Great War Boardgame

 Tanks

I picked up both the main expansion for the Great War boardgame, which features male and female MkIVs and German A7Vs, as well as German artillery, and the Whippet expansion, which I'll go ahead and assume needs no explanation.

Artillery

In addition to the German artillery (105mm guns), I also picked up some British opposition (18pdrs). I'm easily amused, so having this gun in 28mm, 15mm and 6mm makes me smile. :D They come in the usual brown plastic for the Brits, and grey for the Germans. They have been undercoated in the following pictures.

Flames of War

Obviously, the primary reason for purchasing these models is to use them with the boardgame. However, my mate fancies getting into Flames of War's WWI expansion, and so I'll be working out how to use these guys for both systems before basing anybody. Obviously, in time I shall expand my collection beyond just the plastics so I have a broader range of poses - and some officers, too! Hopefully, in a few months, we'll get a game in.

The Empire Needs You!

I was in Wales the other month, and chanced on a new gaming store in Swansea. Naturally, I couldn't resist picking up some Stormtroopers, though I managed to resist the siren song of Imperial Assault itself. It's just a matter of time before my resistance is crushed, mind you. They are lovely little models. A minimum of mould lines. It's a shame there is only the one pose, but when I get some more, it'll give me incentive to get out sharp implements to perform a spot of battlefield surgery. They aren't 28mm, as I had suspected (or known?), but are similar enough in size to the larger 28s that they can stand (in their crouched pose) beside them without too much bother.

In the comparison shots are a tall chap from Renegade's 28mm WWI range and a wee Scots officer from Musketeer's 25mm range. I undercoated the Stormies white, gave them a wash of that Nuln Oil black wash, dry-brushed the armour white again, and picked out the recessed details in black. The bases got a dark grey, and then the whole model received a gloss varnish, resulting in the floors resembling those of the Death Star. I did experiment with some ruddy shading for the eyes, but it hasn't worked. I must bear in mind that one needs greater contrast with little things.

Warhammer Fantasy for Frostgrave: Part III

Next up in the queue is this bunch of blue-tinged adventurers. You can see here one of the Norse chaps, and one of the two Amethyst Imperial wizards. Both originally had scythes. Both soon lost them.

Return to Napoleonics

Come the end of August, I have arranged for some old friends to visit for the weekend for a spot of gaming. As part of my preparations for that, I've been pulling miniatures long abandoned, and getting them ready for a battle or two. A load of Napoleonic troops are currently on the desk. Some of them received a very basic paintjob back in the day - and I don't even intend to try to get them repainted for the summer. I just mean to base them, pop a spot of protective varnish on, and then they should be good enough for gaming. Some infantrymen who never had any work done on them have had a coat of undiluted PVA, as I understand this should help them retain their paint. Wish them and me luck!

March/April Plans

Note: I wrote this before my last post, so don't be confused if it seems retrograde.

I have a few projects on the go at the minute. I am almost at the end of building the village, I think. The "Mosque", a small building, and a couple of large ones will round it out nicely, bringing the total of buildings, including what I think of as the Hacienda to a lucky total of thirteen structures. A ruin or two, and perhaps a few other things, may follow in due course, but for a while, that will be it.

I have three areas I want to focus on now. First, the Baccus BEF Infantry division alluded to on Monday. I'm very happy with the colour scheme for the guns, and am feeling confident about the infantry colour scheme. I should have finished it tonight, but I am too tired for sleeping, having got up early to drive almost to Hull for a friend's little boy's christening. Lovely time, but I'm shattered.

Since I'm too tired to paint I am, of course, cutting things up with sharp knives. Wisdom is for the wakeful! This is work on the second thing I shall be working on: a modular castle. I have posted ere now a teaser for one of several towers I am building. That is nicely advanced, and will fit in with a collection of walls I am at work on. I mean to have a good 6' of straight bits, and then have a think about a gateway, angled bits of walls and so on. Again, sleepiness currently impedes thinking and detailed planning.

Finally, I long ago decided to build a set of three connecting trench boards for 40K. Now, I haven't played 40K in years, and have no intention of going back to it, but I wouldn't be averse to some Great War trench action. I'd need to cover up a few oddities, which I shall. So the first step has been undercoating the old boards so I can get a good idea of what work needs to be done to start bringing them up to code.

Great War Teaser

A 28mm Renegade 18-pdr gun with its 6mm counterpart from Baccus. Guess where this is going!

Saurian Teaser

I hope by the time you read this I am not being savaged by a cold. I had last week off work, which was very helpful in getting Dad's present finished. Naturally, having to that point avoided the deadly cold which had been slaying (well, inconveniencing) people in this locale since just before Christmas, I succumbed. Anyway, today's teaser is much less tantalising than the last one: dinosaurs!

Brown Teaser Explained!

So what was I playing at by posting a picture of a brown car on a brown board? I was making a model railway for my Dad's birthday. I'm too technologically inept to have worked out how on Earth to wire it up properly, though I spent several hours in failed attempts, reading online tutorials and watching a few Youtube videos. It all seemed perfectly simple. It wasn't. The construction was much easier. I made an initial error by applying green grass onto bare brown-painted board, and expecting it to look like grass, but after that everything went swimmingly. The board is deliberately a hodgepodge of different elements. There are some plastic buildings from Granddad's old layout in Stockport, a few buildings I've assembled and painted just for this, several card structures that I ransacked Dad's old layout for, and figures I've painted recently with acrylics, and ones painted in the 1960s with Humbrol. In short, a mixture of wargaming and model railway terrain, miniatures, kits and paints was employed.

He used to have a huge layout that took up most of the attic. Several years ago he removed it to transfer a large quantity of books onto shelves up there, and subsequently I carved out a little wargaming empire, too. I deliberately set up the tunnel to hide the disappearance of the track, that way, if he chooses, we can expand the board with another 4' by 4' section. Anyway, that is what I was up to. He seems pleased with it, and we're all happy I managed to keep it under my hat! Enjoy the pictures. A couple show the construction process in the attic, and then its current location downstairs.

Tyrannosaur Teaser

I'm not just working on terrain these days, although that is consuming much of my time. I am also doing some painting of models, I promise. Here's a teaser of a Tyrannosaur that I am basing and tidying up.

Imperial Guard: Heavy Weapons Team (Mortar)

Although I've been a bit off my game lately I did manage to get a mortar team finished just a little while ago. Looking at it now, it's unintentionally a colour scheme from the IG Codex before last. I've run out of that shade of green, so there'll not be another team in the same outfit.

1/72 Kettenrad and Kuebelwagen

Digging through some bits and bobs the other day, I turned up this adorable pair of Wehrmacht vehicles. I decided to make the car a lot muckier, as though it's been on a cross-country dash through the lines. That must be how it lost one wing mirror and the windscreen. I wonder where they have ended up. The Kettenrad, by contrast, is pretty clean, and must have been sitting around an aerodrome somewhere in the desert. These two must have been sitting around for years. I remember as a student I had some idea of doing a "What if?" game set at the Maus testing facility, and I had a few of these small vehicles around primarily for colour. As with so many plans, nothing came of it, but the vehicles are still sitting about. Unusually, they're only in three places, despite numbering about twenty. Unusually restrained storing behaviour on my part!

ACW: Baccus 6mm all-arms Confederate force

As well as the 15mm ACW chaps, I've also been working on some of Peter Berry's 6mm lads. I decided to have a little test run of one of each kind of unit. The cavalry regiment here is twice the size of a normal one, because nine figures to me. So instead 18 men and horses are taking up more space than 28 infantry on the corresponding base. I feel it both looks more visually appealing and it indicates just how much space a horseman takes up compared to an infantryman. The bases here aren't finished, and I need to find out whether I have any Confederate flags for the infantry, but they're mostly done, so I can start rolling out some more units. I think I bought a divisional pack back in the day, so there's one more Union cavalry unit, but a wealth of Rebel and Union infantry and artillery.

40K Tanks: Leman Russ Vanquisher and Punisher

I'm not up to speed on Imperial Guard things these days. Astra Militarum - the stars of female soldiers? My Classicist's bones creak in protest. Eh, that's GW: if you can't stand the badly beaten corpse of Latin moaning and pleading for its life in the corner, stay out of the writers' way. Anyway, today I'm continuing with some work I started last time on converting some turrets I made years ago to serve on Leman Russes. The first one I trimmed the barrel back a bit, and inserted a Punisher barrel I made yonks ago. I recall I had some idea of a twin Punisher cannon on a Macharius variant  (as in forty shots, not 20 rerolled ones), and I still have that turret somewhere. The second I added most of the barrel from an old Vanquisher turret I partly scratchbuilt and partly kitbashed even longer ago. Maybe eight or nine years, that. It seems to me to have a vaguely WWII German look to it - maybe a Panther. The barrel length seems really disproportionate to the hull and turret size, and that tinkles that little bell that says Panther. I may do a couple more conversions of these old turrets. If I wanted to round out what was the Guard armoury last time, there'd be the Executioner, Exterminator and Eradicator to produce. I could make them all, but I don't want to push myself beyond what I'm willing to do.