Billy Bones paper ECW miniatures

Went I went up to London in August, I got bit by the Pike & Shotte bug. I desperately wanted to buy a Warlord's starter army, but when I realized the cost of it, and thought about the fact that it wouldn't give me even one third of one army... for a rules set and period I had vever before played.... in a scale I hardly ever play in (28mm).... Well, I had to admit that it was a Bad Idea.
When I got back to Brazil, however, the bug still hadn't went away. I REALLY wanted to try out Pike & Shotte, as I'd never played Renaissance before and it had always appealed to me.

But what to do now? I certainly couldn't justify spending 500 USD on a whim and there are, as of yet, no 3mm pike and shot armies. I guess I could try 2mm or 6mm... But what to do about the rules?

Then I found out two things:

1) Warlord Games is very sensibly selling a digital version of Pike & Shotte. Well, glory be! Mind you, I do think it is a bit expensive for what is essentially a PDF, but hey: it's cheaper than overseas mail, by a long shot! And i won't begrudge Warlord my hard earned reais they way I'd begrudge, oh, say, Games Workshop.

2) Billy Bones makes an excellent, funky set of paper ECW minatures.

Well, that settled it.

For USD, I bought my Billy Bones figs and for another 50 USD, I bought a beige bedsheet and printed up masses of figures on thick manilla paper. I printed them out at half-scale, making them around 15mm (they are originally about 28mm). You can see the inital results, below:

Hungry, hungry eyes...

 

The gentleman in the photo above is Mr. William Armintrout, owner of The Miniatures Page. Our use of the image is purely for satiric purposes and is not meant to challenge Mr. Armintrout's ownership of it, nor seriously imply that he's the kind of fellow who'd steal a tablemate's lunch.

First Austrian brigade for Black Powder finshed!

Here are some pictures of my first Austrian brigade for Black Powder.

These are 3mm (or 1/600) Napoleonic figures from Oddizial Osmy, via the good folks at Pico Armor. And behind that, there's a great story, which will tell you everything you need to know about Pico Armor's customer service.

Last year, I went up to a conference in Rochester New York. Being that I am normally based out of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I took the opportunity to place my first Napoleonics order with John and the guys from Pico.

It arrived while I was at the conference but, unfortunately, all the Napoleonic infantry was swapped out for ACW infantry!

Well, needless to say, there was much wailing and nashing of teeth on my part, because at this point, I was a couple of days away from heading back home.

When I informed the folks at Pico Armor, however, they immediately dispatched the correct order via overnight Federal Express to my hotel room in Rochester. They even told me to not sweat the ACW stuff (although I did manage to get it back to them). Now THAT is service!

I have been buying stuff from Pico Armor ever since the O8 3mm figs came out and, for my money, there's not a better mail order company in the market!

The photos...

These really don't need much by way of explanation. This is a two regiment, five battalion Austrian infantry brigade, supported by a 6 lbr artillery battery. Four of the five battalions are over-sized by Black Powder standards. That means that even though this brigade is bog-standard in terms of its morale and general characteristics, it packs quite a punch in the firepower and melee department, as well as gaining extra endurance points.

The slogan of the Austrian Army might as well be "quantity has a quality all its own".

It's probably too difficult to see in these picks, but one regiment has the 1805-style helment while the other has the 1809-style shako. Oh, and the buttons on both regiments are gold, not silver... ;)

The buildings in the background are all from Brigade Models Small Scale Scenery line. Their English Farms and Mediterranean Village sets, to be exact. I have  some Normandy Villages on order and these will be slightly more "historical" for the Central Germany, 1813 scenarios I plan to play, but for now, c'est la guerre.

The scenery is my typical 3mm set up: painted cloth scenery pinned to flocked foam mats. thumbtacks and stick pins have been transformed into bushes and trees and hold everything down.

When finished, the Austrian army will have two infantry brigades, a vanguard brigade (made up of Croats, Jaegers, Chevauxlegers and Hussars) and a small reserve brigade of grenadiers and currassiers.

After that, I will embark on Wave Two, which will include more French Infantry, some German Ally regiments (Nassauers, who'll be able to fight for the French in 1812-13 and the Allies in 1815), French Guard Cavalry and either the Prussians or the Russians. Ultimately, I want to be able to deploy 4 brigades of each of the major allies and some 10-12 brigades of French.

French Army for Black Powder: 3mm Oddzial Osmy

The core of my French Napoleonic Army for Black Powder is FINALLY finished! I rebased it during the World Cup and painted up the last few units.

Here are some pictures:

 
I learned  a lot doing these.

In the first place, as with all microscales, you need to exagerate your paint jobs and use the brightest colors possible: medium gray for black, bright crimson for red, bright blue for blue, etc.

I originally began painting far too dark and had to go back and touch up units.

Furthermore, I put a blue pom-pom on each infantry figures head (red and gold for grenadiers and voltiguers, respectively). I know that French infantry had color-coded pom-poms by company, but at this scale, you need something to catch the eye at arms distance. With their white surcoats, the French looked too indistinct from the Austrians. With a blue pom-pom added, however, the blue bleeds through to the eye, even at this distance. (Close up, they look a bt more like Bavarians, perhaps, and if I ever do that army, I am going to have to make them baby blue so that they contrast).

Finally, I orignally gave these figs a medium green flocked base. Bad idea: they didn't stand out enough. I thus went to fine yellow flocking with some light green coarse flocking tossed in as bushes and the result is as you see it. I am quite pleased with it.

What you are looking at here is some 80-90 dollars worth of Oddizial Army 1/600 scale figures, bought through the wonderful guys at Pico Armor. They took me a year to paint, but only because I went very slowly and rebased and repainted several times, trying to get the proper effect. 3mm is a new scale and needs new techniques when it comes to basing and painting. I hope to find time to write a painting and basing primer for Napoleonics later this year.

What we have on the board are:

6 battalions ofline infantry
2 battalions of light infantry
1 battalion of veteran light infantry

2 foot batteries
1 horse battery

4 squadrons of cuirassiers
4 squadrons of chasseurs a cheval
4 squadrons of hussars

Sundry skirmisher and regimental and brigade command stands.

Doing this same army in 28mm scale would cost around 600 dollars or more. Although it would be much more visibly impressive, it would take much more time to paint and a huge amount of room to play and store. This army fits in a cigar box, plays on my coffee table, and cost about 1/8th what a comparable 28mm force would cost.

Still to come for the French are:

More limbers and commanders
2 Old Guard Battalions
2 Middle Guard Battalions
3 Veteran line battalions.




I eventually plan to buy another 12 infantry battalions, a heavy Guard Cavalry regiment, a light Guard Cavalry regiment, a dragoon regiment, a Carabinier regiment and 4 battalions of Young Guard.




The French will also get some allied forces: 3 Polish infantry battalions, 2 Nassauer infantry battalions and 3 Saxon infantry battalions. There will also be a Polish Lancer regiment and a couple of squadrons of Saxon Cuirassiers and German Chevauxlegers.

As always, my "historical" gaming presumes that all this is going on in an alternate dimension "just next door": I don't strive for absolute accuracy, just reasonably plausible forces. This allows me to paint up forces which I probably shouldn't, were I to stick to stirctly historical OoBs.

When finished, my French force should allow me to "bathtub" any Napoleonic battle up to and including Leipzig 1813, at roughly 8:1 scale (i.e. every 8 battalions/squadrons are represented by one on the table top).

3mm Ogre Miniatures

O8's new sci-fi miniatures allow us to play Ogre miniatures in 3mm! The only figure missing from the basic game so far is the non-mobile Howitzer, and you can use the Mobile Howitzer for that until something better comes along.

Look:

Ogres marsch!

Thanks to the gentlemanly acts of Mr. Tim Porter, I've received my Plasmablast 1/300 Marhaf Legion miniatures months before I could've normally expected them!

Yesterday evening, I finally got a chance to paint some of them up and here they are, Masquerading as Ogres, or what Mathieu Moyen of Six Commando fame calls "Rumblers" - ridiculously large cybertanks, in any case) for my ever-growing Grey Army.

Here we see three Ogres - a big one and two littler ones (let's call them a Mark V and two Mark IIIBs) advancing past a mining village in the bleak outback of Smade´s World. They are escorted by a company of Oddzial Osmy Caesarion MBTs, reinforced by a platoon of Matabele-mounted panzergrenadiers.

Yes, those are Doms Decals 1/600 Beglian roundels on those figs. I use them exclusively because I like the color scheme. They mean nothing as of yet because, as readers of this blog know, I have still not decided on a background for the Grey Army. All I know at this point is that they are fighting The New Vistula Legion Neo-Pole Mercenaries and their employers, the Revolutionary Army of Salvation, for control over Smade's World's unobtanium fields and hand wavium processing facilities.

Pico Scale Building Availability

I just got a bunch of Monopoly City buildings in the mail, bought at Boardgame Geek's virtual market. I'd seen the wonderful city pieces produced by Fen Edge Wargaming for his dieselpunk air combat games and I wanted something similar for my 3mm sci-fi set up. Turns out that Warren Colegrave was selling his copy of the Monopoly City on the 'Geek for a very reasonable price. Mr. Colgrave lives in Canada, but he politely agreed to sell me only the building pieces and to send them to me in a cushioned envelope in order to avoid customs fees.

Two weeks later they arrived in Brazil and I started painting.

The pieces from Monopoly City are all different scales and sizes, but they work well together and with old-style Monopoly houses and hotels, as well as the Microform white metal buildings in 1/900 scale that Ana Paula gave me for Christmas in 2010.

I've mounted them all on plasticard and the resulting blocks can be combined in any number of different ways to make cities, towns and villages.

Here are some quick photos of everything I've built so far, laid out along with some roads. The roads have not been pinned down to the table, as they should be, so they look a little sloppy. Also sloppy is the camera work, which is certainly not as crisp as it could be. I plan to take some better pictures soon.

These buildings have been put together over the past 7 years, a bit at a time (excpet for the newly acquired Monopoly City pieces which were all done in a week). In spite of the varying scales and the fact that some of the buildings have windows painted on while others are more abstract, everything hangs together quite well, I think.

 

The first shot shows Picoburg before I laid down the roads, suburbs and airport. In the upper left- and lower right-hand corners, you can see the industrial districts that are made completely of MC pieces, as are the downtown highrises and the apartment complexes on the edge of town.

To the left of center is Olde Towne, the historical city center, with cobbled streets, the cathedral and a medieval city block made out of PicoArmor's Monopoly buildings. The low-rise housing complexes are simple wooden blocks covered in cardboard and gussied up with balsa bits and plasticard. You can also see some Microform buildings in the block just south of the business district.

Here's a shot of the city from the suburbs and surrounding farmland. The airport and roads have also been placed down now. Most of the village pieces are made out of a combination of Monopoly buildings: some PicoArmor, some Brazilian plastic Banco Imobiliário pieces and some old-school wooden houses and hotels picked up on Ebay. The airport is scratchbuilt.

Roads are painted and textured artist's canvas. They should be pinned down and look better when they are. Here, they're just thrown down and it shows.Since I've taken these photos, I've also trimmed their margins a bit. As you can see, they are too wide here.

And finally here's an aerial shot of most of the city, some farms and a suburb. Next build: Picoburg Federal University, home of the Fighting Pixels!

On my "to buy" list now are Brigade Games wonderful 1/1000 (2mm) pieces (which can be seen here at PicoArmor). I plan to put these down on their own blocks, so that they can be used seperately from the pieces shown above. I think they'll look just fine together, however, as long as they are used en masse.


Recent discussions on TMP have revolved around what buildings one should buy for 3mm gaming. I hope this shows that a wide variety of materials can be used, almost indiscriminantly and without much care for "proper" scale. Here we have pieces that go from 1/700 to 1/1200, but the overall effect is quite acceptable. Of course, some care must be taken when composing blocks and even moreso when putting blocks together in cities, but still...

So the answer to the question of "What buildings should I buy?" is "All of them". You should strive to have a wide variety of pieces available in your modeling kit which you can mix and match as the mood takes you (or as period demands).

The best, most beautiful pico terrain pieces out there are by Angel Barracks (3mm English early 20th century town) and Rod Langton (about 1.5mm for Napoleonics). AB's village will set you back 30 quid, however, while Langton's town hall alone costs five pounds!

The entire MC set cost me $25.00 CDN (and that includes shipping). It came with 6 skyscrapes, 8 office buildings, 8 high-rise apartment blocks, 16 houses, 3 prisons, 3 nuke reactors, 3 garbage dumps, 3 football stadiums, 16 small factories,  3 waste treatment plants and 3 windmills. 100 PicoArmor houses will run you $7.50 USD. Old Monopoly stuff can be bought on Ebay for a song. The shipping's literally the most expensive part!

Another boardgame that can be mined for terrain pieces is Big City. Because this is a classic eurogame, currently hard to find, it'll set you back a bit more than MC. Still, the pieces look to be compatible with MC and a copy is up on the 'Geek right now for $32.00 USD.

There's also Irregular Miniatures 2mm stuff (which is closer to 1/1200 scale, actually). I love IM and they will always have a fond spot in my heart for introducing picoscale gaming to me. I have to admit, however, that their terrain is simply not up to current market standards, however. Nor does it mix very well with the other lines noted above.

Finally, if you need 3mm American Civil War stuff to go with your O8 Union and Confederate armies, there's the old Simply Six line, now defunct, but still sold by Pico Armor while supplies last.  Peter Pig's 3mm Hammerin' Iron line, which I hear is quite good, also has a 19th century U.S. American riverside town in 1/600 scale.

I hope this gives prospective 3mm players an idea of what's available and what can be done with regards to 3mm urban terrain. You can also take a look at Steel On Sand's wonderful comparison shots of some popular 3mm terrain lines. When one uses all these pieces together, en masse, the difference between 1/1200 and 1/600 really doesn't show. If you're only going to be using a few buildings, however, it's probably better to make these all one line or a couple of easily matched lines.