Challenge Submission #6 - The Four Hobbits of the Fellowship of the Ring

 

The figures I painted for one of the Quadrant Challenges are the four hobbits from the Games Workshop "Attack at Weathertop" boxed set. When I bought the set many years ago I was primarily interested in the five Nazgûl, as I already had painted figures of the four hobbits from a different boxed set. As a result these minis languished in the 'big box of unfinished projects' until now. 

After gluing the miniatures to the bases with epoxy, sand was applied using Lepage PVA glue. All the figures were then primed black with a rattle can.  I looked online for stills from the movie to get the correct colours of the clothing for Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. I used Vallejo acrylics for all the paints, along with some Game Workshop washes, primarily on the hair. They are shown with the scratch-built model of the ruined tower of Amon Sûl, better known as Weathertop, that I built to play the scenario with the Conscripts many years ago. 

 

I have included a 360° tour of the terrain piece. It was constructed over the course of a weekend out of a mix of different types of polystyrene, along with pieces of cardboard for the floor and to suggest stonework. The curved portion of the pillars are large plastic straws split in half lengthwise. The two statues were fantasy figures I found at the dollar store of a woman in long robes, and a wizard with a staff. I used latex house paints in black, and various shades of grey applied with a 1" brush with lots of drybrushing of the lighter shades to get the effect of weathered stone, Mixed green flocking and lichen was glued down after all the paints were dry.

 

Thanks for reading.

Challenge Submission #1 - Ruined Hamlet and Stone Bridge

 This the first year in which I have participated in the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge. My submission for the first week of painting consisted of a variety of terrain pieces in 28mm scale to be used with Bolt Action or The Great War.

 The Ruined Hamlet consists of four models of a Ruined Farmhouse in hard plastic from Warlord Games that I bought during a sale of 'four for the price of three'. They can now be purchased individually, or as a 'Ruined Hamlet' box of three. Each set consists of a two story building plus a one story shed. While they are quite generic for 'somewhere in Europe during the last 400 years', they will work best for either WW1 or WW2. Assembly can provide some variation as to how the walls fit together, I would say that there is definitely a 'preferred way'  that results in a 'best fit'. Once all the building and rubble piles were glued together, I mounted them on bases made from some pieces of scrap 3mm Masonite board onto which I had scored lines to look like floor boards. I then glued down some coarse sand around the walls to blend them into the bases. The ruins were primed in black using a rattle can, and then painting using Vallejo acrylics. Once the painting was completed I added some flocking along the edges.

 

 The Stone Bridge is manufactured by Italeri, but marketed by Warlord Games. It comes as a 6 piece hard plastic boxed set that goes together very smoothly to give you a single arch stone bridge that would work on any battlefield in Europe for the past 500 years. After assembly, like the ruined hamlet, it was primed black using a rattle can and painted with a selection of Vallejo acrylics.

 Thanks for reading, and good luck to my fellow Conscripts who are also participating in the Painting Challenge.

Sci-Fi Terrain - GW's Crashed Shuttle

Crashed Aquila Lander and pilot from GW's "Battle for Macragge" Box Set - FINALLY painted after years, and years, and years...

Another overdue finished project from the late summer to share - here is a crashed shuttle, along with pilot. This model of the wreckage, and the pilot, are plastic sci-fi terrain from GW's 40k setting. The shuttle is a crashed version of the Imperial "Aquila Lander" (a flyer model that was, at one time, available from Forge World, although I think it is gone now). 

Rear section - one engine has detached.

Another view of the smashed components.

This terrain set is quite old...it came from a box set called "The Battle for Macragge". This was back in the time of 40k's 4th Edition...which was quite a while ago - and back in a time before GW issued a new 40k edition every other year. The box set included Tyranids and Ultramarines - neither were of interest to me at the time, but I do remember seeing the crashed shuttle and the pilot, and thinking they were cool. Downed craft and pilots always make for great scenarios, and I thought it would be great to have these items for my collection. I went to eBay (remember, this was a long time ago) and just ordered the bits for the downed shuttle. I recall at the time regretting that I did not get the pilot...just the downed shuttle...but I never did follow up to get the pilot.

"Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing - right?"

The eBay order arrived promptly, and I promptly...did nothing with it. Unpainted miniatures and models are a fun thing to joke about, but wow, did this ever sit. For years. I am terrible when it comes to painting terrain. Just terrible. I think this thing was sitting in my pile for like...13 years? Something insane like that. I would come across the bits, determine that I would paint them, them promptly get distracted by something else. At the same time, I would never throw the components away either...in fact, they moved house with me in a primed, unpainted state - TWICE. Sheesh.

Another view of the pilot...probably hoping to scavenge something else from the wreckage...

So, it's 2021, and I have had the crashed shuttle bits primed, but not painted, for more than 10 years. A participant in Curt's Painting Challenge named Stuart L posted a submission which included a copy of the pilot figure from the Macragge box set. I made a comment about how I wished I had picked up the pilot figure back when I had the chance all those years ago. A few weeks later, totally out of the blue, a small package shows up in the mail - from Stuart L himself, and inside was a spare copy of the pilot figure!

This was a rather solemn signal from the hobby gods. So I painted the pilot, then dug out the crashed shuttle, and finally painted it too. Here are the components, completed at last.

Some detail on the front section. Many similarities on the nose design between the Aquila Lander and the more common Valkyries.

Most of the port side wing assembly is still attached...emphasis on the word "most"...

GW really does do a great job on their terrain, and there are many neat terrain kits and models out there. Several continue to...sit on my shelf, as I promise myself I will paint them one day (hello Void Shield Generator box). I wish I wasn't so useless at getting terrain painted, but this shows that I can, in fact, get it done - it is more than a theory! Hopefully it will inspire more terrain work later this year.

The crashed shuttle terrain and the pilot nice addition to my collection. Useful as an objective, or just an extra model/piece of table flavour for a scenario. Anyway, a BIG thank you to Stuart for the generous gift - I hope he sees this blog post. I also hope this terrain can be part of a 30k or 40k game with friends some day - the hobby spirits among these bits will add a bit of extra fun, I expect. 

That's all for now - cheers!

"Trick Shot" Rink for 28mm Hockey Players from Northern Lights!

Okay - so a few months ago I posted on this blog about the 28mm resin hockey players from Impact! Miniatures that I'd painted as the Habs and Leafs of the 1975-76 NHL season. Of course, hockey players need a rink to play on, which is where this project comes in.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there appear to be few sets of rules for playing hockey with 28mm models. Yes, there are a few ports of Blood Bowl around, but honestly I want something a bit more hockey-specific and not fantasy-oriented.

There is a set of rules called Trick Shot that appeared on a Kickstarter a couple years ago that looked promising. The rules themselves were made available for free on the Internet and looked all right. Of course, with no way to get in on the Kickstarter, one is at the mercy of the "secondary market"...

So anyway, reasoning that someday I'll find a set of rules, I asked Conscript Byron to design a rink to "Trick Shot" specification. And he did just that, through his excellent business, Northern Lights Terrain and Gaming Supplies. Did he ever do a good job!

The kit came unassembled but went together easily. Byron designed the rinkboards very cleverly, using a thin veneer that can easily be bent around the corners. The squares are marked with "+" designs at their corners. Although I'm using the nets from Impact! the goal creases in Trick Shot are three squares across, hence the somewhat odd look. It should play OK though.

So thanks again to Conscript Byron for designing the rink and I hope someday we'll get to play a game with it! 

A Vauban Style Star Fort

 This is a terrain project that I completed last July when I was able to work in my garage and set up a work table for sawing and painting. It is a star fort that my father made in 1966 as a Christmas present. The walls had been constructed primarily from the wooden ends salvaged from apple boxes. This became the focus of my initial dive into wargaming, although at the time my brother and I used spring loaded metal tubes my father had made to launch wooden projectiles at each other's troops. 

 

The base measured 1.2m by 0.8m. Originally the fort and base were all grey, but I had painted the base green at some point in the 1970's so it would look better on the wargames table. The large size of the base meant it was still a bit unwieldy, so it was time to trim things smaller as well as repair and improve the overall appearance. The impetus for the project came from watching a video by the Terrain Tutor on flocking gaming boards. I used a number of techniques presented in that video to do the upgrade.

The black lines are the cutting guide for my Skilsaw to trim the base as close to the bastion corners as I could. You can see a lot of the cracks where the wood had split over the years, and the grooves on the outside of the some of the bastions. That was supposed to be where the interior platforms were to slot in, but these were accidentally cut on the wrong side.

 The base was trimmed, and the sharp edges sanded to give a more rounded profile. All the cracks and the unnecessary grooves on the outside of the bastions were filled with plastic wood, and everything was sanded smooth. The 'stone work' (rectangles of heavy paper and cardboard of varying thicknesses) was glued on using PVA. I also used pieces of self-adhesive address labels sent to me over the years by various charitable organizations. I cut them to the desired size and stick them on to give a hint of stone or brickwork.

The entire fort was repainted in a dark grey with highlighting and drybrushing of the stone work in lighter shades. Then sand was glued to the base using PVA and painted brown after the glue had dried. The paints used for all the colours were latex paints from Home Depot. They often have smaller containers for sale in the 'Oops' section of the paint department. Anytime I pass through there, I have a quick look for shades of brown, green, and grey that might be useful for wargames terrain projects.

I constructed three ravelins from polystyrene foam and mounted them on cutoffs from the original base that were trimmed to give an equilateral triangle. To get a consistent size and shape for the pieces of polystyrene, I first cut a pattern out of cardboard that was used as a guide for my handheld hot wire cutter. The simulated stone work was done in the same manner as the main fort.

 After the brown paint on the bases was dry, I flocked them as outlined in Mel's tutorial video, mostly using a medium green blend, with patches of darker green near the bottom of the walls, and lighter green where 'high traffic' or drier areas might be. A few clumps of lichen were added here and there,  just to give some variety. The gates were constructed using balsa wood and match sticks, and then given a coat of dark brown paint followed by drybrushing on lighter shades. The bridge that spans the moat was originally something my father had made for a sand table he had constructed for training soldiers. It was originally just a 1 by 2 cut with a curve and some square arches. It has been augmented with popsicle sticks on the sides, and coffee stir sticks for the planks. It was painted in the same manner as the gates. 

 With the ravelins being separate pieces, it is possible to use the fort without a moat, or without the ravelins completely, depending on the scenario.

The fort was originally designed to be used with Airfix American Civil War Union and Confederate Infanty and Artillery, so the the barrack doors and windows are HO scale. Here's a view of the fort interior.

When I repainted the base many years ago, I thought I might use it for 15mm Napoleonics or Seven Years War, which would have made the barracks too large. I made some 'quick and dirty' facades using cardboard and felt pens to cover the fronts of the barrack blocks and look like buildings that butted up against the fort walls. The buildings in the center are 1/160 scale resin models. I may do some more elaborate facades at some point in the future, as well as some 'battle damage' pieces to place against a wall section or bastion to show where a breach has been established.

This was a project that has been in the back of my mind for quite some time, so it gave me considerable satisfaction to finally get it done. Now all I need to do is find a good set of wargame rules for sieges in the 17th to 19th centuries. I know Conscript Dave is already thinking about doing the 1565 Great Siege of Malta. The possibilities abound.

 

I hope you have enjoyed my little journey down memory lane. Until we can meet across gaming table, stay safe and healthy.

 

 

4Ground 10mm Security Fencing for Adeptus Titanicus

Last year for Christmas, Pam got me some very cool terrain from 4Ground. The first one of these kits to be built was their "Security Fencing" set, shown above with Gilles. 

The set gives you ten full-length fence sections, eight half-length sections, ten corner sections, and two full- and one half-section gates.

The photo above gives a good idea of how much you get. It should be an ample quantity for fencing off an industrial area on your AT table. The terrain tile above is two feet on each edge.

Tiny though they are, the fences in the kit are composed of *many* tiny fibreboard parts. The fencing itself is printed clear acetate that you cut out from the sheet yourself. Clever.

You also get some "gate" sections as shown here.

The kit is listed as "Skill Level 3" out of 5. I also have a "Skill Level 5" kit yet to build and I have to confess I'm a bit afraid of it. The fencing kit was certainly not difficult to assemble but it was somewhat fiddly and composed of many small parts. Thank goodness it was pre-painted... however the parts all fit well and putting them together was a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

Hopefully they'll maybe see the gaming table sometime next year...?

Stay healthy and safe everyone.
 

Polish Post Office Danzig (Polski Urzad Pocztowy Gdansk)

 The central feature of the first scenario of the Bolt Action campaign book, 'Germany Strikes - Early War in Europe' is the Polish Post Office in the Free City of Danzig. Constructed in the mid-19th century, the building was originally a Prussian military hospital (Garnison-Lazareth) until 1920 when it became the primary Polish post office with a direct telephone line to Poland. It was a target of Nazi vandalism leading up to the war, and was ultimately attacked by German paramilitary groups in the early morning of 1 September 1939.

 

The building is described in the scenario as follows: 

"The Post Office is a substantial building in the centre of the table. .... The ground floor of the Post Office consists of six 'small buildings'; rooms, tacked together in two rows of three. A first floor consists of six more rooms on top. All the rooms have windows to the outside, one per exterior wall. Ground floor windows and doors are barred so the only room that can be assaulted from outside is the centre front room where there is a main entrance. Alternatively sappers may be used to blow a hole into the ground floor room, allowing an assault from outside.

The ground around the Post Office should be clear for at least 12" in all directions. The rest of the area on the table is built up with buildings, streets, trees, walls and so on."

This description varies a bit from the historical layout. The original building had a long wing extending off the southwest corner, and it had a brick and wrought iron fence across the front of the building. Also there were a number of adjacent buildings that were situated quite close to the Post Office. Obviosuly, some compromises had to be made in the name of playability.

 Originally I had thought about making the structure so that the roof and the upper floor were separate pieces that could be lifted off, but eventually decided that it would be easier to have the room layout of the different floors off board and build the Post Office as a single piece. I looked for some good colour photographs of the Post Office online, and I was able to do some photo editing to create two files that could be printed off and glued to a structure made of foam core. For the roof detail, I scanned a sheet of Faller embossed cardboard with a red tile pattern that was left over from a project I did decades ago.  The roof itself was made of cardboard from cases of Lipton Iced Tea, and some 3D detail added to the front of the building using 3mm thick cardboard which also supported the dormer above the main entrance. The final features were the chimneys and the downspouts located either side of the main entrance. 

Here are some pics of the construction in progress.

Here is the end result. The final dimensions are L 56cm x W 15cm x H 23cm. I also made two additional terrain bits to mark where the sappers had successfully breached the outer walls of the building.

With the main terrain feature now complete, it's time to work on some early war Germans, especially the support weapons that were used in the attack. More to follow.