Death Cult for Cuties

Alternative Armies' sci-fi death cult paints up great.

All right, smart boys, so it's actually the Post-Apocalyptic warband (HOFP05).  In the House of Wargaming, we treat them as cultists.  Look at them robes and death masks and heads on pikes - what else could they be?

Vince Venturella over on YouTube taught me how to get a better look out of the color purple.  The trick is to know whether you're dealing with a red purple or a blue purple, and what you want to get out of it.  Here's a great lesson in how to get the most out of yours.

The 2mm Journey

Here's a bit of a look at my 2mm journey, one upon which I have only just begun.  Specifically, here is the starting point for my SYW Russians.

Bare metal inventory in progress.  Planning plays a big role here, and you want to dry fit to a base so your numbers are right, before you paint.

Dark green uniforms on light green bases help these boys pop.

Horse, foot, and guns.  After a while all you see is blonde, brunette, redhead.

The beast attacks!  Parrot for scale.

One big Corp sized army, fits into a single sheet of paper.  It's a 20-base skirmish that plays and handles very different from a true skirmish game.  Can't wait to take it for a test spin!
 

A Wargamer's Life: A One Act Play

 

Me:  I'm going to do more playing and less painting in 2018

Also Me:  I'm going to build four matched wargaming sets

Me:  That's not gaming, that's still painting

Also Me:  But it's 10mm, that hardly counts

Me:  It's painting

Also Me:  Have you seen these guys?

Me:  Say, that's pretty - ah, hell with it, you know what?  Paint away.

 

Fin.

 

Irregular Miniatures, take a bow

 Forty dollars netted me another big slew of 10mm skirmish figures.  Since these were bought specifically for this project, I could target actual needs.  The first two orders of business were to build some actual matched factions, so the new contenders are heavy on the high elves and greenskins.  I threw in a few cavalry troops, too, just to keep it interesting.  The new horde includes a few new heroes and some more skeletons to round out the undead faction.

Each kit will get three more skellies and a pair of bowmen painted up in a woodsy, maybe even wood elf style.  At this scale, they can do double duty.

I painted these bases a nice garish green with a hint of yellow to suggest grass, but they don't match my existing figures.  Thinking on the matter a little more, I should use the ground cover to my advantage.  Since the figures are so small, it might make sense to match the ground color to a faction as well.  That's more painting (Me: Naturally!  Also Me: Shaddup, you.) but whatever helps keep the gaming moving.  I'm thinking a nice gray ash color for undead, bright green for the elves, and desert brown for the orcs.  Then the heroes can have a more subtle green/brown base.

And all of them should work fine with the drop cloth.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Looking at my so-called city board, something about it always seemed off to me.  It wasn't until this weekend, while cruising what I think of as the Infiniti terrain-porn* sites, that I realized what it was.  The board was too rural.  The earth and grass speaks more of suburbia than urbania.  What this calls for is some urban development.

That's nice.  Pleasant even.

That's a really easy fix.  All you need is a new drop cloth, some spray paint, and you're in business.  So check out the new and improved urban-core.

After a bit of planning on graph paper, what I did was mark out three inch wide roads using masking tape.  First I sprayed the roads black, then dusted the whole cloth in black and a light gray color.  I moved cardboard blocker boards around to give different parts of the board different shades of gray.  Then I gave it a last dusting with a pale blue color, to break up the monochrome a bit.  After I was satisfied with the concrete coloring, I just pulled the masking tape up.  Leaving the areas covered by the tape completely free of spray paint results in a brighter shade of concrete for the sidewalks.

That's the stuff.  New roads, fire lanes blockable by traffic, and none that cross the whole table.  All we need now is a few flattish terrain pieces to fill in a few gaps.  Maybe a skate park or a junk lot.  Those sidewalks need some additional cracking, too.  It ain't done, but that concrete jungle looks a lot more city-like to my eyes.

In retrospect, it might have been better to build those roads at a more oblique angle.  The Infiniti guys swear that it gives you shorter fire lanes from one table edge to the other.  I'm not so sure that matter given my play style.  Infinity explicitly uses table edges in a way that most of my games don't.  For example - in my last Black Ops game, the defending force started in the corners.  This should work out just fine.

Meanwhile...it's finally time to go back to Castle Meatgrinder!  We'll revisit my fantasy tabletop next time.

* Some of those Infiniti forum dwellers have really got their act together when it comes to building cohesive city boards that are attractive and make sense as urban centers.  If you need terrain inspiration, check them out, but be ready to look at the clock and wonder where the last few hours went.

A Tree Grows in Neo-Brooklyn

Four trees, actually.  Nine more pieces of scatter terrain - what the cool kids are calling street furniture these day - have been added to the table for cover.

When it comes to small bits of raw material for scratch-building, the electric aisle of your local hardware store is your friend.  Today's project consists of nine planter boxes.  The larger tree planters started out as six roughly one inch diameter plain wooden disks purchased at the craft store.  Two of them were double up to give a slightly taller planter box, and then the four metal washers were glued on top of those.  They come in a wide variety of diameter and height, so you can pick and choose just the right ones for your terrain - they make sizes that would work just as well for the big 25's.

The smaller plastic nuts are used pretty much as-is.  Each had some molded ID's on top that needed to be trimmed off, then a small disc of cereal package cardboard was glued up underneath the inner lip of the threaded part. 

The actual trees were plastic Toob Trees left over from previous projects, glued in place with PVC glue.  After drying, the inside of each planter was covered in craft glue and fine sand for a decent earthen texture.

The whole lot was painted in one fell swoop.  After painting, the ground covering plants were added.  The bushes are standard modelling fluff you can find at any decent hobby shop, and the flowers cheap plastics off a $1.50 strand.  

Ta-da

In the end each planter cost about a dollar each, and the whole lot was assembled in an hours, base coated and allowed to dry overnight, and then painted and table-ready in a second one hour session.

The concrete of the planters was painted to match the surrounding buildings, and the flowers given a suitably alien blue and purple hue. The foliage could have been painted to match, but I'm looking for a near-earth parallel here, not an over-the-top cartoonishly alien planet.

Here's what they look like on the table.

Sci Fi Bystanding Guys

Quick shot of some bystanders for 15mm sci-fi games.  First up, four dudes in space suits of one sort or another.  I think they are all from 15mm.co.uk.



From left to right:  ?, HOF57A, HOF86C, and HOF86C

Can't find that guy on the left anywhere on 15mm.co.uk's website, so now I'm thinking he might be a Khurasan figure held over from a previous pack?  That doesn't sound right.

This is some sort of wandering alien holy man.  This sculpt looked alien enough that a simple flesh color would suffice - no need for exotic colors like green or orange or lavender. 

 

After finishing up the painting, priming, dullcoating, and finally photographing this figure, my son pointed out that when you see it on the tabletop...it looks like a giant erect phallus.  Good call, Warren.  Good call.

Five Feet of Rivers

Happy Labor Day.  For my labor of the day, I finished off some river pieces.

A single piece of 3-inch by 24-inch bass wood was enough to make five feet of rivers.  Using the RAW, you'll never need more than 36-inches of river, but with three lengths of unbroken river, on bridge, and two fords, you've got enough pieces to make any of the setups listed in the rulebook.  There was even enough wood left over to add a curve and short make-up length.

That short length is important for my setup because my mat is actually 30-inches wide by 34-inches wide.  So three lengths of 10-inches works great one way, but leaves a small gap when laid out the other way.  That short piece fills it in nicely.

May need to rethink that road piece left of the bridge.  That
bridge is a metal cast bought from Heroics and Ros.

Here's a better shot of one of the fords, with the pond in the back to show the matching water colors. It doesn't show up all that well in the photo, but after sealing these pieces with dullcote, a second coat of gloss finish was applied to the water itself to give it a nice wet shine.

Knights defending a ford.  Because using heavy mounted troops
to defend a static defense line is the mark of a good leader.

  

This is the classic war-game color for streams.  In nature they only look this blue when they reflect a clear blue sky.  On the wargaming table that color makes it clear what the feature represents, and provides a nice stark contrast against the ground surface.  It's only a cliche because it works.  For more in-depth reading, there's a great comparative analysis over on Wargaming With Barks.  Check it out.



Medieval Update

Completing a full set of terrain and matched armies for use with OHW is the big goal for 2015.  So far the terrain is about half done, and the armies are half done.  This weekend, the second army got bumped up a few slots on the all-too-long to-do list.  Check it:

What you're looking at here is 6 full stands of foot troops, dismounted knights in the upper  left, bowmen in the upper right, and spearmen levy along the bottom.

These strips are all from Heroics & Ros' dark age and medieval line.

For this army the boy has selected red and gold - he wants to see a force dispatched by House Lannister.  Not a big fan of old George Har Har Martin, but I am a big fan of my son, and the colors are distinct from his green and purple Necromancer King army, so...time to get ready to pay all my debts.

6mm - First Figures

Got the first couple of strips of 6mm skellies painted for the boy's medieval force.  He asked for a main color of purple, but wasn't sure what secondary color would work best.  This is a bit of a test strip to see if a second primary color is even necessary.  Throwing a lot of flashes of colors into the mix might be all that's necessary.

The conventional wisdom is that smaller figures require brighter colors, but I'm not convinced.  These troops look a little too cartoonish for me.

Also starting to consider photography strategies for the teeny-tinies.  Zooming way in just won't work the way it does with the larger 15mm and 25mm figures.  Using the nickle for scale forces the camera away and gives a pretty decent tradeoff between showing enough detail and showing what they'll look like on the table.

Big Box Terrain, Part Three

Remember that plain old terry cloth battle mat I showed you last week?

For those who don't.

It looks great!

Using a two-inch brush, I just dry brushed the whole darn thing in one short evening.  Before starting, I polished up the three terrain bases by adding static grass, as one does.  I've been using Battlefields' "Field Grass" for no better reason than it's what the local hobby shop carries.  That said, it's great.  The late summer vibe that it has works well in just about any setting.

The goal here is to make a mat whose colors and texture is close enough to the terrain and army bases that they blend right in.  Dry brushing with my own selection of paints gives me a lot more control and allows me to perfectly match the static grass.

My color pallette.

Here's a nice close-up shot of the drop cloth and the terrain bases.  You can even see how the dry brushing gives you a a nice layered effect to the surrounding grassland.  And the texture is low enough that it will work great with the 6mm figures that will someday water this field with blood.

Big Box Terrain, Part Two

Last time we looked at the forest base.  This time let's look at the canopies for the still as yet unrevealed new project era.

What you're looking at is a cheap and easy alternative to the method used by these clever chaps here.  Their forests look great, but they also look relatively expensive and time consuming.  My wrinkle on their idea is to skip the store bought foliage and use a cheaper alternative, the same green scrubbers that we all know and love from hedges around the wargaming world.

What you're looking at here is three different steps from scrubber to treetops.  I started with a basic roundish template for both canopies, and then just started gluing scraps and tufts of scrubber to the base.  It helps to rough up the scrubber a bit with the flat edge of an exact knife.  This pulls the fibers apart and helps disguise the clean cuts you get with these scrubbers.  After letting the glue dry, I painted the canopy black, drybrushed white, and then drybrushed them with every shade of green in the box.  Here are a couple of closeups for more detail.

Primed

Brushed white

Color added 

Note the inclusion of a few tan trees as well.  To really make the coloring pop, it helps to drybush with a faint touch of mustard yellow.

[Edit to add some advice, thanks for the reminder, arabianknight:

I couldn't find my hot clue gun, so I just used regular white craft glue.  The craft glue works fine on the green scrubbers, you just have to lay it on thick.  You don't want to craft glue with the clump foliage from Woodland Scenics, though, it doesn't hold that crumbly spongy stuff for squat.

If your tree stand width is less than the width of a green scrubber, you don't need a piece of board or cardstock underneath it.  The scrubbers have enough rigidity to hold their shape, and in fact the spongy texture will help keep the foliage from sliding around.  The larger tree stand shown here has cardstock underneath it because it is wider than the green scrubber - I glued two pieces side by side and then hid the seam by hiding it with more foliage. [/edit]

And here's a shot for scale.  That's a 28mm figure on the left, and a 15mm figure on the right.  These should work okay for 15mm, but are way too small for anything bigger.  On the other hand, they are perfect for my chosen scale - 6mm!

What?  A new scale?  What madness is this?

Well, it's the madness of big battle games.  This big box is being built for One Hour Wargames, which are mostly for pushing mass infantry around a table.  If I'm going to build a mass army wargame, it going to look like mass armies.  We'll keep collecting 15mm for skirmishing, but this box is all about the bases chock full of lots of little dudes.

Tyranny of Dragons Party - Yours Truly

The most colorful member of the party, in more ways than one, must be my character, a dwarven tank named Henry St. John.  He actually dual wields two light hammers, but the figure came with a hammer and axe.  The axe went to yesterday's dragon-born paladin, and the dragon-born's mace got plugged into the fist of this dwarf.

He's big, bold, brash, and loud.  A typical dwarf - straight ahead fighter, even if he isn't the most effective.  Dual wielding light hammers gimps warriors in fifth edition, but the rules are a lot more forgiving than previous editions, and I've never been a min-maxer kind of guy anyway.

Fighting Fire With Fire

Sometimes it takes a dragon to beat a dragon.  The toughest character in our party running the Tyranny of Dragons gauntlet is the dragonborn warrior, Karran.  This paladin is a white-dragon blooded tank of a hero.  Unlike the three previous characters in the party, the guy playing this character didn't go with a dark color palette.

He went with white on white.

All right to make this work, I tried a bluish undertone for the 'skin' portions of the figure, and a yellowish undertone for the armor.  In retrospect, those would have looked better reversed.  This guy looks more like a blue dragon to me.

Once again, the shield served as a way to provide an additional splash of color.  No idea what the player wanted for the shield, but a nice tribal dragon emblem seemed appropriate.

That weird looking axe is an artifact of an ill conceived weapon swap.  The character wields a big old axe, and the figure comes with a couple of sword options and a mace option.  I stole an axe from a dwarf (see tomorrow's post), and tacked it onto the swords' dragon wing hilt.  It's bulky, but it seems to work.

Sic Semper Tyrannis Draconis

Aramis, cleric of Helm, tank-slash-healbot extraordinaire, and all around good guy.  He has been instrumental in cracking the tyranny of dragons campaign.  

Fifth edition clerics seem like a hard class to play.  They have so many options at every level of the game, there's a lot to track at every stage of the game.  The guy who runs our cleric is very good at his job, he saves the buffs for the right time, and always seems to have heal slots available when needed.

His color choice?  Not so much.  He asked for black and silver, which is fine and all, but the party already has a black archer, a dark mage, and now a dark cleric - we're seriously running the risk of looking like the bad guys here.  This figure also needed something to break up the monochrome, and that's where the shield saved me.

For those not in the know, that's the symbol of the Forgotten Realms' deity, Helm.  A splash of blue background helps provide a nice contrast with the rest of the figure.

Sci-Fi Skirmish Documented Aliens

Look at all this personality.  These guys are great.  Brutal beasts, galumphing stocky blobs, and thin mysterious snakemen.  We truly live in a golden age of 15mm figures.  So many choices, I could could paint nothing but random aliens for a year and never run out.

Khurasan on the left, 15mm.co.uk on the center and left

That big boy on the left is clearly an orange class alien, in Five Parsecs from Home parlance, so it only made sense to paint up a bright orange.  The scheme for the snakeman is taken from a snake native to Arizona called the spotted leaf-nosed snake (phyllorhyncus decutatus).  There are so many brilliantly colored snakes out there in the world, you can pretty much make up your own colors and it's better than even odds you just duplicated something in the earth wilds.