Category: Modelling and Painting Articles

Conqueror Model Dwarves

Stephen gives us the lowdown on his latest painting project…

When Lockdown Part 1 kicked off I decided that I would not be buying loads of new miniatures since there was no knowing when we would be meeting again.

I bought some odds and sods to fill gaps in collections but wouldn’t be starting any new projects. And I’ve kept to that.

However.

Just before Christmas I saw Conqueror Models’ range of 28mm dwarves. These were of the same style as the original Vendel Miniatures dwarves. There’s a good reason for that – same sculptor (Colin Patten). Years ago I bought a few of the Vendel dwarves and always intended on buying some more. Before I could do that Vendel stopped selling them and they just disappeared.

I was absolutely gutted.

I’ve always liked the idea of a dwarven army but hadn’t really liked the style of dwarves that have been available up until now – I’m really not a fan of that GW cartoon style where it’s all belly and no legs.

So seeing the Conqueror Models range I thought, ‘That’s it! That’s what I want!’

Having been stung by the Vendel range disappearing I decided that I wasn’t going to let this lot pass me by. And so, since Christmas was on the horizon and because I realised that, on balance, this year I had been a good boy, I decided that I would treat myself and buy myself lots of dwarves – enough for a whole army, just in case the same happened to these.

Since they were of the same style as the Vendel ones, and since I had some Vendel dwarves, I mixed them in with the units I bought.

I decided to build these in Dragon Rampant sized units. Although, given their ‘historical’ style in arms and armour, I think I will be tempted to use them with the Anglo Dane battleboard in Saga as well (yeah, I know there’s Saga Myth & Magic, but from what I’ve heard that falls in to the same trap as nearly all fantasy rules – lots of ‘special’ rules that are exceptions to the main rules and just tie it in knots).

Anyway.

Conqueror actually do unarmoured dwarven fyrd as well, but I didn’t get any of them. To my mind I wanted my dwarves to comprise predominantly heavy infantry in mail. I bought a few packs of the spearmen which, when mixed in with the Vendel models with hand weapons,, would give a good mix to the unit. I also chose to buy the thrusting spear poses (you can get them upright) because they make the unit look more dynamic. I did two units of 12 each having the same shield design and a war-banner.

Warriors 1
Warriors 2

Conqueror do armoured and unarmoured archers (we’ll come to them in a minute), but I went with crossbows to make two units of heavy missiles.

Crossbows 1
Crossbows 2

Then came the axemen. I swapped the axes that came with the models (because the axe head looked a little large) and used some spare Gripping Beast dane-axes I had. These axemen can be used in one of two ways – either two units of elite infantry or as a single unit of heavy infantry (with the Offensive Weapons upgrade).

Daneaxes

And so on to the archers. I bought a pack of the unarmoured archers to use as dwarven scouts/rangers. And because of that I painted them in suitably earthy/green tones.

Scouts

Leading this bunch are the heroes and commander. I did a couple of weapon swaps here. One of them came with a daneaxe but I decided that I would put in a spare two-handed sword for variety. Other spare Gripping Beast hand weapons were used on some of the others.

Commander and Heroes

To round things out are a couple of beast units. First up is a pack of wolves (lesser warbeasts) and to scare the enemy is a Reaper Bones warbear (greater warbeasts).

Wolves and Warbear

That’s my dwarven army done. I can muster about 50 odd points (in Dragon Rampant terms) which means I can have a dwarven civil war or put together a single large dwarven host for a big smack up.

I love these Conqueror dwarves. Stylistically it’s just what I was looking for. They’ve been a real pleasure to paint as well – not too many fussy extra bits, nice areas to add a few designs to, and good poses. Definitely painter’s models. I’ve finally got the dwarf collection I’ve always wanted. It’s my army d’jour.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Well it’s snowing outside, so what better way of keeping warm than making progress on those hobby projects.

Tony is up first having managed to finally get some paint on some roads and tracks. Much discussion was had regarding how a horse and cart should actually leave three tracks (we have such fun at this club!).

Nice set of roads to advance your tanks down

Next up Stephen has managed to turn a toy into a great looking space ship.

Nice conversion of a toy to spaceship

After a bit of a pause Andy has continued to slap some more paint on his assorted dark ages miniatures.

Almost there for the dark ages

And finally for this week John has out the finishing touches to his warehouse that took a back seat while he finished off the Flour Mill.

The classic warehouse found in all apocalyptic settings

Next week I should have my Wars of the Roses units and more rubble that I didn’t quite get done for this week.

Sticking the Sticks

Jeremey discovers one of his previous projects that he never told anyone about.

After playing a number of Lord of the Rings games down the club, I kept seeing pictures of the official Ent miniature in the rules and thought it looked far to cartoonish compared to the rest of the miniatures. I also saw the price of it and that got me thinking.

So on my travels I started collecting sticks that had fallen from the local trees. I only wanted the sticks that had already come off the tree as these were dry and unlikely to change over time.

I probably collected more than necessary for this project

When collecting the sticks I tried to find ones that had natural bends in them to represent joints and movement in the figure. First task though was to wash the collected sticks, this was important because I’d picked them up from the ground. A good scrub with soapy water and an old toothbrush did the trick and didn’t rehydrate the wood.

Nice walking pose with some suitable sticks

To stick things together I used the trusty hot glue gun. If I did this project over I would drill holes and pin the sticks together for extra strength. But the glue gun worked well enough.

Arms and Legs done now to get creative on the head

The arms came next but I had to work out how to create a head for the Ent. I decided early on not to go for something like a carved face or small pieces of wood to act as eyes, nose etc. I thought that would end up looking like Mr Potato Head.

Head completed and additional branches being added

In the end I made a medieval style helmet from pices of bark I had also collected. The bark also worked for armour plates on some of the joints and as fingers  on the hands. That was the basic figure done but it didn’t look enough like a tree and so I started stcking smaller branches to the back of the figure. I arranged these like a normal tree looks and made sure they extended above the head of the Ent. This also helped to strengthen the joints of the figure by having these additional branches stuck to the joints.

Finally I added some of that scenic lichen railway modellers use to make trees. The final model stands about a foot tall which isn’t bad considering it cost next to nothing to produce, and even if I do say so myself it looks better than the official one.

The finished Ent with two 28mm vikings for scale

Work in Progress Wednesday

I don’t know about dry January but the club have certainly not put the hobby on hold. This week we start off wth Mark turning to his Hammers Slammers 6mm forces after finishing his Panzers.

Next up even more from Tony who was clearly on a roll. I’ll let Tony explain these in his own words: “Behold the might of the Belgian army ! I’ve finally finished off a small force of armour in 20mm – an ACG-1 light tank, two T-15 tankettes, two T-13 type III tank destroyers, three Vickers utility tractors and a pair of 47mm AT guns.
The ACG-1 and T-15 are Cromwell Models (I think) and the centre Vickers tractor is of unknown origin – I bought them all many, many years ago (in the 90s) at Trucks and Tracks in Folkestone. The others are all from Early War Miniatures – the T-13s are resin with metal turrets, the other tractors and guns are metal.”

Marcus has managed a bit more paint on his starships from the other week.

While Eric has finished another Gaslands vehicle.

And finally for this week I’ve actually managed a bit more progress on my 15mm Wars of the Roses units.

There’s pleanty more bubbling away at the club so do check in to next weeks Work in Progress Wednesday.

Work in Progress Wednesday

Welcome to another WIP Wednesday. First up to go with the dramatic Lord of the Rings image above, Tony has made some progress on his collection.

Two versions each of Isildur and Elendil – first (and most useful) are the two standing figures

Tony also painted up this little vignette of the two of them prone, with Isildur waving the broken remains of his father’s sword. Tony says “Not very useful in a game, but it means I can recreate the scene where Isildur cuts the ring from Sauron’s hand” (as seen in the header image JC)

And finally, three more Warriors of Gondor that Tony found were half-painted already, and just had to finish their weapons and shields.

Next up Mark has completed his 6th Panzer Regiment, and mechanised infantry battalion. Mark says “This is how they would have looked around June 1943. Took longer than expected as I’ve not been very productive over the last 6 weeks or so. Some more infantry to base and paint, then I will move on to next project”

And finally this week, after finishing his impressive Grain Mill John has returned to the warehouse he started.

That’s it for this Wednesday, time to get some more paint on those miniatures.

The Grain Mill

We’ve already seen snippets of John’s Grain Mill scratchbuild, but now we can see how John created this impressive piece of terrain.

All the buildings I’ve made so far have been quite generic but couldn’t resist this build. It’s quite an imposing structure measuring 35 cm Long and 25cm high and 14cm wide excluding stairway and ramp. In order to protect the model for transit and storing it had to fit into a shoebox. Here’s how I went about making something like this.

Step 1 Detailed plan
I spent a couple of evenings drawing up a plan of the building on A3 paper. I looked at as many photographs as possible of this particular structure and learned something about it’s function to help with the design and build. The tall section is a Grain Elevator. A bucket elevator carries grain from ground level to the top of the elevator where it is discharged into a silo contained within this structure. The horizontal gantry contains milling equipment and three discharge hoppers are suspended underneath. On the other side of the building is a ramp. At the end of the ramp, grain is dropped into the bucket elevator feed.
For dimensions, I used the assumption that door opening heights would be 7 ft and width 3 ft. I used 5mm to a foot so that gave me the dimensions of this item then worked out the height and length proportions based on that. So the building worked out at 70ft long x 50ft high and 28ft wide. As I drew up the plan, I rechecked against the photos to make sure everything looked in proportion and decided that there would be four stages to the build :- Stairway, Gantry, Elevator and ramp. I thought the stairway would be the most difficult so decided to start on this.

Stairway.
I used the same method as in the office build to start with so glued together 2 cm x 1cm pieces of foamcore to make the steps. The maximum height being determined by the height of the shoebox. I added sides from mounting board to correct any warping then added steps from lolly sticks making sure some were damaged.

I made the landing wide enough for a 28mm figure base as I thought this would make a suitable sniper position. The supports I made from wood strip rather than replicate the flimsy metal supports on the original to make sure the stairway was robust enough for the table top. I added bannister rail supports from matchsticks and then the rail and surround at the top of the stairwell from mounting board which I also used for the base.

Gantry.
With confidence high I turned my attention to the gantry (which turned out to be the most difficult part of the build). I built the wooden structure from foamcore clad with cereal packet cardboard strips, lining the window openings with the same, then adding cut down matchsticks for the window frame parts. The length of the gantry would match the width of the shoebox to fit in.

The hopper assembly was cut from cereal box cardboard glued to 2 pieces of foamcore. This was then glued to the base of the Gantry

The next task was to build the supports for the gantry. I decided to replicate metal girders for this so I made H section girders from 40 thou plastic card. In order to fit in the shoe box, the supports would have to be detachable so I made sockets on the underside of the gantry and on the base. These were a snug push fit. I then added cross struts to provide additional strength. I needed two goes to get the base right and the small ‘turret’ would have to be detachable for the structure to fit in the shoebox. I used Hobbycraft corrugated foam for the asbestos roof.

Elevator.
This was constructed using foamcore clad with corrugated foam but provided a few problems so wasn’t straightforward. To fit in the shoe box, the top section had to be made separately and had to fit inside the gantry, fitting over posts on the lower section of the elevator when in use. There are also two ‘wings’ at the base of the elevator which were constructed separately and slot into the side of the elevator when in use and are stored inside the elevator when packed away.

Elevator under construction showing one of the wings. The top section fits inside the gantry for storage.

Ramp.
This was the simplest part of the build which I nearly missed as it’s so overgrown on the photographs. I made it in 3 sections. The start of the ramp was from mounting board covered in fine sand painted to represent concrete. The middle section was constructed from plasticard as it’s a metal structure. The third part appears from a video clip to be metal and wood. I made this from foamcore and added card planking.

Windows.
I used clear plastic from food packaging for this. I taped the plastic to my cutting board to cut out pieces of plastic to fit the window recesses. I marked out where the vertical bars would be and then cut the windows to show broken panes before gluing the plastic strips to the rear face of the vertical bars using superglue

Painting and finishing.
Wood – Wilko Nutmeg Spice, then black acrylic wash, drybrush Wilko Mineral Stone and then a light white drybrush. I then used a black wash to make sure the planking was picked out.
Metal – Black acrylic and then a succession of dry brushing, dark brown, red brown and then yellow. (All plastic parts primed in grey)
Asbestos roofing – Primed grey first then Homebase Grey Fox then a succession of black and brown washes, finishing with a drybrush across the ribs of Homebase Silver Cloud.
Concrete – Grey, dry brushed white.
Earth – Red brown, dry brushed pale grey.
I then applied static grass where appropriate and the project was complete.

This building is going to be an impossing sight on the tabletop

Work in Progress Wednesday

The club slump after the holiday is definitely over, so much so that I’m going to save a few bits for next week.

First up John has finished the flour mill and we all agree he has done a wonderful job on the model. Considering John was following a very limited number of pictures. John has promised to do a step by step guide for a future blog post. But for now here is the completed mill.

This building is going to be an impossing sight on the tabletop

Next up Marcus has started on some new starships, Marcus told us “I put together some GZG “Crusty” starships. This is just a sample: 2 standard destroyers, a heavy destroyer on the right and an as yet unprimed conversion of a cruiser mated with the rear section of the heavy destroyer.”
Will be interesting to see what colour these go, I’m always facinated by the colours gamers chose for starship models.

A new fleet on the way

Tony has revied his flagging painting schedule to provide two offerings (saving the others for next week in case he flags again). The first being some more 6mm vehicles using Games Workshop contrast paints for the camoflague.

Spray undercoat of white, then an overall coat of Apothecary White followed by camouflage stripes of Militarum Green.

And to follow that some power pylons but I’ll let Tony describe the construction of these in his own words: “First up is this pair of Hornby power pylons. These are HO scale, about 8″ tall, and will serve for anything from 15mm Sci-fi to 20mm Gaslands or 28mm Zona Alfa.
They were pigs to put together – they’re quite old models and whoever designed them hadn’t heard of locating pins. Everything is butt joins or flat face-to-face joins, and it was very hard to get them all square and lined up properly. So much so that the first one I attempted to put together is currently being turned into a wrecked version, it was that bad…”

Apparently a challange to put together

And last but not least I finally managed to start slapping some paint on my last four 15mm Wars of the Roses units. I’m currently using the Sword and Spear rules and have the maximum number of standard units for an army so needed to look at the secondary units allowed.

Apart from the odd figure and commanders these are all from Essex Miniatures

The additional units will be one each of Welsh Longbowmen, Spearmen, Welsh Spearmen and Mercenary Crossbows.  As with the rest of my army I am specifically avoiding painting them all the same so I use one colour at a time and paint just one item on each figure before moving onto the next to get a real random feel to the unit.

That’s it for this week, join us again next week for more progress on these and other projects.

That’s a Nasty Habit

Club member Steve conducted a series series of polls on the club’s modelling and painting habits over the Christmas/New Year 2020.

QUESTION 1
What paints do you use?
100% said they used acrylics. No real big surprise there. Although one person did say he uses both acrylic and enamel (Dave – you crazy kid, you!).

QUESTION 2
What make of paints do you use?
A lot more variety here. The most popular were Vallejo with 24.4%. I was surprised by what came second – Tamiya, with 14.6%. I think Tamiya use some kind of oil medium, which is why they curdle and can be a challenge to paint miniatures with, though probably not so bad when it comes to vehicles and buildings and things with other large surfaces. GW came in third with 12.2%. Then Army Painter, Humbrol, and ‘artist’s acrylics’ with 9.8% each (I cannot believe Coat d’Arms wasn’t even on the list! JC).

QUESTION 3
Which colour do you find the hardest to shade and highlight?
I expected red to romp home with this. It didn’t though. The most popular answer was yellow, with 53.8%. I was surprised at that, because I find yellow one of the easiest. Second was a tie between red and black with 15.4% each, and then both white and metallic with 7.7% each.

QUESTION 4
Do you brush or spray varnish?
Spray on got 53.3% and brush on got 46.7%. Fairly even (some of us use both JC).

QUESTION 5
Which brushes do you use?
Mid-range brushes (Daler Rowney, etc) were most popular with 10.4%. A surprising 7.8% went with those dreadful cheap brushes from The Works – I’ve tried them and they lasted all of one painting session. 2.6% went with decent sable brushes (I recently bought a kaplinsky sable brush and it is an absolute gem). 3.9% treated themselves to a proper miniatures painting brush (not sure what that is, to be honest).

Brush care also came into it. 2.6% take proper care of our brushes, giving them a clean after each session. 5.2% give them a clean once in a blue moon. 3.9% are heartless and cold and take no care of their brushes and just throw them away when they’re no good.

11.7% said they use size 0 and 1 brushes for miniatures painting. 2.6% said they go up to size 2 or 3 (must be painting giants with brushes that size!).

9.1% confessed to putting their brushes in their mouths (come on, must be more than that, surely!). And 7.8% admitted to having put their brushes in a cup of tea accidentally.

QUESTION 6
What colour Undercoat?
Both black and white came out jointly on top – with 33.3% each. Grey was next, with 20%, then both brown and ‘other’ with 6.7% each.

QUESTION 7
Metal or plastic miniatures?
40% of us prefer the heft of metal on the battlefield. 26.7% use metal but have the odd plastic figure, and 26.7% don’t care whether it’s metal or plastic just so long as it’s cheap! This left 6.7% who use the Devil’s cocktail – plastic!

QUESTION 8
Do you make or buy terrain?
I get the feeling that MWS is quite a modelling-strong club so it would be interesting to see what our modelling habits were.

22.6% took the middle road – making what they can and buying what they can’t. Which is fair enough. 16.1% confessed to buying the horror that is MDF terrain – shame on them! Another 16.1% said they preferred resin terrain pieces. 12.9% said they buy terrain, whilst 9.7% said they always make and never buy. picture of model buildings3.2% decadent souls said they have more money than sense and pay others to make it for them! 6.5% of us said that making terrain was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the hobby. Which it is. And a disappointing 9.7% admitted to being so bad at terrain making that even MW’s Wargames Widow was inspiring. Can things be that bad? (In Steve’s opinion JC).

So there we go – a review of the club’s modelling and painting habits. I’ll leave you to draw whatever conclusions you want from the results. Let us know how your habits agree or differ with those of the club because it’ll be interesting to see how representative we are with the hobby as a whole.

Maybe someone else can run a series of polls on our gaming habits

Work in Progress Wednesday

After taking last week off, club members have struggled out of the holiday slump with details of what they have been working on (there’s actually a lot going on but the club members are being hopeless at taking pictures!)

First up Marcus’ son has been trying a bit of miniature painting. We think these sci-fi troopers are a very good start.

Next up Marcus is going to teach a bit of dry brushing

Then Sean surprised us with pictures of his 6mm Viking raiders. These most definitely look the part, even more so when we learnt the ships are actually paper models.

Vikings on Tour!

And lastly for this week, I’ve done some more work on the pieces of plasterboard I acquired (ahem) with a wash of black paint to give that real ruined look.

First of the painted ruin pieces

Hopefully the club will continue coming up with projects in 2021.

 

Every Cloud …

Jeremey gets plastered (it had to be done, AK)…

Sometimes I do worry about us miniature wargamers. Faced with the challenges of everyday life, their outlook can be slightly different to the non-hobbyist.

Recently there was a crashing sound and on investigation the utility room ceiling was no more. There were plaster board fragments everywhere. Dealing with reality first I cleaned the area up and started looking for someone to repair the damage.

Remains of the Ceiling and Collected Detritus

Not the sort of expense I wanted (but quite fitting given how 2020 was), however during the clean up operation I kept picking up bits of rubble and thinking how the chunks of plaster reminded me of concrete.

Proof of Concept

Before you could say “how much!” to the plasterer, I’d put together a proof of concept to turn the plaster fragments, into rubble for my 28mm troopers to fight over.

But I paused at this point when someone pointed out that old plasterboard could contain Asbestos! Well regardless of using the plasterboard for scenery I still had to tidy up my utility room. So I sent a sample off to be tested which came back as negative. So please do be cautious if you’re thinking of doing a similar project as this.

The plaster board rubble was very weak and dusty so I used a genuine DIY tip and painted the plaster with a watered down PVA glue solution to seal it. This made the plaster more like concrete and stopped it from crumbling while being handled.

Glue Gun to Stick it Together then more PVA

A lot of the rubble still had all the layers attached to it which I left in place to make it even more authentic looking. In the pictures I’ve done nothing but glue the pieces together and coated everything in a second layer of PVA glue.

These pieces have become very solid and are still very light, as light as resin would be. As you can imagine I have quite a lot of material to work with and so will be returning to the blog with an update on building an entire destroyed settlement.