MacPhee's Miniature Men

Friday, July 13, 2018

28mm Carthaginian Chariots

Way back in 2012, I painted Punic Wars armies for Glenn to use in his Commands and Colors games. Glenn sold those armies to a nice fellow named Doug, and Doug asked me to paint some chariots to supplement those armies. I tried to match the style and palette I used six years ago, and I think I got it pretty much right.

The chariots are from SHQ (ex-Newline), and they were a beast to build and paint. Construction required me to have three or four hands just to keep the parts flush with each other while the glue dried. I used five minute epoxy on most everything, so these models should stay together, but it did require me to sit like a statue, applying constant pressure for 5 minute intervals. Many of the pieces did not mate well, and I spent a lot of time filing attachment points, hand drilling holes, and inserting pins. The men are well sculpted, but the detail on the horses was soft.

Still, they do paint up nicely, and these eight chariots should vie with the elephants for spectacle in Doug's Carthaginian army.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

1:600 Scale World War II

At Little Wars back in April, one of the more interesting vendors was PicoArmor, which specializes in 3mm figures. I do enjoy going small on occasion, so I picked up some of their WW2 tanks and Napoleonic figures. Today I finished painting and basing a company of Panthers.

Those are 2" square bases, roughly the same footprint as a 15mm tank model. This will make it impossible to see any tank parking lots on my table!

The tanks are recognizably Panthers, although I am not expert enough to tell at a glance that they are ausfuhrung A. I tried painting crosses and turret numbers, but the results are .... impressionistic.

Will these replace my 15mm armies? Probably not, but I liked these Panthers well enough to consider ordering more 3mm troops. I may try Sam Mustafa's "Rommel" with these.

Thursday, June 7, 2018

Giant Napoleonic Commission -- Finis (image heavy)

I got the last of Glenn's figures into the mail this morning. The giant commission is done.

Back in May of 2015, Glenn called and told me he was selling off his 28mm armies and making the switch to 18mm. He asked if I would be interested in painting ALL the combatants of the Napoleonic Wars using only AB Miniatures and GMB flags. We agreed on terms, and Glenn placed the first of many orders with Eureka USA.

I started in early June of 2015 and ended in early June of 2018. It took me almost exactly three years to paint all of Glenn's armies. The final count of painted miniatures in this collection is 4,077 foot, 899 mounted, and 111 guns.

The result of those three years' work is, I believe, the finest collection of Napoleonic miniatures on the planet. I carefully researched all the uniform details so that not a button is the wrong color. Everything got at least two tone shading. On the GAJO scale, these figures are all tens.

So what do 6,000 castings painted to a 10 look like all together? I'll leave it to Glenn to take some proper group photos, but here is a set of images that includes everything in Glenn's collection.