Fred's 2012 Painting Diary

[fred.]

No painting tonight - but did set up a battlefield for a game tomorrow night.

Its always possible these could feature in the 2012 painting comp - when are you going to announce the categories?

[Leon]

Its always possible these could feature in the 2012 painting comp - when are you going to announce the categories?

Not long now... 

[fred.]

Friday 6th Jan

No painting, but did get a game in.  Played Hail Caesar (Fantasy variant) with a Charles Grant table top teaser scenario, with Sauron vs Araby armies (if that is mixing enough ideas together)

It was the first outing of some of my Pendraken Late Era Romans Archers and Horse Archers, helping fill the ranks of the Araby army. PD spiders were present in the Sauron ranks too. In the middle of the photo, though rather edge on is a PD elemental, acting as a sand storm spell marker.



This is getting towards the end of the battle - the Sauron forces are trying to exit to the top and left of the photo - but have been blocked by my skirmishing cavalry. At the bottom of the picture my knights have been edging forward over far too many turns towards the massed wargs - who even with 4 units together won't charge the knights. A couple of turns later the knights finally charged and swept away the Warg brigade. At this point my oppo conceded as he didn't think he could achieve his objective and it was getting late.

[fred.]

Had a rummage around the lead pile and part finished projects to see what could be good for the painting comp.

Also based up some trees.




The conifers I have had for ages, bought of ebay, the light green trees are Minibits 50mm ones, the dark green ones are woodland scenics, they come as plastic trunks and branches and you have to glue clump foliage to them.
Both the conifers and the Minibits trees have wire trunks, which need bending to make a bit of a stand, then gluing to coins to act as bases. The bigger ones got some super glue than a layer of hot glue, for the small ones hot glue alone sufficed. Then a layer of sand to cover the coins and hot glue.  These will add a bit of variety to my woodlands.

I have found I am using so many 2ps for basing that I had to get a bag full from the post office the over week. But coins still seem to be cheaper than washers, and don't have an annoying hole in the middle

[fred.]

WWII for Painting Comp

Did some work on some old and some new minis as potential entries for the painting comp. I dug some early French stuff out, based it and gave it a couple of heavy dry brushes of Olive Green - I quite like early war French kit as it has all sorts of funky cammo schemes. These will get sand lines added.

Tidied up a few stands of German infantry - WWII infantry is quite hard to get looking good, as if done properly they should blend together and blend into the base.

Spent ages researching the right markings for a 3RTR Crusader, as when they had Crusaders 3RTR were part of 8th Armoured Brigade, not 7th Armoured Div. But fortunately after I had found what the markings were I actually had them on a decal sheet.



Minotaurs have become a bit stranded over the weekend.

[Leon]

Coming on nicely, I'm looking forward to seeing these in the Painting Comp!

[fred.]

Not done much the last couple of nights - been rather knackered after some busy days at work so have been watching Lewis on DVD of an evening, then staying up too late reading Game of Thrones book 3.5

Did a bit of detailing on the German infantry - trying to move them on from table top standard to competition.

[fred.]

Got a bit of painting done yesterday, and a fair bit today.
Minotaurs

Decided to get the Minotaurs finished. Did some detailing of medallions and general tidying up. Added bulls head designs to the shields, and washed with brown magic wash. Glued 3 up to a warmaster base, and added sand. The bases are quite big, so may need a second layer of sand in certain places.
Hopefully get the bases painted and a the figures varnished in the next couple of days


German Infantry
Bit more finishing off, added some small bushes to the bases

French Tanks
Added the start of the sand camouflage on the FT17s

[Leon]

Nice!

[fred.]

Did a bit of extra basing on the Minotaurs last night - nothing tonight - bloody work.

Did get a delivery today, some silfor tufts, which look OK with 10mm, was worried they might be a bit too big.


Also got some Vallejo water effects - in a surprisingly big jar, tried a couple of sample blobs, it looks like gloopy PVA at the minute - its quite thick and holds any texture you add to it. Also got a few A4 sheets of blue foam to try to make some castle walls.

[fred.]

Had boiler problems last night (gas not wife!!!) so didn't get any painting done - but boiler was fixed today, so nice and warm tonight. 

Painted bases of minotaurs brown tonight, and dry brushed with pale yellow brown. With a bit of flock these will be done.

Should then do some more work on the French tanks to get one of them up to scratch for the comp. Tried some water effects to make small puddles on their bases tonight - see how it dries tomorrow.

[Leon]

I'll be interested in how the water effects come out, it's something that I get asked regularly at the shows about the Vallejo stuff, but I've never used it myself.

[fred.]

Friday 20th Jan

Played a game - Hail Caesar High Elves vs Sauron - using a table top teaser scenario, Infantry vs Cavalry

My High Elves initially seemed to be doing well, deploying wide, firing lots of arrows, and clearing away lots of skirmishers. But once combat was joined things went less well for me. A unit of terror causing Wights completely stopped my advance, even a followup charge in the flank wasn't enough to win the combat with the Wights saving 7 and of 8 attacks, when I only needed to score 3 wounds to win that round. In the end 2 units of knights died at hands of the undead while the urak hai ran for the hills.

It was a fun game, which played very differently from a normal line up both sides and attack

Shot some time lapse photos which will hopefully play as a movie
https://www.youtube.com/v/picasacid?version=3&feature=player_embedded

If not here is the link to the web album
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ZzIGsImPxBZaLUKZP9xXvtMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink

[Leon]

Cool, I really like the time lapse as well.  Last year, I started playing about with some idea's to recreate one of the AWI battles in 1:1 with our figures, and do timelapse from several angles, which we could then edit together to make a mini-movie.  Never got past the idea stage with that though!

[fred.]

Cheers Leon, I quite like the time lapse, and it's much quicker than writing up a full battle report.

Doing a battle 1:1 sounds cool, how big a battle where you thinking? One thing I think is missing is something to indicate that fighting is happening. With gun powder armies this is probably easier as a bit of cotton wool to represent gun smoke.

Painting wise added some flock to the minotaur's bases, now just need a coat of varnish and dulcote and that will be 4 more units done.