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Colours finished…

After Procrastinating for a good while, I eventually managed to paint the flags…

Huzzah!

And then after third attempt on the white flag it suddenly dawned on me it was wrong again….in the words of Corporal Nobby Nobbs of the Ankh Morpork City Watch….

“Sodding Arseholes!”

The squiggles should be inside the cross!

You know what… I think I may leave it the way it is.

Tomorrow I may start on the Woodland Indians.

The other thing coming up soon is the Shetland Games Day. This takes place on 6th October. Now the question is what should I run… so far I have done:

10mm Mammoth hunting.

The humans are Magister Millitum Eskimo and cave men. The adult mammoth are Pendraken, babies are Irregular miniatures 6mm Tusk mammoth and the rest of the fauna are Magister.

10mm Dinosaur hunting

The human hunters are Pendraken (WW2 Russian Snipers) the dinosaurs are Magister Millitum. Each person took a two man team and had to shoot the male triceratops to win. The other dinosaurs were there to either get in the way or to eat the players.

28mm Gladiator Games

The Figures were a mix of EM4 pre painted as well as some Westwind ones. The rules were EM4 too. The arena was scratch built for the show.

I may have to dust off my Sudan stuff and get the players to brave the hot desert wastes as they struggle to save Charlton Heston in Khartoum.

The other option is xenomorph hunting with the colonial marines… I shall have to see….

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Space Marines….

Well okay Space Marine singular…

This is the first time I have painted one of these things for about 20 years. My edge highlighting needs a bit of work.

The windows on the shed were put on hold due to torrential rain, so my two youngest and I decided to paint some of the Conquest miniatures this afternoon.

My daughter did the green one and my son the other blue one.

They both took their time and worked really hard on these.

Tomorrow I shall endeavour to finish the colours for the French forces. I got a bit sidetracked by doing these. 🤔

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Painting with Washes

Okay I didn’t manage to get anything done tonight…

I have been working on the shed and after only four hours sleep I was somewhat pooped.

I painted these about ten years ago for my friend. I wanted them done quickly so I set to work using whatever inks and washes I had. The only actual paint I used was anything metallic.

These were a joy to paint. The portly gentleman on the left had his muskatoon converted into one the fired a stake as befits gypsy vampire hunters.

These are all from Westwind (well from what I remember). I painted up a fair few of these for him, but these were the only ones of his I did with this method.

I tested the theory on this chap to see if it would work.

Here are a few more that I did…

I was quite pleased with the misty base… not so much with the eyes. Following on are one of the child vampires and a rather pale young lady.

The one thing I find looking back at these is that I have made improvements from then to now. Even at a basic level of the bases. What I would like to do sometime, is to get these last two figures again and paint them how I do now. I wonder what the difference would be?

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Random Pictures of Miniatures

I found some more pictures on Photobucket. If they hadn’t stopped allowing people to post onto forums then this blog probably never would have happened. All of my photos went there to allow me to share them to my gaming club.

Here we have my Perry 28mm forces for Lion Rampant. A mix of Wars of the Roses cavalry and Agincourt infantry. I can’t wait until they bring out the plastic cavalry for the hundred years wars.

There are a couple of shield armed commoners. I reckon they found them in a barn and thought ‘why not!’

I also bought the French infantry box to add crossbows, spears and more foot knights. You can see the crossbows at the back.

This is pretty much where the rest of them got too!

Next up is an addition of biddowers… huntsmen. They have been repurposed from another game system and company. They also are part of my Dragon Rampant force too.

Yesterday I showed a picture of my 15mm Early Germans. This was the force for Hordes of the Things complete with druids and a sacred grotto.

Finally today an Alternative Armies 15 undead force.

These have a mounted unit and general in a chariot. These were great little figures to paint.

The whole force is here in their undercoated state… showing the various command stands and cavalry.

I will look out some more for another day.

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No Painting Tonight

Never managed to paint anything tonight due to parental taxi duty.

Anyway I popped around to my mate’s house for a cuppa and a chat. He managed to get Terminator Genesis game for a tenner instead of £70. He gave me his spare set of rules. This got us chatting about how they work. By all accounts playing the humans in the basic game is a bit of an uphill struggle. Which, as you might imagine, is a bit like it would be in a world overrun by killer robots.

This got me thinking about rules either war gaming or role play games. Some work really well. Take my favourite RPG… The One Ring, in my mind this is exactly how I see Tolkien’s world. However earlier versions of a middle Earth style game were basically Dungeons and Dragons with hobbits.

Wargames are a bit tricky… if it is generic then it doesn’t match anything really and if specific then useful for only one period.

simplicity is tricky too…. I am certainly not into hundreds of pages of charts and tables and rules that you need a degree to understand. But to be honest if they are too simple then they can lead to over interpretation by the players.

I remember changing from WRG 7th edition to DBM that was like a breath of fresh air…you got to remove figures off the table.

These are some of my very first miniatures repainted. I had to rebase them onto mdf as the original card bases had deteriorated.

I bought these originally for 7th edition.They then converted to DBM then eventually to the DBA. The werewolves are Blue Moon and were added to the original minis to make a fantasyesque force for a competition. Early Germans and werewolves kind of went together.

This was the full force.

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Militia and a Couple of Milestones

Tonight was a bit hectic so not much painting happened…

Not much, but at least I managed some,

The Essex miniatures Militia… well I think they are. To be honest they weren’t as bad to slap paint onto as I thought they might. The fringed jackets however are a nightmare! My fringed jackets are cloth as opposed to buckskin. I fancied a bit of a bright colour hence the blue. They still need a fair bit doing on them. But I believe they will ‘come alive’ when their hands and faces are done.

Anyway to the milestones. My first blog post was a year ago, which is pretty amazing. Up to this blog I would have been lucky to make a week. I have tried blogging at least three times and never got past the first post.

The second milestone is that on the day the blog reached one year old was also the day I hit 1000 visitors. That is totally weird to me. I honestly thought I would be asking my wife and kids to come and reads stuff so I didn’t feel lonely. As it happens my wife doesn’t follow my blog ☹️.

So for anyone who has visited my blog or are reading this thanks a bunch as it made my day 👍

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Submarines, Goblins and on the Boat Again

As I am on the boat again, I had a mooch at my Kickstarter pledges.

First up, the one I am most excited about!

Ever since playing Silent Hunter on my PC I have loved submarines. As soon as I saw this I wanted it. Hopefully it will live up to my expectations!

Basically the game ties into an app that shows targets, plays sounds and generally makes it a bit more exciting. It even has whisper mode…. don’t make too much noise when the sub chasers are looking for you.

Next up… Miremarsh….everyone plays a goblin!

I wanted something to play with the kids, and this looked quirky enough to fit the bill.

For some reason I backed a pile of gravestones, really don’t know why… must have been a moment of weakness as I have a pile already!

And finally a couple of books by my best mate Wiggy, who is my gaming buddy.

My gravestones should be here soon, the sub game in December and Miremarsh in August 2019. I already have the RPG books.

Only thirteen more hours to go until I get back to Shetland!

Wish me luck…

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Star Forts, Chips and an Annoying Fledgling

Another mooch about yesterday. Last day of my holiday and I had to be in work. As it is the holidays I had to drag the kids in too.

So instead of haring back home for sandwiches we headed further into town for Lunch. All the cafes were full so we headed for the Fort Chip Shop (the best one in Lerwick). Our normal place to eat them on a nice day is the Fort right above the chip shop so I thought I would take some photos.

This is the oldest part still standing built or rebuilt in the 1690’s. The following photo showing how thick the walls are.

Construction of Fort Charlotte began in 1665 during the second Dutch War. It wasn’t finished before the war concluded. It was rebuilt more than a century later during the War of American Independence but never fired a shot in anger. The fort is pretty much presented as it would have looked in the 1780’s

The fort is a 5 pointed star.

At the minute she is armed with 18lb cannon. These only look out over the sound of Bressay. It had in the past been armed with 32lb cannon

I always fancied starting a re-enactment group here, it would be great fun!

Anyway the Annoying Fledgling…. here he is:

He spent his time calling for food non stop while we were there. On the upside though, he kept the adults away!

Right a couple of random photos taken within… the barracks and the magazine.

And finally a view from above… pinched from a panel at the entrance!

You can just see the best chip shop in Lerwick, small white building near the two story street of shops. Oh and in the background you can see the Lerwick Town hall.

There is a great story from the 1690’s about how 3 cannon from the Spanish Armanda were found. They decided to heat them to remove the rust. ‘ Upon which they discharged balls, much to the surprisement of the onlookers!”

I think Surprisement should be returned to the English language!

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Drummers, civilians,off gallivanting and a leather shoe.

Well I managed to get the drummers up to a ‘yeah finished’ point. I also threw some paint on the civilians.

My order from Old Glory Uk came and sadly it is wrong. My rangers haven’t arrived but another packet of woodland Indians have… I ordered the Indians in error but contacted them straight away to ask for a swap to the Rangers looks like they forgot. Harumph!

I also managed to get a shoe to the Finished point. Only nine to go.

This has a top and back seam to help turn it. 2mm upper and a 4mm sole. I have enough of the upper leather to make us all a pair (I hope) but unfortunately only enough of the thicker stuff to do one more pair.

Our exploration was sort of Viking based. With the dry weather Girlsta loch had dropped enough to allow us to head out onto the holm (an island not far from the far shore. Local legend has it that a Viking princess is buried there (as legends go, they are always princesses). The story goes she was skating on the loch and went through the ice, which was a bit unfortunate as the loch is one of, if not the deepest on Shetland sitting at 78 feet deep. Anyway after a bit of research we came across information in one of the Saga’s.

Geirhilda the daughter of the famous Flokie Vilgerdason was the young lady in question. Flokie had left Norway to find Iceland …it had been found accidentally twice before, but he was off to deliberately find it. He overwintered on Shetland when the accident happened. He then went off and found what he was looking for. He wasn’t that impressed and named it Iceland after seeing a bay filled with sea ice.

Now local legends also have, star crossed lovers, 🙄🤮. Her suitor was not accepted by her father and after a sneaky meeting with him she fell through the Ice and died. Strangely enough the saga doesn’t mention this, or ice or skating or anything really. It does say that “there Geirhild, his daughter, perished in Geirhild’s water.”

So there we have it … a legend and sort of evidence… Girlsta…Geirhild…there aren’t any other Girlsta’s up here so it could be a match.

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The Leather Ripped🤬

“Oh poot!”…well I think that is what I said…

Turning the shoe the right way round is always a nightmare, but this time using leather that was old and weary probably wasn’t clever. This stuff had been in a damp shed that froze every winter. I oiled,it hence the dark colour, to try and get it back to a useable quality. The leather, when I started was nearer the colour of the table top.

Luckily I have a half hide of better quality leather that has stayed in my attic. I shall start again tonight.

This time I think I will do a front seam, that should stop it tearing, and make it easier to turn. It will be a shoe similar to these.