Mountain Warfare: Final Touches

Before heading off to the convention, I finished the last few figures yesterday, just in time for the game. Back home after a nice day of presenting Code Red to a number of interested people, I´ve finally taken some photos and uploaded them:

The New Insurgent Leaders from my own range at Enfilade Figures have made an appearance on the battlefield:

...just like two of the new Foreign Fighters. Paired with an Elhiem RPG-gunner, you can see the size compatibility of the two ranges.

And, the first casualty of the day in our demo yesterday, the Ranger GPMG:

Unfortunately I didn´t take pics of the game itself, but next week there´s another opportunity...

Black Hawk Down

Projekt Mountain War continues... as I don´t have much time left to prepare (tomorrow will be a busy day) I´m currently finishing the last bits.

The scenario I´m offering for playtesting is located at the mountain peaks (duh!) and revolves around a crashed helicopter. I chose an old, half-finished UH-60 kit that´s been waiting in my stash half-built for over a year and turned it into a crashed helo, something that I´ll be using a lot more than an intact chopper.

So this will be one of the key terrain pieces of the game, forming the starting position of the US Task force which will have to disperse and pick up a casualty that fell from the helo earlier.

All the while, there will be heavy fire from the Insurgents and maybe some bombs dropped by Air Support in Danger Close situations right on the heads of the US soldiers...

I think those who are familiar with Takur Ghar will recognize the similarities ;-)

I´m curious how the scenario will play out!

British Armed Forces: Fireteam finished

During the breaks I took while painting the rest of the mountain warfare project, I also finished the last figure of my British Fireteam.

So here we are:

4 UK soldiers modelled after reference pics of current gear and plans for the Army 2020 layout of the section. As there´s still some vagueness, I put in the L86 as Marksman rifle. I know there´s the L129 being phased in as Urgent Operational Requirement and I´ll do a fifth figure which uses the L129.
As the future of L129 vs. L86 seems to be undecided yet, I´ll let you guys pick the right weapon. Not sure how I´ll configure the unit though - 5 man team or Fireteam + optional guy with the other weapon to swap in? Trouble is: which weapon goes into the main set, which will be the addition? :(

Anyway, currently it looks like this:

Pretty sure I´ll add a scope to the Minimi-Gunner before they go into casting.

Mountain Warfare: Deadline approaching

Next saturday I´ll be hosting my convention game in a regional convention near Frankfurt, Germany, with a second con following the week after in Speyer.

As I need to finish the Forces required for my little demo game of Code Red, I´ve picked up the brush this weekend and continued with the buildup. Still lagging behind a bit, especially with my key terrain piece and objective marker, but I´m confident I can finish it throughout the week.

But first, I needed to create the backbone of my Insurgent forces, which means more standard fighters with AKs. I also have to add at least one DShK HMG-Position, so I decided to paint up the kneeling chap, he should make a good ammo loader.

And the Task Force got some reinforcements, Paramedics, a Tactical Air Controller and Number 9 for the Ranger Squad. Need to paint the M240 and the Task Force should be ready to roll.

4 and 1/2 days to go, I need to speed up a bit..

New Enfilade Figures

Hey folks,

after some waiting time, new figures have arrived!

Special Forces in Light Gear

Insurgent Small Cell with AK

Taliban Foreign Fighters / Generic Islamists

Taliban Leaders

Sold out sets have been restocked, so everything should be available!

You can obtain them at:

www.enfilade-figures.com 

or  (short version)

www.enfilade.de 

Fetch the Muskets! - Some Renaissance stuff

Hey folks,

some of you might have asked yourself why the blog is still called rifles and muskets. Well, one obvious reason is that "Just Rifles" sounds dumb. The othe reason is that I never gave up entirely on the idea of doing renaissance warfare.
Unfortunately, the initiative lost steam when I moved 2-3 years ago and abandoned my 10mm stuff as everyone here plays 15mm renaissance with Field of Glory. For financial reasons and as I was not super-happy with the rules (very long and "static" feeling game, I fancy more dynamic gameplay) I did not build up my own army.

However, recently our club has begun trials with "By Fire and Sword" and so far we´re feeling very positive about the game - and as it is much more dynamic and fast-moving, I´m very tempted to start up my own army in the next few months.

Until then, here are some pics of our game yesterday, where the Ottomans obliterated any enemy force they encountered through the power of their die-rolling:
 

Horse-Power

As promised, a picture of my attempt to model a very small horse (15mm to be precise)

Head is too large, but unlike the digital putty, I´ll have to cut it away to fix this ;)


And here´s the latest progress on my first digi-sculpting attempt:

A venture into the digital world

Hey guys,

today I want to present something different. A while ago, I´d been watching some interesting youtube timelapses about the creation of high quality 3D models (used to produce the moulds for plastic minis). I was impressed with the amount of detail you can work into these minis if you do it properly, but wasn´t interested in it at that point.

Now, a few months later, after being fed up with marks and seam lines on my latest experiments on a 15mm horse, While waiting for the putty on my "analog" horse to harden, I thought I might try if I have a good hand for digital sculpting, giving me the option to print some 3D-masters without the flaws that manual production causes at this scale.

So, I went into the depths of the internet, downloaded a free 3D modeling software and started with a horse. And it worked out pretty well:

After a few hours of experimenting (and continuing my work on the analog horse when it was ready) my horse looks like this and already has a rider-dolly mounted:

Pretty happy with my first try, the huuuge bonus of computerised working is that you can go through trial and error without any time limit - there is no putty that hardens at some point.
Ideal if you want to try something you´ve never done before, build some concept art to get a good feeling of the right proportions and shapes.

Now I´m torn if I should give 3D printing a try to produce some dollies or unique figures... 
 But don´t worry, I´m not giving up on the hand work, it´s much faster at the moment.

I´ll be presenting the analog horse in my next post, still work in progress. 

Mountain Warfare: Task Force almost comlete

Hey folks,

time for another entry on my Mountain Warfare project. My presentation at the end of May is closing in, so it´s just a few more weeks time to gear up everything.

Today, I finished the second Team of Rangers including some casualty markers. Originally, I was not convinced of the need to play with these markers, but the visual appeal is much greater than flipping figures on the side, as I learned from a fellow gamer recently.

And a closeup of the casualties - they´re unique sculpts produced in an evening and won´t be cast or sold.

More is on the way, I need to finish more Insurgents and some terrain, including a gaming mat until the end of the month...