Beginnings of a halfling village.

Having recently been on a bit of a plastic binge, trying out some new sets, my stocks of mdf bases actually dwindled to barely nothing. In fact I had completely run out of smaller round bases. It's the kind of thing we all normally just pick up a bag full of at a wargame show, probably not even paying attention to the name of the company we buy them from. Well a quick Facebook group enquiry as to where I could get some currently from and I went with the recommendation of Sarissa Precision. (I did get lots of other great recommendations which I am sure would be just as great.) I'm sure there isn't a lot of difference when it comes to lazer cut bases other than the costs per base, so really my choice was down to what other products the company sold as well. After all, I couldn't just buy bases, could I?

I love Sarissa's work. I have a full table of Old West terrain, mostly from Sarissa. Their smaller Western buildings don't even need gluing, they just hold themselves together snugly. (Great for storing flat again for space saving.) I like that the price point is not increased by the kits being pre-painted either. I'm a wargamer on a budget and painting mdf buildings is not something I find a chore. So the reason I went with them was I knew I would do well treating myself to something. 

I decided I needed a couple of buildings for a fantasy table for playing Dragon Rampant. Something not too large and obviously fantasy rather than historical. The Burrow's and Badgers range of buildings have a nice quirky feel to them. In the end I opted for Salvor's Burrow and Brother Mortimer's Den. They both felt like they would make a good start to a halfling village, handy due to the fact I have a painting table covered in halflings.

A generous relative had gifted me some flock covered paper which had been sat in my craft drawer for some time. This felt like the perfect opportunity to use it. It had suffered some abuse from getting crumpled up in the craft drawer but a day with a heavy weight on top and it was good to go.

Using the cardboard roof pieces as templates and dry fitting the buildings to see where there would be other suitable gaps, I cut some pieces out to glue to the kits.

 

I sensibly pre-painted as many pieces as I could while they were on the flat making it easier. Again the dry fitting of the model helped with this as it showed where it was needed.

 

 

Salvor's Burrow was done first. The flock paper was just stuck on with PVA and even though my paper was really creased up from sitting in storage, it sat really nice and flat on the model.

 

 

When I started Brother Mortimer's Den, I immediately recognised the same style cardboard doorway/window and so didn't even pop them out before painting them. 

 

 

I nearly got in trouble with the door placement on this piece. The base is not symetrical and the door panel needs to be on the side with the wider base to fit the door steps on. The instructions from Sarissa are always clear and the fault is mine for a lapse in concentration, luckily I spotted it in time and didn't do any harm to the construction.

 

 

I was on a roll with the flock paper so decided this building should get the full roof covering treatment as well. This building comes with removable roof and the chimney top comes off as well. There is also a ladder that can be popped into the chimney, I think I might just put mine in my random scatter terrain drawer.

 

 

  

A couple of nice little kits and I had fun playing with the flock paper. I can imagine using this stuff if I was doing a whole table rather than using loose flock any day. It does have a tendency to moult a fair bit, but a spray with watered down PVA might help seal it. I shall see how bad the moulting is in future and maybe invest in a spray gun.

Another Dragon Rampant army

So the Dragon Rampant painting continues. I start with a Bad Squiddo "Jarl Lathgertha". I swapped out her axe though for a plastic spear from the Frostgrave Barbarians sprue. I felt she needed something more intimidating to match the drama of her rearing steed.

In both shots I have since noticed that she looks like she  is wearing sunblock on her nose. I assure you, she is not. After going all fancy with laying out flock for the photo shot I'm not retaking.

My first unit for her to lead are a twelve man two handed weapon bearing set of barbarians from the Frostgrave Barbarian box. I love these gruff looking guys, its hard not to give them all grey and white hair.

 

I've pretty much used the same technique I used for the other Frostgrave plastics. A base paint of colours and then covered with Coat D'arms dark brown wash. They were a joy to paint with lots of detail in furs and shaggy beards. The weapons look suitably hefty like they really could do some damage if you didn't get out of their way quick enough.

 

I kept the head with the helm for just one of the guys so he would be a clear leader. Not that it is necessary for Dragon Rampant, but in case I want to use them for any other system. 

I kept the palette of colours for them to a limited number and they all share the same pallette. They may have them in different places, but they all share the same colours with Jarl as well. Her only addition is the blue on her shield and horse blanket.

  

 I've been contemplating my painting lately. I love sharing online with others, but it is a double edged sword, I also see the highest of quality painting that people share that is far superior to my own. Then I decided it was okay. Luckily I have experienced nothing but positivity from the online wargaming community since I started my blog. (I think I'm just too smallfry to attract the weirdos)  I realised that just some peoples models are painted as one off highest quality pieces for display, or painting competitions and some are painted quicker. If I even tried to paint a whole army to that higher level, I'd never get the whole army painted. It's okay to paint to different levels of quality. A unit of 60 redcoats painted to basic standard looks amazing on the table all lined up, you don't need to paint the pupils in the eyes of each individual one.

Save the effort for when you paint Wellington, that is when you can take the week to paint the model. (I will admit though after a week my Wellington still looks like I spent a day on him) I love getting inspiration from other painters online, but I don't have to compare myself to them. I'm happy with what I paint, I love what you all paint.

Stan The Man

 Editor in Chief, from Crooked Dice

As well as being a wargamer I love comic books. Yep, I burden my life with two heavy box storage hobbies. I even recently took on the task of cataloging my entire collection onto a database. Yes, I will take on any procrastinating task to put off painting my lead mountain. Well, as a fan of the medium I bow down to the Legend that is Stan the Man Lee. So when I saw this model from Crooked Dice I had to paint it up to look like the Grandfather of comics. The model also happens to be holding a suitable item that could be painted up as a comic, so I asked in my last blog post for answers on a postcard as to what it should be. I actually got a postcard. 

The Dashing Duke

A suitable postcard I thought considering some of my other painting efforts, on the reverse addressed to "The idiot with the paintbrush" my Brother in Law with too many spare stamps and a practical sense of humour had requested Amazing Fantasy number 15. Well, as luck would have it, I agreed with the choice. Please excuse my clumsy brushstrokes, but I'm quite proud of the result...

Yep, I think it looks worse in close up, but you get more of the idea.

Marvel's original

What else have I painted since we last spoke? Well everything else is mostly in progress still. I have finished a rather dashing, stylised version of General Custer from Scorpion Miniatures.

 

Finally these little guys have arrived ready for construction. I thought I would share them with you as they are a reasonably new company so folks might want to see the actual contents.

You get eight of the following sprue inside the box for £25. There are no bases included, but then everyone has different preferences on bases anyway. Kits I buy that have bases included? I tend to squirrel them away somewhere and buy different ones anyway. I figure I can make a unit of bowmen, a unit of spearmen and then with a couple of conversions from my bits box a couple of characters.

So, give me a couple of months and I may have made a start on this. Now I just need to decide on which of the bizarre halfling cavalry out there to buy and add to my painting pile.