Rainforests - how hard can they be?

   It's been a while since I've started a post with a blurb about a new project, so because I can't seem to keep focused on anyone thing for too long, here we go with a brand new project;
   I have recently been travelling around the forests of Costa Rica and it's been hard not to come away so heavily inspired that I knew I needed to try building some. I've not tried to reinvent the wheel and have taken heavily from Sir Michael Awdry, so I won't go over how I made them in any more details than anywhere I have diviated from his method.

   First up, I thought I would go over my inspiration. Costa Rica turns out to have multiple different types of tropical forest*, including; Rainforests, Cloud Forests and Dry Tropical Forests, with variations in between. This has meant I have seen the classic palm tree style forests, forests that look like British forests except for the heat and forests that have plants that would be unbelivable if modelled in 28mm unless you were planning on using them exclusively for sci-fi games.

*Rainforests aren't the be all and end all that I assumed

  

 

 

   My dilemma then came when I tried to put what I had seen into practise, how do I get the sheer range of plants and thickness of the vegetation onto the gaming board and make it survive playing games with. Ideally, I want to have a mix of tree types (for my practise ones I was happy to just use palm trees) but I need to work out how to use other tree types without it looking like I have just put British trees in a rainforest board, but that is a problem for later.

   Ultimately, I am pretty pleased with the outcome of my morning's work, the bases need a certain something but that will come with time I think, although any suggestions will be gratefully accepted.

   As these were supposed to be a test bed for a number of thing, namely; how many more plants do I need to buy, does my idea actually work and can I make them thick enough, I limited myself to 3 bases of trees and a single bit of scatter terrain. In the future I would like to fill a 6/4 board as heavily as makes sense.

Spot the bird.

 



 

Thanks for reading

Odds and Sods 3

   It has been a while since I did an Odds and Sods post - this time last year almost to the day weirdly* - but my painting desk is so full of bits of projects that this was unavoidable to someone like me. This post has Dinosaurs, a WW2 Soviet tank, Star Wars droid and Frostgrave, so lets begin.

*Must be something about the first week of September

   First up are the Oviraptors that I picked up from North Star. I was in the market for more of their wire spears as mine have gone walkabouts, but they have some of the most dangerous emails in the hobby and I am afraid I was one such casualty. I did my customary research into this dinosaur and basically came back with the knowledge that it is another 'do what you want' as the scientists don't know, so I picked my favourite scheme and went for it. I really do need a ruleset to play with these figures now, as this collection is getting a bit out of hand.

   After nearly a year of break from Bolt Action, I have picked it up again and started organising games and a couple of tournaments. The army I enjoy playing the most are my Soviets and my favourite tank to use is the SU-76 but I have always wanted to try it's up-armoured brother, the SU-76i**, so when I found out that Company B sold one (via Great Escape Games in the UK) it was a must buy.

**Actually based on captured Pz3 and stugs

   Carrying on from last time, I still have a fair few Frostgrave figures on my desk, of which these 3 made it through the painting process; another man at arms, a white gorilla and a medium construct. The man at arms is from Ladies in Sensible shoes***, the white gorilla is North Star and the medium construct is from Black Hat Miniatures and was bought without a plan, but with my Frostgrave resurgence I knew exactly what to use it as.

***Like the unknown templar from last time.

   Last up is a test model I bought from Tritex Games. I was after a better Owlbear model for D&D**** and spotted they had a Star Wars Miniatures category, so I bought a couple of bits as test items for size comparrisons with Imperial Assault.

****My character now has a magic item

that summons an Owlbear on command.

   The one I bought to actually use in games - probably as scenery - was the astromech droid ' Red' which was the one that malfunctioned when Luke bought it instead of R2-D2 in the 4th film. A quick ink wash and basing brought it up to gaming standard but size was the big issue, but as you can see below, while the model is smaller than R2, it isn't massively smaller, so I wouldn't be upset using it in the same game.

   The only other thing to test was the human sized characters, so I picked up a Sith Nobel with plans to use him as NPC in D&D, but he does seem to fit Imperial Assault's scale, so there is a risk I might bulk some units out with figures from this range, especially if some of the worst priced units work out scale wise (thinking Jawa's here).

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Dinosaur or Monster?

      It's been a while since my blog was graced with a dinosaur, but now that's about to change. This is the Megalosaur from Antediluvian Miniatures*, one of the two victorian Crystal Palace dinosaurs. Now that I have said all that it's time for an omission; I'm not planning on using as a dinosaur, this thing just looked too generic monster for my liking. I can see this thing living in dark caves scaring the peasantry until a Knight came along to do his thing. Ok so I might have gotten a little carried away there.

* I'm really glad I only had to write that name and not pronounce it.

     I'm not going to take credit for this find though, I had one of those emails during the week from another guy at the club (Antmaster) who had obviously stumbled across this company himself, and I sold from the moment I saw it.

      Now I have the photos up online I'm not sure about the base, I think that may be re-done in the future, but I think this thing will look amazing as part of a Dragon's Rampant army as a men-at-arms equivalent in the future.

       I bought a few more bits as part of the same order that will be painted as part of my dinosaur project, but I haven't even started on them yet so they will have to be a topic for another day.

Thanks for reading.

T-Rex

    Before I even start my normal spiel about what I have been painting, or apologising for the photography or any of the normal stuff I tend to do at the beginning of the post, I want to go straight in with accusations. So here it is, I blame Michael Awdry for this post, it is entirely his fault. There I was, minding my own business and boom, yet another blog on dinosaurs, and there I was buying yet more toys online on a website I had never heard of before, but now have saved . . .. So when I got home I figured I had better get one of the dinosaurs sitting in my backlog of 'to do' projects moved into the 'done' projects pile. So here it is; my T-Rex, how can you do dinosaurs without a T-Rex?

 

 

     He hasn't been painted or touched up at all, just stuck to a base and based like everything else. Much as I wouldn't have picked this colour scheme if he was being painted from scratch (he'd probably be a reddish brown colour), I quite like it.

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Another dinosaur

     It's been a slow couple of weeks in terms of getting any hobby done, and it looks like it is going to continue for a while yet, but I have managed to get another dinosaur painted up in my spare time. It's been a while since I've posted a new dinosaur on here.

     This model is of an Euoplocephalus, a heavily armed herbivorous dinosaur. I stumbled upon this in the cheap toy section in Wilko's and figured, with a repaint, it would be a really good addition to my dinosaur collection. 

Thanks for reading

The first milestone just went by

      This is just a quick, completely unscheduled, post to say thanks to everyone who reads this blog. Thanks to you guys we just went past the 1000 views mark, as I write this we are on 1003, and we have 13 followers, after only 5 months and 47 posts. Way beyond what I thought I would have by this point.
        I would like to give an extra special thanks to Herbert West and Michael Awdry for the glowing recommendations they both posted about this little blog. I have un-ashamedly stolen many an idea from Mr Awdry's blog and from the work Mr West is doing I have no doubt I will doing the same again with him, he is a shoe in for a liebster award nomination next time that comes to our little corner of the internet.

      Dinosaurs and or zombies, guaranteed to make your blog better. Hmmm, zombie dinosaur? Some one needs to get on with that. . .

Now, lets look for the next milestone

Little pests

       I still haven't achieved any proper painting but with a spare few minutes snatched between jobs at home last night I did manage to get another few bits done. I'm sure this won't come as a surprise when I say it. but, these have been on my desk for a while. I had originally intended to mount each on a single base and end up with a massive swarm of really tiny dinosaurs but the base ended up being so much bigger than the actual models it just looked daft. Then they almost became basing detail on the big girl, and some might in the future, but I still liked the idea of them being really weak and basically ignore-able in game, unless you let them mob up, see Jurassic Park; the Lost World for details. 

      The figures themselves, are Compsognathus from the hlbs companies dinosaur range, like the velociraptors last month and another couple of dinosaurs still waiting to be painted. I like the fact this range focuses on the smaller dinosaurs, which then balances nicely with the easily bought bigger dinosaurs you can get everywhere else.

     I do love the size comparison between these little guys and the big girl, really proves my point about them being ignore-able. In the future I will probably order another pack of 10 at some point, use half to really bulk these guys up and use the rest for base details on a couple of bigger dinosaurs, but my desk is covered with new projects at the moment and I haven't had any proper painting time for a couple of weeks now so we will have to see what happens.

The big girl

       Yet another toy that has been sitting on the side waiting for me to work out what I was going to do with. She is an Apatosaurus made by Schleich and is the first big dinosaur to go into my collection. The plan for the dinosaur game is to have a couple of big carnivores and a couple of packs of smaller ones that will be the real dinosaur threat, but the herbivores will still be a threat, although a less obvious one, they won't purposely attack you but a scared animal the size of one of these is going to do a lot of damage if it either flees through your men or decides to stand its ground.

       I did plan to repaint her (based on no real evidence I am assigning the gender to this dinosaur) but after procrastinating about how I was going to go about it, I came to the decision that I actually really like the effect the painters have already done on her. Future ones will be probably be repainted, but I do like the effect this one already has. All I have done is glue her to a base (a GW flier base) and then given the base the same treatment that all the rest will have. I always work on the idea if a model has a base their can be no arguments (although there always is) on measurements and movement.
      I think it may have to be a big carnivore next, although a small herd of either triceratops or stegosaurus wouldn't go a miss.

      Also, I am aware I have been doing lots of small, one pictures posts over the last few weeks, this is mostly because I have been doing ridiculous amounts of overtime, so my painting time has been destroyed, but I have a few really big projects on the go at the moment and, I have to run to my 40K tournament,  so hopefully I will have at least one big post this week and then a few more starting later in August.

Thanks for reading

Dinosaurs

     So there I was happily painting various dark age peoples along with some British militia from the late 1930's and then a parcel appeared on the doorstep, and it was at that point I realised my current painting projects didn't stand a chance of having priority any more.
     In a moment of weakness, probably after spending too much time lurking on other people's blogs, I think I'm looking at you Michael Awdry of 28mm Victorian warfare fame, I ordered some small lead dinosaurs from hlbs. These are going to get painted in dribs and drabs as the mood takes me, but last night, while watching Jurassic park, I got the first group finished. . .

My velociraptor pack

     Yet again the picture quality is terrible, I think I might have another go at it tonight, but here are my 6 Velociraptors. Much as the picture really doesn't show it I am immensely pleased with them.
     Now it's probably a good thing I didn't stop at the entertainer last night and buy myself a big plastic dinosaur to repaint isn't it. Oh wait . . .

South African Grey Shirts

     The guys in the photo below are my South African grey shirt unit of mercenaries for my vbcw B.U.F. force. For anyone who is unaware of the fascist movement in South Africa before the start of WW2 (including me before I researched it to paint this unit), the grey shirts were the movement with the biggest member base. 

     I see this unit being multi use. They make a great militia or rifle unit for vbcw but I can also use them in any pulp hunting game that takes my fancy. There is a risk my painting desk might end up covered in either dinosaurs or mammoths before the summer is out.

     Looking at the picture, now it is up, I think they could do with a little more work but as a unit I am pretty happy with them. I really just need to sort out my photography.

Thanks for reading.

What's on the painting desk?

      I was having a think last night on how best to introduce my armies and collections that are already painted and much as I want to just throw everything at this blog and say "here you go", I think it would just be overwhelming. So instead, I plan to show you what is sitting on my painting desk now, then as units get finished I will do a blog on the army it is part of.
   
      So first up are my Viking/Anglo-Saxon archers for my Saga warbands. Although I bought the Gripping Beast Viking archers I will use them for either warband to start with. All of my games of Saga so far have been small, 4 point games against Welsh warbands, and I have finally learned the 'take some missile troops lesson'.

       Next up is a multiple use unit. So far it is a mix of North Star's British North African Riflemen, their Hunters and Explorers and, still coming in the post, the Sidney Cohen and Geor from Empress Mutton Chops range to make it a nice 10 man unit. I plan to use them in two different games, firstly, dinosaur/prehistoric hunting games and, secondly, as a mercenary unit for BUF faction in a VBCW. I'll do the full unit background as soon as they are painted and introduce them properly.

      Last are a couple of models that aren't part of a planned army. I bought these Killa Kans with my brother as part of a modelling/painting project. These we just models we had talked about plans for, for ages and we figured now was the time to go for it. I plan to practise weathering powders on them. Lets see how that goes. . .

       Now to get on with some painting.