steve wood – Page 16 – Steve’s Hobby Blog

Genesis of a Terror Bird

I thought that it might be interesting to show the processes involved in bringing a new miniature to the market. Arcane Scenery own the DeeZee range and since purchasing it we have been very slowly expanding the choice of models available. Buying the range was more of a whim than a serious business decision but I was intrigued by the models and the potential – if we could build the range and revitalise it. That is not quite as easy as it sounds, as I am no sculptor and Arcane Scenery as an online retailer, has no production facilities. We do have the advantage of being right in the middle of the Nottingham ‘Lead Belt’ and as a result, come into contact with some very talented people.

We have recently started working with the guys over at War Banner and inspired by some of the awesome figures that they have been and will be releasing, I decided it was time to add to the DeeZee range. But where to start? Like many in the hobby, I had plenty of ideas and there was no shortage of suggestions from friends and colleagues. After much consideration, I decided that a terror bird would fit into the range and was commercial enough to appeal to the historical collector as well as Pulp, Fantasy and RPG gamers, meaning that we would have a chance of recouping the investment required.

terror bird inspiration

The first job was to find a sculptor. I had in the past been in touch with a few sculptors in the UK but circumstances at the time had stopped me from progressing with the project. So after past false starts, this time, thanks to Andy Hobday at War Banner, the very talented Stavros Zouliatis was contacted. Stavros had sculpted the soon to be released Warring Clans Samurai figures. I had already been drooling over them as a hobbyist, so when Stavros said that he was not only available to sculpt but also very enthusiastic about the project, it was all systems go! Stavros is based in Greece but despite the distances involved, thanks to the wonders of technology (I am still amazed at what can be done, much to the amusement of the ‘youngsters’ that I work with) it was a relatively simple matter to formulate the model. Using my pinterest board as reference and Facebook messenger as a way of reviewing progress, work was soon under way.

DeeZe Terror Bird being sculpted

The picture below shows the Terror bird nearly completed – the sculpting process took about a week on and off.

Terror Bird Complete

Although the sculpting process was complete, we had to give some thought as to how it would be cast. We decided that the legs would be better as separate pieces to the body and also to add a base.

Terror Bird 'Green' comple and ready fro casting

Terror Bird ‘Green’ comple and ready for casting

The next stage was to turn the ‘green’ ( the name of the original model or prototype – usually made from green stuff epoxy clay) into a metal model.

To do this the green is pressed into a rubber mold and then cooked to produce a master mold. Ben, of War Banner games was responsible for this process. It can be quite traumatic as there is the danger that the original will be damaged by the high pressure involved. I’m happy to say that all went well – we even managed to recover the original ‘Green’, which is often lost in this process.

The mold press machine!

Once the first mold or master mold has been made, a number of metal models are cast to produce the production mold. In this case, we have a production mold that will ‘spin’ five models at a time. Depending on the expected demand, some manufacturers will make more than one production mold. It is the production mold that will wear out over time but more production molds can be made using the Master if needed. Part of the skill in producing the master and production molds is to decide where the ‘feeds’ run the metal into the impression of the model. The mold also needs vents to let the excess metal run through to be cut into it. Once again, Ben, from War Banner games has done a great job and the production mold is casting superb models without any flash or excessive feeds.

Terror Bird Production Mold – look carefully and you can see the guys at War Banner have good sense of humour….

terror bird mold open – this is where the metal goes!

It is now just a case of ‘running’ the molds to build the stock of the model so we are ready for orders. We usually hold a stock of DeeZee models so there is no delay in dispatching orders.

Hot metal in the Hotpot!

The final stage in the process was to get a model painted. Jasmine Storey-Smith kindly offered to paint the very first Terror Bird from DeeZee. I think that she has done a super job and the model looks just as I hoped that it would.

The Painted Terror Bird

Terror bird and Neanderthal

And so the Terror Bird, DZ35 is ready to launch…Well it’s available to sell – it will never fly! It’s quite a time consuming process and has involved a number of people. As with all of these projects, the materials aren’t really the cost, it is the time and skill of those involved that have to be paid for. I must thank again, the team at War Banner, who as well as supplying their expertise and advice, have been great cheer leaders as well. If you are thinking of commissioning your own range of figures, War Banner have all the facilities, skill and enthusiasm that you will need to get your project up and running.

We certainly will add more models to the DeeZee range. Like I said in the introduction, we are not short on ideas! Who knows, we may have a rules set in the pipeline….

The Commercial Bit

If you would like to buy your very own Terror Bird, (post free at the time of writing!) you can do so here:

TERROR BIRD

You can see the full DeeZee Range here:

DeeZee RANGE OF ANIMALS

If you would like to see more of Stavros’s work or to commission a sculpt , click here:

STAVROS ZOULIATIS

If you would like help in launching your own range of miniatures or would just like to see the superb War Banner range, click here:

WAR BANNER

We hope that you enjoy your modelling!

French Sailors in the Caribbean – some conversions

Jonas Jones has been busy with his jewellers saw and clippers to bring us some more conversions from the Trent Miniatures range. I think that there is a tendency in the hobby not to convert metal figures but Jonas shows that with a bit of imagination, some simple modifications can give quite a bit of variation. The starting point is the pack of French Sailors from the Caribbean range, pack CAR24 ( links below). A useful pack as French Sailors had no regulation uniform at this time, so these chaps could be seamen of other nationalities or augment a pirate crew.

French Sailors from CAR24

The pack was produced for the Caribbean range as in June 1793, about 2000 French Sailors, led by the newly arrived Royalist Governor of St. Domingue attacked the colony’s principal port, Le Cap, defended by the Republican commissioners. In two days of savage street fighting, involving also the National Guard and several thousand revolting slaves, 90% of the town was burnt down, before the Governor and his sailors were beaten back to their ships. Someone noted that whilst the sailors were good fighters, as more buildings having stores of liquor were ‘liberated’, so their inclination and ability to fight diminished! Perhaps building a force of 2000 French sailors is ambitious ( although we will be happy to supply them!). It does seem that a small force or unit would be very useful to have and we could see them participating in many smaller skirmishes! So without further ado, Jonas explains how he converted his latest models.

French Sailor Conversion 1

“This chap was inspired by the closing action from the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid movie. I wanted a two-fisted pistoleer prepared to go headlong at the opposition. (Even braver with a pair of flintlocks rather than the six-shooters!). The figure’s right arm was clipped off with a pair of flush cutters and a right arm from the French Dragoons (Haiti) – pack Car 14 – was substituted. (About 15 seconds work with a pin vice).”

French sailor – Conversion 2

“When Israel Hands made his appearance in season three of Black Sails, the potency of a cutlass and boarding axe combination was demonstrated to perfection: four opponents despatched in about the time it’s taken to type this paragraph! Again, the right arm has been cut off and this time the shouldered sabre arm from the French Dragoons (Haiti) is substituted. The head is from the EDZ08 bare heads pack. Obviously, a man wielding two fearsome weapons would have a fairly stern demeanor; I felt that the moustache provided some “sternification”!”

French Sailor conversion 3

“You’ll remember the bit in the movie The Professionals when the Mexican bandit leader passes his hat across the front of his holster to mask drawing his pistol. That influenced this conversion. It’s one of the boarding pike figures with its left hand snipped off and replaced by the seperate left hand with pistol. The right hand was drilled through as one would for a pike, but then a cut was made from underneath and the hat superglued in. The hat is from the Car19 pack – Poles in St. Domingue. Flush cutters and a small file have removed the Polish head from underneath the hat – there are always casualties in war!”

French Sailor Conversion #4

“This conversion is the other pike chap, left hand snipped off and left hand with pistol inserted as with conversion #3. The right arm has been snipped off and replaced by the sword arm from the French Dragoons pack (CAR 14).”

“This isn’t really a conversion; it’s just the chap firing his pistol given the priest’s head from the Chouan/Vendean Characters bis pack (FCHOU 06). I just felt that it looked right.

French Sailors conversions

I hope the this article will give the reader some ideas as to how to go about making some simple changes to figures to get a new look. It’s surprising how a simple head or arm swap can change the look of a figure and allow a modeler to stretch one pack of five figures to make a unique band ideal for the many skirmish games that are out there. Jonas has used other metal figures to complete his conversions but plastic bits will work just as well – I’m sure that most of us will have a decent bits box to dive into! You often dont even need to use figures from the same period – a dark age figure holding an axe could be used to provide a boarding axe!

If you are thinking of converting figures though, you will find that the Trent Miniatures EDZ range is a good place to start – plenty of options for easy head swaps.

The Commercial Bit

We carry the full range of Trent Miniatures. You can find the Caribbean Range here:

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You can find the EDZ range and other equipment here:

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If you need a pin vice, pair of flush cutters or tools in general for your hobby, check here:

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I hope that you enjoy your modelling!

Daimyo’s Retinue – Progress?

Sometimes things don’t work out the way you would like them to, and for me, that seems to be the way it is with Daimyo’s retinue. Of course, it could just be a case of familiarity causing the dissatisfaction – this is the second batch of plastic cavalry that I have painted. For some reason, I am not feeling the love for this project! I now have two of the Retinue more or less complete and painted in a similar style to my other samurai cavalry. However, they just don’t look as good as I want them to!

The first of Daimyo’s retinue

Now to be fair, they are not yet finished. I need to complete the basing and I know that once the base has been painted and some nice grass tufts added the models will look substantially better. I also will be adding a Decal to the flags and tidying these up a bit, all of which will help.

In the meantime, I carried on with the retinue and painted the Daimyo himself. I had a clear idea in my mind as to how I wanted him to look and the colour scheme that I would use.

Daimyo ready for basing

However, I am disappointed with the result! The colour scheme just hasn’t worked – he looks like he is sponsored by JCB! Once again, I have made the mistake of adding green trim to his cloak. It didn’t work when I painted my Geisha spy so why I made the same error is a mystery! I also think that yellow is a difficult colour to get right and in trying to use such a bold finish with a primary colour, I have made it difficult to achieve the look that I was after.

Daimyo repainted!

The picture above shows a few changes that I have made to try and improve the figure. The trim on the cloak is now Turquoise, to match his trousers. I’ve added some white socks to the horse and given the horse a white mark on it’s head and I’ve added some highlights to the Daimyo’s trousers. The base has the textured paste applied and will of course benefit from being painted.

Daimyo Charge!

So I think that he looks a bit better but the feeling lingers that it is not quite the finish that I had in mind.

It is easy to be over critical and often the answer is to put the models to one side and come back to them a couple of days later. For now, though, apart from the basing, these are done. I console myself with the thought that these are table top pieces not entries for the Golden Demon Painting competition. They don’t look too bad with my other cavalry.

Samurai Cavalry charge!

Daimyos Retinue grows!

So I have another four more Samurai cavalry to paint before the set is complete. With the World Cup about to start, it will be a while before I can show you the finished result. Perhaps watching the football will give me the break that I need from painting….

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Daimyos Retinue is on the Work Bench!

After more or less completing my Napoleonic Nassau Infantry, I thought that I would have a change of period and complete a Test of Honour Boxed set, Daimyos retinue. I had decided to build the retinue as a continuation of the other Samurai cavalry boxed set and would be using a similar colour scheme for the armour. At some point in the future I’m sure that I will start to play games with larger formations rather than just individual figures and having a degree of coherency in the colour scheme will help.

Daimyo’s retinue ready for priming.

There are actually six plastic Samurai in the set and a metal figure of Daimyo, so with only six horses, I was left with a spare Samurai. It was a straight forward option to find a spare horse in my ‘bits box’, so as you can see, there are now seven riders to paint! The spare horse is actually an old GW ‘Elf horse’ but I will add some green stuff decoration to make it a bit more Samurai. You can see that I have done this before with the other cavalry set by checking a previous blog here, so I will have 14 Mounted Samurai rather than 12, when everything is finished.

Assembly is the usual fiddly process with these plastic models but it is worth using a good plastic glue and of course with patience, the models do look nice once put together. I usually paint the riders separately from the horses but I managed to glue two of the riders onto the horses whilst test fitting everything…What was I saying about patience… To be fair, I had decided to use the arrow catcher on one of the models and it was quite tricky figuring out how it actually fitted to the model. I’m confident that I now have it right but as you can see from the picture below, once primed, it was clear that I had some filling to do before painting! I used the Vallejo putty. It’s fairly quick drying and sands well.

Rider with arrow catcher fitted .

I will have to paint these as one piece models but I don’t think this will be a problem. The other models were primed in black as separate horses and riders

Horses primed

Riders ready for painting

I used my airbrush and Vallejo primer for these models. I am still very much a novice when it comes to using an airbrush but it means that I can prime my models indoors, unlike using spray cans. To be fair, it’s just as easy, and I’m finding that I get better coverage without ‘soaking’ the model.

So I’m ready to start painting. I thought that I would show a step by step guide to how I paint horses. It’s not a strong point for me and there are plenty of great guides out there to help you but here goes with my method that I have put together from watching and listening to other far more talented painters than I!

German Cam. Black Brown – first coat.

I use three colours layered on top of each other and as I want a brown/chestnut horse I’m starting with a dark brown, German Camouflage black brown 70822. Paint as much of the horse as you can see, leaving the saddle cloth etc. and the mane and tail.

Flat brown 70984

The next step is to dry brush the horse flesh with Flat brown 70984. It’s inevitable that the dry brush will stray onto the saddle etc -I don’t worry at this stage as it will be cleaned up later.

Orange Brown 70981

The next stage is a dry brush of Orange Brown 70981 – again you can see that I haven’t been too careful and over painted painted the reins. The idea is really to ensure that what texture there is modeled into the horse itself, is picked up by the dry brushing.

Mane & tail Black 70950

The next stage is to paint the mane and tail black. I also painted the forelegs on the left horse black as he is going to have socks! You can see that I have made a mistake with the right hand horse and been too heavy with the orange brown on his rump and by his front. The front can be tidied and I might tone down the rear with some ink but for now I’ve stuck with it!

Saddle cloth and furniture Dark Prussian Blue 70899

I’ve now painted the saddle cloth and horse furniture with Dark Prussian Blue – things are looking a bit neater now! I’ve also given the mane and tale a very light dry brush using a light grey to bring out the texture.

Lining on the horse furniture!

The next stage was to paint the white socks on the left horse and I added a white patch to both horses heads. I’ve also painted the eyes black. The Horse furniture is lined with a sky blue 70961. I found it a bit stark so I’ve toned it down with some of the dark Prussian blue. The effect is not subtle, particularly close up but it works for me and the lighting is exaggerating the contrast.

Both horses complete!

That’s just about finished for now. I’ve painted the ‘bits’ in steel and done a bit of tidying. After this picture was taken, I painted the hooves black for a bit more contrast. Once the riders are in place and the bases finished they will look fine for the table.

So that is it. I hope that you will find the article useful and it will help you with developing your own technique.

The Commercial bit

Nearly all of the items that I use in my hobby are from my shop. At the time of writing we send post free to most Worldwide locations!

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If you are looking for glues or Fillers:

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Vallejo Paints are here:

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Napoleonic Zombies!

OK, I know that the purists might find this a bit difficult but I was intrigued by these models that I found in the War Banner office. I just happened to be passing by and caught sight of these conversions and I was immediately curious as to what they were.

Watch out! Zombies!

The models are made and painted by Darren Evans, co-designer of the very popular ‘Gangs of Rome’ game and so I immediately wondered if another game was in the pipeline! The short answer is no. The models were just an experiment but having a chat with Darren it was clear that there was a clever idea here for a fun game for the future. It was a great example of how perhaps people could be persuaded to have ago at Napoleonic’s without the need to invest in all the research required to turn out a Battalion of troops!

The simple back story to the idea is that during the hellish retreat from Moscow, following Napoleons disastrous attempt at invading Russia, it wasn’t just the freezing temperatures, marauding wolves and Cossack’s that threatened the French Army. Soldiers that had been driven to desperation by the cold and hunger had turned to cannibalism. Some of these poor souls, suffering a complete descent into madness, beyond all human decency had mutated into the living dead, Zombies. Refusing to leave this mortal earth they now turned on the living, caring neither whether their prey was French or Russian, just so long as it was warm…

And so the stage was set for a very different type of Napoleonic skirmish game. As you can see Daz hasn’t worried too much about the detail on the uniforms. I doubt very much that those involved in the retreat from Moscow were too concerned about Parade ground dress. Which also begs the question as to why some gamers get so hung up on the ‘right shade’ for a uniform but that’s a question for another blog. As for the Zombies, they really don’t care!

Extra cold steel!

Regarding the conversions, the figures are a mixture of mainly Warlord Games Napoleonic plastics mixed up with some plastic Zombie parts or visa versa, depending on how far the contagion had taken! Daz simply took a scalpel to the figures and hacked away, adding a skeleton arm or leg as appropriate, or a uniformed arm, leg or head to a Zombie torso. There is no need to be too careful, the rough finish just adds to the overall look. When a figure is added to a snowy base, the effect is excellent and immediately evocative of the Russian retreat. It’s only when you look closely at some of the figures that you realise there is a zombie problem!

I wish we had a horse each….

The ‘normal’ French that Darren made to fight the Zombie menace were in the main armed only with hand to hand weapons. Muskets were not reliable in the freezing conditions and the idea was to make the conflict all the more desperate. The French were just fighting their way home and trying to escape the latest sinister menace that had appeared.

The muskets aren’t as effective as a shovel!

As I have said, there are no rules as such for a game. The models were more an exercise in imagination. That said, I suspect it would be straight forward to incorporate a batch of Zombies into one of the many great Napoleonic skirmish games out there. Sharpe Practice and Over the Hills are two that spring to mind. I’m sure that you wouldn’t want to be playing Napoleonic Zombies every week but now and then, I think that this sort of stretch of the imagination brings the fun into gaming.

Fire!

So there you are, Napoleonic Zombies – who would have thought of that? Sometimes it’s great to follow your imagination and who knows what ideas you can come up with. I think that Darren has done a great job with these figures and to see an idea through is impressive to me. Having an idea is one thing, actually making it is quite another! It’s that side of the hobby that I really enjoy and making and converting something a bit different is certainly a break from building my never ending Napoleonic army.

Zombie horde!

But in the meantime, back to Waterloo next week and my latest batch of Nassau….

The Commercial bit

If you would like to have a go at converting, we have a vast range of tools, adhesives, paints, Basing Materials and of course figures in our shop. Just follow the link:

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There’s always time….

With my attendance at Partizan and all the preparation that goes with it (and of course, the tidying up afterwards) my hobby time has been at a premium – but when have I said that before! To be fair, I have made some progress since my last blog. Due to the way that I work on my hobby there is always something on the work bench and I will use any spare time that I have, even 10 minutes to keep things moving along. I am lucky in that I have a permanent place to paint and model, so it is easy to pick up where I last left off and do a bit more to a model.

I was chatting to someone about this at work. Paul, was saying how he was so busy that he didn’t have time to do any painting. The problem was that he was looking for a spare morning or afternoon or even a day when he could really get stuck into his project. I find that such blocks of time are difficult to come by these days and I tend to work in short bursts – sometimes just 2 minutes! Yes, seriously. If the next stage of a model is to slap some texture paste on to the base, then it only takes a couple of minutes to do this. It will take 2 hours for the paste to dry but if I can get this job done just before I leave for work, then I know that it will be dry when I get home and it will take another two minutes to paint the base and so on.

The same goes for the evenings. I may be too weary to spend the evening modelling but just half an hour or an hour gets a lot done, so I just focus on the next step in the modelling process rather than what needs to be done to finish the model, if you see what I mean. So since the last blog, some 14 days ago I have only finished one model/project. As you can see, Kojiro is now completed

Wargames Illustrated Special Edition Models now completed

However, I have made progress on a whole lot of other projects. I mentioned that I would be working on another unit of Nassau infantry. Well over the 14 days they have gone from bare castings, primed and the start of the batch paint.

Nassau Volunteer Jaeger on the work bench.

The (poor) photo above shows the figures 7 days ago. The back rank is primed green and the flesh and hats painted. The front rank (out of focus) shows that I have yet to add any black.

Volunteer Nassau – next step

This photo shows as they are now. ( I promise all 12 are at this stage!). Yes, they are a long way off being finished but I’m happy that progress has been made. I know the next step to be painted – I’ll be painting the gaiters dark grey and then I’ll start the straps with yellow ochre. It wont matter to me whether I do both colours on all figures or just paint the gaiters on just two of them. So long as I am moving forwards, I’m happy. Now I know that 14 days to get to this stage seems like very slow progress but it is progress and I will soon have another unit for my Napoleonic Army.

But that’s not all I’ve done. Taking a break from painting, I’ve assembled the next set that I would like to complete in the Test of Honour Range – Daimyos Retinue.

Daimyos retinue, under construction

The majority of these were assembled over at Jaz’s house one evening. We took a break from gaming and just had a hobby night. I had never thought of modelling as being a social hobby but I was once again surprised as to how much I managed to get done whilst chatting away with my war gaming pals. So Seven mounted Samurai are nearly ready for priming.

Musket men and Sergeant of archers

Building the Samurai cavalry gave me the urge to go back to some spare plastic ashigaru and assemble them as Musket men and I also needed a Sergeant of Archery to complete all the figures that appear on the cards. The musket men will be to go with Nobunaga – as this figure allows you take musket men for just 2 points each, I decided that I wanted at least two bases of them. I also decided to add some extra pouches using green stuff. I’ll never make a sculptor but they look passable enough. Interestingly, I ran out of time and rather than waste the green stuff, I used the excess to make some rocks on the Sergeants base. These models were actually assembled while I was sitting out in the garden with a glass of something cold and chatting to Julie.

British Artillery

Finally, on the work bench are a couple of cannon that I am planning to add to my army. They were kicking around in my lead pile and it wasn’t a long job to get these assembled and ready for priming. I’ll probally prime these at the same time that I prime the Samurai horses, so they will be ready for painting.

So as you can see, I haven’t done much in the last 14 days…

The Commercial bit

You can get most of the modelling supplies that I use from the Arcane Scenery shop. Even better, it’s still post free for most world wide locations!

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More for Test of Honour – Scenery & Musashi!

Having just finished my latest Napoleonic Battalion, I fancied a change. A recent post on the superb Test of Honour Facebook group had inspired me to send for some plastic Bonsai trees from China. The Bonzai trees make excellent full sized trees for a Test of Honour game. As a bit of a digression, I am usually not too fussed about the scale of my trees in war games, particularly when playing the larger battles. The trees on a wargames table are there to represent an area of wood, not to be a scale model.

However, Test of Honour is a skirmish game and a tree that is more in keeping with the scale of the figures and buildings seemed attractive. Even if the leaves are a bit on the large size, the overall impression would be of a specimum tree, as seen in Japanese gardens.

Plastic Bonsai tree

As you can see, the tree comes in a nice plastic pot so it was a simple task to cut it out and using a glue gun, stick it to an old DVD. I used ‘Seven Steps to a Better Life’ a free DVD from a newspaper and clearly nonsense, as none of the steps included ‘spend more time wargaming’. You can, of course, use any suitable DVD or CD…In fact, I think that would be an interesting survey…’Which DVD/CD is more suitable for scenery bases than watching/listening to! I digress once again, but at least I am recycling my rubbish!

Tree attached to DVD

The next job was to slap some filler (Polyfilla or other decorators filler is ideal) over the base and when dry, I covered this with Vallejo Dark Earth Textured paste. Incidentally, the temple dog in the picture is from the Ainsty Castings range. They do a set of two of these and also make a very nice Sampan – if you haven’t discovered Ainstey Castings the link is below and they have some very useful stuff! Once the paste was dry, I gave the whole thing a good coat of paint – I use emulsion for scenery, it’s cheaper. The base is now ready for detailing.

Bonsai tree based and ready for detailing

The next stage is to dry brush a highlight onto the textured earth and to add some scatter and of course, some grass tufts and flowers. While I was highlighting the base, I also used the same mix to dry brush the tree trunk to bring out the detail. You could really spend a bit of time improving the tree with a quick spray or dry brush but time was at a premium and I’m happy with the overall look for a piece of wargames scenery that I hope will see plenty of use.

The completed bonzai tree based and ready for the table.

Each of the stages above only take a few minutes but the drying time is the issue. So I tend to have another project on the go when I am making a piece like this. As you can see from the picture above, I am working on a set of ‘Giants in Miniature’ figures from Wargames Illustrated. The figures represent the famous duel between Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro and are a limited edition of 500 sets. If you would like one the link to Wargames Illustrated site is below.

Miyamoto Musashi on the work bench

The figure is straight forward to paint as he is all in black, so while waiting for my scenery piece to dry, I got on with him. Sasaki is in the background. ready for his coat of paint! You can see the finished Musashi in the picture above based and ready to fight his rival Sasaki. The final picture is a very poor shot of the two of them fighting in front of the Sarissa shrine, with the Geisha spy looking on. Sasaki is yet to be finished, requiring a coat of matt varnish, some extra highlighting and of course, basing.

Musashi and Kojiro clash!

As I have said, modelling time has been at a premium these last couple of weeks but I should have Sasaki Kojiro finished for the weekend and he will complete my triology of limited edition figures from Wargames illustrated. I’ve also got a couple more of the Bonzai trees to base, but now that I know what I’m doing , these will be a quick little project. It’s back to Nassau Infantry after that!

The Commercial bit

You can find Ainstey Castings site here:

Ainstey Castings

You can get the Musashi and Kojiro ( there are 45 sets left at the time of writing) here:

GIANTS IN MINIATURE

You can visit the Arcane Scenery shop for all Vallejo paints, textures and basing products – we send post free! We have a great Samurai section and carry all of the Sarissa Japanese range.

ARCANE SCENERY

As regards the Bonzai tree, you will have to search ebay! However, we are looking to import a batch from China – they will be a little more expensive but we are looking to see if we can bundle them with some buildings. If you follow us on Facebook, you will be the first to know!

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Happy Modelling!

Painting the Nassau-Usingen Battalion. Part two, Batch paint

In my last blog I gave some back ground into how and why I was painting Nassau troops for my Napoleonic Army. This week is just a walk through of the basic steps in batch painting the unit. I was on a fairly tight deadline with about three weeks to finish the unit. For me getting 24 troops finished in that time would be a record but I had a plan! Actually, the unit would eventually consist of 36 troops but I quickly realised that this was just not going to happen. I am using the Perry’s metal Nassau troops to build my unit and my painting guide is the plate from the Mont St Jean site – see last weeks blog for more details.

I wont go through the preparation stage other than to say although the Perrys models are beautiful sculpts, some of the castings need a bit of work to get rid of the flash and feeds. There was nothing that couldn’t be sorted with a quick file and scrape with a scalpel. Once cleaned up, I blutack the models to a temporary base and using the Army Painter Green skin primer, sprayed the figures. When batch painting, I usually work on batches of 6 to 8 models to start with. That said, if I am familiar with the colour scheme, I have painted up to 24 in one go.

The first batch of Nassau primed with green skin!

Once I had checked that primer had covered the models, the batch paint starts with the faces and hands. I use Vallejo colours from now and I will list the colours used at the bottom of the blog. With the flesh done, my next colour is usually Black, to paint the hats, boots, sword scabbard, cartridge case, collars and cuffs.

Flesh and Black added.

The next stage is to work through the equipment. I used leather brown for the hair, backpack, bayonet scabbard, and water bottle strap. This is an example of me cutting corners – if you want a more professional look, you would vary the hair colour and use different shade of brown for each item but these are war games figures and I am on a deadline! I used yellow ochre for the straps, off white for the food bag, black grey for the water bottle and sea grey for the blankets.

Nassau, main equipment done.

Each of the centre companies have a different coloured plume on their hats. Company 1 is yellow, Coy 2 is white, Coy 3 is Blue and Coy 4 is black. Orange was used to paint the rosette on the shako. The next stage was to paint the metallic colours, brass for the hat badges and chin straps, detail on musket and sword. I use steel for the muskets and bayonets. I also painted the piping around the collar and cuffs and tidied up any obvious errors.

Voltigeurs block painted

The picture above is a bit of a cheat as this is the Voltigeur company that actually was not ready for the battle! However, it does show the figures at the block painted stage. The figures are now ready to be painted in quick shade – I use the black or dark tone. Note that I don’t dip the figures as suggested by the manufacturer. I find this wasteful and messy. Simply use an old brush to apply the quick shade and you will have a better control over the finish. As a side issue, I decided to give some of the light company off white trousers, just for a bit of variance.

Nassau Grenadiers – quick shade applied

The picture above again is a bit of a cheat in that these were also not ready for the battle but it shows a unit with the quick shade applied and the first coat of matt varnish. I have now resorted to brushing on matt varnish and currently use the artists Galleria varnish. I have had a few recent mishaps with spray varnish and the Galleria seems to give a better finish.

Nassau line Companies ready for basing!

A closer look at the Nassau line

As you can see from the pictures above, the unit of 24 is complete and ready for basing. The figure on the end is from a the casualty pack and I added him in for a bit of variety. To base the figures, I use Renedra plastic bases or I am happy to use the Sarissa MDF bases. In this case, my haste led me to choose Renedra as I had some spare at home (I usually use wood bases for metal figures, plastic for plastic figures). I thought that I was using 60mm by 40mm but in my rush, I picked up 60mm by 45mm by accident. It’s not really an issue for me as depth of bases is often of no particular consequence in rules sets and certainly not in Black powder. I will be more careful in future!

When using the Vallejo paste , there no need to glue the figures to the base, the paste will secure the models. Just draw some of the paste up around the base to hold the figures in place. Once the paste is dry, I give the base a coat of Vallejo Chocolate brown to blend everything together and then add some Iraqi Sand to provide highlights.

Nassau Grenadiers based

The picture above shows the Grenadiers based and I have added some Woodland Scenic scatter to represent grass and to help blend the bases together. The final part of the process is to add some grass tufts and a few flowers – yellow seemed appropriate.

The Nassau line based and ready for action

The picture above shows the bases completed. There is one step that I have missed out from my narrative. Once the figures have received their coat of matt varnish, I will go back over some of the lighter colours and metallics to tidy them up and make them shine out. So the collars ,cuffs and piping were highlighted with flat yellow, I used gold to highlight the brass and silver for the bayonets. I also retouched the yellow ochre where the quick shade had ‘dirtied’ it down too much.

Nassau – Ussingen 2nd battalion almost complete. Just the Voltigeurs to add.

So the 24 figures in the line Companies were completed ready for the battle and I have nearly finished the Voltigeurs and Grenadier company’s. I now have a large unit of Nassau to add to my Napoleonic army. Next up, the small Jaeger unit and of course Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar to complet and my lead mountain will return to it’s starting level in February.

Despite taking casualties, the Nassau hold the gate at Papelotte!

The picture above shows the Nassau ‘in action’. Papelotte was held – whether the battle was won is another matter! Below are just some shots of the finished Battalion taken in front of Papelotte at a later date.

Nassau command – still waiting for a flag!

Nassau Voltiguers

Nassau Grenadiers

The final two pictures show that I did manage to get the Voltiguers and Grenadier companies completed – my photography skills don’t allow a full picture of the 36 man unit but hopefully, you will get an idea of how the battalion looks.

The Commercial Bit!

The Vallejo colours used were as follows:

Flesh 70955, Black 70950, Leather Brown 70871, Yellow Ochre 70913, Black grey 70862, Medium sea grey 70862, Off white 70820, Steel 70864, Brass70801, Flat yellow 70953, Silver 70997, Gold 70996, Orange red 70910, Light Orange 70911.

All paints are available, post free at the time of writing, from the Arcane Scenery shop here:

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Tufts and basing stuff is here:

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Painting the Nassau-Usingen Battalion. Part one, the plan….

Back in March, I was a participant in a small Napoleonic demo game we had put on to support the Bingham Napoleonic day. We, being my two gaming buddies, Pete and Andy. I had already agreed to finish my model of Papelotte in time for the battle and I surprised myself by completing it way ahead of schedule. You can read all about the day and the battle here:

THE BATTLE FOR PAPELOTTE

Papelotte is secure!

With the main scenery piece completed I turned my attention to the troops involved. Our battles usually tend to be a nod in the direction of historical accuracy and if we haven’t got the exact order of battle we are happy to improvise. However, when I checked my Waterloo companion for the OOB, it was clear that one of the most significant deployment of allied troops in this area was the 2nd Nassau-Usingen Regiment. Whilst we had plenty of Hanoverians, a contingent of Dutch and Belgium and plenty of British and French troops, none of us had any Nassau. There was even a provision for the Prussians to arrive and we had even talked about using some Portuguese troops as reinforcements! Actually, this turned out to be not so daft as I thought, as Wellington had the same idea, but that’s for another blog!

I thought that I would have a go at painting at least one unit and so ordered some figures from the Perry’s Web site. Of course it wasn’t that straight forward. First I had to do a bit of research and to be truthful, I tied myself in knots trying to figure out what Nassau was which. There were the Orange Nassau Regiment, otherwise know as the 28th Nassau, comprising of 2 battalions and a small Jaeger battalion. The Nassau-Unsingen regiment consisted of 3 battalions of which the first was sent to help defend Hougomont and the second and third battalions, present at Papelotte. The Perry’s web shop list the first and second battalions as separate packs as there does seem to be a difference in their uniforms. The third battalion isn’t mentioned, so presumably it’s identical in uniform to the second, the battalion that I was interested in.

A quick check on the wonderful Mont St Jean site seemed to confirm my thoughts so I went with the second battalion. Now usually I am pretty rigid in painting my battalions as units of 24 figures but I noticed that the Nassau battalions were quite large and consisted of around 900 men. This is significantly more than the usual 600 that were present in British Battalions at Waterloo. There are also some significant differences in uniform within the battalion which is divided into 6 Companies. The four ‘centre’ companies or Fusiliers, are identical apart from the different coloured cap plumes but the Grenadier and Voltigeur flank companies are quite different.

The grenadiers!

After a great deal of thought, I decided that I would have to go with 36 figures in a regiment and placed my order for a command pack, 3 centre company packs, a pack of Grenadiers, a pack of Voltigeurs and while I was at it, the casualty pack and two packs of Volunteer jaegers. Oh! and the very nice models of the commander Prince Bernard and his staff! And that, my friends, is how that lead mountain accumulates!

The Voltigeurs

Then reality set in. How was I going to have these figures finished in the three weeks that I had before the battle was due to take place? As I had said, my research was cursory at best and I hadn’t even thought about what colours I would use. Fortunately, Dave Woodward happened to call into Arcane Scenery for some paints. Dave actually painted the models used on the Perry’s web site so I pinned him into the corner and interrogated him as to what colours he used! ‘I don’t know’ he cried ‘it was ages ago that I painted them’. Fortunately, Dave is a great guy and he helped me to work out a basic colour scheme that would give me a fighting chance to at least get some of the figures painted for the battle.

The cunning plan that he came up with was to spray the troops with Army painter Greenskin primer. This colour is perhaps a bit bright but I intended to use quick shade which would dull it down. The other significant colour was the cross straps on the uniforms and the yellow stripes and facings. The answer was Vallejo Yellow Ochre 70913. The rest of the colours were pretty straight forward and using the pictures from the Mont St Jean site as my guide, I could press on and batch paint the battalion!

You can see how I did this in the next blog!

The Commercial bit and useful links

You can see the Mont St Jean reference for Nassau here:

NASSAU UNSINGEN REGIMENT

The Sarissa version of Papelotte is here:

PAPELOTTE

Vallejo model colour paints can be found here:

VALLEJO

The Perry’s web site is here:

PERRY MINIATURES

Toranaga San!

I’ve been away on a short break over Easter, so progress on my various projects has been limited. A holiday, however short, is a good time to refocus and think about what will be next onto the workbench. Whilst idling on a sun bed in Gran Canaria, my mind wandered as I considered the unfinished projects back at home.

Oda Nobunaga primed

Before I went away, I had cleaned and primed a Wargames Illustrated Limited edition model of Oda Nobunaga. The original plan was to pretty much copy the colour scheme the the Wargames Illustrated painter had used.

Wargamies Illustrated Oda

The Oda model had been produced by WI as one of their ‘Giants in Miniature’ series but was also given a special card for the Test of Honour game that I am such a fan of at the moment! The card allows players to recruit groups of musket men for just 2 points a group – an interesting option for my next warband. You can download the card from the Wargames Illustrated site here:

http://www.wargamesillustrated.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/nobunaga2.pdf

To read more, you will need to get hold of a copy of WI335 or join the WI prime club – this will give you access to all of the WI articles and is particularly useful to recover older magazines and articles from their vault!

https://www.wargamesillustrated.net/?s=Oda+nobunaga&post_type=

Rather than copy the WI colour scheme, I decided to use a colour scheme based on the description of the fictional hero, Toranaga, from the book ‘Shogun’ by James Clavell. In the book, the ‘goodies’ wear a brown uniform and I thought that this would make a change from the usual bright colour schemes that I tend towards.

I also decided to use a slightly different Flesh colour scheme. It’s one that I have used before and is simply a case of starting with Vallejo 70804 Beige red as a base, adding in 70927 dark Flesh and then using off white 70820 to top off the highlights. I also tend to use at least one or two washes of Army painter soft tone ink to help with blending.

Toranaga Work in progress.

For the robes, I started with 70822 German Camouflage black brown, followed by 70872 Chocolate brown, with a top highlight of 70983 Flat earth. The Under shirt was simply Iraqui sand. It all looked a bit stark so I gave these area a good wash of Strong Tone, the dark brown Army painter ink and the result is as shown above.

Toranaga almost finished?

I then went back and using first a mix of Flat Earth and Chocolate brown re painted the highlights and then gradually added more Flat earth, with a touch of Iraqui sand to add in the top highlights. I also added some grey to ‘Toranaga’s ‘ hair, painted the Katanga silver and brass and added some red details to the scabbard and the under shirt. The socks are off white and the sandals German Cam Black brown.

Unusually for me, I’ve painted the eyes on the figure – I don’t usually bother but these are quite well sculpted and fairly easy to paint in. That said, by now my eyes were getting tired and as you can see, eye’s are not my strength when it comes to painting.

Toranga ready for battle - well, nearly!

Toranaga ready for battle – well, nearly!

Not much has changed in the final picture, I have added some ink to the Katana handle to bring out the detail but as I mentioned above, by now my eyes were tiring and I always find that a break from painting and a look at the pictures gives me a chance to assess if anything else needs changing. I can see that the Katana handle will need a quick touch up with white and the red stripe on the under shirt needs a bit of definition – either a black line or careful wash of ink.

The most significant improvement will of course be a proper base ( without the blu tack!) and some grass tufts or flowers to add a bit of interest and Toranaga will be ready to take to the wargames table. Of course, I will still use the Oda Nobunaga card!

So the plan is to have him finished over the weekend and then it’s on to the next part of the Test of Honour project, nine Ashigaru armed with Teppo!

If you would like to read more about Samurai Arquebuses , or teppo, click here:

https://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Teppo

To read about Oda Nobunaga, click here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oda_Nobunaga

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To see the range of Samurai items currently in stock at Arcane Scenery, Click here:

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The Battle For Papelotte

One way or another, March has been a beast of a month! What with two bouts of snowy weather causing disruption both at home and work, a radiator bursting ( old age not cold…) flooding the bedroom and dining room, a brace and a half of significant Family Birthdays (Father in Laws 80th, Wifes 60th and Granddaughter’s 5th) all topped off with yours truly going down with a nasty dose of man flu, Hobby time has been at a premium.

Despite all of that, the month started with my attendance at the Bingham Napoleonic weekend on 3rd March. I was there with my two gaming buddies , Pete and Andy to run a demo wargame based on the action around Papelotte, Waterloo 1815. The previous year we had run a similar game based on the action at Quatre Bras with some success, so we thought a continuation into the next day would be fun. Andy, who does the organisation & research had decided that the action around Papelotte is very much under represented in favour of the other ‘big’ moments in the battle. I also had a very nice Sarissa Precision model of Papelotte lying unfinished in my garage so it was an excuse to get on with the model for the day!

You can read how I went about finishing the model for the Demo game here:

PAPELOTTE IN PROGRESS

The other attraction of basing a game around Papelotte was that most of the Allied Soldiers fighting there were actually Allies, not British Redcoats, so a force of Nassau, Dutch-Belgium’s and Hanoverian troops would be taking on the might of France. Of course, we didn’t follow the exact script or order of battle. Andy likes to have a bit of ‘what if’ in his battles – it gives us armchair generals something to pontificate about whilst munching our mid morning bacon cobs….

The rest of the blog is a bit picture heavy but should guide you through the battle as it unfolded.

Dutch Jaeger deployed outside of Papelotte.

2nd Nassau were deployed inside the farmhouse – hold at all costs!

French cavalry scout the battlefield

Once the French Cavalry had scouted the area, the French Columns deployed to take the Farm house and capture the ridge, pushing Wellingtons left flank back and preventing him from reinforcing his centre.

The French Advance!

Despite reaching the road running across the ridge, the French advance is held by the Hanoverian Landwehr.

Hannoverian Landwehr hold the line!

At Papelotte farmhouse, the light Jaegers were quickly overcome and the assult of the farmhouse began.

The skirmishers are overcome

Despite taking casualties, the Nassau hold on.

The road was fiercely contested!

The French were very determined!

Meanwhile, the Dutch & Belgian troops had managed to redeploy and march to relieve the pressure on Papelotte.

Dutch – Belgians save the day

Catching the French attackers in the flank, they push them back, and Papelotte is held!

Papelotte is secure!

If Papelotte is secured and with it, the corridor for Prussian reinforcements to arrive, the battle is still in the balance. The French General decides to ignore the farmhouse in favour of a push on the ridge.

Take the ridge!

Advance!

French Pressure begins to win

The determined French attack on the ridge now began to have it’s effect and despite reinforcements, the Hanoverians were pushed back. As yet, there were no signs of the Prussians arriving to help out either. Clearly they had be delayed! Wellington would be forced to shore up his left wing to hold the French back. Would this have made a difference to the overall battle? Well, it was a good time to stop for cakes & coffee and consider the position!

The battle is ours!

And so the battle drew to an end. We had played the game at a very lazy pace although we had few opportunities to talk to visitors – the bad snow fall had meant that visitor numbers to the show were very low. The show had been held on the same day as Hammerhead and despite Hammerhead being cancelled, this seemed to have the effect of dissuading anyone from travelling to Bingham, even though the major roads were open.

It was a shame that the event was so quiet as there were some very interesting speakers and guests on through out the day. Perhaps if you are free next year, you might like to pop along, weather permitting!

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks!

My Christmas present from my wife this year was a two day course at Barwells in Leicester. The topic, ‘How to use an Airbrush’. After over 50 years of modelling and painting, you would have thought that I was familiar with the technique but apart from one failed attempt with a cheap humbrol airbrush and canned air back in the ’80s, I have never been able to get my head around the idea. I have watched others and picked up a bit of knowledge from reading, you tube, and talking to customers and suppliers but the truth is I never use one. It seemed like I didn’t have time to stop using a paint brush and learn a new technique from scratch. I wasn’t entirely sure that it would be of use, now that I have moved from 40K to historical subjects.

To put things into context, I even had bought a complete set up from Expo but it has sat in my garage under the work bench for over two years and the model air colours that I had bought have been used with a standard brush. As an aside – Vallejo model air are very good for brushing!

The opportunity to go on a course and have someone to show me how to use an airbrush seemed to be a good solution. I had seen the Barwells stand at a couple of war games shows and loitered around watching Steve from Barwells demo-ing the products and I mentioned to My wife that perhaps a course would help. As buying Christmas presents for me is difficult, Julie was more than happy with the idea and I was booked in to the ‘Airbrushing for Beginners’ course on the weekend of 24th/25th February.

The course is run by the appropriately named Steve Puffer of Barwells and it is made clear that on day one you don’t need to bring anything but yourself. Everything is supplied, including unlimited coffee and chocolate biscuits, a buffet lunch and of course the Airbrushes and paint!

The set up at Barwells

After a friendly welcome from Steve, the day began with a short informal talk on how an airbush works and it’s component parts. As there are only 6 people on the course, there’s plenty of time for questions and Steve is well able to get around and check how you are doing when it comes to the practical exercises. Steve has spent his career using an airbrush in the car and bike customisation industry, so his knowledge is not only extremely comprehensive but also very practical and down to earth. He quickly dispels the ‘myths and magic’ that sometimes go with this aspect of the hobby and emphasises that the airbrush is just a tool to do a job, not very different to a paint brush and with the same degree of care will give superb results.

With the basic instructions and techniques demonstrated, ( I wont repeat them all here – you will have to go to the course!), we were unleashed with our airbrushes and the practical work started. For me, this was the great benefit of the course. We started by practicing the various ‘airbrush strokes’ on paper. The beauty being that as well as a great set up, we had plenty of time, materials and Steve’s enthusiastic coaching to keep us focused. If I had been at home, I would have lost patience and picked up my paint brush to do some modelling!

Once we were reasonably competent, the next challenge was to paint a Demo piece shown below. We had a picture to follow as a guide, but we were encouraged to use whatever colours we fancied!

Test in progress!

Throughout the day, Steve was on hand to give encouragement as well as share ideas. At the end of the session, we had all produced something that looked a bit like the original but more importantly, we had gained confidence when it came to using the airbrush.

First days work completed – not bad for the first time with an airbrush!

Onto day two, and we had the choice of either bringing our own models to paint or we could use some of the many sample models in the studio to work on. I elected to bring my own as I wanted to see just what I could achieve with an air brush. The day started with a bit more tuition and a fun exercise where we had to see how many colours we could get onto a model in 15 minutes.

Chaos Biker with chaotic colour scheme!

The exercise was of course another clever way of getting us familiar with our new tool and demonstrated just how quickly we could change colours.

It was now down to the serious business of working on the models that we had brought. My main subject was a 1/48th scale Panther made by Blitzkrieg models. I was using the studio colour range but I had help from one of the other course members, Rodger, who knew his German camouflage colours!

I started out with a bit of pre shading, a technique previously covered in one of the ‘coaching sessions’ with Steve.

Pre shading the Panther

The next task was to build the base colour – I perhaps not only underestimated how little I needed to recoat the model but also misjudged how the colour would dry – more patience and experience will sort this!

Base coat on!

The next step was to airbrush on the brown and green camouflage. As you can see, I was perhaps too heavy handed and I should have taken some reference material rather than work from memory!

Camouflage on!

At this point, I would have been reaching for a paint brush to add some detail but Steve wouldn’t allow anyone near a brush! So I went on to paint the rubber road wheels with an airbrush and using another technique that we had learnt, added mud splashes and then ‘dirtied down’ the top areas to represent wear and tear. As usual, I was a bit heavy handed and over enthusiastic but I got the idea. In future less will be more!

Completed Panther

As you can see from the picture above, I also added some basic markings using a mask Supplied by Barwells. As well as painting the Panther, I also had a go at painting a couple of miniatures to see just what could be achieved with an airbrush. The 28mm Prussian Landwehr model was a limited success, the close ups below showing the over spray. That said, for a first attempt, the results show some promise and whilst it would be beyond my skill to complete a figure, it looks as though most of the block painting of the major colours could be achieved.

Close up of Prussian Landwehr

Rear view of airbrushed figure.

The limber horse was also an experiment and I think that there is definitely potential to paint horses using the airbrush as the shading is quite subtle. Once the straps and harness are tidied up, I think the horse will look acceptable.

Airbrushed Horse

Air brushed horse – it looks better on this side!

Finally, the other piece that I took was a Tamiya V-1 rocket that I had quickly put together on the Friday night before I went to Barwells. In this case, I just managed to prime the model but I must comment that using an Airbrush to prime your models is much superior to blasting them with a spray can! The finish was excellent – the only problem was that some of my heavy handed use of the glue showed up!

V-1 primed and ready to paint!

So a busy weekend came to an end and what a productive one it was too! My next challenge is now to re -jig my painting station in the garage to accommodate my new airbrush and to keep using it. There’s no question that it is an ideal way of priming even the smallest of models and of course, spray varnishing them once they are done. Incidentally, using water based paints through an airbrush is quite suitable for indoors work – there were six of us working in the same room without any ill effects and none of the smell that you would get with using a spray can. No more going outside into the garden to prime or varnish my models!

If you are thinking of trying airbrushing for your self, I can heartily recommend that a course at Barwells is well worth the investment. You wont become an expert in two days but you will gain a tremendous amount of experience, and thanks to Steve Puffers enthusiasm and practical knowledge of the subject, I have no doubt that you will become competent enough to start to get the best out of this method of finishing your models.

If you would like to attend a course, you can find all of the details at Barwells Web page here:

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