Monday Update 26 August

After a couple of hiccups, the wolves are almost done. I just need to paint the basing and do flocking.

But that will have to wait until tomorrow as I will be heading off to the club shortly for our Bank Holiday refight of Kunersdorf. It's going to be a pretty sticky game as summer seems to have decided to show its face again, so we are experiencing a few days of temperatures in the low 30s (high 80s for those stuck using archaic measures!).

Rain, Rain, Go Away

...and come again - NEVER!

Well, OK, maybe a little bit of a shower at night to top up reservoirs etc, and to ensure crops and gardens are watered. Just don't come during the day at weekends when I need to hit models with spray paints and varnishes. Do we have a deal?

As you can probably guess, I'm a little frustrated by the weather today which has kicked my plans into touch. I had hoped to post some finished work this evening, but I can't do any spraying so that's out of the question. I'll now either have to put up with an open window (and associated cold in my flat) one evening this week or keep my fingers crossed for dry weather next weekend. I'll probably put up with the open window one evening, just to clear them off my paint table!

I haven't quite decided what to do instead yet, so I took some pictures of what was going to be sprayed.

Mongol Light Foot

These just need to be sprayed with matt varnish and for the bases to be flocked.

While doing the last stages on the Mongols, I decided to finish off the...



Civilian Spaceships

that I'd started painting many, many months ago.

These just need to be sprayed with matt or satin varnish and to have flight peg toppers glued underneath.

I also decided to paint up another big beast spaceship. This is the Dallas Class Refinery Ship which is just over 5 inches long.

It also needs a coat of varnish. I'll probably go matt, then use brush on satin and gloss for the spheres and pipework.

Seven Years War Russians

I thought it would be a good idea to paint a couple of test figures for the Russian infantry. These were going to be sprayed with red primer. The figures are spares.


Since my last post, I have had some goodies arrive. I'd placed an order with Adler for various strips of 6mm ACW figures to see how they would fit alongside the Baccus ones. The cavalry definitely won't work together; the infantry might just about. I could get away with Adler mounted officers on infantry bases as brigade commanders. I'll definitely raise a few regiments of Adler cavalry as they have a good variety of poses/weapons - Baccus just have sabres drawn; Adler have them with pistols, carbines and shotguns as well.

I also placed an order with Timecast for some Old Glory 15s Koreans. It's probably a bit more expensive per pack than ordering them direct, but there weren't enough packs for me to qualify for discounts and it saved me on postage and the inevitable extortionate admin fee from Royal Mail for import VAT. I'm still waiting for 2 packs as they were out of stock and I'd just missed their pre-Warfare restocking order.

These will provide the remaining figures I need to field "legal" armies for the later period (for FoGR I need Righteous Army and warrior monks), and to max out the Korean light cavalry.


Second Game of Art De La Guerre

I got in another game of ADLG last week, this time with my Alans. I decided to try something a bit risky to see if it is workable - the light horse swarm. I'd say that it doesn't work that well as light horse are very fragile and can quite easily be destroyed as they only have 2 cohesion points. It might work better on a table without a lot of terrain, where they have a chance to get around the enemy flanks. Unfortunately, for this game one flank was closed down by forests and forested steep hills.

The beige bits with trees are forest; the hills are steep and forested; the green bits are brush

My opponent had played a few more games before than me, one of them coached by the rules' author. I think that was how he had picked up a rather cheesy tactic that I'll have to try to remember. As charges occur in the movement phase and can be carried out at any time, if you can move a unit around a flank and behind (within 1 base width) of enemy units which can normally evade, it prevents them from doing so when they are charged. He used that to devastating effect against my light horse.

I also learnt another rule I'll need to remember. Allied corps have to check at the start of the game to determine if they are "hesitant". It is therefore useful to place an allied unit in ambush near to where you expect your opponent to advance. This is because if they come within 1 base width of the ambush marker, the ambush is revealed and the hesitant allied corps will stop being hesitant and come into play. Yes, you guessed it - my light horse managed to advance within 1 base width of his ambush, revealed it and activated the previously hesitant allied corps.

A third thing I found out (note to self - read the rules properly) is that disorder doesn't remove the ability of spearmen and pikemen to nullify the impact of mounted troops. In the club tournament, all three of my opponents are fielding heavy foot spear or pike armies against my mounted army. My only chance is to get onto their flanks and rear as it will be very difficult to shoot down 4 cohesion levels.


Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge V

With just under two weeks to go, I'm starting to get myself organised.

15mm Seven Years War Russians - primed and ready to go; schedule worked out
6mm ACW - primed and ready to go
ESU fleet - prepped; ca[ital ships need assembly; all need priming; need to decide on colour scheme
28mm Wars of the Roses - still on the sprues in their boxes. I have worked out what units I'll be making up from them, but haven't decided on livery schemes yet.
Anti-Hero entry fee figure - I think I know what I'll be doing for this; I just need to source the figure(s)
Other bits - I'm thinking of painting some 15mm SciFI as well. These might be a good mini-project to take down to Sussex to paint over the Christmas break.


Curt has decided to try to control the chaos this year by setting up a blog just for the Challenge. All the challengers will be able to draft their own posts (and upload photos) if they wish. He will then review, edit and post them.

We've each been assigned a day when our entries will be posted. Mine will be posted on Saturdays if you want to keep an eye out for them.

Challenge Day 20 - On The Workbench & Koreans

As today was going to be fairly quiet at work (most of the lab staff won't be back until next week), I decided to take the coureurs into work with me to try to finish them off. I'd left them just needing highlights and detailing. Unfortunately, given the number of different base colours I'd used, this meant I also had to take a lot of paints in with me. Surprisingly, in between the work I actually had to do, I managed to finish them (I hope - I've sent pics to Loki to check if they are up to scratch for the BfC project). So, no pics of these tonight as I'll be submitting them later tonight or tomorrow.

This left me with a clear workbench this evening, so I've made a start on 2 small projects in 15mm. First up are a set of 10 regimental guns for my 30 Years War army. I should finish painting them tonight. The other group are the skeleton pirates from Rebel Minis. I've given them a wash of Warm Grey ink to bring out the detail and provide a bit of shading. I'm tempted to paint these with ink washes to give a faded look to their clothing. Belts, boots, weapons and the bones will then be painted.

Here's a pic of the current projects:

The regimental guns should get based tomorrow. If the basing gunk dries quickly enough, I might get them finished and submitted tomorrow. I think I'll get a decent way through doing the skeleton pirates over the course of the weekend.


Challenge Entry #4 - 15mm Choson Korean Arquebusiers and Crossbowmen

This was a nice, large entry scoring me 196 points. This batch consists of 80 arquebusier (8 as light foot, 72 as medium foot) and 18 crossbowmen (all medium foot). The arquebusiers and 16 of the crossbowmen are Grumpys (from East Riding Miniatures), the other 2 crossbowmen are from Old Glory 15s and were leftovers from previous units.

Challenge Day 15

I didn't get much work done on the Koreans today, so it will be a push to get them finished before the end of 2013. If I focus solely on them tomorrow and Tuesday I might just get them done in time.

The reason for not doing much on them is that I made a start on my villain bonus theme entry. The figure on its own would have looked good, but I decided that what I really needed was a backdrop for the photos. So I made a start on that and have almost finished - just need to apply a second layer of paint on one item.

Challenge Day 14 - Entry #3: 15mm Swiss Halberdiers

They've been up on Curt's blog for a few days, so I'm definitely clear to post them here. My third entry for this year's Challenge was a bunch of 72 Swiss halberdiers. The figures are 15mm from Donnington Miniatures and were (as with all my previous Swiss) painted to represent proportionally all the cantons present at Morat. This batch took me just about 2 days to paint and base.

These halberdiers complete my Swiss army for now. At some point I may decide to add a few more bases of them, particularly if I decide that I want to go for early Swiss (else my army would be rather small!).


I have done a bit more work on my next 15mm project. As nobody has commented, I might as well tell you what they are - 18 Korean crossbowmen and 80 Korean arquebusiers. If all goes to plan, I should be able to finish these on Monday and submit them in time to go up before the end of 2013.

I've also begun work on my entry for the Villain bonus theme. The parts have been washed and I've started assembling it. I need to do a little bit of Milliput work to add some extra touches to the figure.

Of King Arthur and the Korean Guards

Yes, it's been a few days since my last post so shoot me! However, before resorting to your guns, do read on as you'll see that I've been fairly busy.

King Arthur

On Monday I was pleasantly surprised to discover I'd won a prize draw. Dan Mersey had randomly drawn a winner from his followers for having gained his 100th. It was me! On Wednesday my prize arrived so I am now the lucky owner of his book "King Arthur" from the Osprey Myths and Legends series. It looks like it will be a cracking read.

Thanks Dan!


Thursday Night's Game

I played a 850 point game of FoG:R against Clive on Thursday - my Swiss against his German States, so lots of pike-on-pike action was expected.

It was a pretty even match-up, but Clive had better dice than me, so I lost 22-3. The fact that his army had 4 guns which annihilated one of my pike keils wasn't very helpful for my cause. It was a fun game though. I'll post an AAR once I've had a chance to go through the photos.


Prepping Pirates

I've been taking pirates into work to prep them during my lunch break. So far I've prepped about 260 figures. I've still got to prep the captains, artillery and African and Asian figures (not to forget the PyRats and Skeleton crew) and bits and pieces for their camp. Once everything is prepped it will be time to glue them onto sticks for painting and prime them.


Korean Foot Guards

Progress was slow as I wasn't able to do much during the week in the evenings, but I managed to finish them over the weekend.

Various foot guard units flourished during the Koryo era, but their role diminished in the Choson era and they were eventually outlawed under the Yi military reforms, replaced by "soldiers".

In FoG:AM you can have 8 bases each of To Bang  and Tae Gak guards (equipped with heavy weapon or crossbow respectively) for both Koryo and Choson era armies. For the latter era you have a choice of guard or "soldiers" (equipped Bow*, Light Spear-Swordsmen) but can't have both together.

Painting these guards took a little bit longer than the regular foot did as I wanted to be as neat as possible when doing their vests, which add a bit of welcome colour to an otherwise fairly drab army.

Well, that's enough waffle, here are the photos.

Tae Gak Guards:

To Bang Guards:

This week I'll be trying to paint the artillery, but with games tomorrow and Thursday night and heading down to Bournemouth on Saturday for TUC Congress I doubt I'll have them finished before I go.

Finished: Korean Kwang Gun Foot

I actually did manage to finish these yesterday, but as the AAR was scheduled I decided to post them tonight.

These complete my Kwang Gun foot. So, here are some pics:

These archers are for swapping with the crossbowmen in two of the units I've previously painted.

The Orange foot with crossbows in the rear rank.

The White foot with bows in the rear rank.

The Yellow foot with crossbows in the rear rank.

Close up of the Yellow foot command group.


And a pic of all my Korean foot so far:

I have started work on the Guard foot, but as I'm back at work now I don't expect to finish them until the weekend.

Sunday Update

It seems that I've got my mojo back for painting and blogging. Thank goodness for that!

AARs

I wrote AARs for the three games of FoG on Friday evening, and the remaining two are scheduled to post tomorrow and Wednesday.

Painting

I haven't got quite as far as I'd hoped with the Koreans, but they're almost complete now. All that's left to do is the metalwork, Klear/ink, matt varnish and flocking. I might be able to get them done tomorrow, but it's more likely that they'll be finished on Tuesday.

Here are a couple of pics that I've just taken of them:

As there aren't many Koreans left to do now, I'd better crack on with prepping some figures. I think it will have to be the Pirates next

Aaaarrrggghhhh!

Admit it - you were worried, weren't you?

Well, that's the longest break from posting I think I've ever taken. Don't worry, it had nothing to do with me hating you all (I don't, before anyone asks!) nor that I didn't have anything to post (I did have some stuff, as you'll see over the next couple of days). It was simply down to me not feeling like posting. It seems that the mini-"heatwave" we had a few weeks ago had messed up my sleep patterns and I was really, really tired. Still, things seem to be better now.

So, what have I been up to since my last post?

Gaming - 3 games of FoG:AM at the club  giving 1 bad loss, 1 massive win and 1 close win (if we'd been able to play another turn, I think I'd have managed another massive win but the manager wanted to close the pub!). Oh, and I've been persuaded to join the club's FoG:AM team at Derby World Wargames Tournament at the end of September. I'll be in the early biblical era pool (lots of medium foot and chariots, hardly any cavalry) - I've just got to decide which army, come up with a list and borrow figures from one of the others.

Reading - finished my first read of Henry's "The Wargaming Compendium"; read "Achtung, Shweinehund!" and a bunch of Ospreys.

Painting - I hadn't managed to get any done over the past couple of weeks as I was too drained to contemplate it. However, I've been on leave this week and have managed to get some done. To get back into the swing of things I've been working on my Koreans. I've painted the basing texture on all the foot and the artillery and have spent the past few days working on the remaining Kwang Gun foot (36 heavy weapon, 24 crossbow, 36 bow). I should be able to finish painting these over the weekend and may even get them flocked if things go well. That will leave me (for now) with just 4 bases of light artillery and the Guard foot (24 "To Bang" heavy weapon foot and 24 "Tae Gak" crossbowmen) to do....


.... until, that is, I get some more stuff to add.

As no post is truly complete without a piccy, here's one of the Koreans on the workbench: