Brave Little Belgians

[gbulens]

Hi all,

I am pretty new here, even though I have been an anonymous reader of the forum for a while. I finally took the step to present a project a friend (thierry) and I are working on.

As we are both Belgians, we wanted to represent our colours in the First World War. As the Belgians spent most of the war behind the Yser Line, the most interesting period to play the Belgians is the first year of the war. So here starts our little project...
First we had to choose the scale of our enterprise. Were we going to go for a skirmish level game or did we want to use whole battalions? In the end, it was a friend of Thierry that made the choice for us...

He knew Kris Van Dijck, and the model range he was making for the First World War is not only outstanding in its quality, but he is also going to recreate all the diffferent items the Belgian army of the time included. Now, in the meanwhile I have gotten to know Kris a lot better and I can only conclude that he is a perfectionist of a whole new level... ( and i like my perectionists ) See for yourself the detail and quality of his work => http://vandyckmodelsandfigurines.be/index.php/furniture/world-war-one.html
So 12 mm it was going to be...

As we promised ourselves to start testing different rulesets and try different scenarios at the next ODIT convention on the 6th of June, I bought about 800 infantry from him (400 Germans and 400 Belgians), some Minerva cars and some officers. As this is not enough to start a battle, I used some Kallistra Early war german and belgian equipment I had lying around here... So this gave me 800 infantry, some 100 cavalry, 40 guns and 40 HMGs to paint...

And that is where this starts... As a motivation, I wanted to bore you all to death with my progress on the subject...
Expect the first pictures tomorrow!

Now to bed, for some much needed rest....

[von Lucky]

12mm... that amout of figures... with that deadline. All the best.

And I've seen pictures of the Minerva before - beautiful little sculpt.

[Firescale Whack]

Going to have to keep an eye on this thread.

I met Kris at the show in Ghent this month and picked up some of his beautiful Germans and Belgians there and was blown away
with the detail. I plan to base them individually and use them with through the mud and blood by the two fat lardies, but I will be interested to see what rules you use for them.

I do believe a lot of n scale model train accessories can be used for this scale and are a cheap, good quality source for terrain and farm animals!

[Atheling]

I met Kris at the show in Ghent this month and picked up some of his beautiful Germans and Belgians there and was blown away
with the detail. I plan to base them individually and use them with through the mud and blood by the two fat lardies, but I will be interested to see what rules you use for them.

So, they are going to be or are commercially available then? They are so stunning it would be a crime for them not to be!

Darrell.

[gefreiter]

AAAAh, some little Belgians Mr Bulens and Mr VanCamp.
Welcome.

Rommel

[Firescale Whack]

So, they are going to be or are commercially available then? They are so stunning it would be a crime for them not to be!

Darrell.

They are available now Darrel, here is the link.

http://vandyckmodelsandfigurines.be/index.php/home.html

[Atheling]

They are available now Darrel, here is the link.

http://vandyckmodelsandfigurines.be/index.php/home.html

The postage seemed a bit steep or i would have ordered a sample pack of Belgiums and Germans. I tries the e-mail address but it's not sending despite me place in the @ symbol where he suggests in his mail address 

Does anyone know of another way I can contact the seller please?

Darrell.

[von Lucky]

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Van-Dyck-Models-and-Figurines/1506760799574390

[Atheling]

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Van-Dyck-Models-and-Figurines/1506760799574390

"Duh!" on my part!! That's where I first saw them  .

I amaze myself at times 

Darrell.

[von Lucky]

FYI if you were going to say you don't use Facebook I was going to give you the postal address. Sometimes I don't envy you old folks that have been in the hobby for decades (I do envy that bit), having to order by catalogue and mail :shiver:

[Atheling]

FYI if you were going to say you don't use Facebook I was going to give you the postal address. Sometimes I don't envy you old folks that have been in the hobby for decades (I do envy that bit), having to order by catalogue and mail :shiver:

Bloody cheek!!  

(Hope you lost the cricket)  

I think I'm going to message the chap on FB and ask if I can have some samples- i can paint them up and give him free advertising on my blog in return 

Darrell.

[von Lucky]

We weren't invited, I guess the others were scared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_national_cricket_team

I guess pestering for a sample pack will get them as an option on the store (and can be sent as a letter).

[Atheling]

We weren't invited, I guess the others were scared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_national_cricket_team]/quote]

Who would have thought it? Bet it's mostly ex-Pats from Britain though?

I guess pestering for a sample pack will get them as an option on the store (and can be sent as a letter).

Already done.... waiting for a reply  .

Darrell.

[gbulens]

Thanks for the feedback! and sorry for my sudden "disappearance"... But disease had a grip on me for the last week...

But now I am back on track and working hard to make the best of the time I lost

So, lets start with the pictures. First I have to apologise for the crappy pictures, as my phone is really not the best and secondly because I am taking these on the living room table as I am in the process of moving houses and my painting desk is all folded up in a box somewhere...

The belgians!

So, lets open a pack and see what they contain!
The packaging is really neat and proper, nothing special or fancy, but just clean. A pack as seen below comes at 9 euros for 30 soldiers.


The soldiers are small, but very detailed. I put one next to a 1 eurocent coin to show the size.


I always start with a tester before going into full factory mode, and I present you:
German test:


Belgian test:


The one on the left in the picture here above is a Van Dijck figure base while the one on the right is Kallistra. I already had a lot of them, and I am going to paint them all in one go. I do have to say that the Kallistra ones are somewhat taller and a whole lot bulkier. They look more like superhuman soldiers next to the Van Dijck ones... But still, it fits on the table
Also, in the pictures above, I used FOW infantry bases to put them on, as this looked the best at the moment...

But then I got these from Van Dijck...



So I am now going to base all the others on the Van Dijck magnetic bases as these give me the opportunity to take away casualties from the bases. As shown in the second picture above here, the brown strip is magnetic thick foil, the white strip is adhesive magnetic paper and the resin bases on the right have to be glued on the thick foil. But more on that later, once I get to that stage...

So now I start the "factory"...
I made a piece of wood where I "glue" the models onto nails so I can pick them up easily and paint them completely before going to the next phase.


Ooo and before I forget... This is where I am at the moment in the "completeness" level of the project... The guns are also Kallistra.




I will try to post a painting color guide tonight, but today is family day, so the productivity will be low...

[gbulens]

So, they are going to be or are commercially available then? They are so stunning it would be a crime for them not to be!

Darrell.

Yes, they all are. And he is adding to the range all the time. I saw him 2 weeks ago and he was working on different officers for the Germans and the Belgians. I have also included his email address below

info@vandyckmodelsandfigurines.be