Empress Miniatures Kickstarter

I guess most of you who are interested in modern games in 28mm will already have seen this, but this week Empress Miniatures started their Kickstarter. It is set in the Asia Pacific region. The first forces to come out of it will be USMC (judging by the size of their previous models these should be highly compatible with Eurekas Marines) and Chinese PLA both will feature and initial five 4-mini packs.

While things are only at the beginning, they already show, that they have some real cool ideas. They said that there will be SeALs in scuba gear, or PLA boarding parties amongst future stretchgoals. And they already showed that they are listening to the pledgers by offering a Marine with a M32 grenade launcher as a stretchgoal mini or that future stretchgoals shall include Japanese or (most important for my taste) North Koreans!

Right now things are going great for them, but i suggest if this is your cup of tea… Go and take a look!

 

Prussian Leib-Grenadiere König Friedrich Wilhelm III. (1. Brandenburgisches) Nr.8.

So slightly behind schedule here is the latest addition to my Prussian forces for Möckern… the Leibgrenadierbattalion. Now for those who are constant followers of this blog, they will remember them from last month post about the 1 / Brandenburgisches Infanterieregiement (also known as IR 8), for until June 1813 the Leibgrenadiere were actually their Fuisilier Battalion. They were also named after King Friedrich Wilhelm III, for he was their nominal chief from 1808 till 1840. For all their career during the Befreiungskriege they shared very close ties with their parent unit, fighting in the same battles as they did.

For a personal point of view there are a lot of things to say about this unit. For one… it is now the largest Napoleonic unit I own. They fought at Möckern with 682 men, which translates into 34 minis plus four skirmishers under R2E (they therefore surpass my previously largest unit, the 4. Bayrisches Linien-Infanterie-Regiment “Sachsen-Hildburghausen”, by two minis). As usual minis are by Calpe, who easily turned into my favorite Prussian minis around. As I said before these were painted in two large batches and I think this was just fine, because I think I could never have stayed sane painting them in one go.

But it is a bit sad to see these done, since they were the last Prussian infantry unit I needed to paint for my Möckern game. I have to say that I have grown dear to painting Prussians by now and since this means I will probably not paint more Prussian infantry for some time, I am a bit sad. No worries, I will paint more in due time, but I need to catch up on some other projects and some other allies before I can return to Prussians. But at the same time, when I put them into the cabinet after taking the photos today… all those Prussians were a really impressive sight and I shall definitely post some group shots once the remaining artillery and officers are done.

But now enough of this… here are some pictures (I have not taken too many shots of individual bases, since the poses of the minis meant that some bayonet was always obscuring the minis in the rear rank):

Leibgrenadierbattalion (front view)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (side view)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (side view)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (command base)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (1st Coy bases)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (2nd Coy bases)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (skirmisher bases)

Leibgrenadierbattalion (top view)

 

Medical interruption of normal service

Well just a short note with some bad news. Over the past few days I have had problems hearing, which found its climax in a sudden hearing loss on both ears yesterday. The doctors say that it is probably due to work stress and related high blood pressure.

With medication and some calm I can already see (or rather hear) minor improvements but I am supposed to take it easy and avoid stress and noise for at least the rest of the week. And they are positive that it should go away since I went to the doctor as soon as possible. Good thing is… I am allowed to paint as long as it calms me down. I shall keep you posted!

 

No plan survives first contact with the enemy…

… or does it?

Well earlier this year I had serious doubts, if I could paint all the minis for my Möckern game at Leipzig. I did not make as good progress as I would have wanted last year and when the new year came there was the daunting prospect of painting all the big Prussian units for the game as well as three small French ones. So I did a mental calculation, where I would need to be at what time to have a chance for things to work out. So I decided that by the end of May I would have to be done with all the Prussian infantry, so the only units left to do would be three Prussian batteries, one French battery, said three French infantry units (which should paint up faster than usual since they will be wearing greatcoats) and a unit of Prussian Hussars. If the same goal would be achieved by the end of June, I assumed that there would still be a snowballs chance in hell for me to pull it through.

So where am I now. Well as of last night slightly more than half the minis for the last Prussian infantry unit (the Leibgrenadiere) are done. The other Prussian infantry units are done. I finished one of the Prussian batteries ahead of schedule. In addition I finished 35 minis for my 40K Tau army and the new river boards (which will also see use at Crisis) are about 70% done as well.

To me this is looking quiet well, especially when I look at the fact that I hardly did anything in April.

Leibgrenadiere WIP

For those wondering why their shakos are still in their light grey primer state: I always make sure that there are no duplicate minis on a base. But I also make sure that no two minis on the same base do have the same hair colour. Obviously I can only make the decision, which minis go on the same base, once every mini in the unit is done, so they are still awaiting their hair. And it is a bit easier to paint the shakos after the hair, so therefore they are not done yet. Those looking more closely will see that the skin is only in its base color so far. This is just a matter of taste. I want to make sure that the mini inside the unit have the same skin tone. I found that painting skin can be a bit temperamental in this regard, so I want to do all minis in one go here. The freiwilliger Jäger is completely done, since I painted him when I was doing the Jäger for the Brandenburger. Not much danger of a bad mix on a two mini base (especially when you already know which mini is going to be based together with him).

 

Hear, hear… these are the winners!

So for those of you anxiously awaiting the results of the prize give-away… I did the draw a couple of minutes ago and we have the winners.

So in the order the names were drawn out of the hat:

Paul Alba from Napoleonics in Miniature

Rosbif from Monsieur le Rosbif & Johnny Frog

 

 

 

 

Ray from Don´t throw a one!

 

 

 

 

All the winners have been notified and I really hope they are happy with what they got.

I would also like to thank everyone for taking part. I have been quiet surprised by the huge interest and I will definitely repeat this in the future (at least with the third anniversary of this blog, but also if some milestones gang up on this blog again).

I would also like to thank everyone who did a little promotion for this on their own blogs and those who came this way due to that. Hope you newcomers like what you saw and will keep on doing so in the future!