My Counters in Action

It's always nice to see new gamers using my counter sets to dive into Warmaster.  This is a recent thread over on Reddit: My very first game of Warmaster today. I'm not registered on Reddit, so I can't thank the fellow for his nice comments. (I lurk sometimes using my RSS reader. If you're on Reddit, give a shout out from me. :) A nice photo from his game:

An Old Friend: Old Glory January Pirate

To start the photos, here is a shot of the first 28mm figure I ever painted a few years ago and the one that began the blog. It's the January pirate of the month from the Old Glory Army. My son loves how I did this mini. It was also my first try at eyes, which are a bit off. As I mentioned several posts ago, I would abandon eyes until this year, when I began working on the Black Tree Design Soviets. Hmmm....this week, I noticed that I have several preacher figures: a couple pirates, a couple cowboys, and some Deepest Africa missionaries spring to mind. Got several nuns as well.

Blue Moon Pirates: Part 1 - Base & Shadow Flesh

Today, I finished the first coat of flesh on two packs of Blue Moon 15mm pirates seen below. I use P3 paints for flesh. Since these figures are more detailed and will be individually based, I'm treating them more like 25mm figures than 18mm figures.

The first three photos below show the first coat of paint, which is P3 Khardic Flesh. I apply it rather sloppily to get in all the nooks and crannies. I do this because people notice flesh and faces more than clothing. Later, I will trim away all the excess flesh paint using black and then paint the rest of the figure.


I used P3 Idrian Flesh as the base for the African fellows below. There is only one figure in the pack that looks African, which is a bit disappointing. I would have liked a couple others as well for variety. This guy looks suitably tough!


With all the bare chests and legs in each pack, these figures took a lot longer to paint than I expected! With the Khardic flesh done, I set out to paint in the shadow colors. Using a 00 brush, I painted P3 Idrian Flesh into the muscle shadows such as this fellow's six-pack and biceps. I also paint the eyes, the shadow under the cheek bone, under the nose, and under the chin and neck area. When done, I go back and touch that up with Khardic again to make everything neat. You don't want thick lines of Idrian slapped on the figure!

You can see the finished result below. The figure to the right has the Idrian painted in the shadows. The fellow on the left is just the base Khardic. The difference under normal light a couple feet away is dramatic.


Even though painting the flesh has been been an experiment, I am liking the results so far. It is taking longer than normal 15mm figures and is a bit trickier than painting 25mm figures because these pirates are smaller. But I am not done yet.

Next step will be to highlight the muscles using P3 Midlund Flesh. I am thinking of mixing 50/50 Midlund/Khardic but might go straight Midlund for a more dramatic effect with these smaller figures. Then maybe some extreme highlights here and there using P3 Ryn Flesh if I feel it looks good. I think it will be worth the effort. Then I have to return to my Splintered Light hares, which is turning out to be an eternal project due to the drybrushing method I started. Always something to work on in our hobby!

15mm Blue Moon Pirates & Treasure

I'm getting a bit burned out painting 19th century coats on my 28mm figures, so I decided to break out my 15mm Blue Moon pirates I bought at Cold Wars. Last night and this afternoon, I cleaned the mold lines and flash off two packs of 15BUC-101 Pirates and Treasure.

Each pack contains 28 unique figures armed with a variety of weapons: cutlasses, pistols, knives, rifles, blunderbusses, and a grappling gun. BUC-101 also has two figures carrying a treasure chest, a single fellow carrying a small box, and a small pile of treasure. You can see the cleaned and prepped figures in the photo to the left. It's almost 800k and 1700 pixels wide so you can see the detail of the figures in the rough.

Overall, I am very pleased with these figures, which come in at about 18mm. After the Old Glory Army discount, they come out to 32 cents a figure, a great price. As I and others have mentioned, these figures will not fit in with Peter Pig pirates, which are true 15mm. While this is a shame because I love Peter Pig figures, Old Glory / Blue Moon gives you enough pirates and civilians that I won't be missing the PP figures. Plus, the Blue Moon faces are sculpted more realistically than Peter Pig's more comical "screaming" faces.

The downside about this range is that what we see is what we are getting. At Cold Wars, I asked the wife of Old Glory's owner if the Western and Pirate 15mm ranges would be expanded in the future. I mentioned Barbary and Asian pirates as examples. She replied no more figures in those lines. Oh well.

(Slight) Criticisms
While I adore these figures for their great detail, mostly dramatic poses, weapon variety, and pose variety, I do have some slight criticisms. You will have to clean the usual mold lines and vents, which is expected for all figures. You also will have to clean some unavoidable flash in areas always prone to flash. However, after cleaning 56 figures, I noticed that many of them had crudely sculpted or cast legs where the top of the leg meets the pant cuff. I filed and scraped off the excess metal in those areas, so it won't be a problem. It just took a bit of extra work I wasn't expecting. Besides, I hate prepping figures.

The Ships
I really want to start painting the two ships I bought. Unfortunately, Old Glory does not supply instructions. Being a newbie to pirate gaming, I will be asking quite a few questions about how to assemble the rigging and make some sails. More on the ships when I get to them.

Out & About
Ok, that's about it for now. By the time you read this, I'll be getting ready to spend the day with my wife. We need to get out and have some fun. With my dad still in the hospital after six weeks, this has been a rough summer for us, especially me. My moods have been swinging minute by minute at times! Ive been holing myself up, not wanting to see or talk to anyone at times. Then getting online and being a grump. Sigh. It will get better.

15mm Blue Moon Is HO Scale

Earlier this year, Old Glory under their Blue Moon Manufacturing heading started making 15mm pirate, wild west, and World War I figures, with plans for science fiction in the near future. I knew these figures were larger than other 15mm figures, coming out closer to 18mm but gladly bought all the pirate codes they had. I passed on the wild west because I have been rooted in 25mm western, but it was very tempting to start another scale/size!

Yesterday, I decided to size up the figures next to my 35-year old scale ruler. Lo and behold, the figures are nearly dead on for HO scale as you can see in the photo. The Blue Moon pirates scale to about 5.5' tall--just about right for average humans of that time and close enough for me in general.

From left to right, the figures are Rebel Minis, Peter Pig, Splintered Light, and the Blue Moon. You can see how much larger the Blue Moon figure is to the other three. The upcoming Blue Moon aliens might work because aliens can be larger than humans. However, I would not want to mix Peter Pig pirates and westerns with their Blue Moon counterparts.

Ran Out of Time: More To Come Later!
I was going to do a large section on using the Blue Moon Western figures with HO scale models but have run out of time this evening. I'll work on it for tomorrow or asap. Being a model railroader, I am now really tempted to jump into 15mm Westerns! My favorite hobby is building model railroad structures.

Preach It, Pirate Preacher!

Painted in December 2007, this was my first attempt at painting a 25mm miniature since 1985. Trust me. My efforts in 1985 were more like blobs than painted miniatures. Besides, back then I only had painted several figures for D&D games. For this free fellow from the Old Glory Army deal, I used craft paints from Ceramacoat and Americana, thinning them using water and flow enhancer. I also used a wet pallet I bought at the local craft store--wet pallets are fantastic because the paint stays moist a long time! For the flesh, I used Privateer Press's P3 paints: Ryn Flesh for highlight, Midlund Flesh for midtone, and Khardic Flesh for the base. After taking these photos, I noticed that the fellow's left pupil looks a bit odd, but when viewed from above a normal gaming angle it looks fine. The base is a mixture of two grades of sand I bought at Walmart's craft section. I dry brushed them a few different colors of brown and tans and added some larger rocks and a bit of tree bark as well. Until I painted this figure, I was petrified to paint 25mm figures. Now I am starting to enjoy it, though every figure is a learning experience.