Archaic Abodes

It’s amazingwhat a scrounge around in the attic can reveal.  In this case a 1985 Citadel Journal in great condition!  

Crucially, the pages of ‘cut out’ buildings were intact.  Back in the day I got my Dad to photocopy these, coloured them in, then mounted them on card to create my scenery.  These days of course I have access to a photo quality scanner and printer!

There’s some amazing card scenery out there these days, from the likes of Fat Dragon, or Dave Graffam Models.  But I can’t deny the charm of these beauties!

Here’s the first one.  Expect more to follow.

Warpstone Meteorite Obelisk

Made from genuine warpstone!

Well, obviously not, but it has the look.

Near me is a stretch of canal that passes the site of an old pipeworks.  The iron pipes were cast in sand moulds, with the sand tipped afterwards into the opencast coal pits that powered the furnaces, and used to build up the canal embankments.

Of course sand and heat makes glass, and you will frequently find some quite lovely pieces of foundry glass laying about.  This particular piece had both glass and foundry slag melted together in the right shape to make a perfect standing stone.

It would have been rude not to do it!

Maid Marian

Continuing with the Robin Hood theme for a moment, here’s another classic member of the band, Maid Marian, from Footsore Miniatures.

A really lovely sculpt, nice folds in the cloth but not fussy.  Stylistically the Footsore models are a more ‘realistic’ take on the subject than the Studio Miniature Robin and Tuck; neither the Hollywood romance of Flynn and de Havilland, nor the mysticism of the ‘80s ‘Robin of Sherwood’ - my two favourite takes on the stories. And she’s not a fox either, like the Miniature would prefer.

The (now not so little) miniature was involved in colour choices, as they are sort of to get her interested in gaming ;-)

She was adamant she wanted the dress to be white, which is not my favourite colour to paint, but challenge accepted.  I suggested that she should then have a cloak in brown or green to allow her to hide in the forest when needed, which she was enthusiastic about, fortunately.

Luckily I had a trick up my sleeve to try out for the white…

This model actually proved to be an interesting exercise.  Aside from a little GW ‘Ogryn Flesh’ wash on the face and hands, I didn’t use my normal washed for shading, this was all brush shading and highlighting through multiple shades.  While I wouldn’t say it’s my best work by a long shot, I am really pleased with the result.

Reiksgard - 90’s style!

 Finally finished the models I needed to complete a whole (albeit small) unit of Reiksgard using the early to mid 90’s sculpts.  I should have at least one of each now.

This marks my third time painting the standard bearer model.  I have two others playing the role of a foot and mounted Battle Standard.

I made a wizard!

A little while back I tried out the old Grenadier Fantasy Warriors rules, but had to commit the terrible crime of using a proxy figure for an Orc Wizard.  Whilst looking around for a suitable model (now found, typically), I decided to make my own using a spare orc with a polearm.  As a friend of mine (hi Matt!) is fond of saying 'how hard could it be'?

Here's the mini, I used.  The blade of the pole-arm had already snapped off, so the plan was to keep the staff, and add some robes to hide the chainmail.

First job was to remove the sword scabbard on the rear. (it didn't need to be a neat job, fortunately).

Greenstuff was then used to build up robes and a hood.  Unfortunately the green stuff I used was quite old, so I had trouble with some lumpy bits and splits, which I tried to disguise with some tears and stitches.

Not great, I'll admit, but it'll do.  I've used Green Stuff before, to add details to the old plastic GW knights, or furs or other details.

Spot of paint covers up the worst of it.

Hunted out an old plastic skeleton head for the top of the staff, and hey presto!

Rubbish scenery for the blasted heath

"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

"When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won."

"That will be ere the set of sun."

A combination of virus quarantine and an energetic five year old in the house (now that schools have closed) forced me into the garden to attempt to reclaim it from brambles (I like to think of it as a wildlife garden).  Inevitably, the gamer in me looked at the rubbish created and thought, "I could do something with that".

I'd been thinking for a bit that the trees in my scenery collection in particular look a bit too neat and manicured and I'd been wondering how to create a more 'blasted heath' feel.

These were made using some twigs from cutting back some dead plants, mounted in milliput on two pence coins, covered in PVA and sand before painting.  Really quick and I'm far more pleased with the result than I probably should be!

They'll be rubbish as cover, but I think will look pretty good on the tabletop.

A post for Blacksmith!

Blacksmith, who runs the 'Javier at War' blog (well worth checking out, he's recreating the old X Com games with miniatures, a fine project!), has asked me a couple of times where the minis I'm using for Five Parsecs are from.

I've been terribly remiss in not replying; so, just for him and anyone else interested, they are from Games Workshop's old Dark Future range.  I used to love the game and had quite a few foot warriors for it, which I've supplemented with a few careful ebay buys (they sometimes turn up for stupid money as well though).

Scale-wise they are a bit of an oddity.  Smaller than 'true' 25mm, but slightly bigger than 20mm/1/72.

Here's one compared with an airfix model and Hasslefree's Grant, for comparison.

And here's a few more that were painted up for the last game.

Terrain is mostly printed card (wish my printer was better!) from various sources including:

https://www.wargamevault.com/product/167915/SciFi-Style-Buildings?filters=0_40209_40014_0
http://www.toposolitario.es/workshop/index_scenery.html
http://www.germy.co.uk/paper25mm.html

Getting Ahead

I do like variety in the units I put together for gaming.  With most plastic sets consisting of multiples of the same model there are several ways of achieving this: varying paint schemes (where this is possible); mixing sets, which I do quite a bit, but which can lead to problems with matching scale; and repositioning or swapping heads, limbs etc.  And it's that last one that I spent last night doing (including time spent repeatedly supergluing my thumb and forefinger together),

Most bodies came from the Caesar Panzergrendier set 1, with the new heads coming from the Airfix Afrika Corps set as (a), I have lots spare, and (b) they have some good poses with forage caps and plenty of uncovered helmets on models I wont have a lot of other uses for (the chap surrendering, or the one with the spade, for example).  

In each case I've photographed them next to the original (which are going through bases and finishing touches)

 Not entirely pleased with the head position on the one above, will have to see how it paints up.

And finally, as I ended up with a few headless DAK, I've added some of the discarded Caesar head with the helmet covers.  These will do duty as late war Germans in western Europe quite nicely.

Right, time to get painting!

What I did on my trip to Sheffield (or a plug for Wargames Emporium)

Not many posts, but been getting a bit of painting and modelling underway in one form or another (here's my rather confused painting space, on the dining room table).

Imaginary and totally irrelevant points on offer for spotting what's going on there!

Work also took me up to Sheffield last week for a seminar.  Knowing I'd have a bit of time at lunch in the city centre I thought I'd check out Wargames Emporium, which was nearby.  Since my local model shop in Chesterfield town centre closed, and Modelzone went under, pickings have been pretty slim. The opening of a Hobbycraft helped, but it's pretty much limited to Airfix kits and doesn't have any vallejo paints.

Although small and tucked away on the upper floor of some small craft units at the back of a shopping mall, it was a great little shop, well stocked with paints and all sorts of models: through GW, Copplestone and on to the likes of Plastic Soldier Company plus the obligatory collectible card games (not for me, bit whatever floats your boat...).  I'd intended to just pick up some paint, but somehow ended up coming out with box of Caesar Fallschirmjäger.  Nice models, showing Caesar's usual quality of sculpting and production.  I'll post some WIP photos as I go on, but here's some pretty poor pics to be going with.

Airborne, Step-by-step

I've been meaning for a while to get a step-by-step run through up on how I painted my Brit Paras, and this week I finally found the time to do it.

British Airborne, in action between tea breaks!

Before I start, it's worth taking a quick look at the iconic feature of the British Airborne, the Denison Smock; a handy starting point is the rather good page about it on Wikipedia.  In short, there seem to have been two major variants used during WWII.  At 1/72 I'm not going to worry too much about the cosmetic differences involving buttons etc, but it is useful to note the difference in colours, with the earlier smocks (which would be more suitable for North Africa and Italy) on a sand coloured base and the later smocks (used in Northern Europe and appropriate for D-Day and Market Garden) on a more olive green base.

On to the painting then.  The aim of the game here was to produce minis that I'd be happy to use of the gaming table rather than miniature works of art, so I was aiming to get a convincing look without spending too much time fussing over the detail or shading and highlighting.  The figures used were all from Italeri, the sten gunner from the 'Anti Tank Teams' set and the rest from the (former Esci) 'British Airborne'.  Paints were a mix of Vallejo and GW (although I'm not sure what their equivalents would be in the new range).

back row: German Camo Medium Brown, Reflective Green, English Uniform, Russian Uniform, Black Grey, Khaki Glossy Black

Middle row: Mournfang Brown, Mechrite Red, Gretchin Green, Tallarn Flesh, Leadbelcher

Front Row: Badab Black, Devlan Mud

After priming with GW Chaos Black, I started with the basecoat.  VJ English Uniform for the battledress, helmets in VJ Russian Uniform, webbing and gaiters in VJ Khaki, boots VJ Glossy Black and weapons in Mournfang Brown and Leadbelcher.  Two of the models had the smock basecoated using GW Gretchin Green and one in VJ Green Ochre, to represent the earlier smock.  Painting is pretty rough at this point, as later coats will tidy it up, and I haven't painted all of the webbing, as some will inevitably get painted over again when doing the camo.

The first camo colour is done first, using VJ German Camo Medium Brown.  The earliest smocks were allegedly hand-painted using mops, and the pattern continued through the war, so I went for big, bold patches of colour and didn't worry about being neat. The 'stripes' on Denison smocks run in all directions, so I tried to avoid it looking too neat.

Green patches next, in VJ Reflective Green.  Again it was put on it quite bold strokes, trying to cross patches of brown at angles.  It doesn't matter if the paint is a little thin either, in fact it can be helpful, as on the real smocks the colours do seen to show through one another to some degree.  Once the green was on I tidied up the webbing in Khaki.

Everything is looking a bit bright and, to be honest, a bit shoddy at this point but this is where the washes come in.  Shading was a simple matter of a wash of GW Badab Black for the guns, which was followed up with GW Devlan mud over the whole figure.  I've not tried the new washes from GW, I only hope they work as well as these ones do!

Once the wash was dry, a quick highlight was achieved by simply using the original base colour on any raised detail.  The helmets had a quick drybrush with khaki to bring out the netting, and the boots a rough highlight with Black Grey.  I didn't try and highlight the smocks; it's a ridiculously time consuming thing to do and, in my opinion at least, the camo should stay quite dark so that the webbing and other details don't get lost.

So there you have it, how I've been painting Brit Paras.  Do let me know below the line if you've found it useful (or, indeed, if you have any suggestions on how I could improve the next batch!).

Tally Ho!