Casualty/Status Markers (Crows and Stiffs)

Just a small post from me to top off the workweek.

A few years ago Paul posted some fabulous crows from Zombiecide and I knew I had to get a set for myself. I managed to pick up a box on sale this past summer and then duly forgot about them until a few days ago. (Don't you love finding cool stuff in storage that you almost bought again, but caught just in time? It's like an impromptu Christmas.)

So, five bases of creepy crows. You get around 15 bases in the box which seems a little overkill.

Anyway, as you can imagine these were pretty much a doodle to paint-up. I primed them black (gasp!) and then oversprayed them a light grey. I then blasted the batch with a mixture of Drakenhof Nightshade wash and a bit of glaze. As they are fairly light plastic, I glued in some small washers in the bases to give them a bit more stability. Squawk! Done.

What to do with these? Um, well, I thought they'd make great markers to denote when units are routing. You know, 'In flight'. In. Flight. Geddit? <Sigh.> Or maybe to highlight a spot on the table where something especially horrible has occurred. Like where Sylvain has dreamt-up some fabulously clever (read: suicidal) strategy, or where Peter has accidentally dropped/toppled/smashed some miniatures. Sometimes both of these happening at the same time. Sometimes repeatedly over the course of a game. 

Come to think of it I may need some more crows...

Next, we have some casualty markers for my Italian Wars collection. I did a few of these last year and thankfully had a few unused bases waiting in the wings (thanks Byron!). I believe the two flanking ones are from Eureka Miniatures' Colonial Portuguese range, while the center one is from Artizan. Poor chaps.

Thanks for dropping in and have a great weekend everyone!

Curt

Entry #16 to AHPC VIII: Zweihänder Flammenschwert Casualty Stand

It's been a rather hectic time lately, but I have managed to nudge a few figures to completion - so, another casualty stand to add to my Italian Wars collection - the last one was cavalry based, so this time I've gone with an infantry theme. 

Here we have a heavily armoured landsknecht with his zweihänder flammenschwert (quite literally 'two-handed flaming sword') demanding blood or surrender from a fallen enemy.

The poor bloke on the ground is a model from Redoubt Enterprise's oft forgotten Renaissance range, while the fellow wrecking his day with the compensator sword was sourced from Oliver over at Steel Fist Miniatures. 

Thanks for popping in folks!

Entry #14 to AHPC VIII: 'Gloria Invicta' Renaissance Cavalry Casualty

Just a single figure from me today. This time it's an another casualty stand for my Italian Wars collection, a stricken horse and its dead rider - a set that I've sourced from Gamezone Miniatures. 

Gamezone has obviously marketed itself as an alternative source of figures for Warhammer Fantasy Battle fans. While most of the castings are indeed fantasy oriented, there are many of the 'Empire' themed figures which will stand-in very nicely for the Renaissance period, particularly for Spanish soldiers of Charles V's reign.

This set is called 'Gloria Invicta' and is probably amongst the best sculpted 28mm models that I've had the pleasure to work with. The sense of movement, the skill with which both figures' anatomy has been rendered and the overall feeling of pathos conveyed by the pair is amazing.

Out of the pack the rider is bare handed, which is absolutely fine, but I decided to drill-out one of his hands and give him a shivered lance modelled from a piece of plastic rod. I like to think that this small addition helps to make the scene a little more dynamic - giving the impression that they have just staggered away from a ferocious melee.

As a little experiment I applied several thin coats of Formula P3 Armour Wash mixed with blue ink on his armour plate to give the impression of the blued armour which was frequently seen during this period.

I've mounted the figure on one of the D-shaped bases that I've come up with for this project. The flat side fits snug against my transparent unit platters, helping to identify which unit it belongs to.

Thanks for dropping in folks - keep warm and have a good day!

My Tribute to Byron - Napoleonic French Unit Status Stand

I've known Byron from waaay back. Back to when I played (get this) the GW Fantasy tournament circuit (!) and he ran his own Rogue Trader series (the excellent 'WarCons'). Byron has been a Challenger since the fourth edition and, as many of you know, has exhibited some of the finest painting seen in the Challenge over the past three years.

This year I was a bit in the weeds with the administration of the duels, but Byron came to my rescue by offering to take them off my shoulders. I know it's been a bit of a struggle for him as he was not involved in the initial negotiations detailing the nuances of the various duels, but he's done a valiant job in maintaining the roster, keeping it updated, so participants could better focus on their targets. 

A few years ago Byron began to tip his toe into collecting and painting 28mm French Napoleonics. He's now at a point where he can field a small infantry brigade, so I invited him down this past weekend to get them properly thrashed on the tabletop (really, what's a 500k drive for a wargame amongst friends?). With this in mind, I thought I'd make him a casualty/status stand to add to his collection of Grognards. 

Seen here is a French line officer haranguing a grenadier drummer to keep up the tempo.

Both are 28mm figures from the venerable, but excellent, Foundry range, sculpted by the Perry's. 

Similar to my other unit stands I've created three sockets on the base to fit small dice to track unit status and a fin that can fit a unit identification label. It's pretty rudimentary stuff, but it seems to work alright and I find looks nicer than 'bare' chits or dice cluttering the tabletop.

Below are a few examples of previous unit stands I've done with their ID labels and how one of them looks with a sample unit (the small greyscale marker is to track things like 'Fatigue' or 'Disruption, depending on the system).

Examples of unit stands from my collection.

Thanks very much for all your help Byron! I hope you like these lads.

From IannickM: 28mm Casualty Stand of Biblical Proportions (20 points)

From Iannick:

Here is my last submission, a small diorama I call 'Feast of vultures", with dead Canaanite and Egyptian soldiers surrounded by vultures.

The vultures are from Foundry and were sent as freebies with my Shasu Bedouins. Not wanting free stuff to go to waste I figured I had to find a way to include these animals in my biblical project. Mostly it's for the looks but maybe I could use them as a marker of some kind.

Unfortunately this is my last submission; I was literally one evening away from finishing a 24 Canaanite spearmen unit, so very close, damn basing! I take solace in the fact that the contest made me paint that unit in 7 days which is a record for me.

A big thanks to you, it was my first time participating in the contest and it was a lot of fun. Kudos for not losing your sanity along the way... ;-) 

If vultures eating corpses can be beautiful then this is the bee's knees. Excellent work Iannick! I really have to see if I can get a couple of these as they're wonderful sculpts and this is a great purpose for them.

This grisly vignette will give Iannick 20 points. Thanks for participating and I look forward to seeing your Canaanite army grow over on your blog in the coming months.

From SamuliS: 28mm Napoleonic French Cuirassiers, British Command & Casualty Markers (145 points)

Samuli sends an impressive entry which includes a full unit of French heavy cavalry, a British command stand and some ingenious casualty markers (if I do say so myself, ahem)...

From Samuli:

Next up is a change from painting all the Redcoats during the Autumn and Winter. Flashy frog eaters of the 10th Cuirassiers and some not so lucky foot soldiers from the 1st Royal Scots and a French regiment. All figures from Perry except for the doctor who is from Westfalia Miniatures.

I wanted to base the Cuirassiers so they look like they are dashing through a battlefield towards their objective so I filled the base with casualties and some left over gear from other boxes. The cuirassiers look a lot nicer than british cavalry, makes me want to start building a French force too.

I preshaded the horses with an airbrush to get a nice effect and then painted them up in some different shades of brown. The shading doesn't show that well in the photos, but looks great on the table. Helps to speed up the painting also as I can basically skip all layering by just doing the shading using black, grey and white and afterwards painting over them. Painted with Vallejo paints and finished with an oil wash.

Major General Kempt and the casualty stands are actually painted for a second time now. The previous time they ended up going down a flight of stairs coming home from our last game day and losing quite a bit of paint in the progress while also getting banged up.

I stripped them from paint and painted them up again while waiting for some other models to dry up and when I had the suitable colors left over. The basing idea is stolen straight from Curt. 

Excellent chance for some bonus points? :P

Very nice work Samuli. I like your creative shortcut in airbrushing the horses' basecoat and using an oil wash as a finish. In regards to your casualty bases I can only give you my heartfelt admiration with your impecable taste in source material... ;)

This group will give Samuli a very tidy 145 points. Nice bit of work, that!

From Curt: Spatter Wound Markers & Musketeer (5 points)

Touché!

Just one figure today and some gory wound markers.

Several years ago I picked up a bunch of figures from Redoubt's 'Three Musketeers' range. I've painted up most of them and we've had some rollicking skirmish games. Nonetheless I came across a couple lonely castings awaiting attention so today I did up the fellow in brown with the green tabard.

As you can see from the photo he's taken a bad riposte from his opponent. I been wanting some wound markers that were a bit more grisly for skirmish gaming and I had seen these great markers over at Anatoli's Game Room so I thought I'd try to make a set for myself. I ordered a batch of clear acrylic discs from Litko in two sizes and then painted them in layered inks (Brown, Chestnut and Red).

I'll use these for skirmish games like SAGA, Operation Squad and Strange Aeons.

'Armand, was that a bit of bad road or a gaggle of peasants that we just rode over?'

I thought the larger size markers will be handy for tracking hits on multiple-wound creatures or to symbolizing a unit meeting a particularly sticky end.

'Back, you, you... You tentacly thing from a tentacly planet!'

If you decide to make some of these DON'T varnish them as it seems to cloud the acrylic and lessens the glossy/gory appearance of the ink.

Oh, and 5 points for me!

Pin Markers and 28mm Early-War WWII Fallshirmjägers

A mix of impact hits and an explosion marker.

I've had a few games of 'Bolt Action' now and I was wondering of how I could better reflect the status of multiple 'pins' on a unit than what we've been doing. We had been exclusively using small steel wool explosion markers (what we call 'crumps' - Thanks KevinH!) to denote pins. These look great as singles, or for artillery strikes and heavy direct-fire hits, but always seemed a little overkill when used in groups since I reason that most incoming fire would be small arms and not necessarily explosive in nature. 

This looks good...

...but this seems a bit over-the-top for indicating pinned status.

Anyway, with this in the back of my mind I was rummaging through my markers the other night during a game and I came across some 'splash' markers that I had made up year's ago for naval gaming. I thought, 'Hey, with a little change of colour these things would look similar to the bullet impacts that you see in the movies'. 

Naval 'splash' markers for tracking hits.

Here are some movie still from Saving Private Ryan. Note the impact hits of the sniper's shots. This is what I'm wanting to mimic.

The making of these markers are a fairly simple affair involving a bit of plasticard, a few different lengths of #4 flat-head screws (I used 3/8", 1/2" and 3/4") and 'resin sand' acrylic gel artist medium. 

I cut thin rectangular bases from the plasticard approximately 10mm wide and of varying lengths, depending on how many impact strikes I want to place. I then glue the flat-head screws to the bases in a slightly staggered formation to give it a more natural look. I sometimes place a variety of screw lengths to mix it up or do groupings of the same size.

I then coat the screws with the 'resin sand' gel. This works quite well as the gel adheres nicely to the ridges of the screws. I often apply a second touch-up of the gel to build-up irregularities, simulating the dust and debris kicked out from the bullet strike.

After the gel has cured (which only takes a few hours) I then prime the bases black and drybrush them up from a brown base tone. I try to use a base tone that is similar to the majority of my skirmish bases so they better blend in. 

The 'impact strikes' are drybrushed from the brown base-tone right up to a bright white so they stand out on the game surface. You can do a fairly large batch of these in a night, probably enough to cover your needs.

I'll probably use a mix of 'crumps' and impact hits in future games (like the first image in this post). The crumps will signify multiple hits (perhaps 5?) and the impact markers will be for singles.

The figures you see here are 28mm Fallshirmjägers from Wargames Foundry's WWII range. These were sculpted by the Perry twins in the late 90s and I still think they are some of the nicest WWII figures in production. I painted their uniforms in early-war colours and did up the groundwork to reflect the arid terrain on Crete (I reasoned that it will also work for the later Italian campaigns).

A very chunky MG34 which I oddly quite like the look of.

I wanted to make the officer a complete rock-star hero so I painted a shedload of awards and decorations on his tunic. He's a basically a walking Christmas Tree with blonde hair, blue eyes and an attitude. (In fact if you look close you can see he has the pale yellow 'Kreta' campaign ribbon on his left sleeve even before he dropped on the island - High Command was obviously anticipating great things from him...)

The Dude Abides...

A FJ squad advancing under heavy fire.

Next I'm returning to an old small-scale project...