Secret Projects; WIP: First Vikings #3

Secret Projects

I had decided to have a lie-in this morning but had managed to sleep in for longer than intended (I obviously needed the sleep!), so I wasn't unhappy when my doorbell rang. It was the postman with a small parcel for me - the items I'd ordered for my original Secret Project. A small fraction of these will get prepped and painted shortly as I need them, but I want to get the current batch of Vikings done first. The rest will make up Secret Project #2 and can wait a while - I won't start on them until my 30YW army is finished.

In terms of Secret Project #1, I've managed to do a couple more steps today. I'll be able to do the next couple of steps before I go to bed. At this rate, I might even be able to complete it tomorrow or Monday.


WIP: First Vikings

The 16 warriors I assembled yesterday have now been primed. Unfortunately, when I went to start assembling the 16 unarmoured warriors I discovered that the needle applicator on my polystyrene cement had clogged. Rats! Tried my other one, same thing. Double rats! I'll need to get some more before I can continue with assembly. Or maybe use one of my El Cheapo brushes that I know longer use for painting.

Tomorrow I'll probably do the basic steps on all 18 figures I have primed, then will work in smaller batches until they are (almost) finished.

Some piccies:

WIP: First Vikings #2 (aka "I hate plastics!")

Got another stage done on the Secret Project. I think there are another 6 or 7 steps until it's complete, so if I manage to do 1 a day you'll be in for a step-by-step account next weekend. Maybe sooner if I manage to get more than 1 step done per day.

Anyhoos, the Vikings are what you want to hear about. I'm discovering an aversion to plastics. Too much fiddling about with assembly for my liking - I just want to get on and paint them up. I guess I'll just have to persevere with these as I've paid for them now and made a start on assembly.

I've spent this evening gluing arms onto the armoured warriors and have started on the heads. As suggested by Rodger yesterday in a comment, I'm going to leave the shields off for now.

The two figures I completed assembly of yesterday have now been primed (using Vallejo Black Polyurethane Primer). Here are a couple of pics.

A-viking we will go..... WIP: First Vikings #1

I've managed to do quite a bit of prep work this evening:

• Cut all the parts off the sprues (storing in a multi-compartment tray until used)
• Cleaned up mold lines on Wargames Factory figures (16 armoured, 16 unarmoured)
• De-sprued, cleaned up and started assembling the 2 command figures (warlord, hornblower) from the Gripping Beast pack - just the shields and a cloak to add
• Glued figures onto 25mm washers

Tomorrow I'll hopefully manage to do assembly of 8 armoured and 8 unarmoured figures and will take photo s for you at that stage. We've got first practice games set up for Monday, so it would be good to have some figures at least partly painted.

I've also done another step on my Secret Project this evening and should manage to squeeze in another step tomorrow.

Just a quickie

Well, the weather forecast was wrong - thankfully. instead it was bright and sunny when I got up this morning, so I took the opportunity to do the next step of my Secret Project which needed to be done outside. Wahey! Some progress!

This evening however I have been feeling a bit wiped out, so I didn't make a start on assembling my Viking troops for Saga. I did manage to do another step on the Secret Project though, as it was something that only needed a few minutes to do.

Hopefully I won't be feeling wiped out tomorrow night and can start assembling the plastics.

WIP: Donnington 30YW Cuirassiers #6 - Finished!

I was in luck - when I got home from work this evening it wasn't piddling down so I could open my windows and do the spray varnishing. After the matt varnish had had time to dry, I did the flocking of the bases. I've decided to leave tufting until the whole army is finished (well, that is, I mean, finished until I decide to add more units) to ensure a coherent approach.

Here you go:

I've also washed the sprues of Vikings that I'm going to make a start on. They're now drying out on my workbench. Tomorrow I'll make a start on assembling them - that should be interesting as I haven't worked with plastic figures or models since i was a teenager.

First things first though - I need to work out what weapons my warband composition is going to be. I'm tempted to go down the Jomsviking route (no levies!) which should make things easier - two 8-figure groups of warriors and four 4-figure groups of Hearthguard. I can always add some bow armed levies later on if I decide I want missile troops in my warband.

Pimping Plastic & Rubbishy Rain

Pimping Plastic

I went along to the club this evening to distribute Saga stuff to people who'd asked me to pick things up for them and to split packs of plastic Vikings and Saxons for others who wanted them. I didn't have a game set up (probably just as well as it would have interfered with the plastic pimping). We had a good turnout this evening - 18 players (5 games of Fog:AM, 1 of FoG:R, a game of Epic, another of Maurice and the 9th was King of the Battlefield), plus myself, another club member and a visitor from New York.

Saga certainly seems to have been a bug that was hiding itself away in our club, just waiting for an agent to cause an outbreak. In the space of just a few days there are 16 of us signed up for the campaign and a few more who might be interested.

Rubbishy Rain

It's piddling down here in London and the forecasts suggest it is going to stay this way for the next few days. My cuirassiers will have to wait to receive their matt varnish spray coat and my Secret Project will be on hold as well - the next step needs to be done outside.

So, what's a girl to do? I guess the obvious thing is to make a start on my Viking warband for Saga. For the campaign we're doing each player starts with a 1 point force of warriors or levies. The size of your warband increases as you play games - by 1 point for a win or after your second successive loss. When you reach 3 points, you can add Hearthguard, when you reach 4 points you get to have a Warlord.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to approach this. It would make sense to prep, assemble, prime and do initial detailing (flesh, armour) for the whole lot then work on them singly or in pairs. Then again, I'll want to get 8 figures off the workbench pretty quickly, so I might want to do the initial batch of 8 Bondi in one go.

We've kind-of-agreed that it will be OK to play with WIP figures, so they'll need to be mounted on 25mm washers from the start - may as well add some ground texture before I prime them.

I'm actually quite keen to have a female warband leader but as I wasn't sure where to look for suitable figures, I posted a question on TMP and got flooded with suggestions very quickly. I think I'll go with one of the Shadow Forge miniatures, maybe with some extra females slipped into the Hearthguard and Warrior units. Another option is Eowyn from GW's Lord of the Rings range, but at £15 for a foot and mounted version it's a bit of an outlay. Mind you, from the pics I saw on their site they do look very nice figures.

Back From Broadside 2012; Saga; Cuirassiers update

I'll do this in reverse order and start with the update on the cuirassiers. They've had their Klear/ink coat, been glued to bases, basing gunk added and dry-brushed. The trouble is that it is raining outside, so I can't open my windows to ventilate the flat while I do the matt varnish spray. Hopefully tomorrow it will have stopped raining allowing me to do that, then I can do the flocking/tufting and declare them "finished".

Saga

Some bright spark at Central London Wargames Club decided the other day to gauge interest in starting a Saga campaign and it looks as though there will be a lot of people joining in. I was hoping to avoid being infected by this, but apparently it is highly contagious and I have succumbed. I'm going for Vikings or Jomsvikings.

This meant I had a shopping list of things people were after to make up their (and my) warbands - mostly plastic Viking and Saxon figures, rules, dice, etc

Broadside 2012

I had planned to head down so that I'd get there by 11am, but was feeling grotty when my alarm went off so I went back to sleep for a while. I eventually got there just after 1.30pm.

It was a nice little show and I'm glad I went. I also didn't have to fork out the £3 entrance fee as apparently that's only for the menfolk!

I had taken my camera, but unfortunately I hadn't spotted that the battery was low, so I couldn't take many pictures. There were some excellent display and participation games going on and a range of traders. The venue was pretty good, although the increased participation meant that everything was split over 3 rooms - the main sports hall, a smaller hall and a subterranean grotto (aka the "bring & buy").

After a brief look around the traders in the small hall, I headed towards the Rejects' game - the Battle of Amiens, a WW1 tank and infantry fest. This was the first time they'd done a demo game at the show and they were awarded joint-second in the prize giving. After a quick chat with Ray and Fran I wandered off to take a look around the main hall.

The main hall was much busier which wasn't too surprising as that was where most of the games and traders were situated. There were a few "big names" trading there - TSS, Warlord Games, Ainsty Castings, Crooked Dice, Mongoose and Armourfast spring to mind.

As I said earlier, there were some stunning games - the Maidstone club had a 6mm Pegasus bridge game (with 3D-printed bridges) which won first prize; Realistic Modeling Services had a Franco-Prussian War game and Shepway had a Romans in Germania game that all looked fantastic.

Having had a look around the games it was shopping time. Unfortunately, one of the packs I was after (Wargames Factory's Saxon Fyrd) had sold out earlier in the day. However, I was able to pick up 1 box each of the following:

Warlord/Gripping Beast - Saxon Thegns, Viking Hirdmen
Wargames Factory - Saxon Thegns, Viking Huscarls, Viking Bondi

Looking at the contents when I got home, I found that the Wargames Factory packs are quite handily designed with bodies & arms sprues (Armoured Warrior = Thegn or Huscarl; Warrior = Fyrd or Bondi) and separate heads/weapons/equipment sprues (Saxon or Viking)

I also bought 2 copies of the Saga rules (1 for me, 1 for a club member), the Northern Fury supplement (for me), Vking/Jomsviking dice (for me), Anglo-Danish/Anglo-Saxon dice (for a club member) and a pack of the Godwin brothers (Harold, Leofwine and Gyrth - for another club member). Oh, and some Mini Natur "tufts with leaves" for myself.

While I was doing the rounds, I bumped into Henry Hyde at the perfect moment - he was just about to show a couple of people a preview of his long awaited "Wargames Compendium". It looks like it is going to be a great book to get. We had a good chat and it turned out that he was judging the games. While i was with him he stopped at one table and was completely ignored. Cue Henry making the following note on his sheet "They ignored me, so I'll ignore them". It wasn't as if they were actually doing anything that would be disrupted by pausing to chat with someone showing an interest.

Note to anyone running a game at a show - the reason for doing a game is to interest people in it. This means that if someone stops to take a look you should at the very least say "Hi!" or even better "Hi, this is xxxxx. Would you like me to talk through what we're doing?". Don't just sit there like a sour lemon and hope that everybody will leave you alone.

Anyway, here are a few of the few pics I took (warning - quite big files):

Franco-Prussian War game

The Rejects - Battle of Amiens

In black t-shirts, L to R: Ray, Fran, Postie, Big Lee