It’s Wednesday and we have a few offering on club member progress.
Above and below we have some miniatures painted by John, this time some Cultists for a game of Perilous Tales.
Next more progress from Andy on his Dark Age forces, here we have some more Saxon Thegns.
And lastly this week Marcus has added some paint and plant life to his Snap Dragon scenery.
See you next week.
It’s another Wednesday and we start with club member Eric’s progress. Above we have some Romans for Broken Legions and below we have another Cultist.
Next up Mark is now painting up some Pontic offensive spearmen.
While John has completed some bandits for Zona Alfa.
A blast from the past now with Marcus making a start on some terrain that happens to be from the old Snap Dragon range. Was a good range but no idea if you can still get it.
And finally some more Dark Ages progress from Andy.
That’s it for this week, see you next Wednesday.
I bought one of these kits unintentionally recently. Unintentionally? Well, I was buying some other bits from Mighty Lancer Games and wanted to get over the threshold for free postage. This seemed a very useful building to add to my Lord of the Rings scenery collection along with the Games Workshop Rohan Houses already in my shopping basket.
The kit is about as simple as you can get; there are three sprues, two identical ones each with a roof half and sidewall for the main barn and a reversible end wall for the small lean-to, and another with two different end walls for the main barn with different doors, plus the single sidewall and roof of the lean-to. So there are just six pieces for the building and four for the lean-to. The two roof sprues also have some accessories in the form of a pitchfork, cartwheel and ladder, making a grand total of sixteen parts.
Doors and windows are all integral – the sidewalls each have a window, but one can be covered by the lean-to. There are no optional pieces, so the only decisions you need to make are exactly where the lean-to goes and which end to put the doors.
So assembly should have been a doddle, but for some reason I couldn’t get the pieces to stick together with superglue. Initially I thought it might be the cheap poundshop glue, but switching to Loctite didn’t help either. So in the end I reverted to Humbrol Liquid Poly – this stuck everything together safely, I’m not sure why superglue didn’t work – it might just have been a bad day.
Once assembled, I sprayed the barn with Army Painter Leather Brown, and when dry stuck it to a base cut from 5mm Foamex. A mistake I made here was not painting the base first; the barn lives up to the Ramshackle part of its name and has a number of holes in the walls, through which the white base was clearly visible. I spent a while poking an old brush loaded with dark brown paint through the holes to cover up the white bits…
I also added some of the accessory pieces plus a barrel taken from a GW kit to the base.
Painting was straightforward – I gave it an overall wash of Agrax Earthshade, then gave it several drybrushes of increasingly lighter browns. The only other painting needed was to pick out the ropes hanging from the doors, and the hinges in rusty steel.
I smeared a home-made mix of PVA, sand and brown emulsion paint over the base and once that had dried, drybrushed it with mid-brown and bone. I finished the barn off with some Woodland Scenics bushes and some long fibre flock (manufacturer unknown, it came from eBay).
With Mighty Lancer’s already very good prices, plus a discount voucher they sent with a previous order and the free postage it worked out to be a bargain. But having built one I’d say this was a very good item even at full price.
Here is the third and final instalment of Andy’s recently finished Dark Ages figures.
Above we have four figures from Westwind Productions DS04 Character pack, comprising (left to right) Arthur, a Bishop, Merlin and Owain.
The pack came with a selection of heads and shields for Arthur and Owain however, at some point in the painting process (interrupted by Christmas when I had to clear my painting table) I lost the shields. So Owain now has a spare Saxon shield and, as I used a Romano-British looking head for Arthur, I gave him a Late Roman shield, both from Gripping Beast Plastics.
Paints are primarily Vallejo acrylics over a grey primer finished off with Army Painter washes. Arthur and Owain’s shields were painted white and finished with Battle Flag or Little Big Men Studios transfers.
The last four figures from this batch are from a variety of manufacturers.
I’m not sure where the figure on the left came from, Irregular or Lamming perhaps? The figure was originally unarmed, so I drilled out his right hand and fitted an axe from the spares box. If I need him to fill out a unit I may give him a shield.
Next in line is a bard or skald from Ral Partha Europe, he’s playing a harp of some form.
The last two models are both from Gripping Beast. First off is the Blind Seer and his boy, finally a Viking Warlord.
After these were finished I had a bit of a diversion in scale and period, doing some 15mm Sci Fi figures before returning to the Dark Ages with some Saxon Thegns, but more of those later.
It’s Wednesday and we have another offering from the progress made by club members.
First up John has painted up some more ships. This time some English and Spanish Galleons.
John’s amassing quite a fleet.
Next up Marcus has made progress on his alien plants. Still think these models are very nice and enjoying the colour scheme Marcus is going for.
Andy has yet more Dark Ages miniatures on the go. If he continues like this he will have enough to stage … well the Dark Ages its self.
And last but certainly not least this week, Eric has painted up a selection of Warhammer 40K Cultists.
See you next week with some more progress from the club members.
It’s Wednesday again and John has been extremely productive for this one.
Above John has painted up some more Norse Gaels for Saga, and below we have some Armada period ships John has based up for Galleys and Galleons.
But it doesn’t stop there, John has also made progress on two of his Spanish buildings.
Next up Marcus shares his current work bench with lots going on. We are all particularly interested in how his alien plants are going to end up. They look like great models.
And lastly I’ve made some progress on my dropship. I’ve managed to create a cockpit for it. Now just down to the paint job. I think I’m going khaki for the main colour.
See you all next week.
This week we start with a surprise new project from Tony. He’s been collecting various makes of Star Wars toys and miniatures. The speeders are looking particularly good.
But it doesn’t stop there for Tony as he has also painted up some 15mm crates.
And the crates don’t stop there, Stephen has used some more of the Robogear terrain and added some free cargo container paper model textures for the outside.
And last but not least this week, Marcus has made some more progress on his scratch built spaceship. Can’t wait to see what he chooses for a colour scheme.
I really should make more progress on my own spaceship.
See you next Wednesday.
John La looks back at a Dragon Rampant Warband he built for a past club campaign…
Some time ago Stephen hosted a Dragon Rampant Campaign where my Da Vinci Condotta warband was narrowly beaten into second place by Tony G army. With some WIP Wednesday painting articles centred on this ruleset, I thought I’d dust off the army and explain how I went about making it.
Prior to the campaign, we’d had a few trial games where my Dark Age force fared badly and I decided I’d have to change if I was going to be competitive. I’d never been a fantasy gamer so had no Orcs, Elves or Dwarves so decided to go with a human based theme at minimum cost.
Research
I came up with the idea of a warband which would include some of Leonardo da Vinci’s war machines with some Italian Renaissance figures. Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan sponsored Leonardo who created a number of sketches of war machines and a TV programme entitled ‘Doing Da Vinci’ used these sketches to reproduce the machines. I thought with some plasticard to make the machines and a box of Perry Plastic Late Medieval Mercenaries and a box of Late Medieval Mounted Knights I could make a suitable warband.
Humans
The Leader had to be Ludovico Sforza himself leading a unit of knights.
These would be the shock melee unit, best used against damaged and disrupted units to deliver the ‘Coup de Grace’. I gave them an ability to prevent wild charges, they needed to be in control.
Next up I needed the Bulwark of the Warband and chose to make these Milanese Militia pikemen, which I painted with combinations of white, red and green hose. I needed to add a magic element and picked up a Sorceress at Cavalier. I found that Caterina Sforza (Ed: Ludovico’s illegitimate niece). was a noted Alchemist so she would have the ability to confuse an opponent’s unit, to heal a unit and to provide a long range powerbolt.
I needed more shooting potential and decided on a unit of scouts. For these I used Handgunners and gave them the invisible ability (due to gunsmoke). This meant they could only be targeted in melee or via magic. If I placed them in difficult ground they would be a handy irritant.
On to the machines.
My first build over a weekend was the Armoured Car. I mocked up the conical design using paper templates, then drew them out onto 20 thou Plastikard and scribed on the planking. I painted the planks individually then washed with brown mixed with Flow Enhancer, producing a wood grain effect. The vehicle is fitted with a number of small calibre guns to provide all round fire, for which I used plastic tubing. In ‘Doing Da Vinci’, the vehicle produced from the plans could move but firing all guns simultaneously would result in deafness for the crew. I decided mine would be propelled by captured Turkish Galley slaves. I gave the crew a fearful ability as I reasoned that they would be as afraid as their opponent of this machine. I mounted the model on a landscaped foiled cake base. This would prove to be a good flank guard.
The second build was an Airscrew. I wanted this to be like a Helicopter gunship, flying over a terrain item to deliver a lethal volley of crossbow bolts before retreating to safety. This proved to be a more difficult build as I had to get the sail pattern right. I found a ‘how to’ rubber band powered model video and plan on the internet and used this as a basis. The central spindle was plastic tube and the fighting platform was plasticard. The crew were modified Perry plastics. I gave them the fearful ability, who wouldn’t be scared, and added a sharpshooter ability to provide a lethal hit. The Airscrew fits onto a bolt on a cake stand base.
So this was my starter warband and as the campaign progressed I was able to add additional units.
Human Reinforcements
I added a unit of Light infantry in which I mixed javelin armed troops with blade armed ones. I used Gripping Beast Dark age Infantry javelin figures cut off at the wrist and glued onto the arm of the Perry figures. I scratchbuilt the large oval shields from plastic card with a Milanese design and I repeated the white, red and green hose patterns I’d used on the Militia Pike.
Next I needed some Mercenaries. There would also be English Bills and Bows – Dogs of War that had survived the Wars of the Roses.
Finally, I added a unit of Elite Foot Knights, probably German Mercenaries.
More Machines
The next machine I made was a 33 barrelled organ gun. On ‘Doing Da Vinci’ this machine really worked well with an 11 shot salvo firing shot the size of a tennis ball, with devastating effect.
I made the guns using plastic tubing. The design has a rotating centre section so that after firing, the barrels rotate for the next salvo. This was a complete plasticard scratch build and the crew come from Perry plastics, all mounted on a cd.
Finally, I made a War Chariot. Here, a geared mechanism controls rotating blades like a food processor. In ‘Doing Da Vinci’ this was another lethal weapon.
This was another complete scratchbuild and I decided to paint the horses and horse armour in black again mounted on a cd.
Well that’s it, though I’m still thinking of adding a unit of three Ornithopters as another scout unit.
This week a couple of us have made progress on the spaceship building competition currently being run. Above is my latest progress. I was given the original model by another club member. It’s a toy of some sort and I ended up taking it apart and repositioning parts of it. I also added a hatch/entrance to the front of the ship. Next up I need to design some sort of cockpit and then choose a colour scheme.
Marcus also showed the progress he has made. Named the Soaring Sow Marcus has gone for a complete scratch build. Be interesting to see where he goes with this.
Also this week Mark has been working on an army of 6mm Pontics bought from another member of the club. These are all based up with just the actual basing material to do.
Thant’s it for this week, see you next Wednesday.
Well life got in the way of being able to post this morning, but better late than never here is this Wednesdays offering from the club.
First we have a plastic barn from Renedra that Tony has put together and painted.
John has been busy scratchbuilding but this time in 15mm for the Spanish Civil War period.
And another example from John
Next up Eric’s painting mojo is starting to return with a chaos marauder and viking looking nice and sharp.
And finally for this week Mark showed progress on a spaceship and crew for a little competition we are running at the club.
Hopefully next Wednesdays WIP post will be on time. See you then.
You must be logged in to post a comment.