Build 'em up and knock 'em down

I've got tanks, I've got troops, now all I need is something for them to fight over. I've already painted a couple of resin ruins from airfix, but over the last couple of months I've been adding a bit more. First up, a ruined small industrial building, available from Airfix in resin. To be honest their stuff is a bit pricy, but it's nicely cast and paints up well. I think it needs a scenic base with some rubble on myself, which shouldn't be too tricky.

Next up is a famrhouse from Italieri. This is a plastic kit and involved some assembly. The style is slightly more southern Europe/Italy really, but shouldn't look too out of place. It's substantially bigger than the Resin Airfix buildings, but that fit its character.

Both buildings have been painted to try and represent the the grey/gold stone common to northern France (and much of southern England too!). The basecoat is actually an emulsion tester pot (Dulux 'Potters Wheel' to be precise), followed by a drybrush of GW Kemhri Brown, a wash of Devlan Mud, followed by light drybrushes of GW's Tau Ochre and Dheneb Stone.

Finally, I've had a go at scratchbuilding using some offcuts of foamboard and textured plasticard, and some doors and windows left over from days playing with trains. It's still awaiting paint, and I rushed it a bit, which has left some gaps, but I'm fairly pleased.

WWII Progress

The great WWII project continues. I've finally found painting time to finish up a platoon of german infantry. Ok, so with the marching boots and Kar 98s they're probably more suited to early war than Normandy, but I said I wasn't going to get caught up in button counting (yes I did). The models are a mix of Airfix and Revell. The Revell models are a bit taller than the airfix (and not actually that crisply detailed if I'm honest), but once painted up and on the table the difference is barely noticeable. More prominent is where I moved part way through from Tamiya field grey (which is horribly gritty and dries too quickly) to vallejo paints, but again its not a that noticeable and just suggests different issues of uniforms.

And here they are with some armoured support care of some Dragon pre-paints I picked up on sale.

I've also been adding to my US forces with some more infantry, care of Caesar's US Infantry Set I , purchased thanks to a recommendation from fellow blogger 'Thanos' (visit his blog here, I promise you won't regret it, his project to recreate a Normany village is an epic piece of work!). I have to say these are nice figures if you're into 1/72 plastics. The plastic is quite hard, so there's less problems with flaking (the Revell germans are terrible for this I'm afraid), although I have still got a few wonky gun barrels to contend with. The detail is great and the casting nice and sharp. They paint up well with a combination of acrylics and washes (I am not going to start doing eyes at this scale!).

Here are some examples.

They mix pretty well with my existing matchbox infantry (although the matchbox are a bit chunkier, the heights are OK). Although they make for an interesting comparison with what Valiant think is 1/72 scale...

Left to right, Valiant, Caesar and Matchbox

Just for a bit of a change, I also painted up some old Matchbox British Infantry. Wish I could find some more of these chaps, I used to have loads, now I can barely find enough to make an understrength rifle section (I suspect some are still bravely holding their positions in my Mum's rockery from many moons ago!)

All work and play... with added foamcore!

I guess as I'm a Town Planner by day, it should be no surprise that one of the aspects of the hobby I enjoy is making scenery, more specifically buildings. Sadly I'm not very quick at it!

Over the years much of my attention has inevitably focused on Warhammer, and buildings compatible with my human armies (Empire and Dogs of War). I'm always sketching ideas for buildings (often in the more dull type of meeting, in the margins of my notebook), sometimes inspired by buildings I see out and about or through work (protecting built heritage is part of the job). Here's the collection so far:

Anyone who's been to Derby might spot 'Ye Olde Dolphin' pub just to the right of centre

For construction I usually use 5mm foamcore board; it's relatively cheap, easy to work with, takes paint well and is quite sturdy. Details are added using balsa off-cuts (for the timber framing), card and, occassionally, textured plasticard and wallpaper. The roof tiles are from cereal packet card. The first few I did one tile at a time. Realising that I wasn't going to live to the age of 500, I've since cut back to doing them line by line instead!

Here are a couple of buildings I have 'in progress' to show the construction detail:

This will be a 'posh' town house - loosely based on a building in Derby city centre

and this one's a corner shop,based on sketches of old building's in the 'Shambles' of Chesterfield, where the butchers would originally have traded from open stalls

And a sketch for another one, this time based on 'The Old Grammar School', a preserved medieval house near Birmingham (I think this was the result of an extremely tedious team meeting).



I've also done a few buildings for friends, including three buildings for my Friend Matt. He wanted something that he could transport easily to tournaments, so I came up with three buildings: a Manor, Cottage and Hut, that would fit inside each other for transport.

The 'Russian Doll' houses, prior to painting

Of course my dream is to be able to fill an entire table with buildings and do a fantasy/medieval cityfight. Maybe when I retire... ;-)

First of 2011

Just a quick post to show the first couple of completed minis from 2011.

First up, a GW 'Last Chancer', painted up for the Sheffield Irregulars January painting challenge 'wounded'

Second is a Copplestone mini from the 'Scavvie Tankbusters' pack.

He'll join my partisans and other 'irregulars' for SF skirmish gaming.

Both were photographed in the new, portable studio my lovely wife got me for Christmas.

Looking back (or, "He's behind you!")

January 's traditionally the time for looking back and evaluating. So I've waited until February...

I thought I'd take a quick look back over 2010, particularly at progress on painting and gaming, and maybe think about what to tackle this year. Overall, "10", as I cam to know it, was a bit of a diverse year. I started a couple of projects, managed to complete some long standing ones and even found time to enter a couple of the Sheffield Irregulars painting challenges (I even managed to win one with a Tau entry although, admittedly, there were only two other entries...). So, what were the other highlights?

• Painted some 'old skool' 40K Imperial Army
• Finished a platoon of Copplestone Neo-Sovs and Partisans/Insurgents for games of Fast and Dirty
• Finally painted that Old Crow Lander
• Upgraded some of the characters and units for my Empire Army
• Started a 20mm WWII project thanks to unearthing some old 1:72nd figures and some cheap Shermans
  

Gaming wise I didn't do that well. Apart from a couple of games at Warhammer World with Matt (who's now gone off travelling the world, how inconsiderate), I didn't get much gaming in.

In all, could have done better. However I have had to contend with busy times at work and a house that, in the latter half of the year, was practically a permanent building site. For some months I couldn't even get near the painting table because of stuff stored around it.

Sadly I haven't managed to make much headway until recently on my proposed Tau Army. To be honest I'm not really feeling the love on this one. I've also been having a bit of a think about just how many part started projects I have, and it's quite alarming! Amongst the front runners are:

• More units for the Empire Army, in particular I have some old style Reiksgard and Knights Panther units and a Griffon to tackle (and still haven't done a Free Company)
• Several half completed 'medieval' buildings (including city walls) to finish, plus a pile of plastic food trays to turn into and SF colony
  
• A near complete platoon of Copplestone Troopers (just needing basing and a couple of specialists)
• More old Citadel Imperial Army and Ogre models to paint, just because I love 'em
• That 40K Tau Army

This year I need to be more ruthless in getting projects finished. I'm going to keep track of my expenditure on gaming and sell off some stuff I'm almost certainly never going to get around to using. Oh, and try really hard not to start new projects (at least until some of the above list is done).

Yeah, good luck with that.... ;-)

Next stop Paris

Just a few more pics of the ongoing WWII project. I've just finished (apart from decals, which I don't have yet) a pair of Armourfast StugIIIs. These are nice little models, very quick to build. The detail is pretty basic, particularly on pieces like the tracks, but fine at for gaming. They seem pretty robust too (I've dropped one already). The reason for the two different colour schemes is that I was testing out which combinations of colours worked best. I still can't decide which I prefer...
Second up are some buildings. Most of my 28mm scale scenery will work fine for Western Europe: trees, hills hedges and so on; however buildings are a different matter. These two are resin models from Airfix. They're described as 1:76 scale, so look a little small next to most models up close, but at gaming distance they should be fine. Longer term they could probably do with being mounted on bases with some rubble.

Tech Adept

This month's painting challenge from the Sheffield Irregulars was simply "Red". I had an old GW Adeptus Mechanicus model that had a pretty poor paintjob (I was younger back then), so out he came for a repaint. I wanted a look that suggested that the 'organic' components, including robes, were rather neglected, in contrast to antique but very well cared for technology. Hope that's how its come out!