Painting Oak and Iron

I've had Oak and Iron sitting on my shelf since I backed it when it was first on Kickstarter. As I've started to return to painting and playing miniatures games I was roundly infected with the desire to get this out, blow off the layer of dust, and see about painting the ships and playing the game.

Oak and Iron - First Edition Boxed Set

The ships are multi-part models, that push together. One part is the hull of the ship, and then all of the sails push into their little slots. This has the advantage of making the models easy to set up and play with - you could put them together straight after opening the box, and play it within a couple of minutes. With the hulls in brown plastic, and the sails in a white plastic, they look good enough for a sort of board game/miniatures game hybrid model.

Some of the models from the base game.

Whatever advantages are gained by making the ship models like this, the flip side is that they lack some refinement in terms of their detail. However, at the scale of the models, and how good they look once painted on the table, I don't think it really matters - they are table quality models, and a good paint job really does make them pop.

The base game box includes six ships, and I had to use the handy PDF on the Firelock Games website to help me work out which was the brigantine, and which was the frigate, and so on. I decided to work through the base box, hopefully play a game or two, and then decide whether to continue with the other couple of boxes I've got for the game.

I have played a couple of games now, and I started on the Men of War box (includes 3 more ship models). Two of these are painted in the photos below. I'll review the game another day, but for now, here are all the painted ships...

The first model I painted was the sloop...

The Brigantine and the Corvette were next

Brigantine

Corvette

The Fluyt

The Petite Fregate

The Light Galleon

All six ships from the core box

The 6th Rate, from the 'Men of War' box

The 5th Rate, from the 'Men of War' box

Oak and Iron ships on my sea board, and with some terrain I had originally built for Dystopian Wars:

Gateway to Mayhem

I seem to have been on a theme recently, the last five posts from the Castle have all been about Gaslands. This is to make it six in a row...

The last little while I have been consumed by both getting some freelance work finished and completing my school reports, outside of that I managed to squirrel away a little time to finish off a set of four gates for my Gaslands table (I want to make some billboards next, and I think I'll be done). These gates are from an Australian company called Module-R Terrain, they went together very easily, and look great; you get six in a set (I have the last two near finished, but needed four done for an upcoming event). Well worth the price of admission!

The six gates from Module-R went together very easily. The car is to give an idea of the scale, you can comfortably fit three cars side by side within the gate.

With all of these I undercoated them with a silver metallic spray. After this I heavily dry-brushed with a lighter silver paint. The next step was to paint the black and yellow stripes. I used a piece of ragged foam to stipple on the red for the signs. Once all that was done I washed it heavily with a black wash (Dark Tone from Army Painter). Lastly, I dribbled a fair bit of brown wash over them to give them a rusted look. The tire marks and oil stains on some of the gates were made with pooled black wash - the Army Painter stuff from the tin is quite viscous, I watered it down when painting the gates, but used it straight for the tire marks etc.

So, four gates finished! All ready for an upcoming participation game I'll be running at the local game convention ShepparCon, which I am greatly looking forward to. I was also blown away that Sebastian of Module-R Terrain offered to support the event, and I'll have some packs to hand out for 'spectacular happenings' and 'ludicrous carnage' over the course of the weekend!

I also managed to finish off the cars I had on the workbench. One was a buggy, the other a monster truck...

With both of these I used plenty of Vallejo textured paint to make them look like they have a fair amount of mud caked to them. Other than that, I followed the same method as for the other cars I have completed: an undercoat of Indian red, water and salt in patches, an undercoat of the base colour, get rid of salt, detailing, wash, highlight, rust effect and finally varnish. I am fairly happy with how they've come out. Now I need to do a couple more cars for the participation game coming up, and I'll be fairly well done I think...

These are all the vehicles I have completed so far. I need to add a couple more cars, and I should be good to go... and paint the bikes I have... and do some billboards... and...

Lastly:

I managed a quick game of the Death Race scenario with my son and daughter the other day... It was hilarious. I was neck and neck with my son (who sped to top-gear and spent the rest of the game trying not to wipe out).

That is until an unfortunate slide had me going through a gate the wrong way, my son rammed me, and the results were not pretty. Straight after the ram my car flew forward, slid and flipped off the table.

A combination of high speed and being rammed got me in this pickle... My son won by technical knockout.

Well, those are my Gaslands travails till now. I am greatly looking forward to the upcoming participation game, and until then, I have a few more bits to do, and I should be done!

Well, I say done...

A wreck!

More Gaslands terrain! My last posts have been consumed by Gaslands, and this one is no different. The simple fact is that the terrain and cars I been putting together and painting, are just fun to do.

This time, with the explosive gas tank and concrete piles behind me, I decided to make one more piece of terrain: a pile of wrecked cars. The materials required: a MDF coaster, cheap cars, a hammer, hot glue, and paint.

So, taking the cheapest toy cars I could find outside, I found a suitable hard surface to sit them on, and then belted them with a hammer several times. Given the intended outcome, it ended up being visually appealing and quite cathartic at the same time. Next I hot glued the cars together and onto an MDF coaster I had laying around. Be aware: cars hit with a hammer have holes through which hot glue can travel, I noticed this as I also managed to hot glue my fingers. It turns out hot glue is not 'marketing speak', trying to make warm glue seem edgy, it really is hot.

After this I painted the base with PVA and sprinkled sand all over it. An undercoat of Indian Red was next.

The car on the right of frame was a rubber one that came with a monster truck, the paint never fully dried on it (damn chemical reactions), so I pulled it off and replaced it with another cheap car mauled beneath a hammer. Next the base coat - some metal dry brushing, the few windows in blue, the tires in black (and hubs in metal), and ground in brown.

I washed it heavily with an Army Painted Strong Tone, and not happy with the result, again with a Dark Tone, allowing it to pool in spots on the base to look like spilled oil etc. Lastly, I broke out my Tamiya weathering kit and dusted the whole thing down heavily with rust. Lastly I sprayed the entirety with the last drops of a flat varnish spray - which came out patchy, and caused a wrinkled effect I would have been furious about if it had not been a car wreck.

The wrinkling in the paint is due to the flat varnish coming out of the can poorly, and the pock marks in the surface from bubbles in the wash (which I would normally remove). Overall, the effect is solid I think. A car wreck, for other nearly wrecked cars to get wrecked on.

The next items on the docket are two more cars for the teams, a set of gates from Module-R terrain, and some bikes that just arrived from Ramshackle.

Module-R Terrain gates

Ramshackle bikes

Edited in response to Wouter's question below, about how the bikes scale with the HotWheels:

I think the scale fairly well, it should be noted of course, that some of the HotWheels cars are chunky and exaggerated, but on the whole they sit nicely alongside them and will work a treat once based and painted. I did notice the resin is a little brittle, so take care when trimming them. But the detail is solid. I'm very happy with them so far!

Obstacle Course!

In between getting the various teams ready for Gaslands, I have also been working on a few pieces of terrain to liven up the board. Last post I wrote about the board I made, and a few piles of concrete to provide things to drive or slide into.  This time I took a few of the cheap plastic city pieces that came with one of the car kits I bought and made them more post-apocalyptic-y (it's an adjective right?).

First were some witches hats, because in the smoke, gas, and blood fueled ultra-violence of this post-apocalyptic roller derby, someone spent time before the starting horn to set out traffic hazard cones. Getting ripped apart by .50 cal shells or having a 2.75" rocket detonate your fuel tank is one thing, losing traction on a slippery part of the course though? Not on!

Garish plastic cones, stripped of the sticker, stuck them to a washer and added some sand, and finally masked with some thin tape.

A spray of black undercoat, in retrospect I should have bent a few of these up.

Peel the tape off, and now we have added safety!

Next up I took a plastic gas tank, glued it to a MDF coaster, added a plastic street sign (which I bent up with a pair of pliers), and some left over pieces of MDF railing from my Spartan Terrain sets.

Stupidly I undercoated the whole thing red. Realising shortly afterwards this wasn't what I was after I resprayed in black.

I

That's better...

Brown and drybrush with a lighter brown on the base. The tank, fences and sign were heavily dry-brushed in metal. The fence and sign were dry-brushed again in a lighter metal. Following that I applied white to the tank using heavy to light stippling with a torn piece of foam.

The rust was a light brown wash dribbled over the top and around all the edges and valves. With a final coat of Tamiya rust weathering powder in patches all over.

Originally I did a cross on the sign, but wasn't thrilled with it. I decided to paint over it...

That seems more appropriate.