TFL Painting Challenge: A Mid-Week Post

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Lots of really beautifully painted entries today. In no particular order, we have:

  • Treadhead and his gladiators
  • Paul Baldwin with some more WOTR foot and a load of 6mm re-basing
  • Mr Helliwell gives his Germans some wheels
  • Benito gives us a 28mm Panzer and more Moors
  • Carole gives us a recce zug to look out for
  • Mr Naylor pops in a couple of entrenchments
  • Mark Luther has built lots of jungle terrain (I mean lots) and also painted up six aeroplanes (yes, I had to look up what a "Nate" was)
  • Mr Plowman (lovely boy, lovely boy) enters some more lovely sci-fi figures, these painted a la Argyles if I'm not mistaken
  • And Mr Douglas achieves his usual LOTR entry, but adds some smaller horse archers as a cherry on the cake

Now, pictures...lots to choose from. Here are three that particularly caught my eye:

Treadhead's Gladiators

Treadhead's Gladiators

Some of Mr Baldwin's re-based 6mm Austrians

Some of Mr Baldwin's re-based 6mm Austrians

Mr Plowman's sci-fi Argyle's

Mr Plowman's sci-fi Argyle's

Check out all the entries in their respective galleries...and keep the e-mails coming!

US Airborne: 60mm Mortar Teams

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Next up in my building of Band of Brother's Easy Company are the 60mm mortar teams. I've used Forged in Battle figures again, and am again very happy with the results, even if the photography is a bit pants.

Now onto the bazooka teams: Battlefront figures for them...and a pack of ten 2-man teams bought for half-price at Salute!

Here are the mortar teams:

IABSM Army Gallery: US Armored Rifle Company

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What should I have been doing this afternoon? Well either painting some more US Airborne figures, or some of the six alien races for Q13 I have on the go at the moment, or uploading more 19thC battle reports to this site so that I can get that section finished and move on.

What have I actually been doing? 

I've actually spent a very pleasant afternoon re-organising all my US forces for IABSM, amending the photo galleries of the Rifle and Tank Companies to bring them properly up to date, and finally getting around to constructing the gallery for the Armoured Rifle Company. Seems like I need an awful lot of half-tracks of the M2 and M3 variety, along with a handful of 1.5 ton trucks!

Five down, an awful lot to go!

Five down, an awful lot to go!

But seriously, I do think that properly cataloging your troops is an important part of our hobby...a part that's sometimes sadly neglected. I have a master spreadsheet of all my figures (all 15,000 of them) by period and unit, which also notes how many times each unit has been on the tabletop. Dividing one figure by the other then gives you a master efficiency quotient, so that I can see which of my armies are the most cost-efficient!

Then I have OB workbooks, where I list each force I've built by order of battle. This is really useful when playing pick-up games, as I can just print out a force's OB, then add or subtract units as required. The galleries on this website are a reflection of these spreadsheets: so far they're complete for my WW2, Vietnam and sci-fi armies, but I haven't even started on my 19th century, ancients or fantasy collections yet!

Thousands of them? Let me just have a look at my spreadsheets and I'll tell you exactly how many there are!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I keep a workbook with how I painted each army in it. Very useful when adding extra units to an already existing force.

Nerd?

Maybe so, but then to me the spreadsheets are all part of the fun!

TFL Painting Challenge: Saturday Morning Update

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As I think I'm going to be busy for the rest of the weekend (including painting some more Paras and a game of Q13 tonight) I thought I'd better get in an update now .

Today we have:

  • Some home-made swamp from Mt Plowman
  • Sixteen beautifully painted 15mm WW2 BEF vehicles from Egg
  • Some more Perry WOTR figures from Lloyd 'The Hat' Bowler
  • Eighty 6mm ACW infantry from AJH
  • Lots of Napoleonics from Owen
  • And an impressive one hundred sabot bases (plus some other bits and bobs) from Mr Hodge

Today's pictures are two in number. First, and obviously, Egg's vehicles, which I covet enormously:

And secondly, AJH's 6mm ACW entry. Very nice for things so small!

Q13: Two New Manufacturers

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I do try to keep the lists of manufacturers up to date on the site so, to that need, here are two new manufacturers of 15mm sci-fi figures added to the directory.

First up, Flytrap Factory. Run by the chap who used to run Flashpoint Miniatures (where I got all my Vietnam infantry from), FF produce some very nice ranges that vary from the historical to the fantastic.

As regards 15mm sci-fi, their Warfighter and Warfighter Vietnam ranges of modern and ultra modern figures contain several items that would do very nicely for a near future setting, and their Warfighter Epoch range is actually a sic-fi range in its own right. Well worth a look.

Then there is Onslaught Miniatures. Onslaught already produce several ranges of lovely 6mm sci-fi troops and have recently announced plans to scale up some of these ranges to 15mm.

At time of writing, none are yet released, but I'm working on the principle that if I add them onto the directory now, this will somehow magically make the figures come sooner!

So far revealed are the first releases from their Sisterhood range: exquisitely sculpted warrior women peacekeepers; and the Tzacol lizard men.

I literally cannot wait for the Sisterhood figures, and am currently considering whether to use them as a force in their own right or to have them as allies to my forthcoming space dwarf army. Decisions, decisions!

Here they are:

US Paras from Forged in Battle

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As some of you may know, I have started putting together a company of US Paras, plus supports, in 15mm.

The MMG Platoon proved a successful test paint, so I decided to bite the bullet and get on with the first of the big paints, the first platoon.

Being a bit sick of painting Battlefront figures, and wanting to spread my cash between manufacturers, I decided to get my first Airborne platoon from Forged in Battle. I like their vehicles, their infantry is metal, and some of the poses I'd seen in various images looked very good.

Well that platoon is now finished, and very pleased I am too. The poses proved excellent, the castings were almost totally flash free, and there wasn't a dud figure in the pack (Battlefront take note!). Here they are:

As you can see, they have taken the paint very well indeed.

For those interested, my painting method was as follows:

  1. Undercoat (spray) in white
  2. Two (2) coats of GW Agrax Earthshade brown wash to bring up the detail (so that I could see it) and provide creases. When painting, try to leave as many creases in place as possible i.e. every step is effectively a kind of highlight.
  3. Highlight face and hands with GW Dwarf Flesh
  4. Top highlight face and hands with GW Kislev Flesh
  5. Paint the helmet straps (one set) GW Balor Brown (leather colour)
  6. Base coat the uniform Foundry Drab Shade
  7. Highlight the uniform in Foundry Drab
  8. Top highlight the uniform in Foundry Drab Light
  9. Base coat the helmet in Vallejo Extra Dark Green
  10. Paint the boots GW Mournfang Brown. Brush from back to front as this leaves just the suggestion of wash colour where the laces would be. Didn't work on all of them, but looks like laces on enough of them to be worthwhile.
  11. Highlight the helmet with flecks of  Vallejo US Dark Green.
  12. Base coat any rucksacks in Vallejo US Dark Green.
  13. Base coast the wooden bits of the guns in GW Rhinox Hide
  14. Highlight any rucksacks in GW Loren Green
  15. Paint all webbing and the second helmet strap in Vallejo Green Grey
  16. Highlight any helmet-strapped medipacks in Foundry Moss Light by painting three vertical lines on them
  17. Paint the metal bits of any guns in GW Abaddon Black.
  18. Paint a square of GW Abaddon Black on the left upper arm as the basis of the Screaming Eagle patch
  19. Highlight the wooden bits of the rifles in GW Skrag Brown
  20. Very lightly highlight (barely at all) the metal bits of the guns in GW Leadbelcher
  21. Paint a triangle of GW Ceramite White on the black patch to represent the eagle's head
  22. Paint a dot on GW Sunburst Yellow at the tip of the triangle to represent the eagle's beak
  23. Glue to 5p pieces as bases: I like to mount my figures individually and use squad sized movement trays
  24. Glue coarse sand onto the bases. Undercoat in a thick coast of GW Rhinox Hide. Highlight with GW Balor Brown. Paint the edge in GW Castellan Green. Add GW Glade Grass flock.
  25. Seal with Army Painter anti-shine.

Phew! That's twenty-five steps for each of the 32 men (three squads of ten and two Big Men), but worth it as I'm very pleased with the results. Here's my favourite figure:

Now onto to platoon two, for which I have figures from Battlefront.

TFL Painting Challenge: Monday Night Update

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The post-weekend rush is in, and a good excuse for a Monday Night Update.

Today we have entries from:

  • Owen, who submits loads of Austrians
  • Mr Yuengling with a few Home Guard
    • Incidentally, I was listening to Dad's Army in the car on the way home: Radio 4 Extra has an episode every Monday night at 7pm. Still very, very funny!
  • Treadhead with some more of his lovely US WW2 troops in 28mm
  • Mr Bax returns with some sci-fi figures. No photos yet, unfortunately.
  • Mr Stapells submits a hodge-podge: a 2mm city, some 15mm artillery, and four 15mm vehicles from Gaming Models
  • And Lloyd Bowler gives us the first installment of some Perry 28mm WOTR figures...a period that seems very popular at the moment...and probably will be until someone discovers that it was the Perry Twins who buried a  Richard III corpse-a-like under the carpark in order to boost sales

Today's picture is more of Mr Treadhead's Americans...Bazooka Teams:

Another Sarissa Precision Building

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Took advantage of Salute to buy myself one more Sarissa Precision lasercut building from their Far East range: what they call an 'outpost' which I will use as a lean-to or similar as a smaller building in a village set-up.

Lovely model to build, and surprisingly durable in that although I did manage to be clumsy enough to snap two of the little struts that connect one top bit to a bottom bit, it's still robust enough that I could leave the roof unglued so that I can get figures in and out of it easily.

The whole range is highly recommended.

TFL Painting Challenge: Post Salute Update

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No, not another Salute blog post: an update to the painting challenge that I'm adding the evening after I got back from Salute.

But whilst we're on the topic, a great show this year. Top game was obviously the debut of the TFL Chain of Command variant Fighting Season, which takes the platoon level WW2 game and adapts it for ultramodern warfare in Afghanistan. Nice to see a properly asymmetrical platoon-level game instead of just something where the westerners just shoot anything that moves!

The show itself, I thought, was the best for some years...certainly in terms of organisation. I arrived at 10.25 and walked straight in: no queue. There was plenty of space between each, er, installation, and not too many people playing fancy dress, although I did spot a very miserable looking Napoleonic British rifleman, an enormous American GI (wouldn't have fitted in a half-track, perhaps not even a full-track), and a girl wearing fox ears and a foxes tail! Oh, and there was someone in a giant cardboard space marine suit as well, accompanied by a decidedly un-lethal looking gun woman!

I spent far too much: two boxes of the new PSC SdKfz 250 half-tracks; quite a few half-price FOW blisters that I didn't really need but, come on, they were half price; a few full-price FOW blisters that I did need; some more Sarissa laser-cut buildings; and then some odd bits and pieces that just caught my eye.

Excel was packed (I had real difficulty finding somewhere to have a sarnie and a cup of coffee) mainly because in addition to the Marathon people (loving the contrast: wargamers vs marathon runners) there was also a convention celebrating the Sherlock TV series. I enjoyed Sherlock very much, but not perhaps enough to go to a convention about it, but it did increase the babe-count in general. A sexist comment, I know and apologise for, but I'm with Holden Caulfield on that one.

Anyhoo, on to the painting challenge entries...

  • Mervyn adds some more LOTR figures
  • Steve Burt adds some more Napoleonics
  • Carole is awaiting a package, but has just squeezed in a couple of 28s
  • Fred Bloggs adds more dwarves and witches and things
  • Mr Plowman has some 15mm sci fi painted samples for a forthcoming Kickstarter. Very nice indeed.
  • Mr Naylor pops in some 20mm WW2 Germans
  • Mr Ralls slams back into action with a massive entry that takes him over his last year's entry already. Top pick was the 98 Mighty Empires terrain tiles: 588 points on their own.
  • And Wulf adds a few more 28s to his gallery

Today's picture is from Mr Burt: his British 7th Hussars...

Q13 Army Lists: Updates

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A couple of updates for the Q13 Army Lists.

First up, I've added stats for the Mudskipper Medium Jump Walkers to the US Weird World War III list. Gives the Airborne force a real punch!

Secondly, I've added a brand new army list: Dwarves in Space. Forgive the slightly clumsy title, but one has to think about copyright. At the moment the list covers the Thrainites from Khurasan (a nice mix of infantry and vehicles) and the Sons of Thunder from Rebel Minis. I'll add more as and when manufacturers release more 'dwarf' models.

You can see all the Q13 lists by using the navbar, above, or by clicking here.

Khurasan's Thrainite Troopers

Khurasan's Thrainite Troopers

TFL Painting Challenge: A Moderate Update

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Just a moderate update today. Quite lucky, as I'm exhausted after a week travelling around England's green and pleasant land on business.

Today's entries are:

  • Obviously Matt Slade, with a giant entry
  • Mr Helliwell roars back with a mix of scales and periods
  • Leif is back! Okay, so it's just one 28mm tank, but he's definitely back
  • Carole pops in some more half-tracks, but is running out of things to paint. Salute, dearie, Salute: my shopping list already extends a great deal further than my wallet!
  • Not only is Leif back, but Wulf returns as well.  Four figures from him.
  • Mr Luther submits some 20mm Japanese tanks, and pimps up a load of 6mm armour as well

Today's picture? Well it has to be Leif's tank, doesn't it?

DSC_1067.JPG

Chain of Command Terrain: A Lard/Warbases Joint Venture

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Exciting news for all 28mm 20thC/modern gamers: the TooFatLardies and Warbases have got together to produce a new range of laser cut terrain pieces. Here's the news item from Lard Island News:

Part of the joy of wargaming is the opportunity to, albeit briefly, suspend our disbelief and see ourselves as Napoleon or Wellington, commanding vast armies, or Sidney Jary at the head of 18 platoon. For me, a big part in creating the environment which encourages that immersion in the narrative of our games is getting a table that not only is pretty, but also looks right. In so many cases it is the small detail which makes a big difference. In all of the games we have run around the shows, it has been stuff like telegraph poles and (believe it or not!) cabbages growing in the garden which have received the most comments. Interestingly, it is small detail like this which I have so often found myself having to scratch build, with varying degress of success if I am honest, as most terrain companies tend to focus on the big stuff, like buildings, bridges and walls, rather than the minutiae. Well, that’s all about to change.

Before Christmas I had a long discussion with my old chum Martin up at Warbases and floated the idea of starting a range of terrain for Chain of Command. To my mind it is the skirmish or platoon level game which really comes to life when you add some extra detail, and I wanted us to work together to start producing the type of items which I really wanted to see in my games. As always, Martin came up trumps, as my dodgy sketches and vague ideas were turned into something practical and VERY pretty. The great news is that we will have the first two packs available at Salute. These are as follows:

Pack One includes the following:

  • Lean to Greenhouse
  • Potting shed, including work bench
  • Chicken coop with two cast metal chickens
  • Cold frame
  • Compost bin

Pack One

As you can see below, the lean to greenhouse will fit neatly onto any flat walled building

Pack Two contains the following:

  • Free standing Greenhouse
  • Dog kennel with cast metal doggy (optional “woofs” to be provided by customer)
  • Garden bench
  • Wheelbarrow
  • Wood store

PACK TWO

​All of the models are in laser cut MDF and, where shown they have suitably embossed paper to cover the roofs and serve as tar paper or roof felt as used in the early 20th century. Even better is the news that each of the packs will be retailing at just £16 each, great value for models which will really transform your wargames table. We hope to have these available on the web site immediately after Salute, although I reckon these will be a sell-out at the show!

These look great! Now all I need is for them to be produced in 15mm as well!

TFL Painting Challenge: Enormous Update

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An enormous update today: lots of people submitting lots of entries. Has taken me almost two hours to update the site!

In no particular order we have:

  • Matt Slade with a huge number of 15mm sci-fi miniatures from Khurasan. Of particular note is the sci-fi Foreign Legion: twenty-one figures from the same unit, but each from a different alien race. Kinda hard to get into a painting rhythm there: I know, mine are still languishing in the lead mountain!
  • Mr Plowman makes a welcome return: very busy, but not busy enough not to fit in painting four random fantasy figures
  • Mr Baldwin submits his usual large melange of figures and scales
  • Carole has built and painted a couple of lovely camps
  • A first entry this year from Pingu, who promptly pops in some perfectly painted Paras
  • Sapper achieves some Seleucids
  • Egg just about completes his British forces for Sealion
  • Mr Burt submits some Hussars, and another cat photo...
  • Stumpy sends in some great 28mm modern Russians, and some 15mm WW2 Germans as well
  • Mr Naylor builds some rather nice looking minefields
  • and finally Mervyn paints some more LOTR figures

Phew!

I'm thinking that a large number of entries deserves a large number of pictures, so again in no particular order we have: 

Egg's Brits for Sealion

Egg's Brits for Sealion

Carole's Camps

Carole's Camps

Ralph Plowman's entry: four random fantasy figures

Ralph Plowman's entry: four random fantasy figures

And finally, Mr Burt's other cat!

And finally, Mr Burt's other cat!

I would have included Matt Slade's sci-fi Foreign legion, but as they are split between about six pics, you'll have to go to his gallery and see them there.

Sarissa Precision Ltd: Buildings for the Far East

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I've never been big into terrain.

I am never going to make any (far too much like hard, and messy, work) and in the past it's always seemed like a waste of money that could be spent on more soldiers. 

That, however, was before I got my wargaming room back after its sabbatical as a kids playroom, and before I moved this website to Squarespace. I'm having more games now, and the photos are easier to process and upload, and my existing terrain...well, it just isn't up to scratch any more.

Wooden huts for the Eastern Front from 4ground

I have had very good experiences with 4Ground's range of wooden huts for the Eastern Front, so I thought I'd see if I could get some more of that sort of thing, but this time for the Far East. 

A quick search of the web, and I found Sarissa Precision Ltd: a UK company that do a nice little range of laser-cut wood buildings just like 4Ground's.

They have six different village huts in their Far East range, so I bought one of each, and have spent the last few days putting them together: I love the smell of laser-cut wood in the mornings!

Once built, however, I felt they were slightly lacking something. Not in the models themselves, I hasten to add, they were lovely, just that the setting demanded something more.

So I have been very brave, and I have pimped them up!

First I've added a toupee of wool roving (whatever that is!) bought from the local Hobbeycraft to their roofs. This was quite difficult: it involved smearing white glue over the roofs, then carefully snipping off and sticking down layers of wool cording so they look a bit like some kind of vegetation. Don't ask me what sort of vegetation: just enjoy the look!

It didn't turn out just how I wanted it too.

Building One: Planked Style Village House - Low

Apparently you're supposed to be able to comb this stuff, and I had envisioned a sort of green thatch effect...whereas what I have achieved is more Boris Johnson! But I like it, and I think it will look good on the tabletop amongst the plastic palm trees and lichen.

Next, I thought that the empty holes for every door and window (on some of the huts: others have a wooden lattice effect) looked a bit odd.

Building Two: Small Village House

So back to Hobbeycraft and the purchase of a roll of hemp trimming. From this I have made crude blinds/curtains which actually round things off nicely. Flocked bases and the odd shutter finish things off: at least until I can buy some little pots and other household detritus with which to decorate the bases.

So a little bit of work to make them look super, but highly, highly recommended. Oh, and they cost £52.50 for the six, with only £2.50 p&p.

Here are the other four:

Building Three: Woven Palm Style Village House - Low

Building Five: Planked Style Village House

Building Four: Woven Palm Style Village House

Building Six: Small Village House - Low

A Small Village Somewhere In The Far East