Finecast and why it's awesome. And Samurai.

     Yes I actually wrote that. Finecast is awesome. This will make (what the internet tends to portray as at least ) a large group of people angry. It's ok though, listen to my reasons. I'm not talking about whether it's a suitable material for G'dub to use, whether it deforms or bends over time or in heat (I live in South Wales. It's a temperate rainforest at best except for the odd week of summer) or whether the casting quality is unsatisfactorily poor (not something I've personally experienced - everything I've dealt with has been minor cosmetic stuff). I mean as a sculptable resource.

     My AHQ peasant/poacher had been in a box of random scrap for a good 20+ years until half an hour with some finecast sprue furnished him anew with a mighty bow. It was simple and easy.

Poacher and (Chaos) Dwarf with new weapons and a new sense of purpose :)

     Here's an Empire Greatsword champion I picked up for 50p. His Flamberge was not only ridiculous to start with, it was bent all over the place. Quick snip, suitable bit of finecast sprue and half an hour and he was better than new. I know the blade is daft and a little oversized but it's the equivalent of the original and feels right. I may decide to reduce it further but it's unlikely. Nothing in Warhammer should be sensible in my mind. GW started to lose me when they moved away from the humour and tongue in cheek style of the Oldhammer I grew up with. Pictures aren't great as they are smart phone snaps but they are enough to get the idea.

A ridiculously big, almost spatulate blade just screams Warhammer and AHQ to me. Wondering monster of unknown make.

     Next up are a couple of 28mm samurai from Northstar's Ronin range and Perry miniatures. Once again the original blade or weapon was removed, a piece of finecast sprue cut to size roughly using clippers. I then drill a small hole (usually 0.8mm) into the centre of the piece and insert and glue in suitable brass rod. I then use file and a scalpel (in a scraping motion) to shape the piece. It takes a little time but is a therapeutic past time like whittling. I'm not totally sure about Finecast health issues regarding sanding (Forgeworld's is nasty) but always recommend doing it in an open, well ventilated space.

A Perry samurai who suffered in the great stairs incident of 2014. Perry's Katanas are much smaller than Northstar (often rightly so) so I increased it slightly to aid mixing.

A Northstar bandit who originally wielded a Kama (sickle). I removed it and used the handle of a Perry katana with a finecast blade to make him a little more fearsome.

     It's an easy and effective method for replacing damaged blades. With the addition of the the super glue and rod they are more resistant to bending and seem to be stronger overall (haven't broken them yet) than the original and it allows you to add some new weapons into the mix if your feeling creative.

     My 28mm samurai are all Perry or Northstar and I intend to use them just for skirmishes on a couple of small, purpose built boards. I have 25 armed and based chaps from traditional non-armoured (hakama wearing) retainers, various swordsmen, peasants, bandits (various states of dress and armour) and a few more waiting to be fettled. I replaced a few other weapons to add a bit of variety. I also wanted some Yari wielding miniatures so bought my first ever lot of wire spears from Perry miniatures (like an initiation ceremony into 'proper' wargaming). Brilliantly simple to fit and solid things. Good enough to draw blood at least and no bending, then re-bending ad infinitum. A Northstar bandit lost his Teppo (I don't want guns in my Japan) and gained a simply crafted Tetsubo (Big club) made of carved sprue and pro-create putty.

Fearsome and Yari appropriate wire spears and miniatures from Perry.

Out with the high tech Teppo in with the big bit of wood with iron rings. A truly deadly, crushing weapon that would need great coordinated skill (dai-sabake) to use.

A (perry) monk like fellow with a Bo staff. If you think a stick isn't much threat, think again. In trained and practiced hands it's a lethal and infinitely controllable weapon with an astounding reach.

     That's it really, the others are based but just as they come and so not interesting yet. They'll get packed in the move as I want to tackle some other 28mm painting first as a painting refresher, as traditional patterns are often complicated and I suspect will need patience. I'm going to check out the available 28mm appropriate scenery from Sarissa and 4Ground at Salute in April. Thank you for taking the time,

BALM.

The spoils of war (or rather eBay)

With my first lot of eBayed miniatures sold and sent out; shockingly my thoughts turned to new, shiny toys. After paying some bills and treating my wife (she never asks for anything so the chance to buy her something she wanted was too good to miss. Suffice to say her hair  is now very straight!) I started doing some mental online shopping. The original plan was to buy a heap of KR Multicases to stash all my miniatures in. In the end I bought 3 cases so I could see what the trays were like and then buy more in the future. Also Peter Pig was having a sale due to the sad loss of colours this year (one of the best shows IMHO). So now I have all my British infantry (possibly more than I need if that's possible) waiting patiently in my hobby queue (we are good at queuing after all).

I also picked up a few things from 4Ground. I purchased the lovely Hotel complex, The Cafe Gondree and the cobblestone road kit. so far I've made the cafe and, if the rain holds off, I'm going to play with the cobblestone kit after this.

The Cafe Gondree in all it's splendour, the detailing is fantastic but only time will tell concerning it's durability.

It's a lovely kit with a lot of detail. It was easy to assemble and is going to look great with the rest of my buildings. One thing to note though is that the detail came at a price for me. Small, delicate brick corners whilst looking great, delaminated easily and that has left some patches to repair. They are hardly noticeable and certainly won't take away from my enjoyment of it on the table. I should probably take some of the blame as I wasn't particularly well whilst building it and was quite shaky (thus why I didn't tackle the hotel straight away). I've now spray varnished it in the hope that it will increase it's lifespan somewhat.

The shutters are a nice touch and I've propped some slightly away from the wall using excess from the sprue.

Not the most exciting view but it does mean that with no windows on one side any troops occupying it will have a rather large blind-spot for the enemy to approach in. Also if you look closely you can see the de-laminating of the brick pieces at the corners.

Like all $Ground stuff the roof and upper storey is removable. The roofing is more delicate than previous buildings and this may have an effect on it's durability. But for £20 you can't complain.

As well as making the cafe I've also based a few more german options for CoC, hacked up some Space Wolves and made a character for my WHFB 3rd ed. Goblin force.

WH40K is currently leaving me cold. I admit that I haven't played 7th but what I read of the codices didn't inspire me to take the quite considerable financial plunge. For 5th and 6th I had my Squats as Guard and Grey Knight Henchmen and some Space Wolves too. I really liked the previous space wolf codex as the sagas allowed you to make your own characters effectively, now all the bits I liked are gone and I'm just not motivated to do anything with the models I have left.

I stupidly sold all my carefully customised wolves to a friend of a friend, who assured me he'd pay me when his wages cleared. Sadly he didn't and I was left without models or cash. Luckily my friend managed to do some damage limitation and return my scouts, wolf priest and a terminator lone wolf. I was still missing ten termies and some grey hunters. After repairing the damage to them (how did he break them?) and reading the new codex I realised I wouldn't be playing 40K anytime soon and certainly not as the wolves. So they are being re-invented as a gang for confrontation, I see them as bounty hunters or some kind of wilderness guides.

As for the Guard codex I'm upset by the loss of artillery options (I know I can spend more and buy the relevant IA book but it's just more expenses) but it's still my best bet to field my Squats so I'll probably end up purchasing it. The division of the Grey Knights into them and Inquisitorial troops also means that my lovely Squat dreadnought will probably never see the table (as I'd have to buy it a separate codex and more models if I want them to have Objective Secured). At the moment CoC and BA are just more fun.

The vulture is from the Ogre Stonehorn kit, the horse it's stood on a dwarven pony from warmaster,  everything else is pro-create with a wire bow and arrow.

For WHFB I took the vulture from the leftovers of an ogre stonehorn commission and built a saddle and Goblin character out of Pro-create. I've got to re-familiarise myself with 3rd and work out what he can represent. The little green chap was done (or at least attempted) to match in with the Mongol styled Warmaster goblin wolf riders.

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I carefully painted the horse as a grey and then totally hid it with the vulture. not my best bit of forward planning.

That's all for now, thank you for taking the time,
BALM

For the love of plastic.

So due to inexorable and boring life stuff our gaming weekend got cancelled and has had to be postponed for a couple of weeks. As I had tidied away my BA 15mm painting station (looks like a mini motorpool now) I decided to have a poke at a different scale and material. First of all whilst shoring and propping my lead mountain after a mammoth eBay purge (only part 1 and still doesn't seem to have reduced much) I found my ogres.

My four ogres for WHFB Realms of Chaos; One lord or character and three general hench ogres. I want them to be usable as much as possible from empire mercenaries to chaos.

I knocked these up last year in order to play in the Realms of Chaos game at The Foundry in Nottingham. The force I'd generated had a chaos dwarf, an ogre chaos lord/champion, 3 more ogres (his retinue) some wolves and a chaos warrior. Unfortunately shortly after starting on the ogres I realised I wouldn't be able to attend due to conflicting dates for work. So back they went, until now.

The only model to get anywhere near finished. My ogre lord, there's still some bits to do but not much.

It's a toss up between a ogre sized crossbow and the tied up human from the stone horn kit, to fit across his back, may investigate a magnetic solution.

You can just see the brass wrings I made and added to the converted sword. As there traditional use in martial arts they are distracting to the opponent and will blunt or damage weaker weapons.

The Hench ogres need some more armour and straps to finish them.

Plates from the stone horn kit give them a TMNT feel.

They're made up of spares and excess bits from a commission and anything else I could scrounge together. None of them are quite done but I managed to get the feel I wanted after an evening of cutting and gluing. The next evening I did the sculpting on the ogre lord. And that was their 15 minutes of fame.

I don't know what I'll use them for but I'm sure I'll think of something.

This is a creature for skirmish games made the other night, from a gaunt and a gargoyle and another set of tyranid claws (want to say genestealer rending claws). I've got enough parts to make 10 of these little beasties and they remind me of the Rogue Trader Tyranid picture (but with added wings).

Last but not least my wife bought something of her choice (from a range of stuff I fancied but never felt justified enough myself to impulse buy) for my 40K Squat force: some Ogryns. I do have some originals and I was reticent about the look of the new ones. I have never sworn so much at 3 plastic models.

I incorrectly attached the wrong left arm to the first ogryn and it has welded itself together perfectly by the time I noticed. Every other arm was a hassle from hear onwards. I didn't make the box standard ones either as I'm not a fan of the look. Whether this had anything to do with the calamitous build I don't really know. The instructions are plentiful I just strayed inadvertently and the verbal abuse began.

Luckily I like what I came out with: two troopers and a bonehead/Nork Deddog stand in. Just need another couple (nearly £30!) and I'll have a nice characterful unit to shield my stunties.

Thank you for taking the time,

BALM

Advanced Heroquest and old lead.

Nice and short: some Island of Blood box set Skaven for AHQ and some old citadel lead adventurers and heroes to face them.

My WIP Warpfire Thrower.

I don't have an original Warpfire thrower and the IoB one is really ugly and flat. It looks like Hasbro had already taken over. But with some Skaven cunning, bits of an awful rat ogre and some procreate I set about making it mine. Needs a little work but I looking forward to OSL'ing it if I can.

My skaven Warlord. Hopefully his armour colour and fur will make him recognisable in a horde.

Some of the Skaven, including a severely directionally challenged champion.

Aenur Sword of Twilight (Mordheim not vampires) The Moon Duke and a Thug (My Witch-finder's man of persuasive means)

A dwarf scout, a human scout and a templar all early Citadel.

Possibly my favourite dwarf model. Not too GW and nicely Tolkien. This chap is what I think of when I think "fantasy". And he's packing lots of weaponry.

Human Scout and Chaos Dwarf both repaired.

Both of these models have been in my collection for years (childhood) but have always been broken and clogged with some old, manky paint. Biostrip sorted them right out and with the addition of a bow for the ranger/scout and a mace head for the dwarf they were reborn. The mace is from a spare Rackham Confrontation Goblin Ashigaru and fits in perfectly. The bow is made out of finecast sprue and was FOE's excellent idea. A lot of people don't like Finecast but I discovered that it's really useful, and can be carved easily, and I will be keeping it for any future projects.

A small selection of my adventurers.

  

A range of suitable heroes I dug out from a couple of roses tins. There is more somewhere........ seem to have a dwarf fetish.

 So more 15mm to do (scenery and figures), Rats to base and then some 28mm to paint, My warlord marines need their final gear check and a couple of bits of procreate'ing I'd missed and they'll be ready to paint. Much to do but I'm actually feeling like I'm getting somewhere.

Thank you for taking the time,

BALM.

Progress.... of sorts

So you probably notice that this doesn't start with any lovely pictures of painted Fallschirmjager. It's rained, I've been unproductive and so on and so on. As I type this however it is glorious outside and about 30% of my chaps are sitting in the sun drying after their first light coat of PSC's Field Grau spray paint. Hopefully after this weekend I should be able to start blocking them in and get going.

Whilst I haven't achieved what I'd intended there was  some hobby progress this week. I put together two Zvesda Opel Blitz trucks and an Sdkfz 222. I'd initially been very wary of Zvesda's kits as they were cheap and looked low on detail. Having finally bit the bullet and, managing to get the kits at a more than reasonable £2.75 each, can say I'm impressed. There is a good range of parts and the whole thing goes together well and without glue. There are some parts that feel fragile whilst you're building them: the wheels on the opel blitz being particularly unnerving as they push on (the axel is relatively thin and the fit is tight) but when together you've got a robust and charming little kit for an excellent price.

The two blitz' are going to be fiddled with; I want to add tarps or make the bench seats in the back rather than rely on the moulded tarpaulin cover. There's nothing particularly wrong with the one supplied, it's maybe a little boxy, I just want to see what I can do.

My SdKfz 222 with tarp and jerrycan rack. Simple but adds character nicely to make it a unique little vehicle.

The 222 however seemed a little bare so after a very brief bit of googling (mainly at 'proper' modeller's conversions) I decided to add a few simple touches to make it a bit more unique. I used some jerrycans and a rolled tarp from the PSC 251D pack my opponent bought me for my b'day. the simple addition of some procreate straps and detailing to the end of the tarp (the moulded end is very plain, almost conical and certainly too neat for something that has been stowed in the field).

I also had a rather unfortunate accident moving my kampfgruppe around the house that saw my FoW Stug, Tiger and 250/9 come off quite badly. Needless to say they did not fare well and may be used as destroyed vehicles or objectives and replaced with plastic ones instead. The 250/9 is still serviceable, having just bent the gun, and I will rescue it as it's one of my favourite vehicles. It's infuriating but entirely my fault and at least I'll now have some objectives (optimism).

One of my original dungeoneering dwarves with classic cardboard floor tiles. May not even re-paint him as he's an ok example of my early work. Sadly many of his compatriots were lost in a series of disasterous house moving incidents.

Whilst vainly trying to tidy part of my hobby kingdom I came across the dwarf above, a mass of untouched fantasy lead and some other models that started me off on another tangent. A friend I did some painting for, had paid me in unused models and these included the skaven clan rats from the Island of Blood Warhammer Fantasy boxed game. Whilst I don't (currently) play WFB in 28mm I do love 28mm fantasy models and have a good and relatively varied collection, from my youth and more recent eBay'ing, stockpiled in my lead mountain. These are all intended for Advanced Heroquest.

This awesome box cover spoke to the 8-9 year me. And it said get a sword and be awesome...

If you've never heard of it Advanced Heroquest was the follow-on (in the loosest sense of the word) to the collaboration between GW and MB that bought us Heroquest in 1989. Heroquest was the first mainstream gaming product you would see outside of White Dwarf or other specialist publications. It was the first, and only, game I ever played with my whole family and I wholly enjoyed every chance I got to strap on a sword and go adventuring. In a very square dungeon. Perhaps rates were high, or it was a starter dungeon for monsters wanting to get onto the property ladder.

Sadly I found it wasn't really enough and I wanted more. Then I saw Advanced Heroquest and an obsession was born. Strangely I never owned AHQ as a youngster but regularly played with a friends copy and loved the increased freedom of the dungeon tiles and possibilities for adventure that it provided.

Images like this are scattered through the rule book and really helped visualize the dungeons and their denizens.

Obviously the first thing I did as a fully grown and serious hobbyist (encountering eBay for the first time a while ago) was to buy myself a copy in the attempt to recapture my youth. I say one copy but in reality it is two boxes with one game and three sets of dungeon tiles and the expansion Terror in the Dark (In the same way that to my wife I have only one mighty fortress; they originally came in five boxes as standard didn't they?)

Terror in The Dark added some new rules and some excellent irregular  cavern board pieces, sadly it can fetch a ridiculous price on ebay.

Having re-read the rules and found an excellent 2.0 version by a fan online I was still endeared to the good old fashion dungeon crawl. And moreover I think I can get my 7 year old niece to play it with me, and she's awesome.

The plastic skaven are perfect for this. They've got more character than the one piece, two dimensional ones provided originally (they may become skaven slaves) and should work very well. For nearly any other use I'd find them frustrating as there would be little I could do to convert them and would prefer the old WFB multipart chaps, but for AHQ they're perfect. So in my spare time (whilst it rains or my artistic temperament/insubordinate body stop me painting tiny WW2 germans) I'm sticking card flagstones roughly to slottabases and scraping mould lines off of lots of angry little rats. The paint jobs will be simple and I hope it'll help ease me back into my painting groove; as the marder was hard going at times as I slowly readjusted after a lengthy period of not touching a brush.

So hopefully soon I'll have more actual progress to show you and less wittering. Thank you if you managed to get through that.

BALM

Too many ideas...

Ok, so the first few posts of any blog aren't often the best. Over the next week I hope to get some pictures up of one of my first projects and get some helpful comments and feedback from the blogosphere and its occupants. Until then this blog feels aimless; so in an attempt to put something vaguely useful I've decided to post some links, with a few words of comment, about favourite sites I visit or loiter at. (Interspersed will be any more pics of past stuff I've found).

My WHFB 3rd ed. homemade giant: using a catachans face and arms, skaven legs, miscellaneous bits and a good lump of green stuff and procreate.

Concept minis for my WHFB Half Scale project. I just picked a range of different models, based and painted them to get an idea of how they'd look. I was happy.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd ed.

First up is Realm of Chaos 80's blog. This is an excellent blog following, in general one persons re-immersion into the true spirit of warhammer: Orlygg. Orlygg's approach and reminiscences about the Oldhammer gaming experience (using older rules editions of WHFB, mainly 3rd, to play the game as it was initially envisioned) are insightful and he deftly provides some interesting articles about the early GW artists and sculptors, background and thoughts behind what I loved so much as a child and ultimately became a goliath of the gaming world. It's a characterful read and will put you into contact with one of the key people in the UK oldhammer scene.

Elven Champion on steed. Needs a final detail.

Shield emblem and horses bum.

If you're interested in Oldhammer then check out the Realm of Zhu another key blog which includes the Oldhammer contract: a document detailing the spirit and intention of oldhammer gaming. A brilliant resource for all things oldhammer is the Oldhammer Forum. Through this you can get in touch with the movers and shakers of the oldhammer revival scene (and some truly excellent artists).

My finished giant with dragon skull, horse barding and small hogtied pig on rear. All started because I had some spare putty and bits in front of me. One evening later... seems very shiny but has since been dullcoated.

I'm not likely to play alot of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 28mm. Even with 3rd being comprised of smaller forces with a more maneuverable, skirmish feel. I do a variety of fantasy stuff - mainly lovely old school dwarves but these will probably be based for Advanced Heroquest. The bulk of my 3rd WHFB battles will be played in half scale using 10mm individually based warmaster miniatures and a few lovely additions by Copplestone Castings.

Orc Boar Boy - Individually based and sadly now OOP GW Warmaster model. 

The oldhammer chaps organise a tournament day (it's not a tournament though as the games don't really play that way) at the headquarters of the excellent Foundry Miniatures in Nottingham. Whilst I was unable to attend the first event, I have every intention of cobbling together something interesting and trying to get up for the next on the 9th and 10th of August this year.

Really nice Copplestone wizard in familiar garb.

Warhammer 40k

Whilst my comments above will lead you to some excellent old school Rogue Trader painting and gaming not everyone is stuck in a time vortex like me. I have tried 5th edition and found it ok, I was put off by the amount I'd have to spend, some of the gamey players/features and to be honest the daunting amount of work to get my squats to a useable state. I've got 6th and simply wait to see how GW present the new Imperial Guard (sorry Astra Militarium accordingly) codex. If I can make a playable force that has charm and character then it may be the boost needed to motivate me back into 40k gaming.

Some (very few) of my expansive heavily converted squat 40k force.

Until then I regularly stare at Bell of Lost Souls (not the forum, just the articles/comments). Be warned this site feels very commercial, and is primarily patrolled by some zealous american tourney players (they're not all like that just be aware) and can be very WAAC (Win at all cost) and off-putting. This doesn't mean it doesn't have some useful articles; just that they need to be sifted and sieved mentally to remove the sometimes exacerbating bias of some the writers. If nothing else I always check it out on a friday for the invaluable Outside the Box articles by Table Top Fix covering a great range of recent releases for a variety of systems.

Storm Raven gunship converted for the vertically impaired.

Other things

Just to finish off a quick run down of some other worthwhile sites:

The Miniatures Page is a great resource of news and forums covering all niches of gaming and is well worth a look.

Board Game Geek is an excellent site covering games of all types but predominantly board based action. I've used this to research whether games are worth getting, get reasonable valuations as guides for eBay purchases and buy things. Full of lots of helpful and informed gamers.

Warlord Games forums are a brilliant resource for all their games but my particular interest is in Bolt Action. I'll be playing in 15mm and expect my first proper posts to concern this. 

Battlefront miniatures is the Flames of War publishers website and even if you ignore the option to purchase here, as cheaper vendors are available, the site holds a wealth of knowledge about each miniature and gives newcomers a good insight into WW2.

Peter Pigs miniatures is the UK 15mm miniature company I'm predominantly using for my Bolt Action forces and Martin's site is well worth a visit. 

It should be noted that I'm not affiliated with any of these sites and all opinions are simply my own, and thus dubious. Thanks for reading and hopefully I'll put up a post with some progress in a couple of days.

Thanks

BALM