New year new project(s)

Currently working on refining my Fantastic Battles Dwarf army. Last year(?) I finally got around to painting some very old RAFM Roman Dwarves. These fellows really did not fit with my existing Dwarves for Warhammer so they were a perfect choice to be dedicated figures for Fantastic Battles. So I had painted them in three easy to identify colours and based them on 60mm x 60mm bases.

Well I knew then that I was not done with that army, but it has taken me a while to get back to it. As it stood there were only a bunch of foot troops and some heavy weapons stolen from the Warhammer army. It was time to correct this. This past Saturday some friends and I had a hobby day, a chance to get together to chit chat and work on stuff. So while I did spend some time building some Halfling forces for a future project I did trot out some Dwarf light archer fast infantry. This will be a better representation of a light troop for my Roman Dwarves, they will be auxiliary troops.

So I plan to have only 4 stands of these that can be field as 4 individual company/units or more likely as 2 units of 2 companies. The figures are Oathmark from Northstar. They are really nice simple figures, not too much extraneous details and so far have painted  nicely.

These have mostly been painted with contrast paints. I kind of like the bright colours but I will no doubt do a light wash on them at the end. Again the figures are quite nice and really convey the idea of light fast infantry with quite a few running poses.

 The box also has other weapons so I will be making more stands of light infantry, nut not fast light infantry.

Pulp Alley urban boards

 

 Finally I have gotten around to addressing my woefully inadequate urban/tarmac gaming surface. Good old Dave of Pulp Alley keeps talking about 18" x 18" tiles as a good gaming surface. Well, while he seems to be able to walk into a home store in the US and readily find these tiles it seems to be a bit more of a challenge here in Canada. Even if you can find them they are sold by the case which is not so economical to me. However I did find some tiles on Amazon and then figured out a way to make them double sided, sort of like what Dave does.

Painting stuff; Vallejo Xpress & paint brushes plus a dollar store silicon 'painting well'

 

So, a few updates on the painting front, not so much any finished figures, although I have quite a fair number on the verge of completion, rather a talk about paint and equipment.

 

Time cast terrain

 

So, a relatively recent purchase (last 3-4 months) that I thought I should get around to painting up. These are from TIME CAST and are a brown silicon/rubber material. They are very flexible, have a reasonable amount of detail and take paint well. They come in a variety of sizes and textures; rough terrain, marshes, fields and patty fields. These ones are technically scaled for 15mm/20mm figures and while I will use them for those scales they will also see service in a variety of other scales. I bought a four item mix pack of each type of terrain. So far I have completed all of them save for the marshes.

Final few posts of AHPC 14

 

From post 14

From post 15

So, the challenge has come to an end. Once again I had fun participating in the challenge and I feel that I have had a much more successful winter painting time than I would have without the challenge. I certainly had a more laid back approach to the challenge and I did not get caught up in any self induced competition to get the most points, or to paint the most items. I did leverage the weekly posting schedule and the point target that I had selected to drive myself to paint stuff when I might just as easily have sloughed off doing any painting. In fact I found it interesting that near the end of the challenge I really thought to myself that I was done for the year and then with only a couple of days left I suddenly turned it around and managed to produce a 513 point entry, my largest post this year.

Post 14 HERE

Post 15 HERE

The good/bad thing about this years challenge for me was the slow start that I had and the fact that it took me so long to get into the groove fro producing stuff. The good thing about peaking so late is that the painting urge still remains even though the challenge is over. So far I have managed to pick up (and use) a paint brush every day since the start of spring! (with the exception of the weekend away at Hotlead) So the inspiration continues, I may even try to track my weekly or monthly output although right now I am working on some petty dull stuff, crates, always need cover.