Back again ! with Lugana Studio

Dear all, after many years of activity pause I now revived my interests with respect to the hobby!

I restarted with my interest on terrain making and wanted to share my activity with some friends and possibly with other hobbysts in my and other countries. To this end i created Lugana Studio with a facebook page and  an ETSY shop.

here are some pictures of my recent works on Minas Tirith walls. I plan to create specific blogs with the details of my work and to collect reactions and ideas.

thanks for the interest and cheers

Daniele

The first Prussians !

I finished tonight the first small batch of line infantry including 2 bases with 8 figures in total.

Still to be done

Foot (infantry+artillery) = 232 - 8 = 224
Generals = 5
Guns = 4

The Process

To speedup the paint I tested a fast paint system in which I used a blue primer for the figures and black primer for the knapsack and heads. It seems to have worked fine. I initially did not glue the head and knapsack but for the next group i will immediately glue the heads.. there is no advantage to glue them later and in this case there is also the risk of damaging the paint job.









The primer is Liquitex prussian blue spray... excellent ! Then i did a quick dry brush with medium blue. I painted the trousers with london grey and the coat german fieldgrey or other grey. the gaiters and the shako are painted black grey. Then i did a general wash with nuln oil and reikland flesh on the  faces. After the wash I did a quick passage with the original colors and completed. It took me one and half evening... a bit too long. I hope to speedup in the next batches (the next will be of 16 to complete the battalion).

First batch arrived

To assemble my forces I selected two excellent 28mm miniature producers which I knew very well.

• Warlord games for the landwher .
• Perry miniatures for the line infantry and artillery.

I was already familiar with their products and their excellent service. In addition, both companies are active supporters of the Waterloo replayed initiative and offered generous discounts on their products for the participants so it was a win-win option.

The first batch arrived is that of Perry brothers. As you see from the picture I bought are:

• two boxes of plastic line infantry (more than enough for the two musketeers battalions, of 21 men and 3 commands each)
• one pack of fusilier upgrade for the fusilier battalion (20 men and 4 metal commands)
• four guns and crew (1 howitzer and 3 guns actually)
• two mounted general packs
• two packs of landwher commands to add some variation to the warlord miniatures.

In total I must produce

• Infantry and crew = 24*9 + 9 casualty marker + 16 gunners = 216 + 9 + 16 = 241
• Mounted Generals = 5
• Guns = 4

As always it took less than a week to have the Perry jewels on my working bench. Indeed the metal figures came with beautiful small cardboard packs that make them really luxury products ... And when you open the box the first impression is confirmed. Excellent castings, limited mould lines and varied poses make these items a perfect choice.   I was tempted to go with them for the landwher also but the total cost would be too large (I need 6 battalions of lw so about 150 miniatures) and Perry discount only the plastic.

Even though the day after I had to leave for a work trip in the USA I could not resist to start assembling some musketeers ... In the next post I will report the work on the first battalion.

The Prussian 13th Brigade

Let me now explain a little better my task. I am supposed to recruit a "brigade" of 10 units to be used with Black Powder 2nd ed rules. Here is the breakdown I got from Jack (the Ministry of War)

After a while and a couple of emails with Jack I realized that actually the brigade has been split across three players. Each of us will have the 3 Line and 6 landwehr battalions, then I will have an artillery battery of 4 guns while the other two will have a squadron of Landwehr cavalry each...
This means that the whole brigade would field

24 x 9 = 648 infantry !
2 x 12 = 24 cavalry
4 guns and 16 crew
plus staff....

which makes approximately a scale 1:10 since the brigade fielded at the start of the campaign about 6500 men.

In practice i will command a regiment not a brigade but wisely the organizers created balanced forces so that i can have in my unit both line and landwehr ...

I immediately went to my favorite Waterloo source

centjours.mont-saint-jean

where you can find beautiful tables for each regiment present in the hundred days campaign

to see the look of my regiments.

The 10th is a standard prussian line infantry regiment with 2 musqueteers and one fusiliers battalions. It has yellow facings and a nice red/orange flag...

see here the uniforms of the 10th

The Neumark Landwehr has red piping and facings and the Silesian has yellow ones. So a very good mix. It took me a while to understand all what i need (I initially thought about doing two neumark regiments because several order of battle I consulted assigned to this brigade 2nd and 3rd Neumark Regiments) and in the end was very happy to have more variation.

see here the uniforms of the 2nd Neumark Landwehr

see here the uniforms of the 3rd Silesian Landwehr (where you see it enlisted in the 15th brigade)

Finally i had the 21st foot battery with six 6 pdr and 2 7 inch howitzers.

The whole brigade was under command of General Albrecht Georg Ernst Karl von Hake
but actually mine is commanded by major von Braunschweig commander of 2nd Neumark Landwehr. Find here some notes on his life (in German).

Back again

After a long time in which I only posted on facebook I reopen my blog. The reason is that I have been accepted as member of a glorious project and I want to document my steps towards the completion of my tasks ...

In case you are curious the project is nothing less than Waterloo replayed
the largest ever wargame battle with more than 100 players and 22000 miniatures.

I got the info about this project from the newsletter of Perry bros this summer during my holidays ... I immediately wrote to enlist but ... 

Sold out! 

I was not discouraged so I wrote again asking to lbe put in a waiting list in case someone would drop.. 

Land Monday I scanned my hobby email (gargaslittlewars@gmail.com) and I realized that some 10 days earlier I received an email  from one of the organizers Donald Adamson writing me the probably there were some possibility.... 10 days !!!!

I did not even noticed that he called me Danielle (perhaps they were thinking of enlisting a cute girl) ... I immediately wrote Donald saying I accept (took some risk since I did not even consulted my chief of staff :-)

After some very long hours in which I tried to work (not so succesfully) I got an answer from Donald ...

I was in ! I was enrolled as one of the three commanders of the 13th Prussian Brigade (Prussian ? ... ok in the end still a blue jacket !)

Rubicon's T34/76

I am amazed by the quality of the new Rubicon models. Here is a look of the T34/76 i recently built... very nice tank and very easy to build.

Getting two Sherman's at the cost of one !

I recently purchased the fantastic plastic M4A3 Sherman from Rubicon Models
The model is great and easy to assemble and I was super excited by the perspective of getting both the 75 and 76 mm turrets. Unfortunately during the assembling I got a bad surprise ! A few items that were needed by both turrets were only present in a single copy... They are not many but still this made the construction of two turrets a little bit tricky.




First of all I left unglued the base of the turret so that it can be attached to both versions (it stays well in place without glue. Maybe in the future I will magnetize it.









Then I magnetized the 75 and 105mm gun so that I can interchange them easily.

I also magnetized the Cullin hedgecutter so that it can be removed

The last part I needed to adjust was the cupola hatch for one of the two turrets (just one was present. To this end I used "minimold" a nice transparent plastic that softens when warmed and that creates easily a mold that can be used to replicate items with green stuff. The result is excellent and very easy to obtain....

The only think I fear is that I glued the two parts of the hatch in a wrong way since the periscope is looking backward... too late ! The next sherman will be correct!

After painting and weathering the tank I am very happy about the overall result !

My 1/48 collection

I decided to make all my german vehicles in 1/48. They are better in scale wrt to 28mm infantry. The big pity is that the ranges are quite limited and in practice the only army that is possible to make is
the german one that has a decent range. Here is a sa set of samples of y german army.






In total I have

100/17 battery

Here is the big gun of the italian army.... the 100/17. Actually my grandpa was an artillery officer an fought as a leutenant commanding a mixed 75/18 and 100/17 battery in the 1936 Abyssinian war, where he got a silver medal during a big fight against natives at the Uarieu Pass. Later he returned to Italy and was assigned to territorial duties. Fortunately he was not sent neither to north Africa nor to Russia (so i was able to see him...) and after September 8 joined the partisans in Piemonte and Veneto. He left the army after the war as Lt. Colonel.
I ideally think one of the men we painted is my granpa ("Nonno Leo").

Italian support teams

The support is made up by the solothurn anti-tank rifle and by an 81mm mortar.

Italian Command

The third item in the production line is the command team of the platoon. It includes two officers and an artillery observer (actually from the 100/17 gun). The infantryman of the command is yet to be painted.

Officers have the khaki sahariana jacket with the markings. Artillery officers have black pipings.

Bersaglieri II - second squad of the commission

Following the good results obtained with the first squad we produced the second squad. This one has helmets with the typical bersaglieri feather plumes. We kept the same color scheme and basing to keep homogeneity of the army.

More photos below.

The first commission of the Gargas & sons

Tired of fighting against iron-colored armies I was convinced by my friend Max "Pollo" (chicken) to paint his Italians... I started this project since my oldest son Filo decided to help me attracted by an easy flow of fresh money in his pockets. We setup a nice collaboration: I take care of preparing and priming the figures; he paints all the main colors; I wash them with army painter dark tone and then do the refining touches... We used a speed painting technique that is suited for wargame standard quality but I must say that the final result is quite good given that we can do 8-10 items in one evening each... and most importantly Pollo is very satisfied by the result !

Here is a sample of the work done: a squad of Bersaglieri with sun hat.

A nice completion of the bases is an autarchic set of tufts I made with my self constructed flocking dispenser... I'll devote a separate post to that...

Any comment and suggestion is more than welcome !

German Vehicles 1/48

A couple of transport from my collection of German 1/48 vehicles:
A Steyr Heavy Car and an Hanomag, both from tamyia.

Painted with airbrush.

It is easily seen that 1/48 is the right scale for heroic 28mm ! Unfortunately the vehicles available in this scale are not many and for many reasons is much better to use 1/56... sob !

Terrain put pourri !

Here is some terrain complements I prepared some time ago after Fede The Young gifted it to me... they are basically Italeri sets of road signals, walls and anti tank defences... they make a nice addition to our tables....

Winter war BTD reinforcements 6: The high command

Final addition to the army is a fat officer with Nagant gun. It comes from the pack with the other officer that I used for the cavalry squad.

I also bought the Gaz jeep. It is all lead and not fantastic but with the 50% discount it makes an optimal compromise between price and quality. I mounted it on a base since i feel it more fragile than the resin ones.

Winter war BTD reinforcements 5: The heavy mortar

Warlord stuffs are great but often out of stock !

BTD is then ready to fill the ranks with this awesome 120mm mortar including the transport (horrible to assemble but looking nice when finished...).

Unfortunately the crew is of only 3 people  but the seated guy is really great !

Winter war BTD reinforcements 4: The infantry

I could not resist buying a squad of infantry in summer uniform.

Great poses, excellent sculpting and low price are fantastic arguments.

The squad is made up by 10 men with a LMG.

Winter war BTD reinforcements 3: The scouts

I find the BTD scouts are really better with respect to the warlord ones.
I am not very happy about my painting job since the camo blotches do not came out from the rest of the uniform. I should have used a much lighter background since it darkens a lot with the army painter dipping that I use to shade and protect the figures.

Anyway scouts are fearsome with the ability to deploy together with snipers and observers...

Winter war BTD reinforcements 2: The cavalry

The next unit is a superb squad of dismounted cavalry. To make them I used the NKVD men that are really appropriate and painted with the colorful blue trousers. Perhaps they were not that used
in campaign but add a lot of effect to the army.


Again an excellent squad of veterans to field besides the inexperienced rabble... these will arrive to finish the work !