Fred's 2014 Painting Diary

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Waitrose - you'll be buying from Muck and Sh1te soon....

IanS

[fred.]

That's a great haul Fred! (Starts reading codes to see what Fred's up too) Ooooohhh shiny!

Lots of WWI guns - for the Germans and British, all in steel helmets for late war. Got most of the German ones glued together.

Nice to see your painting area looks as cluttered and messy as mine

Hells bells, Fred, I thought my painting area was a train-wreck..... 

It does look bad in that photo - its not normally quite that bad

Are we all liking Fred again now?  No-one told me

Jealousy its not good - but understandable !!   

looking forward to seeing them in the painting diary!

If I pull my finger out a few may even get into the painting comp....

[fred.]

Time to have a bit of a think about the painting comp.

Although the standard of some of the entries is so good, that I'm not sure I'm going to do much more than make up the numbers.

So some of the options I have available

Open Single Base
French WWI Artillery
Ottoman Guns
WWI Germans ?

Open Army
WWI Germans
Nature army (need to check how many stands I have that are pure Pendraken, as this army came from a variety of sources)

Mounted
Centaurs?
WWI Germans?
Mongols?

Foot 20th C
WWI Germans
1914 British

Foot pre 20th C
Pike block
Ottoman hand gunners

Fantasy / Sci Fi
Various options from Nature Army here

Vehicles
British WWI MkIV Tank

[fred.]

So I need to get the WWI German Guns and Cavalry spray painted to at least make a start. Same with the Mk IV tank.

Most of the others, just need to check and photograph. Even though the closing date is the 28th, as that is a Friday, it makes taking photos in daylight a bit more challenging - so really could do with stuff ready by this coming weekend to allow the taking of photos.

[fred.]

Well the German guns and cavalry got sprayed - and thats as far as they got.

The Tank did rather better - and was painted, and detailed, and muddied up in time for the comp.


Here it is crossing the deadly carpet land...
I do need to sort out some terrain / ground cloth for WWI, to my mind it needs to be brown / muddy - it looks really odd to me to see WWI trench battles on a green cloth.

I have gone for brown / khaki for the tank colour as this seems to be the consensus of the colour they were painted at the time - even though a lot of examples show green, which was apparently a post-war colour???

I managed an entry in each category of the comp - though a couple of my entries feel a bit weak to me.

When I checked my Nature army in detail rather a lot had to be left out as it wasn't Pendraken, most of the stands of forest creatures while having quite a bit of Pendraken on, also have a good variety of other peoples figures too.

[fred.]

Tried out some new rules last night - Seasons of War - as have been blogged about by Bishop Lord http://www.redwyverngames.com/seasons-of-war/4581304756

The rules are designed for 10mm, and Warmaster 40x20mm basing. Units are rated by different dice for their stats rather than simple scores.  Rather than the WM style command roll, there is a discipline roll, that you will usually make, but on a 1 your unit will undertake a rash action. If you roll high you can do more complex actions.

For a first game it went remarkably well - by about half-way we knew what we where doing (well as much as ever...)

The combat is attritional, most combats will last several turns, and can swing one way or the other as more units get fed in. The dice based stats and mechanisms seem to differentiate units well. We are busy inventing fantasy add-ons (as always).

If you want to buy a copy, I'd recommend the PDF version, as you get two versions, one in full colour with lots photos, and with a light weight version with white background and hyperlinks. The printed book, is unfortunately in grey scale, and I found it a bit hard to read, due to the background images.

You do need a fair few (6 or more) of d4s and d8s, so I have been shopping for a few more today!

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Love that tank! All your entries were good this year mate.
There are a lot of aerial photos and maps of the front, which should allow you to work out the lines. I would go for parallel pairs of trenches if I were contemplating building them, but definitely in a modular build so I could fight different parts of the front. German trenches tended to be better than British ones as the British High Command didn't like our troops to be too comfortable at the front!
Not all was like the latter days of the Somme, but Carpetland looks pretty good, nice straight furrows your farmers plough there!

[fred.]

Love that tank! All your entries were good this year mate.

Thanks!

There are a lot of aerial photos and maps of the front, which should allow you to work out the lines. I would go for parallel pairs of trenches if I were contemplating building them, but definitely in a modular build so I could fight different parts of the front. German trenches tended to be better than British ones as the British High Command didn't like our troops to be too comfortable at the front!
Not all was like the latter days of the Somme, but Carpetland looks pretty good, nice straight furrows your farmers plough there!

Carpet land was picked up to provide a few fields to break up my terrain a bit. But its not very Western Front!

At the minute I'm thinking of using Greatwar Spearhead - so each base is a company, which makes the trench lines pretty much just lines! But I do fancy doing a couple of feet of terrain boards at 10mm ground scale of some trenches, to use with rules like Through the Mud and Blood, or even Chain of Command.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

There are terrain mats with photo printed trenches available, a mate has one for WWI Wings of War. I'll faceache message him and see where he got it from, even if you eschrew purchasement it mahaps provide inspiration.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

www.terrainmat.com hand makes them.

[fred.]

Ta, they look rather nice. Not sure I want to spend quite that much, but should give some ideas for DIY.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

That would be my route too!

[fred.]

Made a start on the German WWI artillery



Did 7 in a grey colour - though I wonder if its still a bit too dark.

The foreground 15cm guns are in dapple camo - the green dots though barely show up against the grey, but in B&W photos they look much darker.

I've also found a funky light blue scheme that might get used on some of the guns...

[Techno]

Did 7 in a grey colour - though I wonder if its still a bit too dark.

Not to my eyes Fred.
Cheers - Phil

[Hertsblue]

I recognise that spotty paint scheme, Fred. It could only have come from the dawn of camouflage art, couldn't it?