More Picking Away...

More stuff accomplished this weekend. First, I built a second DBA base, this one for English medievals:

I ordered a handful of Fife and Drum figures. The Spirit of '76 vignette, and five minutemen. My plan is to paint them up for a work display - the theme for the whole year (not just summer) is America's 250th. So another excuse to promote miniatures in the library. I plan to paint two of the minutemen to represent a pair of free black colonists who - completely coincidentally - shared my rare last name. So I hope to do a good job painting them.

What I got was a bunch of figures, free overstock! Thanks! About half minutemen, half Continentals in uniform. That could make up two small regiments or one large one, with mixed appearance like Jim Purky's own 2nd New Hampshire. 

I haven't built or painted metal models in ages, so some filing practice is in order. I'll also have to use a pin drill on the standard bearer. As for basing... probably singly, for skirmish games. I have lots of round Wargames Atlantic bases.

I also bought some Games Workshop 25mm and 25x50mm square bases, for the Pike and Shotte starter set. Here's the first infantry sprue mostly made up:

Needs a few more hats, and there are also a lot of scabbarded swords on the sprue I haven't figured out where they go on the figures yet. I'm glad I just made these chaps to start with, as I found out specific arms go to specific figures. Also, gluing two arms onto a figure at once is a bit messy. A little filing and paint, though, and I'm sure they'll look good enough for the tabletop.

Finally, a painted Skaven done with Speedpaint pens. Fun and not too frustrating. I find it hard to tell the colors apart when they're bunched together, so (for example) some of the leather has a gold tinge...

I'll stop here, as I have two cats on my desk trying to interfere with typing and projects.

For comparison, here's the one I have to coax into letting me touch.
On the right: still unopened boxes of Warlord samurai.

'Til next time.

Still Tired

Not much done, except reading. Read the Silmarillion and working slowly on Warlord Games' supplement Wars of the Samurai (quite good for a beginner!). Here's what little hobby I've done this week:

Two twelve-man units of crossbows for Lion Rampant,
with pavises. This may seem like they're on too-large
bases, but the plan is to play on a small scale with cm
instead of inches.

An armoured orc chieftain from 6th-7th edition Warhammer.
I picked up a command group from the FLGS.
Painted with paint markers, with the metals NMM.

I really need to get cracking on building the Pike and Shotte stuff...

Edit: I did.

Five down, seventy-seven to go!

A Week's Worth

Still a bit under the weather, and I will probably have to give up the club's second Binge Weekend. But I did get some minis done this week.

Belatedly for President's Day (but can still find use for it later this bi-and-a-quarter-centennial year), I built a Paperboys George Washington and a regiment for him to review.

The command base isn't quite finished, because I decided to use the extra individual officers on the page for once. The typical "unit" that can be assembled from a single page from any of Peter Dennis' Helion Horse-and-Musket books is of four bases, one of them with one of its two strips replaced by a "colours and drummers" strip, thus 32 men plus one extra on a bit of card out in front of the command base. This leaves over one strip of four musketeers and typically two individuals, like an officer and sergeant. I chose to make five bases, with the "center" being the colours strip behind the two leaders, for a total of 38 men and a more even-looking unit.

I misplaced the command figures, or rather I suspect the cats did. You'd think a messy desk would deter pets from jumping on it, but it actually attracts them...

So I'm working on two more units, and swiping officers from a third. Eh, whatever. Using my new, incredibly sharp Beaditive scissors is surprisingly relaxing after a long day at work.

The second project I did this week was a unit of five "bloodreavers" from the 1st-edition Age of Sigmar beginner box I started years ago. I'd undercoated them already, so they were ready for the paint pens, and only required seven colors: skin, bone, black, grey, red, silver and gold. (No brass color.)

"Blood for the Blood God, or something..."

A bit messy, but tabletop ready once I add a bit of texture paint to the bases. I'm not sure gold really works for the brass, perhaps the sandy-orange "non-metallic" would be better. The large tips also made it hard to avoid coloring the silver, though depending on the texture I could turn the pen sideways and sort of "overbrush" the gold onto it. Gold borders first and silver insides second might also be a better order, and I'll try that when I get to the other three (more heavily armed) Chaos Warriors.

Finally, I received tonight a Warlord Games Pike and Shotte starter box, with 70 infantry and 12 cavalry, enough for small skirmishes, or full forces for Pikemen's Lament. I was prepared for the fact that bases aren't included, though I haven't found 20mm ones yet for them. (Even with its "Old World" Warhammer, GW's smallest rank-n-flank bases are 25mm.) However, I found the Warlord models have small puddle bases which might work for game-experimentation.

Haven't found much on Samurai-period uniform (only two pdf pages on painting the Warlord figures so far) though I am tempted by the comic-style Mifune colors: 

How did I miss these new action figures?!

Speedpaint Markers!

Got them markers last week. I have about twenty now, only about five repeated colors. I haven't got all those available at present. Most importantly, I have no white or gold. I'll wait on the FLGS, who don't get shipments frequently or orders quickly.

So far, I've tested them out on a Quar Crusader, a Warhammer wall and fence, a strip of Black Powder Epic ACW infantry, and an Age of Sigmar Stormcast Eternal.

The undercoat for all is Army Painter Matt White spray, which ended up a little dusty. I had a bit of a scare when I misjudged the wind and the stuff blew back at me, but a quick visit to an emergency clinic reassured me. It probably helps that I am heavily hydrating myself these days. Anyone who's ever spoken to me knows I'm a motormouth, which doesn't help my throat if I'm talking on and on about hobbies or interests...

That said, I will try paint-on primer for a while, and wear a mask next time I spray.

Uniform: Orc Skin
Weapon, buckles: Polished Silver
Bootstraps and pack: Pallid Bone
Boots and straps: Hardened Leather
Skin: Zealot Yellow, Magic Blue

A poor photo, it looks a bit better in person. The Crusader uniform is supposed to be a pale green, and this was the closest I had. I think the gun came out best, but with more practice I think it will work. I don't think these pens are capable of doing the distinctive spots, however; they look more like blotches to me.

Stone: Gravelord Grey
Wood: Dark Wood plus a layer of Sand Golem
Metal bits: Polished Silver
Grass: Orc Flesh

I'm most proud of this terrain piece. It really looks good, though I say so myself. The downside is that the pen tips were damaged, mostly by sticking them into gaps and cracks. I've learned to be a little gentler, and luckily it's easy to change the tips.

Coats and caps: Magic Blue
Trousers: Caribbean Ocean
Weapons: Hardened Leather, Polished Silver
Boots, hats: Grim Black
Skin: Crusader Skin

Not happy. Probably has something to do with the poor undercoat, but looks more grey than blue, and the marker tips aren't quite precise enough.

Shoulderpads, shield: Magic Blue

Skin: Crusader Skin

Straps: Hardened Leather

Haft wrappings: Familar Pink

Hammer and base: Runic Grey

Tactical bricks: Blood Red

Hair: Pallid Bone

Shoes and joints: Grim Black

Armor: Sand Golem

I enjoyed this one. Not having white, I left as much of the markings as untouched as possible. Not having gold, my brother suggested Sand Golem as part of his non-metallic metal recipe. Doesn't look half bad to my eyes.

Overall, I think the experiment was a success. While the paint isn't as bright and could certainly use extra highlighting, I loved the lack of mess and the speed of coverage. Even occasionally shaking a pen or pressing more paint into the nib, I wasn't constantly adding paint to a palette or dipping or cleaning a brush. Also, I had more room to work - no need to cover the table, find space for a water cup and a dozen bottles of paint. The pens are just stacked in a box to one side. They don't drip, either, though it's still easy to touch something you didn't intend to.

You do need to be careful with the nibs. They're reasonably durable, but be gentle when painting heavy texture. They are a bit large to use the side unless it's something like large armor plates, so it's easy to work the point too hard.

Not sure how I should store them - point up, point down, or sideways?

I'll keep using them - for individual minis and details on terrain. I look forward to trying them on historicals. Until next time.

Miscellanea, and a Treat

Work has been <bleeping> tiring this week. Hopefully that will turn around tomorrow, as we have a couple new staff joining us. In the meantime, I've only got bits and pieces done, but they are usefully inspiring nonetheless:

• Basecoated my Citadel hills in white. Will finish them in speedpaint green, brown and grey.
• Received and read much of Talking Miniatures:

A remarkably good oral history of Games Workshop.

I'm serious. It's worth the money.

• Started on my bit of the Hastings960 project:

Three sheets of Saxon Fyrd (300 figures).

Trimmed.

Frames separated...

... and folded.

Next is gluing them all - then cutting with my new Beaditive and Fiskars scissors.

This is a test strip on 80gsm paper rather than the
requested 120gsm. If you see a green tinge, it's because
I experimented with a speedpaint marker on the edges.

• Tested a speedpaint marker on a couple Reaper Bones orcs (no good pics).
• Finally, a treat - my talented brother has made some progress on the LDV I sent him. Here's the first Scottish militia!
  
  

A how-to, mostly Speedpaints:

Undercoat: Slap-chop
Cap: Caribbean Ocean

Skin: Pallid Bone
and Crusader Skin

Straps: Pallid Bone
Hair: Dark Wood

Uniform: Noble Skin
and Tyrian Navy

Boots: Grim Black

Weapons: Broadsword Silver

Base: AK Muddy Ground

Base highlight: Pro Acryl Pale Yellow

Base detail: Vallejo Scorpy Green

Ready recruits.

My intent was to have only the guys in tam-o-shanters be in Scottish Republican grey, with the other twenty being more generic, but my brief confused my brother who has never painted historicals before. Part of the problem may have been a picture that scanned fuzzy.

He was a bit disappointed, but hey, I'm not going to look a (beautiful) gift horse in the mouth here. I'll take what he gives me and work with it. The guys in caps could be Scottish BUF, or Republican militia who couldn't find tams. VBCW offers plenty of explanations!

All in all, a productive week for him, not so much for me, but still - making progress!

Happy Solstice, Merry Yule, or whatever you celebrate. Life gets brighter from today (in the northern hemisphere, anyway). See you around.

Painting at the Library

 So, that went well.

It wasn't nearly as chaotic as the first two attempts at this were. I spent about three hours and only had about a dozen takers - two to four at a time - which was much more relaxing. There were few enough that I could change most of the water myself without leaving the kids unsupervised. 

To be fair, most of the folks who came by were there for DnD, and many of them took a mini without having time to paint it. I painted three myself, mostly for demonstration purposes. There are fifteen left of the forty or so I started with. I did decide to stick with the four Warhammer Alliance types, though I added some of my own paints.

Undercoating went badly, partly because the canister ran out of paint. The figures came out ... dusty. Worked alright, but I think skipping the undercoat step might work for a project on this scale - the sample figures in the magazine are not undercoated, for example.

A few examples:

I even got in a simple game demonstration with a few of the kids, facing off single Space Marines and Necrons. A couple of the parents read through the magazines.

May add more photos when they are distributed by the staff member who took better ones.

The small, laminated paint palettes are harder to clean than they look; we tossed most of them and a couple brushes, but overall the kids paid a lot more attention and I managed to teach a few basic techniques. I had hoped to run a Youtube painting video for inspiration, but the screen was in use for 3D scanning.

Oh, and I asked a coworker to print a couple of Victoria Miniatures' "Space Aussies" for me:

Not great. Might try printing them at larger size instead.

It would seem the printers at work aren't the best for the job. We have one at the club now, though, so I may try it one of these weekends.

In related news, I have started reading Playing at the World, a history of early DnD which appears to have plenty about early wargaming - both board and miniature - to go with it. A thick and wordy tome, but good so far.

Year's End

 As usual, more reading, and finally some proper painting!

I spent some of today working on some of the Quar. I now have five Coftyrans basecoated, all except skin.

Highlord Blue coats, Hardened Leather straps, stocks and boots,
Averland Sunset collars and cuffs, Sir Coates Silver metal.

Skin will take a little thought, as it's varied, pastel, and often spotted. I think it should contrast a bit with the uniform, too, so I won't use blue or yellow. But I'm pleased I've got this far!

There's also the machinegunner's hat, and the blanket rolls. I need a spot color for those, and I'm leaning towards red.

Reading-wise, I found an excellent new book on the 1216 French invasion of England. I was surprised to find it's published by Osprey.

It's fairly short (which makes sense for Osprey), but is not typical even of the publisher's more "conventional" histories - it's not a summary, guide or overview, but an in-depth coverage of the years immediately following Magna Carta.

The author has nothing good at all to say about King John, except that he died at just the right moment. His son succeeded him as not a tyrant but an innocent, now not about to be overthrown by a savior but by a foreign usurper. He also had the support of the Pope. The struggle is depicted as one that turned England from a cross-channel empire into an individual country independent of France. This started with the loss of Normandy, although nothing is said of Aquitaine.

The battles are Dover (a typical siege), Lincoln (pitched cityfight, relief of siege), and Sandwich (a naval battle). (Hilariously, Sandwich is now landlocked.) Hanley describes these all in a lively style, along with the key characters. Two of the most interesting are the female chatelaine of Lincoln, and a Robin-Hood-esque character who led a savage rebellion on the south coast, forcing the French invaders to go out of their way to avoid him.

The cross-channel relations of the two sides also made for interesting interplay - many of the lords on both sides had holding in both Normandy and England and had been forced to choose a side when Normandy abruptly became French. The King of Scotland held lands in England and swore fealty for them to the pretender from France. 

There are so many interactions between so many characters that I have only really given a taste. But this is quite a good book, and I'm glad I read it.

Happy New Year. I hope your next is full of hobby. (I still have two boxed games on the way myself!)

Trundling Along

I'm tired, depressed and not in much of a mood to game real life history at present. I think I'll concentrate on Quar and VBCW for a while (which I need to anyway). Having nearly all Quar built (a cat stole one) and a clear day outside, I chose to undercoat them. I only have pure white to do it with, but it should be an OK base for Contrast-type paints.

As for what I've been reading...

Published in the '60s. Quite short, it's thus pretty superficial, concentrating on personality quirks and famous incidents rather than being true biography. It's written in chronological order, too, and in a style that makes me unsurprised the author specializes in fiction. It's not a bad introduction, though.

This one, on the other hand, is new, and quite scholarly. It focuses on the military side of things, primarily strategic and operational. The author's key concept that he uses to rank the main players (Howe, Burgoyne, Washington, Gates, Sackville, etc) is grip - a term I haven't heard before in reference to military competence. Basically, it means partly understanding and recognition of the many variables a general needs to make a decision, and partly the ability to control the units under his command to carry out his intention. He uses Montgomery in the Western Desert as a good example of a general with "grip." Washington and Gates had it, the British didn't. This was mostly because of distance and the fact that some of them didn't like each other (The Americans didn't either, but they still managed to work together).

To Weddle, the reason the British campaign failed was because it was managed from afar, in a strategic sense from London, and in an operational sense between commanders variously in Philadelphia, New York and Canada. Both sides had to spend weeks (months in the case of overseas) communicating, but one was operating on interior lines. Both Howe and Burgoyne focused on parts of their orders that said they could work independently and assume the other would support them, rather than the parts that said they could and should use their own initiative because their directors were too far away in space and time to have the "grip" they needed.

There was also the problem that the goal was to link up the armies at Albany and then, somehow, the British would profit - when instead supply would still be so strained that there would have to be penny-packet garrisons all along the line, and taking Albany wouldn't prevent the Americans linking up anyway. He doesn't mention the parallel, but I'm reminded of the Vicksburg campaign which really did cut the Confederacy in two.

All in all, an excellent and well-researched volume on the campaign, and the battle narratives aren't bad either.

Finally, I've started an account of HM/Submarine Trenchant:

Best known for sinking the cruiser
Ashigara.

Quite good so far, even in the first chapter on the construction and working up; I liked the description of a senior WRNS officer as "the Great Crested Wren!"

OK, just finished undercoating 27 Quar:

Ten Crusader "line squad" and four trench raiders.

Ten Coftyran line and three snipers.

I experimented with an undercoating method I found on Youtube - sticking the figures to a paint stick and wearing a glove. In theory, this makes it easier to aim the paint at all the undercuts; in practice I still missed a lot, and will have to use some white paint to neaten. Still, one step done, a dozen to go...!

Enjoy your week, folks. Two of my coworkers are off so I'll have a busy one. See you next time.

Painting and Other Miscellany

Not much gaming or posting this month. I worked at a local convention and brought a few Paperboys sheets:

And finished off the LDV bases with some Stirland Mud:

Re: Paperboys, I've had little interest in the Portable Wargame during Chess Club, but a couple players suggested that the figures would make good chessmen. I've been thinking for a while, but so far I haven't worked out what all the pieces would be. Pawns, Kings and Knights are easy enough. Elephants or war engines would work as Rooks, as these were the original name for the piece. The Bishop can be taken from one of the medieval sets with monks. The Queen is the real problem, as (Paperboys focusing on wargaming pieces) there are few women. I could use Boudicca, for example, from the Romans-and-Britons volume, but then there are no Roman women, and while the Britons have druids for the Bishop, there's no corresponding figure for the Romans. While for the Rook, the Romans have both elephants and war engines, but the Britons have neither.

Best for the purpose might be the clearly differentiated Little Wars figures, in blue and red. Still need a queen, though it might be possible to modify the civilian women a bit - someone has already done it to make suffragettes. There is one with a huge flowery hat, just the sort of Ascot wear you might expect of an 1890s upper-class woman. I've looked up French first ladies of the period, and they wore the same hats, so I could use the same figure (or head, anyway).

After a little experimentation, I also suspect I'll need to modify the size of different pieces. The size of chessmen is an important element of any set, with the pawns half the size of the pieces. A knight at the same scale as "infantry" bishop, rook, king and queen would also tower over them. I'm thinking 28mm Pawns and Knights, with the others in 54mm.

Finally, heavier bases would be useful. I've been using old business cards, which works very well for smaller figures. I would prefer thick "grey card," the sort at the back of notepads, but am not sure where to find it.

Finally, I've started painting my Warhammer 40K 8th Edition starter set:

Tricky to undercoat in blue when they're already blue...

Though in the circumstances under which I'm likeliest to play with them, leaving them bare might actually be preferable, as they seem more like "playing pieces" than complex models this way. So I'm undecided.

And that's what I'm on about this month. Other than reading, of course. Have got thru four Leaphorn/Chee novels and one and a half Poul Anderson fantasies so far. See you next time,