Liebster Blog Award

Another meme is doing the blogger rounds - the Liebster Blog Awards. the rules are pretty simple - if you have received one of these awards, you put a post up with a link back to the blogger who gave you the award, then award it to 5 other blogs that you think deserve it.

So, Anne of Anne's Attic got given the award, then named me as one of her 5 awardees. Curses - now I have to decide which 5 blogs I follow deserve the award (that haven't been given it already). It's going to be very tough to narrow it down.

I guess it has to be these 5 folks:

Mike Whitaker over at Trouble At T'Mill - if for no other reason than his excellent and informative series of posts on horse colours and heraldry.

Curt over at Analogue Hobbies - fantastic painting and a great guy

Colonel Shofer's Mild OCD Model Blog - whilst we see very little of his own work, he does an amazing job of linking through to inspiring work on other peoples' blogs, youtube channels and suchlike.

Brovatar over at Den of Imagination - fantastic modelling and painting

Frontline Gamer - for his Sunday Sermons if for no other reason. This blog is always entertaining and informative and he deserves kudos for all the work that goes into keeping it going.

So, there you go. That's my 5 nominees for the award. I'm certain that I've overlooked some that are equally deserving.

Not completely idle

Okay, so it's been a week since I last posted. I'm still feeling very tired in the evenings after work which means I'm not in the mood to do much painting or modelling. In an effort to get a quick mood-boosting win, I decided to start painting up some of my GZG starships (well, they've been sitting in the box for a year or so).

Ages ago, I'd bought some of the magnetic adapters from Ninja Magic to allow me to quick-fit ships onto flying stands. For painting ships, I'd figured it would be a good idea to fix some of the adapter bases onto long flight pegs that I'd picked up from Litko.

I therefore set to work. The first problem I found was that the base sections were pretty fiddly to glue together. The second problem was that I later found I'd used slightly too much Zap superglue to fix the two base sections together which meant the ship part didn't fit properly in many  of them. Unfortunately, by the time I'd discovered that, I had already done the same process on a number of flight stands. Grrrrr!! Hopefully I'll be able to drill out the excess glue so that they are usable. In the meantime I prepared another 8 flight stands

The next step was to decide which fleet to do. The easiest option was to do the FSE starter fleet - 2 frigates, 2 destroyers, 2 light cruisers, 1 heavy cruiser and 1 battle cruiser. Cleaning these up wasn't too bad apart from the drive exhausts which had quite a bit of flash that needed drilling out. After fitting the magnetic adapters, I primed them with Vallejo black polyurethane primer, base-coated with Dark Blue, heavy-dry-brush with 50:50 Dark Blue and Light Grey, with a final light brush of 50:50 Dark Blue and White.

I'm not totally sure about the basic colour scheme and don't want to go any further without seeing what people think, so here are some photos. For some reason, the photos against the black background have bleached the colours on the ships.

Let me know what you think of this as a base colour.

The scheme I'm looking at instead is a mid grey base dry-brushed heavily with pale grey blue, then some panels picked out in dark blue.

Remembrance

Posting tonight in case I forget in the morning.


They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.


In memory of all those killed in war, both military and civilian and of all sides.

4Ground Dark Ages Buildings

As you may recall, I bought a pair of 4Ground buildings from their 28mm Dark Ages range while I was at SELWG a few weeks ago. I've finished assembling them now, so here are my pics and thoughts.

Anglo-Dane Dwelling (28S-DAR-103)

Late Saxon/High Medieval Hovel (28S-DAR-102)

These buildings were easy to assemble and for the most part needed no reference to the instructions. The only fiddly bit was assembling the "fire box" for each building (the raised area of the floor) and the most awkward bit was attaching the smoke hood on the Anglo-Danish building.

Being made of MDF, assembly only needed PVA glue, with the exception of the smoke hood - I used superglue gel to attach that.

These were "pre-painted" models. The paint job is fairly basic, but looks fine for gaming.

If I was to buy more of these, I would probably:
1) Give the walls and any exposed woodwork on the roofs a brown ink wash to dirty them up a bit. I might also wash the teddy-bear fur thatch to give it a bit of depth.
2) Before adding the walls, I would probably do some work on the floor - add the fire box; coat the floor with basing texture; paint and wash the texture; coat the floor with dilute PVA and sprinkle chopped-up sisal string fibres over it.
3) Paint up the top of the fire box
4) Add "curtains" swept to the side of the windows.

Would I recommend 4Ground's buildings based on my experience with these? Definitely. They are pretty cheap, easy to assemble and look good enough for gaming without any further work.

Viral Blog Post - "Are You a Proper Wargamer?"

Wow, a week without having posted anything. That's mainly because I haven't had anything to post. Last Sunday, just before I headed off to bed I realised I had another bleeding cold which combined with increasing my hours at work left me too worn our to want to do any painting this week and yesterday.

I did get some work done today though - the dark ages buildings are now finished. I'll take some pics tomorrow and post a review of the buildings. I also did a bit more work on the cuirassiers - armour has received a black wash, saddle cloths have been painted and the horses have been base-coated.


OK, so another viral on the wargames blogosphere has been kicked off by Phil B over at The Wargaming Site

So, here are my answers.


* Spent at least £500 on figures / tanks - and you get extra kudos for every £500 you've spent
Definitely over £500, possibly over £1000 (if not, I'm damned close). Not bad considering I've only been back into gaming for just over a year
* Pricked your finger or thumb on a pike block - several times
Pikes and lances, many, many times.
* Tried at least 10 different rule sets and vowed never to play half of them ever again
Not yet, but with only a year or so of gaming I haven't had time yet. I've definitely read more than 10 and decided against playing several of them (the wonders of free and cheap PDF rules)
* Bought an army off EBay
Not yet
* Sold an army on EBay
Not yet
* spent months painting an army - then used it in anger once
Not an army, but I do have several squads for SF skirmish games that haven't seen any tabletop action so far
* tried several different periods and genres
Yup
* dropped a box of figures on the floor from a great height
Not yet (thank goodness)
* lost a battle on the last throw of the dice
Yup
* made at least one enemy for life
Does having 3 stifles on PMT count as having 3 "enemies for life"? I've obviously upset them enough for them to want to ignore my posts
* had a proper, stand up argument over a wargames table
Nope, probably because I'm too easy going.
* thrown a dice across a room
Not intentionally - some overly enthusiastic rolls have seen my dice skip off the table, onto the floor and carry on to the far wall.
* rebased an army for a different rule set
Not yet. If I changed rules and the new one used different base sizes I'd probably opt for a different army (and maybe scale)
* inflicted a whopping defeat on an opponent
Only once
* suffered an embarrassing defeat due to a stupid tactical decision
Pretty much every game I play
* joined a wargamers club
Yes and no. Central London Wargames Club isn't a membership club, you just arrange games with other "members", turn up and buy drinks
* bought a ton of lead that remains unpainted
Certainly a good few pounds weight
* been to a wargamers show
Yup - Colours 2011, SELWG 2011 and 2012, Salute 2012, Broadside 2012, Campaign 2012
* have more dice than is logical or necessary to own - and have used most of them
Definitely more dice than I really need, but not all (or probably even most) of them have been used
* have taken boxes of troops down to a club just to show them off to your mates
Haven't taken whole boxes, but have taken units or individual figures.

So, that's:

10 definites
6 negatives
4 maybes or partials

I guess that means that I am a "proper wargamer"