World's Edge Wargaming

The new edition of the MIddle Earth Strategy Battle Game is a great game. Especially as I started the game about year ago, the new interest on it is great. We had a 12 player tournament at our club yeasterday which was quite a feat in the local scene, as the 40k tournaments tend to not get much more players nowadays in Finland. I had other stuff to do for most of the day, so I only got to play the last battle, but I played a game with a friend who also couldn't make it during the week. The earlier game I won against Isenguard with my combined arms of Mordor and Harad, but in the tournament I faced (again) the Elves I have faced a few times already in recent history and got beaten again. Still, both games were awesome and just added fuel to the Lord of the Rings heat I have. Nice boards, including one of mine. My friend Janne had got his elves in bit less red shape during the night before the tournament, and also had made an awesome Moria board out of an Ikea Lack tabl

I got asked to participate a fun community project to paint the demo set of the Blackstone fortress for a local game store (http://ohmygame.fi). The units/heroes/villains were drafted and everyone got a traitor guardsman in addition. I had a late pick, but the Chaos lord was somehow still up for grabs. I wanted to play a little with OSL and made a searing hot hammer for him. It turned out nice enough considering that it took my 2 hours from undercoated models to finish. Have to go an try the game some day, though I have a feeling it's not a game that I'm particularly interested. It was still a fun change from the 15mm models and LotR stuff to paint a beefy chaoslord with massive sized details.

I got my second big batch of infantry done for my 30 years war project. 8 Stands of musketeers. Again the models are from Totentanz. I based the musketeers 6 to a base instead of 8 for the pikemen, as I though they look nicer in bit more skirmishing formation. I put bit more effort to the bases as I filled them with milliput and added some stones made of cork and some twigs as fallen trees. It was well worth it. Here a full Pike and shotte unit. And here the new 48 musketeers. Next in my painting queue are 4 stands of reiters, 5 stands of dragoons with the dismounted models and 3 officers. After that I actually have enough models to play By fire and sword in a Task force size (actually a lot more infantry that I'm ever going to need). I'll try to arrange a game for the first week of December.

Perry miniatures released recently some Swedish dragoons for Napoleonic period. A friend of mine is  working as a dragoon in the Finnish army and thus we quickly came into conclusion that we have to build small forces for some skirmishing based on the Finnish war between Russia and Sweden in 1808-09. I took Russian side and an essential part of any Russian skirmishing force are Cossacks, which I painted first: The paintwork is nothing fancy. I don't normally like painting horses too much, but after painting about 50 of them this year, I'm getting used to them. These turned out quite nice. I also took some WIP photos along the way: Final steps, bases were covered first with Vallejo pumice. Then I made some mud from dried sea grass, glue, pigment and paint and topped it off with some slush made of baking soda, glue, paint and dirty water from my water cup. The horses have been painted. Start, with a proper drink to go with them (though actually ma