Desert Terrain Day 05

After Thursday's post I carried on for a bit and cut and bevelled some more ePVC - bases for the impassable and a steep hill, plus a bunch of 20cm strips for river (8cm wide) and road (4 cm wide) sections.

Those who have read the comments on Thursday's post will have spotted an error I made - Das clay shrinks as it dries, causing warping. After seeing that comment yesterday morning I checked the fields and "dunes" bases and sure enough, they'd warped. I ended up removing the Das (and Milliput - that one didn't warp) from the field/plantations and flexed the dunes to release the clay forms - I've since superglued them in place.

The bits I cut on Thursday night got taken into work yesterday and were sanded during my lunch break. I didn't do any more work in the evening as I had a couple of drinks after work.

Before heading out this morning I decided to try something out. I took one of the plantation bases (the textured wallpaper had come off with the Milliput) and gave it a coat of filler. When I got back a few hours later the filler had dried and there was no warping - I should be able to use filler to create the field ditches.

For the road and river sections there is a much bigger risk of warping, so I cut some 20cm lengths of bamboo skewers and superglued them near the edges. They're a bit too thick for the road banks (but ideal for the river banks) so I sanded them down to reduce the raised effect.

I also had some messy fun covering the gentle hills, gully and the flat (for scrub and village) pieces with filler. I've also glued the plateau and steep hill to their bases.

Here's a pic of everything:

And a close-up on some of the river & road sections:

Tomorrow I'll be doing some more work with the filler, doing the roads, rivers and dunes. And maybe the edges around the fields/plantations.


While I was out I did a bit of shopping. After last Saturday's post a couple of people had mentioned that they'd found small topiary balls in pound shops - I'd never seen any in my local ones. Until today that is, so I picked one up. I also picked up a couple of flower sprays in Wilko:

Bits from the topiary ball

The big petals and leaves probably can't be used, but the rest will add more variety and help to break up the green monotony a bit.

Desert Terrain Day 03

I was feeling a bit under the weather at the beginning of the week so didn't do any more work on Monday or Tuesday. And I forgot to take pics last night (not that there would have been much to see). I had finished shaping the hills with the hot-wire cutter, glued them onto ePVC bases then I made a quick pass with the cutter to blend the edges to meet the base. Today I took the hills to work and sanded them during my lunch break.

This evening I did some work on the field, plantation and dunes bases. I started off using Milliput but realised I wouldn't have enough and it probably wasn't ideal. So I switched to Das air-drying clay.

Here's a pic of everything so far:

After work I made a trip to 4D Modelshop to buy some more ePVC sheets - I'll be cutting a base for the "impassable" terrain piece to go on and also cutting some strips for roads and rivers..I also picked up a Foam Factory 2-in-1 hot-wire kit which includes a cutter/router and a hot-knife. The former will be the most useful as it gives a larger "throat" for cutting and sculpting.

Desert Terrain Day 01

This afternoon and early evening I've been working on the desert terrain. The first job was to paint the undersides of the bases:

Once the second light coat had dried, I sorted out which bases would get used for which terrain types and marked them up. I've assigned three boards each for fields and plantations. For quick and easy furrow texture I cut out bits of textured wallpaper from a sample I picked up a while ago, then stuck them on using spray adhesive. 

Note to self - do not buy the cheap cans from pound shops. The glue comes out in globs and the nozzle soon blocks up. 

I also needed a gully piece so I cut a rough shape from 10mm styrofoam then shaped it with a hot-wire cutter. As the spray glue had crapped out on me by then I haven't been able to stick it in place on one of the bases.

I then cut some pieces of 10mm styrofoam for gentle hills. I've started shaping the edges with the hot-wire cutter - I'll carry on tomorrow night. I also cut out a suitably sized piece of 50mm styrofoam and roughly carved it to resemble a rocky plateau for a piece of "impassable terrain".

I'm going to need to get some more sheets of ePVC as I've decided the mount the hills and plateau on bases to help protect them.

So, here's a pic of everything so far:

Tomorrow I'll be doing some work with Milliput - the fields and plantations need to be edged (and maybe divided up) with ditches and water channels and I need to make some dunes on three of the bases. That leaves three bases, one which will be for scrubland.

Another job I need to do for this project is to make up a load of tufts and bits of sage-brush

In The Jungle

I bought some things today:

No, I'm not abandoning wargaming for a new plant-based hobby. These plastic plants (from Ikea and Homebase) are a source of foliage for my Junglegrave project. I've also ordered a few bits off Amazon.

Some close-ups on individual bits:

I think this one will be used on terrain pieces as creepers.

I've made a start on grabbing bits from the balls and pots ready for use when I get some bases (of various shapes and sizes) to stick them onto. They'll also get dotted onto terrain pieces. I suspect that I'll have much more here than I actually need!

It's also provided a couple of "tree trunks" to mix in.

Over the next few days my plan is to work on some desert terrain pieces for use with my Nubians (and eventually Sea Peoples) as well as with the Buccaneers (note to self - must actually finish painting that army!).

AHPC7 - The Round-Up (lots of pics)

The dust having settled from the weekend's tornado of entries, I guess it's time for me to do a round-up post. Let's start with a pic of everything I painted:

Updated to add links to the posts on the main Challenge and Bonus Theme Round blogs

Entry 1 - Baaa!

Linky-link

These 28mm sheep were just a quick entry on the first day to get myself on the scoreboard.


Entry 2 - Grav Vehicles

Linky-link

These 15mm grav tanks and APCs were my entry for the first bonus theme round "Armour"


Entry 3 - Ancient Nubians

Linky-link

A complete army for ADLG painted and based in a little over a week!


Entry 4 - Huzzah!

Linky-link

The first of my SYW Russian entries were these 36 hussars, representing the Novoserbskiy and Slavianoserbskiy regiments.


Entry 5 - Daughters of the Revolution

Linky-link

Some lovely 28mm minis from Bad Squiddo Games (Annie rocks!). These are only the second batch of WW2 figures that I've painted.


Entry 6 - Choson Korean Irregulars

Linky-link

These figures from Old Glory 15s max me out for Righteous Army and peasant levy troops for FoGAM and FoGR. They were my entry in the second bonus theme round "East".


Entry 7 - Cossacks!

Linky-link

This wild bunch were a mix of SYW and Napoleonic Cossacks from Essex. I will be adding some more Cossacks and some Kalmuks to my SYW Russians at some point.


Entry 8 - Horse Grenadiers

Linky-link

More SYW Russian cavalry, in this case the last two regiments of horse grenadiers - Kargopolskiy (green flag) and Rizhskiy (yellow flag).


Entry 9 - SYW Russian Infantry, Artillery and Wagons

Linky-link

This was quite a big entry - four infantry regiments, two artillery batteries with limbers and 4 wagons with fusilier escorts.

Nevskiy; Pskovskiy; Riazanskiy; Sankt-Peterburgskiy

The infantry were the first four of eight regiments I painted up this Challenge.


Entry 10 - Crew of the Lady Sarah

Linky-link

Some lovely 28mm sculpts from Pulp Miniatures. This crew will be a smuggler gang for games in Salutesville - now I've just got to buy a ship for them, build a dockside area...

It seems that the tattoos I freehanded on two of them were very popular.


Entry 11 - Choson Korean Regulars

Linky-link

This entry comprises enough front rank bases for me to field 14 units rather than 6 - great for any civil war campaigns or for very big Imjin war battles.


Entry 12 - SYW Russian Cavalry and More Infantry

Linky-link

Another two infantry regiments - Kazanskiy at the front, Lazodskiy in the middle row; the cuirassiers are the Prinz Fedorovich (or Altesse Imperiale) regiment - the last of the regular cavalry regiments that fought in the SYW for my army.


Entry 13 - Well, Would You Believe It? Still more SYW Russians!

Linky-link

The last two infantry regiments - Bjeloserskiy (orange flag) and Kegsgolmskiy (yellow flag) plus some generals.

You'll probably be pleased to hear that these end the SYW Russians for the Challenge!


Entry 14 - Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme!

Linky-link

My Curtgeld entry. This year we were asked to produce something in collaboration with other Challengers. I was in a group with DaveD and JamesM. Originally we planned to do a bunch of gladiator gaming figures, including some lions but for all of us time ran out and we only did the lions. This is a 28mm figure from Wargames Foundry. I called him Parsley after the character in a certain children's TV programme.

At some point I'll finish painting up the gladiators (and Emperor) to complete the set that we'll be sending off to Curt.


Entry 15 - Postie's Lair

Linky-link

I had great fun writing the text for this entry. The original plan had been to paint them in normal full colour, but after doing pre-highlighting with the airbrush I switched to a Sin City type chiaroscuro effect - greyscale with a colour accent.

This was my very last entry of AHPC7. If you're wondering about the sandbags, well they're to indicate that "Ray Woz Ere".



Phew! That took a while to type up. Let's doa bit of summary.

15mm
Foot - 590
Horses -20
Mounted - 116
Guns - 2
Limbers - 2
Wagons - 4
SciFi Vehicles - 6

28mm
Animals - 4
Foot - 34


In terms of overall points, this was my second best year; also in terms of points per week (AHPC5 was my best). I probably could have got close to beating my AHPC5 result, or even beaten it but after my father died I spent quite a bit of time away and didn't feel much in the mood for painting. I'm in a much better mood now and looking forward to hitting the paint table again shortly.

Some big surprises this year - no 6mm, no spaceships and hardly any SciFi.

This year was the biggest Challenge so far - it seems to keep on growing. We had 96 participants who achieved a total of 83,200 points of submissions - that's 867 points per participant. Just under 10% of the final points tally was submitted in the final 48 hours - that was a crazy weekend for those of us helping Curt out with minioning them. The scores ranged from a modest 5 to a whopping 4125. I got pipped from 7th down to 8th place in the very last hours.

Once again it was great to take part. Some of the entries were simply magnificent in quality, quantity or both. Some were absolutely bonkers (in a good way!). The sense of camaraderie was as strong as ever, with the usual encouraging and mickey-taking comments.

If you fancy taking part in this great event next time, keep an eye out on the Challenge blog (link at the top of my right-hand sidebar) around the end of October/beginning of November.

AHPC7 - Challenge Day 89 They Think It's All Over

...and it very nearly is. There are just under seven hours left for people to get last-minute submissions in, but for me it actually is all over. At least as far as painting goes. After my Curtgeld submission of Parsley yesterday I didn't think I'd paint up anything else, but I felt in the mood this afternoon and did a few more figures. I started with a plan for how they'd be done, then managed to go in a different direction. Here's a sneaky pic:

Linky-link

Yes, I went greyscale with colour.

I've also been doing a bit of Minioning this weekend to help Curt out with the final flurries of submissions.

Which leads onto...

The Hall of Shame...

That's right, here are all the figures that I prepped and (for the most part) primed.

Left - 15mm Sea Peoples; Right - 15mm Mongols

Left - 6mm ACW
Right - 28mm Pulp; 28mm SciFi; 28mm Gladiators; 15mm Three Musketeers

After setting them out I did a count-up and calculated how many points they would have been. One thousand six hundred and one. 1601.

Hmmm, It's possible that I prepped a lot more than I needed. About 1100 points more than I needed. Well, I guess I've got plenty to work on over the next few months!

AHPC7 - Challenge Day 88 SYW Russians On Parade with Parsley

Life and not having any pics to show are the reason I haven't posted here for over a week. Over on the Challenge blog, a couple of people had asked me to post some group shots of the SYW Russians that I'd painted up this winter. I posted them on the Challenge blog, but as I know not everyone wants to pop over there I'm going to post them here as well:


This winter's additions:

The army so far:

Formed up in two lines, with the cavalry on the wings, I'm pretty sure that the army so far would be enough to cover about 8-10 foot of table-top.

It isn't complete yet. There are another thirteen line infantry regiments to be painted, Shuvalov's Corps of Observation, more Cossacks and artillery. Plus the regiments that didn't get to participate in the SYW and the various militia units if I decide to do a "what if?" campaign against the Swedes, Ottomans or perhaps even the Prussians - who's to say that Fred wouldn't have pushed East if given the chance?

As for Parsley, that's my Curtgeld submission which has just been posted: linky-link. It's probably my final entry of the Challenge.