Author: Jeremey

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s another Wednesday and I think the club are gearing up for all the painting they are going to be doing over the Christmas break 🙂

First up Tony has another addition to his Starwars forces with another toy conversion of a U-Wing from Rogue One.

Next up, probably the most productive club member over the last few months, Mark has some Khazad guards.

And has made a start on some civilians for Judge Dredd.

And lastly this week Andy has something new with some 10mm Polish Napoleonic troops.

See you all next Wednesday.

The Concremental Comes

Club member Jeremey takes us through building and painting his modern take on the classic earth Elemental.

While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself to be a professional sculptor, I have made a number of miniatures over the years. This miniature, the Concremental came out of an idea to create a modern version of the very familiar Earth Elemental. I was lucky enough for this miniature to be cast and so here is my attempt to paint it.

The miniature is currently being sold by Fenris Games and comes in several parts as shown. Therefore the first thing to do was to glue the parts together. The miniature is made of resin but I found superglue worked very well in sticking it together.

The miniature fit quite well on a 50mm round base and I stuck the spare bits of concrete that came with the miniature to the base.

I then added some milliput to the base to provide a texture to match the miniature.

Once the milliput was dry I sprayed the whole thing with Halfords grey primer. It was at this point that I first thought how on earth I was going to paint it. After all, concrete is grey so do I just put a black wash over the miniature and leave it at that or do something else.

I decided to try something different and painted the various concrete blocks in different shades of grey. I then dry brushed the miniature with lighter shades, before finally adding a very watered down black wash.

I then painted the traffic light pole silver and the steel reinforced bars as rusted metal. The traffic lights I did in yellow, I didn’t actually sculpt the traffic lights and they are clearly in the American style that I’ve seen in yellow.

Once all that was done I felt the miniature needed something else, so thinking the miniature would be made of modern street materials I painted road markings on the flat parts of the miniature.

The miniature started to look much better with the markings but they were too clean and bright, to remedy this I actually took a file to the whole miniature to distress the markings. This worked really well and gave the whole model a nice worn look.

Now all I need to do is find a game to put the Concremental in.

Work in Progress Wednesday

It’s Wednesday again and we have another offering from members on their current projects.

First up Tony has been putting together another unit for Hammers Slammers. These are apparently the Sincanmo, a sub-saharan Islamic inspired unit equipped with fast attack buggies, heavy armoured cars and mounted infantry on giant lizards. The miniatures and vehicles are all from Brigade Models.

Some of the vehicles still need crews to be added.
The vehicles are a mix of wheeled and half tracks
And some cool looking Lizard riders

Stephen has added yet more characters to his Sci-Fi collection and a drone.

More space bums and ne’er do wells…

And lastly this week, Mark and his son have been painting up more Lord of the Rings miniatures. First up some Mordor Orcs and a Ring Wraith.

And their hated enemy the Dwarves.

We’ll be back next Wednesday with more from the club.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another Work in progress Wednesday.

This week we start with the giant Zombie Stephen was working on. He’s kindly added a Zombie from the Celtos range for size comparison.

Next up I’ve made a small amount of progress on my trees. These were bought from the shop ‘The Works’. Nice and cheap but a little threadbare compared to the ones I bought from them last year.

I’ve also managed to undercoat some 15mm Sci-Fi troopers to go with my Dropship conversion. The infantry are Brigade Models PacFed.

Now we have some more Dredd stuff from mark. This time a Judge Cadet and bike. These are from Warlord Games.

And last this week Mark’s son continues to produce some good work. This time some Uruk-Hai soldiers.

I do like those armour tones. Well that’s it for this Wednesday, see you next week!

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another Work in Progress Wednesday, above we have club member Marks’ son working on a building for Judge Dredd, currently displayed with the City Defence miniatures.

Below is another Judge Dredd building Mark is working on himself.

Next up Stephen has decided his undead army needs something big. This time he has gone for a Giant Zombie. Will be interesting to see how this turns out.

And last up this week Marcus has put some last minute touches to his Biggles show game. First up some yeti monsters.

and some treasure tokens for the game.

See you next week for some more club offerings.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Another Wednesday and another selection of club members hobby efforts.

First up Tony has been adding to his 15mm Star Wars collection. Above is a Action Fleet toys Imperial Shuttle, and below we have a Ronto, a native Tatooine beast. Tony has added a black wash and a few other painted parts to the models.

Next up Mark has moved on from his hundred years war army and painted up yet more Judge Dredd miniatures. A lawmaster and some city defence forces.

Stephen has painted up some more star fighters, I’ve lost track of how many he has painted now.

And last but not least this week John has made more progress on his Pacific war project. This time some Regular Bolivian Infantry and Bolivian Cavalry Husares Del Sur.

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

Work in Progress Wednesday

Just a few offerings from the club this week. It’s been nice to be getting more games in, but this always has a knock on effect to the lead pile.

Above Andy has made some progress on his Medieval miniatures.

Next up Mark has taken a break from his 6mm Hundred Years War army to paint another Judge Dredd miniature.

Where as Stephen has managed to throw some bits together to create some effective Drones.

And finally for this week I’ve made a start on my Concremental miniature, a modern take on the fantasy Earth Elemental. Shamelessly blowing my own trumpet here as it is a miniature I made for Fenris Games. I’ll do a full blog post showing how I decide to paint it at a later date. First thing will be to assemble it.

See you all next week.

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.