Basing horses

As I said last time, I just bought six Riders of Rohan. I love these models, but the fact that their horses only have one hoof touching the base makes them rather fragile.

Here is my solution to that problem:

 Step 1: Fill out the gap between base and hoof with suitable material, I glued some pebbles into place.

 Step 2: Fill all the way with suitable basing material. I use acrylic paste, mixed with some MIG pigment to take away the white shine in case I miss something with the paint later, or if the base gets chipped. 

Step 3:Coat the base with white glue and cover in sand. Suddenly there is a marked difference in stability and the areas where hoofs attach to base materials will be covered in grass or bushes when the model is painted.

Magpie and butterfly in one!

SO, I had a long list of stuff I wanted to paint, lots of it prepped and ready on the table. Veterans of Osgiliath for Dux Gondorum. Mars Attacks Soldiers and Heroes (I'll be buying suitable paint for the Martians this week). Two tanks for GuP. A Jeep for the LRDG project. Some Germans and Paras from CP Models for Market-Garden.

And what happens? I go to the local second-hand store and find a box of Riders of Rohan, still in shrink-wrap, for 100SEK, ie less than half price. And of course...

Well, I've had great fun so far building horses and riders and planning for the base work that will allow me to attach at least one extra hoof, thereby providing stability and strength.

Dear Secret Santa...

I have now been given my vict...recipient for the Secret Santa project. That also means someone will soon be reading this blog looking for ideas. Well, Santa, there should be plenty of ideas to be found by reading previous blog posts, but just in case, here are some ideas:

1, Red Star Miniatures DBP range.

2, CP Models 20mm Germans, Russians, Brits or 28mm "Dr Who" range

3, Perry WW2 or Normans.

4, Anything for Dust Warfare.

5, Baccus 6mm ACW

6, Rapier 6mm ACW

7, Total Battle Miniatures 6mm ACW buildings

8, Timecast 6mm ACW buildings

9, Leven Miniatures 6mm ACW buildings

10, Any 10mm fantasy suitable for Battle of Five Armies

11, http://www.sgtsmess.co.uk/ Continental Cafe set, Stowage, Scenery etc.

12, Conquest Games Normans

13, http://earlywarminiatures.com/ BEF or French

14, Anything for Mantic Games Mars Attacks



And in case your are located on the other side of the world, Santa (although we all know you really live just across the border in Finland), here is my FLGS:

http://alphaspel.se/shop/content/9-Internationalorders

I am sure they will be willing to do a local delivery.

Paper strength

Fellow Swedish gamer and blogger Ptr has been doing a very inspirational series of posts about scratchbuilding scenery. One suggestion he had was using printed patterns to make walls. Since I had a PDF for making a castle (Fat Dragons Winterhawk) I thought I'd give it a try.

This is the bottom 5cm of the outer wall (hence they ivy) mounted on a piece of foam core with a strip of packing paper that Ptr kindly gave me on top as a row of tiles and a strip of flocked cardboard as a base.

Reverse view. This is the next 5cm of the wall so no ivy. 5 cm plus base and tiles is acually a bit high for 28mm. I think I will be doing a lower version that figures will be able shoot over.

I will be making more of these for sure, but in future the base will be plasticard as the white glue that holds the flock warped the cardboard far more than I expected.


Next idea came from Jocke who found some paper terrain intended for Dust and Infinity. First out are two containers.

The figure is from Mantics Mars Attacks game,

Closer view, with a Dust figure. Sorry about the sloppy glue job.

There will be more paper terrain in the future for sure. It is cheap, light, looks good, won't break if you drop it and you won't cry your eyes out if it does break. What's not to like?

Adventures in camouflage land finished

The first set of French troops for the Indo-China project are finished. They took a while to paint but it was an absolutely brilliant painting experience. I will buy more of these figures, that is for sure. The range is only about a dozen skirmishing poses so far, but there are head variants with helmets, bush hats and Bigeard caps. I intend to use this variation to the fullest, and probably find heads from other makers as well.

They are posing in front of a stone wall printed from a PDF set by Fat Dragon Games.

Adventures in camouflage land, WIP3

Did some more stuff, including a pin wash of the webbing and equipment and a regular wash all over. Not the greatest pics this time either, but Winter Is Coming (tm) and daylight is in short supply in Sweden.

Next, I'll try a light drybrush on the uniforms to get them a more worn, faded look and think about more shading and hightlights for the faces. Any other suggestions? Any ideas about the aluminium rifle butts?