populating the decks of these wooden walled monstrosities, each one only 1.5mm tall... I just cannot sleep knowing that I didn't bother trying this out... that and of course my scenery kick this year for Dropzone Commander will need to have details added. After all the devil is in the detail and I love the idea of producing my own ornate iron fencing for buildings and such like :D

This... but much MUCH smaller! Oh yeah baby!!!!

So there you have it. That is my whole year laid out! I think one day somebody is going to have to sit me down and explain just exactly what a lighter workload actually is! :D

Fix Bayonets!

Me looking all debonair and shit in Istanbul

Grande Armee: Kolowrats III Korp of the Austrian Hauptarmee of 1809

These little monsters take such graft to get on top of this is obviously turning into a very VERY long term project but I was feeling a little guilty at having left Charles festering for so long that I decided that I was going to tackle one of Archduke Charles remaining corp before I went back to the high art stuff and before I started ploughing into the scenery Ive got on my list of mountains to conquer

So anyway, after much deliberation, and wokring out just whether or not I had enough artillery pieces to tool up another entire corp I decided that Feldmarschall Johann Karl, Graf von Kollowrat-Krakowsky (or Fieldmarshall Kollowrat) who commanded Austria's III corp at the battle of Wagram would be the next to be dealt with.

This was the first corp I had done that gave me the opportunity to try Lancers (or Uhlans as they were called), funky shakos (for both line infantry and auxiliary infantry; wait until you see the red and white striped Shakos) and an opportunity to adjust the colour that I painted by artillery pieces and limbers to be more realistic instead of  the gaudy yellow I had previously done...

Also over time I have become dissillusioned with the manner in which I have done my bases and as such I have left the bases on these pieces to be completed at another time as I believe I can do far better... and intend to try (but more on that in another blog!)

So... without further ado I introduce you to a very painted but equally unbases III corp!

The entire painted III Corp. Lots of sex but no sizzle!

So, I guess the first to be introduced will be the man Kollowrat himself. This guy was far more capable than the run of the mill Austrian commanders would have you believe. He was a career soldier starting off with the Austrian army in 1766. Fought against just about everybody on the continent. Proved himself a crack artillery gunner officer, an excellent logistician, had a bad six year period where in two major battles (Hohenlinden and Austerlitz) he found himself and his corp isolated and alone by incompetent commanders and suffered the brunt of the avalanche of French as a result. At Wagram Charles launched him on III korp's very dangerous assault on the French left which almost caved in the entire French army before Napoleon launched an entire cavalry division at them. The cavalry division was all but disembowelled by Kollowrats troops but not before Napoleon was able to form his 112 gun Grand Battery.... which when opened up stopped III Korp cold. They withdrew to beside Deutsch Wagram.... but they STILL werent finished. When Napoleon launched Marshall MacDonald on his gigantic attack at the juncture between III and VI Korp the III Korp STILL stood there and fought the French to a standstill!

These guys were worth their weight in gold to the Austrian cause... and were, for once, very ably led!

The man himself

So, the artillery. There are 4 batteries of Artillery in III Korp and I decided that the yellow that I had used on the previous attempts was far too gaudy so I toned the yellow down to a rather weathered and dull yellow that was far more reminiscent of artillery that had been in the field and on the move for the last 6 months.

I also decided to mix things up a little and include a couple of Handlanger Corpsmen into the serried ranks of the artillery. Those crew members that you see with the blue facings; well they are members of the Handlanger Corp... which is to say, they are the artillery crewmens bitches. They are there to push, pull, dig and fill in!

III Corp had a couple of able divisional commanders in Franz Xaver Johann Graf Saint-Julien und Walsee (or Graf St Julien for short) and Baron Josef Philipp Vukassovitch. Vukassovitch was a Croatian career soldier who earned many plaudits through his career. He was mortally wounded at Wagram defending the army against MacDonalds attack and he died of his wounds a month later. 

St Julien on the right and Vukassovitch on the left

2nd Uhlan Brigade (Von Schwarzenburg) and the 2nd Berauner Landwehr

The Uhlans! The 2nd Uhlan Brigade von Schwarzenburg shown here with III Corp's Vanguard Brigades infantry support; the Berauner Landwehr

2nd Uhlan Brigade (Von Schwarzenburg) and the 2nd Berauner Landwehr

...and of course the rest of the infantry:

The 7th Karl Schroder Regiment in the foreground followed up by Infantry Regiment 56 Wenzel Colloredo

The 7th Karl Schroder Regiment in the foreground followed up by Infantry Regiment 56 Wenzel Colloredo

IR1 Kaiser Franz on the left and IR12 Manfreddini on the right

IR1 Kaiser Franz on the left and IR12 Manfreddini on the right

IR7 Schroder

IR7 Schroder

IR20 Kaunitz at the front followed by IR38 von Wurttemburg following up.

and there we have it... the assets!

Ill come back and base these when I have mulled over what effect I want to achieve for a bit but for now, I need to finish up a load of Polish mountain infantry!

Watch this space!