I had about 5 minutes to do something tonight as we went to the delayed Firework show and then played One Night Werewolf for about an hour (used different characters this time). I went for more Greenstuff in reusable moulds.
These oil drums are going to be for some scatter terrain, so trying just part ones.
As I enjoyed the fireworks, I thought I would share…. after 3…… oooooooh
Ahhhhhhhhhh
To be fair my wife took these shots using her phone…
The fire went pretty much horizontal…
Having an early night tonight as most of this morning was heaving a cast iron stove around for my mother in law, a great lady, but a cast iron fire, is a cast iron fire. .. oh and don’t you just love it when they don’t bother putting construction diagrams into the box….
However we did get to play ‘One Night Ultimate Werewolf’
This was a great little game, Lasting about 5 minutes per session. We played it five times in a row…. however everyone kept shooting me… to be fair I was the werewolf twice in a row.
Each person is a character in a small village, the villagers win if they kill a werewolf and the werewolves win if they survive.
The cards are lovely…really thick and very colourful.
The picture above is from the App supporting the game. This isn’t necessary and we played our sessions without it.
The rules are really easy to understand. Basically night falls and everyone shuts their eyes as they go to sleep. The first to wake up are the werewolves. They check who the other werewolf is, if any…they then shut their eyes and the seer wakes up, they can check one person’s card to see who they are. The problem is that the robber wakes up next and swaps cards with someone else. They then go back to sleep and the trouble maker wakes up and swaps cards. In the morning the accusations fly and the loser is the one that gets the most votes (and the silver bullet). Because of the Shenanigans of the card swapping sometimes you end up as the Villager when you started off as a werewolf.
The other cards are for more advanced games, we will come to those in future games.
I haven’t explained it that well, but it was a fun Games session nonetheless!
Made a bit of a start painting the cockpits on the cars. Brown seats for the buggy types and coloured for the Interceptors.
I also added lots of bright buttons and lights as well as trying some dashboards…
I actually only needed to paint the engines on two. They can only be seen on the buggies!
I have already started on a blue interceptor to match the seat cover 😉. Too be honest I am a bit worried as to what these will come out like. Edge highlighting has never been my forte. More like my minus forty. But it is something different. I will have a mooch online to see what inspiration I can get.
I only wish I had drivers to add into them. The original drivers had the steering wheel moulded onto them. These will look a bit weird without them.
Having had a look I can get some from Ramshackle games, problem is I only need 4 drivers, they have a good deal on their stuff but do I pay £20 for stuff I will never use?
Well that’s it one hundred years since the end of the First World War.
This is my Grandfather Robert Surtees Knott Renwick of z Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers..gassed at 3rd Ypres and was one of the lucky ones to be invalided home. Sadly after recovery he went down the mines and the coal dust finished off the job the gas started. He died aged 58.
I was working in a school the other day and one of the teachers were a bit concerned that when she asked her class what remembrance meant four had said nothing or not much. But you know, what does it mean to a kid of 10 playing Call of Duty or other such game on a PS4. My kids know what it is about, but to be honest have no real understanding.
When I was a kid the old men in the village had been in the second and the really old men had been in the First World War. Well to a 10 year old everyone over 30 was old. These guys would occasionally tell tales of where they had been or what they had seen. Then there were others with one arm or leg. Every November 11th they would mass beside the Greenside cenotaph, but year on year there would be less of them. My dad went every year, he had been in a reserved occupation in WW2, working in the mine with my Grandad as a surface occupation rather than down on the coal face.
So I honestly believe that the vast majority of today’s kids are a long way removed from the understanding that I had. Unless they have family in the forces or are in a garrison town then it really is small wonder that they write ‘nothing’ or ‘not much’ when asked what remembrance means.
Today we took part in the pages of the sea event at St Ninian’s isle. This is a natural tombolo with the sea on both sides of the beach.
The sand was raked through a stencil.
There were a number of different ones including nurses.
They did look very effective.
The following one reminds me of shadows, I suppose the arty side of me thinks of the shadows of people long gone…
We left around two hours before the end, hundreds were done by then, and by all accounts around 800 people turned up.
Tingaholm rising out of the mist on Tingwall loch this morning.
Tingaholm was the site of Shetland’s local parliament until the late 16th century. It was once an islet accessed by a stone causeway, by 1774 the stone seats had been ripped up to provide grazing space and in the mid 19th century the water levels in the loch were lowered, and the holm has appeared the same ever since.
Well when I say all done, I did contemplate square plinths in the corner to put skulls on. Part of me wants to add plants on the outer wall to add a bit of brighter colour. But this would cause problems with bits getting knocked off.
I can fit two of the smaller pyramids into the same space provided that they sit diagonally front to back.
I decided to see how the pyramid worked with 10mm too. I am happy with the results.
I felt my Amazon’s were a good army for a funky pyramid, well that and they were the only ones I had to hand. 🙄
I gave the whole thing a smack with a ball of silver foil to give it a bit of texture. Not that you can really see it in these photos
For this build the paint was mixed 50/50 with PVA. This helps the craft paint adhere to the polystyrene. I also made up my own Sepia wash with water out of the condenser dryer, some sepia ink and a drop of detergent (I was too lazy to go back out to the shed for the proper stuff).
Guess who shook it vigorously to mix everything together? Three hours later there are still bubbles! Once this was dry a gave it a quick dry brush to lighten it back up again.
I decided against doing it the same colour as the Pyramid as it would look better with a bit of a colour change.
The Dry brush colour is the same as the temple.
Finally, I was going to add a terracotta tile pattern in the plaza, but decided against it as it would be a lot of work for very little gain.
Tomorrow I will probably flock up the troops and then who knows….
Azazel’s monthly challenge is something mechanical…. off the top if my head I have…
6mm Post Apocalyptic vehicles
15mm Flames of War tanks
20mm Dark Future Vehicles.
I may have a blast at some of them (but really should finish the Mongols) 🤔
And a few more 👍 Medium cavalry this time. This Mongol army is probably four years old. The actual Mongols had subjugated most of Eastern Europe in less time. There are the heavy cavalry and infantry to go, but I needed an army for the HOTT tournament this coming weekend.
Then a HOTT Conquistador army. These were my Birthday present in July 2017 or possibly 2016…they all blur into one 😱
There are also two units of spears and one cannon that were also painted.
technically the 10mm Amazons were finished in October, for the simple reason I didn’t get them finished in September.
Huzzah, all done apart from a green wash and highlight on the grass on the bugler’s base.
They have come a long way from the bare metal of the Schilling pack!
My plan was to try really hard with the faces and apart from the squinty eyed bugler I am happy with the result. I don’t mind the face, it’s the Mad Eye Moody look that I am not too happy about.
After I pushed through the ‘oh blimey they look naff’ stage of the painting I am really pleased with them. The do look rather spiffy in their blue jackets.
This is them alongside the other three dwarves from the pack.
The only thing missing from the skirmish pack are the two ogres.
I decided two was a bit of an odd number and reinforced them with some friends and actually made them an odd number…. I must apologise for the really naff teacher joke there! 🙄🙄🙄
The two from the pack are the two on the left.
It took around 6 months or so, but I got them all painted eventually.
The big question is what next?
Flintloque maybe the Ostarian or undead hussars
French and Indian Wars – two units of thirty one of woodland Indians and the other of militia.
Or maybe change scale again and sort out my 10mm Mongol horde.
Oh yeah and finish the gloves on the dwarf Officer above!
On a non painting level, I survived the exam, I spent so long thinking about the legislation etc that I forgot about the day to day simple stuff. If truth be told, the whole exam thing wasn’t that brilliant. It was a closed book exam however, that is not real life, in reality we would look up what we needed. All It did was freak out a good number on the course for no good reason. I did point this out on my feedback., Course Excellent- Exam … pants!
Did I pass, Who knows… but I think I did enough to not fail 🤔
I managed a fair bit of base coating tonight as well as some highlighting of packs and pouches (not that you can really tell from this photo). For idiotic reasons known only to myself I painted the beards first then tried to paint in the flesh tone! The officer has grey hands still as he shall be wearing gloves.
These seem to be taking forever, I know that, in the grand scheme of things, they are not, but to me they are dragging on. Probably more my state of mind than reality.
Anyway onto the exploding custard powder. This is because as I found a 30 year old photograph today. It shows an experiment we devised whilst working on the Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales.
A group of us were sitting around in the hostel when we learned of an explosion in a custard powder factory. Discussion ensued as to how and why custard powder could explode, being inert as it is. Coal dust yes as we knew coal was flammable. A bit of head scratching later we came to the conclusion that it would have to be as a fine powder in the air. Queue hunt in the larder for the out of date tin of the required ingredient.
Not the actual Custard Powder used in the experiment
Having explored the properties of said ingredient we needed a way to turn the powder into a fine mist. Blowing on a spoonful sort of worked but not properly, then again who would want to volunteer to blow onto the powder to make it explode!
A bit more of head scratching took place and the Edward came up with the ideal solution….
A bike pump!
Sadly it did not work as we wished…back to the drawing board!
It was then that someone (the name now lost to the track of time) came up with the solution.
Dismantle the bike pump, add deadly ingredient, reassemble and then fire custard powder over a naked flame.
We set up our experiment in the hostel and I was just about to hit the plunger, when Edward came to the conclusion that inside, may not be the best place to attempt our initial trial.
Not an actual picture of Edward!
So after much grumbling and muttering we took our experiment outside and placed it on the mini skip. I took a number of photos that evening. Only one survives in my collection.
Here we have Edward taking his turn at the Custard Powder Bike pump.
Edward letting rip with the Minfordd Hostel Custard Powder flame thrower
We all agreed afterward that perhaps he may have been correct in his conviction that this was an experiment best conducted out of doors! Strangely enough over the course if the evening we ran out of custard powder, not to mention flour and any other substance we could locate.
An evil combination of Skaven and zombie. I had a couple of zombie heads going spare and a pile of skaven bodies and I thought I would give it a go. Tail removed and the zombie head attached with Greenstuff. A down and dirty paint job and voila.. a couple of… whatever’s!
Funnily enough I did not enjoy painting these at all. I can’t say why I just didn’t. Strangely exactly the same thing happened with the Witchland Zombies I added to my Flintloque force. I just didn’t enjoy painting them.
I have painted plastics before and never had the same feeling of ‘meh’. It is not as if I haven’t painted plastics before and to be honest I just painted a plastic Space Marine that I quite enjoyed.
It shall probably remain one of those mysterious mysteries.
Speaking of space Marines I built some of the chaos ones.
To be honest I am quite impressed, even though you can’t do much to these ones apart from maybe move the position of the arms a bit and get the middle one to turn his head the other way. I am going to have a mess around with my green stuff tentacle roller tool and see if I can make the next lot look a little different.
Bogenwald 