Speed painting challenge

How fast can you produce reasonable figures in bulk?

I often wondered, especially as I'm accused by others of being a ridiculously fast painter. It's certainly an advantage that my painting table is a permantnet feature of the living room, in plain sight of the TV, HIFI, PC and Wife! Hardly an evening goes by without an hour of painting (except Saturdays I guess), so results can appear to come pretty fast to others who paint maybe only on sundays, or that one night a week they're allowed to set the painting table up.

Still, it doesn't mean the result will be any good. The common answer to the question 'how do I get good at painting model soldiers' as asked on any number of forums and in magazines, is always some variation on 'paint 500 bad ones first'.

I'm always learning.

None the less how long does reasonable tabletop quality take. To find out I timed a set of figures from start to finish. The figures in question being 20 goblin archers from the latest Warhammer boxed set.

Clipped from the sprues, the figures were slotted into the bases and painting began. They were not glued into the bases, as I intended to both multibase and randomise the positioning of the figures later. The troops were laid out in the 5x4 block with a variety of poses in each row, then each row had its' robes painted a different shade of grey; starting with the lightest shade, and gradually adding more of a darker grey to the mix for each row until all 20 figures were done. I tend to start figures by painting the largest area of colour first, usually this means the main uniform, on ancients figures it is often the flesh, on moderns the fatigues.



Next for the goblins was the flesh tone. On goblins, I like to vary the flesh tones, and although I've never bothered with doing so on human figures the principle that skintone varies greatly would still stand true. The method is basically the same as for the grey robes, but this time with a mid green base lightened with Yellow and Cream through teh columns rather than the rows; to avoid them all matching the command group were shuffled along ther rows at this stage. I was neat were the edges met the grey, but not anywhere else. To this point the process has taken a total of two hours from out of the box.



Next the bows, belts, straps teeth and other details were despatched. The figures were entirely base coated in under three and a half hours out of the box. Next the figures had to be carefully cut off the slots, which were then reglued back into the bases.



The bases were then glued to squares of 60-thou (2mm) plasticard. 4 pieces for three bases, 2 for two bases and 4 singles. The gaps were filled with quick drying filler (Tetrion of similar) and the figures then glued in position. You'll have noticed that the figures were so far painted in flat colour. That is because this is speed painting! No time for highlights here! Instead I use a combined varnish and wash mix to shade and protect the figures. Some use woodstains for this (the notorious 'DIP' technique) but I prefer to mix my own:

20-30 parts Humbrol Mattcote varnish (well mixed) + 1 part Humbrol matt black paint (or brown/dark green/etc as appropriate) + 3 parts thinners (optional)

It's a bit of an art to get right, and results can vary, I certainly put in more tint than I like on these chaps, but the results are instant and magical. Just slop it on, and the figures are transformed. It can be worth using a clean brush to draw of excess pigment if it is building up in blobs at the bottom of the figure. Lastly in this shot the bases have been given a coat of of sand brown paint.



For finishing, a layer of wood glue was applied to the surfaces of the bases, and they were dipped in fine playpit sand, a second pass was used to add patches of GW/Noch static grass (Noch is a model railroad company; I suspect they supply GW its' scatters, but from source they cost half the price). Last of all the bases get a second coat of sand brown paint; and they're done!



From start to finish the unit has taken just 5 hours, to do everything, that's 300 minutes, which works out at 15 minutes per figure. Bear in mind tough you have to allow for drying time at several points, notably the filler, varnish wash and basing stages; the painting itself allows me at least to work with wet colours, but you have to still take comfort breaks. In all the figures were onto and off of the painting table in 6 days.



As you can see from the command group above, there was still time for some detail in the unit, I was able to do the eyes with highlights, pick out the teeth, give the command group some personal details and spend a little time on the standard. The key to this technique, beyond being fast is simply to be neat and light of touch. Better to ned two strokes of the brush to put a belt in, than to make a messy blob of it in one go.

Of course practice helps, as does having all the right kit available, but it is a perfectly reasonable timescale for producing straightforward wargames figures, whether fantasy or historical, 28mm, 20mm or 15mm!

Time yourself, you may be surprised, maybe try my techniques, see if it's any faster for you...

Bailed out

Airfix & Humbrol have been saved by Hornby you may have seen over the weekend. Of course Hornby itself is hardly on the cutting edge of it's own hobby, though they make enough money to pay the pittance Airfix was up for; £2.4m seems very cheap for all their assets to me.

To be fair to Hornby too my brother, who'se into trains, assures me that recent Hornby product has seen heavy investment to bring it up to it's competitors standards, whilst wisely pitching at the 'Memory lane' market. I think it could be the shot in the arm Airfix need. But on the positive side for me, it means I don't need to start using water based paints just yet. Hoorah!

Armarti - the war against Etruria

OK, so for a bit of variety I took Armarti to the Leeds club this past week. It was another opportunity to 'display my wares' so to speak, and Armarti as a set of rules have the advantage of being very simple to run through in an evening, even with players who've never played the game before.



As makes sense, I'd preselected a couple of matched armies - Early Roman Republicans, and Etruscan Greeks (i.e Greeks with a warband ally for novelty value, a simple tweak of the Armarti Greek list). Once the players had the basics of units explained they deployed based on their map plans.

Armarti is dependant on the map deployment, like historical generals of the time players plan the fight with no idea what the enemy will do for sure; I wish more games used so simple a method, it produces fascinating results. Here the Etruscans deployed wide, whilst the Romans deployed deep and entirely refused their right flank.



Battle commenced and the Romans moved aggressively to try to outflank the Etruscans. Armarti dictates armies have a fixed number of available formations in a game. This limits tactical flexibility. The less flexible Etruscan army had to deploy a huge line, which spent the early game redressing to face the enemy.



The Cavalry battle eventually went the way of the Romans, though the horse were battered, their commander tried in vain to rally them. Eventually chosing to attack the Etruscan psoloi in the rough ground. An error as psoloi fight at their best in difficult ground - each unit has three combat factors, one for fighting in good going, one for difficult ground and one for being hit in a flank; in this case foot troops are better han cavalry in rough going. This as a result allowed the psoloi to hold the Roman flank attack up, whilst the phalanx closed with the Roman centre.



The figures used were from my extensive 20mm ancients collection. A mixture of Zvezda, Hat, Nexus and Revell in this case.



Late in the day the Etruscans clashed with the Princeps in the centre. At the rear the Etruscan general was lost along with the warband, to a cavalry charge in its' flank. In the end the Etruscans crumbled first in the cantre, largely through not being willing to attack the available flank of the Romans. It was a straight 5-0 break point victory to the romans.

Armarti is a good game, hampered mainly by only being suitable for stand-up fights. It is however quick to play once you are familiar with the conventions it uses you can get two games in, in the shortest of evenings.

My figures attracted a fair deal of favourable responses too, which is always nice!

Two in One!

Last week was a good week for games.

Been a very long while since I got two games in within seven days, but I did it this week.

A game at home on sunday first of all; we rolled out the Epic 40k figures. As you can see from the arrayed armies of Orks and Imperial Guard, what they lack in size they more than make up for in numbers. In total the game involved around 250 figures and 120+ vehicles.



An Ork assault developed on the ruins of a regional penal colony on Armageddon. At first only an Ork supply station was occupied, but the fast moving forces of the Kult of Speed and forces of Battlewagons sonn applied some pressure to a defending Company of the 181st defence militia regiment. Although reserves for the 181st were arriving, it appeared it would be too slow to stop the Orkish advance.



A wide advance by the Orks was then backed up by infantry and the slow progress of the Ork Great Gargant. But now the long range firepower of the 181st and their tanks and artillery started to make an impression. Several ork units were pinned down whilst a Tank company made a rapid advance on the left flank:





Whilst some Ork forces advanced, others stalled and the first force was outright destroyed, sent into retreat. The artillery and concentrated fire of the Baneblade and Shadowsword tanks stopping the main attack. On the left, Orks were trying to counter the Tank advance.



As many Ork units broke, the Gargant finally came into play, in doing so attracting a mass of fire from the Reaver titan and Shadowswords. Sorely outnumbered, the Leman Russ tanks broke, but not without inflicting many losses on the Orks. The 181st and its' command company held in the centre. Overall a hard fought,but inconclusive draw; cut short a turn by the start of the final F1 race of the season!
....

The second game was at the Leeds club last night, and as promised I took along my Medievals; but not alas my camera! Two 1600 point armies for WAB - Flemish and French - put about 250 figures ont oa little 4x4 foot table.

A solid line of Flemish Pike were under my command, with a little help from some foot knights, Swordsmen, handgunners, bowmen, a cannon and a troop of mounted seargents. My opponent had a typical French array; two units of knights, some crossbowmen, heavy spearmen, light spearmen and a mass of peasants.

Terrain played a major part, as the French knights got lost behind a wood for the first three turns (moving back and forth in column trying to find a point they could attack without my cannon and handgunners getting them first). on the opposite flank the peasants occupied a farm, whilst my pike line advanced over a low hill, slowly forming an oblique line.

A misjudged manoevre on my part left my seargents - attached to the General - exposed to the smaller unit of French knights, near the farm. He should have pounded me on the charge, but even needing 6's to save, I made 5 throws and escaped unscathed, my horse cut two of his down and they fled. I'd turn his flank through pure good luck! He now had to try to block me with his knights, from charging his fighting line in the rear. He also turned his crossbowmen in fear of my horse.

The rest of his line had come well forward, whilst his general tried to chase down my skirmishers. Some of his spearmen tried to occupy the woods, but handgun fire and a pikeman charge dealt with them. My cannon enfiladed his crossbows, and the fled with heavy losses. Neverthe less a charge in the centre by his heavy spearmen stalled my advance and initially put flight to some of my troops. Only the foot knights held.

His king rode down the handgunners and threatend to do the same to my cannon, but by this point my centre had consolidated, three units outflanked and then destroyed his spearmen, whilste my last unit of pike flushed out the peasants from the farm. My horse failed to charge again, but by this poiunt the game was over. A Flemish victory, Hurrah!

All good fun, and my figures received a favourable response from the other members. Leeds seems to be one of the clubs where they think 28mm is dead; Oh how very wrong they are! still, it means my stuff gets some good attention. Other games on last night were a WW2 skirmish, a Vietnam game in 20mm; and as ever 15mm DBA (the same 2-3 players as always, with the same armies, and so far as I could tell, the exact same terrain) - apparently it's all they ever do.

Ork's'es!

Posted a few shots of my Warhammer 40K Ork armour on Warhammer.org the other day and they seemed to go down well. Granted I am not a great figure painter, but the ingenuity and variety of the models impressed the people there; which was all I was hoping for.

Honestly the quality of their painting knocks my socks off; I'm learning a lot just looking at the pages. But it isn't practical for the purposes of my mass-production painting schedules. You cant knock out 24 figures a week, if you are doing three highlights, a shaded glaze and then three MORE hightlights to finish up, each colour!

My models are a mix of GW's own models heavily converted with plasticard, and the contents of the bits box. And low cost 1:35th scale WW2 tank models with varying degrees of conversion carried out.

They certainly don't lack for imagination!

Leeds Wargames Club

As an alternative to the murderous journey to Harrogate; I've now tried Leeds' best known games night. To be fair there are several in Leeds and its' immediate area. But this one had the advantage of being nearby, and after the DBA tourney - discussed some months back on this blog - I knew how to find it!

Fisrtly with Phil in tow, and then on my own, I've visited their last two regular Wednesday evenings. Compared to harrogate, the set up is not disimilar, but nowhere near as permanent feeling, though a steady arrangement from what I could judge. The club has arrays of scenery available in cabinets, and a few club owned games appear to be stored. The attendance was reasonable on both nights, about 16 players and a couple of hangers on/loiterers. Thankfully there were some games on too.

Over the course of the nights there were games of Flames of War, Blood Bowl, Crimson Skies, Block Wars and DBA played. For myself and Phil it was a game set in the English Civil War, using Peter Pig rules (Regiment of Foote I think). An entertaining little affair. Whilst this week America beckoned, with a refight of part of Antietam, using Fire and Fury.

Observations include a preference for small scales, in figures and games. 15mm on a 3x4 foot table seemed to be the norm, whilst the ACW game stretched to 4 foot square, but was only in 6mm. Additionally despite a pretty extensive scenery selection, presentation of games could best be termed as functional. Maybe I was spoiled by the Grimsby club for all those years, but 20mm and 25/28mm games played on great terrain on big tables is what I really expect at a club!

Still another friendly bunch; and crucially a 15 minute drive from my home, on roads I actually know! I think I shall introduce them to my 28mm medievals, and see how we go from there...

Photo bonanza

Well; I finally scraped together the savings devoted to a camera: £50 from the contract paint job of Russian infantry, and £100 from selling my Flintloque figures. With that I was able to replace my aging digital camera; all the photos on this site to date have been taken on a simple Vivtar 2mp point and click I got from Argos a couple of years ago. Adequate for ebay and generic holiday/celebration photos; it really suffered in delivering quality shots. Now I've upgraded to a Samsung 5mp camera with a decent range of settings, manual override, and a decent macro function (amongst other things). So here are some new shots.

Firstly, here are the 15mm Egyptians I was working on earlier this year in all their glory. About two months work, thanks to the varnish-wash technique, they look pretty respectable!

All figures are by Essex, a mix of their Early and later New Kingdom Egyptians, along with some Sherden allies.

Finally for these, the general gives his orders, beside the entranceway to a regional temple...

Next, to test the range of options, I dug out my WWII 28mm Americans.

M4A3 Sherman (IIRC) by Bandai, figures by Black Tree; and yes they are rather too green!

Some B&W shots to give more atmosphere; more Black Tree Americans support a Solido/Verem M20 utility car.

A general view, someone's got wind of enemy, nearby...

All these shots were taken without modification, on basic settings on a Samsung Digimax V50. Uploaded without scaling or post-production. I'm quite pleased, the results should only improve when I run them through potatoshop.

Lastly, the burden of the wargamer:

Harrogate Wargames Club

As a new inductee to the world of motor vehicle transportation, I took an outing to one of the local wargames clubs. Although Leeds is nearer, I opted to have a look at the Harrogate Wargames club first, they are on paper a fairly easy drive from where I live, and had a good reputation. There website is not much help however, and as it turned out the roads in Harrogate are a nightmare.

After a 35 minute drive and an hour long trundle around Harrogate and its' environs, I finally found the place. The RAFA club is one of many servicemens clubs in Harrogate, I should know, I visited three trying to find the right one! On entry I found there to be a large range of board and card games going on, darn I thought, no figure gamers.

But this was only the first floor, I soon found the historical gamers - at the bar - and was introduced around and given a tour. It turns out this is a healthy group of 30 to 50 (!) regulars with a more or less permanent residence in the club and the use of 5 rooms over two floors! masses of terrain, storage for regulars armies, and a huge selection of their own boardgames. Thankfully the emphasis did not seem to be on tournament play of a limited set of rules, but on a 'bring it and we'll play it' sentiment.

I was impressed.

Eventually we got round to a game, a modern version of the very trendy Flames of War rules, played in 1/144th scale (12mm) on a 8x6 table. British and Dutch forces against Russians in the sort of WW3 - cold war - scenario every modern gamer used to do in the eighties. Painted up, it all looked pretty good.

So after a couple of hours play I realised it was gone 11, and they showed no sign of stopping; I had to call it quits and drive home. A missed turn resulted in a 15 mile detour and rally driving conditions along pitch black country roads. Gulp!

Overall, I liked the place, and will give it another chance, but at this stage I just couldn't do that drive every week; even if I did get the right turns each way. Maybe as a monthly treat...

Next week I hope to try the Leeds club, and see how they compare

Resolution

So after failing to buy a copy of the new Warhammer last week, I bought the Battle for Skull Pass at the weekend. And much like Chinese food, I already want another! The rules are subtly different to the previous version, but there are many place to find out in what ways and how it affects the game; to be honest I haven't finished reading them yet. The main appeal was the figures.

When GW has a reputation for charging upwards of £2-3 for a rank and file figure, and even over a quid for a plastic trooper, it's refreshing to find that for £40 the new boxed set is crammed with over a hundred varied and well made models. Many of them are of course quite small, nothing like the massive orcs or empire knights of the previous edition, but in value terms I think its a better deal, producing two reasonably balanced armies to oppose one another. The sculpts show, particularly in the goblins, but also in the better of the dwarves (miners, cannon crew), that Games Workshop are masters of plastic figures in fantasy games.

Inclusion of cavalry, monsters, artillery and characters helps round it out in a way earlier versions never seemed to as a starter set. Granted many board games and figure systems now come with excellent plastic models - even painted ones - but the quality shines through for me here.

They may end up playing more HOTT than Warhammer, but they do look nice. I'm now tempted to buy a second box, funded by painting and ebaying the dwarves. It'd allow me to round out my goblins to a neat 200 foot, to accompany my orcs...

Sigh, here we go again. And still the Samurai stand untouched.

Frustration

So I've been away, as my limited range of readers will have noticed; no dwelling on the details here as they're nothing to do with wargames - but it was for good stuff.

Still, I came back looking forward to picking up a copy of the new Warhammer; only to find my favoured local independant stockist hadn't had his supply yet. I suspect the sneaky hand of GW holding back supplies to independant retailers - an old trick, to maximise their sales. Went to the other stockist nearby, who was shut. Drat!

Dilemma now is whether to order online from Maelstrom games (10% off) http://www.maelstromgames.co.uk/index.php?sou=worg post free and wait a week; or walk into a GW tommorow and take one away with me. Sadly that means buying it whilst at work and getting it home, trying to avoid cries of "GEEEEEEK" all the way.

Maybe I can wait a week for online orders to turn around...