New Technical paints tested.

Our hapless volunteers, three members of my old Middenhiem Mordheim Warband, and a spare base.. with a layer of Codex Grey on it.

28mm WW2 Terrain–finished farm buildings

Put these two together the other day to round out and provide some interest on the new 4’x4’ Layout I’m making for operation squad.

Boards are in 2’x2’ sections and so far I’ve made 2x plain ones, one with an elevated area and one with a “beach” of sorts.

Eventually I’ll put two more together with river sections, and a couple of mobile hills. I know from experience I could be making a more attractive board by integrating everything, but I want this to be playable for many smaller games, so I need to be able to mix up the layout, and as such all the roads, walls, fields buildings etc are based separately and made mobile.

It’s a compromise between looks and playability.

anyway here are some shots that sow off the excellent buildings by http://www.lasermodellbau.de/

a view through the new woods (post to come)

The barn,

The farmhouse, with an attempt at Ivy…

one shot of the other side of the house. and yeah, the lighting isn't great, but these suckers are big, and I’m not well set up for anything over a couple of inches tall

anyway as always let me know your thoughts and I’ll post again soon™

WW2 Scenery–Normandy farm buildings

I’ve been slowly plugging away (very slowly, sorry for the pace of posts of late, RL and all that) at some WW2 stuff, as you may have seen with the Germans, well, turns out I needed a new table to play on. the game (Operation squad) requires a 4x4 table to start with, but moreover, the scenery demands are somewhat more particular then my usual 40k stuff.

Much the same as the models are more appropriately and naturally scaled, so must the structured be.

While I have made my own buildings before, I am severely pressed for time of late and trolling the various forums and websites I found this lovely German gentleman and bought two of his buildings from him.

they arrived like this:

and being the obsessive I am, I layed out the components

the farm house went together very easily, with a wee bit of filing and a smear of epoxy

The Barn, with it’s multiple, separate doors took a wee bit longer.

and was very slightly warped, but a brisk hair drying on a flat surface soon sorted that

the joints just need a little filing and then voila,

 

The rooves were left separate for painting

after base coats with Vallejo, I realised that while the barn was fine with the odd open window, I needed to glaze the house.

I marked up some old clear plastic from a blister and cut to size, a wee bit of CA and.. in they went

The last stages involve a seal with klear, and then some detail paint and weathering down.

 

The barn, awaiting flock.

I’ll sort out some lighting later and get some finished pics of these once the pva on the flock dries, expect finished shots in the next day or two.

I will say this, these are solid kits, with good detail and I’ll be visiting this guy again for another couple, maybe even a towns worth.

I’ll also reinforce that I bought these products and I’m not being recompensed for running an advert or anything,

let me know your thoughts,.

The Christmas Elves

Seem to have something of a sense of Irony. After my recent post lamenting my hobby time, and the long list of projects stacked up, they have deemed it wise to bring me more to do!

Notably, this:

Not that I am complaining – I’ve been interested in Super Dungeon Explore for a while, and my partner and I both love board games, so it seemed like a good fit.

She’ll even paint a model or two if the must moves her. so this box might be something we can work through together.

for those who don’t know it, it’s a dungeon smash much like heroquest or descent, but very differently themed around a terrible Japanese rpg

if I had to I suppose the best description might be a board game version of a japanese ripoff of “gauntlet” (WIZARD NEEDS FOOD)

I spend an afternoon putting the figs together, which isn't an easy task for a novice, and would be the only thing preventing my recommending this with universal appeal.

When you open the box, your greeted by some card…

The rulebook, which is fairly concise and helpful, and some punch out tokens, these come off the frame easily and should be sorted into baggies for ease of use…

Next are the playing tiles and the meat of the package, the figs…

These come in their own wee baggies, and with many many small parts, take a couple of hours to put together even for an experienced modeler. this alone might be the barrier that prevent a lot of people playing this.. I hope not, cos it’s a cracking game.

 

Models themselves are good quality hard plastic, a few mold lines exist but are easily removed and not huge in any case.

The Desk, mid-build….

And the completed horde.

My partner and I had a quick game to test it out, it’s quick to pick up, plays well and fast and is good fun, if anything the desk is pretty stacked in the hero side of things.. I’m going to have to get devious as consul to give them a challenge.

Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Books

This article started as a short review of the second book, and I soon realised I was talking about it more in terms of it’s relationship to the first book, than on it’s own merits, so I decided not to fight it, and to talk about both.

A bit of background - I came at these books having been involved in model making and specifically wargaming for many years, I’m a digital and creative art teacher, and so a lot of the stuff contained in the books was not new to me, but some was, moreover, some were techniques i knew but just hadn't shifted paradigm to even think of using them in my hobby modelling.

I don’t often do product reviews on the site, only really when something exceptional comes along, and these books are certainly that, but let me know in the comments if this article was any helps, and if you;d like to see me write like this more often.

Both the books discussed are available through Forge World. both are priced as £26 at the time of writing.

Volume one.

The first model masterclass book is incredibly useful, and I think every modeller who works with vehicle kits can get something from it, no matter that it’s called a “masterclass” some of the very easy and effective techniques can help out any modeller.

Now, is it essential? no, not at all.

Can most of the stuff in it be learned form the web? Sure, you need to trawl through military modelling website though, and have a rough idea what you want to achieve.

 

Where this first book wins is in gathering all these techniques from the scale and military modelling worlds together and showing how they are done in one neat package for the hobby modeller, I cant recommend this book highly enough to well, everyone.

 

This book covers some advanced modelling and painting techniques and is very easy to follow, it’s strength lies in it’s simple layout and good, step by step instruction.

It’s also packed full of stuff you just haven’t thought of.

Volume two.

Now we come to the second book, and where things get stickier. it’s much lighter on actual techniques, having shown most of it’s aces in the first book. the whole book lacks that level of simple, step-by-step instruction that the first has.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, to repeat all the steps of book one would be pointless, but it for sure assumes you have the first volume. I think this is exactly what this book needed to be, but I can see some people being disappointed at that lack of clarity of technique.

 

it’s still got the same excellent photography and production values, it still has a decent price point, and I find it contains plenty for me to both be inspired by and learn from.

There are articles covering some of the famous, high visibility models and dioramas to come out of Forge World, and as such it is a very informative books, but i wouldn't recommend it as widely and universally as the first book. it’s much more about finesse, ways to combine techniques for subtle variation of finish. and it is much more a book about how certain effects on certain models were accomplished.

This is not a book everyone needs, it wont give you the same feel of a new technique on every page. it does have some beautiful models in it, and it does tell you how techniques were applied to create effects, but it’s much more a book about how to achieve certain effects, than the first, which reads much more like book about universal techniques.

So do you need both? no. but if you’re like me, you might want both.

Do yourself a favour and don't buy the second book expecting the same amount of new and revelatory techniques as the first, buy it to see some of the best our hobby has to offer, and maybe pick up a thing or two on the way.