Chief Vitalstatistix was somewhat nonplussed to hear that his rival Mykingdomforanorse had got a bigger fort than his, so he popped over to Brittania to see for himself….
My original plan was to use milliput to build the ramparts, but as I had about a litre and a half of my original modelling compound then I thiugh I would try an experiment, building them with that instead.
I increased the height of the original hill in the centre and the started using small amounts to do the ramparts.. you can see the size difference with the original one.
This one will need a bit of work once it is dry as some of the bits justlook stuck on to the base…
My plan is to add some more defences where the opening is… got to confound those Romans somehow.
It looks a bit weird in it’s raw state. Once I have got some paint on it, it may look better. If it doesn’t then it cost pence to make and about 25 minutes in terms of time.
I have decided that this thing is protected by cliffs on the sides nearest the camera. These will be painted accordingly.
I will try and get some miniatures painted tomorrow evening. I might even go for 2mm, 6mm and 28mm…I do also have a 15mm Dervish warrior undercoated too!
Tonight was a bit of a non starter painting wise. I managed to throw some contrast paint on the ruins…
I then took them off the thing they are sitting on and took it into the kitchen and threw some Geek Gaming modelling compound onto it to make a start on my giant 2mm hill fort…
Hopefully this will dry quickly, so that I can get the Milliput onto it tomorrow evening. My idea for this one is something like Maiden Castle with multiple ditches and ramparts.
Tonight idid a bit more on the Hill Fort, Chief Vitalstatistix is pleased with the progress. I need to cure the resin on the other houses, a job for tomorrow night methinks.
As you can see frommthe above photo, I did a bit more work in my Romans. I pretty much got six ‘units’ of heavies and three Velites finished. I will work on the cavalry tomorrow.
I was originally going to be going to the wargames club tomorrow evening, but unfortunately the old new car failed it’s MOT.. the downside is that it decided to fail on something big like the rear drive shaft… the part alone is £1100… on the upside we bought it just under a year ago and it has two weeks still to go on its warranty. Phew! It is going to be a faff getting to the club, it is do-able but not sure it is worth the hassle.
This evening we moved from the deserts of the Sudan to ones in Libya. We also jumped forwards about 50 years to a conflict between Germany and Britain. This time we had tanks. Or rather a tank each! We went for What a Tanker this evening.
My Matilda in the foreground faces off against a MKIII in the background. Although the Matilda was slow, in the early parts of the game she was off like a whippet across the sands.
I managed to get a ranging shot in my but failed to do any damage…please note the house the extreme left, it played an important part in the ensuing battle.
The only thing missing was the Benny Hill theme Tune as we chased each other around the building. We manged to fire lots of times, but kept saving the hits… once again my dice were on form…
Reload, Shoot, reload, shoot reload… this happened so many times… eventually my lucky dice rolls began to tell.
In the end Joe was down to a single command dice so we called it an allied victory.
It’s a really fun game with much hilarity throughout. Although I really enjoy the game, I reckon it is not a one I could play week after week.
This evening I worked on my hill fort interior… Aka making some houses. I spent ages trying to texture my own roof for a simple one I had designed. I really needed something other than Meshmixer. This is able to make the basic shape, but I really couldn’t get it to do any texture on the roof.
So I went back to plan B. I cut out a house from the original village in Meshmixer and repaired it. I the copied a few and supported them. To be fair I should have dropped my support density from 74% but I forgot.
As you can see, I also got some texture onto the thing too… the house is the small grey thing next to the chariot. Chief Vitalstatistix is pleased with the progress. I reckon I will get four or five of the houses in to the space I have.
I will probably do a bigger one than this. I was looking at pictures of hill forts, I never realised that there were so many in England… 1224 to be precise… or more rather 1224 that we have found yet. We have more Brochs on Shetland than there are hill forts in Dorset
I will get the sand covered with watered down PVA tomorrow. Hopefully I will get up early enough to get it done in the morning so that is dry by time I get back
So I am back with the 2mm again. I have done a lot of slicing today. More Celts, Romans and now Hoplites.
In the past I have sliced various things together like celtic chariots and Roman cavalry. This time I have gone for factions… I did eighteen blocks of hoplites, a mix of celtic infantry and cavalry and then a whole host of Roman troops. This should make things easier to organise when I need more of a certain faction.
I also made a start on my small hill fort…
The chieftain Vitalstatistix surveys his home to be. If this works as a proof of concept then I will make a much bigger one.
And finally I got on with some painting…
Now I know the early Romans weren’t in a uniform, it makes painting them a lot easier. Once dry I will pick out other colours for the tunics. Each legion will have different coloured shields.
Well I am back to work tomorrow, I have managed to get a whole load of things done here. Today I put a new socket in, earlier in the week I got the dishwasher plumbed in. So I am heading back to work for a rest.
Hopefully we are gaming here tomorrow evening. So there might not be much painting happening.
So,in the end, I got nothing done today at all, apart from glueing the elephants to their painting sticks. I still have more sitting in the shed that need curing. I didmanage to photograph the Italian houses I started a while ago…
I will hopefully get something done tomorrow evening.
Today, as it is officially the last day if my holiday, I decided to just kick back and do nowt, apart fro shopping, being Dad’s taxi etc… but on the whole I had a chilled out day. I started off by working on the Woodsford the 2mm forces. I decided in some dry brushing and went for an army painter green and mustard yellow with a light Iraqi Sand top coat… I think it came out OK…
I then trimmed the chariots and friends off their supports. Surprisingly there was inky kne chariots casualty… the horses pinged one way and the chariot the other…
So from left to right we have the chariots, a whole horde of slingers and some light cavalry with shield. Next to them are some heavy cavalry… these came with the Romans. And behind them two sets of Romans with printed integral bases, which is why they are painted.
I also did a pile more work in the 6mm Italian buildings. These are pretty much finished apart from some touch ups around the window frames – basically when I painted the models I didt do the inside of the windows.
And finally this evening I downloaded more 2mm troops and just had to print the elephants. These come with either armoured armoured unarmoured elephants both with and without a howdah.
I decided to put a couple of grains of basmati rice in front of them just to show how big they are. The other thing is a 6mm ancient village I got ages ago, same time as the Ancient Galleys in fact… I had no use for it then, but now I have an interest again. So I shrank it down to 30% of its original size.
I am going to scratch build my hill fort, but as this one was sitting there I thought why the heck not.
So still to slice and print from the new stuff are some hoplites or similar, some infantry with an oval shield in a more ragged formation and some other infantry with a crescent shield.
Tomorrow I am going to try and get some of the undercoated Romans painted up.
The Blood and Honour Rules that are in the making have huge forces per base, so basically a legion per base. Now I will see how much they cost and to be honest printing the 2mm stuff in pence per printing session so it wouldn’t be too big a jump to have them as well as something else… Next thing to hunt for are some other suitable rules… someone has mentioned Scutarii as a rule set, but at £28.00 a shot then I want to find it what they play like, before jumping in.
I just remembered that I had Warmaster Ancients, and went to look it out…Strangely they don’t have Carthaginians in any of their lists. They do have celts and Numidians, but not Carthage, which as a major power of the Punic wars then you would think they would be there. Talking of books, I have ordered the WRG Punic wars book… https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1326256564/ref=pe_27063361_487055811_TE_dp_f1
I had this book years ago when I was gaming in the Newcastle club. Time for a reread I thought… especially as I am going to be wargaming the period again.
Right I am off to ogle at some teeny tiny elephants again…
Today I sprayed the bases I did yesterday with watered down PVA and this evening got on with painting them. Three repainting later and I am still not happy with them…
The first colour was too dark,the second,mint green and we are now back to a different version of ‘too dark’. I will get them dry brushed tomorrow and see if that helps.
The brown base in the front is going to be a hill fort or something similar.
Now if you remember absolutely ages ago I printed some triremes etc… they don’t look to bad next to the 2mm stuff.
Today, was the day I tackled converting the old stable roof into a polycarbonate roof, to complete the conversion into a greenhouse. My estimate of a couple of hours was ay off. Seven hours later I got the thing finished. I had made sure that the original roof was not going to fly off in the gales, this meant it was an absolute swine to get off when I wanted it to do so. Anyway I did manage to get some bits and bobs done this evening too…
First off I got my next lot of 2mm sprayed…
A mix of Romans and cells, not to mention a 6mm wagon and 15mm Mahdist.
I also slapped some paint on this lot…
The bases in front are for the 2mm stuff. The malker Irregular ones for woods and the larger for a hill. I still had my bag of vivarium sand from when I had the lizard so I decided to give that a test run.
And finally after what seems like weeks (it probably is) I eventually got some basing material on the fanatics…
I am heading off into work tomorrow to meet my new teacher and get some stuff sorted it ready for next Wednesday.
Bogenwald 