Lucky Toys - Vlad Tzepes

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This box art goes hard!

Recently I've acquired this nice kit from the Italian manufacturer Lucky Toys, one of their last releases so far (from 2009!)

This one gives us a small Walachian army, consisting of a few bowmen, halberdiers, some light infantry, light cavalry and a few horse archers. 

the axemen in this set are very versatile: they work well either as Wallachians, generic European peasants or Vikings

There are also a few casualty miniatures, which are always some nice miniatures to have, and two very cool-looking standard-bearers, which kind of look like hooded executioners.

These standard-bearers are too bad-ass looking and they fit very well both in "real-life" or "fantasy" armies (specially in evil fantasy armies, due to their scary style)

The highlights of this kit are the miniatures:

1) ...of Vlad Tepes, a.k.a Vlad the Impaler, a.k.a Vlad Dracul, the Wallachian hero who inspired the legend of Dracula, which inspired Bram Stoker's most famous book (which is, of course, one of the most influential books in modern literature). This is a miniature of him wearing his "nobleman garments" (the same he is wearing on his most famous portrait), obviously not what he would wear in a battlefield (as the guys from Plastic Soldier Review wrotte back in the day when this set was new). Nevertheless, this is a very cool and unique miniature, proper to be used in the command group of a Wallachian Army, specially in a siege scenario (i.e. Vlad Tepes is wearing his courtly clothes because he was  hosting a banquet in his castle when, suddenly, a Turkish war band surrounded it in a siege);  

and...

Vlad Tepes Draculea in 1/72 scale (and the most badass-looking bannerman miniature in the background) - his sword is "bendy" and not meant to look like a scimitar!

2) ...of Count Dracula, the most famous vampire character in the world, wearing the typical vampire attire (XIX Century style fancy, nobleman clothes and a long cloak). This is a nice miniature to use with the Chainmail fantasy rules as an individual monster in the battlefield or also as a commander of an evil fantasy army. This miniature could represent Dracula, of course, but also any other vampire (e.g. Strahd von Zarovich, the most famous vampire from Dungeons & Dragons - the main villain from the Ravenloft campaign scenario).

These miniatures have some other uses outside of making a Walachian army. They can represent:

- Medieval or Renaissance Russians, Ukranians, Serbians, Albanians or any other "Eastern European looking" army;

- Barovians (a fantasy realm - a domain from Ravenloft, whose dark lord is the vampire Strahd von Zarovich, mentioned above);

- Generic "men from a village being raided by Vikings" (a village in a cold mountainous place)

- I guess these figures might also work as mercenary Cossacks or as Stradioti, due to their heavy clothes, cloaks, boots,  fur-trimmed caps (kaftans), etc. 

The bad side of this set:

- There are 4 of each horse pose, which means there are 4 horses in that "epic pose" standing on the two hindlegs, which is not very cool - perhaps there could be 1 horse like this and the other seven in more "normal" poses.

- There are 2 causalty poses (good) and 4 "almost casualty poses" (not so good) - as shown in the picture bellow. The "almost casualty" could have been just 1 soldier, and the other 3 could've been an extra fighting pose. 

- The box art implies that there would be a figure representing Vlad Tepes wearing his battle armor and riding a war horse, but there is not such figure. A pity. I'll probably use one from the Dark Dream Studio "16th century Medieval  Knights" set, because of their awesome armours (although they are not Eastern-European looking at all, but I'm not a historical purist, I just want my sets and battles to be and look cool)

In the scene above: the hero, armed only with an axe, prepares to face the skeleton brought back to life by the terrible vampire necromancer!

Eventually I'll paint these beautiful miniatures and post the pictures here!

See you next time!

Mustering 15mm Fantasy armies - Dwarves (and a Dragon)

(Para a versão em Português, clique aqui)

Greetings, everyone!

It's been a long time since my last post!

Well, I am just upholding yet another wargaming blog tradition: the hiatus.

In this time I've been busy with "real life" things, but every now and then I've found a bit of time to paint (and purchase) some miniatures.

In this post I'll show you some pictures of the dwarven army that I've been mustering:

A part of my army, above: a dwarven pike block protected by a heavy infantry (on the right) and a arquebusier unity (on the left side). In the background, a group of archers, dwarves riding large boars, and the commander with the standard-bearer further back. My army is facing a dragon.

Most of the dwarves in the picture above) are from Mirliton 15mm fantasy range (labeled as "Chaos Dwarfs", which implies that they are somewhat bad guys - or antiheroes at best). I also have some from Alternative Armies, Splintered Light Miniatures and, of course, Essex. The dragon is from Lance&Laser Miniatures, from their Battle Dragons range and is actually a 28mm miniature, and labeled as a "Basilisk".

Two painted miniatures from the Heavy Infantry unit. These are from Mirliton Miniatures (they are labeled as "short weapons chaos dwarfs" - I simply call them Heavy Infantry).

A Arquebusier Dwarf  on the march. This one is from Alternative Armies.

The same Marching Arquebusier, side view.

Figure size comparison. The dragon, a Mirliton Dwarven Lancer (which I will use as a pikeman), an Alternative Armies dwarf arquebusier resting, 4 Mirliton dwarven arquebusiers, the marching arquebusier from Alternative Armies and a Mirliton heavy infantry dwarf.

A close from two of the Mirliton Arquebusiers. This pack only comes with 2 variant poses (shown in the picture)

I have many more dwarves, all from the manufacturers aforementioned, and all of them are high quality. A quick comparison:

Essex - good overall quality, it is only a shame that each miniture does not stand by itself due to their narrow bases. These dwarves from Essex have a more "Eastern European" look due to their long cloaks and fur capes (Some look almost Russian to me!). They are a tad shorter than Mirliton's dwarves. They come in packs of 8 units each, with some variant positions distributed randomly (so far the "worst cases" I got were a pack with 4 equal identical miniatures plus 2 pairs (4+2+2) and another one with 4+3+1 - but as far as my experience colecting Essex miniatures goes, the packs will mostly come with 3+3+2).

Mirliton - I only bought the ones from the "Chaos Dwarves" range. They are very well made, each miniature has a small base that is wide enough for the miniature to stand by itself. These Chaos Dwarfs have a Viking-esque look, with horned helmets and scale mail armor. They come in packs of 8 miniatures each, with variants, but not so random as the ones from Essex:  I got one with 2+2+2+2, which means 4 variant poses among 8 miniatures, and another wih 4+4. They are a bit larger than the ones from Essex.

Splintered Light Miniatures - these are also great. Depending on the set, they come with great variety (I acquired a Treasure Hunter pack, to have some "dwarven civilians", and a "Battalion pack" which comes with some 20 different foot warriors. The dwarven bowmen pack (named "Dwarven Rangers") comes with 3 different poses distributed among 12 miniatures). These have a more "fantasy-esque" look, even "cartoonish", I'd say, with more rounded heads. They are roughly the same size as the ones from Essex, if not a tad smaller.

Alternative Armies - the best thing about these is that they come in packs of 16 instead of the usual 8 that seems to be the market standard (or so I think). The bad thing is that they are visibly taller than the dwarves from other manufacturers, which kind of stands out when one looks closer, but is not such a matter when one looks from a distance. Another bad thing is that a few of these miniatures come with some ammount of "flash" (what is the "scientific denomination" of excess lead?). Their pose variation is somewhat mixed, but still good: some packs come with 16 identical minis, and some have 4 different poses, evenly distributed (4-4-4-4), and some come with nearly identical poses, but with minor differences (open or closed helms, chain mail armor or plate mail, etc.). 

Figure comparison. Left: Alternative Armies; Right: Mirliton. Notice the (albeit small) difference in size. The Alternative Armies sculptor made thinner dwarves with longer legs, while the guys from Mirliton made them sturdier and "chunkier", with shorter legs.

Figure comparison. From left to right: Alternative Armies, Essex and Splintered Light. All 3 are dwarven crossbowmen miniatures.

Figure size comparison. From left to right: Alternative Armies, Mirliton, Essex and Splintered Light Miniatures. Notice again how Alternative Armies has made thinner/"slimmer" dwarves than the other manufacturers!

The dwarven treasure hunters pack makes for a nice set of dwarven civilians, either to populate a dwarven city diorama or to use as peasants / town levy in a battle!

The dragon (actually a "Basilisk") - this one is from a 28mm range, but 28mm monster miniatures also work great with the 15mm and 1/72 scales, as I've written before!

In future posts I will share more pictures of (hopefuly) painted dwarven warriors, among other miniatures.

Untill next time!

Godspeed!

This box art by LW

(Para a versão em Português, clique aqui)

I know that LW was (or still is? Does LW still exist?) a miniature manufacturer heavily criticized by the guys from Plastic Soldier Review specially for selling kits that were actually conversions of other manufacturers' works, but, damn... the box art for their "German Knights" set goes hard:

This is one of the best box arts I've seen in this hobby so far.  

The depiction of the knight clad in black armour waving the german hawk flag makes me wonder what this man's backstory is. 

To me, this image fits nicely with Prokofiev's "Dance of the Knights" (search for it on youtube, it's 100% worth it!). 

The castle walls in the background, the open fields, everything is just right for me in this picture.

I tried to find the original picture (without the text and LW logo), but could find nothing. 

So I asked grok on twitter to remove the texts from the box art. The result was quite good (it slightly changed the knight's face, the symbol on the flag and erased the castle gate):

It makes me wish this set was still widely available! At least I own a copy of the Revell French Knights set which was the base for the conversions made by LW!

Eventually I'll paint at least some of them as German Knights!

Making peasant houses

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 Here are a few little peasant houses that I've made using only cheap household materials such as:  

- empty tea boxes

- mask tape

- coffee stirrers

- acrilic paint

I started by covering the tea boxes with mask tape, because I thought the paint would stick better to the tape than to the box .

Then, for the first house I applied  a base coat of white primer. 

After the primer was dry, I applied the paint of the collors I wanted.

When the paint dried, I cutted and painted the coffee stirrers to emulate those wooden beams that one can always see on the walls of the typical German / Bavarian house (such houses always gave me that "peasant" feeling - rural life, working all day on the fields under the Sun, celebrating harvest festivals, etc.)

- From thicker cardboard paper (e.g. from a chocolate box) I cutted small bricks, doors and windows and glued them to the walls of the houses.

I still have to make triangular frames to fill the voids between the walls and he roofs on the sides. They will be made with cardboard and wooden coffee stirrers too.

For the second house onwards I tried painting directly on the boxes instead of using mask tape and primer and it worked out just fine.

Since these houses were made with tea boxes, it means that they are foldable and thus may be stored in small spaces!

And, of course, they're quite inexpensive. I prefer to prioritize spending money on miniatures over scenery sets (and such sets are usually more expensive), not to mention the joy of making things by hand.

Trying some 15mm medievals

(Para a versão en português clique aqui)

This is a blog focused on 1/72 scale miniatures, but the nice details of Essex 15mm minis caught my attention and so I decided to buy some and add them to my medieval colection.

I've bought, so far:

1) from Ebay, a Hussite army pack, which contains:

 - 1 Horse wagon with 2 horses

 - 3 "mantlet wagons" (I'd call these "wheeled pavises") each with 2 horses

- 1 artillery wagon (with a wooden frame with sliding doors, to protect men and guns)

- 1 small canon with a crew of 2 men

- 3 knights (I'd say heavy/medium cavalry)

- 2 mounted crossbowmen

- 8 halberdiers

- 8 flailmen

And quite a few hand gunners, crossbowmen, etc.  I do not remember the exact number right now. 

2) a lot of separate kits straight from the Essex website: 

- A command group consisted of a king, a herald and a standard bearer

- Many knights on horses, from light cavalry to gendarmes with armoured horses

- 8 knights on foot

- 8 medium swordsmen

- 3 groups of peasants (which are 3 different kits: armed peasants, armed pilgrims and "poorly-armed hordes")

- 6 monks (I like miniatures of priests. They add more realism and variety to games)

- 24 pikemen (3 groups of 8, each group holding the pike in a different position, in order to make a pike block)

- And others (do not remeber how many: crossbowmen, handgunners, assorted footmen, etc.)

Yesterday I started to  base them, since most of them do not stand by theirselves (no pun intended) due to their very thin lead bases.

I do not like the idea of gluing miniatures to a base forming a permanently based group - I like versatility. So I decided to base each miniature individually and then build larger bases in wich there will be holes where to fix each individual miniature in a way that I can change each one whenever I want.

To base each mini, I cutted small round discs made of biscuit (for those of yiu who might nit know: biscuit is "cold porcelain", which hardens after a few hours of contact with air) and then I glued each miniature on a disc using loctite superbonder:

All these minis are from the Hussite army pack. The first ten discs are all irregular. Only after a few tries I came up with a quick way of making standardized biscuit discs.

.

The 24 minis pike block. On the front row I placed heavy pikemen (these have "Conquistador-style helmets). On the middle row, landsknechts (with plume hats) and on the back row swiss pikemen (dressed in various ways, resembling a town levy). All in order to add some variety.

3 different types of gunners from the Hussite army pack

I chose green collored biscuit because I think it will mix well with grass (and I will use diorama grass and pebbles to cover the bases).

Honestly I expected that this hussite army bundle would have peasant miniatures (my favorite kind of medieval minis), but I guess this army represents more "professional" hussites - after having fought a few battles and after looting fallen soldiers and knights. I guess the flailmen could represent "better armed peasants" or "battle-hardened peasants", I guess. Anyway, the flailmen are very versatile and could fit into a peasant army as well. I mean, every miniature from this Hussite army pack is very versatile and could fit into any dark ages, late medieval and renaissance army. Some even in ancient armies. Versatility is a key word here, and I like it a lot.

Eventually I'll expand this european army (adding more peasant units, siege weapons., etc.) and also build a Muslim army. Perhaps a 15mm viking army too. I've been checking the Essex website and I think that many English Civil War miniatures could easily be used as medievals (specially the pikemen, billmen and civilians).

Let's see. Time will tell.

For the muslim army I think I'll use grey biscuit  for their individual bases because it probably will mix well with either grass or sand (the grey bases will pass off easily as pebbles). 

On a future post I'll share the results of my basing process and (hopefuly) pictures of a few painted minis and the assembled war mantlets and wagons. 

Strelets 005 - Army of Joan D'Arc

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This is one of my favorites (if not my favorite) sets from Strelets. I got 5 copies of this one (1 bought individually and 4 [almost complete sets] as a lot at an ebay auction).

The guys from PSR gave it a rating of only 6 for the sculpting, 7 for Historical Accuracy, 7 for Pose Quality and 8 for the Mould. The only 10 this set scored at the PSR website was for the pose number (which is indeed very good, since all 36 poses are unique). 

In my honest opinion, I'd have given a 9 or even a 10 for the sculpting and a 9 for the pose quality. 8 for the mould was kind of fair, due to the flash in a few places. 

As a fan of Strelets' work in general and an avid hobbyst colector of medieval miniatures, I thought the sculpting on this set was very good precisely because it has that "Strelets look" which is unique for this manufacturer. 

I personaly don't like "hyper-realistic" figures and I genuinely think that Strelets delivers in their sets a very nice balance between the "realistic look" and the "toy-ish look". Hence why I hesitate to buy those "perfect and ultra-realistic" 3d-printed minis that are popping up in ebay and other market places (mostly 28mm rpg minis, but still...) 

That being said, let me start with what I like about this set:

- this is a very nice looking set with the aforementioned "Strelets look". It is indeed very "Streletsy".

- This set provides a nice arrange of heavy infantry (or dismounted knights, or armored infantry if we use the Chainmail rules and jargon) which may be employed in any medieval european wargame army. 

- Also, the variety of armours is great too. You get a decent number of different helmets and armour styles in this set.

- There is also a good number of crossbowmen poses: 4 in total. A guy crouched, reloading his crossbow, another one with it rested in his shoulder (a good pose for a tower or wall sentinel, for example, or even to represent a marching crossbowman), one holding the crossbow as if waiting, and finally one shooting.

- I really like the short glaiveman (or perhaps they are Billmen?) with the very large shield. A group of these could work as "man-handled pavises", as in the picture below:

- A very useful piece is the king, which can be used as thus in any european medieval army (and also medieval fantasy armies)

 

- Another very useful piece in this set is the Herald figure, which is great to  compose a command group, for example. Also I think it is always nice when manufacturers provide civilian miniatures (specially priests, heralds and peasants) so that our games and dioramas have a greater variety of miniatures and thus more flavour. There should be more medieval civilian sets in 1/72. I'd buy, for sure!

- The horses are very beautiful on this set, specially the armoured ones. All the horse poses provided in this set are great.

Now the bad side:

- Since the French were known for their paladins / heavy knights, a higher number of such mounted figures could've been provided, and not only 6 mounted poses - and of those 6, 2 are mounted archers, 1 is Joan D'Arc herself and 1 is the King of France. Only 2 of the mounted poses in this set represent the famous french heavy cavalry, one with a sword and the other wielding a battle axe. The old Accurate / Revell "French Knights" set does it better by providing more knight poses. The French Warriors set from Italeri also does a good job. Obviously, all these sets may be used together to create a large French Army for the 100 years war.

- Some flash, specially in the edges of the small details (such as the herald's fleur-de-lis baton), which makes it more difficult to trim.

Overall, this is a very good set whether you are a wargamer and/or a collector of medieval niniatures. Even though this kit represents french soldiers and knights, I think these minis might be recruited by almost any other medieval european army, even those who have the fleur-de-lis design on their shields.

I really liked this dismounted knight! Perfect to represent a general or an officer!

Strelets - Normans

(For the Portuguese version, click here)

Here are a few pictures of some Normans I've been painting (Strelets M001 - Normans; Strelets M002 - Norman Archers; and Revel Normans too!)

A shield wall, with the commanding officer in the front and the archers in the rearguard!
 

As always, I  really enjoy the versability of these minis, since they are perfect for almost any dark age army and can also represent different human armies in fantasy games (I'd use these Normans for Gondor, Dol-Amroth, etc.)

The Norman Archers are also very versatile, working for any middle-ages army and the ones without armor can easily be recruited as  peasant archers, which is very good in deed, since there are almost no peasants miniatures in the 1/72 scale! 

The same can be said regarding the Revell Normans too. Even though they are "thinner" and a tad smaller than the Strelets ones, I think that after a paint job they work together nicely. 

Painting always gives life to miniatures.

In future posts I shall publish more (and better) pictures of these nice Strelets minis.

See ya!

Some painted Strelets minis

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Here are a few of the minis I've been painting in the last few days, all from the "Vikings against Franks" set by Strelets, which I own five copies of (1 won in an eBay auction and the others bought together as a second hand sale, also on eBay. Strangelly, the seller did not know that it was 4 copies inside a single box: the ad only said "100+ miniatures"). 

First, let's see the Franks, this lovely band of Christian warriors and knights:

The whole group of Franks I've painted so far.

I'd say this one is an officer due to his fancier armor

I really like painting armor because of the shiny result I get with metalic ink.

Here is a king (Charlemagne?) with a santard bearer (left) and a scout(?) (Right)

Four archers, one of them trying to string his bow.

Now let's see the vikings, this lovely band of pagan warriors and berserkers:

Here we have a commander figure. I'd call this one a Jarl.

The whole band together

A berserker with his belly full of beer (You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like!). For this one I kept the original collor of the miniature on his pants, boots and weapon because I liked it. And on the background in the left, another berserker swinging his great two-handed sword.

A bald berserker with a giant club

Two viking archers

Although this kit got a somewhat bad review from the guys at Plastic Soldier Review, I liked it a lot. 

Of course, it was one of the first kits produced by Strelets, in the early 2000's, and the company has improved a lot the quality of its miniatures since then, but I like this style that has a rather toy-ish look, and also the fact that there are no repeated poses in this set, which means 40+ poses, which brings a welcome variety to a wargaming army. There are a few miniatures I did not like very much (because of a few details) but on the whole this is a good medieval set!

It makes me think that Strelets planned this one to work like a standalone wargame, hence the title "Vikings against Franks". 

I'll definetly try to play a skirmish using only this set some day!