Tackling a new army

 

Not a pile of shame if you start to work on it within a week of buying all this stuff, right?

Last weekend I attended a game day at Centuries in Cannington Ontario Canada, hosted by the owner Kamal. The event ran on Friday night and all day Saturday. I only stayed until 5:30 or 6 pm on the Saturday but I was witness to a number of fine tabletop games. There was an ADLG tournament all day Saturday, a big 28mm game of General D'Armee 2 on the Friday night, and on Saturday there were games of Chain of Command 2, Pillage and Barons War. A good time had by all.

For me the draw was Kamal's store, a chance to peruse his stock at leisure. A real danger for me to be in a game store for 12+ hours! Well I selected and deselected a lot of different items before finally settling in on a 'few' items. All but the Grognard cavalry will show up in Midgard games, hopefully sooner than later. I already had a box each of  Oathmark Human cavalry and infantry, so the new purchases are to add to that. The Oathmark Humans have a different look to them than many fantasy and historical figures, this appeals to me. I am not certain why I felt the need to buy these, I have Empire and Bretonian styled troops already, so why another Human army? No real reason I just liked the odd look of them.

So far I have the cavalry mostly assembled and based. I primed up the horses in advance of building them but I will next have to prime up the riders. Between the two packs of cavalry, I had 30 cavalry and I split them up into two units of 8 cavalry each (medium cavalry), and two units of light skirmish cavalry of 5 figures each. This left me 4 extra cavalry figures for leaders and/or standard bearers.

I have also been working on the infantry, I have assembled one unit of heavy infantry and one of light infantry, with many, many more to be built.

But it is a start.

New Zeppelin launched from my ship yard!

 

Courtesy of Sarissa Precision, I now have a Zeppelin for my German/Prussian forces. It is about 15" in length and with the flight stand it virtually soars into the sky. 

The gondola carries 4 figures, while the top centre part lifts off to allow at least 10 figures to stand, ready for action. I thought this might be a challenge to build, but it was actually pretty straight forward despite a couple of mislabelled parts in the instructions. I primed up the grey board coverings and the MDF fins prior to gluing them to the MDF frame. (which I base coated chainmail after assembly)

I used Army painter Army Green and Vallejo Russian uniform for most of the ship and Gory red for the red bits. I would have used German Uniform but I was out of that colour, did not feel like going to the store and was impatient to get it done. I plan to do some highlighting of the base colours to bring them out a bit. I am tempted to leave the exposed metal rectangles as is rather than painting them to match the skin.

I am also thinking that I will cut the flight stand a bit, removing the front and rear support to reduce the footprint. I also am thinking of arming her as I have some spare parts that should fit. Probably use magnets.

Works in progress, actually progressing!

 

So five buildings for my current What a Cowboy! campaign. The first one is a resin model that really resists paint. I thoroughly washed it, cleaned it again with TPS and even used sealant to try and give the paint something to adhere to. It sort of worked.

So, to be fair it is the peak that lost paint, the other section was where a roofing piece that had been glued on fell off with very little effort. As a result it is important that I stop touching this model, so I have glued it to a base, in this case a clip board with the clip removed. The earth is a textured craft foam sheet that I think really painted up nicely. It has enough texture that comes out when dry brushed. The fence is from Renada. 

Wash applied

 

Before and after sepia wash.

WIP Aphid and Locust under construction

 

Aphid

So, I have had these models for a few years now and they have remained boxed all that time. But this year I have finally got around to them. The are from Things from the Basement by way of 4Ground. As per many 4Ground models they are pre-coloured so limited painting will be required. However unlike 4Ground they were a breeze to build! The instructions lack a lot of words but lots of pictures. For the most part it really was very easy to build these. This set also came with 3D printed guns and cord for the railings.

So, this is mostly done, all that is left is to paint the guns and add the railings. Also I will need to do a bit of weathering/touch ups. I think I will have to wash the deck to add some depth.
 

Also in the shipyard is this Locust class gun boat, a variant of the Aphid but with extra weapons. There is another 4 pounder on a platform aft of the bridge and 2 Hales rockets mounted forward.

Been doing a bit of model making lately

 

So, I am taking advantage of some new found inspiration to tackle the back log of unfinished kits that I have accumulated. Now some of these items were pretty simple builds, 4 walls and 2 roof sections. But, they were items that had just been lying around gathering dust so really needed to get unboxed and built! Some of these items were a more intense building experience like the small black flyer, it was not a lot of fun to build.

As you can see it is quite a mixed collection of stuff from VSF to medieval to 1930's pulp. Right now I have to content myself with building these things as it is a trifle to cold outside these days (-14C to -20C) to prime. I am waiting for a warmer cold day to prime.  

So for now lets see how much I can assemble!

WIP courtesy of a recent Hobby Day

 

Some ghostly hounds

So, we had a Hobby Day this past weekend. Six of us got together in my basement to work on various projects, with very little overlap. I was not very focused but I feel I was fairly successful. I managed to make some progress on some barrow downs, some Dwarf leader figures for Fantastic Battles and even started painting some new Ninja warriors.

3D printed barrows

WIP on some Chinese buildings for Pulp Alley China Station campaign

 

These are Warbases models from their 55 Days range. They are very easy to build and have some nice character. I did pimp them out with a bit of Liquitex flexible modeling paste to give the impression of a stucco like appearance. For the building on the right (with red door) I taped off all the areas where the cross beams would be placed. I then applied the paste with a brush and then as it was drying I took another brush to dab the paste to create a more nuanced look. It worked out very well as it left a clear area to glue the crossbeams onto. The paste dried a pale white almost clear in places and as a result the 'plaster' took on an off white hue. To aid in the appearance I used some off white paint, dabbed on, followed by some slightly whiter shade very lightly applied as a highlight. 

 

For the other two buildings I dispensed with the taping and instead was just careful in applying the paste, this worked and saved time. For the building on the left I added some embossed brick paper to break up the monotony of painted MDF.

 All the roofs were painted black and dry brushed a dark grey and light grey. Then I used Vallejo environmental paint to add streaks of green, light green, brown and yellow.

 

I still have one more building to complete and three more on order.

Pulp Pacific preparations

 

So, prep work has finally started on some required elements for a new PULP alley campaign, China Station. The gunship is by Sarissa with Pulp Figures hardware and figures. The two junks are 3D Russian 'puzzles' that I bought many, many years ago. 

Mighty Fortress, possible AHPC XIII entry

 

 So, inspired by a fellow challenger and his wall project, I have been poking around the garage for some old GW stuff. On the painting table right now are 4 forests terrain features. They might be ready for this Saturday. But, the item I was looking for in the garage was the mighty fortress, three in fact. I found them.

 

I think this may become a background project to be worked on during the course of the challenge. Three mighty fortress consist of 13 wall sections (including gate sections) for a total length of 390cm roughly 192". There are also 8 towers roughly 5.5" square.

The points calculation

Each 6" square cube counts as 20 points.

The 4 wall sections when placed side by side form a square roughly 12" by 13". 

So that would be 4 x 20 = 80 points per fortress, x3 for a total of  = 240 points. 

Four towers make a square roughly 11" by 11" so 20 x 4 = 80 per fort x3 = 240 points. 

My admittedly poor math skills suggests that this may well net 480 points for the 3 fortresses. Then add in 20 points for the lone extra wall section (1/4 of 80 points) and this would bring the total to 500 points. This would be nice to go out on.

WIP WW 2 projects taking shape, slowly and a new tool for basing.

 

The AA tank on the right has an integral base, all others had bases added by me.

The new tool a device to cut corners, to round them off.

Finally making some progress on my 20mm WW2 stuff assisted by this tool.

Can't see the forest for the...

 

 Trees!

Finally getting around to working on some scenery. In this case I am trying to fix up some already built forests, while also building some new forest bases, and some forest 'outlines'. The Mod Podge actually is not being used for this, it just happens to be on the table. The old forests are on the left side, the trees on these are fixed in place, but I plan to pry them off and place magnets where they used to be. This should allow me to better store these bits of terrain as the tress can be stored separately from the bases (that can be stacked for easy storage.

On the far right you can see the forest outlines that I am working on, these can be used with individually mounted trees. The idea is that when troops enter the woods one can remove the trees but keep the outline on the table to delineate the footprint of the woods.

None of this is all that innovative but it is a project that is long overdue to be done, just like the corn fields that have sat in storage for a few years.

 

 

The 'Great' mountain build of 2022 part 3 the end