Blog – Page 31 – Steve’s Hobby Blog

Whats on the Workbench 20th November 2014

Much as I am committed to my Lion Rampant retinue, I couldn’t stop work on my Napoleonic Army. I intend to complete the 6th Division as it appeared at Waterloo ( with some artistic licence, of course). Having added another Hanoverian Battalion, I decided to go back to the British. I had already painted the 1/27th Inniskillins, and the 1/4th Kings Own, so the final British battalion in the Division was the 1/40 2nd Sommersetshires. This battalion has buff facings and so is very similar to the 1/27th. Fortunately, when I assembled this unit from the Perry boxed set, I made all of the figures, so in effect I had 12 extra men already finished in buff facings. It is now just a question of adding the command group of 6 and 6 figures to represent the flank companies and another battalion is ready for battle.

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As usual, I will use the Mont St Jean web site for reference when painting, but for the time being, here are a few pictures of the additional models being assembled & made ready! As you will see, the easiest way of making the command group was to order a spare command sprue from the Perry web site. I’ve slightly altered the Officer and used a head from the Victrix set to make him different from the 1/27th officer. I’ve also added in a Sapper from a Victrix metal command set. As a side project, I’ll also paint the mounted Colonels that the Sapper came with as Officers for the Battalions, which will use up the whole pack and reduce my lead mountain reserve slightly! The rest of the command are assembled as usual.

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For the Flank Companys’ I have used a mixture of Perry’s & Victrix parts to make the six required figures. Here’s the Left flank:

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And here is the Right Flank:

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As you can see, the Perrys (grey plastic) and the Victrix (Light Brown plastic), mix very well and there is very little difference in the size of the figures so they are quite compatible. Mixing sets is a very simple way of making conversions and giving variation to the troops in a unit. So it’s just the painting now….

The Lion is Rampant – Again!

I mentioned in my blog earlier that I had signed up for the Wargames Illustrated Magazine’s Lion Rampant day, to be held on 31st January 2015. Although it seems some way off, I thought that I better start putting my retinue together and of course practicing the game. As I am somewhat focused on collecting English Armies (and their Allies!), I thought that I would start with a typical English Warband. In the LR rules this breaks down to: a unit of 6 foot men at arms; a unit of 12 ‘expert’ foot sergeants and two units of 12 ‘expert’ Bowmen; a total of 42 figures to assemble and paint.

I could save a bit of painting time by having two units of 6 foot men at arms but this will make the army quite fragile. However, in the short term it will speed the process of having my own retinue finished. The beauty of the English Retinue is that I think that I will be able to build most of the figures using the Perry’s Wars of The Roses Plastic boxed set, which has 40 figures, a good mix of which are either archers or Bill men (foot sergeants). So for an outlay of £12 for the rules and £20 for the figures, I’m in the game!

For those of you not familiar with Lion Rampant, it is one of the Osprey Wargames mini rules, written by Daniel Mersey. It’s one of those clever rules sets that does what it says, it really is straight forward and simple to learn, easy to play and has enough subtlety to keep players engaged. As I have previously noted, this type of skirmish game is a great way to explore a historical genre before you pile in and build a huge army. Even better, the small war bands allow you to mix & match different troop types. So if my English Army doesn’t work for me or if I fancy a change, it wont take too much effort to produce, say, a Templar war retinue.

The game itself is a bit like Saga Rules, but without the Saga board – all the action takes place on the table and combat is resolved quickly by rolling either 6 or 12 dice. A simple attack & defence mechanic determines how many casualties are inflicted and then it’s down to morale – which unit has the stomach for a fight! The fog of war comes in the order system, you roll a dice to see if a unit will activate or not. If it activates ( Moves , Attacks etc) then you go to the next unit. If not, your opponent gets the turn. This soon opens up opportunities or causes problems, depending on which side of the table that you are on! Of course, the other fun comes from the scissors, rock, paper effect of matching one type of troop to another.

So, I have painted my first unit, the foot men at arms. It’ a bit of a motley crew -4 of the figures are Perry plastics, and two are spare metal figures that I had lurking in my lead mountain! In fact I think that both were figures given out at past Newark wargames shows, one of which I painted some years ago & just needed rebasing. Painting was fairly straight forward, I spray undercoated the figures in Plate mail, gave them a dry brush with silver, painted the cloth & leather bits ( Scabard & belts etc) blue or red for a bit of colour, and gold for the sword pommels, brown for any wood. Then a good wash of black ink, brought out the detail before re highlighting the armour. Basing is done using Sandy paste to level up the figures on the renedra 20mm plastic bases, then extra sand added & painted in chocolate brown & highlighted & dry bushed with Iraqi Sand. I finished off with a liberal dose of tufts and flowers…. Here’s the first unit :

Whats on the Workbench 23 October 2014

2014-10-23 10.19.08 Well I am just about going to scrape in with my objective of finishing a Hanoverian unit by the end of October! As you can see the officers are close to being finished – final highlights need to be applied. The only figure that needs painting now is the Drummer and I will then have my unit of 24 finished. The next stage is to base them and then finally the add the flags. Ah! the flags….

The problem here is that I cant find any reference to flags used by specific regiments of Hanoverian Troops at Waterloo, particularly the Landwehr units. Indeed, it is possible that they did not carry any into battle. But that wont do for a war games unit – my aim is to make a representation of the unit for the war games table and they look prettier carrying flags! As I have already stretched history by giving my unit the flat peaked caps, it wont hurt to use a bit of artistic licence when it comes to the flags, so I think that I am going down the route of using a conjectural Hanoverian Battalion flag and a Blue Kings Colour for the other ensign.

If there are any of the ‘fashion police’ or ‘button counters’ out there twitching at the liberties that I am taking with this unit, dont worry, I’m twitching with you! One of the dilemmas of historical wargaming is deciding whether you are trying to build an entirely accurate scale representation of the units involved in a particular battle or a general representation of the units that were around at that point in history. Of course, the further back in history you go, the more difficult it is to be sure of who wore what and when. Even the modern day infantryman appears to supplement his uniform by purchasing kit from ebay! It always amuses me that we are told exactly what style of armour/helmet/weapons various ancient tribes used when after a battle, the first thing that the winners did was loot the dead of their possessions.

You can just hear the conversation now. ‘Oi Ulrich, there’s no way you’re wearing that Saxon Helmet, you’re a Viking, so put it down, besides, you’ll make us look silly when Osprey come to take our picture…..’

It seems I digress, but you see the problem. Regardless, this weekends task is to finish painting the drummer, re highlight the officers and then get the whole lot based up and another Hanoverian unit can join my growing British Napoleonic Army!

Whats on the workbench 16th October

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Sometimes it’s difficult to fit painting miniatures around all the other jobs that need doing! The last week has been no exception. However, I have managed to finish the second pack of Neanderthals and I’ve also finished those Jaguars that were undercoated about three weeks ago. I’m happy with the Lucid Eye neanderthals. They are superb sculpts and that always makes it a pleasure to paint miniatures that have so much character. As regards the paint scheme, I used a variety of browns for the furs, from Vallejo of course! The colours were:

822 German Cam. Black brown, 872 chocolate, 984 Flat Brown, 871 Leather brown, 877 Gold Brown, 914 Green Ochre, 819 Iraqui sand, 918 Ivory plus white & off white. I painted the flesh using 804 beige red and flat flesh. I also used a few ink washes of various strengths , both strong tone brown & Vallejo black shade. The basing was straight forward. Just some Vallejo Sandy paste to level things up and then a coat of basing sand painted with Vallejo chocolate brown highlighted with Iraqi sand. To finish, just a few highland tufts!

2014-10-16 13.16.29 The next project was the Jaguars. I’m not sure that I am happy with the finished result. Painting and highlighting black is a devilish business! I’ve tried using blue rather than grey or white and in the end it was a mixture of both but I haven’t got the effect that I was looking for. I also used white to paint on some whiskers & for the teeth but it all looks a bit stark. the standard of photography isn’t too good either!The yellow eyes have just about worked. I think that when they are properly based, with plenty off jungle cover they may look OK. So that’s it for this week. Next up, back to Hanoverians – the officers this time.

Whats on the Workbench 9th October – Neanderthals & Hanoverians!

2014-10-09 09.37.11 A strange mix of subjects on my workbench at the moment! I’ve just about finished painting 18 rank & file Hanoverian Landwehr. As you can see from the picture, they’re all based and ready for the table. There are of course 6 figures missing – the officers, ensigns & sergeants. They are undercoated and ready to paint, so they should keep me busy for the next few painting sessions. I will then have a nice unit of 24 figures representing the Munden Landwehr battalion. As far as finishing the figures went, once I had painted them with Army painter Strong tone, I gave them 24 hours to dry and then sprayed them with Army painter Anti shine. I tend to use a light coat and if the figures are still a bit shiny in places then I use vallejo matt varnish, just brushed on, to finish off.

The next job is to go back over the lighter colours to make them stand out. So I repaint the white straps, yellow hat bands and any metallics. The bayonets get a coat of silver to make them stand out on the battlefield! It sounds like a long process but it doesn’t take too long. The idea is just to highlight these colours, so if you miss a bit then it just looks as though the area has been shaded.

Basing is then completed. Again, I have gone for a quick basing finish. The first task was to mount each 4 figures on a 40mm square renedra base. I then used Vallejo sandy paste to blend the figure bases into the renedra base to get an even surface. When this was dry, I painted this Vallejo chocolate brown to gice a dark base on which to work. I prefer a brown edge to my bases rather than green or black, which are also favoured by painters. Next up, I coated the bases in PVA and covered with a forest brown scatter. This in turn, had patches of Javis green scatter added and then I detailed the bases with smaller patches of Expo flowered field static grass. The final touch was to add some Noch summer grass tufts and of course my ‘trademark’ flowers – in this case, Noch white flower clumps.

In the picture you will also see that I have painted a female admirer waving the Hanoverians off to battle! It’s a bit of a nod to the Warlord box art and she will of course take her place in little Bingham, the town on my war games table. Without getting too commercial, all of the items that I use are available in the Arcane Scenery shop and if anyone out there reading this needs some help, call us and I will be happy to talk through the materials & techniques used.

2014-10-09 09.46.44 The other project that has leap-frogged up the painting queue is pack two of the Lucid Eye Neanderthals. Arcane Scenery are now stocking the Lucid Eye Range and of course the Neanderthals go really well with some of the Ice Age DeeZee miniatures that we produce. The Mammoths, Cave Bears & Smilodons for starters! So I’m working on getting a little band of Neanderthals ready for a Hunting party. One is just about finished, except the basing, the other two are just awaiting the fur pelts to be highlighted & the detail picked out. The techinique that I have used for these is slightly different from my usual style. Rather than using ‘dip’ to shade, I am shading and highlighting using inks, dry brushing and mixing lighter & lighter shades of the base colours. It’s a bit more time consuming for me but gives a nice result, particularly when the figures are so well sculpted. Here’s the progress so far. I’ll spend a bit more time in my next blog detailing the colours used.

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The Lion Rampant!

I’ve managed to wean myself off of playing Black Powder for a few weeks! It can get a bit stale playing the same rules set, although I am addicted to Napoleonics for the time being. That said, I have wanted to build a collection of army’s and have been looking for inspiration elsewhere. I have been very tempted by the American War of Independence, as I like the look of the Muskets & Tomahawks rules but the thought of painting more redcoats doesn’t appeal whilst I’m still working on my Napoleonic army.

A recent rules set arrived in stock that did take my fancy and it would give me the opportunity to start another different army from a different period. The Rules set was ‘The Lion Rampant’, a medieval skirmish rules set. Skirmish games are a great way to get you into a period and allow you to play with just a few figures. The Lion Rampant is ideal in this respect as you need about 30 to 50 figures and you have a reasonable retinue with which to play the game. I think that with a box of Perry’s Foot Knights & Mounted Men at Arms I will be able to make a decent retinue. I’ll also have a look at the options from Fireforge games. Their figures have been tempting me for some time now!

So when I was invited to play a game at the local club, The White Hart Gamers, I jumped at the chance. As I thought, it was a straight forward rules set that allowed easy play, just right for a club night game. We played on a 4×4 foot table with 4 retinues all doing battle. It ended with all four leaders meeting their end in glorious combat! In fact we probably overplayed the game but by the end of the game, we were all familiar with the basic rules and enthusiastic enough to sign up for a campaign day in January next year. So I have another project to add to my list. In the meantime, if anyone out there is looking for a new game to play, I can very much recommend the Lion Rampant! Here’s a few pictures of our game.

Whats on the Workbench 25/9 & Deezee Miniatures

2014-09-25 11.06.22 Progress on the Hanoverian battalion continues, albeit at a snails pace. I had started to paint a batch of 18 figures but progress was too slow and so I decided to finish six off just to get to see how they would look. The picture shows the first six block painted according to the colour scheme from the Mont St Jean site ( see last weeks blog for link). The next stage will be to paint them with army painter quick shade – I’ll use the strong tone or black shade. This will give me the shading to bring out the detail, particularly the faces and trousers. It will also give a clear outline to the equipment and lacing, making them stand out. Once the quick shade has dried, I’ll highlight the figures by repainting the lighter colours, particularly the webbing & lace and I’ll highlight the metals with either silver or gold as appropriate. This will really make the Buttons & bayonets stand out on the battlefield. Of course the most important finishing touch will be the bases! I just need to think about the colour of the flowers that I will use….. Hopefully by next week I will have at least these six finished. One final thought on painting these models. With hindsight, I should have painted the three individual pieces that make a figure separately. It would have made painting the detail much easier, so I will give this a try when I paint the next 18 figures.

Changing the subject completely, I mentioned in a previous blog that I was working my way through the Deezee range. Well, next on the workbench is a couple of Jaguars! One of them is not yet in production but we are edging ever closer to sorting this out! All being well, we will change the pack on the Jaguars so that you will get two different animals rather than two the same. The bear cubs should be in production by next week and we will have a couple of brand new packs of dogs! Here’s the Jaguars, just undercoated. I will be trying to paint them both as Black Jaguars, the sort that appeared in Apocalypto. On the face of it, that is the simpler option as opposed to the spotted type of Jaguar. However, painting & shading black is quite difficult – I’ll show you how I get on when they are finished. 2014-09-25 11.07.26

Collecting an Army……

It’s always a pleasure to hear from other people in the hobby and to see what they have been up to. I recently had an email from Alan, who collects and paints 1/32 scale WW2 figures. Not only does he have a huge collection of Soldiers & AFV’s but due to space constraints, the collection has to share a table with his vintage railway. However, the result is just great and the two interests compliment each other and help to show one another off. Here’s Alan’s email detailing his collection:

‘Have had a count up, nearly 20 Shermans and Fireflies, 2 M10s, 4 US halftracks and around 150 infantrymen depicting the 29^th Division from Omaha beach to the Bocage region, also 101^st airbourne. Also includes support trucks. Brits are 130 Coldstream Guards and full battery of 25pounders and paras.

Germans, 160 infantry of 916^th division, Omaha and Bocage complete with Stugs, Hetzer tank destroyers, Panzer IVs and Panthers support. Also Kettenkrads and Kubelwagons with PAK 40 anti tank guns and mortar batteries and motor cycle combos. ther are 40+ paras supported by Panthers, 50+ Panzer grenadiers supported by King Tigers, Tiger Is, halftracks and assorted light vehicles. Full battery of 88s with remnants of Luftwaffe regiment support.’

Wow! now that is a collection. Here’s just a few of his pictures:

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Warlord Hanoverian Infantry

After a short break from Napoleonics, I decided to get back on track with my British contingent. However, the German influence remains! Having finished the Prussian infantry for the time being, I am moving onto Hanoverians! The plan is to complete the British 6th Infantry Division as they appeared at Waterloo. Which means that I need to paint 4 battalions of Hanoverian Landwehr to make the 4th Hanoverian Brigade that was one half of the division. The Other half was made up of 3 British Battalions, the 4th Kings Own, 27th Inniskillings, and the 40th Sommersets. ( There was a forth battalion, the 81st, but they were left in Brussels).

I already have completed the 4th, 27th and Verden Landwehr and so need to paint three more Landwehr battalions, the Luneberg, Munden and Osterode, a total of 72 figures. I’ve decided to use the Warlord Games Hanoverian boxed set and use the flat peaked field caps for two of the battalions, the other will be in Stovepipe shakos for a bit of difference.

2014-08-28 11.04.46 The Warlord figures are nice and straight forward to put together and have very little flash to worry about. A bit of cleaning with a file & a scrape with a knife and they are ready for undercoating. Here’s the first batch of 5 ready to be sprayed.

I’m going to use army painter grey spray for the undercoat. This will save time painting the trousers & blanket rolls and the grey takes the red for the jackets better than the other way around. I wont base them at this stage, the small bases that they are on will be good enough to hold whilst painting although I know that the ‘professionals’ would mount them on temporary bases. I am going to be batch painting a large amount again, so I’m happy to work with them as they are. It will also allow me to base them as fours on larger 40mm square bases once they are completed. As always, for my painting guide, I use the Mont st Jean site, which gives a nice clear picture of how to paint my figures. LandwehrHanovre

The reference material supplied with the warlord set is also very good as well. The point is made in the leaflet that not too many hard facts survive regarding the exact details of the Landwehr uniform but from the research that I have done, I wont be too far out following these colours. I suspect having the battalion in field caps is a stretch, regarding accuracy, but as I have said , it will make for a bit of difference on the battlefield and help to differentiate the battalions. As for flags, there is even less information, so I’ll use a bit of licence when solving this problem! One final thought, The Hanoverian Landwehr didn’t have flank companies but the warlord include figures with flank epaulets. Technically, I need to remove these but I suspect that I’ll just paint them when the time comes….

If You Go Down To The Woods…..

Once again, I find that my modelling and painting activities are taking a back seat and I have had very limited time to get to paint anything. I have managed to get the to Bear Cubs finished though. As I mentioned before, we will be adding these to the DeeZee range – I hope to have production started on these in the next fortnight, subject to the production moulds being completed.

The Bear cubs are a bit on the large size, even for giant Ice Age bears and to be fair, are more like juveniles than cubs. They look cute enough, though, and make an interesting addition to the range. The paint scheme was quick and easy enough, just a base coat of chocolate brown and then a number of dry brush highlights using increasing amounts of light brown. The noses, claws & eyes were picked out in black and then the eyes given a coat of gloss varnish. I’ve added a few flowers onto the base to represent the bears in spring time (not that I need an excuse to add flowers – most of my bases feature these, much to the amusement of my gaming buddies!) So the Bears are done. Onto the next batch of neanderthals!

What’s on the Workbench 28 August 2014

After nearly 3 weeks away from my workbench, I was actually pleased that we had a miserable wet Bank Holiday! I was able to sneak off and at last get some painting done! I was still persisting with my Prussian Brigade. The last figures that needed painting were the Volunteer Jaeger that come with the Perry’s Prussian infantry set. I didn’t do my usual research on these figures regarding uniforms but just relied on the artwork supplied in the boxed set ( which is usually very good anyway!).

Prussian Volunteer Jaeger

For some reason, I didn’t enjoy painting these figures as much as usual. I suspect that I have become a bit jaded with Prussians! Regardless, I pressed on and finished them as I thought best, with green jackets, yellow facings ( for Silesia), and equipment colours as the rest of my Prussians. Here are the figures based & ready for battle tonight!

As well as finishing these figures I started to prepare another batch ready for painting. I am working my way through the DeeZee range at the moment. Although we have painted examples of the full range now, some of them are quite old and since we acquired the range, I have been gradually painting examples. As well as giving me a few more display pieces it also helps me to understand how to paint the models so that I will be able to advise customers in the future. We also have some new models in the pipeline – we’ve already released the Baby Mammoth so next up we have some Juvenile or Baby bears! Here they are undercoated ready for painting. At some point in the future I’ll do an update on the DeeZee range and where we are going with it. The other little project on the go is my band of Neanderthals. Sculpted by Steve Saleh at Lucid Eye, these figures are the second pack to be released. There is a slight glitch in production as Steve has moved jobs but we hope to solve this soon. The Lucid Eye range fits nicely in with the Deezee Range, We have the animals, Steve will supply the Hunters ( or hunted!), so we hope that we can work with Steve to keep the range in production and growing. Here’s the pics: 2014-08-28 11.03.52

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History surrounds us.

I haven’t lifted a paint brush or done any modelling for nearly a fortnight now. It’s been one of those fallow periods that you go through from time to time. There are other things happening in life that draw you away from your hobby. We are having a new kitchen installed that has caused a bit of chaos and, of course, my hobby den, AKA the garage has been used as a dumping ground for the new units coming in and then the old ones going out. This means that I couldn’t get to my workbench if I wanted to. There was some good news though. I have had a new light installed in the Garage as well as a couple of new power sockets, so when I do get access ( next week…) the facilities will be much improved.

I also had to return to my home town in Torquay to conclude some family business. Sadly, my father passed away back in March after a long illness, and I have been travelling back & forwards to Torquay from Nottingham for the last few months. My Dad was a big influence on my hobby. Of course if it wasn’t for him I would probably never have got involved with building models. Dad was an enthusiastic model airplane and model boat builder and was more concerned with building a working model rather than the ultimate replica. He taught me the practical skills that I needed to build models, how to use the various glues, filler & materials and of course how to use the tools & techniques to produce a good model.

The Slipways at Torquay

His other passion was for fishing – sea fishing of course, being in Torquay. The great advantage of sea fishing over coarse fishing ( apart from the fact that you usually eat what you catch when sea fishing!), is that you don’t have to be quiet and so you can have a conversation whilst you are watching your float. During our fishing trips to Torquay harbour, my Brother & I would be asking Dad about the various buildings and structures and it was surprising how many of the unusual buildings around the harbour were actually defensive structures from the Second World war, now modified for everyday use. This inevitably led to stories from the second world war. Dad was only a young boy during the war but he witnessed the Terror raids on Torquay, ( My Mum was bombed out of her house in Babbacombe and my Aunty was nearly killed when a Fockewolf crashed where she was taking shelter – stories to be told in later entries in my Blog) and of course the build up to D Day. The Americans were billeted at the bottom of Dads Road in Upton Park.

It was from these stories that my love of history grew, and if you put an interest in history together with a passion for modelling, a wargamer and military modeler is sure to emerge! The strange thing is that whilst at school, although we learnt the dates of the big battles and wars, when kings came & went and the political background behind the conflicts, we were never taught what happened in our own town. Recently, the town has recorded that the two slipways that I fished from as a child were built as loading ramps for the LCTs that went off to Normandy on D-Day. Now I reckon that kids today would be just as interested to hear these stories now as I was then. So check out your local history, if you don’t already know, there will be lots of history stories all around you. If nothing else, they will no doubt inspire you fro your next modelling project! Here’s a few pictures of the plaque erected in memory of the D-Day ramps in Torquay.

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