Krisztian painted the HAT 1870 Frenchmen

When I got the figures back from the caster I was so exited I put a photo of the metals late in the night on my blog.
Here now the official photos which I will put in the shop this weekend. Krisztian painted them for me and I think they are really looking good.
As for their enemies, 18 poses of Bavarians done by Massimo are already with Jörg Schilling who will do the casting of them.
So in case you need a late Christmas gift to reinforce someones Crimean range, 1859 Italy or simply as I do to start with a 1870 Franco-Prussian war project, help me to cover the costs of them:-))

Krisztian is not just a great painter, he - in my mind - makes the best photographies of figures too!
Many thanks mate for helping me out here!

The first carved master for Rocroi

What do you say to this figure, made by Denis Huré  in 1/72 scale?
It is very easy to do. Simply take a cube of soft wood, glue a drawing of a flat figure on two sides of the cube and then simply take a knife and cut it out. Afterwards you take this wooden piece and carve some more details into it to make it threedimensional.
As I say, very simple......

Sometimes I can't believe what is possible.!!!

Figures for Rocroi

You know with the existing range of plastics it is difficult for a purist like me (Schmitty always searches for cover when I start to tell him about historical correctness of uniforms:-))) to create a Spanish tercio and French attackers.

Ok, to cover the mass of the figures we have to go for our exitsting armies of Revell and ACA 30YW and ECW plastics. Beside this Hank made me a great gift some years ago, sending over 800 Hinton Hunt and Tumbling Dice ECW figures with a lot of cavalry. Beside this I have others like old Minifigs S-range and Kennington .

Now with Mars hitting the market with French and Spaniards this is an option. But to be honest I have seen worse figures - and a lot of better ones...

So as you know me we started ordering some new figures from sculptors. Massimo already put photos of the figures he is sculpting after the Ferrer Delmau painting for Michael Cremerius from Germania figures. These figures will be available within the next few month in resin and metal. Another sculptor, Denis from France is working on dead and dying figures and some more cavalry. in the end we will have a lot of figures and hopefully the time to paint them:-)

Beside this stuff, Falcata miniatures started with a Spanish 30YW range too. See here, how they look like. Very interesting for us.

I am not sure, but have I posted this photo of the French OOB at Rocroi before?

And here how a proper Artilleryunit should look like

And as I have mentioned Denis above, see here some of his 25mm figures. These photos are again from Alfred's collection. Believe it or not, but Denis is carving out figures from a peace of soft wood!!

And more photos from the Museum at Rocroi

Alfred and Roland Umhey worked on the exhibition in the museum some years ago. As we are working together on the next years diorama (BTW, more figures of the own production will follow soon)
Alfred gave me his complete photo-series of the museums project.

See here the next bunch from it

Some more for Rocroi

Ralph has some great postings on his blog for this battle too. This one I found interesting.

Beside this as you liked Stephan's SYW diorama, here are the photos of the one he made for the 30YW.

I hope to have much more photos from my own armies soon. At the moment I am thinking about organising a tercio in scale 1:1

Something total exotic - Westafrican cavalry

Well, you know I am always after the lesser known subjects:-) This here is the most exotic stuff I ever made for myself. Westafrican cavalry (Benin, Sokoto etc) for the 17th to early 20th century.
These guys buildt an Empire in West Africa and fought against Slavers and other African natives. When the British came in 1904 they thought they can match them too in heavy cavalry charges on British squares with machine guns. Didn't worked this time then....

I produced two such figures some years ago with six different head-versions. Now Dirk Risser painted for me the first of this figures and I want to show you the photo here.

These guys are much more colorful than you can think. Would be an eyecatcher on every colonial diorama or wargame in my eyes.

And there is already an interesting book from Foundry on the market for them

So in case you are interested in such extotic stuff, they are now in the shop:-))