Fred's 2012 Painting Diary

[fred.]

Thanks chaos.

I think that was meant to be Chaps.

[fred.]

British Armour

Tidied up a few more Shermans


And some more Shermans, along with Stuarts and M10s


Added a few decals to a couple


Thats the quick bit over - the rest of the battle group will take rather more work as they only have base coats done

[nikharwood]

Looking lovely 

[fred.]

Missed a few days of diary entries:

Friday
Played Saga - with those big 28mm figures - my first game playing and my host let my Anglo-Danes thump his Welsh, mainly by equipping his Welsh with rubber javelins. This is a great set of rules - very simple on the surface, but the battle board gives a strategic element to it, and allows several different methods of play, great fun.

It would also work well with 10mm figures, either single based or 2-3 to a 2p coin - with less than 30-50 figures to a battle group you could probably have all 4 factions for less than the price of the rules from Pendraken

Saturday & Sunday
Because of Saga, I did some more work on my plastic Saxon figures, finished off 2pts of troops, 4 Hearthguard and 8 Warriors. Also glued sand to the bases of the other figures I have assembled, 8 more Hearthguard, 8 Warriors and 12 Levy.

I nearly had a major disaster spray varnishing my Minotoaurs - and not the usual spray varnish disaster. I had taken the minotaurs and a few tanks to the shed to give a spay of matt varnish. I was using a sheet of cardboard as a tray to allow the figures to be rotated easily. As the shed was a bit dark I picked up the figures on the cardboard tray to have a better look at them in door way. At this point the weight of figures on a slightly damp bit of corrugated cardboard was too much and the card bent in the middle - I managed to stop the tanks and most of the figures falling on the floor. But 3 stands of minotaurs landed on the paving stone just outside the shed. Fortunately damage was remarkably light, 2 figures popped off their bases and one figure had a bent and scraped horn.  It was only today that I noticed 2 more stands were missing - and discovered these lying on the floor of the shed, with bottom of the bases facing the door way, where I hadn't seen them. Luckily I hadn't stepped on them!!

Monday
Had a flexi day from work, and was able to paint, as I had looked after the kids all weekend while the missus was away.
Did more work on Saxons for Saga, got another 8 warriors mainly painted along with a Warlord. Painting 28mm figures is slow - and for figures like these not in uniforms it seems to be constant swapping of paint colours.

Took some photos of Minotaurs for the Comp in the sunshine!

Had a Catch 22 moment when phoning the doctors - phoned in the morning - to be told to phone after 2pm for test results, phoned in the afternoon to be told that the GP made his calls to give out results in the morning, and would I like him to phone me tomorrow.  

[fred.]

More painting of Anglo Danes for Saga (not 10mm, sorry)


I've got 2 x 8 man units of Warriors pretty much painted, along with a 4 man unit of Hearthguard.


At intermediate stages are a 12 man Levy unit, 2 units of Hearthguard with Dane Axes, and a another unit of Hearthgurad and 2 warlords. Most of the figures are from two sets of plastics, but I did get a few metal ones over the weekend.

[Leon]

More painting of Anglo Danes for Saga (not 10mm, sorry)

[fred.]

Friday

Double plus good day.

Got home to find a weighty envelope from Pendrakan and played (and won) in the evening

Shiney
Lots of lovely 10mm goodness, assorted wagons, some very nice pack camels and Arab civilians, palm trees (which say they can be microwaved!!). Water and fire elemetals.  Nice ballista for my Romans and a pontoon bridge.  It's like Christmas,

The only bad bit is the halflings who are huge, they are as big as the historical humans and up to the shoulders of the high elves, who ar being figures. Also think with my messing about with the order some extras may have been forgotten - but I'll check and email Leon about that.

Hail Caesar gaming
Played HC with fantasy Addons in 10mm. Played our typical Elves vs Sauron, but this week swapped armies so I played the hordes of evil. And swept all before them. the elves spent most of the game rather too close to their table edge, and only very late on where able to make much use of their shooting.

[Leon]

...palm trees (which say they can be microwaved!!).

I hadn't realised the tubs said that on them!

[fred.]

Saturday & Sunday

Watching 6 Nations and Work came ahead of painting.

Got some assembly done from the latest order - but the Roman ballista together, and did some very basic conversions to make some crew from the Late Roman figures. The Napoleonic dead horses look perfectly acceptable for earlier periods, so will make some little dice holder walls so they can be used as HC wound markers.
The ECW tumbrel carts are really quite big, makes you feel sorry for the poor little horsey that has to pull them - smallest daughter wanted to know how everything wouldn't slide out the back of them...

Took lots of photos of a few models for the comp - taking photos seems to be rather time consuming - then the results are never quite what they seem on the back of the camera.

[fred.]

Also based the palm trees - used some left over plastic circular bases from BoFA which came with a hole that nicely matched that "stalk" on the bottom of the trees. They need a quick dry brush to tone down the shininess of the plastic.

[fred.]

Added some little green stuff "walls" to the base of the horses to make casualty dice holders



To the left are the ECW tumbrel carts, and in the background the GW BofA Storm Giant - which I assembled as I had the green stuff out. Big monsters like this are great in 10mm, as they are huge.

[Leon]

Also based the palm trees - used some left over plastic circular bases from BoFA which came with a hole that nicely matched that "stalk" on the bottom of the trees. They need a quick dry brush to tone down the shininess of the plastic.

I think I should have tried that on mine, I used a wash instead aond it didn't work too well.

[fred.]

British Armour

Back to doing some more work on my British Armoured Battlegroup - today it was the half-tracks and funnies. Did some highlighting of the half-tracks, and then a coat of Klear in preparation for the decals. Did 3 stars, which needed 6 decals due to general ham-fistedness, may take longer to do the decals than the painting!

Black washed the funnies and some trucks to darken them up as their base coat was quite pale.



A rather dark quick photo of my desk!

[fred.]

More decals on half-tracks and some more work on Saga figures - including a bit of basing in preparation for a game tomorrow.

Hand painted a set of blank dice to be Viking Saga dice - The coat of Klear to seal the Anglo-Dane dice that I had added stickers to at the weekend didn't go to well. Might need to redo a few faces were the Klear pooled then stuck 

[fred.]

Friday
Played a six player game of Saga - which turned into 2 three player games on the same table  My Anglo-Danes on their first outing were slaughtered to the literal last man  , but in doing so took such a toll on their enemy that I won the scenario, with twice as many kill points as anyone else   .

Still wonder about Saga in 10mm - you'd probably get a 4pt war band for about £3!

Saturday & Sunday
British Armour
More decals on half-tracks, highlighting on them and Funnies, then some basing.
Finally feel I am getting there on this battle group, mainly trucks left to finish off now.