Wednesday Workbench 22 June 2022

 

It's Wednesday and I have remembered to do a workbench post this week! As you can tell from the photo above, I have got the later war Germans primed. I got that finished yesterday.

There was a reason I didn't finish them on Monday - I was out most of the day gaming. I had decided it was about time my ancient Germans got blooded, so I arranged an afternoon and an evening game at the club. The afternoon one was against IanM's Triumvirate Romans, led by Julius himself. The dice were wild for both of us, either one extreme or the other with very few middling rolls. That led to some crazy results once the battle lines clashed. It all came down to the final two combats in one turn - Ian was one point away from breaking and I was two away. I lost the first of those, leaving us both one point off breaking, then the dice gods favoured me - I won it, despite being down a factor, causing Ian's unit to take the cohesion loss I needed to break his army!

Here are some photos of that game:

The evenign game was against DaveM's Early Imperial Romans. I was running a slightly different list, using an allied command of Batavians. Luckily for me, they passed the test in the first turn and didn't go "hesitant". Unluckily for me, I had made a complete hash of my deployment - I should have put that command on my left flank and the command with cavalry on my right. Lessons learned...

I forgot to take photos of that game. Because of my poor deployment, the Batavian medium swordsmen were facing elite Roman heavy swordsmen and got badly mangled; on the left flank, my medium cavalry were matched up against Roman heavy cavalry and suffered equally badly. I also suffered from the dice gods' disfavour almost every time it was crucial. Still, it was a good game overall. 

AHPC XII 3rd Entry - 15mm Ancient Germans

 

I managed to finish the basing on the ancient Germans in plenty of time to submit them yesterday. They got posted last night: linky-link.

In terms of scoring, these have put me back on track for my target of 1300 points, making up for the lack of work done over the holiday period.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to finish the Japanese in time to submit them yesterday - I was waiting for the basing to dry before matte varnishing them, but it didn't happen in time so I did the varnishing this morning.

Paint Table Saturday 15 January 2022

 

As you can see, there's quite a bit going on on my workbench at the moment. My Warbases order arrived yesterday afternoon, so I set about cutting magnetic sheet to size and sticking it onto the bases I need. 

I'd finished the Germans during the day, including all the varnishing. With the bases sorted, I popped the figures off the sticks (and was pleasantly surprised when none of them broke at the ankles), sorted them out by pose and then into groups for basing, then finally glued them onto their bases.

This morning I added sand to the bases, then left them on top of a radiator to dry and harden. This evening I've applied a sealing coat of 10% matte medium and returned them to the top of the radiator. they should be ready for drybrushing and adding static grass tomorrow.

Rather than sit around idle while the basing was drying, I decided to start on the next squad of Japanese infantry:

There isn't much left to do on them, but I don't think they will quite be finished in time to submit this week.

While the various washes were drying on them, I decided to assemble and prime a couple of MDF buildings which I had previously popped off their sprues. 

One of them will be part of a submission later in the Challenge, but getting them done to this point now will save me rushing later on.

Wednesday Workbench 12 January 2022

 

In my post on Monday I did mention that I'd just started work on quite a lot of 15mm figures. In fact, 139 of them (although as they are from Lancashire Games older ranges, I expect a few casualties before they are based - weak ankles and hand/weapon joins).

This lot are ancient Germans to beef up my army to ADLG size.

I'm very nearly finished with the painting - just leather details, flesh highlights and metallic details to go before a final wash and then varnishing. 

There is a hitch that might see them not submitted for Sunday - I forgot that I was out of the size of bases that I need for them. As Tiny Tin Troops are no longer selling pre-magnetised bases, I placed an order with Warbases. I then realised I am also out of self-adhesive magnetic sheet, so I ordered a pack of that along with a pack of self-adhesive flexo-metal to line storage boxes.

The magnetic sheet and flexo-metal have arrived. I'm hopeful that the Warbases order will arrive before the weekend.

Wednesday Workbench 24 November

 Apologies for the lack of posts since Salute. I decided not to do a post of pics of the Salute games as I hadn't taken very many, they didn't cover that many games and other bloggers had done much more comprehensive posts.

As for WIP stuff, I'm slowly plugging away at figure prep ready for this winter's Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge:

That's the Imperial Romans prepped and primed. I do need to touch up the primer, which I'll get done tomorrow.

Part of the lack of progress has been down to me having the expected sore shoulder and "feeling like crap" reaction to having my Covid booster last week and my annual 'flu jab yesterday. I'm also dealing with a gas boiler which keeps switching off - I've got an engineer booked for tomorrow, so hopefully the fault will be sorted and my flat will be warm again.

I got a parcel in the post today:

Or is that three parcels combined?

But you're not interested in white boxes, it's what's inside that you want to see:

It's the order I placed with The Assault Group about a month ago. There are seventeen packs of WW2 Japanese and a pack of dogs. They'll be joining the prepping & priming queue.

Finished: 15mm Foot Leaders for "Infamy, Infamy!"

 

I did mean to post these yesterday - you'll find out why I didn't later on.

As you can see, I have finally finished these foot leader figures for my Roman and German forces for "Infamy, Infamy!". 

German Leaders and Characters

Roman Scorpion and Crew

Roman Standards and Cornicen

Optiones

Auxiliary Officers

Legionary Officers

When I was resizing the photos yesterday afternoon, there was something niggling away in the back of my mind, but I couldn't put a finger on what was wrong. It was quite late last night that it dawned on me - the Roman shield designs were wrong. I'd painted the legionary officers with the auxiliary foot design and the auxiliary officers with the auxiliary cavalry design.

A quick repaint later and the niggle was kicked into touch:

All these figures were 15mm from Donnington Miniatures.

Finished: Stewards and Mounted Leaders for "Infamy, Infamy!"

I did manage to finish the basing on these figures today, so my prediction of Saturday held true. I've also made a start on the dismounted leader figures (just the flesh base coat and wash so far).

Roman Leaders:

German Leaders:

German Stewards:

All the figures are 15mm from Donnington Miniatures. 

The leaders on pill bases will be Status 3; the ones on oval bases will be Status 1 or 2.

Paint Table Saturday 07 November

 

It took me a little while (OK, about a week) to sit down and finish painting these leader figures, but that is exactly what I did today. Tomorrow I will varnish them and start the basing process - they should be finished on Monday.

As the basing process will have some quite long breaks while things dry, I should start work on the dismounted figures tomorrow. I'll do the flesh on them all, then work separately on the Romans and Germans.