Scratch Building for Spectre

Hi Chaps,

Well the painting bug has not returned as of yet but I have been busy preparing a board and scratch building a church for some expected Spectre games.

So far I have ordered a lot of figures from Empress and Spectre (arrived within 2 days and are excellent. Sadly my order to The Assault Group over two weeks ago has yet to arrive....when it does I will pop a comparison pic on here so we can compare miniature sizes.

The board is 3' square and is only 12mm mdf...I should have gone thicker or used some other material as it may not stand up to being moved about-it's all a learning curve.

Hopefully the church will end up vague enough to be used anywhere from Spain to the middle east and Mexico! Lots of detail to be added and paint to be slapped on, plastic tile sheets are on order.

Also on order are a couple of Humvees from Grubby and a Technical which should be enough for games of this size. To end the spending spree I am looking for a desk, it seems I am expanding my empire!

Paper and Foam building 28mm

Hi Chaps,

Well this week saw an epic battle where my immune system kicked the ass of the common cold! Not all plain sailing as my reaction was to cease all activities for a day or two to help the old white blood cells out.

Still I managed to almost complete this small block of maisonette style housing. This was constructed out of foam board and a printed paper brick pattern. The internet has various patterns out there and my library charges 25p for a colour print out so this was an affordable construction. The "final fix" of doors has yet to go on but I have for now run out of steam (or is that patience?) with it.

So there it is...room entry for zombie games is now an option though I may buy some mdf buildings to fill out a table. I am hoping that some TV dishes, wires and trash will help to give it a lived in look....now I just have to source some ping pong balls to cut the satellite dishes out of!

The figures are the only two I have had the strength to paint, they are both Warlord plastics and the detail was sharp....they were also easy to put together which is always a bonus.

Thanks for popping by. Keep blogging.

Toy Cars repainted for 28mm

Hi Chaps,

Almost a crisis in my painting world as I have run out of figures to splash paint onto! (OK if I am being honest I have 20 Darkest Africa waiting and around 30 Space Marines but I am not in the mood).

So with no little dudes to paint I am resorting to car boot 1/48 1/50 1/55 scale toy cars to repaint so that they will match my tabletop men and buildings. I feel that without a repaint they just never match the scenery nor the table itself-they are just too shiny looking!

Anyway this is the process that my toys go through to look more like the rest of my collection-to be fair a couple of my cars are nearly as old as I am! I always purchase them from car boots or from ebay at ridiculously cheap prices...£1 or £2 pounds and when you examine the casts they are actually little precision works of art.

First step above is to drill out the rivets holding the major parts together...

Give a caustic soda bath to anything that needs a lot of paint removed. I have ignored the chassis on these trucks and just lightly sanded the paint to give the black spray some grip...

Undercoat everything matt black (or white if you want a pale top colour).

Apply your main hobby colours and weather the vehicles a lot if you are representing Africa/Middle East or Asia. I saw a lot of hand painted cars and trucks out there so you really cannot make any mistakes....brown was a major choice for home painters...why is anyone's guess!

So that is it until my TAG figures and Warlord Zombie game arrives. If you want to give this a go Lesney Superkings seem to work for 28mm, I have a Unimog on the way and a Securitas truck (to be used as a SWAT team truck) soon to arrive. Corgi's larger vehicles work well and I am searching for their Transit van from the 70's!

A lot of these models will be older than the readers of this blog...

Thanks for popping by and keep blogging you are all excellent.

Starting to paint

Hi Chaps,

I am sure that at some time we have all had that loss of enthusiasm that causes us to abandon our painting stations from time to time? It happens to me a couple of times a year but I leave my paints in the rack because I know that at some point a trigger will snap me back into painting mode.

A similar thing just happened...though I cannot really say why I wanted to paint moderns again...maybe the Spectre miniatures website? Anyway I am still working on a cheap way of fabricating satellite dishes, air con units (molding seems to be the only option on this one) and radio relay masts.....

Foam buildings are being churned out at the rate of 3 a week but I really only want to show them on my gaming table which of course needs vegetation!

One of mine (and I am sure yours too) habits is to return to manufacturers that have provided good service previously and I always seem to look at Grubby Tanks. His technicals are effective and very cheap at £9 for vehicle and two crew....I love these casts which are easy to paint and arrive within a day or two-Grubby Tanks are excellent.

Fine scale modelers may want to look away at my techniques for securing wheels-the blue tac is still on there and cannot be seen, the super glue does the rest.

"The Crew" so far-the rest will be made up of TAG (The Assault Group) when they arrive. Actually this was a big order from me at over £50 (wooo I hear you cry...sadly no one gets rich off my orders)...

Chap below is a Reaper Bones plastic "Horace Action Jackson" who may appear in future Zombie games but for the moment has been promoted from pimp to Warlord!

Empress miniatures also feature in my little world and they are lovely to paint, there is far more detail on them than I can do justice too but they still look effective-I may try to take less close up pics!

Another Empress figure, I think he was in the SAS pack but now he is freelancing on my four foot square board.

Same guy in a dump...

Cheap foam board is a great way to fill a table, the gate is from Warbases....the actual base is a table mat that cost about 20p which is cheaper than mdf and saves the hassle of cutting.

Another contractor. The detail on these little guys is just amazing.

Well thanks for looking. I now have a little campaign started with the background story printed out which gives every little contact a reason. I have no idea how this will develop but it should be fun and mostly out of my hands.

Keep blogging guys!

Pizza (base) Hut.

Hi Chaps,

A few hours yesterday were spent cutting and scribing some extruded styrene into the shape of a cabin. Household tester pots provided colour and the base was a random piece of mdf. In all this item just cost me the time to make it...maybe pennies.

So now my 28mm adventurers have a cabin to call home! This was fun and proves that if we war gamers try our hobby is cheap.

Sorry about the photo quality, today it has decided to be autumnal and is duller outside than inside? I did manage to put one of the two sides to this building in upside down making one window lower than the other but I rolled with it as it adds to the randomness and well, you can't really tell.

The last pic below was taken during the build....pizza bases rule!

Keep blogging Chaps!

Chapel for Templars out of a pizza tray

Hi Chaps,

You may have noticed over the years that I am on a budget-though my miniature defense budget should increase soon, So in an attempt to keep down my spending I fashioned a chapel for my 28mm Templars using a pizza base and some pics from my local church.

The photo is of the chancel of St Andrews in Leyland, the land was granted to the Templars in 1218 and they began building soon after....the inside of this earliest part of the church is very interesting-sadly it was locked when I visited but one day I will find it open with camera in hand. The gothis windows are a later addition, possibly as early as 1485 when a new tower was added-the earliest windows would (I think) have been arched.

These are the grave markers of what must be some of the first Templars around my home town....

Which brings me to my 28mm Chapel made from the bottom of an old drawer, a pizza box and the inevitable cereal packet for the roof tiles!

So here iot is, maybe a couple of pounds at most....budget intact. Maybe next my mini Templars will be asking for a hospital or even a keep? As I have just purchased a couple more units of little plastic men I may consider an expansion for them.

Keep blogging Chaps I need your ideas...

Oh and err ignore the desk it is now clear again.

The Assault Group and some scatter terrain

Hi Chaps,

My two orders to The Assault Group (TAG) arrived on Saturday and I am absolutely astonished at the quality of these little figures. (TAG had the common sense to combine my separate orders...I am a dullard). The miniatures look very paintable and each figure is full of character, as a bonus two extra figures were included, both very useful-a western style sniper and a Taliban character armed with pistols.

I would recommend TAG to anyone interested in the modern period but their catalogue seems to cover lots of different conflicts.

Orrin Deforest's book Slow Burn is an excellent read for anyone who games the Vietnam War or is just interested in military intelligence. I am sure that a lot of scenario's could be built around some of the chapters in the book, as gamers we do seem to restrict ourselves to the more common military activities-the modern period especially has so much published material that we should never run out of gaming ideas.

The TAG figures busy being glued....the scissors are being used to keep a figure upright until the glue dries...despite not even starting these guys lists are being drawn up for more support! I did have a Taliban army in 20mm but I find 28mm easier to paint, easier to see and just generally more enchanting.

The pallets are made from matches and coffee stirrers and are a great way to use up some hobby time when you don't feel like like painting or if time is short. Eventually you will end up with a couple of little stacks that when based will provide a bit of detail to the table and break up lines of sight.

Keep blogging Chaps, all these ideas have been stolen from various places around the blogosphere.

28MM Housing and Terrain

Hi Chaps,

This week has seen no figure painting (well half a dozen Airfix modern Brits were started) but plenty of scratch building for a modern or Zombie table. I did order twice from The Assault Group whose figures are truly world class. Why twice? Mainly because I forgot to order the pack of figures which took me to the site on the first visit! Only a small order but enough to give me a stash of figures to dip into when an opportune moment arises.

Embracing my new love of pdf's and technology I bought the "Danger Close" ruleset from Empress Miniatures. These two page rules seem very interesting and I can hardly wait to push some figures around my desk to try them out. At £1.50 I would recommend them to anyone who has an interest in modern/future games.....you will need a 20 sided dice.

The market stalls/bars are now pretty much complete and are really little more than scatter terrain as these things pop up all over the place in countries less preoccupied with health and safety and tax collection than the euro zone.

More scatter terrain was made with this toy car, 99P from a cheap shop-it was originally a police car and there were three in the pack, bargain. This model should work for breaking up lines of sight and could also be used in Zombie games-it can join the couple I made last year.

After a visit to my local burger place I restocked up on coffee stirrers which are being snipped and glued into miniature pallets, a few stacks of these can then be based and used as more scatter terrain and should not be out of place on a board representing real estate anywhere in the world.

Thanks for popping by, two more buildings should be painted by weekend and the TAG order should have arrived so it will be back to figures next week.

Keep blogging Chaps/Chicks.

Time and motion study

Hi Chaps,

Well the painting (of figure) vibe has gone. This happens now and again, maybe it is similar to writers block? I never worry about it because when I discover something of interest it comes back with a vengeance. It seems that the cause of my current malaise was actually attempting to paint (OK force) a battalion of 10mm infantry with artillery support. I have nothing against the smaller scales except that I felt no affinity for them and they looked crap.

I want to recognise and feel proud of every piece of metal or plastic that I slap paint on...not squint at a base of Khaki shrimps imagining that they are a group of men. OK the smaller scales win the whole range/ratio thing but at the end of the day a 10mm man can still shoot further than the edge of my table.....

So due to this slightly disappointing and deflating failure of an experiment I rummaged around for something other than a figure to paint. It was hello Africa (or Asia) and I took up a house brush (yes 1/4") and a few tester pots and got the whole smaller scale thing out of my system. The failure was all mine and small scales are great (honest)....hopefully that disclaimer will prevent arguments, hate mail or fatwa's.

The shop may look dishevelled but I can assure you that generally the third world produces far worse-it seems that a building never see's neither brush nor paint the day after it is built. The smart money would open a DIY store in those parts....I will find some pictures to back up my claims shortly!

keep blogging Chaps.

Bases are fun!

Hi Chaps,

Despite my mistake of gluing the figures intended for these bases to their ordinary plastic bases I still enjoyed this project. Whilst this sort of base may be of limited use for historical types for skirmish fantasy or sci fi it has its place.

The technique is not difficult, cheap air drying modelling clay was used to make a few 3 or 4mm thick "plates"-use a glass or rolling pin to flatten it out....don't worry about it being uneven. When dry it was broken into pieces that were stacked up on each other in the most random way possible, glue it all together using Bostik type glue.

Next I scored in patterns of bricks and stone slabs, the lines need to be a bit deeper and wider than you would at first think or they just dont show up.

Paint was matt black undercoat followed by greys being worked lighter with bone colour paint. The whole flat surface was was washed with Waywatcher Green which gave a nice worn look.

This was an experiment and maybe the bases should have a more unified look as I was hoping to base a unit of 12 Haradrim (?) on them?

Thanks for looking Guys, keep blogging it's where I nick these ideas from (James Wappel take a bow).

Grubby Tanks

Hi All,

In my last post I forgot to mention the figures that I purchased from Grubby Tanks. They are from the old Britannia range and are really excellent sculpts, I do like their larde size (easier for me to paint) and I also like the free figure and quick dispatch time!

http://www.grubbytanks.com/catalog/

Couple all this miniature perfection with the really useful painting guide from Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy and life is made so much easier...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTTSgtUYfS0&utm_source=Karwansaray+Publishers+General+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d1eeb2f165-Karwansaray_Publishers_Newsletter15_07_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_519a3fa91b-d1eeb2f165-407433817&mc_cid=d1eeb2f165&mc_eid=a4e88010b2

The technical was just £7.50 and it came with two crew and HMG, probably the cheapest 28mm vehicle on the market-I will be ordering more US infantry and a couple of Humvees shortly. Whilst in the mood I also scratch built a house which I am hoping will not look out of place in Africa or Afghanistan.

Keep blogging Chaps......more pics on the way soon.