Small is beautiful

So it's been a long time between posts, but I have been doing stuff. Just recently I dusted off some figures I'd bought a while ago but never painted. It's a bit of a change of genre and scale, which helps to keep things fresh.

Here is the first unit off the line for my French Napoleonic army. Painting figures on this scale is actually fairly easy, and it's wonderful churning out 24 figures in a couple of evenings. If you look closely you'll realise that the paint jobs look a bit rough, but remember these things are 6mm tall! On a tabletop they look just fine, and the mass effect on the table top is something you can't get in any larger scale.


It's always tempting to jump straight into painting the generals and guard units, but it's a good plan to try knocking off a number of the basic units first - it let's you "get your eye in", and tests your ability to churn out large numbers of these things! Each infantry unit has 48 figures, and with over 12 of these in an army, that's a lot of figures.

Despite the number of figures, they're fairly easy to paint when you set up a production line and it's quite feasible (even for me) to turn out a unit in a week. That's something I would struggle to do with 5-6 32mm figures.

I'll try to take some in progress photos on the next lot, and post some details of what it's like to paint these guys.

The Might of Menoth

Sam came round for a game of Warmachine to christen my completed terrain boards. It was to be a mighty clash of arms, with two grizzled veterans slugging it out. Kreoss brought to battle plenty of Exemplars and Flameguard, and put the Avatar of Menoth in the vanguard. Irusk concentrated on fielding his prettier units (i.e. painted), namely Widowmakers, Manhunter and Doomreavers and then a few fun units to fill things out, the Behemoth and Drakhun.

Below I'll fill in the details about each turn, and I've taken photos from each side of the board, which is how we mostly see the game, afterall.

Turn One:

Khador had the advantage for the first turn, and went first. the Doomreavers were uncharacterisitcally cautious, setting themselves up for a charge next turn. The Drakhun set himself up to charge next turn also. On the left, the Iron Fangs established their line with the (Superiority-d) Behemoth on their right. The Behemoth and Mortar units lobbed some shells at the Wrack in the wood on the left and scored a lucky hit to blow it up.

The Menites moved their Flameguard up to face up to the Iron Fangs, with Kreoss, Paladins and some Exemplars in support. On the left the Avatar and Exemplar Errants got ready for the arrival of the Doomreavers.

Khadoran view:

Menite view:

Turn Two:

Not much happened on the Khadoran left, mainly jockeying for position, although Kell earned a portion of his pay back, taking down some heavily buffed Flameguard. Things were far more intense on the right flank though. The Drakhun charged the Avatar, and missed by a mile, leaving himself open to the Avatar's counter punch, which was to prove fatal, both for his mounted and unmounted incarnations.

This is going to hurt!

The Doomreavers struck home though, demolishing most of the Exemplar Errants unit and putting a fair bit of hurt onto the Avatar, which very obligingly soaked up a lot of the 'reavers Berserk-ed-ness. Unfortunately, Sam had a spell on the Exemplar Errants that meant that the models who killed them would have to forfeit their action next turn. This was to be a recurring theme in the game.

Khadoran view:

Menite view:

Turn Three:

Lots happened here. The Iron Fangs charged the Flameguard, and I forgot to trigger Irusk's feat. As a result, the heavily buffed Flameguard inflicted some really heavy damage on the pikemen, who hade failed their defensive move of falling back into Shield Wall after combat - I hadn;t moved the Standard bearer quite far enough forward, meaning that some of the pikemen had to fall out of melee range of the Flameguard to form the wall - not surprisingly they were taken out, meaning the Shield Wall never formed. They did take out a chunk of the Exemplars though (along with Kell).

Flameguard are staunch!

On the right, the remaining Doomreavers finished off the Exemplar Errants before being trampled by an angry Avatar.

Khadoran view:

Menite view:

Turn Four:

This was to be the decider. The Behemoth had to pick his targets, and was thinking of trampling the Flameguard, but chose the Avatar instead, easily trashing it. The Greylords advanced on the annoying Paladins, and wiped them out.

Khadoran view:

Menite view:

Unfortunately, I'd left the Flameguard an open charge lane on Irusk. This, along with Kreoss charging the Behemoth and firing off a nasty spell at Irusk, finished the game. It was an all or nothing play by Sam, but it paid off handsomely.

Victory!

Conclusion:

Flameguard are tough, and I need a better strategy to take them out. At the moment it's Snipers, which I need to pursue a bit more ruthlessly. Irusk's feat on the Pikemen would have helped, perhaps it would have been enough.

It was fitting that the Flameguard won the game though, they really are tough when used well.

A land worth fighting over...

Happy New Year!

Over the Christmas and New Year's break, I've been working on finishing my second set of two terrain boards. Working on more than two at once is awkward - there's not quite enough room to comfortably work on more than that.

Yesterday I had them finished, just in time for a game with my friend Sam. It's amazing, but the game really was more fun with a complete set of terrain. Here's a few tips I picked up / discovered this time round:

• If you use a wash at any stage (my first layer of colour, for example) give it plenty of time to dry (several days at least). The wash is great for getting into all those nooks and crannies, but the large amount of water sitting there also soaks into the previous layers, and if you try to put on the next layer before the wash is dry, you can end up lifting up chunks of sand / kitty litter that have come loose.
• Use a larger range of flocks, and mix them up rather than keep them all separate. This leads to a more natural finish, and just looks better. I'm not suggesting throwing all your flock into a big bucket, but when applying it, don't think you need to completely cover any area with just one flock. Sprinkle the flock on, leaving a few gaps, then go back with other colour(s) to fill in the gaps.
• Choose a base colour for your flock. Once you've put down all the different typs of flock, use your base colour of flock to fill in any remaining "whitespace". I use Woodland Scenics blended turf for this.

Here's some photos of the completed boards, with and without added terrain.

And just a little Photoshop trickery:

Updates...

No posts for a while, work has been busy. But there is some thigns going on behind the scenes. The most obvious is that I'm playing around with some of the new layout options available on blogger.com.

On the gaming front though, I've started another couple of terrain boards to bring my total up to four, which would give me enough to play a full game of Warmachine.

That's about it really, Guitar Hero, work and kids has taken the rest of my time lately. I'll post pics when there's more to see.

Well, it's been a while since I added anything here, but I guess moving jobs will do that. Lately I've been slowly getting back into things (can I do it any other way? I think not). I'm now trying to enjoy the process of painting more, rather than trying to bash out the next unit for an army.

So far, it's working. I've painted a solitary figure from the WarGods range, and enjoyed it so much that I splashed out on a few more. I'm not sure I want to get into another game system, but rather enjoy painting the figures. So I ordered a collection of interesting models that won't all work together on the same side.

Anyway, here's the pictures of the final model. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out... It's a Heru priestess - the Heru are a strong, fierce and noble people. I've always loved the deep red and off white combination, and I think it's really worked well here.

These next pictures are of a work in progress from the Confrontation range. It's a Paladin of Alahan. The detail on the figure is gorgeous, and a bastard to paint. Still, I like the way the blueish armour has turned out, even if it doesn't show up well in the photos.

Trees, nasty trees!

I've always meant to try making some of my own trees. It turns out that, at least so far, it's pretty easy. The photos here are the result of a bit over half an hour's work. And it's the easy kind of work, the kind that you can do in front of the TV.

I found some cheap wire at a $2 shop, probably enough for about five to eight trees. Using pliers, I cut it about 16-18 lengths, each about 50-55cm long. They get folded in half, giving you almost 40 strands. Hold all the strands where they were bent in the middle and twist to form a loop. This will eventually be the root system.

Holding the loop, split the strands roughly in two and twist together until you have about 6-8 cm twisted. Then choose eight strands to split off the first branch. Twist these strands together, so that they come out more or less horizontal. After about 3-4 cm of twisting, split them again, and continue in this way until you're left with individual strands.

Now go back to the rest of the strands which are forming the main trunk, and continue twisting. After another few centimetres, branch out eight more strands. Continue doing this until you run out of strands. I then cut the individual strands to length.

Finally, we form the roots. Separate out about four or five strands from the loop at the bottom. Twist them together for a bit so and then cut the bottom of the loop to form two roots. Use the pliers to twist the strands of each rot together. Repeat this process until all of the loop has been turned into roots.

Now just sit back and admire your work, possibly tweaking here and there to taste or to make the tree stand upright!

The next step will be to make a base for the trees and apply some bark. There's two options for the bark, one is ready made papier mache and the other is filler (spackle) mixed with PVA glue. Hopefully by the next time I post here I'll have made up my mind!

Two boards finished for the cause...

So the boards are finally done. I can play small games, Confrontation for example or perhaps 350 points Warmachine games. I'll try to get another couple of boards made soon for larger Warmachine and the like. I'm pretty happy with the construction and painting side of things, the flocking is OK but I think I need to figure out how to mix the colours a bit better.

Here's a couple of different layouts:

And some close ups...