Bogenwald

Well I have achieved very little over the last couple of days, mainly because I am feeling knackered  and lacking motivation. Hopefully I will crack back in with things tomorrow.

Now the regular follower of my blog will know I do like my Samurai forces and indeed I am printing and sort of painting 15mm forces for games of Ronin. So far I have got everything from 6mm – 28mm

So whilst doing sod all on the painting front I have been playing Ghost of Tsushima on the console. You play the main protagonist Jin Sakai who is a Samurai defending his home island from the Mongol invasion. So as the game had progressed I am becoming less of a Samurai and more of a brutal, killing machine. My honour seems to have gone out the window as I throw various explosive devices into the midst of my foes, or drop on them from a rooftop and stick my katana through their torso. To be fair though I am good at saving the peasants from the evil invaders. So they think I am awesome…one of the characters in game did think I was enjoying it a bit much and said as much after watching me take on a Mongol force.

The graphics are absolutely gorgeous and whilst playing it it dawned on me that I have everything I need, except for some Mongols to do some kind of diorama… so watch this space and see if I ever do manage to get it done… remember the woodland Indians diorama from a couple of years ago… nope neither do I… I only remembered about the miniatures when I was hunting for Samurai pictures for this post…

This is the armour I am going to recreate in the diorama if I ever actually get it done… I have a Battle of the Five Armies to do too!

Right off to sneak into a Mongol encampment and emm stop them being naughty!

I really didn’t fancy flocking a pile of miniatures so instead I decided to set about the ruins with a dry brush… I will sort out the oil wash on these instead of the miniatures…

The above shows a before and after version of the buildings. I only had two acrylics handy to go over the updated base coat. I basically had raw sienna and buff titanium available so it limited the colours that I could go for, but I was after a sandstone look so it worked.

The new base coat… some kind of mocha colour I think.

Okay, not really, but a bit pointless when one paints everything in Contrast Paint. So today I eventually plucked up the courage to give an oil wash a go. Now to be fair I went for burnt umber instead of a black mix. As I was slapping it liberally everywhere on some skeletons it kind of dawned on me that the whole point of contrast was to do just what the oil wash would do… but I persevered and did twelve, waited about 20 minutes and wiped the wash off the surface… this is a mix of wash and not…

I haven’t given up on them. I resprayed some of the ruins in a lighter brown and am going to set about them with a dry brush tomorrow. My plan is to use an oil wash for the mortar between the stones.

So earlier on I got some more work done on the Big Beastie… i decided to give my Artis Opus brushes a try… all I can say about the brushes so far is that I need a bit of practice. So anyway here are a couple of shots of the Beastie after a bit of a dry brushing frenzy…

The one on the right was taken outside. I put it on the ground as it was really windy and I didn’t want it falling off something and hitting the floor with a horrible cracking sound…

I also got the 15mm based up… resin printed bits at the back and the purchased metal miniatures at the front…

Today I did my last stint at serving teas and luckily missed the excitement on the road coming home…

We have had some dry weather followed by torrential rain and voila, the peat is lifted off the bedrock or lower layers and careens down the slope… in this case straight onto the road. It got as far as the white line up the middle. This is just a little one!

By time I went past, they had cleared the road and opened both sides again.

I did a bit of painting when I got back…

Not exactly the best photo, but shock horror, the nights are drawing in and it now gets dark at night. I will take a better photo in the daylight tomorrow.

Well today I decided decided that I couldn’t be bothered to fire up the airbrush so used the brush for the big beastie…

I went on a greenish look, to be honest it doesn’t look very undead looking, but then again it looks like a living thing and not dead looking, so I think it will work.

I got the rider done too…

Now the rider needs a wash over him, but you can see the colours I went for… purple robes as befits a posh dead dude on a scary flying thing.

Joe came over for a game this evening so we went for U-Boot and did the training mission… we actually survived after sinking four ships, checking the weather in a certain area and trying to shoot down a very persistent plane..it actually shot us… luckily no-one went down.

Here we are stalking our prey…

Hopefully I will get the big thing finished tomorrow.

Well today I cracked on and got the crossbows finished, leaving seven mounted troops and the big beastie….

I am really, really not looking forward to getting the flock done on these… there are going to be 132 of them to do… I must be totally bonkers!

I did buy some oil paints and thinners and am going to give them a go to add a wash on everything…I will varnish everything first just in case.

The printer has been busy the last couple of days, but it isn’t for me… I am printing up a dwarven army for Joe. I have done three units totalling thirty figures. August brings more troops, so it will give him a chance to get these painted before the next lot drop.

Joe very kindly got me an AA gift voucher for my birthday so I had a think and decided I would go for another HOTT army… but what to choose. I decided on an elven force… but found he had one already and so, because I need my head examined, I went for an Imperial army… yeah more Landsknecht to paint up… why not go for 15m , I mean I already have loads in 6mm and 28mm… these are nice miniatures though…

The only thing I am going to change out is the Giant (we’ll it is a fantasy army)… I am going to shrink down one of my 28mm Ogres for the job… he has Landskecht style armour which will fit in nicely… if I want to change things up a bit I do actually have a Leonardo’s tank from my HOTT Conquistador force 😁.

You can find an image of my tank Here. It worked well in the HOTT competition.