Finished: 15mm Korean and Ming Chinese Additions

 

And they're done, at last! They took me a bit longer to complete than they should have, but at least they did get me back to painting figures after my sojourn making terrain.

Korean Armoured Infantry

Korean Heavy Spearmen

Korean Levy

Korean Light Cavalry

Unit 1

Unit 2

Here is a photo of a base from each "unit" with one from the first unit painted a few years ago:

As you can see, I've kept the same three main colours (blue, magenta, orange) for their clothing, but used for different parts.

Due to pack sizes, I have ended up with two spare figures:

I'll probably use those for a baggage camp base.

Ming Chinese Levy

All figures are 15mm from Old Glory 15s (purchased through Timecast).

I haven't decided what will be next up on the paint table. I'll have to have a rifle through the piles tomorrow.

Wednesday Workbench 03 November & Traveller Ships Kickstarter

 

I haven't quite finished the Koreans and Ming Chinese. Mind you, the only thing left to do is add static grass to the bases, which I'll do tomorrow morning.

Some goodies arrived today:

There were also some paints, but you don't want to see those. The baggies above contain the bits I need to make up another batch of "scrub mix" for jungle terrain. I will probably get that done tomorrow or Friday.

Traveller Ships Kickstarter

For those with a yen for Traveller or who like starship miniatures, 2nd Dynasty launched a Kickstarter campaign this afternoon to produce a range of Traveller ship miniatures, focused on the smaller "adventure class" ships. the miniatures will be in two scales for each ship - 1:270 (X-wing scale) and "tactical scale" (designed to work with 1" hex grid games).

NB - these will be STL files for 3D printing, not physical miniatures

The Kickstarter link is: (linky-link)

So far the six core ships (Type A Free Trader, Broadsword mercenary cruiser, Gazelle close escort, Type M subsidised liner, Vargr corsair and Type S scout), and five stretch goal ships (Type A2 Far Trader, Type J Seeker, Type K safari ship, Type L Laboratory Ship and Type R subsidised merchant).

Some of the pledge levels include ships and add-ons from their previous campaigns, including their 28mm Type S Scout.

I couldn't resist, so I've backed it. I guess that means I will need to buy myself a 3D printer at some point...

Paint Table Saturday 30 October

 

I know what (some of you) are thinking - "That table looks far too clean and tidy!". Please rest assured that this is a very temporary state of affairs and it will soon be looking very cluttered and messy.

I finished painting the Korean cavalry yesterday and hit them and the Ming levy with Klear/ink last night. Today I used the airbrush to matte varnish them and the Korean infantry. After leaving them a few hours, I popped them off their painting sticks, sorted them out into "units" and then glued the figures onto bases.

A couple of the figures refused to stay upright, so I ended up using some "kicker" to quickly cure the superglue. That is why you can see white patches around some of the figures' puddle bases.

Tomorrow I will be adding basing texture. They should all be finished by Tuesday.

Thursday Workbench 28 October

 

I forgot to do a "Wednesday Workbench" post yesterday, so you've got a "Thursday Workbench" post instead. I was meant to be at the club this afternoon & evening for an ACW ironclads game, but my lower back was "out" this morning. Luckily a few hours laid flat on my back seems to have sorted it. I had planned to do some shopping in central London before the game, but that will have to wait until next week.

In the photo above you can see the Korean light cavalry that I'm currently working on. They're almost finished - just the metal bits and some touch-ups (mostly hands) to do, then I can hit them with my Klear/ink wash, hopefully tomorrow. The Ming Chinese levy were finished a couple of days ago:

They will also get their Klear/ink wash tomorrow.

On Saturday I will be hitting all of the figures from this project with a coat of matte varnish; I should also make a start on the basing.

Paint Table Saturday 23 October

 

Well...I went down a couple of rabbit-holes again this week, so it ended up being Thursday before I got back to painting. Finishing the Korean armoured infantry was very quick and they were done by the evening. On Friday I gave all the Korean infantry a brush-on coat of my Klear/ink mix. I left that to dry overnight, before starting work on some Ming Chinese levy infantry today.

As you can see, I've made some good progress. Hopefully I'll have them finished tomorrow, then on Monday I will be able to start work on the Korean light cavalry. I should have all of these finished by next weekend, including having them based. Assuming I don't encounter any ore rabbit holes, of course!

Paint Table Saturday 09 October

 

I'm back! In case you were worried about my not having posted anything for a whole two weeks, please rest assured that I am alive and well and that nothing untoward has happened to me. I was quite simply busy with all sorts of odd little bits and didn't have anything to post until today.

As you can tell from the photo above, I actually have some figures on the table ready for painting. Over the last few days I got all of this lost prepped:

and primed them today with the airbrush:

That's 96 foot and 18 cavalry for my Choson Korean and Ming Chinese armies. Some will be ADLG specific bases, the rest will be towards my megalomaniacal Korean army for FoG/FoGR.

Why did it take me until this week to start prepping them? Well, I was away for a few days at the beginning of last week, and then when I got back I managed to sidetrack myself to deal with a bug going round my in my brain.

For those who know the Traveller RPG system, I came across what I thought might be a clash between the world generation system and the stated average Imperial tech level. According to most sources I'd read, the average TL is 11-12 (Jump-2 to Jump-3). However, all the Sector data I'd seen suggested a much lower average TL. So....

...I thought it would be a good idea to do a quick check to confirm my suspicions. At least, I thought it would be quick. It wasn't. It took me a day and a half to build and run the spreadsheets to work it out. That's because there are six different factors that generate die roll modifiers for the tech level roll and many of them interact with each other. My suspicions were confirmed - the average TL using the systems in Book 3 and Book 6 comes out as around 8. 

Clearly an additional DM on the TL roll is required to give an average tL of 11-12. Not knowing how big a DM would be needed, I did an initial recalculation using a +2 DM - that shifted the average TL to a bit over 9. I then tried +3 which shifted it to a bit more over 10. I finally tried a +4 DM which gave an solid 11.5 as the average. There was still a full range of TLs from 0-15, but the distribution was skewed much more toward the higher TLs. That makes much more sense given the published TL timelines - at the time the RPG is set, the Imperium has had Jump-3 for over a thousand years and Jump-4 for about 500 years. How likely is it that the majority of worlds would be TL 8 or below after all that time?

Oh, yes, each run of the additional DM took the best part of a day to complete as a lot of copying/cutting and pasting had to be done.

Which is why I wasn't doing actual hobby stuff to post here until this week.

AHPC9 Day 26 - 6th & 7th Submissions

I managed to submit two entries this week. The second entry was finished yesterday morning, so I would have had time to paint something else up for submission today. However, I decided instead to start work on a project which will probably take me a week to paint - the extra couple of days will be helpful in case things go belly-up.

The first entry was some Seven Years War Russians:

The post can be found at *this link*


My second entry was some Ming Chinese arquebusiers:

The post can be found at *this link*



These two entries have boosted my tally to 917 points and 4th place on the table.

Finished: 15mm Ming Chinese Anti-Cavalry Unit

Despite being slowed down by the 'flu, the fact that I was at home sick rather than just painting in the evenings has seen me complete the last of my current units for the Ming Chinese army (there will be a few more in the future).

I had bought a pack of infantry with shields by mistake, but realised that I could in fact make use of them. For ADLG they will be heavy infantry swordsmen and for FoGAM they will be heavy infantry "anti-cavalry squads" - there are no heavy foot for the Ming Chinese in FoGR.

This is how they would normally be deployed:

And a close-up to show off the freehand shields:

The officer has the symbols for "wolf" on his shield. The troopers have "demon faces" which were added with a micron pen which is meant to be waterproof - just as well I did a test with brushing on Klear and gloss varnish before doing my usual Klear/ink coat as the ink turned out not to be waterproof after all. To avoid ruining all that hard work I airbrushed them with Vallejo gloss varnish which didn't cause the ink to run before applying the Klear/ink coat.

And the army so far:

There will be a "workbench" post tomorrow where you will find out what I'm moving onto next, but it probably won't be until later in the week that the next finished unit appears (possibly even next weekend).