Rügen'46 Gangs Of Sassnitz (3) In Nomine Domini

For last years "Rügen'46" game, more on that in this post, I build for each player an additional squad of troopers. The other minis I built and painted and more from that game can be found in this and this post.

Sister Mary (this post) represented what was left of the Roman-Catholic Church. The Vatican saw in the Sassnitz incident the beginning of the endtime and gathered lots of poorly armed Christian fanatics who would give their life for god in the final battle between good and evil.

These cultist were built combining some Mantic zombie- and ghoulbodies with the robed cultist heads made by Tabletop Art. Their arnament came from my bitsbox. It made fun to build these strange minis, if I find the other 8 (?) cultist heads in my bitsboxes, I may build more of them.
This was the only squad with 8 figures, all other players had only 5 men squads.

The sixth and final Squad I built represents the new Germany, reborn when the war ended with the victory of the allied forces. Since there are not many industrial capacities left after the zombie outbreak, the army of the reborn German nation has to rely on Wehrmacht equipment.

These minis were taken from the German Infantry box from Warlord Games, the mini in the middle may came from Wargames Factory German Infantry box. They were built out of the box except for the heads, where I used heads from the SHS range from Westwind Productions.

This is the first batch of those minis, last Sunday I built 10 more, but I do not think I will paint them soon. But when I do, the mouldlines on the already painted minis will be removed. But I did not care for this when I painted them, I did not have time for that, because I had to hurry.

This Squad was led by an unknown female officer.

This mini was taken from the "Ilsa and the She-wolfes" set made by Pulp Figures. The mini got a new SHS gasmask head and a hairpiece from the bitsbox.

I can not remember in detail which colors I used on the Germans from this post, but the uniform color is Revell Aquacolor Olive Gray, what not only fits for most German uniforms (including the early monocolor Bundeswehr uniforms) as a substitude for Feldgrau, also it is a good first layer of drybrush color for most greens I use for my 15mm tank models.

I can not say if I will find some time for posting tomorrow, but Thursday is the 29th anniversary of the German reunification, and for that reason I will post about German post-war stuff for the rest of the week only.

Meanwhile In Sassnitz...

Work in progress, maybe I will finish the diorama this weekend.

Rügen'46 Gangs Of Sassnitz (2) Сибирские ветераны

For my last years first game of "Rügen'46" I had planned that we would first play a simple dungeon, using only two figures per player, to get warm with the rules. Followed by a simple round of racing, some lines about that game can be found in this post, the third and final part added some more units to the game for each player.

After I showed off two squads of German troops in powerarmour (this post), today I am going to show you the (Neo)Soviet forces which were used.

The commissar in the middle of the pictures obove was one of the squadleaders for the Neo-Soviet forces, just as Karl Heinz von Diskowitz was for his faction. The figure was taken from the Warlord Games "Siberian Veterans" box, on which I took a closer look at in this post, and painted in a similar scheme as all Soviet figurs that can be found on this blog.

Sorry to say, but I can not remember which was the second figure in that team, that is why he is accompanied by the squadleaders of another faction on these pictures.

The two female figures are the leaders of the Soviet factions forces, the figure on the left side is a miniature of Mariya Oktyabrskaya made by Stoessis Heroes, reviewed in this post, the figure right of the commissar was also made by Stoessi, it is a miniature of the Soviet sniper Lyudmilla Pavlychenko, which was (as Mariya Oktyabrskaya) a historical person.
I think, that I may repaint them when I will have the time for that.

Next we have one of the fireteams, taken just as the commissar from the "Siberian Veterans" box too. In the third part of the game, the two Soviet females got five of the veterans as an additional troop. These faction represented what was left of old Mother Russia.

Since I can not say which five figures I took, I made pictures of all of them. Please note, that there are some more figures included in the box.

But at least I think, this guy was not included in the game.

The next squad was another faction from the East. In Stalingrad a new government was made when the old world changed forever in Sassnitz in the year 1946.

Guided by comrade comissar, for the Neo-Soviet faction I choosed to use my modified Plastic Soldier Company Soviet Infantrists minis. I can not say which of them were used, but you can find some pictures of them in this post. Maybe I will get a single sprue of them in the future to give them a small review.

As usual, things not always are happening as supposed, and I did not find the time to finish the kits I wanted to this weekend, but today I managed to finish them, and they look great. The templates for the cards for them, they shall be used as custom units for "TANKS", will get finished tonight, that I can make a testprint tomorrow after work and them publish them via this blog.

Rügen'46 Gangs Of Sassnitz (1) Schwere Mechanisierte Infantrie

The first pictures of some 28mm miniatures I finished for lasts years first Rügen'46 game. I built for all players a combat squad consisting 5 - 7 figures, since most of them were done in the last moment, the paintjob is pretty sloppy.

But anyway, I was (still am) very satisfied with the results of these exhausing nights before the game.

For more informations about Rügen'46, I suggest to read this post.

These powerarmoured troopers were built from minis of the "Void" starterpack. There were two factions included, each squad was built from one of those.

The heads were taken from the SHS range of Westwind Productions, I took a closer look at them in this post. Their arnament and additional equipment was taken from the ww2 German infantry box from (now closed) Wargames Factory.

The shields were also included in the "Void" box.

A closeup of some of the figures with the flash of my camera activated, just to give a better look of the two different color schemes. I think the small Balkenkreuz decals came from Dragon Models 1:144 ww2 tanks range.

Without any paint, the blue/black painted troopers looked like that:

Of course, these troops needed a worthy leader, and that was was they got.

Take a look at "Karl Heinz von Diskowitz", this mini was built by combining some parts of the "Void" box and "Horace Jackson" of Reaper Miniatures Bones range. The look may be anachronistic, but I like this unusual mini.

For some last minute improvised minis, I am happy with them. For years I had no use for the "Void" minis, but now, used for these minis, I am happy that I did not gave them away.

The next batch of miniatures used in the "Rügen'46" game will be shown soon.

Originally this post should have contained a 3D print timelapse video, but due to some technical issues, the first try of making that video was a fail. But I will give it a second try sooner or later.

Rügen'46: Beer and Pretzels

The weekend after my birthday we had a little sit-in and played a first game of "Rügen 46" with some of the minis I showed in previous posts. I set up the simplest rules possible and it was a big fun for all of us.

The game was divided in three parts.

First all players had to escape from a dungeon, followed by a little race, after that we had to search for an artefact in the heavily zombie-infested ruins of Sassnitz.

As usual I forgot to make pictures, the credits for all pictures go to my mate Olli.

It was pretty cool, that the rules were understood by all players which made the game a big fun. After crawling through the dungeon, for the race all players got a GAZ 67 jeep, which I 3D printed from this file.

The GAZ 67 jeeps that I printed for the game got a coat of green, then they got some wash and drybrushing. For the final look all jeeps got a red star decal from the sparebook.
Last but not least all cars got a flag with different motives plus matching counters to tell which car belongs to which player.

I made a first try using Vallejo pigments which I got some years ago. I was satisfied with the results, but after I sealed the models with a coat of Revell Aquacolor matte clear, it seems that some of the pigments rinsed away.

But I think that they still look well for some improvised game pieces.

Finally, all players arrived at the ruins of Sassnitz where each got his actual mission and a squad of troopers for reinforcement. The mission was to find a key under one of the red tokens which were scattered arround the gamefield. For each token collected the player had to draw a card which decided if there was the key or some other useful/useless stuff.

When the key was found the player had to reach a chest in one of the ruins which contained the artifact. But it got very late and we decided to end the game in a draw.

Even when we did not finish the game it was a great fun. Sitting with friends and playing a game is a great thing. The two days before the game I had to do some nightshifts to finish all figures and other stuff but remembering the evening and looking at the pictures, it was worth it

In one of the next posts I will try to recapitulate the rules we used, a pc crash deleted most of my gamefiles that I will have to improvise, but they were pretty simple so that will be no issue.
Followed by a post where I will show all figures that were used, be ready for Karl Heinz von Diskowitz and his comrades.

You do not know anything about this "Rügen46" thing. Just read this post, it may help.

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When you think it is getting bad it still may get badder(worse) and suddenly some months went by without posting. What does not mean that I stopped this blog. But some personal shit was more important than compiling my modelling experiences. This post was started in July but personal issues and struggles kept my from finishing it. Not to mention the promotion at work which means total different work schedules leading to less spare time.

But I will continue this blog, I can not say in which frequenzy, but there a some plans for the future.

First of all I will unbox the new "TANKS The modern age" starterbox and some units for the game from Battlefront miniatures. I am excited for this new version of TANKS which will include helicopters. It should arrive after Christmas, so be prepared for this weekends closer look at it with all its strengths and flaws.

And you will see how I will build up a German force for the game with 3D printed miniatures.

Remember this ? It will be continued, we learned from the first game and will start another 2v2 or maybe even 3v3 TANKS game in the near future.

And then we are still working on our inofficial TANKS extensions. The first will feature some new gamemodes while the second extension is featuring planes and bailed out tank crewmen. It will contain some custom unit-, equipment-, crew- and herocards, custom markers, and custom rules for using planes and AAunits in TANKS.
While the basic rules are done there is still some work to do.
Fun fact: I downloaded the rules for the new TANKS game from Beasts Of War and some of the heli rules resemble the rules my mate Olli and I wrote in the late summer.

Finally there is one last thing to say,

I wish all of you a merry fucking Christmas.

Just Ranting, WTF Is Rügen'46 ?

I was asked by a friend about all this Apemutation-Zombie-Sassnitz stuff, and here they are, the roots of Rügen'46...

Last year I painted some nazizombies (see this post) while my mate Olli was working on his tanks. Do not ask why I built them, maybe I watched "Dead Snow" or some shit like it before. It was our first modelling session, happening on a Monday, since then we call ourselves ironically Montagsmaler, even when we never met on Monday again.

While painting we were talking about this and that, and my blog was one of the topics. I had not posted for more than six years for several reasons.

Maybe now should be the right time to continue posting, I restarted modellbuilding almost a year ago from that. And the zombies which I was painting could be a nice start.

We were talking about the minis and I gave Olli a small overview of this "What if..." weird World War Two concept, showing him Heer46, Conflict47, Dust, and stuff like that.

And soon we were joking about the ridiculousness of all this stuff, remembering weird movies like "Oasis Of The Living Dead" from our youth or wackos believing in stuff like "Die Glocke" and all that weird shit. Yes, naziscum sucks.

But a restart of the blog, would mean that I wanted a "stylish" label for all this www2 stuff, and I can not remember who of us said it first but suddenly the words Rügen Sechsunvierzig appeared which were worth some good laughs.

I think it was "Rügen Sechsundvierzig, die letzte Bastion", what made me spill my drink over the desk in a heavy laughing attack.

As you can see, I continued this blog. I made some years pause with modelling, but at this time I restarted to build models at least for a year. It is still a nice compensation after a stressfull day at work.

Time went by and some more Rügen'46 posts appeared, but I had still no use for all this stuff. To be honest, I do not have any displays for my finished models, I just store them in boxes. And I am not much in wargaming except for a game of tanks once a month.

I just like the figures.

But then I found this blog, stole shameless some ideas, and suddenly it all made sense. I would host a small gaming session at my birthday party. Just like the people at X-acto Science have done before.

Knowing that this would be a hard task, since Olli is the only friend of mine who is interested in tabletop gaming, I had to give it a nice feel and look that my other friends would not be too annoyed by it. Now it are only some weeks to go, and I revealed my plans to all of them, at least they may be prepared of the things to come.

Finding a ruleset "for dummies" was easy, we are going to play a heavyly modified (dumbed down) version of "Combat Zone", some years ago I picked up an English starter from EM4, a year later I got the German version from the bay and the rules are not too complicated for beginners.

But I know I have to dumb them down, experiences from our 2vs2 game of TANKS clearly showed one thing, don't drink and drive.

Finding a good background story was not a problem too, as you have read above, I will take my www2 stuff, write a simple background story and design some factions. And this went well.

Just to give you a plain overview, the world of Rügen'46 is totally screwed up.

Things went as known until the spring of 1946 when something happened at Sassnitz on the island of Rügen. From this point everything changed. The western allies flew from the continent, only appearing as merceneries in the troops of the remaining forces who survived the incident. Ressources are rare, the dead arised, strange things were invented, and an unexpected enemy rises again.

Since I do not want to spoil it for my friends, for more detailed informations about the background and groups of the Rügen'46 universe you will have to wait, it will comesooner or later.

In the meantime I will continue my work on this project, most of the modelling work is done now the paperwork is next. 

Rügen'46: Stoppt die Eindringlinge !!

Another Rügen'46 post? 

This time it is Reaper Bones' Sister Maria and a companion.

Since not only the remains of world's governments strife through the ruins of the devastated city of Sassnitz, the forces of the Vatican may be seen in various raiding parties.

The mini got painted in a very simple way, I even did not use white on the collar, it is still the color of the material. The main color is black with no shadings or highlighting. Depending on the source and angle of light, I like the look of natural shading on this figure.

Next is Indiana Jones' unemployed cousin from the South a.k.a. Frank Buck. Adventurers from all over the world are joining the opposing forces for great reward, just as this guy, but are they trustworthy?

He was painted in various beige and brown tones followed by a Army Painter soft tone wash. Then I painted the hat and the face/hair.

The nun and the adventure rare made by Reaper miniatures who offers with it's Bones sortiment a big range of miniatures for a low prices. The reason for this is, that the miniatures are made from some kind of PVC. They are pretty soft and the details are very soft. 

I hope the paint will stay on these figures since they will be in heavy use in some weeks. I am concerned about the soft material, some paint may split off.

One miniature from the British Snipers set of Warlord Games' Bolt Action range. Human ressources got rare since the incident, highly trained marksmen from overseas can be seen in any of the conflicting groups which are the remaining since the collapse of the civilisation.

I like the look of his ghillie suit, and the paintjob of it went pretty uncomplicated. I used green as basecoat, then I used two more green tones to paint some of the patches of the suit. After that I only added a wash with Army Painter soft tone before I went on the rest of the figure.

Last but not least a picture of two minis from a previous post. I planned to rearm them and since I got the excellent weapon sprue from the Warlord Games Siberian veterans, I got some matching handguns.

The female miniature got a new revolver and the male figure got a complete new hand with gun. I cut away the old parts and glued the new arnament to the mini.

Since I am pretty wasted at the moment, since Mr. Burnz got his birthday today. I am happy that I made this post some days ago, don't think this would work well at the moment. There is still one more post (almost) ready, which will be online tomorrow, but in the meantime I made some more weird stuff, enough material for some future posts.

If there are heavier mistakes in ma bad English than usual, please excuse this rare circumstance I will fix it as soon as possible. But now in this moment.

Rügen'46: Механизированная пехота обезьян (and some 3D printed stuff)

Since the Rügen Incident, things went bad in Europe. Findings from various artefacts did not solve the question what happened on the island and it is still unclear what hides beneath the ruins of Sassnitz.

But what was found pushed scientific progress beyond known borders....

Mechanised Ape Infantry (M.A.I.) which is one of the results from cruel experiments in the bunkers of Stalingrad, also known as "Ape-X" from Reaper Miniatures' Bones range.

Reaper offers with it's Bones sortiment a big range of miniatures for a low prices. The reason for this is, that the miniatures are made from some kind of PVC. The material is pretty soft and the details are soft.

On both minis I modified one arm. I cut and reposed the arm, then the resulting gap was filled with Greenstuff, in which I sculpted a fur pattern with my hobbyknife (called cuttermesser only by professionals). If I would not know, I could not say which arms were changed.

Also both miniatures got a new 3D printed 50mm roundbase, since I did not like the look of the bases attached to them. The bases were printed with the same setting than the stuff below, and took 50 minutes to print for each of them.

I finished the miniatures with a simple but effective paintjob. When these creatures will be used for future games they will count as light tanks.

While I painted the miniatures, the 3D printer printed some movement trays from Thingiverse. They will be a nice addition for games or maybe even figure storage.

By the way, I think I never mentioned that we are using PLA as printing material.

The movement trays were printed with 100% infill at 195 degree celsius, with a print and movement speed of 50mm/sec. Printing one of these things took about an hour, after that I added some sand and my standard base colorset to make them match with the bases of the minis on it.

And as you can see, the new movement trays look decent and match perfect with the bases.

Rügen'46: Нападающие, готовые к атаке

Last weekend I spent some time to rework the Plastic Soldier Company Russian infantry I painted a while ago. Even when I was happy with them when the were finished, in the moment I saw the Westwind Production SHS heads, see this post, I knew what would be to do with them.

I messed up the pictures.

 there are six figures missing and 

six figures two times on the pictures above

Heads were rolling like at the French Revolution. After all minis were headless, I drilled holes for the new heads, which were glued with UHU Hart. This fine stuff needs some time to dry but after it is dried there is a strong connection.

The modifications went without big complications, the most heads were easy to remove, some poses needed more efford, because of some hands and guns attached to the helmets.

I wanted to save some time, that is why the minis in firing poses look a little weird. But I did not want to repaint the whole mini, what I would have to do if I had to pose the gasmask filter a little more appropriate.

The paintjob was fairly simple. The mask, tube, and filter were painted with Revell Aquacolor. Then I made two black dots for the eyes, followed by a lighly thinned black wash. The helmet was painted before I sealed the new head.

Luckily there was almost no damage to the paint at the necks where I removed the heads. I used AK Russian primer for the new heads, that color concealed all messed up spots arround the necks.

Finally I found a use for my (weird) ww2 styled miniatures, and are only four weeks to go before these guys will roam through the streets of Sassnitz. But before they can do this, there is a lot of work to do.

Tomorrow is Sunday what means: turn off the mobile, ignore the doorbell, time for some models to build or paint. This time I have a clear goal, I have some built Amera Plastic Mouldings ruins in the basement that will get a new look.

Rügen'46: Achtung, Spione!

A group of allied commando forces accompanied by their trusty drone. In my Rügen'46 background settings, the allied commands decided after devastating losses of men and material to withdraw all their troops from the continent while the plague is spreading

Allied specialists can join any faction as so-called military advisors, but since the plague spread over the oceans, their armies are needed to defend the homeland.

Two minis from the Warm Acres boardgame "Hour of Glory". Due to the game mechanics you get the same character in a sneaking and in a fighting pose.
I replaced the left miniature's knife with a bad looking pistol which will be replaced when I get a new one. The other figure got not only a pretty weird view but also a cigarette.

Again two miniatures from "Hour of Glory" and again the same character in a sneaking and in a fighting pose. I did not do any changes to the figures but if I get a nice looking revolver the actual revolver of the left mini will be replaced.
The overall quality of these "Hour of Glory" figures could be a lot better.

Today I finished this Mr. Gutsy inspired robot figure made by Brother Vinni. Made from very soft resin, the 8 parts went together very well. It was the first time I used UHU Hart glue for resin and like the actual result. For the paintjob I used the same colors that I use for my 15mm US tanks.

A specialist armed with a revolver and a sharpened wooden peg by East Riding Miniatures. The other mini came in a blister with the vampire miniature from this post.

These miniatures were mainly painted with Revell Aquacolor Khakibraun and an unlabeled olive green. The main wash I used was thinned down GW Agrax Earthshade. For the bases I used the materials which can be seen in the background of the first picture.