A trip to the "Darkside" (which turns out is a lot of fun!)

So I had the pleasure of going to Warhammerfest-2023 over the last weekend and seeing some of the world's best painters work up close and personal in the Golden Demon cabinets. There was some absolutely mind blowing stuff in those cabinets, and some very talented people to talk to. Everyone was really happy to stand and chat about their experiences in the build up to the event and discuss how they had gone about their projects. I think the overriding thing that stayed with me from the weekend was the community and openness to celebrate our niche little hobby, I would recommend it to anyone.

I also entered Golden Demon and came away with a finalist pin, which I was ecstatic about. I came away forming ideas for next years competition. I best put a picture up hadn't I.

More speed painting refinement

Today I put the speed painting process to the batch painting challenge. I tried to paint the remaining 5 bow men as quickly as possible and it took just under 4 hours. Add in the other bow man from last night we end up with 6 miniatures in 5 hours or 50 minutes per figure. That said doing all six at once would of saved at least 30 minutes and if I stopped looking for videos on YouTube and making cups of coffee, I reckon another 30 minutes would of been saved. Splitting that difference I think it's fair to say each figure will take 45 minutes to paint. I've not added in for building, priming and basing as each one will be done in bulk and probably take a full day for each (or a good portion). So these are the results for my 45 minute bowmen.

On mass I think they'll look pretty effective and will look very unified when all based up.

A foray into simple speed painting and the War of the Roses

I made the first tentative steps into trying to understand and refine a speedy painting process for our War of the Roses demo game.  Below are the results of a Yorkist archer (28mm Perry miniatures). Total paint time of about an hour, 8 paints and two washes. There's a argument that you could do it with only one wash and lose one of the three neutral colours. The red and blue make for the most detailed and time consuming part which is to be expected. If they were to be batch painted and with some sense of repetition, I'm pretty sure they could be done at 30 minutes a figure. Over the coming week I'll have a few more goes at refining the techniques required and stream lining the whole process. I shall return with those results.

First contact! Stargrave

A few pictures of last night's game of Stargrave. As it was the first game we stuck to the very base mechanics and we'll add the more complex features as we progress. Great fun was had and unusually for a new game, we all seemed to agree that it was a good ruleset and something to be added to the game rotation at the club. 

Sharp Practice peninsula skirmish French vs British 25mm

British troops resting at a rural homestead suddenly attacked by a flying column of French soldiers and voltigeurs.

The British managed to get into line as the French units approached in echelon. 

Meanwhile to one flank the French voltigeurs pushed back the British skirmishers through accurate long-distance fire, who managed to hide behind a farm building to re-group.

British line fire won the day in the end, eventually shooting-back the French units, but it was a close-run thing as the French voltigeurs started to pick off the British line soldiers.

20mm French partisan group

I shall say zis only wernce......almost completed this small French partisan force for our 20mm WW2 games, and thanks to Alex for his lovely figure painting skills.

20mm Battle Group encounter game

 A few shots from the BattleGroup game on Monday 29th June 2021.

In the early stages this looked like an easy British victory with three German AFV's being taken out in quick succession, but lady luck changed sides and the evening ended with a German victory.

Bringing out the BIG guns!!

 So this post shows some of my work as I trundle along the wargaming path in my mission to paint the random "When the hell did I buy that/them/whole army!!??" projects that I find in long unopened boxes and draws. Two of these boxes contained some Perry's British 9lb artillery pieces and crew, some British casualties and two random Perry plastic sprues of U.S infantry '44-45 containing enough parts to make a 0.30cal machine team and extra crew.

So first up is the artillery. Both are 9lb cannons, one with a firing crew and one loading. They are in the later uniform and due to this are going to be forced in to double duty in my Peninsular force (1811) as well as my Waterloo force (1815). I can't see myself paying another £20 just for a few crew figures for the 1811 period.

Next up I have a few figures I hope don't see the table too often!

Finally we have the remaining 0.30cal machine gun to round out my "Chain of Command" platoon

So that finishes this post and finally finishes some projects. Both my "Sharp Practice" and "Chain of Command" forces are both now finished and ready to game with (though the thought of any project being 100% complete is, in reality, not possible is it?).

This weeks painting is taking the form of some dark ages figures I have re-found and some fantasy chaos warriors that I think I bought on eBay with "Dragon Rampant" in mind. I think all these figures can be amalgamated into one force and do double duty in several rules sets. Added to all this I found some oil paints in the garage, this has led to me messing about with oil washes, so hopefully on my next post we'll see those results.

Additions for my U.S Army platoon ('44-45)

 So this blog post contains several additions for my U.S infantry platoon that I've been playing games of The Too Fat Lardies "Chain of Command". As with the rest of the figures in the platoon these are all Perry Miniatures plastics, from their multi part kit and go together rather well, look rather nice and most importantly are nice and cheap! The kit comes with most options you'd find in the standard infantry platoon, bazookas, 0.30cal machine guns, BAR's, Thompson sub-machine guns, and a good mix of carbines and rifles are all present. 

This should really help bulk out my support units for the platoon. On the paint desk I have a 0.30cal MG and that should add some much needed firepower to the force and that should finish the infantry off. The only question left now is "How many Sherman tanks is too many?!"

Warning! Contains non-historical content and may cause distress to some viewers

 In last weeks Zoom call I'd briefly mentioned a little side project called Turnip28 that I'd heard about on the internet of all places. I said I would post a picture at some point and so here we are. I have taken to butchering some pretty poor sculpts from Warlord Games and turned them in to this,

Whilst I'm here breaking the cardinal rules of a historical wargames group, I may as well add some Warhammer 40'000 models I've painted as well.