15mm WWI Update

I haven't been posting a lot lately, just because other factors have been getting in the way, but I have slowly been chipping away at my ongoing 15mm WWI project. Here's a quick look at a few more figures that are ready to go over the top.

First up, here are five more French riflemen from Peter Pig. The only modification to any of these was the addition of a scope to the weapon of one of the crouching riflemen, and the removal of his bayonet. He will be a designated sharpshooter for his team. The "Through the Mud and the Blood" rules allow a designated figure to operate as a normal rifleman until called upon to operate as a sniper, at which point some special rules apply.

Next, four grenadiers from Irregular miniatures. Some of you may recall an earlier post I did about adjusting Irregular WWI Germans to fit in better with their Peter Pig counterparts. For these guys, I just removed the pedestal under them. No heads were removed and swapped, as they fit in better than the Germans did.

You can see the variety of poses is not great. I bent some of the arms around a little to add some minor variety, but that's not much. The sculpting quality in general is not quite up to the Peter Pigs, but they're not bad figures, and it was a quick way to add dedicated grenadiers to the unit.

And lastly, here are five more Germans. The first, second and fifth (from left to right) are from Irregular Miniatures, and had their pedestals removed, their heads swapped with Peter Pig heads, their arms bent around and, in the case of the second from the left, a pistol added to one hand and a grenade to the other.

The figure in the middle is from Peter Pig's WW2 line. I removed the pockets from his chest to make his jacket more appropriate for WW1. You can just make out the edge of a little piece of white card on his base. It has a number on it, which identifies which "Big Man" card is his in the "Through the Mud and the Blood" deck.

The figure next to him is another Peter Pig figure, who was originally carrying a submachine gun. I replaced it with two small brass rods to give him a double barreled shotgun - not a military-issued weapon, but perhaps a hunting piece that I can imagine a trench raider taking with him on an assault.

There's plenty more of these in the works, and I look forward to posting more photos soon.

Shatterlands - Kickstarter for Second Set of Figures

I had the opportunity recently to preview (and try my paintbrush out on) the second issue of figures for "Shatterlands," the 28mm blackpowder fantasy skirmish game from Stonegate Forge. The company is currently close to fully funding the Kickstarter campaign that would allow them to put these figures into general production, so you should definitely take a look at their KS page.

If you're not familiar with the game, it's a really fun take on skirmish gaming, with a sort of French and Indian War feel reimagined in a fantasy setting. It has a number of innovative features, including character-specific scratch-off cards that let you track both damage and improvements for a character across a whole campaign. You don't known in advance how quickly or how significantly a character will advance in skill level until after each game, when you scratch off a given trait and see the result. Also a neat system of color-coded dice that let you see at a glance how good a particular character is at getting the job done, without having to memorize a long list of modifiers. For example, in general you want to roll low, so if you see a character is rolling a 20-sided die when shooting, rather than a 6-sided, you might not want to try to use that guy as a sharpshooter. The game is unlike any other I've played of this type, and always makes for some tense moments and a good immersive sense of story.

From a painter's point of view, this is another set of fantastic figures. The sculpting is extremely crisp, the poses are very attractive and well chosen, and the casting is top notch. Mold lines are very, very slight, and flash was nonexistent.

The extension includes 6 new figures, 3 Dumah Rangers (in colorful uniforms) and 3 Rappani (in black with bows and arrows). You have the option of equipping the Dumah Ranger on the right (in blue jacket) with either a rifle or a combination crossbow/ musket, as I have chosen here.