Author: Jeremey Claridge

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s another Wednesday and we have some more offerings from the club.

Above we have some 15mm Rebel Troopers painted by Tony. He’s making good progress on his Star Wars project.

Next up Mark has continued the good work with his 6mm Hundred Years War in the shape of the Black Prince and his commanders.
Mark has also painted up a 15mm musician for his Spartan army.
Now we have some Sci-Fi troopers painted by one of Marcus’ children. It’s always good to know the hobby is being passed down.
And last but by no means least Stephen has put the final touches to his hover camper van.
That’s it for this week, see you next time.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Here we are back with another selection from the club members on what they have been up to.

First we have Stephen’s impressive Hover Camper Van (above). Stephen went with a suitably retro colour scheme and has added some luggage items to the roof. Still a few stages to go – cargo and top, and weathering.

Matching up colours

Stephen has also decided to do some extra harbour/quayside sections, he just needs to remember what colours he used on the original.

Next up John has added a few more Bolivian infantry units to his Pacific war project.

John describes these as poorly equipped ‘ragged foot’.

Next up Mark has finished his hundred years war longbows.

Some men at arms that need basing.

And a camp to rest up after a long days march.

I cannot wait to see the whole of Mark’s army on the battlefield.

And last but not least this week, I managed to paint up my long lost Viking first purchased in 1985 and then lost for 36 years!

See you next Wednesday for more miniature goodness from the club.

Scratch Building on a Budget

Jeremey takes us through building terrain from things just laying around.

For a while now I’ve been determined to build up (no pun intended) my collection of terrain features and some table top dressing. But I wasn’t able to just throw lots of money at all those nice resin or plastic terrain sets, and so I looked at the materials I had around me.

The Swamp
First up was a swamp, I’ve never actually owned a piece of swamp terrain but often see other gamers with a single round piece of cloth or card to act as a swamp.

I wanted to do something a little different to just one large swamp and so built a selection of smaller pieces that could be pushed together to form a large swamp or break up providing paths through the swamp.

The swamp pieces were made from a piece of backing board from an old flat pack chest of draws. It’s like a thinner version of hardboard and easy to cut. I painted the pieces in a swampy green colour and stuck bits of real wood branches to it. A bit of flock was added and then to get that wet looked I used clear PVA glue. it took a couple of layers but ended up looking the part.

Total cost for the swamp was the price of a bit of flock, bit of glue and bit of paint. In other words pretty cheap.

Stone Walls
Battlefields have to have walls, if for no other reason than to justify the half dozen pages in most wargame rules dedicated to how to move your troops over them.

For these again I used the backing board and stuck to it some polystyrene pieces. However it wasn’t your standard white polystyrene this was a special grey insulating styrene that was a bit stronger and had a larger better formed structure that looked like a pile of stones. I didn’t know such existed until my neighbour had some building work done and let me have some of the off cuts. They were very easy to paint and fitting for this project, free.

Signs of Past Battles
As well as actual terrain pieces I also wanted to create some scenery to break up the blank spaces you often get on the battlefield but do not affect the game.

I found in the bits box a few old sprues of Games Workshop plastic skeletons and thought having some remnants of a past battle.

I cut some small pieces from the backing board and simply stuck various body parts down. In quite a few cases I cut the underside so that it would lay flat to the base and in some cases used the part of the model I’d sliced off back on the base. A bit of flock and the odd grass tuff and I had a half dozen pieces to add a bit of character to the battlefield.

Forest Hall
On a wander through some local woods I came across an unusual piece of bark that had fallen off a tree (quite a long time ago given the state of it), and I immediately thought it would make a good roof for some primitive dwelling.

I brought it home and using some other sticks I’d collected I built a forest hall by sticking the bark and sticks together with the hot glue gun. A little bit of flock and the hall was complete. I might return to this and add some furs or other decoration to the entrance.

Trees
Lastly I just used some of the collected bits of old wood from the forest floor to make additional dressing pieces to the battlefield.

I made two tree stump pieces and two large ancient trees that would work as objective markers or some other scenario goal in games. You can also see the size of the forest hall in the above picture.

Building all of this terrain was exceptionally easy and as pointed out cost next to nothing to get on the battlefield.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another Work in Progress Wednesday, as a complete contrast I’ll start this week with what I’ve been up to. Above you can see I finished my long dead warriors scatter terrain pieces, and below I have a re-discovered a Citadel Miniatures Viking from 1985 that I’ll be adding to my Viking Saga warband.

36 years old and still looking the part

Next up Mark has yet more 6mm units. Fist are some Roman infantry units.

Medium infantry ready to join the Roman army

Then we have some Hundred Years War Men at Arms and Longbowmen.

Hundred Years War English Men at Arms and Longbows

Finally from Mark a camp for his Greek 15mm army. This is a nice twist on the normal two tents and a wagon style camps we often see.

Camping at a ruined temple after a hard day on the battlefield

Next up Stephen has added to his Sci-Fi collection with a group of generic crew members.

More conversions for Stargrave

Marcus has been improving this years club game (technically last years game!) With more snowy terrain that will hopefully be ready to play at Broadside.

More Snowy Ground for Biggles!

And last but not least this week, Tony has continued painting his Lord of the Rings dwarf Grim Hammers.

Grim Hammers led by Bombur, who’s obviously spotted something to eat ahead of him

See you next Wednesday for another catch up with the club.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Bit of a bumper crop this week. Stephen has made progress on his hover Camper Van. Stephen has added luggage to the roof and undercoated it ready for the paint scheme.

What paint scheme will it be?

Next up Eric has painted up two fantasy miniatures. The first being a ranger miniature.

Old school feel to the Ranger

The second a warrior Eric will use for Warhammer fantasy or to add to a Dragon Rampant unit.

Flailing around?

Mark has gone back to his Hundred Years War army with the mass ranks of archers getting the painting treatment.

Hundred Years War archers

John has made progress on his Japanese buildings having added the thatched roof and wooden panels.

Japanese houses

And last but not least I’ve been looking at creating some terrain pieces to just act as battlefield dressing. Things that won’t have an effect in the game but break up the tabletop and set the scene. To start with I’m using some old Games Workshop skeletons as the fallen left behind after some ancient battle.

Unfortunate souls from a previous battle

See you next week for more from the club.

 

Barrow or Cairn?

Jeremey takes us through a recent scratch build of an ancient Barrow, or should that be Cairn?

During the last few months I’ve started to build up my collection of terrain. Having a fantasy undead army I thought I’d have a go at building a burial mound of sorts.

As is my usual methodology when building terrain I created a number of rock shapes out of some EVA foam and stuck them together with the hot glue gun.

Stage 1 – the basic burial mound

The whole thing was then glued to a piece of thin wooden board, and then spray painted with grey primer. Unlike other polystyrene foams the EVA foam does not melt when sprayed.

Stage 2 – undercoated grey

I then had to decide what colour to paint the rocks. The temptation is always to go with grey but I try and avoid that. I chose to go with the brown/beige look.

Stage 3 – painting the individual rocks

The method I used was one I’d tried before when painting a dungeon. I used a few different shades of brown to give a variety to the mound.

Stage 4 – dry brushing

The next stage is to chose a light beige colour (bone, linen etc.) and to dry brush the whole thing. This dry brushing blends the different rock shades together, you can go lighter if desired. I did return to this later feeling that the dry brushing needed to be lighter.

Stage 5 – basing

Simple stage up next with painting the base brown. I always do my bases this way and then apply PVA glue before flocking.

Stage 6 – flocking

With the PVA glue applied I then sprinkled the flock on the base. I also stuck some flock to the rocks to give the impression it has been around for a while.

The finished burial mound

Here we have the finished burial mound, this was a simple piece of terrain to build. I was pleased with how the rock colours worked especially after applying another lighter dry brush.

 

Work in Progress Wednesday

We start this weeks post with a unit of Dwarf Grim Hammers from Tony. He has 24 on the go at the moment.

Next up John has turned his scratchbuilding skills to some Japanese buildings.

Next up I’ve started building a Barrow, it’s made out of EVA foam with the next stages being to decide on a colour scheme for the rocks.

 

Barrow of foam

Stephen has decided to build a sci-fi camper van. Next step is to add a cage to the roof and fill it with cargo and luggage.

A Camper Van that Hovers!

And finally this week Mark has made more progress on his Spanish army. First up more cavalry.

Spanish Cavalry forces

Also some Infantry and Generals.

Generals

Tune in next week for more from the club.

Stargrave – Return to Fenris – Part 1

On another club outing with Stargrave Jeremey ran a game set on the legendary planet of Fenris, with Stephen providing a dramatic write up of the game …

The game was set up in the ruins of a city with the robots of Fenris on patrol throughout the region. The crews of four ships arrive to search for loot.

The Robots of Fenris patrolling through the ruins

Each crew was given a random mission brief providing additional bonuses to be had based on those missions. Stephen ended up with a mission that allowed the crew to pick a rival crew and gain extra credits for any kills against that crew.

The Seedy Dive Space Bar

“100 Credits!? You gotta be kidding me. I want 200.” Kersh Wilson banged his fist on the table for emphasis.
His opposite number leaned forward. Only now did Kersh get an idea of his features in the half-light of the smoke-filled room – the flattened nose, the red skin and ritual scarring. Kersh was dealing with a Creduxian.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Kid,” said the Creduxian. “What I’ll do for you is make it 150 credits for a kill. Just 75 for a hit. Do we have a deal?”
Kersh leaned back, trying to recover his composure, remember the calm and measure he’d been taught as a young student by his masters.
“150 for a kill, huh? Yeah, OK – we got a deal.”
“Good. Good. I’ve made it easy for you. The hit’s name is Offler dZuk – she killed my kinsman. She’s a crew member on a ship called The Troubadour. The captain’s name is Ash de Vere. I’ve had one of my cronies slip Ash some information about some ruins on Fenris. Told him there was money to be made. So I’ve got ‘em off-planet for ya’, somewhere quiet, somewhere away from the eyes of the lawmen. Who knows, maybe you can make some extra loot out of it yourself…”

Kersh and his crew, as well as trying to collect loot tokens, had a special mission – extra money for taking an opposing player’s crew down to zero Health.
Fenris was an area of ruins and covered in undergrowth. Also present were some battle droids, so they’d have to take it careful. I had to choose which player I would have to try and shoot. It would have to be either Andy or Phil, as they were either side of me. I looked at where the loot tokens were and I reckoned that I was more likely to bump into Andy, so it would make sense to have him as my target since there was every chance we’d exchange gunfire anyway. Where I deployed there were two tokens that shouldn’t be too difficult to grab. I pretty much split my force in three – crew Captain Kersh Wilson (a mystic) led a couple of his crew after one token. Shoggoth (a biomorph), the first mate, led some crew after another. I had two raw recruits who I decided I’d send after the furthest away, but also with an eye on the possibility of taking a pop at Andy’s crew if the opportunity presented itself.

The Recruits sent out to scout the area

Oh yeah, I also had a pathfinder and used his extra speed to lead the way, draw any fire, see what droids were about etc.
I took the first token without too much difficulty. At that point Phil rolled a bad initiative roll (any roll of 4 or under meant a random droid would appear – Phil proved good at rolling low…) and a droid appeared near my crew. Kersh took out his lightsabre (sorry, ‘void blade’ *ahem*). The droid took a shot and Kersh deflected the shots with his blade. He then concentrated carefully and caused psionic flames to shoot from his hand and engulf the droid. Didn’t do too much. So he drew his blaster pistol and let off a couple of shots. Down went the droid.

Fire fight with a robot sentry

The two recruits – a robot called 2B-55 and a pale-skinned alien called Ronnock Crowder – advanced through the ruins. Not too far behind was Shoggoth and Yammet Lament, an ex-commando. TwoBee and Ronnock by-passed a loot token, leaving it for Shoggoth, and took position behind some ruins. Because on the opposite side of the road two of Andy’s crew could be seen trying to unlock a loot token.

Laying down some fire

Both TwoBee and Ronnock drew their pistols and started shooting. Down went one of Andy’s crew – Offler dZuk. She was only wounded, so on Andy’s activation he decided to pull her back. But TwoBee and Ronnock let rip again, and this time she wouldn’t get up – down to zero health. But was it a kill?
With three loot tokens, and having successfully completed their special mission, I decided discretion was the better part of valour and got my crew off with all their loot.
It had been a very successful first mission for Kersh and his crew.

Captain Kersh collects some loot

Or was it?  The story will to Return to Fenris for a different perspective …

Work in Progress Wednesday

First up this week Eric has painted two more Stargrave crew members, I could be wrong but these have the look of cannon fodder.

Next up Andy continues to wade through more of his medieval miniatures, this time with some progress on horses.

Mark has made some 6mm progress with his Spanish Napoleonic era forces.

Two cavalry units, a mixture of heavy cavalry, dragoons, hussars.

Mark also sent us progress his son Felix has made on his first Imperial guardsman.

Warhammer 40K Imperial Guardsman

And lastly this week, with the shows starting again Marcus has turned his attention back to the clubs current (Last seen at Cavalier 2020!) show game, first up some Yeti’s.

Copplestone Yeti’s

and some snow scenery made out of expanding foam.

Expanding foam terrain

That’s it for this week, catch you next Wednesday.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Here we are with another selection of pictures from the club showing what we’ve up to. With the return of club meetings, projects are turning to the various games we have managed to start playing again.

First up Tony has been painting up some 15mm Brigadier characters, strangely enough from Brigade Models. He has also managed to complete another dwarf for his LOTR’s collection.

Kili the Dwarf

Next up I’ve been painting up some crates from the Mantic Dreadball range for use in various sci-fi games.

The selection of crates from the Dreadball Extreme box set

John has been painting up some 10mm Chilean and Peruvian Cavalry.

Regiments of Cavalry on the way

Lastly for this week Stephen has used up some old EM4 Colonial Marines miniatures and a bit of kit bashing to create some additional crew/gang members for use in games like Stargrave.

Effective bit of kit bashing to bring some old figure to life

See you all next week.