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Ogres… Nearly Finished

So tonight I mooched around trying to find something to paint and came across these two already primed…

So a quick paint job and we got to here…

I probably spent twenty minutes on each. Once everything is dry I will sort out the strapping on the fur bracers and greaves. There are the usual bits that were missed first time round. I have come to the conclusion that it is caused by the wet paint reflecting light, therefore any actual white bits fool me into thinking ‘wet paint’ making them invisible until everything has dried. As I spent a whole while sneezing as these were drying then I decided to call it a night.

These were a ‘prize’ for taking part in the last HOTT competition. Technically one belongs to my daughter as she got one of them for attending too. They are on 40×40 bases as they are behemoth from HOTT.

Whilst mooching for miniatures to paint I cam across a whole host of part finished projects. So far, in the house, I have some 15mm FIW militia and woodland Indians, a force of based 10mm Mongols, a pile more 10mm Sudan war British and Egyptians, a tribe of 10mm Sioux. In the big shed I have all the Starship Troopers stuff as well as various printed miniatures and terrain (let’s not talk about the Aliens V Predator minis nor the Journeys in Middle Earth either).

All in all too much stuff. I didn’t make it out to my shed as that would add more to the lead and plastic mountain.

Tomorrow I shall finish the two ogres and then take stock and come up with a plan. I am not sure why as I probably won’t keep to it anyway.

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One More Sleep…

Well that is it, all the preparation for tomorrow’s convention are almost done.

I almost forgot to put the wash on the road, but luckily remembered in time, it has darkened down nicely, but is still light enough to be seen as a road. I found photos that showed really light roads amongst darker desert and this is what I was aiming for.

So here is the finished village…

I also got my display boards done too…

Regarding the firing rules, I have come up with a change that I think will work. Under twelve inches needs a 5 plus to hit, twelve to twenty four inches needs the 6. Up to thirty six is the 7 then beyond that is an 8 on 2D6. To aid with this I have a piece of dowel 36 inches long, this has been coloured in sections to aid distances for firing. There will be photos of it in action tomorrow.

From what I recall, there are the following:

Rapid Fire,

Zombies

Pod Racing

MTG

My Tanker game

There may be more too.

Whilst I remember, I go through bucket loads of superglue sticking things to bases etc. I decided that enough was enough with the 5g pots (sometimes 3G).

On the left 5g of superglue for £3.95 …. on the right 150ml of superglue for £7 posted.

I reckon it should keep me going for a while.

Tomorrow I shall regale you all with tales of our little convention 🙂

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Walls with added Agriculture

Today everything got a second spray with watered down PVA. Once it was dry I added some vegetation of sorts.

I pretty much looked through my tufts to see what might be useful. Don’t ask me what anything is meant to be as I never got round to googling crops in the desert, well okay I just have…

 Crops grown in the desert include watermelons, apples, green onions, cucumbers, corn, hot peppers, melons, bell peppers, radishes, carrots, cabbage, soybeans, pears, tomatoes, squash and spinach.

 Many farmers raise alfalfa as feed for their animals. It uses four times as much water as wheat. But wheat is also wasteful because so much of the plant ends up as straw.

So now I know!

Anyway everything is pretty much ready for Saturday.

I hunted out my palm trees…

The one conundrum I now have is distances.

A player rolls 2D6 and has to get higher than six for ranges up to 48 inches and needs a seven beyond…Now do I half everything as I am playing 15mm. Therefore gun range becomes 24 inches for the six and over 24 becomes the seven. I would keep the movement distances of 2D6 the same.

I think this would work as although range has reduced, it means crews fire at a more effective range. As can be seen below there is no reductions for range apart from the 48 inches.

Therefore 24 inches will work just as well… I hope… I don’t want to go down the inches into centimetres route and thought this would make it easier.

What do people think?.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 9 Comments

Walls, a Village and some Camels

Tonight I got some watered down PVA onto the fields, below you can see it pooling…

I also managed to get sand onto the village, I intend to darken the road a bit, probably with a wash…

I also printed out the cards and records sheets and laminated both…

I now have enough of everything for six players using tokens or eight players using dry wipe pens.

I also found some camel riders from my Sudan wars games, although my armies are in 10mm I have a mini game involving 15mm miniatures. This idea is found in the Science Versus Pluck rules. If things go horribly wrong then each officer has a miniature and needs to fight a skirmish game to see whether they make it or not.

Anyway here are my Peter Pig Ansar that I painted this evening. Well I felt that I needed some camels as the game is taking part in the desert 😂. Sadly I couldn’t find my 15mm sheep and goats that would have graced the table.

For speed, once again, these were done in Contrast paint.

Tomorrow I will add vegetation to the fields and spray the PVA mix onto the village.

I had a look at my ga I got mat today and suddenly realised that it was a lot smaller than I thought it was. I have a sand coloured piece of felt that is bigger. I will also put a shout out to the club and see if anyone has anything bigger. If not then I will go with what I have.

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Walls, Conundrums and a Christmas Card idea

Well tonight I got some more work done on the walls, they were dry brushed lots and then sand was put on the bases.

These will get some colour variations added then will get a spray with watered down PVA… oh and then I will get some vegetation on there too,.

The following is going to be my Bethlehem scene with Mary, Joseph and ickle wickle baby Jesus…

Still the sand to add, the well is just about visible under the shade of the palm tree.

Sadly I don’t have any 15mm middle eastern civilians, plenty of 10’s but no 15’s.

So onto the conundrum…. drum roll please…..

WaT requires a board to mark everything on, whether a tank is loaded, acquired etc. As I said yesterday I was going to print off the Thingiverse one and here it is…

The hexagonal tokens are the universal tool that shows how far a turret can turn for each appropriate dice. 60 degrees rotation per successful dice. Now Cura, the slicing software, gave a time of 5 hrs 30 minutes to print, it was actually closer to seven. My new roll of PLA hasn’t arrived yet and I reckon I can probably get another one out of the remainder of this roll. This type needs a plasticised sheet behind it so it can have things written on it in the blank boxes, which is again more work.

Option 2 is to simply print out the ones from the book and cover them with the laminator…

Option 3 is to basically use what I have already

The problem with this last option is that I made them double sided…

The only issue would be making sure things didn’t get wiped off and having somewhere for the temporary damage dice to go…

To be honest for ease, I will probably go for option two or three. I also just remembered that I need to make a crib sheet for all of the different attributes.

Today I had to go and get all of my crap out of the crashed car. It did look a bit broken, however when I was there I noticed this…

All of the other tyres were inflated and this one has run on its metal rim. It looks like it had a blow out on the back driver side. Either way the car is totally buggered.

Tomorrow I will carry on with the village, hunt out the palm tree bases and generally crack on with things.

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Walls, Cheat Sheets, Photos and a Well

Today has been, what can best be described as, bitty.

The walls were nice and dry so I gave them an undercoat of grey primer, only to find I still had enough desert yellow in the can, so they got a blast with that too when the grey had dried.

Once the undercoat had cured, I gave the walls a wash with home made sepia wash with a home made black wash over the top of that.

Once the wash has dried, I will get going with some dry brushing.

When that is done it will get some vegetation added. This will be a mix of green and desert yellowish colours. The green will be used as crops etc on the inside of the walls as these areas would be watered.

The small well for the village can be seen in the middle of the walls.

The other thing I managed to do was make some support materials for the game…

Firstly I printed off a simple map for the Battle of Sidi Rezegh which took place in late 1941. I also added a pile of photos showing various axis and allied tanks in operation Crusader.

The other thing I wanted to do was a cheat sheet for the gamers and lo and behold I came across these.

This has certainly saved me a shit load of work… so a big thank you goes to:

https://onseanstable.com/2018/06/08/what-a-tanker-full-metal-dashboards/

He (I reckon he is called Sean) added PDF’s to the page, which means I can get it sorted super quickly. His had metal in between the paper to make them magnetic. I am going to print dashboards out on the 3D printer. Each one will take over 5 and a half hours each. I am kicking of with them tomorrow. Tonight I am printing off the WaT Universal tool. I am printing off six, these are taking me a couple of hours to do (in total thankfully). They still have an hour to go so no photos until tomorrow 😉. Hopefully you can keep your excitement in check until tomorrow evening. 😁

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Desert Walls

Well tonight I managed to get another three wall bases done. I say bases, but in reality I may just leave them as they are.

This lot were a lot messier than the last one as I mixed tile grout, Wood glue and brown paint together.

Needless to say I dropped things in it, put my elbow in it and generally made a bloody mess.

I reckon I am going to leave it with these 4. I also have the houses (some will be based together), I have hills and I have palm groves. There needs to be enough terrain to make it interesting but not so much that it is like street fighting.

Tomorrow I will get a well built or printed and then get some houses stuck onto their base. I printed lots of spare walls so hopefully I can make things interesting.

Today, as I mentioned yesterday, I managed an actual game. I got to play Star Saga, for those that don’t know, it is a Sci Fi dungeon crawl (or should that be spaceship crawl). It was quiet enjoyable. Four of us basically ran around lots, shooting anything that moved and somehow, against mounting odds managed to win, by escaping the level. It was funny seeing the same miniatures I used for my Mobile Infantry being painted differently and used in their intended game. Much fun was had by all.

The other thing I got today were the Ninja from Battle Valour Games. I am rather chuffed that scale wise they are pretty damn close. Aesthetically different in appearance, but aren’t the teeny tiny miniatures I was worried they might be.

Above we have a TS peasant, a BVG ninja and then a TS archer. They will certainly do the job. In this case the TS minis have a whole lot more detail, but a ninja, in a typical ninja suit doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of detail to have. On the up side, they are all unique poses, armed with ‘typical’ ninja weapons and equipment. The only archetypal weapon missing is a throwing star.

These are not as cheap as the Tin Soldier ones. £2.75 for eight miniatures with TS, the Ninja came in at £4 for six minis. This is certainly not a criticism, merely a statement of fact. The BVG sets, have civilians as well as ONI and also undead warriors which are very tempting. The other thing is they come with the sashimono and don’t need to purchase them separately.

Although I am technically on my hols I am going to go into work to do some paperwork 😱. I need to make sure everything is up to scratch before the kids go back in a couple of weeks.

I shall Carry on with preparations when I return tomorrow evening (or afternoon if I lose the will to live).

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DAK… a bit of Progress

So tonight I pretty much used half my Army Painter Light Tone covering this lot with shade…

I am not sure whether I like it or not. It might grow on me though, and to be honest everything has to be finished and dry by Friday so perhaps it had better grow on me!

I will get numbers and the like on them once the wash has dried.

The other thing I had a go at was a wall. It is a bit wide, but I used some ‘no more nails’ which can be seen squidging between the pebbles.

I will make a few more of these to spread around the table to act as cover. This is a low one, either this, or the next ones will be taller. I will add more pebbles with Wood glue to cover the ‘no more nails’ . I decided to use this stick stuff as I had an open tube that needed using up.

I cut out three irregular sized bases out of ePVC. I sort of just squirted out the glue for this one at a random size. Hopefully it will fit one of them. If not I am sure I can do another one.

So tomorrow is going to be busy, busy, busy.

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A Night Off…

I decided to leave the paint brushes where they were tonight and took a night off. I had a meeting with my Line manager in school today. I thought it would be an hour… it was two and a half. He is a great guy, sadly he is off South next month. I really hope I get a good replacement. Even though he is a nice, supportive guy, it was still a little stressful as I have only been in post 8 weeks.

I left work at 17.30 only to find my wife needed rescuing from Lerwick (we still only have one car – better than last week when we had no car… we picked up a cheap one to keep us going until insurance is sorted out on mine and My wife’s one escapes from the garage).

Anyway enough of my life history!

I got a package!!!

Yep my Tin Soldier package arrived safe and sound.

It was filled to the brim with Samurai goodness 😁

A nice little DBA army… but this is where it gets interesting…

I couldn’t remember whether the army pack came with Sashimono or not. So I put a little note in saying I had ordered three packs of them, but if the army pack came with them just add some more minis to the price of the back banners.

I was a bit surprised to find three packs of back banners and…

Yep… a pack of mounted archers and a pack of Ashigaru archers too!

But there is even more….

Please note the number of figures and the amount for the army pack. The only thing I can think of is that the infantry come in 8’s it is easier to split them in half than have the odd figures lying around.

Either way Tin Soldier are most definitely on my top five traders list. The two extra packs are a very kind gesture. Each pack would have cost me £2.75. However what it means is that when the car shenanigans are over I will definitely purchase another DBA Samurai army at the very least.

For those that are interested, this is the list

The figures themselves are lovely and I can’t wait to get some paint on them… looks like my orctober is potentially going to be Samuraiober instead.

So a big thank you to them, oh and also to the people who have managed to make it to the end of my rambling post.

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Allied Tanks… A Night Off

Well sort of a night off… I didn’t get in until 22.30 tonight and was going to have a night off as I had been off to see my Eldest as Pugsley in the school production of the Adams Family. Although I was a proud dad and was amazed at her singing voice ( she never really sings in the house) it was a great night out and would have been If I had been a regular punter.

Anyway when I got back I thought I had better do something on the tanks…

Yeah I know the triangles are a bit thick in places, if I have time and can be bothered then I will go back and redo them.

I know I didn’t need the red triangle on them, but it makes them a bit more interesting and that is my story.