Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Walloon Guards flags sample

Let me show you a printed 15mm sample of our recently released WSS Walloon Guards flags, as fitted on a regiment belonging to my own collection:

The unit only shows the regiment's own colours, due to a customary practice I adopted years ago, when my units were smaller than currently. Then I chose to use the king's colours to decorate generals' stands and special vignettes, so here you can see what this latter flag looks like, once put in place:

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Free booklets & painting guides

Long time before creating the Minairons miniatures brand, I had been running a blog called "Desperta ferro!", from which I shared some of my hobby experiences under form of PDF files for free download; often as a result of a wargaming campaign with my local mates, other times as a product of my personal research after a project in horizon. Perhaps someone here still remembers the first one, a booklet named "Catalonia Stands Alone" devoted to the solitary, hopeless war waged by the principality in the last stages of the War of Spanish Succession. Encouraged by the positive feedbacks earned, I still published a few documents else before having to resign and shutting the blog doors down --mainly due to the difficulties and troubles inherent to creating a miniatures brand.

Now that some of such troubles are seemingly fading away slowly, I have regained much of the hobby time I had been denying to myself for such a long while, so being able to play games again with some regularity, and even to run some new campaigning. This circumstance has allowed me to reconsider making available again some of those titles, either in their past format or under a new concept.

And this is precisely what I've started doing right now from Minairons miniatures website. So I have created there a new Free Downloads section at root level, currently comprising just a handful of free SCW painting guides as well as a PDF product catalogue; and I shall expand it quickly to contain all the free stuff mentioned above. Some of such materials are likely to be uploaded as they were, under form of a PDF booklet; but others will be shared as data cards, following the previous positive experience with the mentioned SCW painting guides.

Some of such WSS data cards have already been uploaded and are available; I would thank sincerely your feedbacks on them. I shall publish and upload more of these on a regular basis --probably with some simultaneity with the 15/20/28mm flag sheets I'm currently releasing.

About the booklets themselves, as said I will be revising them the one after the other, to get ensured about which ones to salvage or to discard (with disregard of the data cards above expansion), and see what must be translated still. For you to get an idea on what I've got ahead, there is an all-in-one booklet, a related WSS campaign, a WWII campaign (that has probably become outdated due to Battlefront's expansion of their Firestorm system) and an 18th c. Caribbean Sea campaign (so some amount of work ahead!).

Thursday, May 9, 2019

WSS Walloon Guards flags

This is our latest addition to the War of Spanish Succession military flags ranges at 1/100, 1/72 and 1/56 scales. As usual, they've been released as DIN A7 sized PDF sheets, for users to download and print at will. Regardless of scale, each sheet comprises two flags preformatted for the intended scale: King's and Regiment's colours.

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

Painting commission completed

Today I've completed a painting job I was commissioned some months ago, consisting of 17 Peter Pig ships to be painted as either Spanish merchantmen or pirates. Only the two largest ones out of the commission were left, and these are what I'm going to show you now, along with a couple others that I've built for my own collection.

This time I've performed very few modifications on the ships --just replacing their original bowsprits. Both have been dressed as Spanish indiamen, so proudly flying large Burgundy Cross ensigns and mast flags.

One of them has been given a different flag on foremast (a light blue one with the Spanish coat of arms), that was historically used by one admiral in WSS times. I thought it might be useful to the user --for identifying the Treasury Fleet admiral for instance, or a ship commanded by an able Reserve captain perhaps, or for whatever other reason he might need.

As you can see, decks are crowded with Peter Pig crewmen and guns, Minairons lifeboats and some unmanned guns from my spares box.

I've enjoyed this commission intensely, and would like to thank the commissioner for his patience and trust. Hope he likes the result not less than I do.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

1/600 Ship of the Line, almost ready

I'm proud to show you what our upcoming 1/600 Ship of the Line looks like, now that all the 3D printing and prototyping work is over. We intended to make a medium ship of the line, rather than any of those huge 1st or 2nd rates. So we took as a loose model an early 1700s Russian 58-gun warship good for building a 4th rate model from it --or even a small 3rd rate one if imagining it plentiful of bow and stern chaser guns!

The hull you can see in the following pictures is the ultimate production resin one, while masts and rigging are 3D printed prototypes that are to be taken to foundry --so the ultimate ones will be white metal.

Here below you can see the fine detail achieved on hull sides, showing the gun ports open.

We have also designed rigging versions for fully unfurled sails, that we shall most probably sell apart, as optional accessories for ship customization.

Here below, our warship can bee seen together with a race-built galleon from Skytrex, so as to help having a notion about their respective sizes.

We would like to have it released before the start of Summer; however, as is it likely unexpected issues to eventually occur, let's be less optimistics just for cause, and let's say we'll have it ready by late Summer.