How to Make Some Simple Hills

I feel like you guys already would know all this stuff but I am so pleased with the new hills I made for the Little Bighorn game that I wanted to post a short tutorial. It is really easier than it seems.

Materials:

• 2x8 sheet of 1" styrofoam, Home Depot/Rona, cost ~$10
• Sharpie. You have one of these already
• USB Hot Wire Foam Cutter. I use the FloraCraft CleanKut. Got it at Michael's, $30
• Sand
• Paint. If you can, grab a pint pot of mistinted paint at the paint counter. Otherwise, have some latex paint mixed up in a ground colour. Don't use craft or model paint, you will need too much of it
• Sanding sponges - medium texture. ~$8 for three. Get washable/reusable ones. You will be doing a lot of sanding
• White school glue

First, draw out the shapes of your hills on the styrofoam with your Sharpie. Next, cut out the shapes with your hot wire foam cutter - but angle the wire outwards from your lines as much as you can manage, like 45 degrees. This will give you a start to the "slope" on the hillsides. Cut slowly and let the cutter do the work while you inhale the fragrant fumes of atomized styrofoam. If you're using a USB cutter and it's not working well, try a different plugin adapter as some are more powerful than others.

Once you've got the shape cut out it's time to start sanding. You want to round off the edge contour between the hillside and hilltop to make it natural-looking, and smooth out the hillside itself. When the sponge starts to get less effective, switch to a new one. The styrofoam dust will clog up the sponges but you can wash them.

When you have the hill contoured in a pleasing way it's time to start painting. On mine I laid down a basecoat of the latex ground-coloured paint. Then I brushed over white glue thinned with water and lightly sprinkled the sand over top. After the glue has dried (it can take a long time if it's thinned) put another coat of thinned glue over top. Then paint again, or not, and drybrush, or not, and apply flock or static grass, or not, all according to your taste.

Lastly, have a game with your fantastic new hills!

Here are the hills cut out of styrofoam and shaped.

Hills after basecoat of paint with sand applied over thinned white glue.

More thinned white glue gets put over top to seal down the sand.

Hills laid out on the Little Bighorn terrain.

Hills after painting over the sand, with flock and static grass applied.

Finished hill.

Ready for the last stand on Custer Hill.

Hills laid out on the finalized terrain.

The battle is on Sunday - hoka hey!

All Done. Teepees and Dead Horses

OK so this is the end of the Little Bighorn project (for now)... some set dressing for the game. Above we have some teepees for the village. The pattern is a free download from firstpalette. They are big though, but I discovered that printing them two to a page (on 8 1/2" x 11" letter paper) makes a perfect size teepee for 28mm gaming. The "poles" are coffee stirsticks cut in half, then in half lengthwise, and taped to the inside of the teepee walls. A good project for an evening. They didn't need to be super-detailed since they will be placed on the very edge of the battlefield anyway.

The other thing the battle had a lot of was dead horses, survivors of the Reno fight talk about piling up dead horses as breastworks and the people who saw the Custer battlefield afterwards mention dead horses (and later, piles of horse bones) everywhere. So I thought I would get some horses 3D printed (thanks Byron!) and paint them, just as some cover for the troopers.

Here's what I imagine they'll look like on the battlefield, more or less.

So that's about it for painting before we have the Big Game. Don't get me wrong - I still have lots of unpainted models for this project, likely more than I will ever get painted. But this will be enough to do the battle I've planned for my birthday, and to commemorate the 150th anniversary of one of history's most famous "last stands". 

Next up - battle report. Hoka hey!

Nearly there! More Plains Warriors and Crow Scouts

Last night I finished off nine more Plains warriors and three Crow scouts for the other team. The warriors are from Foundry and the scouts are the very nice Brigade Games models sculpted by friend of the Conscripts Paul Hicks.

 

Here is Crazy Horse his own self, flanked by two warriors, Fish Arrow and Holds Fire. I have a mounted Crazy Horse too.

Lean Wolf, Bear Licks With Tongue, Lazy Boy.

Little Crow, Running Rabbit, One Shirt.

Crow scouts with trapdoor Springfields. Really nice models, these.

Here are all the models I've painted for the game so far, approximately fifty foot and mounted on each side, which is about what I'd set as a goal. This should make a pretty good game of Legends of the Old West even if not all of the 7th Cavalry get put on the table - there are several specific "characters" including Reno, Benteen and deRudio who I've painted, but who won't appear in the Last Stand game. The model painting is almost done now, I just have to paint some dead horses (depressing, I know, but they were everywhere on the battlefield and will be useful cover for dismounted troopers). I also will be making a few teepees for the village on the nearside of the river, at the edge of the table.

Hoka hey!

Nearing the End! Mounted Seventh Cavalry Troopers and More Plains Warriors

OK! So we're about a month away from The Big Birthday Game and the models are progressing nicely. The latest I've gotten done are eight mounted Seventh Cavalry troopers and eight more Plains warriors. First the cavalry - they are Wargames Foundry models (naturally) and are pretty great in every way. The horses are noticeably larger than the Plains ponies ridden by the warriors, which necessitated slightly bigger bases, but that's the way they were in real life and it's fine by me.

   

Custer organized the Seventh in a particular way - each company was mounted on the same colour horses, except for one company, and the buglers who were on greys. Company A had coal black mounts, Company E had greys, Companies B, D, F, I and L had bays, H had blood bays, G and K had sorrels, and C had light sorrels. Company M had mixed colour horses. These were all identified with brands. The excellent Foundry horses have a "US" incised brand on the front upper leg and I put company brands on the rear left "thighs". The pattern was company letter over "7 C" for the Seventh Cavalry. I did these with a black technical pen.

  

The castings are good - horse is one piece and the trooper, saddle and gear cast together as a separate piece. This makes for easy painting although there is a lot of gear. You can see the light blue overcoat rolled in front of the trooper here. There's also a nosebag, feed sack, saddlebag, pistol holster, lariat, and canteen.

I've painted the greys as E Company of course, the bays (reddish brown with black points - mane, tail and socks) as C Company, and the sorrels (reddish brown with light coloured points) as C Company.

Bugler here on a grey.

Trooper of Company C in his red fireman's shirt.

With the mounted troopers out of the way I also got some more dismounted Plains warriors done. These are the Foundry Dog Soldiers.

Goes Through the Camp, Touch the Sky (he is a big fella), Voice Like Thunder.

Yellow Thunder, Walking Rain.

Three Fingers, Pawnee Killer, Plenty Coups. All painted in the traditional style, although I did punch up the blue with another highlight of Hoeth Blue and the red with some Evil Sunz Scarlet.

Here are the forces as of this update. I have nine more Plains warriors to go and maybe three more Crow scouts if there's time. I also want to make some teepees for background colour on the battlefield. 

So till then... hoka hey!

Legions Imperialis Whirlwind and Support Marines

A few more bits for Legions Imperialis!

Summer is winding down, and it's time to finally organize a few blog posts showing some of the stuff I have painted. Here are few more bits for Legions Imperialis (aka "Epic 30k") - some more Whirlwind multiple rocket launchers and another group of tactical support marines. The painting is divided between the XV Legion Astartes (the Thousand Sons) and the Warmaster's own XVI Legion Astartes (the Sons of Horus). These are all plastic kits/figures from GW. 

A more classic-looking "pepperbox" style launcher on these vehicles.

View of rear details and decals on the hatches.

For an old Horus Heresy grognard like me it is great to have the Whirlwinds joining the collection. After all, in the original "Space Marine" game the Whirlwind was one of the core vehicle selections for your forces, and in general it has been a classic support weapon for the Space Marines over the years. These Horus Heresy Whirlwinds are built on the "Deimos" pattern Rhino APC hull, which is itself an homage to the classic original Rhino models. So these are just great all around.

More firepower for the Warmaster!

The Whirlwinds come eight models to a box, and you have options for two different types of launchers - one meant to fire ordnance that targets vehicles (the "Scorpius" variant), and the other holding ordnance that is more "anti-personnel" in nature (the more classic-looking pepperbox launcher). It's great that you get both - in fact, you get eight versions of each variant, so you if the variability matters to you, well, you're all set!

Little less flash on the rear doors here...couldn't spare the decals!

I painted the first four vehicles from the pack back during the most recent edition of Curt's Painting Challenge - so here we see at last the remaining four models from the box. I'll want to paint more of these vehicles for the Loyalist side of the ledger, but that will come later...somehow the poor Loyalists always have to wait :) 

Little chaps with snappy energy weapons.

You can see some of the detail on the back...maybe...?

The infantry are "tactical support" Marines - i.e. guys with shorter-ranged, heavy/special weapons. Two more bases hardly moves the needle in this collection, but it does at least help to bulk-up the available infantry detachment for my Thousand Sons forces in this scale.

So not a whole lot to share in this post, but there will be more to share shortly, as I try and get back into the blogging routine! Thanks for reading.   

Plains Warriors Progress

Really on a roll now with another group of dismounted Plains warriors completed. I feel like I'm well on the way towards completing the Little Bighorn project at this point. 

I had planned a trip down to Montana in September to visit the battlefield again as a reward for finishing all of the painting, but that is a bit up in the air now, for a couple of reasons. One, while my original plan was to head down during the week of Labour Day, that's hit a snag as my parents have to stay with me that week as my father has a medical appointment in the city. Two, we are now "at war" (trade war that is) with the United States and I increasingly consider it questionable form to visit and spend money there. So as for the second point anyway, we shall see if relations thaw in the next couple weeks. While we are not political on this blog, I will nevertheless say that I find the current American federal administration's position towards trade with Canada both baffling and frustrating in the extreme. Imposing tariffs that your own importers and consumers pay is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. But Canada will now impose counter-tariffs. I hope we are not entering into an escalating suicide pact. 

ANYWAY... here are eleven more Plains warriors for the project. Above are Walks Alone, Crow in Rain, and Swift White Raven from the Foundry "Young Bloods 2" pack.

Running Rabbit, Wolf Looks Back, Goes Walking. The first two are from the Young Bloods 1 pack and the last from Young Bloods 2.

Fish Arrow, Bear Licks with Tongue, Lazy Boy from Young Bloods 1.

Strikes Like Bear (from Young Bloods 2) and Holds Fire (from Young Bloods 1).

A bit of a show-off of a couple of the shields. I always have a bit of a challenge coming up with ideas for the designs but I think these are OK.

The models were painted in my usual Plains style - flesh done with Doombull Brown under Ratskin Flesh and warpaint applied over top. Basic painting but I think they look OK. With these models done I think I'll have painted one of every dismounted Foundry Plains warrior. I do have another couple packs though and next up is another Dog Soldiers pack. I will do at least one more pack of Young Bloods too. It'll be easy enough to vary the paint jobs.

Until then... hoka hey!