October 2016 – Steve’s Hobby Blog

Portuguese Men of War.

My attention has been very much on domestic and nursing duties this past week and so my hobby has taken a back seat. That said, I have still found the time to sneak off and get some painting done and so I have made some progress on my latest batch of figures, Napoleonic Portuguese Infantry. As I have mentioned previously, I have painted these for an article that will appear in this months Wargames illustrated, issue 349. If you would like a copy, it will be available, post free from my shop here:

WARGAMES ILLUSTRATED

Wargames Illustrated 349

As you can see from the article, I had painted a full battalion as well as part painting another battalion to show the various steps that make up the process of batch painting these troops.

Painting Portuguese article

The article is entitled, The Perils of Painting Portuguese, not because the figures themselves were difficult to paint but because of the problems that I had in getting good reference materials to confirm the various colours. To find out more you will have to purchase the magazine but I am willing to share some of my references here:

https://uk.pinterest.com/horzawood/portuguese-napoleonic-uniforms/

It’s a link to my pinterest boards and if you are interested in painting some Portuguese infantry, I hope that you will find it useful. If you haven’t come across this site before it is a very useful way of gathering reference material for a project and if you check out the rest of my boards you will have a clue as to what I am interested in painting next!

So back to my work bench and as you can see, I have finished and based the Infantry:

Portuguese Line Infantry

And the command group are nearly finished. They are just awaiting the last touches of paint, a coat of quick shade, matt varnish and then basing!

Command Group still W.I.P.

I’m afraid that the pictures were taken in haste for this blog post – once the battalion is complete I’ll post some better ones! That said, Portuguese infantry may be occupying my work bench for some time to come. The reason being is that I have decided to build the full regiments for both the 11th Penamacor from the Central Division and the 23rd Ameida Regiment which were brigaded together in the Peninsular War. Each regiment consisted of two Battalions, the first battalion carrying the Royal Standard, the second battalion carrying the Regimental flag. So in all, I will need 96 figures, which means that I have another 48 to paint. I have decided that I might as well complete these whilst I am ‘in the groove’ so to speak, rather than come back and of them later. It will also force me to do a bit more research as to which battles they fought in and who they fought alongside.

Portuguese Infantry in movement tray

So there will be plenty to keep me busy as we go into the Autumn and the clocks go back! My target is to have a full brigade of Portuguese, complete with Cacadores as skirmishers and some artillery support. Unless of course I get tempted elsewhere…..

Man Down!

Well actually, Woman Down! My wife, Julie has just had a Hip replacement and so I have been confined to domestic and nursing duties. It also means that we are missing both Julie and myself from the business at the moment. Fortunately, Hayley, Rob and Kevin are doing a great job holding the fort and keeping things running whilst I am away. However, I have found some time to sneak off to the garage when Julie has been resting to do some modelling, so some progress has been made with my various projects.

Sarissa Dark Age Stable

I have managed to finish another of the Sarissa Dark Age buildings for the village that will form the centre piece of my scenery when playing Saga. This building is the barn/stable J10, the third building in my collection. I have just one more building that I am keen to finish, the Grain store, although I am in no particular rush to do so. The method used to paint it was of course exactly the same as the previous buildings so that they all blend together.

Sarissa Dark age Grain Store awaiting its coat of daub!

I also have a Sarissa Dark age/Saxon church that I started work on some time ago but never actually completed. As usual, I decided that painting figures should take priority and so the Church was relegated to being in the background of many of my pictures but never quite was finished. Perhaps now is the time to get this project completed as this really will give me a nice little village for my warbands to fight over!

Dark Age Village – work in progress

As I hinted, the lure of painting figures is always a distraction for me and I have already strayed back to my beloved Napoleonics! To be fair, the figures in question were already part finished as I had painted them for an article that will appear in this months Wargames Illustrated ( issue 349 November). The article is entitled, the ‘Perils of Painting Portuguese’ and explains step by step, how I batch paint my Napoleonic infantry units. I was using the Warlord Games Portuguese boxed set and in order to complete the article I actually painted 24 figures to completion to illustrate the main article but also then painted a further 20 in various stages so that the reader could follow the painting process. These figures have been sitting on my work bench queue for some time and I thought that it would be a good idea to get them finished. The other prompt was that I had found some of the old Victrix Portuguese metal figures in the ‘Bring and Buy’ at the recent Derby war games show. There are some really nice Officer, ensign and musician figures, so I will be using these to complete my next Portuguese battalion.

Portuguese 23rd Regiment awaiting final highlight and basing!

As you can see the rank and file are now completed and just require basing. Incidentally, the goats are not mascots but will be living in the dark age barn!

Portuguese Command.

The picture above shows the Victrix Figures that I will be using for the Battalion command. I really like the fifer and it makes a change to have another musician present as well as the drummer. Musicians were of course a key part of the Battalion or Regimental organisation in most Napoleonic armies but the tendency is just to field drummers. Trent Miniatures make some very nice Musicians that will eventually find their way onto my paint table to flesh out my Waterloo collection! As ever, plenty to keep me busy, although, as mentioned above, my hobby time may be slightly curtailed over the next couple of weeks.

Doing Up The House.

Following the completion of my Irish Warband it was time to move on to a new project. I planned that this would be some scenery for my Saga games and rather than dive into the next pile of miniatures that are waiting on the painting table, I thought that now would be a good time to try my hand at some scenery making. The goal is to have some generic scenery for each period that I am gaming in, so that when I am off to the wargames club, I can just pick up the appropriate boxes and I’m ready for battle. I also thought that having some nice scenery would also improve the look of our games. I dont expect to reach Wargames Illustrated standards but having scenery that is relevant to the game will improve the visual appeal. I have some nice Sarissa Precision Dark Age buildings that I am working on at the moment. Previous blog posts have shown the first of these buildings that I have completed, the A frame Hut, in the background of my Irish figures.

Fiana, Kern and A frame house.

My next building was to be the Timber Framed House J14. I covered the roof in ‘Teddy Bear Fur’ thatch, to match the A Frame hut and then coated the fur in PVA glue to flatten it down and stiffen it up. Teddy Bear Fur is just one way of making roofing for these buildings. Gary, from March Attack, the designer for the range, prefers to use pan scourers as roofing and they look just as good, if not more effective. Other choices include flannel cloth or even coco fibre hanging basket liners. I think that it is a question of taste as they can all look realistic. I went with the teddy bear fur primarily because I had some to use up! I think that it’s worth pointing out that the Sarissa Buildings look very good with just a coat of paint, I just fancied trying a few ideas to pimp them up! So having covered the roof, the next stage was to add the timber framing.

To do this I used some standard matchsticks. I didn’t actually use the headless hobby variety – we do sell these in the shop in bags of 2000 for just £2.99 – but as I was at home, I resorted to a box of Swan Vesta’s that were handy! I used the etching on the building as a guide and cut them to the right length. It is then a simple matter to glue them to the building using PVA glue.

Sarissa Dark Age House j14 with framework added

You need to gently sand down the tops to let the roof fit nicely but it is a relatively simple job to do. Once the frame work was glued into place and dried I used Vallejo Dark Earth Paste to represent the mud or daub filling in the panels. Actually, you can use any of the Vallejo pastes as you will be painting over them At a push Polyfilla or a similar product will do! I used a squared off coffee stirrer to apply the paste, leaving the frame work showing. You can see that I used the stirrer to roughen up the paste to get more of a texture.

Applying the daub!

Once the paste had dried the next stage is to paint the building. I confess that I had made a slight mistake here. It would have made more sense to paint the inside of the building black before assembly or even afterwards, before I started to add the framework. As it is. I forgot and it doesn’t really show.

Dark Age house with daub.

The picture above shows the effect achieved before painting and the picture below show how the building looks from the end with the door.

Dark Age house viewed from the end – note door is left unpainted at this stage.

Once everything was dry, I painted the building with my favourite brown, Vallejo Chocolate Brown, including the door. I then dry brushed everything with a couple of lighter coats, using Iraqi Sand to lighten the brown on the panels of mud. Now, I’m no expert on Dark age buildings, so I wasn’t sure whether to paint the panels in a lighter colour or even whitewash them but I decided that they were best left a dry mud colour – this village hadn’t received a visit from the travelling Dulux Salesman! The next step was to paint the timber framing. I choose a very dark brown. Vallejo German Camouflage Black Brown was a good contrast. I used a light grey to lighten this and then gave the building, in particular, the timber frame, a gentle highlight using the dry brush technique. The final task was to pick out the door hinges with black and to add some black & grey to the smoke hole in the roof.

The finished dark age house, complete with new owner.

The building is now ready for the table and my village now consists of two houses. I have a couple more to finish in a similar style and that should give me a nice little settlement for my Dark Age war bands to fight over! Whilst I was thinking about other scenery that I could use, I remembered that Arcane scenery has it’s own small range of Neolithic monuments. Although not specifically designed for the dark ages, they seem to be useful additions to the table top and will add a bit of atmosphere! Here’s a couple of the pieces:

Neolithic Stone Circle

Neolithic Burial Chamber

If you are interested, the DeeZee scenery range can be found here: DeeZee Scenery

So, my aim of building some new scenery for my wargames has moved forwards. If you would like to undertake a similar project, I would recommend that you visit the March attack site for some very useful Tutorials of how to get the best from the Sarissa Precision MDF buildings. Just a very simple paint job will give superb results as Gary demonstrates in these PDF’s

http://www.marchattack.co.uk/Painting%20Building%201.pdf

http://www.marchattack.co.uk/Painting%20Laser%20Cut%20Terrain.pdf

Sons of Dana are ready for battle

The Warband Gathers

It seems like I have been painting my Irish warband for half the year but at last they are complete and ready to take to the table. I actually started to paint them in July, so it has taken me some time to finish the warband. It didn’t help that I had decided to paint the complete collection of Irish warriors from the Footsore range. I had actually finished enough Hearth Guard, Warriors, and Levy to field a warband some time ago but the Heroes in the Footsore range are such lovely sculpts I had to add them to the band. So I now have Ulf The Quarrelsome ( no you don’t…who said that..); Brian Boru, the High King of Ireland; a Priest; Standard Bearer and enough assorted heroes to give me the flexibility to easily field up to 6pts and more, in a Saga game.

The Heroes all took a bit longer to paint than the standard rank and file troops. I wanted them to be wearing more decorative clothes. However, I did stick to a limited pallet of paints and tried to avoid really bright colours. I agonised over how to finish the shields. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to use shield transfers or whether to paint them free hand. I decided to go down the free hand route but as I am no artist, I have kept the designs very simple. I had the same conflict when it came to producing the banners. Despite my concern that the Dark Age Irish would not have access to a graphic designer, I decided that the Little Bigman Studio Banner transfers were too nice not to use…

Brian Boru surveys the battlefield.

When it came to basing up the figures I put all of them onto 25mm round MDF bases, with the exception of Brian Boru and my ‘reserve Warlord’ – these went on 40mm bases. Although the Footsore Brian comes as a set of three figures, I decided that I would just mount him and the standard bearer on a 40mm round base. I also swapped out the Footsore Warlord with the mean looking guy from the Irish Command set. I think that he makes a better warlord, so the other figure has been relegated to Hearth guard status! So I have the luxury of two warlords to play. If I use Brian Boru, although he is ‘free’ in terms of points, his effectiveness as a warrior may be a challenge. Generating three saga dice and costing no additional points is a great bonus but his combat abilities are very limited – he will need protecting!

My newly promoted warlord displays his latest victim!

I mentioned that all the other figures are separately based on 25mm MDF bases. This gives me the opportunity to field these figures as separate units or even add them to another warband. I think that the heroes armed with Dane Axes will be quite at home in an Anglo Dane army.

Ulf The Quarrelsome, Priest and Hero

I’ve also been playing with movement tray design for Saga. Whilst my rectangular trays ranked my figures up nicely for display purposes, I didn’t think that they would look so good on the table. I was messing around with some other options and found these smaller skirmish trays that were designed for fire teams in bolt action by Sarissa. A quick conversation with those very helpful people and they produced a Saga Movement tray set. You can put four figures in the tray, allowing you to deploy units of 4, 8 or 12 very simply. The way in which they wrap around each other means that you can change the shape of the unit from a ‘clump’ to a line fairly easily. Of course when you get to combat, it will make sense to take the figures out of their tray but it will make the initial moves in a game easier. They are also good for transporting your army.

movement tray for Saga

My intention is to use some Vallejo paste on the trays to make them blend with my basing scheme, but the picture does show how they might work. So the sharp eyed amongst you will see that I am two war banners short and those with long memories will be asking where are the dogs that you were going to make? Well the banners are ready, I just didn’t have the time to fix them to the poles before I took the pictures. As for the dogs, they are at the back of the work bench. My next project beckons…time to do some scenery!

If you would like to have a go at building your own Irish Warband, Footsore do a 4pt warband (26 figures) for just £36.00. Even better if you purchase before the end of the month through my shop, we are supplying free bases and spears for the warband. Just add the code WARBAND in at checkout. Even better, if you enter SEPT5, you will get an additional 5% discount and of course free postage. Free postage is worldwide, so yes, that does include USA and Australia… Click here to purchase your Warband:

Footsore Irish Warband

If you would like to buy the Saga movement trays that we have designed with Sarrisa, just click the photo:

By the way, the trays also include the 25mm bases, so you will have some spares!

If you would like quick links to my other saga articles for details of the paints used and the basing scheme, just click here:

Saga Articles

Right! I’m off to fight a battle!

Monthly Archives: October 2016

Portuguese Men of War.

Man Down!

Doing Up The House.

Sons of Dana are ready for battle

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