Fred - 2018 Painting Diary

[fred.]

Time for a new thread, new year and all that!

There has been a bit of hiatus over the Christmas period, mainly down to flu, so its taken a while to get much done, and to get a new thread started.

2016's thread was a mammoth, with over 800 posts, and 32,000 views during the year, checking now its up to 62,000 views, so nearly doubled in the intervening time. Which is quite surprising to have so many more views, when the thread isn't active.

2017 was perhaps a year more of gaming, than painting. Real Life really intervened for a good chunk of the year disrupting many things, including gaming and painting.  The 2017 thread still managed 460 posts, and 20,444 views.

Looking back over 2017 the part that surprised me was the resurgence of WWII during the year, very unexpectedly I built a 15mm British Desert force for the Battlegroup rules. I really enjoyed putting this force together, the building of plastic kits for the tanks, and surprisingly the painting of the 15mm figures. There is a fair bit of work to do to finish these figures, but they are perfectly playable now.

The second burst of WWII was using Rommel divisional scale rules, this allowed my 10mm WWII models to get on the table, which was great as I have loads of stuff. We played both Desert and NW Europe games. I added to my Desert forces with Italians and some more British infantry, and expanded my early war French with more infantry and some cavalry.

The third burst of WWII at the end of the year (and very much in progress) are 28mm British Airborne for Bolt Action. I've enjoyed building these and painting them. Yet to play any BA. But I know that I can use the figures for Chain of Command if BA feels too gamey.

I totally new period for me was Colonial with The Men Who would be Kings rules, I've built small forces for Mahdists, British Red Coats and Zulus. We played a few games, but it would be good to play more.

Both Fantasy and Sci Fi were played lots with our two sets of home-brew rules. Both sets of rules are pretty stable now, with tweaks to magic for Hordes of War, and expand army lists and points for mini epic. Painting wise there were small expansions of existing forces, with additions to my Beestmen army and Fishmen, along with camps for several armies.

There was also a fair bit of terrain building / painting, with Jungle terrain, farm animals, a desert fort, craters and finally some base boards for scatter terrain.

As to 2018, at the minute I'm feeling like letting it take its own course. Currently the 28mm airborne are being worked on. But I'm not sure what's next, a few more Zulus would be useful to give me a playable force (I need 6 units, and currently have 4).

[fred.]

Anyway, enough words, some photos...

mini epic - Orks vs Squats


We had a kind of diagonal deployment - which didn't really work on the shape of the table, as we pretty much ended up playing up the narrow width of the table.  My green squats are in the foreground, the Orks in yellow and red are in the distance.


Close up of the squat deployment. The large artillery pieces where heavily picked on by the Ork fightas, they only got off one barrage. But this did leave a lot of the rest of my force available to attack.


Late Game - my reinforcements have tunnelled out (LHS, large light grey drill). Lots of fighting around the central town. Largely the Squats were able to sit back and allow the Orks to advance onto their guns. The large Ork formations are pretty durable, but they don't have that much firepower. The Orks main attacking force is their Fightas which can swoop in and unless AT rockets on pretty much whatever target they choose. My AA was moderately effective, but the Fightas were defiantly the Orks MVP. In the end I was able to control 3 of the 5 objectives, with one contested one, and the Orks holding the final one.

It was a good game, and a first outing for the Orks under the current rules, they played very much like they do under original Epic, which isn't necessarily the best.

[fred.]

28mm British Airborne

Some more work on these troops over the weekend - the next dozen or so figures near completion


This gives we the completion of the 2nd section, and a Vickers team and the 6pdr crew.  Highlighting and basing are the main things left to do.


I picked up some additions from 1st Corps, a couple of jeeps, another section of troops, a pair of snipers and some supply markers. I have undercoated these figures by hand using Vallejo Surface Primer, this is described as grey, but it is a very pale grey. I was fed up of waiting for weather that was OK to spray undercoat, so thought that I'd try brush on primer.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Looking great Forbes

[ErHo]

Dang I love me some Epics!

Any info on making those buildings?

[paulr]

 

[Womble67]

Very nice indeed

Take care

Andy

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Great looking game

[Techno]

Great stuff, Forbes !!

Cheers - Phil

[fred.]

Thanks chaps

Any info on making those buildings?

They are Brigade Games in the UK

[Steve J]

rGreat looking Epic game and the Paras aren't half bad either. I painted mine years ago for 'Rules of Engagement' but sold them on when I moved from 28mm to 10mm.

[fred.]

Thanks Steve.

I'm glad the game looks good. I spent a bit of effort in the least 6 months improving the look of my gaming table. With small scales the table is quite a large part of photos. So I got a Deep Cut Mat as the base, which looks much better than a plain green flocked mat. Then more recently I replaced my funky foam bases for terrain with some textured and flocked MDF ovals. The jungle plants where newly made last year, and I probably need to do some more so that I can cover more of the table.

[fred.]

Thanks chaps

They are Brigade Games in the UK

Brigade Models - always getting these two confused http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/6mmSF/Desert%20Buildings.html

[fred.]

Having a bit of a think about projects and what I want to get painted next.

At the start of last year's thread http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,15270.msg222060.html#msg222060 I went through what had in the lead mountain. And looking back on this list, not much has changed. The main progress was on the Beastmen that went to a playable force. There was a small amount of progress on Araby and Lizardmen, but most of the rest stayed in boxes being very shiney.

Forces in which only a small amount of effort is needed to improve playability
* Camps for HoW
* Lizardmen (a few infantry and flyers to finish)
* Araby (a few camels and other cavalry)
* Mongols (a few more units)
* Epic Squats ( a few more infantry)
* Marines ( a few aircraft)
* Tyranids ( a few big carnfex, and warriors, and the big bio-titans)

So the above should all fall under the quick wins category.

Bigger Projects
* WWI French - not too many more troops needed here
* WWI British - I enjoyed painting these, and have loads more, so getting another Brigade done would be good
* WWII British - I got a few reinforcements for these (mainly commandos) should be pretty quick to paint
* WWII Desert - got a few Italains and British to finish off, again should be quick to paint

Army Sized Projects
Dwarfs, Romans or Evil Men (or new Ogres when they arrive)
It would be good to get on with one of these. The first 3 are all armour heavy so should be fairly quick - spray black dry brush silver, do shields.  But these have struggled to gain traction recently (well over severa years...)

To a certain degree the above all feels a bit hypothetical as its likely that something new will alight and that will become the next big thing! I was reading Advanced SoBH the other day, and thinking about various war bands for that. These could be largely provided from existing figures, with a few upgrades I'm sure. We played a cowboy game just before Christmas, which the rules weren't great, but I could easily see getting a gang for this style of games, if we find a better set of rules.

It's definately easier to buy stuff than to paint it, and its even harder to play with stuff once its painted.

[fred.]

Missed a couple of updates I think  
Poor start to the year, and all that. No excuses (for once!)

28mm British Airborne

Got some reinforcements for these guys from 1st Corps, a couple of jeeps, another infantry section, a pair of snipers and some containers as objective markers or the like.

I've got all the infantry undercoated - having switched to brush on undercoat due to the constant rain - it feels quicker overall as you save all the faffing getting stuff line up for spraying, setting up a box to catch the overspray, spraying, letting dry, rotating, spraying letting dry. Bringing in, letting dry and de-gas. etc.

Anyway - overall process is good with 2 sections painted and various support options. This is them in the middle of varnishing (again brush on), most have had a coat of matt varnish, the right most ones are still in shiny (but hard) gloss.



We had a first game of BA on Friday night. I have to say the rule book is appalling for playing. Its pretty good for reading. But when you actually play a game you just can't find anything. At best rules are buried in long paragraphs much of which is background at best. Then stuff is just spread around everywhere. The worst example was doing an Assault, we read the rules infantry can move 12", no problem move the figures. Then we find several sections later (after we had done response fire from the defenders) that if the attackers cross terrain they only move 6". Why this wasn't with the movement rules who knows.  We had far too many people (3 on each side) so the game went very slowly. But any good tips for speeding up future multiplayer would be appreciated.