Dino’s July 2022
To say that July was hectic would be the understatement of the year. First of all, I lost my job, then within two weeks I found another, better one. In between, I tried to catch up on all the private stuff that was left behind during that time.
One could think now " That guy doesn't paint at all!". But against all expectations I even managed to paint more than in the previous months. The first mini has set a small milestone with its completion.
Moors of Iberia – Camel Cavalry
With the majority of the moors being ordered from the Outremer Kickstarter, it is time to look at what I am missing. As I mentioned in the article, I wanted a cavalry unit to stand out, and of my ideas was to use camels instead of horses.
Why camels? Well, obviously something different than regular horses. As the Moors in Iberia, especially the ones in the set time frame of this project (Almoravids and Almohads) were Berber Dynasties. And as an old time Age of Empires fan, Berber Camel riders. Yet, there are only a few miniatures out there, and to put it mildly, they are not the best looking. As camel riders weren't part of the Kickstarter I had to look elsewhere and so I did.
As the majority of my Crusader miniatures are Perry sculpts, I looked up their store. Unfortunately their Crusader Arabs didn't cover camels either ... but other ranges did. For example the Sudan range, had these interesting looking Beja warriors on camels.
The Sudan range even had interesting riders to replace the Beja, the Baggara in different variants, with long robes and fitting head gear. But I went for the MA15 Bedouin Command and MA16 Bedouin Cavalry. The miniatures come with separate mounts and riders, so good baseline for a conversion.
Dino’s June 2022
A little more than half a year has passed and finally, FINALLY I received four brushes and three pots of Lahmian Medium from Battlefield Berlin. Sounds strange? But it actually happened.
Somehow I don't seem to have much luck with my orders lately and the matter does leave a sour taste. Since then I have asked what the status is and I was told that there will be a shipping confirmation as soon as the order is on its way. After more than half a year of trust for an open order, I would have expected something like a small thank you, even if it had only been something like a ballpoint pen.
The Barons War 4 – Outremer (The Crusader States)
Almost 800 backers support the of Barons War Outremer campaign and pledged nearly 95,000 GBP towards this goal.
So, why did I participate in this campaign? I talked about it here - Spanish Crusaders vs. Moors. I am looking for miniatures for the Moors on the Iberian Peninsular, even though as the Muslim Warriors of this campaign aren't a 100% perfect fit (being more about the Ayyubid of the Middle Eastern regions and not Almoravid or Almohad of Northern Africa / conquered souther Spain), but should still be "generic" enough, to make it work with some minor tweaks here and there.
Mortal Gods – Veteran
Ha! I finally managed to finish painting up the Veteran of the Corinthians. I admit, so close to the end of the month I hardly believed it, but two undisturbed evenings later I brought my usual color scheme to the mini quite quickly.
June 2022 Review
That's halftime for 2022 already. A bit unexpectedly - at least for me - the last weeks were filled with a lot of Horus Heresy content.
Why was that unexpected? Well, I do plan ahead and do some (at least rough) scheduling for the content road map for the blog, to tie in articles, prepare the content itself and such. I was aware of the Horus Heresy release, and initially my plan was to cover my own 30k content in Adeptus Titanicus to go along, but I was provided by Games Workshop with some of the novelties, and I covered those instead, pushing the other items back in the schedule.
Happy coincidence, the featured legions of the boxed set are Imperial Fists and Sons of Horus, both faction I was already set on for before the announcement and release of this kit. And I even chose the exact patterns, of Mk III for the Fists and Mk IV for the Sons of Horus.
This meant, I covered the Age of Darkness boxed set, with an unboxing of the starter set itself, detailed reviews on the content, like the impressive Spartan Assault Tank, and further coverage like the Liber Astartes and Liber Hereticus. But we're not finished yet, there will be a sum up along with a community interview.
Internal CONflict Rheinland 2022
Finally - an update in the event category! Conflict Rheinland returns after a 3 years break with a private event, and 2019 was our last visit to the event in Langenfeld. Yet, the return is a bit special, as this is not a public event, as they had to cancel that format about a month ago and went for an invite only meet up of some of the hosts and clubs, that would just do a private get-together.
Torsten kindly invited me to join that round of wargamers and I happily accepted the invitation as it would be my first wargaming event in over a two years (my last wargaming road trip was January 2020 to Nottingham, visiting Warhammer World).
Bolt Action – SdKfz 250/11 Ausf. A
We've covered multiple variants of the Sd.Kfz 251 on here already, with the regular 251/1 Ausf. D, 251/16 Flammpanzerwagen and 251/7 Pionierwagen. And thanks to Jürgen from Warlord Games, he sent me a pre-production copy of some of the new Sd.Kfz. 250 Ausf. A (Alte) kit, from their trade meetup in Nottingham.
So far, the Sd.Kfz. 250 was available as a resin kit and now got an update and turned into a multi-variant plastic kit that is now available from Warlord Games directly and their trade network. The final kit obviously comes with a proper packaging, decals and all the additional content you're used to. In my case, I got the base sprue and the one to build the /11 variant leichter Schützenpanzerwagen mit einer 2,8-cm-schweren Panzerbüchse 41.
May 2022 review
Where April was a themed month of Stargrave (and we're not finished there, as I still have some posts in preparation), the month of may was focused on Bolt Action.
I covered three reviews, two of them D-Day campaign supplements British & Canadian Sectors and US American Sectors, as well as another plastic kit with the long awaited Inter-Allied Commandos review and some support my 8th Army and Afrikakorps.
Dino’s May 2022
Last month I asked you how the ease of the Covid measures had affected your hobby life and I received some interesting feedback. Overall, I could see from your feedback that the different views on the measures have partly led to a small split in the hobby community, between the more cautious and the less cautious hobbyists. In general, however, the changes have led to more contacts among those who already checked their health status before each visit anyway, and the number of tabletop games in private has increased again.
In my opinion, it is encouraging that we as hobbyists still show enough common sense, where we also pay attention to our fellow man and not only to ourselves. It shows that integrity and consideration are still present and lived in our hobby. Altogether the contacts have strengthened again somewhat - above all however online. During the period of increased precautions, the online community in particular proved to be a strong anchor for us hobbyists, so that most social contacts could be maintained.
In this regard, I also have to say a few words of thanks to the people who are always encouraging me to push my projects further in the Tabletopwelt forum in my thread and my known group of Tabletop Daddies. So I managed to paint the last hoplite for the Corinthians group that was left for Mortal Gods.