Even more exciting news on the Plastics front

Two posts in one day? Can this be possible? Well I thought this was worth mentioning:



http://www.wargamesfactory.com/AnnouncementRetrieve.aspx?ID=16056




Wargames Factory are to release Zulu war British in 28mm! I guess Zulu's will be next...


As for their other models, the 48 figure box set of Romans is still due out in September, as are revised boxes of Celts (now 32 figs for $20 rather than 48 for $30 - with more options). It all sounds good; will they make it to Britain in September I wonder...

Some Vikings - in another guise

My, now regular, club is having a little Warhammer Border Patrol campaign; to those of you not in the know, that means armies of a mere 500 points, formed of 2-4 units and one leader. For some practise matches I turned a portion of my Viking army - newly refurbished - into a trial force for my upcoming army: the Dogs of War.

Using the DoW army list I was able to assemble suitable force representing a Norse raiding party. comprising a unit of 18 raiders, 12 scouts and two small units of mounted Norsemen:

It performed ok in battle too. Thoroughly out manoeuvring a High Elf army, but losing to the massive firepower of a Dark Elf force (the new uber-cheese, I fear).

Elsewhere in the club, I was surprised to find several boardgames being played, and a game of DBM! Somewhere in the Crusades...

Though downstairs the usual sort of thing was going on:

Back on Winning Form

Well, I'm still running behind on my write-ups, so this goes back a more than a week once again. But my Dwarfs proved their worth against the might of the Empire.

I was expecting a very shooty army, and a lot of cavalry; not sure why, but that was the impression I had of what an Empire force would be. With that in mind, and with a view to trying a different slant on the two previous forays with my army, I assembled a 2000point force roughly along these lines:

Two 13 strong Thunderer units with no command

Two 15 strong Warrior units with full command

A 14 strong Longbeard unit to protect my Runesmith

A 13 strong Hammerers unit to go with my Lord and Battle Standard

A Catapult

A Cannon

A unit of 10 Dwarf Miners with no command

A unit of 6 Mercenary light cavalry with no command

My opponent duly turned up with a very shooty army, as I recall:

Three units of handguns

Two cannon

A Hellblaster volleygun

A Rocketlauncher

25 Spearmen

Two units of 12 militia

10 Greatswords

12 Swordsmen

8 Knights and some characters

Here is a shot from the end of turn one, before things reall got stuck in; aside from my Cavalry I would characterise both deployments as conventional.

Fortunately for me all his shooting was to prove fairly ineffective, much of it spending too much time moving to really make itself felt; also his master engineer spent his time killing his friends with hopelessly ineffective Pigeon bombs, which helped me out no end.

It wasn't quite a static gun line battle for the Dwarfs either. In the centre his knights charged my line, but in doing so exposed their flank to on unit of warriors, this fight consumed the rest of the game, and cost me the Hammerers and my Leader. But in the end I routed him and cleared the table quarter for myself.

Elsewhere the Miners turned up just in time to capture the Imperial artillery battery. Whilst my own artillery withered his spearmen to nothing, then blasted his militia with grapeshot.
The real stars for me though were the Mercenary cavalry. They ran rings around his flank, keeping two or three units busy every turn before finally charging first his Rocket battery and then his Swordsmen - breaking both.

At the end of the game, I held more ground, though both sides had suffered huge losses; 50% or higher. In another almost magic-free battle I'd been able to withstand (thanks to at least some luck) all the enemy could throw at me, and learnt a few more tactics to help my static little Dwarfs out.

Elsewhere that day, there was the usual assembly of 40K and Warhammer games; but also the club's historical gamers were present with a late 17th Century game (somewhere in the Balkans I think) and the usual (and still unappealing to me) Flames of War WW2.

Some snaps of those to enjoy, Particularly liked these Orks, though the bases only look half finished.

Dwarf defeat and WW2

We're not exactly bang up to date here, but as this is apropos to the pictures below, I thought I better mention my Dwarfs getting thrashed by a Czech High Elf army a couple of Sundays ago. The broad nature of it was that he, knowing I had a Dwarf army that could neutralise his magic, brought no spell casting at all, but instead used lots of small units of super fast, super hard infantry. It was a very one sided game - in which my Miners wisely never appeared on table. The defeat was comprehensive.

It was a useful learning experience, but not the most fun game I've ever played. As armies go it seemed to smell a bit of Cheese, if you know what I mean.

That over with I trawled round the rest of the club for something worth a few snaps, and found a chaps' extensive collection of 15mm WW2 Germans (for Flames of War, the only historical game most fantasy gamers seem to have heard of) that pleased the eye.

The in game shots are really let down by the plain finish on some of the club boards. As a club, I think it wouldn't hurt to texture and repaint them.


The models weren't painted by the owner, something he was honest enough to admit; sadly I didn't get the name of who was responsible; but it's tidy work.

Lastly, a bit of potatoshop action to give that pseudo-authentic look.

Pledge update - shopping, baaad.

Well, it's an opportune time to update this ,as there was a planned shopping excursion on Saturday that has radically effected my scores.

I went to Wargames Emporium (http://www.wargamesemporium.co.uk/) in Sheffield at the weekend. Probably the nearest real wargames shop to where I live. It enabled me to spend a happy hour or two rummaging through filthy boxes of shockingly ugly Warhammer models, in search of the last miniatures for my Dwarf army, and a bunch of new miniatures for my upcoming project. I didn't buy anything other than second hand figures, but still spent £52 on lead and plastic! Still that totalled 31 metal and 15 plastic figures, including ten cavalry and an artillery piece.

I also picked up my first of the new Axis and Allies expansion set: Task Force. More on them another time.

But anyway, how does this leave the painting tally; well, I chose to count that Predator tank as ten figures, it comprise ten separate parts, and terms of time spent, I could certainly have painted at least ten miniatures in the same time span. Additionally I finished off 18 half painted Jomsvikings, that were in my Viking box.

Total them together with my running score and I make that I'm now on:

• Bought: 58
• Painted: 165.

A ratio of 3:1.

21 of the figures from the weekend though are nearly finished; but I've committed to buying another 25 plastic spearmen and a unit of 10- more figures are urgently needed for my new project; a Border Patrol campaign, that starts next Monday!

Hopefully I can reign in the shopping after this activity, there is after all no short term benefit for me in massing figures I cannot use (a couple of the armies I brought out of storage are already going back in again, in preparation for our probable return to France). And anyway, I'd hate for my painting stats to fall below a 2:1 ratio!

Giving old soldiers a wash

Saucy title eh? Frankie Howerd would be proud. But this has nothing to do with my day with the Chelsea pensioners and a tub of Cillit Bang! No this is another of my steady efforts to make my tired old armies look a little better, so they see some use again.

My Vikings have appeared on this blog once in the past, but generally they've seldom had an airing as they were unsuitably based for any game I'd actually play. Personally DBM fell from favour with me a long time ago, and 60mm wide frontage stands of four figures are close to useless for Warhammer, and overpopulous for Armati. I liked to think the painting of the figures was good and so thought all I needed to do was re-base them and away I'd go.

Of course it's never that simple. On closer examination I found the figures a bit lacking; they were neat enough, but for the most part my attempts - twelve years ago - at highlighting had fell flat, there wasn't enough contrast in most cases to see that I'd even bothered. I've never liked garish highlights, but this was far too subtle.

A solution looked to be using washes, and as it happens my gaming/painting forums were raving about the new Citadel washes. The boxed set of 8 washes is only £12, which to me, considering it was GW, actually seemed like quite a good price; so I got a set and used the Vikings to experiment.

And pretty successful it's proved too. The washes, as promised require no diluting, and dry to a hard wearing Matt finish. They aren't a replacement for a varnish glaze in terms of toughness, but otherwise work exactly as hoped. Here is a before picture of a group of bases:

They look pretty bland to my eyes now. Though ten or more years ago I was really impressed!

Each figure was sliced free of his multiple stand and then re-based singly. Then each was given a was of "Ogryn Flesh" to the skin tones and palest colours, followed by a wash of "Devlan Mud" to everything else bar the metalwork (which as it had been done with an old metal wash technique I used to use, I adjudged didn't need more work). The difference can be seen in the pictures below.

By the way, the guy on the right in the nude is a Beserker, a late substitution into the unit.

I really want to try the washes on other things now, they're the first out the bottle inks/washes I've tried in the last twenty years that seem to work. Although I occasionally use washes as part of my painting process with acrylics, they are always hand mixed at the minute; now I have a set of 8 basic colours ready to go at all times. I can think of lots of uses. And, although they may not reduce the time taken to paint things, they look likely to raise the bar on my painting quality another step or two.

So prepare yourself for this, I had to: "Go buy the new Citadel Washes, they are really good."

And as for the Vikings. Well, I based and freshened up a 2000 point Warhammer amy of 120 figures in just 5 evenings; with another 60+ figures left over. Bearing in mind some of the rest of this force (the even older models) had been recruited into my Ottonian Franks, I've managed to get two large WAB forces out of one medium sized DBM army. I'd call that a good return, and certainly a benefit in terms of variety and flexibility.

More Plastic 28mm excitement!

Shamelessly stripped from my local Club's forum; who in turn have pulled it from the Victrix site:

http://www.victrixlimited.com/

Victrix are on schedule to release an exciting new range of 28mm scale hard plastic Napoleonic figures. At present we are at the pattern making and tooling stage and are on course to go to production in late September 2008.

Our first 4 sets:

VX0001 - Waterloo British Infantry Centre Company

VX0002 - British Peninsular Infantry Centre Company

VX0003 - Waterloo British Infantry Flank Company

VX0004 - British Peninsular Infantry Flank Company

Each set will feature the following:

52 individual figures including officers, standard bearers, NCO’s, and drummers. Cost of each set will be £19.95 that equates to £0.38 per figure. Separate heads allowing great flexibility in the posing of the models. All the heads have individual faces sculpted to a high standard giving figures character and an authentic look. Each set contains advancing, marching and firing line positions with many variations on each type of pose.

The sets contain dozens of arms allowing endless pose combinations. No two units need look the same, this is a huge improvement on sets of metal figures. Separate back packs, sword scabbards, muskets and pistols providing yet more opportunity for figures to have a unique look. Fast play rule set written by Barry Hilton from The League of Augsburg will be included in each boxed set. We have also included a 4 piece measuring rule with the figures that can be used in conjunction with the rule set. A set of 2 kings colours and 2 regimental colours included in each set. In addition we are providing a different flag sheet for each of our first 4 boxed sets. This potentially provides colours for 8 different regiments. (snip)Opponents for the British already at the design stage.

We have already started the design work on new sets; French Infantry in Bicornes and Shakos 1805 – 1812."Looks great. Along with Perry Napoleonic french plastics it looks as if soon will be able to do another era in 28mm plastics.

I for one am excited. I mean, look at the quality of those figures:

A campaigning Predator tank.

Once I'd finished the Dwarfs, last weekend, I picked the next thing I had readily to hand, that was as different as possible to spend some time on. A Predator tank for my 40k stuff.

This was going to be a shift of pace to something more carefully painted with the intention of producing a centrepiece model for my Space Marine force. The modelling work had been done long ago on this model, with that sentiment in mind. The inspiration will be obvious to my historical gaming readers out there, being influenced by the appearance of particularly American tanks in World War Two, Vietnam and so on.

Anyway, the modelling took maybe 6 hours, whilst the painting racked up a good 15 hours more. On top of my more usual effects I added chipped paint marks for the first time. Something I didn't want to overdo, as many models with the technique I've seen go overboard with far too many of them, but then ignore the inevitable resultant rust from that damage.

My marines make extensive use of Latin motto's and graffiti. Also, this tank has scored three kills...
Part of the reason for all the kit on the turret is to stop it looking ridiculously small. In fact, nice as the new Predator model looks, if you dissect it from an engineering and tank design standpoint it makes no sense at all; there is no room for suspension on the centre track bogie, therefore it must be a fixed axle - very uncomfortable for the crew, and anyway, where do the tracks actually go? There's no room for them what with that hatch in the way...

As an added bonus, the weapon stations are interchangeable, allowing more options from one model; this was done with the ingenious use of magnetic strip, though if doing it again, I'd use 'Rare-Earth' magnets for a more solid hold.

Overall, I'm very happy with the result.

More Dwarfy goodness

So, here is the output of my last six weeks of painting:

124 figures and two war machines:

Battle for Skull Pass (BFSP) Cannon:
£2 Catapult and crew:
BFSP Thunderers:
Another of same, plus two metal classics:
BFSP Warriors:
A mixed bag of plastic Dwarfs, upto 22 years old! Plus a classic metal leader:
Longbeards; £8 at a show:
Hammerers, shamefully bought new:

BFSP Miners, plus a classic metal figure filling the ranks:In case your wondering, I picked up a second sprue of BFSP plastic Dwarfs from ebay some time ago, along with a third group of Thunderers. This helped keep army costs down and numbers up!

BFSP Slayer; a weirdly posed and proportioned figure if ever there was one:
Runesmith, came free with Longbeards, what a bonus!:
My Lord:
Paint job was overall configured for speed, so it's all done with layers of highlights; a method I find allows me to rattle through uniformed troops in no time. I don't like exaggerated highlights, but the flash on the camera has made some of these look particularly flat. I'm urged to try the new GW washes, and may just give them a try soon; but in the past true washes and inks have not suited me.

And now, with pictures (again)

As promised, and might I add, to my relief. Some photo's make a welcome return to the blog. Here are a couple of snaps from my game on Sunday. A bit of a teaser to show my new army too. The first two images are from the end of turn one, wherein my right flank was moving to address a threat from my opponents Goblins.

My Left was facing down an advance by three large units of Orcs, although my cannon was having a ropey start, the unit of Dwarf muskets was laying down a lethal hail of fire, which broke the key enemy units before they reached us.

Here it's the end of turn my turn six. The Orcs had been locked into combat by the stubborn artillery crew, meaning that even when my units broke, they couldn't pursue, and being Dwarfs, we inevitably rallied. The reformed gun line picked off the remaining threat to the left flank. Whilst away on the Right Flank, a unit of warriors and a unit of Miners were busy encircling the last of the Orcs.
A resounding victory, and photographic proof at last!