Challenge Day 25 - Skeleton Pirates

Don't forget my 2nd Blogday Prize Draw!


Back when I was planning my Pirate Buccaneer army, I found these lovely figures from Rebel Minis and couldn't resist the impulse to buy them.

Given their, errrmmm, nature I figured that their clothing should be faded and grubby. To achieve the faded look I used acrylic inks, which were sealed with a spray of matt varnish before I painted the rest of the figure. I then gave them a wash of warm grey ink to give a grubby look and fill the depths of the skulls and rib cages. Once the wash had dried I highlighted the bones.

Unfortunately I chose ivory as the highlight colour, which has left the bones looking rather white. I should have used a more yellowish white like pale sand.

These were great fun to paint and earned me 48 points. Not bad for about 2 evenings work.


Challenge WIP Update

The NSL Fleet is progressing well. The heavy carrier is finished and all the other ships have been drybrushed and the panels that will be picked out in colour have received a base coat of yellow ochre. The fighters have just been drybrushed - they are lighter so there isn't the need for the yellow ochre.

Just to give you an idea of the scale of this project, the fleet (at the moment!) consists of:
1 heavy carrier
1 light carrier
2 escort carriers
1 battle dreadnought
1 heavy battleship
1 battleship
1 battle cruiser
2 heavy cruisers
2 attack cruisers
6 escort cruisers
6 light cruisers
2 heavy destroyers
4 missile destroyers
4 destroyers
2 frigates
3 corvettes
48 light fighters
3 logistics ships (1 each tender, q-ship tender, tanker)

And here are some WIP pics:

The whole fleet

Capital ships, carriers, logistics ships and heavy and attack cruisers

Escort cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes

Fighters

As you can see, that's a whole lot of ships to paint up!

And the winner of the prize draw is....

....Dux Humunculorum!

Congrats Dux - pleas email me via the KontactR link underneath the Postie's Rejects logo so we can discuss what I'll be painting for you.

WIP Updates

The muskets and pikes for my foot regiment upgrades were primed this morning, along with the ECW dragoons I'm painting up as part of Andy' prize from my July draw.

I also did a little bit of work on my musket only units - black undercoats on musket barrels and officers spontoons and swords, followed by Oily Steel dry-brush. I also did black basecoats for the jacket of one officer, breeches and shoes of one drummer, boots of one standard bearer and hats of the other 3 command figures. I then lightly-dry-brushed the black with Black Grey, then highlighted with a 50:50 mix of Black Grey and Neutral Grey.

I'll probably do a little bit more work on the musketeers tomorrow and see if I can finish all of the command figures.

I'm doing this to reduce the number of paints I need to take with me to the TUC. The musketeers of one regiment will be getting Hull Red jackets, those of the other will have Dark Prussian Blue jackets.


A Couple of Teaser Pics

I took all of the 30YW figures I've painted up so far along to the club tonight. This was for 2 reasons:
1) I had an 800pt game lined up against Gordon
2) It was a good opportunity to take some pics of them all together

I'll do a full post tomorrow with all the army pics, and will write a separate brief AAR (I forgot to take pics for most of the game)

In case you're wondering, the "hills" in the background are Gordon's cloth scrunched up - looks pretty effective doesn't it?

A few turns into the game, before things started to go very, very, very badly wrong on my left flank.

We hadn't actually finished the game when we realised that it was coming up to 11pm. At that point I'd had 5 of my 13BGs broken, Gordon had lost 2 from 15 or 16. However, I was about to break another units and capture his 2 batteries of guns on his left flank. In the centre I was about to break one of his musket/heavy weapon foot units and then would have pursued into the rear of a couple of his other foot units. He might have taken a few more points off me but the question we'd both probably have broken each others' armies at the same time, so we called the match a draw.

Oh, and the magic of tuftiness did seem to work it's wonders on my cuirassiers and they didn't break as quickly as they might have done.

Congrats to Dropship Horizon

http://dropshiphorizon.blogspot.com/2012/01/1000.html

Well, here's my congrats to the captain and crew of good old Dropship Horizon - 1,000 blog posts in about 3 years.

Dropship Horizon has been - and indeed still is - an amazing and invaluable resource for 15mm SF gamers and collectors and is one of my daily "must-reads".

Looking forward very much to seeing this blog continue and reaching 2,000 posts.