Great Wargaming Survey 2021

 

It's that time of year again when WS&S magazine unleash the Great Wargaming Survey onto the world for wargamers to (hopefully honestly) fill in.

I completed the survey yesterday. It only takes a few minutes and your get a 5 Euro credit for the Karwansaray store and entry into a raffle for various prizes donated by wargames industry companies.

I've put the link in the picture above, or you can just click here: linky-link

Paint Table Saturday 31 July

 

As you can see from the photo above, I haven't done very much over the past week. As a matter of fact, most of this was done today.

I've spent this past week mostly catching up on reading, but now that I have that under control I should be able to make rapid progress on these and the remaining jungle terrain.

These bits are some alternative 50mm bases for the swamp terrain bases and some on 25mm bases as well. Later tonight I will add some scrub mix around the bottoms of the plastic plants. Tomorrow I will "fix" them and tone down the green plastic with brown ink glazes. I might also add some more swamp gunk around the bases of the palm trees to bed them in.

Lockdown Podcast #lost count

 The most recent episode of the Lockdown Podcast was released into the wilds a few days ago, but as I was away I haven't had a chance until now to post it.

You will be sad/glad/relieved/disappointed to hear that this will be the last one for a while as we take advantage of "Freedom" for a few weeks until England has to go back into lockdown of some description.

In this edition:

• I go nuts and bananas with jungle terrain
• Tim inserts bird sound to stop potential opponents discovering his army composition for an upcoming tournament
• Adam has a rant about English longbows/longbowmen not being the super-weapon/super-troopers that most rules make them
• Peter's facial foliage is compared to my jungle terrain
• It is revealed that the road from London to York is a hotbed of sex shops and crap "American Diners"
• plus all the usual witterings

As I mentioned, this is the last episode for a while, so don't listen to it all at once!

Paint Table Saturday 24 July

 

It might not look like much, but those bases are what is on my workbench right now. There is a good reason for that - I've been away on Dartmoor for the past few days getting sunburn and bitten by horseflies on the sunburn.

Tomorrow, once I've caught up on various things from last week, I will start adding plastic plant bits to them. Mostly large ferns as these will be inserts for the swamp terrain bases.

An hour or so after doing last Saturday's post I took a look at the water effects on the swamp bases and started to get a bit worried:

It looked as though the water effects had reacted with something in the swamp gunk around the edges. The next morning it looked a little better, but as I was heading off for a few days, there wasn't anything I could do except to hope for the best. Luckily when I checked them on returnign home today it had all cleared:

While I was away, the extra 500 bamboo stems I'd ordered had arrived:

Once I've finished work on the swamp terrain, I will be finishing off the bamboo thickets. I'll start with the two bases that I ran out of stems for, and then do the extra bases that won't have paths.

That should keep me fairly busy for the next week or so.

Paint Table Saturday 17 July

 

The swamp terrain bases are close to being finished. The tree bases for them are also almost finished - I just need to add some large ferns:

The terrain bases had swamp gunk added yesterday morning. It had dried by late evening, so I painted in the water areas. This afternoon I airbrushed a couple of coats of gloss varnish on the water areas and allowed that to dry for a couple of hours. I then mixed up some water effects:

I had to make a second batch to do all of the water areas. Luckily I had remembered how many drops of the green and umber washes I'd added:

I also added in some palm leaves and bits of twigs.

The water effects should be fully cured by the time I return from a few days on Dartmoor.

Wednesday Workbench 14 July

 As you can see, I've been working on the "chunky trunk" palms. The trunks have all had a coat of thinned frame sealant, been basecoated and dry-brushed. I've also sprayed all of the foliage bits today:

This evening, while we were recording the last podcast until September, I stuck the sprayed foliage onto the trunks. I'll be dry-brushing them tomorrow, then I can start work on basing them.

I've also prepared some "swamp" bases:

For these I used the large bases of Charlie Foxtrot's terrain sets 1 and 2, and one of the "oasis" bases, with the toppers from oasis, pond and small trees bases added. The bottoms and uppers have been painted brown. Looking at them this evening I decided to add some MDF washers for 25mm round bases to them, so that I can add some smaller scatter pieces if I so wish. I'll have to paint those tomorrow.

I've also made up some texture gunk for the swamp bases:

The gunk dried much more matte than this

It's a mix of frame sealant, brown paint, PVA, sand and herbs.

Paint Table Saturday 10 July

 

Today I have mostly been painting the bottoms of terrain bases. As you can see from the photo above, quite a few of them. They are now ready to go when I need them. Last night I got the trees bases painted, top and bottom:

These trees bases are from Charlie Foxtrot Models. The larger ones are for 70mm bases, the smaller ones for 50mm bases. 

I also glued 5mm blue foam squares to some 50mm and 70mm round bases, and some terrain bases onto sheets of 5mm blue foam:

This evening I have used my hotwire cutter to cut out the terrain bases and to bevel the edges of those and the round bases:

Since taking those photos I have sanded down the bevels. The round bases will have trees added at some point, the terrain bases will be for additional kunai grass and bamboo thickets.

Tomorrow I will probably be working on the "chunky trunk" palm trees, to get them done. After that I will be tarting up various pine and deciduous trees.