Sunday 17 March 2024

Wars Of The Roses - Part 8 - Arrows & Iron Balls

First arrows.  Many, many arrows.  In the Never Mind The Billhooks rules the bow-armed units have a limit of 6 looses of an arrow each game.  It can be quite nasty, especially when you can loose twice in a turn, however, it's also can run out sharpish.  

To keep track of this sharpish situation a marker is recommended, and having looked at others suggestions and recommendations I settled upon the following effort; a round base with a dice slot/square on it, most of which have some arrows to show it is an arrow counter.  The effect is finished off by a mini 6 sided die, my colour of choice being green (not mint, just normal green).

The usual sand was added and brown spray used before painting the base the same as my other WOTR figures, and the arrows painted a suitable sandy and white combination followed by a strong tone wash and a bit of dry brushing to strengthen the colour again, nowt fancy.  A matt varnish over arrows and base finished it off.  I don't usually varnish a base, but there's so little to use to pick it up each time that I thought it worth doing.  They still need some flock but I'm saving that for a Big Flock Day along with other WOTR bits.

On to the iron balls, and it's my one piece of ordinance from the period.  I gradually worked on it to break up the monotony of many billmen.  I'd seen an example online of someone painting their piece green and liked it, I think mines come out OK. The crew I wasn't sure whether to go uniformed or all the colours of the rainbow.  In the end rainbow it was.

Sunday 3 March 2024

Wars Of The Roses - Part 7 - The Broken Made New

My original Wars Of The Roses models are plastic and date back around 12 years. In that time they have been out, not only for a battle or two against like minded individuals, but also to satisfy my sons wargaming interest. Unsurprisingly the latter caused casualties in the billmens billhooks department.  A couple of the mounted men at arms also took a hit but I have yet to find the heart to look at those.

I had replaced the broken arms amd weapons with new ones, giving an unpainted grey look to otherwise painted figures. I took the opportunity of being in WOTR painting mode to finish these off, with a brown primer followed by varying colours, trying to for in with the original painting style I had used. My current painting style and techniques are for brighter, clearer colours.  Billmen fixed, and added to the growing pile of WOTR infantry, now if only I wasn't scared of painting horses.....

Monday 12 February 2024

Wars Of The Roses - Part 6

Just as it began to look safe to come out from behind the sofa....bang! Another Wars Of The Roses post swam into view.  Part 6 follows almost exactly three years after Part 5, and approximately eleven and a half years since Part 1.

Having spent too long doom scrolling (is that a phrase?) and watching rubbish in the evenings on my phone I decided I'd like something constructive instead and out came the Wars Of The Roses.  Originally I was building a Yorkist army, but now I'm just building a generic army I can split into two when I want a game.  

In the last few weeks I've managed to paint a unit of bowmen and one of men at arms, although they are awaiting the final touch of some green flock and perhaps a flower or two on their bases.  

Having done the usual brown leather undercoat I gave them a dry brush of matt white to help the brighter colours I was planning to stand out.  I've been buying a few speed paints, most of which work quite well, especially over a white base, and used these for the browns and red (note: the 'Holy White' did not work so well - just came out grey).  

For the armour I used a coat of leadbelcher, then an Army Painter dark tone wash, before drybrushing in shinning silver.  A bit of red brown and sandy colours for the belts and weapon handles was covered in the Army Painter strong tone wash and highlighted, and the skin with a flesh speed paint and wash, and some gold bits to give a bit of variety and colour.  Everything was finished off with a gloss varnish on the metals, and a matt varnish on the more natural materials and it was done.  The bowmen had a few more colours including a yellow and green, but all done in the same way with paint+wash+highlights.

Overall reasonably pleased with them, now on to the next couple of units.


Thursday 25 May 2023

Lord Flashearts Fabulous Coach

A few years back a somewhat marvelous model turned up on my birthday. It was the Warlord Games pike and shotte period coach, and it was lovely, although a bit daunting and so I put off looking at it for quite a while.  And then a bit longer. And then a few years after that.....

Moving on I was putting together the Black Coach and a couple of skeleton chariots and decided to use the experience to work on the coach at the same time. All four were made and based at the same time, but the pine and shotte coach was by far the biggest so it received its paint job last.

The build - The model was a combination of metal for the most part with a resin cab (and roof), and it's length and limited connections between parts - especially the horses to the traces - provided some issues.  An Eons Of Battle (youtube) tip for adding bicarb of soda to superglue to fill gaps and make it dry swiftly helped,  as did some green stuff in a few critical spots.  I made a base out of thick plasticard, only to discover it flexed under the weight, so I braced it with long straps of the same plasticard, hoping to disguise them with sand and flock on the base at the end.  The bracing did work however.

Painting - I gave it a rattle can spray of brown before painting the base (drybrushing the base) before moving onto the tricky bit, the actual painting. I had a few rough ideas on colours, but when it came to it my inspiration fled into a dark corner and I mostly followed the box art.  I find horses tricky so I focused on the Carriage itself first, driver, and its two passengers.  The passengers and their baggage I painted separately before sticking in at the end.

For painting I dry brushed most of it lightly in white to make the colours stand out, then I did a fair amount of blocky base colours before following up with a wash and then a highlight/dry brush. The red on the coach was the exception, it just looked right straight away so I left it.

Final stage - the flocking and varnishing. Flocking went ok, didn't hide as much of the strengthening struts on the base as I would have liked, but I also used some flowers and overall I felt it finished nicely. I went for a spray varnish, and not having used it for best part of 2 years I overdid it on the roof and caused some damage that had to be repainted, but the massed dreaded cracking didn't occur, amd after the first paint fix it was done.

Tuesday 11 April 2023

Orcses in yellow my precious....

Exactly what it says on the tin, ronsel style.  GW has launched an Age of Sigmar start collecting magazine set, which for the most part is £8.99 and not justifiable for my income, however week two was flagged up to me on a Facebook page somewhere as being £5.99 and having 10 orcs attached.  Spotting it in tesco (other supermarkets were available but not stocking it) I bought two packs.  I was thinking that 20 orcs would bring a nice variety to painting undead, and that they would be a handy bit of colour to any dragon rampant games I played with children.  They are marketed as not needing glue (push fit), but I did use plastic glue, and I'm glad I did. Without it I think they wouldn't have stayed together.

Colour choices - green was an obvious one; a bright green followed by a green wash and a couple of highlights/dry brushes of the same bright green but brought lighter by increasing levels of white.  The shields are a red with a light dry brush of orange; left to my own devices I'd have probably ended up with bronze, but the GW ones on the magazine had a similar redish colouring and I thought id try it. Its cone out really well.  The clothes I was originally going to go with brown, after all there was plenty of green amd red/orange going on already. But then wondered what a brighter colour would look like and tried a yellow. 

It came out really well - I find it a hard to do colour so I had lightly drybrushed where it was to go with white, then put two coats of yellow. I followed this with some arms painter strong tone wash, before finishing with some yellow highlights and a tiny bit of white drybrushing on the very raised areas.  Jobs a good one, now just another 18 to do....





Monday 10 April 2023

Work In Progress.....April 2023

In which I look back at my painting, gaming and modeling exploits of the last month and write a small amount.

I've finished a number of models I've been working on for a while, and very varied they are too. When I played regularly I would make and paint units ready for the next week, or even a big game in 2-3 weeks time, and getting them on the table to use next time out was my motivation for painting and modelling.  Fast forward and I am playing no games whatsoever at the moment, but have picked up an interest in modelling and painting once more.  My motivation for getting figures done is now very much about how much fun I'll have actually doing the task rather than getting to use them.  This means I'm picking some seemingly very random bits to paint!  I've also discovered a need to paint in bright colours, something I avoided due to a lack of skills when I was gaming regularly.  This has had a distinct influence on how bright everything I'm painting is.

And so with no more addo let me introduce you to this month's creations:
2 Orcs
1 Black Coach
6 blue men (more on those in a later post)
1 water carrying supply train piece
A hen house
2 chickens (same base)
And a badger.
The skull markers I did last month but look nice.
Working on currently is this nice ECW piece which I've had for a number of years but never made.  Currently trying to get the base colours right before going to the wash stage.





Little Blue Men

A while back I bought some zulus from a bring and buy, and hidden in the back of the box was two large bases, each with three....pygmies on them.  The sculpting was....questionable.  And the paint job on them was....hmm.  If you have read Astrix & Obelix and you recall the way Africans are portrayed then you'll get the idea. Absolutely not something that I would ever be using on any table.

I debated selling them, or even just throwing them away, for a long time, amd then one day recently looked at them and thought "I wonder if they'd look acceptable in blue". 

I stripped the pain off them, rebased them individually and tried a blue and orange theme, partly inspired by the Nac Mc Feegle from Terry Pratchets books, and partly by the thought that they could be mystical pixies/spirits and tag onto my undead.  I enjoyed the painting, it was very different in colour scheme to the undead I'd been working on, and overall I think they look good.

Don't get me wrong, I can't hide the sculpting, but I think they should be ok to use.  For now they are going into my undead box and I'll see if I can wheel them out next time I've a game and get sone feedback from the opposition.