Gallery – Page 42 – An Archive For The Steinberg Shed Space Blog

Oriental Scenery For A Number Of New Games.

As I’ve never had an oriental game before I have no oriental scenery. For someone who has such a fascination with scenery I am surprised that I have never made some before. I now have two games (Ronin and Wolsung) with an oriental flavour to play and will soon have some new samurai too.

China has again come through with its freakishly cheap and quick scenic items. Bamboo, 100 pieces, £5.60 with postage.

A couple of bases, a small drill bit and some brown flock later (10 minutes work without drying time) and here we have a stand of bamboo plants.

I also found another use for the blossom trees that I got (from China). I originally got these for the Dropzone Commander table I started. They look just as good, with 28mm figures, as small trimmed garden trees, as they do as mature autumn trees against 10mm figures.

Its a start as an oriental table but a long way from finished. Next up some buildings and maybe a paddy or two. Who knows where this may lead.

Ronin First Impressions And First Game

I picked up a couple of new games for myself at Warfare. One of those has had its first outing recently.

Ronin is one of the Osprey range of books and focuses on the samurai age. Its a simple game and easy to pick up. You only need about 5 figures to get started and our games lasted from 30min to about an hour.

A 3 foot by 3 foot table is ample for a game and it is very scenery lite. My Wolsung figures worked while I try to find some real samurai to use.

The game has a selection of scenarios in the back and each is very different allowing for a range of play styles.

The combat system is the part of the game that stands out immediately. It is the most novel and interesting part of this game for me. In very basic terms, Attack and Defence are balanced by the player selecting where the emphasis is placed in each and every round of combat.

A lower grade figure can stall a more powerful figure by defending all the time and a gang of minions can gang up on another figure generating enough attack power to overwhelm the enemy. (That said, the enemy in question can play defensive and stall all the others but at the sacrifice of not hitting back…)

I think it will get some good play over the next few months and gives me the perfect excuse to put together some new oriental scenery.

Market Day.

Another purchase from Warfare in Reading was these little items.

The crates are some fine resin casts from Ainsty castings. They are from the Trade Goods range, one of many varied and versatile ranges, and are their Boxed Produce set. These paint up easily and look good with a simple paint job.

The sacks are also resin and come from Antenocitis Workshop. These are their Fantasy Sacks (I always thought that a sack was a sack was a sack…)

All together they are perfect for that Market I always wanted to finish. My barrows are now filled and are ready for use from the Medieval to the Victorian era. Just need to find some neat little market stalls and I am done.

Now, I must keep a look out for some those Wolsung market stalls I saw in their rulebook.

Post Number 41.. And I Am 41. Birthday Brings New Stuff.

I am happy to say that I have reached another birthday safely and without loss of life or limb. (Lets all be thankful for the small things).

Birthdays are good as the represent a chance for me to talk loved ones into buying me stuff for this never ending hobby… This year I the found timing in my favour and attended Warfare in Reading just before my birthday. This meant I was able to actually buy my own presents and give them out to have them wrapped and returned on the day.

Usually there is some trepidation before the day as I await to see if the requested item will be sourced correctly by said loved one or if a surprise replacement (usually the result of a mistaken order or wild guess at an alternative) will be found within that colourful paper…

This year was all about the base (sorry cant get that song out of my head) or headquarters as an Englishman would call it.

The headquarters in question is the new Warbases Police House.

Complete with smaller out building/ jail house block.

This will be the HQ for my Victorian Peelers faction which gets the odd outing in Empire of the Dead and may also show up in ‘In Her Majesties Name and Wolsung’ (if I can shoehorn them into the rules).

The next was again off the Warbases stand and is their Workshop (slightly less generic than the rest of their range). This reminds me of a twentieth century British workshop often seen on industrial estates and farms in my childhood. I almost picture this with an ancient petrol pump outside and an oil stained set of blue overalls on the attendant/ mechanic.

Complete with sliding doors (the main doors big enough for a truck to drive in) it will look good by itself or along with the other buildings in my set.

My Daughter (not a gamer in any sense) also shocked me and tagged along to Reading to find me something for my birthday. She proved to be no trouble at all (even as a blonde 15 year old surrounded by ‘sad old men’) and came up trumps with this built and painted 1/48 scale Tiger from the bring and buy. Putting an immediate smile on my face until she calmly stated I couldn’t have it until my birthday…

Who knows what next year will bring!

Ashes To Ashes, Dust To Dust. The First Of The Dust Deadmen, And The Last Of The War Apes Are Done.

It is a seemingly unending task. With so many pieces to paint in my Dust Tactics collection, both figures and vehicles, I have let it sit idle again for quite a while. As these are not going to paint themselves, I decided to gather up some more of the blighters and daub some paint on them before the urge left me again.

I really do need to paint things as I buy them. The thought of painting so many figures, especially all in one go, does not appeal to me at all.

The good thing about these guys is their unit sizes are an achievable 3-5men. How hard could it be to get a couple more units done in an evening or two?

Not too hard it would seem.

These guys are not the master paintjobs that you may see on other, skilled painters, websites or blogs. However, as they are ‘dead’ they probably don’t take too much care over their appearance…

Teamed up with the already completed Grenadier X they don’t look too shabby. With the help of his abilities, they can happily stumble across a table and into combat with the best of them.

The specialist assault apes are finished too. The painting bug held out just long enough to finish off these three as well as the last few normal apes.

Even though these guys came with 2 alternate heads each, I couldn’t decide which faces to use. In the end I went with the ‘get out the pliers’ approach and ripped of the heads from the normal apes. By swapping them out I eventually got the effect I wanted. I do think that the heads from the original apes look better on these guys…

The remaining assault ape heads went back on the last 3 normal apes (as the leather goggles fit their poses better in my opinion), and voila, apes done!

Apes in all their glory with Markus their hero.

So far 6 units and 3 heroes done. A nice little set, but only the tip of an iceberg that daunts me every time I look in that box…

Wolsung Done. The Finished Bases And Figures.

These guys are now done. The sculpted bases went as well as I could have hoped and I didn’t ruin the miniatures when I painted them… I have regretted however, using the oldest paints I have in my collection to finish off these guys.

Worm Purple and Imperial Purple were some of Games Workshops original paints. They are from the era of the basic paint set and creature paint set (anyone remember those?) Surprisingly mine are still liquid and I have very fond memories of painting lots of English 100 years war billmen in two colour jacks using this very combination.

The combination worked better on those billmen than on these guys I think…

One day I will realise I cannot paint in bright colours. My palette seems to be more suited to rustics and greyscales…

I think in future I may try to stay with these muted tones as even when I use the brighter colours I often find them dulled down by the use of inks and washes that feature very often when I paint. I think it takes a specific level of skill to use those brighter tones. A skill I am happy to admit, I lack.

Back to these figures though, overall I am pleased with them. Especially the bases. In this case beginners luck may have had a hand. If I expand this force (which is highly likely) we will see how well the second set of bases come out.

Lesson learned: Stick to what you know, and let others paint in brighter tones…

Another Tank Game Played And Lost.

My ever expanding collection of tanks got an outing again the other week. This time it was a force focused entirely on armoured vehicles. All that firepower… How could I lose…

The table was set up as a mix of town and country (sounds like a magazine…) and my tanks went off hunting their prey.

That prey was again a large force of Allied Shermans and that nasty tank destroyer that plagued me last time. The Allies were going for quantity to out gun my quality.

Their extra vehicles, however weak they may have been in comparison to my tanks, began to take their toll early on.

My King Tiger was feeling fairly invincible as it roamed across the town taking out Allied vehicles with almost every shot.

The Allies were almost as effective with their tank destroyer managing to land some very long range shots. It was destined to be a shoot out between these two heavy hitters that settled things.

As my King Tiger nosed out from behind cover to find its target, the tank destroyer found its mark though…

One problem with quality is its lack of quantity. My 3 vehicle losses left me with only a single tank, and a command vehicle that was armed with machine guns.

The remaining Shermans closed in to claim the objectives and by the end of the game my last plucky panzer was so pinned it was unable to do anything (other than act as a target for more shots). He did survive to end the game, with surprisingly minor damage, but unable to claim any of the objectives.

Overall another good game and a lesson in army construction. Some times the side with the most guns will win against the supposedly better shots…

Dreadball Team Two.

A couple of weeks ago I finished a small team for Dreadball. They were some very nice sculpts, Orcs (or Orks or Orx) depending on your upbringing. They painted up well and I was pleased with the outcome (except for those horrid Mantic bases…)

So, as it takes two to tango (and play Dreadball) I picked up a cheap second team and popped some paint on these too. Overall, the poses of these individual models, and the look of the team, with the futuristic armour and helmets, is great.

Once undercoated though, the detail on the sculpts seems to be less defined and painting them left me slightly deflated as the details blurred with each colour added. In the end, I left them slightly more simply painted than even I would normally do.

Another small issue was that I did not plan ahead. Blue was on the painting table so blue was applied. Just like the last team… No home and away strips as such so I had to add a dash of colour to make them stand out from the Orcs (not that the green skin and teeth don’t make the Orcs stand out already…)

Overall, Not my best painting experience but a second team all the same. If I go for another team I will be looking closely to see that the models have suitably deeper sculpting details before buying anything new…

Wolsung And The First Sculpting To Be Done In This Shed.

On the painting table this week is a new project, namely a Triad crew for Wolsung. Wolsung is a simple steampunk skirmish game produced by Micro Arts Studios.

These miniatures are the first I have had where the bases needed some pinning to get them done. Luckily for me these come with a pin moulded to them but the bases supplied were normal slotted ones.

My usual basing method is to cover the holes left by the slot with paper then to grit it all up and hit the whole thing with a basecoat of primer spray. The model gets painted and the base gets finished last.

This time however, I decided to change all that…

So, 5 figures would usually take me about two days to paint and base. As I have decided to sculpt individual bases for each of these guys they are going to take much, much longer…

The first coat on the bases was done with greenstuff and liquid greenstuff (the potted GW stuff). The regular greenstuff gave me a firmer mix for holding texture (in this case pressing the bases into a heavy grit sandpaper). The liquid greenstuff was used as it gives a softer smoother finish (for water in this case). Small craft sticks made up the remaining shapes and surfaces.

The first 2 bases were planned to represent a river or shore edge. One was planned to look like a man made shoreline (banked and planked to hold back the tide). The last 2 were planned to look like simple tracks or road edges.

The miniatures base pins were pushed in while the greenstuff was still soft then holes punched for grass effect to be added later. A sandy base tone with plenty of washing with brown ink started things off. A little bit of green staining gave a water aged, algae coated, look to some areas.

The water was done by painting a blue base coat and green ink wash. White highlights were used to pick out the ripples that were formed by the brush lines in the liquid greenstuff. The mud on the banks was done in a deeper brown and a final coat of gloss varnish was applied thickly to add some translucent shine to the mud and water.

Overall I think it worked quite well.

So far, I’ve finished only one painted mini but all of the bases are completed. Grass effect was done using some long grass stems that I picked up over 4 years ago (goes to prove all things find their worth in the end…)

I will add some pictures of the others when I get them done and then we may even get a game in. The Wolsung rules look simple and fun and I will let you know how they play when I find out myself.

Latest and Best Buys.

Not much more on the gamimg or painting front to show you, so let me show you what has come along in the post lately.

First things first, these trucks turned up from an eBayer that I have seen a couple of items from before. A friend went through a phase of buying Very British Civil War (VBCW) stuff which has never found a use to date. I have always wanted to populate the streets of my little town with vehicles and civilians so this goes some way to meeting that need, and at about £2-£3 each it made buying so many a no brainer.

My plinth from Hurlbat games has not made it any further along the painting queue, but now has a suitably statuesque personage on top. Queen Victoria arrived, again from eBay for a minimal fee. Quite chuffed with the scale of her and after some bronzing she will be suitably situated for any game she is called to oversee.

The last item is a throwback to past games… This is an AT43 UNA Fire Crawler. Shown with a 1/48 scale KV-1 and 28mm figure. She was sent from China (again eBayers in China provide a great service every time I order). We don’t play any AT43 at the moment but I live in hope…