Fred's 2014 Painting Diary

[Roy]

  Really very nice. A great advert for the 10mm scale, and your abilities 

(er, I hope that sounds right. I'm tired, and my brain ain't thinking right) 

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Very nice Fred.
Think the bases on the Naval boys need something, I always leave a few bare patches to break them up.
Maybe some tree stumps or fallen logs?

[Leon]

Excellent!

[paulr]

Royal Naval Division

Not totally pleased with these photos - not sure if its the basing, or that they need a bit more highlights on the figures?

Looking good, the piping works well

Perhaps a bit more of a silver highlight on the bayonets?

Have you done any metal on the muzzle of the rifles? Barrels would have helped if they weren't Lee Enfields

[Leman]

I'd go with the bases thing on those naval boys. Static grass, rocks, bushes, that sort of thing. similar to the fantasy photos.

[fred.]

The bases on the RND chaps, are supposed to have bare patches. I hadn't cleaned them up well enough after flocking them, after a bit of a brush there is more contrast now. Might try a few other bits - but I was going for something fairly simple for NW Europe style bases.

I'll have a look at what rifles they have (I don't think they were Lee Enfields) and paint a bit of barrel, and brighten up their bayonets.

[fred.]

flap flap go the butterfly's wings

I received a copy of Neil Thomas' One-hour Wargames yesterday - it was a birthday present, but only arrived now as it has only just been published. At first glance it seemed a bit thin on content, but on further reading its really good. There are 3 main parts to the book; the first part is 8 sets of simple rules for different periods from Ancients through to WWII - now these are obviously pretty simple, but they seem to bring out some key points of the different eras, and have simple definitions of the characteristic troops of each era - with descriptions and rules for 4 units in each era.

The main part of the book (and the part that is probably of most interest to most seasoned wargamers) is the section on 30 scenarios. These again are fairly broad brush affairs, but have enough to set up an interesting game and should work for any era, and will give some asymmetric games with often 1 side having 1/3 more troops than the other.

The final section which I've not looked at much yet is a pretty comprehensive bibliography by era.

Reading the book has already had me rummaging in the painted figures, trying to work out if I have enough figures to try out the rules for different eras. And if a book can make you want to play games then it must be pretty good in my book.

My horse and musket forces looked like a good match for the size of the games (about 6 units a side), but I realised that I needed to finish off some dismounted Dragoons to act as skirmishers. Half the figures had already been based, the others were at about 75% painted so a quick finish off, and the same for the limbers.



In rummaging I have spotted just how many figures I have on painting sticks that are at least undercoated, and often part painted. In the horse and musket drawer alone there are a further 5 sticks of troops.


Back to the RND chaps - a bit of research showed that they were armed with Charger-Loading Lee Enfields (CLLE) rather than the typical SMLE - but appearance wise these are pretty similar with most of the barrel covered by the wooden housing of the rifle.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

The flaps of fate have dealt you a fine set of ideas Fred, look forwards to seeing those done. Nice research on RND.

[Leman]

They look SYW or WAS but not familiar with green with yellow facings. Are they Saxons?

[fred.]

I think they are SYW figures - the uniforms may be made up, or I may have seen them on one of the uniform sites.

They were originally painted as generic dismounted Dragoons to fulfil the light infantry option in Maurice, for the western nations without native Skirmisher troops.  Now they are fulfilling the same role for another set of rules!

[fred.]

A few weeks ago I won the competition in Miniature Wargames for a large selection of Brigade Models 2mm buildings.

These are teeny tiny houses and factories - I have decided to use them to make BUA for GWSH, which uses 3" squares for towns and villages



I got enough stuff to make 4 village bases and 6 town ones. Ignore the blue lines on the photos they are some writing that was previously on the plastic signage I used to mount these.

I am currently trying to add a few green stuff hedges/walls and other bits to break up the flat areas. But finding this quite hard as the GS sticks to everything but the base  

[petercooman]

Try to sand the spot where you want the green stuff. Or if you have a dremel or something, just use that to rough it up!

[toxicpixie]

Cool plan, looks like it'll be cracking.

Maybe make the GS bits and bobs then superglue it down?

[Leman]

Really like those buildings. One day I'll do a Nik and produce a massive 2mm FPW set up.

[fred.]

Thanks for the ideas chaps.

The greenstuff seems to have stuck well overnight - it was just whilst using it, that it had the standard property of all sticky things, that they want to stick to you and the tools you are using much more than the thing they are meant to stick too 

DP - I remember the photos of Nik's 2mm Irregular towns - and these Brigade ones look much more detailed - and to a degree look bigger too. They have a big range of stuff, and even though they sent me loads, there are quite a lot more packs available.

I'm looking forward to getting some of these painted up, as I think they will look good with not too much effort. My only slight concern is that having based everything up, I might be making it hard for my self to do the painting.