Terrain Mat part One

Earlier in November, my family was away for the weekend, and I got little done while they were gone, instead spending time with my sister and playing video games. (Classic XCOM).

When they got home late on that Sunday afternoon, my wife encouraged me to involve the kids in a project that I have been wanting to do for quite some time.

In the spring, a neighbor moved out, and for a few days had a bunch of random wall "art" out in front of their house to give away. My wife picked up the last piece with the idea that she would repaint it with the kids, as she has done with other canvases in the past. However, like many projects, no progress was made for a while, and the painting lived in the garage.

After several months, we pulled out the painting, and put it in the backyard where kid painting occurs. The paint was basically falling off, and we began to peel it off as we were doing other things.

After a few weeks of it sitting around, I got serious about peeling off the paint, and realized that it was sticky on one side... was it glued?  A quick soak with the garden hose proved that it was, and everything came off much more quickly after that.

So now we have a 91x119 cm blank canvas, and my idea was to make it into a play mat.

The kids were enthusiastic once they got into the idea, and they wanted to make a design with a road and a river (the maps of the battle of five armies and the battle of the Hornburg I had showed them may have influenced this a bit).

With a pen, they sketched out a plan on the canvas, and then I had my son measure the road segments so that they would be approximately 40mm wide (suitable for a 15mm dirt road or a Warmaster base)

After that we gloved up, and started mixing caulk and paint and smearing it on.  After slapping on a section of caulk, we then sprinkled a relatively heavy coat of the primary flock, followed by dustings of other flocks, static grass etc.  I then crudely rolled it in with an empty caulk tube, although this was not very successful due to the canvas still being on the frame.  Unfortunately no pictures of this phase, my hands were too dirty, and my wife was busy.

After less an an hour (and one change of clothes for the kids), we got to this stage:

You can see here that there are quite a number of colors, and some texture imparted by the caulk.  The roads and river are currently unfinished. After this dried for a few hours, I carefully dumped it off onto newspaper, and put it in the garage to await the next step. The flock and such dumped off was recovered, and equaled about 60% of what went on in the first place, more because of all the other flocks added than because it all fell off!

Tools used:
Paint stirring sticks
plastic tub from the recycling bin

Supplies used:
Two cans of paint, matched to GW Scorched Brown, and Vallejo Earth
Two tubes of flexible paintable caulk
One bag of flock
Various other flocks, static grasses, and herbs

Next step: have enough time to do the road and river sections.

WH:TOW - All Aboard the Hype Train

Next Stop Wish List City.

So this is apparently something that the GW design team is really working on... for a far future release.

Wish-listing? Plastic Warmaster scaled Warhammer. Far more suited to the scale that GW wants Warhammer to be, plus visually gorgeous.

More realistic?  Cynical way to rope in the grognards by bringing out a $75 $100 hardback rulebook with all the characters they love and miss.  If it plays like 6th edition, but incorporates 8th edition units, they will have my money!

So we will see.

Painting Tiny Germans

I have started painting the infantry (and support guns) mentioned in my prior post.

It has been something like 10 years (!) since I have painted any 15mm figures, so I decided to do a test figure, see how I liked the colors and such before I really got into it.

Keep in mind that the figure is based on a 19mm disk, so you can see that this is blown up a bit, but I think that the painting is not terrible... but hang on, why does it look sandy?

Did not roll the figure around in sand before painting

Bother.

Under magnification it appeared that the figure was covered in fuzz from the white primer (which did fail after this use).  Review of the other figures revealed that some others were similarly afflicted, so under magnification, I scraped each of the figures with my finger nail, and used a file for smaller bits.

Now smoothed, I touched up the paint a bit, and ended up with the following:

Still not perfect, but getting closer to where I want to be, and I have pressed on with painting the rest of the platoon and infantry supports.

Night Goblins - Nearing completion

Before you start a new project, you should finish you old project... is advice that I clearly never follow, as a glance around my blog, or house, or office would clearly tell you. 

However, I am nearly done with these night goblins, and while I was getting them ready for various basing work, I took a few hasty pictures.

The lighting is not great at night, but I think you can make out what is needed here. 

First up is a picture of all the goblins I painted in this round, which include 30 spear goblins, six fanatics (all old metal so they scale better), and four converted "heroes".  I started these in January, so not the fastest painting progress, although in terms of time spent it was not so bad. 

Here is my converted battle standard bearer and the figure it was built on. The standard is comprised of three different parts, and the left arm comes from a beastman (with some sculpted robes)

All of my figures have come from the old WHFB 7th edition starter box called "the Battle at Skull Pass" or some such, and as with all GW starter boxes, the included figures are relatively cheap on Ebay for a few years after release.  Consequently, I was able to buy a bunch of the figures (which is where the various regiments come from), and had a ton of heroes for conversion.  The center guy in this picture is the big boss from the box, and I converted two more of that same figure in to the guy on the left and the right. 

Since I had a surplus body from the battle standard bearer, I converted him to a boss with a great weapon.  Pretty minimal sculpting was needed, which I always appreciate. (As I recall the original regiments were much smaller than the 30-40 size I am building them as, so I have a lot of spare command figures)

Last, we have three generations of regimental champions, with the oldest on the left, 2013 edition in the middle, and newest on the right.  I think there are about 11-12 years between them. 

Since I took these pictures I managed to flock the bases for all these fellows, as well as another, older regiment of spear goblins that I painted a while back.  I was intending to also do the static grass, but looking at 70 of their little faces the energy left me, and they got put back into a box while I played Civ V.  Not exactly an ideal result, but they are so close now... just the static grass and matte coating and they will be finished. In the future I have another 40 spear goblins, 40 or so archers, the rest of the night goblin wolf riders to convert, a few more trolls, and a spear thrower... sounds pretty daunting when you think about it.

Next should be 15mm Germans, but you never know.

15mm Skirmish Plans

I moved my desk again recently, which gave me the chance to tidy up a bit and photograph  my 15mm skirmish force that I previewed in the last post. 

Shown are a German Panzergrenadier platoon (Battlefront metal figures) and support assets (nearly all Old Glory cast Command Decision).

The three squads of the platoon are based on what I will euphemistically call "19mm copper clad zinc disks", with larger versions of the disks for the machine gun teams.  The best part about this basing is that it cost mere pennies. Then I increased the cost by buying self-adhesive magnetic disks, which you can see to the right of the picture.  PzG platoons are small and thus brittle, but very shooty with all those machine guns. (and I had them on hand)

Additional Company/Battalion/Regimental/Divisional assets:
Under officer, panzerfausts, sniper, MMG squad, LeIg 74, PAK 40, Stug III (with gun variations), Panzer IV H, Panther, SdKfz 222, a standard SdKfz 251 and a 251/10 commander's vehicle (with 37mm gun), and a couple of kubelwagens.

I clearly like all of the additional assets!  Happily, everything here except the MMG squad was drawn from my reserves of miniatures, since 13 years ago or so I had the idea that I would like to play Flames of War and bought a couple of kilograms of metal to that end. The grey painted Panzer IV and the SdKfz 251 have been on my painting desk since then...

What I do not have are on board mortars, forward observers, medic, or any panzerschreck teams.  Or terrain, rules, or an opposing force...

So it has been a while...

Hello blog followers.  Sorry that it has been so long since the last post.  I would give excuses about being busy with this, that, and the other, but really I was just not doing a lot of hobby, and for whatever reason did not want to blog about other things. 

I have been painting those Night Goblins from my prior post, and have them nearly finished.  Then again they have been nearly finished for a couple of months, so we will see how long it takes me to actually get them done done.

Even though I have not been hobbying that much, I have (as one does) been on Ebay, which is pretty dangerous.  I managed to lose a bunch of bids, which is good, if frustrating, but did win this WHFB dwarf lot...

 That is an old Marauder organ gun, a mostly complete bolt thrower, a steam 'coptor, a mess of crew dwarves, and some random warmachine pieces.  Plus eight monopose plastic dwarves and three newer dwarves that fit in with my army.  And Burlock Damminson.

Once I had bought something, it was easier for something else to fall into the cart...

 In this case a 210x150cm "tapestry" that will work very nicely as a play mat for space games, as seen in the next picture.

And finally, if various projects are stymied by having a lack of time, and you just unexpectedly bought some new miniatures for an old army, then naturally you should be starting a different and completely incompatible project...

I.e.  15mm WWII skirmish gaming.

So that is where I am at.  What about you?

Night Goblin Conversions

I managed to do a little sculpting last week to move these Night Goblins along.  I am trying to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak, before I inevitably drift into thinking about other projects.

Converted Boss, Banner Boss, Shaman, and another Boss

Since I took this picture I finished prepping a 30 member regiment of spear gobbos, and now I am just waiting for a warmer weekend afternoon to get to priming.

Of course, given the time of year I may be waiting a while (and I spent the last one doing work on the house).

Brigade Miniatures order

Midway through last month, I took advantage of the annual Brigade Miniatures holiday sale to order some bases and a few other things (it was pretty hard to resist testing out 15mm scifi, or getting a swath of space ships).  I ordered on the 14th, and it made it to my house on the 24th, which is pretty impressive for international shipping, particularly during the holiday season.

The main thrust of my purchase was to get these nifty bases that Brigade has for use with my Trek project.  I figure these bases will be great for tracking drones, missiles, plasma, fighters, and shuttles.  Each base is comprised of a metal hex with a die dock in the top, and a 3mm hole for a flight stem.  I got three varieties of micro dice to fit in the docks, and I will either use spare GW flight stems or buy some 3mm acrylic rod.

Shown with GW flight stem

I also bought a few packs of space fighters and other ships for multiple uses.  They could be used as fighters and shuttles in a Trek game, or on their own as micro fighters in a space game, such as 5150: Fighter Command by THW.  (which allows for solo play too)

Here is a sample of the fighters and other light craft.

Courier to fighters

 In addition to the "good guy" fighters, I got a transport and a corvette, as well as a pack of enemy fighters.

Anyway, a great buy from Brigade Miniatures, and inches me closer to having a complete Trek gaming set.  Now if only the magnets I ordered from China would show up.

Gloomspite Gitz

Happily for me (but not for my budget), the next Age of Sigmar army is "Gloomspite Gitz" which rounds  up the Night goblins, Forest Goblins, and trolls into one army and adds quite a few new figures.  Here are some that have caught my eye:

The bad goblin himself

Plastic Squig hoppers! 

Troll King

Goblin cave terrain

In addition to these there are also an alternate build for the squig hoppers (with lances!), squig herd, a box of various drugged out shamans, new (tall) stone trolls, plastic mangler squigs, and several more.

Looks like GW is keeping up the frenetic pace they have been on, which is great for new models, but terrible for those of us with limited time and budgets!

What about you, will you be adding any goblins in the new year?

Shapeways November Order

You may recall that there was a Shapeways sale for Cyber Monday 2018, which I know was quite a while ago.

Naturally I bought some of my own ships during the sale (why not save more?) and they arrived just after Christmas.

I got six Confederation frigates of three classes, five Imperial escorts of two classes, two more D6s, and a sprue of shuttles.  The printing seems to have come out perfectly, except that the sprue for the Imperial escorts was twisted and one of the frigates popped off its sprue.

I have an order of bases from Brigade Miniatures to go with these, and some magnets from eBay coming from China, and then I can get them based up and off to primer.

Looking forward to painting these sometime soon... at least before I buy a Unionist or Star Empire fleet!