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Temple Complex Completed

All done…

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) 🤔

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October update

What I managed to do last month.

A whole host of 10mm 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.

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The Krautians are Finished

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 🤔

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Krautian Dwarves and Exploding Custard Powder

First the dwarves….

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.

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Witchland…Thingies

These are thingies or even thingumybobs.

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.

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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.