The Dreadfleet sails at last

Well, 3 months after it arrived on my doorstep, I have finally managed to finish painting all the parts for Dreadfleet. Well, almost. I haven't varnished them yet but nearly done. ...

The Grand Alliance

The Dreadfleet

For those who don't know, Dreadfleet is a limited edition game of pirate ships published by Games Workshop and set in the world of Warhammer Fantasy.

A small fleet of 'good' pirates are hunting down a small fleet of 'bad' pirates in an obscure part of the the oceans of the Old World. As you would expect, the components are of very high quality and the sculpting is quite amazing. 

 It would be quite possible to play the game with the ships clipped together and not a bit of glue or paint in sight. But it would be a tragedy not to paint the lovely miniatures in this set. 

In some ways the ships are always 

going to look good when painted because the sculptors have done given you so much straight out of the box. I found it quite a slog though - because each ship is so individual so there is no real opportunity to get a production line going.

This is not a mass combat game - each ship is very individual with its own distinct character. Personally I find it impossible to resist a game that includes a giant mechanical kraken or a ship constructed from a hollowed out giant fish and crewed by zombie Skaven ! The vampire vessel is distinctly weird though - made up of the hulls of wrecked ships with a giant stone castle perched on top. You don't so much need to suspend disbelief but rather to nail it very firmly to the ceiling.

Heldenhammer

We've only had time for one proper play of the game. This was the introductory scenario which saw the mighty Heldenhammer pitted against the nefarious Bloody Reaver vampire ship. This inevitably resulted in a victory for the baddies (i.e. my son George) but with plenty of action along the way. The game makes a lot of use of random events to add a lot of fun to the game (having your rudder jammed when trying to navigate around all those little islands is quite a challenge!). I'll probably report on some battles on my twitter account so be sure to follow me to find out how many times my son George sinks my battleship!

Bloody Reaver

The remaining ships in the Dreadfleet...

Black Kraken

Skabrus

And the brave ships of the Grand Alliance......

Seadrake

Grimnir's Thunder

Swordfysh

Flaming Scimitar

League of Augsburg French (Pendraken 10mm)

This summer I was hoping to get loads of figures painted. In the end I managed two battalions and its now October !

These figures are from my new project - a French army in 10mm for the War of the League of Augsburg. I've started collecting these mainly because the figures in the new range by Pendraken are simply fantastic (they are sculpted by the amazingly talented Clibinarium who also created their AWI range). The detail is superb - some of the figures even clearly having eyeballs. In 10mm! Its just not fair on us painters !

This was a figure inspired project, so I quickly realised that I didn't actually know anything about the period at all. With help from a certain Mr Essex Boy from the WD3 forum I got into some basic background reading. The most enjoyable being the useful Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough (David Chandler). This is a very good introduction to the tactics of the period and well worth a look. There is also a very useful webpage and forum at the League of Augsburg website. Here also you can purchase a set of rules for the war - Beneath The Lily Banners 2nd Edition. They are a bit pricy, but well produced, colourful and very readable. I haven't had a chance to play them yet but they seem like fun.

The Pendraken figures come in packs with a variety of poses. Initially I was going to mix the poses on all my stands - but this made the battalions look very irregular and rag-tag. Conversely I wasn't too keen on completely identical regiments. So I have compromised with having each base having the same figures front rank and different ones in the rear rank. I think it looks ok but i'm not entirely convinced - I may well have to experiment still more.

I have targeted my collection at the large starter army from the rulebook. This requires nine foot battalions and oodles of horse. Luckily the horse figures haven't been released yet so I have some time to get the other seven done. That's of course if I don't get distracted by AWI, 40k, Napoleonics, Space Hulk or ....sigh... Dreadfleet...... 

Chaos Space Marine Project Part 1 - Chaos Daemon

A side project of mine is Chaos Space Marines for 40k. This isn’t going to produce a usable army any time soon - but is rather a chance to model and paint interesting units in between other projects.

My force background is that of a large Imperial space cruiser (formerly the Lex Talionis, now known in whispers as Naga Oblivio) that has been possessed by a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, the crew having been overcome, seduced and entrapped by its magic and lies.This particular aspect of Tzeentch is that of the snake - deceiver, whisperer, influencer, manipulator. Having taken control of the ship, the Daemon is working to a mysterious plan, ambushing other vessels, luring in boarding parties, appearing seemingly at random to launch its attacks and then inexplicably disappearing again. The denizens of the vessel are barely aware of their own sentience - their minds only clearing from a haze of magic and warp visions in time to attack the latest objective of their deviously insane master before lapsing back to their nightmare existence.

The snake presence will feature strongly in all units of the legions of the Naga Oblivio. These are not so much Space Marines who have adopted snake iconography - rather the essence of the snake is taking them over slowly and surely.

The first unit in my army is the centrepiece Daemon Prince, J’Ssurus. No one is quite sure how he came to be - part snake, part Daemon, part machine. His slithering form leads the assault in boarding parties - huge though he is, his lithe and supple body is able to compress and slither into vents and service shafts, erupting behind the defenders in a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Sometimes he prefers to use mutated thruster vents to propel himself across the void between the ships and tear his way into the enemy bridge using his daemonic strength to rip through the bulkhead walls.

The model is a combination of the standard GW Daemon Prince and a rather excellent 54mm giant snake figure from Grey Matter Figures with a bit of greenstuff embellishment thrown in too. So far its just undercoated with a brown guidewash. Full painting will have to wait till after my summer holidays.

Virginia Continental Regiments (Pendraken Miniatures 10mm)

After a break of nearly a year I have now finished the next part of my 10mm AWI forces for Guilford Courthouse. I finally finished the British last year, so now its the turn of the gallant Patriots fighting against tyranny, oppression and for the right to super size meals.

 

First under the brush are the Virginia Continental regiments. There were two regiments at Guilford Courthouse which seem to have different numbers in every reference book, but I'll go with Babits* and use them as the 1st and 2nd Virginia. I have been constructing my forces using the order of battle in the original British Grenadier rulebook which used a 1:20 ratio - meaning if I can get away with each regiment being about 20 figures. The new scenario book has scaled the battle up to 1:10. I decided therefore to arrange the figures so they could be used as 2 smaller regiments at 1:20 or one larger at 1:10 in case I ever get round to painting enough figures for the larger battle (i.e. never)

 

One advantage of painting up the Americans is that you pretty much have free reign on how to paint the uniforms and flags since they were anything but standardised. This also means needing to put a bit of thought into it rather than just following an Osprey guide. I have decided to give each of my American regiments their own flavour. For the Virginians I latched onto a passage in Babits which mentions that they had received a new batch of poor quality uniforms prior to leaving Virginia. I decided therefore to paint them up in relatively uniform blue coats but have a number of them patched on the knees and sleeves. In the end they probably still look a lot less scruffy than they would have done in actuality (I'm going to save proper scruffy for some of the militia!).

 

The flags are also entirely conjectural. The best work on flags is Richardson but even this is incredibly vague. I knew I didn't want a Betsy Ross so I have just used a random Stars and Stripes design. The regimental colours are entirely made up. There are some Virginia State flags using a buff background so I made the flag with a plain buff yellow field and a simple scroll device. I have had comments that painting 10mm flags is borderline insane, but it really is quite straightforward (and probably easier than larger scale flags). This time I've included a step-by-step to show how I went about them

Step 1:

First you need a template on a piece of paper. I use standard printer/copier paper. It needs to be absorbent to make the glue work (see below). You could hand draw the template entirely. I prefer to print a base template for somewhere like Warflag. Print it down in black and white and resize as appropriate. It is better to use the resize function in your printer driver or photocopy the size down. I find using an art package to rescale can cause the image to become 'blocky'. For these flags I used a Stars and Stripes template from Warflag and a standard blank template that I have used for other flags previously. At this point make sure that the flag is the right size to fit on your flagpole!

Step 2:

Now blackline all the detail. I used a Rotring 0.1 pen. It needs to be a waterproof ink. Don't worry if the detail becomes smudgy at this point. Extend border the lines beyond the boundary of the flag - this will help to guide cutting later.

 

Step 3:

Paint in the base colours using a shade colour. Paint up to and slightly over the blacklines so that you leave the finest black line bordering each colour. Don't put the paint on thickly otherwise it risks cracking when the flag is bent later.

Step 4:

Paint a mid tone colour to fill most of the shade colour blocks already done. You may need to repeat if the brushstrokes are still visible when dry. At this point I also used a Rotring 0.03 pen to write the slogan on the scroll. In hindsight I should perhaps have used this fine pen to outline the stars.

Step 5:

Now cut out the flags using a sharp scalpel and a metal ruler. I have one of those paper cutters that combine a blade into a sliding ruler but it's not necessary. When the flags are cut out, paste the reverse sides generously with a PVA/Water mix. Wrap the flag around the flagpole and match the two halves carefully. While the flag is still wet, get a thin paintbrush handle or similar (a knitting needle is good if, and only if, you have permission!).  Bend the flag around the handle 2 or 3 times to create furls - the paper should bent stay in place. It looks more realistic to furl on the diagonal rather than straight up or down. If you are brave you can scrunch the flag up quite severely..... I wasn't! Leave to dry overnight and then varnish to give the flag some strength and you're done.

League of Augsberg (Pendraken 10mm)

Having finally finished my 28mm 18thC brigade for the WD3 battleday earlier this month I am now back into 10mm painting. I have primed my Virginian Continentals and on Saturday night painted all the flesh on them ready for a concerted assault on the painting task on Sunday. But this morning I couldn't help but look at the Pendraken League of Augsberg sampler pack and wonder what they would look like painted - so it looks like my Continentals will have to wait a week at least.

I'm seriously looking at League of Augsberg as one of my next projects so there was a point to this. I didn't pay too much attention to getting the uniforms right this time, I just used the photos from the latest edition of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy as a rough guide.

My first impressions are that the figures are a delight to paint up. The sculpts from Clibinarium are crisp and well defined making them very easy to paint. The uniforms are very simple with plenty of opportunity to field brightly coloured units with long coats and large cuffs and lapels in attractive contrasting colours. One lesson learned though is that I'm not doing the Dutch - nice though they look, painting orange is a nightmare and I'm not really happy with the effect that I ended up with here.

Wire Mesh Fences

A Space Marine Biker from my son George's collection eyes up
 some mysterious aliens beyond the perimeter fence

For Christmas I got a copy of GW's rather excellent How To Make Wargames Terrain. I've never really made my own terrain before (except for a few 10mm trees) so I thought I would have a stab at something straightforward before I commenced building a Minas Tirith or similar. Wire mesh fences it was then. The guide has a good photo of a fence made from aluminium mesh and foamboard. Here's how I got on following their instructions.

Card & Foamboard bases

First step was to cut out bases. I used strips 15cm x 3cm. The book says you can use card, which I did, but I ended up with a small amount of warpage. Next time I think I would use wood just to be sure. The foamboard is the 5mm stuff which I think is the standard size you can get from any art shop.

I removed the thin card strip from one side of the foamboard (this was easily done by sliding a sharp knife between the foam and the card). This was then used as the top side.

I stuck the foamboard to the card with PVA glue (this is when the warping happens - I was able to gently bend it back into shape when dry). I tapered the ends to more easily make corners when setting up a game. 

Now, a craft knife was used to carve the foam into something resembling a rough sloping bank of earth.

Carved base

It was now time to add some fence posts. For these I used some of the girder shape plastic strip that is available from most model shops. This was the most expensive part of the fencing - I ended up using 2 strips that cost about 90p each making just 4 fence bases. When the fence posts were cut - I pushed them into the foam and then used super glue to fix them in position.

Posts in position

I now painted the posts a steel colour (using the Foundry metal paint triad) and washed them using Devlan Mud. It is compulsory in wargaming to use Devlan Mud in all painting projects. The foam base was then coated in PVA glue with sand and other scenic rock stuff sprinkled on.

Bases ready for painting

I painted the bases using a formula from an article in an old Battlegames article. This involves a coat of chocolate brown, a wetbrush layer of Vallejo Orange Brown, a drybrush of Vallejo medium flesh and finally a drybrush of Vallejo Buff. And a little bit of Devlan Mud on the rocks. Naturally.

Painted Bases

Now to add the wire mesh. For this I used some mesh that I had rescued from an old kitchen sieve. I'm not sure where you would buy mesh separately but sieves are easily available from pound shops or places like Wilkos (or for the foolhardy they can be stolen from the kitchen).

Rescued from the kitchen (with permission!)

I cut the mesh into strips and distressed it a bit using pliers so that it looks like a battered piece of fencing before glueing it to the posts. Now a handy tip for idiots. If you use super glue and hold the mesh in place against your post then the glue will seep through the holes in the mesh and handily attach your finger to the mesh and fence post. This it not a theory. I can vouch for it.

Once the glue has set I drybrushed the fencing and posts with some dark brown and orange brown to create a dirty rusty effect and that was just about it....

I added a small sign to one of the fences using a bit of plasticard and an old transfer from the bits box and now I know that my little plastic men will feel totally protected against any alien incursions...