College of Kings

Command Bases for Pavia

The amount of work needed to get the Pavia project finished in time for Historicon in July 2025 is huge. I still have a vast number of figures to paint, buildings to build and trees to make. In my next post I will do a review of the buildings, which ones I have finished and which ones I am still working on. I always wanted to spend some time creating command bases for Pavia featuring the actual commanders at the battle. However, I was coming to the realization that the time for researching each commander and creating the base would not be possible in the short time that I have.

That is when I came across Sijie Hao on the Italian Wars Wargaming Facebook page. He is both a superb artist and someone who meticulously researches the Italian Wars. I was immediately drawn to the quality of his work. Luckily he agreed to do some commission work for me on Command Bases for Pavia. I have never had commission work done for me before as I prefer to paint my own figures. However, his work will truly put my Pavia project over the top.

I initially gave him six command bases to do just to see if everything went smoothly. It did and I have now agreed to purchase an additional ten command bases from him. The first order consisted of:

Francis I King of France plus three of his Royal Retinue.
Palice and his standard bearer.
La Tremoille and his standard bearer.
The Marquis del Vasto and his standard bearer.
Charles de Lannoy and his standard bearer.
Charles, Duke of Bourbon and his standard bearer.

Photos of Command bases for Pavia

Francis I, king of France and his Royal Retinue.

Left to right the Imperial Commanders, Marquis del Vasto, Charles de Lannoy, and the Duke of Bourbon.

Left to right the French Commanders, De La Palace, The King and De La Tremoille.

The King of France

Now that I have received these figures, my second order includes:

French

Charles Tiercelin, Lord of Roche du Maine
Francois of Lorraine and the Duke of Suffolk – Richard de la Poole
Anne de Montmorency
Florange (Robert de la Marck, Seigneur of Fleuranges
Bonnivet
Duke D’Alencon

Imperial

Georg von Frundsburg
Marx Stitch von Ems
Ferrante Castriota Marquis de Sant’Angelo
Marquis de Pescara

After these ten bases arrive I will only have three more command bases for Pavia that I need. These will be Antonio de Leyva, Captain Hernando de Alarcón and Gallot de Genouille. I may make some of these myself or depending on time I may make another commission order.

Pavia 2025 – progress and work to do

I was feeling a bit out of control on my Pavia 2025 project following Historicon. I needed to identify what units that I had and what units that I still need to paint. Over the past few weeks I have formalized the order of battle that I am aiming for. With over 400 figures still to paint (mostly Landsknechts and heavy cavalry), there is a lot to do before Historicon, but at least I now have a plan.

Terrain

In addition to the figures there are five main terrain items to complete:

The terrain mats – these are being made for me so I do not need to worry. They should arrive before the end of the year.
The park walls and gates – I am working on these at the moment and my next post will probably concentrate on them.
Castello Mirabello – I plan to scratch build this important feature and have ordered most of the parts I will need. Construction will start in November.
The trees – there are a lot of trees to do.
Movement trays for the figures. I will complete these in December.

Figures for Pavia 2025

Here is my order of battle. I have highlighted in green those figures that I have painted already.

This OOB has been updated to reflect the command bases that I will represent for each unit.
No artillery has been added to this table as I still need to research artillery.

From this chart it easy easy to see that the bulk of the work is Heavy Cavalry and Landsknechts. With over 400 figures still to paint, I took the unusual step for me of outsourcing the command stands. The main reason was time, but I also came across an artist who can really do superb command stands and does a lot of research on Italian Wars commanders. I will post pictures when they arrive.
Finally here are a couple of pictures of some Italian and Landsknecht shot that I recently completed for this project. There will be a lot more posts on the Pavia 2025 project in the next few months.

Haiti, the six week project

My plan after Historicon was to get straight into working on my Pavia 1525 project for next year’s Historicon. However, at the show I purchased a number of buildings from the Miniature Building Authority’s Shanty Town range. I then supplemented these with some after show purchases. These buildings were so good that I just couldn’t leave them unpainted, but I was aware that I really needed to get back to the Italian Wars project. I therefore set myself six weeks to complete this new endeavor – Haiti, the six week project.

Scope of project

I already had some parts of the project. I had seven Humvees painted along with all the US Marine infantry from my Afghanistan project. I also had all the jungle terrain that I needed from my modern Japan v China Senkaku islands project. I also have a lot of 28mm scatter terrain from various projects and a very nice desert terrain mat. This random collection gave me a good base from which to start. What I needed to complete was:

Painting about 70 Haitian paramilitary figures.
Painting about ten to twelve buildings, including detailing the insides.
Building and painting five more Humvees.
Preparing the terrain mat.
Completing scatter terrain around the buildings.

The race was on.

The terrain mat.

A lot of the inspiration for the project came from someone who goes by the handle Garb3n on TMP. I encourage you to look at his work on TMP. Although I don’t know him, I stole some of his ideas shamelessly. He had two ideas on his “Jagged Alliance” modern game that I really liked. The first was using a desert terrain mat as the base layer (for the roads) and then adding cut out green terrain mats on top of it to represent the other areas. This idea gave a lot of depth to the base terrain.

The second idea that I really liked was that each of his buildings was put on its own base. This method of construction had two advantages. The first was that each building could have its own vegetation and scatter terrain fixed to the base allowing a level of super detailing that would not otherwise be achievable. The second advantage was that it allowed the terrain to be deployed very quickly at a show. The whole terrain was set up in less than 15 minutes.

An overview of the right side of the table

Overall I really like the look of the table and it is great to be able to set up and take down the table very quickly, as most of my tables normally take hours.

The Buildings

As I mentioned in a previous post, I chose Haiti 2004 as the theme for the project as it is a very colorful location to model. Also, I chose it as I have never seen modern Haiti done as a war-game and I like to do unusual subjects.

The Hotel on the left with US Marines on patrol

I tried to make all of the buildings colorful without being garish. All of the colors were copied from photos of actual buildings in Haiti to ensure realism.

Also the signs were taken from photos and were made into decals using decal paper and my printer. Using real signs again added to the realism and capturing the feel of the location.

A local bar with various detailing items

I also tied to detail the insides of the buildings. At the moment I do not have photos of the insides, but I will do a future post with some new photos.

A lemon grove with home made concrete walls constructed from foam and a chain link fence at the front.

A video overview

Here is a short video showing the whole table with some close ups.

Final thoughts

Although I had a number of significant elements of this project available from other projects, there was still a lot to do. This project shows what is able to be completed in a relatively short amount of time. Haiti, the six week project was completed on time and I was very pleased with the results. Hopefully it provides some inspiration to someone to push through and complete a project. I will be running a game at Barrage in two weeks time using this project.

Modern Haiti in 28mm

With Historicon over, I had planned to immediately start working on my Pavia project for Historicon 2025. To free my time up for the Pavia project, I had planned not to put on any game at Fall In! 2024 and just throw a small modern Afghanistan game on the table for Cold Wars 2025. I already have everything I need for an Afghanistan game, so that would be easy. This plan came apart when I visited the vendor hall at Historicon. This is how the project “Modern Haiti in 28mm” began.

I had always wanted a different theater of operations for my modern 28mm figures. Having already done Afghanistan in 28mm, Iraq or Somali just weren’t different enough in terms of terrain. I also am not ready to do modern day Ukraine. One possibility was doing a more Central African shanty type town. The problem that I had with this idea, was that a lot of representations of shanty towns seem a little too cartoony for me – more of what people think a shanty town should look like, rather than what they actually look like.

The motel on the left and the maternity hospital on the right.

That is when I decided on modern Haiti in 28mm. The US actively got involved in Haiti in 2004 by sending in the US Marines. This meant that I could use my marine figures and vehicles. The island also has a lot of jungle type terrain, so I could re-use the jungle terrain bases that took so long to make for my Japan-China Senkaku project. Also, many of the buildings are painted extremely bright colors, and while not modern design, are quite well maintained. These colorful buildings are what interested me as they would make for a very different table.

The convoy passes the bar on the left and the fruit stand on the right.

I quickly purchased and painted a number of buildings from the Miniature Building Authority range that are close to Haitian buildings from photos that I have assembled. I am now in the process of detailing the outside and inside of the buildings.

The convenience store even sells Nikes. The inside is super detailed.

I based each building on its own base for two reasons. The first is to allow a quick table set up. The second is so that I can add a lot of details and vegetation to the scene. I am trying to create many small vignettes.

The convoy passes the Motel in the background and the bar in the center

The project has come together in about three weeks. I have about 60 figures of Haitian insurgents that I need to paint, but they should not take long.

A cover was added to the hotel to protect the washer, drier and coke machine

The cat peers over the maternity ward checking things out.

The base terrain was my WarSigil Afghanistan mat. I then cut out sections of a teddy bear fur mat and placed it on top. The building bases and jungle bases were then added as a final layer.

The fruit market stand on the left will have a lot more merchandise in the next few weeks.

Many of the civilian vehicles and road signs are reused from my Afghanistan game

The terrain base was my WarSigil desert mat with a cut down teddy bear fur mat on top.

Not only were the brightly colored buildings fun to paint, but I also enjoyed weathering both the tin roofs and rusting the side of the buildings. The next two photos show some of the weathering effects.

An auto parts and vehicle repair building. This building base needs more detail.

I plan to officially unveil this project Modern Haiti in 28mm project at Barrage later this year. It will be my first time running a game at Barrage, so I hope that it is well received. I have really enjoyed this project as it came together very quickly. I managed to reuse troops, vehicles and some scatter terrain from my afghan project as well as jungle from my Senkau project. This reuse of items really kept the work down and allowed me to concentrate on the buildings. Once the figures are painted, I really must get back to Pavia.

1813 Saxon Chevau-legers

I bought 40 figures for my 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers from Black Hussar Miniatures a number of years ago and they have been sitting on my paint desk for a while. Having finished my preparations for Historicon about 3 weeks ago, I had some spare time in my hobby schedule before I fully commit to Pavia 1525 after Historicon is over. It was time for those 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers in 28mm to finally get painted.

The figures were a real pleasure to paint as the sculpts seem to fit my painting style. The figures also work well with my Calpe Saxon infantry.

The unit represents the Prinz Clemens Regiment as it appeared in 1813. The regiment consisted of five squadrons for a total of 758 men and 26 officers. This gave 784 total. At a ratio of 1:20 this was close enough to 5 squadrons each of 8 figures.

I had quite a lot of discussion on TMP with some very knowledgable people on how to represent the unit. In 1813 the first two squadrons had lances.. Also the first 4 squadrons had standards with no standard for the 5th squadron. The first squadron standard was the white Leibestandarte and the second to fourth squadrons had the red Ordinarestandarten.

I also decided to put an officer and trumpeter in each squadron. For the first squadron I decided to mount them on black horses in the French manner, even though I have no solid evidence that the Saxons copied this practice. I also put all the trumpeters on grey horses (except for the second squadron where I decided to mix it up a bit to represent a shortage of horses). Again I do not have any historical evidence for this decision.

The ribbons on the standards were white for the first squadron, red for the second, yellow for the third and blue for the fourth.

Overall it took me between three and four weeks to paint the 1813 Saxon Chevau-leger regiment.

Now I see the photos I can of course detect areas of my painting that can be touched up, but overall I am happy with how the figures turned out. We can all point to better painted figures that we have seem, but I would not be embarrassed to put these on the table. I do like the red and lime green of the 1813 Saxon Chevau-legers.

It is now back to Pavia, although I do have some Prussian Landwehr Cavalry and National Cavalry regiments that I have just started.

Historicon 2024 trailer

Here is a trailer for my Historicon games.

Amphibious vehicles for Historicon 2024

Earlier I made three 20mm AAVP-7A1 for the JGSDF. These were the fully tracked versions for the land battle. However the assault will be from the sea in the for of an amphibious landing, so I needed three in water version of the amphibious vehicles for Historicon.

Modeling the vehicles

The first step was to buy three additional kits and cut them down to the in water height. This process was much easier than I expected. I firstly went on the internet and found some pictures of the AAVP-7A1 in water, and then I used a razor saw to cut down parts. Only eight parts in each kit needed cutting and the entire process only took just over an hour for the three vehicles.

One of the land borne vehicles with the three in water models.

I was thinking about using the models in this state, but with the bottom missing I was worried about how much handling they would be able to withstand. I eventually decide to base the models on some ABS plastic sheet. The first step was to cut the ABS leaving enough room for some water effects. Again I used a real life photo to decide where to place the model on the base.

Putting on the water gel effects

I then matched the paint color of the base with the color of the water on my terrain mat, this meant combining dark blue, green and grey. Once matched I painted the base and then glued the vehicles onto it.

The next stage was to model the waves and splash using the photos as a reference. I used some really neat products produced by AK Interactive, their “water gel effects” and their “water foam”. Here is a link to their products page.

The reference numbers of the products are on the lids for those who want to buy them.

Firstly I applied the water gel effects using a brush. This product goes on white but dries clear. It is used to provide the surface texture of the water and can be used to simulate waves. For the higher wave peaks I put on two layers and allowed it to dry in between. Putting it on too thick in one go may prevent adequate drying. In the following photo you can see the drying in progress. The top vehicle had the gel effects applied first and the bottom one last. The phot allows you to see how I applied it and what it looks like when it starts to dry.

The application process and what it looks like as it starts to dry.

Adding the foam

Once the product was completely dry and clear, I then wanted to add the foam. Again I used reference photos. The shape of the foam at the front and rear is exactly how foam forms in real life. On the sides, I initially modeled reality, but when it was complete it looked too much. So I decided to back off the foam on the sides, particularly on the diagonal waves. In the end it looked much better. This case is one of those times where modeling accurately just does not look right and I had to achieve a balance that I was happy with.

The application was again done using an old small painting brush and dabbing the product on. The process only took about five to ten minutes per model.

The finished models after the foam application.

Amphibious vehicles for Historicon

This was the first time that I had used these products and I was very happy with the results. I now have my amphibious vehicles for Historicon.

If you like this post and want to receive notification about future posts, please subscribe below.

Making hills for the Senkaku islands

This week I have been making hills for the Senkaku islands project. The scale of the game is 20mm and I wanted to make rocky hills that are typical of the island’s terrain. This project is the first time that I have tried carving rocks from foam and I have spent a number of hours viewing tutorial videos on YouTube.

Making the base structure

I first of all needed to decide how many hills that I needed and what size they would be. Finally, I settled on one large hill with a footprint of around 30″ wide and 18″ deep with a two part structure – a large base and a smaller outcrop on top. I will also have a second hill that is around 18″ wide and 12″ deep. these sizes will have an imposing position on the 6′ x 4′ terrain mat, but will still leave enough space for the game.
I was looking to achieve some height on the table so that the hills are taller than the lower level jungle terrain.

At this stage things do not look like they will ever turn out to be realistic hills.

The first photo shows the two hill bases on the left and the top piece for the larger hill on the right. I first cut the green foam layers to the shape and size that I needed using my hot wire foam cutter. I then stacked and glued the green foam pieces using my hot glue gun. Finally, I cut pieces of the pink foam to represent the rock faces and “glued” them in place using insulation spray foam. This spray foam had the added advantage that it filled in the gaps between the pink foam pieces.

Carving the rocks.

After the carving, things start to come together.

The next stage is carving the rock using a knife. After watching a few videos, this process was not as difficult as it seems. I also used an old large paint brush to beat up the surface of the rock and change the texture. This process also causes realistic micro-cracks. I then filled in some gaps between the foam pieces with Dental Plaster, which is not shown in the above picture.

Base paint

The next stage was to paint the structure with an umber acrylic paint from Blick. I modified the color by lightening it with white and mixing in a touch of black to make it a light grey brown. I diluted the paint with water to allow it to get into all the nooks.

Detailing the rocks.

To detail the rocks I used a black wash to put a shading into all of the nooks. I also added some dilute rust color to some rocks for added color variety. After all of this dried, I over-sprayed the top half with a light grey misting of paint and the bottom with a darker grey. I used spray cans for this process.

Starting to look like rocks rather than foam.

In a later step I added some green wash near the bottom indents to represent moss. I still need to dust some of the rock edges with a white dry-brush to catch the light.

I also then sealed the top and some land-fall areas with a mud effect.

Flocking

The last thing that I added this weekend was the flock to the top. I used two colors of flock from Woodland Scenics. More detailing will need to be added over the next week or two. I also need to complete the second layer for this hill and do the second hill. The scene will also need bushes, extra flock and some water effects. I will also do some dry brushing to add contrast. The second layer should prevent the top looking too flat.

Getting close to the end, but still more detailing to complete.

Making hills for the Senkaku islands

Making hills for the Senkaku islands was a new process for me, but I am happy with the progress. I think that they will go very well alongside the jungle terrain and terrain mat that are already complete. In May I plan to put everything on the table for a test run, so I should be able to get some good pictures of the finished table.

If you would like to be informed about future posts, please subscribe to this blog:

Naval units for Historicon 2024

This week I finally completed the Naval units for Historicon 2024. They are part of my Senkaku project and include both Japanese and Chinese ships. These vessels have taken me way longer than I expected. I have used a combination of three different scales for the naval units.

1/2400 is for the naval battle using the Harpoon V rules.
1/700 is for the naval units during the amphibious assault phase.
20mm is for the actual ground battle.
I will be adding some 1/300 aircraft later for an additional scale.

The LCAC – Landing Craft Air Cushioned.

These are the hovercraft that the Japanese forces will use to bring units ashore. The Osumi LST carries two of these craft in its rear well-dock. I have built both of them in 20mm and also in 1/700 scale. The 20mm scale units took a lot of time to build and tested my airbrushing and weathering abilities.

A view of the two different sizes of LCAC

The JMSDF – the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force.

The Japanese units consist of:

The Osumi – A Landing Ship Tank with 2 LCAC and 2 CH.47 helicopters
A Kongo Class destroyer capable of Ballistic Missile Defense
An Akizuki Class destroyer
Two Takinami Class destroyers

A close up of the Osumi in both scales, with the LCAC.

The Chinese fleet

The Chinese fleet will consist of:

Two Type 56 Coast Guard vessels
A Type 52D destroyer
A Type 54A frigate

A close up of the Coast Guard vessels in both scales

The Type 52D in the foreground and the Type 54A in the background

The same vessels but this time in 1:2400 scale

Next steps

With the naval units for Historicon 2024 complete I will be finishing the 1:300 aircraft before moving onto the cliffs and hills for the 20mm terrain. The project is finally starting to come together and March and April should see me get close to completion. I plan to do a test run of the game in May.

If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe below to get informed about new posts.

20mm Senkaku Project update – Historicon 2024.

My last post, about my Pavia project, discussed terrain mats. I mentioned that my terrain mat for my Historicon 2024 game was due to arrive in the next week or two. Well, the mat arrived today and I couldn’t resist posting a couple of pictures of the mat for my 20mm Senkaku Project.

The Senkaku islands are not far from Taiwan and are contested by Taiwan, China and Japan. The game will be a modern Japanese amphibious assault against Chinese forces that have captured the islands. For the terrain mat I needed some coastal terrain that would allow me to put hills and dense vegetation on it. The mat was made by Warsigil.

The two photos below show me putting down some of the vegetation, an LCAC and a couple of AAVP-7. I still have a lot to add, but I wanted to get a feel for the size and layout. My next job is to make some hills and rock faces.

Japanese LCAC and AAVP-7 storming the beach

I was very happy with the mat when it arrived. I can now finish my figure bases so that they match the color of the mat. That is all for now on my 20mm Senkaku Project.