Happy New Year 2018

Happy New year!

Another year and another Batch of Bods, nags and accoutrements finished.
Slightly down on 2016´s prodution rate but still not bad.
Approximately 312  bods, 68 nags (with and without Mounted bods) 4 guns, 9 trolls, 4 fire demons, a catapult, a stack of  ACW Terrain, roads, walls, rivers, Bridge etc and an ACW  wargame.
13  English Men-At-Arms 13th-14th Century
14  English Longbowmen                                
80  ACW Union inf                                        
8    McNeill's Rangers                                                        
80 ACW Confederate inf                                
8 "Jayhawkers"                                                                  
8  Crew and 2 ACW guns                                
4  trolls
14  Norman Cavalry                                                            
2  Orc catapults
10 Modern Mounted Amazons                                            
12 Modern Amazons foot                                  
14 Eastern Friendly Indians                                
9   Lewis and Clark                                            
14 Medieval Guards resting                                  
4   Burgundian field artillery                              
10 Dark Alliance orcs                                        
12 Conan and friends                                          
13  Caeser Orcs                                                  
4 Fire Demons Set 1 and Set 2
2 Orc Catapults
War Trolls set 2
4 War Trolls set 3
6 Hobelars  
4 Inquisition                                                                        
14 Bodstonian Dragoons                                          
10 Amazons                                                                
10 Mounted Amazons                                                

What was planned and actually happened.
Continue work on both 1329 Teutonic dio and  the Airfix ACW wargame Project.
Wargame the ACW bods using the rules (with possible mild adaptions) from the Terry Wise book. ..this should actually happen.
Re-Boot Bodstonia. Those  Bodstonians have been getting on without me so it´s about time I had a look at what they are up to

Medievals took a bit of a back seat, the bulk of "production" was Fantasy and Airfix ACW with both subjects taking up over 2/3rds of everything painted or created.
The ACW Project got completed and a game was actually played.
The land of Bodstonia  wasn´t revisited with new Storylines but a lot more (46) Personalities and Populace were created.
A couple more bits and pieces were painted for the Teutonic 1329 dio.
Apart from not creating any new tales for Bodstonia...2017 Targets achieved :-)

Plans for 2018
Produce  more for the 1329 dio.
Get some Story lines done for Bodstonia. I made the effort to read a book (Changes in the Land by William Cronon)  on early Colonist/native American Indian relationships/Interactions,  so it would be a waste not to use the new info  in the plot lines.
Possibly..but I´m still thinking about it, add to the ACW Project using the new Strelets range of ACW bods.

Airfix ACW Wargaming (Terrain Pt2)

Again, like the first post on  Terrain for the project, the aim is for quick, cheap, easy and durable stuff.
Trees.

13 "Toytown" trees as approved by Noddy and Bigears. As and when, I´ll replace or add to them..(??...no, on second thoughts..I´ll definately replace them) with those  Merit/New-way style trees. I´ve got a couple which came with one of those "bag -o- crappy Knights" sets but not enough for a decent amount of rough and ready foliage.

Basic, quick, easy, cheap and durable. They certainly aint going to win prizes but  I liked the lack of fuss and bother of the "Toytown" appearance. 


Green sponge for the foliage, some bits of bamboo from an old basket  for the trunks and plasterboard for the bases.



Bases for the trees cut out of the plasterboard using a circle cutter. Added advantage, the drill bit automatically makes the holes for the trunks as it cuts out the discs.

I cut a  bevel (slight slope) around the bases which were then painted with cheap wall paint. Trunks added, painted Brown. Clumps of sponge (roughly shaped with scissors) are then shoved onto the bamboo rod , taken off,  a drop of PVA added  the end of the rod and the hole in the sponge and re-attached.
To get around the single colour of the sponge, I dipped my fingers into some watered down darker green  and brown paint and randomly pinched the sponge.





House on the hill

House in the woods

Stone walls.

Way back I had loads of wall sections, the type that were used in toy farm sets and the like but they´ve Long gone to  landfill heaven. So, rather than go playing the part of Archeologist and digging up  the local  rubbish tip, I made some.
High density foam, stonework marked out with a pen, black base , Grey drybrush..the odd Stone or two picked out with different hues of Brown.

Normally I would have made more effort to lessen the contrast between the joints and the Stones but I like the Cartoon effect of the the black Joints.

Test set up with the fences, trees, road and river sections, houses, hills, walls etc. Two Merit/New-way style decidious  trees and 1/2 a dozen firs added.
The green base is on of those astroturf style matts for Offices, the ones with the felt like surface and bobbles on the back. The surface is good because the roads etc have slightly rough undersides and stick to the felt...found this out by accident not by design.
2m x 1m. It´s not quite wide enough, everything Ends up massed in the middle,  so I´ll have to buy another. Still, it only cost a tenner.

Back drops, ploughed fields and some hay fields in preperation along with some more road bits.

So, that´s about it. All that´s left is, in the words of  Sri  Sumbhajee Angria;

.

Airfix ACW Wargaming (Terrain)

Bits and pieces of Terrain keeping to the Old School  "cheap,cheerfull, robust and quick" idea behind the Project.
The difficulty is trying to not get too involved with the Terrain.. the aim is for a more early wargames days, not quite as sparse or simplistic as just using the lawn * aka H.G.Wells Little wars but also not going for something along the lines of;
"as Close to   realistic as possible, so realistic in fact, that if I was small enough to be able to  skip merrily across this landscape, I´d hear birds tweeting and see badgers....er?...badgering"
..........and it´s all got to fit into a storage box without getting snapped, bent or crushed.

Also, the more "realistic" the longer it will take and as the target is to get this Project finished by the end of march this year,  it´ll do as it is.

Hedgerows.

Made from......

.....An old pan cleaner (the type with the green scrubbing surface) and sections of an old wooden Jointed folding ruler . Being old and  used pan cleaners, they already had weathering added

The ruler cut into lengths the same length (roughly 10cm´s)  as the pan cleaner and then rubbed with sandpaper so the paint will stick.

The scrubbing surface of the The pan cleaner torn off , cut in half, then each half folded and stitched (yes stitched) together. Stitching proved faster than glueing and less messy than a hot glue gun.
The bases are simply painted green and the pan scrubber glued on with PVA.

Gates.
Posts made from bits of high density foam, gates from chopped up Coffee stirrers.

Roads.
Peasy. Strips of thin MDF board (from the back of an old cupboard) PVA smeared over the surface, sand drizzled over that and painted dark Brown then a  mid- Brown  drybrush.

Rivers.
Again, thin MDF, Banks made with a mix of  sand/wallfiller and PVA glue . "Water" painted with first matt mid blue and then, to get a bit of a shine,  a mix of blue/green window paint with a smudge of Brown added.

 

Bridge
Base the same as the roads and rivers. The sides of the Bridge high density foam and the road surface from thick Card.

Quick test set up of the roads, Bridge and a couple of river pieces. Yep, Looks fine to me :-) So I´ll Need a couple more short sections of road and river and that´s sorted.

A couple of hours work and a cost of a couple of euros.

* I used to get a lot of complaints from Mater for digging earthworks in the flower beds or worse,  Setting fire to  Palisade  forts/houses made from lolly sticks and twigs  that were built in the middle of the jungle..er?..Forest..er?.. lawn.


Oh...and as I´m loosing track of which and whose Blogs I´m following, I´ve started work on sorting the blog rolls into categories;
Ones with mainly 1/72nd/20mm Content
Ones with mainly 28mm Content
And others...mixed Content, historical only, busts, 54mm etc until I get around to Setting up other blog rolls.
It´s a lot of work..more than I reckoned upon. Swopping the Blogs about means opening a couple of Windows at one time, swopping between them, adding and deleting as I go along. Deleting is the worst part. Trying to find a blog among the others on a list is a pain..you can´t put them into alphabetical order!! If your blog isn´t already under it´s blog roll heading (or in the wrong one)..don´t worry, I´ll get around to it eventually..or tell me

Airfix ACW Wargaming (Pt6)

2 lots of CSA Infantry (40 in total) finished and based. Another 40 are nearing completion.
Based according the the base sizes in the Airfix American Civil War Wargaming book, 25mm x 20mm for 4 bods per base.
Planned is at least 4 "regiments" per side but more could be added depending on supply of bods and me Holding interest and not getting sidelined into some other Project
One bod is from the Airfix Wagon Train set.
The flags...
At the back, The 3rd Texas Infantry
At the front, The 28th Regiment, North Carolina

I´m still in two minds as to wether I should spray the whole lot with gloss or leave them matt...

A couple of Hills made from plasterboard offcuts..heavy, durable..and cheap.
Basic shapes cut out, the edges cleaned up a bit  using a fine toothed woodsaw  then glued together with PVA.

Painted with cheap wall paint

"Little house on the hill"

A shout for Phil from Philotep´s 1/72nd Minis Kingdom Blog. As his blog titel suggests, he´s a follower of the true scale ..1/72nd ;-) ..and he´s a damned good painter..his trolls (HERE) for example. 

Airfix ACW Wargaming (Pt4)

Two Batches of cavalry, one for the Union and one for the CSA. With the recent new recruits (HERE) I´ll be able to make up another two Units.
Then a bit of mix and matching and onto their bases they go.

The CSA have had a couple of head swops. Ok, anyone who has an idea about CSA cav (or, like me,  has looked at PSR) knows that the cavalry on both sides prefered the Hardee type hats but I reckon the use of hardee hats for the CSA cav makes them look more CSA looking....well it does to me.

Also, anyone who has an idea about CSA cav (or, like me,  has,  looked at the write up on this set at  PSR) knows These bods and thier nags (well, not so much the nags but the Equipment on them) that they are about as historically accurate as the film Gladiator, but this Project is old school. ...hence the big flag carried by the CSA Standard bearer...I like BIG flags!! :-D

In the distant past I´d have used a  small screwdriver heated over a candle to weld the pegs on the nags hooves (and sometimes my fingers..happy days) to the holes in the  bases. In most cases it never really Held for Long.
These days, I´m allowed Access to superglue to weld the pegs (and sometimes my fingers .. nothing changes)  to the bases.

I came up with a method  using thin metal wire "welded" to one of the supporting legs to attach the nags  as shown HERE . It´s a way more solid method of attaching them  than either of the "welding" methods but to use it on all the nags would be time consuming.

Some of the nags which were lacking their bases  have the same peg arrangement which fits  exactly to the bases from the Airfix Sherrif of Nottingham set  so they didn´t Need the Addition of metal Pins.

A bit more scenery,  some "snake fences" made using cut up coffee stirrers

I´ve mabe them in interlockable sections. The 8 (so far) have a total length, when locked together, of 1.6m. I was going to add the side stakes propping up the fence at the  intersections but that would mean they wouldn´t be joinable and as the stakes would stick out, theyéd be prone to damage.

Battle of Stamford bridge 1066

Was there a Bridge and if there was one, was it a nice Stone one as in some depictions or a well constructed wooden one as in others?
If there was one it was probably a bit "rough and ready"..so that´s what I´ve made.

Here´s the Viking hero working his way through anyone who attempts to force him off the Bridge, Clip from 1066 - The Battle of Middle Earth..."stop pushing at the back!!!"

Palm Trees ( "scratch Built" )

Sir Henry Botherington Smyth is having a relaxing rest under the shade of a couple of palm trees. The well is re-cycled from the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem Dio.....

The palm trees..how to make them. A couple of weeks ago Michel from Germania Figuren visited and we discussed, among other things, Palm Trees. He told me that Erik Trauner makes his using the middles from Pinecones. Off  I went and got one and we both tried (without success) pulling the scales off with pliers etc. A few days ago I was again  thinking how to make palmtrees for the Khandibar set up and bingo!!!

What do you need ? A pair of scissors, some clear silicon, some plastic decoration leaves (the sort with a metal or plastic spine welded under the leaf, the ones used for roses seem to be the best) a Pine cone...AND!!!!!!...................

..........A Squirrel. One of the visitors to our garden...:-D

Squirrels like the seeds in pine cones and to get at them they strip the scales off. and then throw the core down. After just a quick look under a pine tree near our house I collected over 50 such "cores". The only thing the squirrel doesn´t do is remove the "tuft" of scales at the top, but as this can be easily snapped off, I´ll let them off.

The Plastic leaves. Simply cut down to the rough size wanted, and with scissors cut irregular strips all along the sides. When that´s done, turn the leaf over and remove the last 1/2 cm of the spine near the base of the leaf. This gives it a nice flat area for attaching. Bend the leaf to shape(the bending also spreads the fronds apart)....and using silicone, glue to the top of the pinecone core in an overlapping clockwise (anti-clockwise)  pattern.

If anyone is interested, Valdemar are looking for sponsors to help fund a set of Bods.

The concept:
It costs 50 euro to be part investor in the set, these money are used to help cover some of the development costs. What you get are that you help the range grow and you get 1 sample set from the first testshots, so you will get the figures way before anyone else.

How:
You sign of for 1 share (10 total) and when all ten are sold the project will begin. If the project are not completed you will get your money back.
It will be a "brutal" battle set..so if your interested,  contact Jens on the Valdemar site