Fred's 2014 Painting Diary

[Leon]

Looks good to me!  At the end of the 1st LOTR film, there's some ruins during Boromir's final fight which are similarly sized, so they look right to me.

[Hertsblue]

Yeah, medieval fortifications could use huge blocks of whatever stone was available.

[fred.]

So already this is turning in to infrequent posts - listing what I have done in the last week rather than more frequent updates.

Anyway.

Played KoW both this Friday and last week - we have invented a brigade activation system, which actually seems to work quite well, at both cutting up the turns between players, and keeping a multi-player game moving along.

This week it was a 5 player game, with my as an Araby force waiting for a relief column of Undead to cross the board, between us was an Orc and Goblin horde.


This is the view from my position, Pendraken Ottoman Turk hand gunners and artillery doing sterling work holding up the Orc Chariots. My artillery was very effective this week - surviving most of the game and causing a lot of damage especially late on.

The Orcs in the village in the middle sat there as a blocking force most of the game, while the undead shambled forward very slowly. The Orc cavalry on the left caused lots of damage to me, but I killed them all but a couple of heroes, the goblins (out of picture to the left) cleared out my left hand brigade, but at a very heavy cost.
The undead managed to keep the supply carts, which was enough for a minor victory, yeah!

[fred.]

Total Battle Village

Found the base mat that came with this, and gave it a quick coat of paint, picked out the walls and hedges, and a bit of flock - it has come out rather nicely.



And with the houses in position - a couple are still at a very basic level of painting.

[get2grips]

That is superb Fred

[Fenton]

Looks really good Fred

I presume the brigade  idea is something similar to the way Warmaster ran it?

[fred.]

GW Hill

Some time ago (a good few years) I got the Battle of Five Armies box set from GW, this was a great set with lots of figures, and scenery and a version of the Warmaster rules.

One of the more useful pieces of scenery is the GW modular hill - well half of it any way. Last year I got another 2 pieces of the hill to make a single large hill - or two promontories.

So finally painted up the second 2 pieces last week, using a rather nice craft paint from Hobby Craft - why it had taken so long to getting round to painting this, when it took so little time, I don't know.

The hill can be assembled in two ways.




It can also be combined with the other 2 pieces to make a nice big hill - which I did this morning. Then was interrupted by someone at the door, and forgot that I hadn't actually taken a photo of the big hill, and put all the bits away again....

[Techno]

Mega, mega 
Cheers - Phil.

[fred.]

Thanks chaps - the TBM houses really come up nicely with some quite simple painting

I presume the brigade  idea is something similar to the way Warmaster ran it?

A bit. Its actually a bit simpler - you divide your army into brigades, last night the different players had 2, 2, 3, 4 or 4 brigades each. The bridge must deploy together. But after that can move apart. Then we draw coloured beads to see which side activates (the total number of beads is equal to the maximum brigades on a side). Then each player on that side activates their brigade, and plays a mini turn with that brigade.

Works better than the single activation as it allows multiple attacks against a defender, and speeds things up, as you can move units together.

[fred.]

Mongols



Big parcel this morning from you know who.

Light cavalry on the left, heavies and command in the middle, foot archers then civilians on the right.

The figures look really nice - I think I may need a few more mounted archers - as I wanted to get all the packs for variety, so have ended up with quite a few spear and sword armed chaps.

The camp followers are very nice - have to work out how to use them.

The foot command are really nice - again have to work out how to fit them into a cavalry army.

[fred.]

WWI Reinforcements

Also in the jiffy bag were several French guns and a few extra 1914 British.



Along with an earlier delivery from another manufacturer (shh!) I now have enough for a 1914 Division of French infantry with a couple of regiments of cavalry, and a brigade of British.

[fred.]

and finally for this week's catch-up

Late War WWI Germans

A regiment of troops for GWSH - just a couple of colours so far. Its taken a fair bit of googling to find out the colours of all their various bits of kit - of which the answer seems to be brown, light brown and dark grey.



With single colour uniforms the figures really paint up quickly.

I used a new brand of spray paint to under coat these - Kobra which is available from Amazon at around £5 for a can. Seems to be a nice paint, with good coverage, very matt, and comes in lots of colours too.

[fsn]

Is there some kind of conspiracy showing me lovely WWI stuff?

Now I want Mespot, 1914 and 1917!

[Fenton]

Is there some kind of conspiracy showing me lovely WWI stuff?

Now I want Mespot, 1914 and 1917!

Yes

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Very nice Fred! 

[fred.]

Sshh. We're not supposed to talk about the conspiracy.

[Fenton]

Sshh. We're not supposed to talk about the conspiracy.

Sorry...I have mentioned it once but I think I got away with it

[fred.]

French artillery cleaned and assembled  (a Mongol old man has crept in at the back!)

First 20 or so Mongols cleaned and on painting sticks


The 5th leg is a bit fiddly to remove, especially on the horses where their legs come together. I've also managed to snap a couple of bows off the firing poses. The figures look very dynamic, and on rough basing attempts look suitably horde like.

[Leon]

Looking good!

The 5th leg is a bit fiddly to remove, especially on the horses where their legs come together. I've also managed to snap a couple of bows off the firing poses. The figures look very dynamic, and on rough basing attempts look suitably horde like.

Let me know how many breakages, and I'll send some replacements out.  The feed under the horse can be tricky on that pose, I usually use a pair of small clippers for the bulk of it and then file the stub off.

[Steve J]

Nice work there