New Year, New Update

Received a couple things from my beautiful wife and kids for Christmas, the wife got me a box of Warlord Games "Union Cavalry & Zouaves Brigade" and my kids bought me three 15mm buildings from Sarissa for my Civil War board!

The brigade box I mostly wanted for the cavalry, as I read more about the Civil War the way cavalry was used is really starting to interest me. There are a few "traditional" cavalry engagements but there's also a lot of dismounted action that I think could be really fun to play out on the tabletop.

The first building I made up was the excellent Sarissa North American church. Really easy to put together (although I'm a messy SOB with the super glue) and really pops after just a simple paint job

The second building I painted up was one of the Sarissa 15mm North American houses. These are also really simple kits to put together and I attempted to make it look a little more beaten up than the church. I'm not thrilled with how the white turned out on it but I'm trying to not let little mistakes ruin the larger miniature for me.

There is also a third building and I'll probably paint that between doing some of the miniatures, the larger size of the houses are a little easier on my eyes so I can commit a little more to them.

Next on the list is getting stuck into some infantry stands for the Rebels and Patriots forces that I'm putting together. I'll be streaming some of my painting on twitch next Thursday at 8:30am EST!

twitch.tv/TheYoungBeef - Miniatures with Beef

 

Simple Wargame on Tabletop Simulator for twitch.tv

 I've always wanted to host some sort of tabletop wargame on my Twitch channel because it's a hobby I love and I want to be able to share those things with my community.

I recently came across a YouTube video where a fella was using Tabletop Simulator to run a Black Powder game set in the American Civil War and I just had to try putting something similar together myself.

The basis of the game is a very stripped down version of the Osprey "Rebels and Patriots" ruleset, there's basically three moves you can do in chat - Move, Shoot, Charge, and depending on how well the community receives it I can add more rules to it later on (as well as incorporate Streamloots integration).

I downloaded a couple maps and settled on this one -

Then I downloaded these units -

The board I downloaded is beautiful, it's large, it's detailed and I think it's going to offer a great back and forth game in chat.

I also made up some simple cards so people in chat can see which units are theirs and added some casualty markers. I also made up some reference cards for the four units available for chat to use - Line Infantry, Skirmishers, Cavalry and Light Artillery.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how well the game can be played in a Twitch chat and I'm hoping I'll have a battle report to share on here once that happens.

Epic ACW "Rebels and Patriots" Project - Confederate Skirmishers, Artillery and Commanders

 I haven't completed much since my last post but I did finish the last of the skirmishers for the project (for now) with two units of Confederate Skirmishers (also Eskice epic scale miniatures)

I've also finished a Confederate artillery piece, this one will represent a well trained Medium Artillery battery and is one of the Warlord Epics plastics

And finally I finished two commanders, one for each side. These will probably be replaced once I purchase the commanders sets from Warlord as I'd like to have a 40mm circular base with a commander, flag bearer and aide on each and make them a little flashier but these fellas will do for now.

The next units I need to paint are the main infantry units for each side, it's too hot right now to paint where I am but once the weather dies down I'll be back painting and I might even finish a project for once!

Epic ACW "Rebels and Patriots" Project - Union Skirmishers and Medium Artillery

 Here are two more stands done for the union force, one stand of union skirmishers from the Eskice 3d printed collection and one stand of Union artillery from the Wargames Epic Union sprue. 

I'm really happy with how they've turned out and I think going over after shading and making the pants pop a little more will really make them stand out opposite their confederate opponents. I have four more stands to do for my first union force that I'll be using for Rebels and Patriots and they'll finally be ready for battle!

Epic ACW "Rebels and Patriots" Project - First Stand of Union Sharpshooters

Completed the first stand of miniatures for my ACW Epic 15mm project to use in Osprey "Rebels and Patriots" games. This stand will be a unit of Skirmishers with the Sharpshooter upgrade and are modelled on Berdan's Sharpshooters for use in my Union force.

I'm fairly happy with how they turned out, this is still a really new scale for me so I'm trying to stop getting too into the details, I'm trying to keep the 3 foot rule in the back of my head so I'm not getting frustrated trying to paint a bayonet scabbard perfectly. The only thing that I'm a little miffed about is that the Testors Dullcote that I sprayed them with after put a little sheen on them that I'm not a fan of.

The models themselves are from Eskice miniatures and were purchased from a seller on ebay, but they look fairly decent with the miniatures from the Warlord Games ACW epic line.

Next up are three more stands of skirmishers, two for the confederacy and one for the union, and then I'll be getting into painting the line infantry which I'm a little nervous about because there are so many miniatures in a unit.

WIP: Civil War Diorama

 I'm a huge nerd when it comes to the American Civil War and I've wanted to make this diorama for a while. What this diorama shows is a union firing line pushing Confederates from a split rail fence, a type of fence that screams 19th century America. So far I've finished one side of the diorama, the one covered in dead/wounded Confederates. I still have about 10-15 Union soldiers to add to the diorama before I call it good.

All the miniatures in the diorama are from the Perry Miniatures collection, some metal but mostly plastic. 

TIGR Safari

For the last few years I've been playing alot of Escape From Tarkov. For those that aren't familiar it's an extraction shooter set in the "Russia 2028" setting in the fictional city of Tarkov. One of the quests that you're given early on is to make three Russian tiger vehicles for a shady UN logistics officer called Peacekeeper.

This is my attempt at building a MENG 1/35 scale TIGER up as one of these vehicles. The only things that I purchased were the set itself and a sheet of UN waterslide decals that I bought off of ebay.

Here's how I started, I left the passenger door open to match the in-game version.

After that I basecoated the entire thing in a dark grey, slathered on some nuln oil and then drybrushed the exterior with a cheap 'Fog Grey" color. I hate painting white so the less I have to do of that, the better. I also thought it looked better this way too than it would if I painted it exactly like the one in-game.

It was also at this point that I snapped the antenna off by accident. I didn't notice right away but I'm pretty sure I snapped it off with my forearm at one point while I was working on the bottom of it.

With this done the next step was attaching the three UN decals to the side, this was done with the usual bowl of water and the one two combo of microsol and microset. This is also when I got some of the heavier weathering tones onto the sides and bottom of the body.

This was all I could get done before the base was finalized so I got to work on that, I tried to make it as close as I could to the in-game environment, a ditch beside a road that slopes up on the backside. Once I had this done I could glue the Tiger in place, put some lighter weathering on the tires and underside of the vehicle to blend in with the base and call it good!

All in all this project took a little over two weeks, an hour here and there during the day and a couple of long evenings. I'm really happy with how it turned out and modelling 1/35 vehicles is something I've really grown to enjoy.

Welcome to the blog!

 Welcome to my new blog. I paint various things, mostly 28mm historicals but also some 1/35 vehicles, Warhammer (fantasy AND 40k). I'm hoping this blog can give people some ideas for their own projects and also serve as somewhere I can dump pictures of everything I've worked on instead of using Facebook.