Pocket Panzers

In the predawn light, shadowy figures move from tree to tree, cradling their firelocks against their bodies to keep them free of underbrush and vine. Some wear capotes and blue wool forage caps, others are stripped to the waist and adorned with fierce red and black war paint. Marius watches the men under his charge from the rear of the file, while the imposing blanket-draped Huron war chief at his shoulder has his eyes on the French officer. Balancing the hot tempers of the political dissidents that gathered in Parisian cafés kept Marius at his wit's end, but working with the crown's native allies had proved an even worse headache. "We go now." Hardheart growls in French, a language he knows only a little better than Marius knows Wendat. What the sachem lacks in vocabulary he makes up for in tone. The words are a statement of fact, not a question. The young exile nods agreement, adjusting his forage cap and checking the pan of his musket before the two leaders steal t...

This week, I put the finishing touches on some more French compagnies franches de la marine, this time from Brigade Games, and finished up another Huron leader, also from Brigade Games. I wanted to add some variation to my French marine forces and include more troops that were in their issued uniform, not just frontiersman attire like most of the Conquest/Warlord Games figures are. These are from two packs of Brigade Games' French marines . I think these have been my favorite Brigade figures to paint so far. The Brigade rangers I did were well sculpted, but there was something about these figures that made getting good detail and shading almost effortless. Most are in the blue uniform coats, but there are a couple in the capote coats that give them more of a woodsman look. Here I've chosen to go with earthy colors, though I have read it was not uncommon to make these coats out of their issued uniforms. I painted up two officers or sergeants from the command pack because I...

After putting together two cabins and some fences for wargames set in colonial North America, it seemed only right to paint up some settlers, in this case colonists who have armed themselves to defend their livelihood from marauding French and natives. These models are Brigade Games' frontier family , and like the other Brigade models I have, they're quite nice. Definitely on the slimmer side, but detailed. My biggest gripe with Brigade figures is that the weapons are thin and bendy and the faces are all oddly similar. The set includes two figures who fit the bill for a father and mother. I personally think the man is clearly modelled off of Mel Gibson's character in the Patriot. Then two sons, both springing to action to defend the farm. If the dad is Gibson, I suppose that makes green trousers there Heath Ledger. Finally, there is a younger son and daughter carrying muskets and powder. I think the set has some nice variety, fitting a specific niche between unarmed settler...

  It's been a minute since my last update — April and early May have been very busy, and even when I've had time, I've struggled to focus on and finish a single project. But with our French and Indian War campaign using Sharp Practice 2 set to kick off in about a week, I felt the need to get my act together and finish some more terrain. That's where this second log house comes in. This scratch-build uses largely all the same techniques as I used in my first cabin , but has a few other features, most notably the stacked-log chimney instead of a stone chimney and the bark-sheet roofing instead of shingles. The log chimney was a lot of hassle, but I think it looks relatively convincing, and it has that distinctive early colonial flair. I'm not all that eager to do another one, however. I guess that's the cost of detailed scratch building. The use of bark sheets as roofing is drawn from the excellent YouTube channel Townsends, where their group of living history ent...

Well, games set in the French and Indian War mean specialized terrain for the period, at least if your brain works like mine. After all, you can't have tomahawk-toting Huron fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad , right? Of god forbid, some sort of gothic 40K monstrosity. What I'm trying to say is that this is the first of several period-appropriate buildings I plan on scratch-building for our games in the period. It's built in much the same way as the log building I scratch built for my eastern front terrain, which can be seen most prominently here, where I also showed off my split-rail fencing for the FIW project. However, I tried to take the lessons I learned from making that cabin and apply them here to get a better result. Those lessons were, primarily: 1. the dowel rods I used as logs looked far far too uniform; 2. I notched them by hand with a craft knife, which took forever and murdered my hands; 3. the insulation or chinking between the logs looked unconvincing, and...

  The perceptive among you have probably guessed that my new wargaming project is going to be a force of French and Native American warriors for the French and Indian / Seven Year's War. This will be my first time doing any sort of black powder era wargaming - my first foray out of WWII wargaming, actually. I was drawn to model the French side because of their interesting uniforms and heavy reliance on Huron and other native allies. Plus, everyone loves an underdog, right? We'll be using Sharp Practice by Too Fat Lardies , but I suspect we might end up giving Studio Tomahawk's ruleset Muskets and Tomahawks a try eventually as well. This Christmas, I was gifted a box of Warlord's Woodland Indian War Party , which are actually metal sculpts by Conquest Miniatures. I've always loved these characterful and detailed figures, and painting them has been great. This is just the first batch of them, and I also quickly added to my collection some plastic natives , also from ...

  As some of you may have inferred, my next big project will be set in colonial America. I plan to keep the precise setting under wraps for a little while longer, until I have some figures done to show, but I have already gotten cracking on some terrain. This first batch covers, as you might have guessed, fences, ponds, and a bit of delicious scatter terrain. My Russian cabin is shown here, though some more period-correct buildings will come in time. To me, the split-rail 'snake' fences are a must-have for a project like this, so I set about making some, drawing inspiration from Mark at Tactical Painter and John Bond . Here, an anachronistic German soldier shows the scale of these fence sections. I did 8-inch lengths, largely because I typically have to transport my gaming kit to and from gaming stores and friends' places. It might be better to have one or two 12-inch lengths. If so, I can always make those later. These ponds are cut from the MDF or hardboard I use for bas...