6MMRPC: Week 20 - Necromunda Gangers /Gorkamorka diggas

These two fellas sat on the tray half finished for quite some time. I've been quite ADD about what to work on lately, and the productivity is still pretty desultory. I did however managed to finish these guys off.



I figured they would make good stand additions to forces I can use for necromunda type games. To that end I wanted them dirty, and I figured some tattoos would be fun to break up the skin. I'm still not super happy with my skin tones, but they are a great improvement on my russian artillery men painted near the beginning of the challenge (5 months ago!). I considered using my special rust effects paint on their weapons, but decided that of anything they had, the weapons were the most likely to stay in 'fighting trim'.




I also used the opportunity to base each in a different style. That way I'll be able to finish up my few posts on the different ways I base figs. Maybe I'll choose the one I like best and return to it.

Basing 'A': PVA & silica sand

This was my go to method of basing for a good number of years. I believe I found out how to do it off the website http://www.dropship.org.uk . The author (Carl Woodrow) has since migrated to a blog, although I must say I only discovered this in the last 5 minutes as I couldn't remember what the name of the original site was for years. I did remember his 'sand jackal' marines which allowed me to Google it though. Most interestingly (to myself), I think I first found dropship horizon, in the past the mecca for all matters 15mm, but hunting for Carl's site. And thus my interest in 15mm sci fi began.


Back to the point: Basing. This method is fairly slow (it takes multiple steps), but gives you a lot of control over the final colour of the ground. The layers of dry brushing give a bit more depth than the other methods I use now. One problem is that it isn't as robust, so chipping will occur over time, and the silica sand is white underneath, which makes damage quite noticeable. It is a very cheap approach.



We require:
-white (or carpenters in my case) glue
-silica sand (I procured from an aquarium shoppe)
-paint (black, yellowish, and khaki ish)
-flock/static grass
-1-2 crappy brush (1 for glue, 1 to drybrush)

The directions after the break.....

6MMRPC: Week 19 - GW Mordheim Ogre

I've lately been distracted from painting by a hoard of exciting computer games. I managed to pull myself together to finish off my GW Mordheim Ogre (who is, incidentally, in desperate need of a name).




Last week he was largely complete, but I had just inked him. I took the time to bring up his skin, and leather goods with the base colours as highlights (sometimes going lighter). The stitching on the pants and hat got black (I do like obvious top stitching in my clothing in real life), and thanks to Dai's suggestion from a few weeks ago, did a striped red shirt. Quite dandy if I do say so myself. It tempts me to pull out the pirates and start work on them at some point.

The metals had a fine line of 'honed steel' by reaper. I'm getting to be a big fan of the reaper paints lately. They are in dropper bottles, come in triple sets (of base, shadow and highlight), and are much less watery than I think vallejo tends to be.





While the fig is not totally complete (basing yet to finish), I plan to do up a couple of posts of the different basing schemes I've worked through. It's also more interesting to have multiple posts per week, rather than the just under the wire 11pm sunday post for the week.







In the spirit of 6MMRPC, I also managed to cut from sprue and clean from flash a bunch of pieces from Pegasus refinery. There are an amazing number of pieces to this set, and it's a LOT of work to cut and clean them. I was doing it as I was watching you tube videos, and waiting for things to happen in a multiplayer computer game I tried on the weekend.



I have high hopes for what will come, as I often see set ups of pipes and wheels and pressure vessel in the background of various sets. It will, however, take some time to realize.

6MMRPC: Week 18 Ogres, Diggas, Musselmen WIP

I managed to miss a week of posting for the challenge, and I'm a day late for this one. Not the best start to the New Year.

I managed to get the legio heroica muslims assembled at last. I ended up getting some advance from Cameron (we piggy backed our order) and bought some CA glue accelerator. Pretty marvelous stuff actually....now your instant drying glue truly does glue instantly. I'm not sure if the glue gets a bit 'tired' over time and glues more slowly, or simply that some materials don't want to stick together. Regardless, a little accelerator on one part, the glue on the other and *presto* they stick together much MUCH easier.

I'm hoping to get these guys primed up sometime in the week when the wife is not working on her clothing project in the craftroom. I can put off figuring out a air scubber/ventilation system for a bit longer yet.

My other work was largely with inking. The ion age Adders get a coat of black ink. I will be able to bring them back up towards their base colour via highlighting now. The camera doesn't quite catch the difference to be honest. The pic below being the 'before' image.

The GW gorkamorka diggas that I am adding to the necromunda/post apoc gang members get an inking of sepia ink.

I think it's probably a bit overboard, but it does work for these guys looking 'grubby'. I'll probably rust up the guns and metal a bit, and start the highlights soon.

These are nice figs for inking as they have deep creases in their faces/muscles/clothing.

Finally we have the mordheim ogre. Also inked with sepia, I can see spots of residue on various flat parts (his hat for instance on the upper left). Not terribly happy about the outcome. I'm sure with highlighting I'll be able to save most of the problem areas though.






I have to say this is a fantastic figure. His wicker backpack has ears of corn in it, a sausage hanging from the side (not shown) and a victim/stowaway as well (seen in the rear shot).

I'm looking forward to yellowing up his teeth as well. I decided to start with a brown and work up to a healthy yellow/khaki.

2014/2015 Mandatory Resolution Post

I realize it will be nonsensical to post this if I wait much longer. I usually have a bit more reflective time around the holidays, but there was much family in town this year, and more shifts than normal.
I'll look at my simple nerd list of resolutions, rather than investigating the longer one I keep in evernote.

1/. Run a traveller game
2/. GM a (minimum) 6 game story arc
3/. Paint a French 15mm Naps Corp
4/. Play 12 games

1/. Total Fail. The beginning of the year was dominated by (Savage Worlds) Space 1889 (till April). I managed to run an (4 week) intro to Torchbearer, which is actually quite fun, although I think it probably needs a special group (which our regular group doesn't quite hit). Another one of the players has been stoked and wanting to run lowlife (also in savage worlds) for a long time, so he started that in May and it's still going.

I've decided I prefer, and been advocating for, shorter story arcs (2 or 3 months) and then switch games. If it's popular we will return, if not, then move on. Our current game should end and then I hope to run something. I doubt there will be an appetite for traveller, but possible stars without number (I think people like leveling up too much to play traveller).

2/.  Success! The torchbearer game was only 3 or 4 weeks. I did however run a pretty sweet Red Tides game with a pair of out of town friends via skype/hangouts. It died off in the fall when we all got busy with new jobs. It's possible it might pick up again....but perhaps not.

3/. Fail. I actually have a huge lot of mostly painted 15mm french old gaurd, AND great coat guys. There's also a whack of horse artillerists. The plethora of partially painted projects around here is prompting a new resolution (below). I think I may finish this resolution this year. I really only need to paint up some cavalry (which was a mental and spiritual block) and some higher level command figs (usually mounted and thus problematic at the moment).

Arguably I finished a russian corp (in 28mm) but the number of figs is so low that it's a bit false to try and wedge that into this one.

4/. Success. A pleasant surprise actually. Looking at my totals I played 19 wargames this year. Including, for the first time, some heavy gear and volley and bayonet. Other notable games were gruntz, pulp alley and alpha strike. Hopefully I can bump this number up in 2015.

In addition, I managed 8 board games, and near weekly (averaged) role playing games.

Summary: 2 of 4. An unmentioned goal was getting married this year, which was successful as well. The planning, wedding, honeymoon, moving, etc put a crimp on hobbying in the early summer, and I didn't really recover for quite a while. I forsee a dark period in the hobby time when I have kids which I imagine will happen in the next few years. I'm really hoping to bang out some high productivity over the next year or two so I've got sufficient toys finished to play more games, even if I lose time to paint.

The plan for 2015
1/. Play 12 wargames (playing it safe with this one)
2/.Focus on partially painted painted items (a bit vague, but I hope it will tend to prevent me from starting new things, when I could be finishing off old)
3/. Paint log I can present at the end of the year. Create as I go. (I'd like to have a numerical value of what I've done. I could MAYBE do it now.....but there are so many 1/2 finished projects that I don't know how to count them. It will feeling cheating to fully count them as I finish this year, but oh well. I saw a few blogs with pics of glory of everything done in a year.....and I'd like to be able to do that as well.)
4/. Fully paint a project I can host solo. (The ambitious one. I really dig when I can show up and simply play a game with someone with their models. I'd like to finish up enough figs and terrain to be able to do the same. I HAVE multiple projects that should be able to meet this requirement, it's just a matter of getting them done/together)

2014 Retrospective: CY6! Jet age. Falklands

I've been trolling through my photo archives, which I tend to separate by month and year and was trying to figure out how much I've actually painted this year. Funnily enough, I didn't take pictures of a lot of what I worked on (which is unusual), but I do find hints of what I was working and interested in at various times in the year.






Beginning of last year I had just finished up a batch of jets for check your six! (CY6!). I chose to do the falklands war purely based on the limited number of planes needed, and the couple of scenarios available. After hunting for various pics of 'correct' paint jobs, and getting confused (as there was changes through the quite short war), I painted up these fellows.

mirage 3 (i think)

Daggers are slightly smaller than the mirage 3 to the topleft and the right

These are all 1:600 tumbling dice figures. They include harriers, mirage 3's, 14 skyhawk, and IAI daggers (which are almost indistinguishable from the mirages...and I think they are perhaps an earlier model).





















 Harriers in the two group colorations. They are noticeably smaller than most of the opposition.













 A4 skyhawks which are wee little planes compared to the mirage's and daggers.












Despite finishing these in Jan/Feb I haven't gotten around to playing yet. I have sourced a hex mat, but I'm still facing sound challenges with how I want to do the bases.

Ideally they will change height, and show the speed on them. The planes have a small ball bearing located on the bottom in order to pitch/roll/yaw on the magnet on the stand.


I originally toyed with the idea of having the ball bearing on the stem, and only placing a magnet inside the plan. The end result was wildly unstable and the nose or tail (depending on where I placed the magnet) would instantly track downwards. I then managed to embed some magnets within the base stem, and attached the ballbearing to the plane. This is improved....but they still yaw a bit too easy. I may just stick some 'blue stuff' inside the stem to increase the friction.  I'm hoping the whole basing scheme isn't kaput.

Meanwhile, I still need to decide how to represent plane speed. A dice and frame arrangement vs a arrow/dial/pointer thing. Decisions, decisions.....

I'm going to wait till I'm more inspired to fight with these problems.

6MMRPC: Week 16 Legio Heroica Musselmen Wild Card

These actually arrived last week, but I didn't get around to working on them till this week. This is the first set of figs I bought since the challenge started (16 weeks ago!). There was a sale on and a few of my friends are starting Saga Crescent and Cross. It set me back about 40$ with shipping, which I figure is the cost of a box of plastic for many games so I'm going to call this one wild card.

Spears on the top above the metal tray

I went with a variety of arab/bedoin flowing robes with head coverings. Basically every melee fig is armed with a spear, which I thought was a bit annoying, but I couldn't do much about it. The casting are actually quite nice, though they are noticeably beefier than some other manufacturers (including Khurasan).

One of the few successful glue jobs

The spears are actually sharpened steel spikes on the foot troopers (lead on the cavalry), which is pretty fantastic, but they've been driving me nuts trying to glue them. One of my friends suggested CA glue accelerator, which I'll probably have to try, as using blue tac to hold the spear while it sets didn't work out so hot (lots of scraping to remove).

Christmas, of course, is taking up much of the free time, so overall not a lot was accomplished this week, and probably even less for the following week.

 I have 16 bowmen, 16 spear in robes, 8 spear in chainmail, and 11 cavalry. Hopefully I can bang these guys out quickly so 1/. I can get some games in and 2/. so I don't set back the lead mountain reduction project by much.

Happy Solstice everyone!