Wargaming Girl

...over their own screams!

Wahey! My Space Demons were posted last night on the Challenge blog, so I can share the pics here now. This entry gave me just enough points to squeak into 3rd place. Although I expect to be pushed back down the table in the next couple of days. Still, it's nice to be there at least once in the Challenge.

Very late on Friday night I realised that I had something in the lead pile which would go marvelously with them, so a quick session of prepping, assembling and priming was in order. I managed to paint that up very quickly on Saturday along with finishing the Space Demons off.

"Get away from her you BITCH!"

I decided to give the loader a well-used look - dry-brushing with Oily Steel and dirty washes with brown and rust inks. I think it looks pretty good. I had some fun with the base as well. Basically, it's a bit of wire mesh glued onto a MDF base and painted. The floor markings worked quite well.

I've also made some good progress on the Korean warrior monks. One of the command stands - the one which will be for my Righteous Army - got finished yesterday. All that was left to do this evening was to flock the base, so that got done shortly after I got home from work, then I took pics and drafted the post for the Challenge blog. It will go up on Saturday.

I also did a little bit on the rest f the figures, and have done some more this evening. I've still got a bit more to do before going to bed. As things are very, very quiet at work right now, I might take them in with me and do some more during the day.



Oooh! This is my 600th post!

Remember I said it was my team's Xmas lunch today? Well, this morning I woke up with a headache, streaming nose, sore throat, aching all over and shivering. Not to mention feeling wiped out and a bit spaced out. So, I've been off work and had to skip the lunch.

Still, it meant I had plenty of time to dry-brush and the bases of the dragoons and horse grenadiers this morning, once the Lemsip capsules had kicked in. I then took pics, wrote the post, saved it and emailed Curt to let him know that it was ready for him to add his bits and post it tomorrow.

I've also been able to make some progress on the Space Demons, mainly on the bases, but also silvering the teeth. I still need to do some touch-ups and do a little bit of detailing. They should be finished in time to be posted in my slot tomorrow.




At the back you can see something I've been prepping over the last few days. These will be the warrior monks for my Korean army. My plan is to take these with me to paint over Christmas.

As I'll have a couple of days before I head off for Christmas, I'll have to work out what to paint over the next couple of days. Start on the Russian infantry or change scale and do some 6mm ACW? You'll just have to wait and see.

First up - Simon has posted an AAR of the Gruntz game we played on Monday. I really should get around to doing mine!

Second up - the dragoons and horse grenadiers are oh-so-near completion. The basing gunk has been added, but is still a long way off drying, so I won't be able to do the dry-brushing and flocking tonight.



Thirdly - it's no good, I can't keep it secret. My "break" figures won't let me. So here's a pic.



I did several steps yesterday evening. A shade colour (Prussian blue mixed with some gloss black), a wet-brush of Prussian blue, then a medium-light dry-brush of medium blue mixed with metallic medium. I then gave them an overall wash of black. They were looking really good. However, I couldn't have thinned the black wash enough as this morning the figures were very, very black with only some of the metallic medium blue highlights showing through.



I've redone the metallic medium blue this evening, going a bit lighter on the dry-brushing this time. They look OK now. I should have just done the metallic medium blue dry-brush and left it at that. I've also painted the bases with London grey. Just a few more bits of detailing and they'll be done. However, it's out team lunch tomorrow, so I may not be in a fit state to do detail work when I get home, so they might not be finished in time for my Saturday posting slot.

Oh, yes - you want to know what the figures are - Space Demons from Khurasan.

Well, everything is done now for this regiment - matt spray varnished, basing gunk dry-brushed, tufted, flocked. So, here are some pics of the finished regiment, including some close-ups *shudder*









I've somehow managed to paint up 650 points worth of troops, which is plenty for an army as it stands - I just need some command groups to actually use them. Looking through the drawer with the rest of my 30YW lead pile, I've got the following to prep up:

12 mounted figures for command groups
12 Reiters/Harquebusiers
2 field guns
10 dragoons
casualty markers* - 8 horses, 8 riders, 8 musketeers, 8 pikemen
"ambush" markers - 4 herdsmen plus sheep, pigs, goats, chickens
Camp items - 2 wagons (plus 2 draft horses); religious group (altar, priest, 4 monks); farrier, assistant and horse; goods/cargo (barrels, sacks, crates, cannonballs, chests); foot officer figure
22 pistol armed "horse"** (late war) plus 2 mounted standard bearers
9 assorted mounted standard bearers***

* to be used as markers for Cohesion state
** not a priority for painting up right now
*** I might paint up a couple of these to go with the foot officer or on other camp bases

Obviously my priority for prepping and painting are the command groups, and I might as well prep the Reiters, artillery and dragoons as well. This will probably keep me occupied for a couple of evenings, then it will be a couple of days for priming (and allowing the gesso to fully cure) before I get to painting them.

In the meantime I do have a few things I can be getting on with as a break from doing prep-work - my Scythians are looking accusingly at me, as are the various SF figures I've started painting (battle bots, space demons, Chewks). I also need to do the basing on my Saga Vikings.

Yup, I got ahead of where I said I'd be when I posted last night. I cracked on and did the remaining bits of paintwork and the Klear/ink before going to bed. This morning I stuck them on bases and adding the texture gel before going to work. This evening I painted the texture gel with Flat Earth 983, dry-brushed it with Revell "Afrika Brown", added tufts then added some Noch "Meadow Grass". All they need now is a coat of matt spray varnish and they're finished. I'll do that in the morning.

I think my next side-project will be to do myself a nice baseboard for photography of finished units.



Space Demons:

I had a chance this morning to touch up the metallic black on the King. I've just done some test washes with different colours on a few of the figures to see which works best. I'm not sure that any of them do, but we'll see how they look when the washes have dried.

It's lovely having a day off work. It was all very quiet in the office, so yesterday I decided to book today off as annual leave. Just as well, as I had plenty to do before heading off to Milton Keynes tomorrow for Campaign

WIPs

Done this morning:

• Matt spray varnish of remaining painted Sarmatians
• Khurasan "Space Demons" - received spray undercoat of Humbrol Metallic Black 201

After letting them dry, I discovered that the back of the King had not got much coverage, so I'll have to respray him at some point.

Next step for these is to use some of my ink washes to add some colour. That will be followed by silver/oily steel on the mouthparts, paint the basing texture (mix of greys) then a final Klear/black ink wash. I may tone down the glossiness by spraying with satin varnish; the base texture will get a brush-coat of matt varnish.



Goodies

After doing all the spraying and having had the windows open for a couple of hours to disperse fumes, particulates I headed into town to get some scenic cement and a spray bottle from ModelZone in Holborn. I also spotted a tool that would be useful to have, so I bought that as well.

As I was nearby, I took a walk down to London Graphics Centre and bought some more brushes (W&N Series 7 size 2; W&N Series 7M sizes 0 and 00) and a colour wheel.



I then headed home via the local Royal Mail depot where a package needing a signature was waiting for me. After picking that up, when I finally got back home I had 2 nice bits of post - Miniature Wargames #350 and a package from Donnington.

Tasks completed (so far) today:

1) Matt spray varnished my Sarmatians-posing-as-Alans. Had to go back for a second light coat as some still looked glossy. I then went back and brushed gloss varnish on a couple of bits of the camp - the spit-roasting pig and the "liquid" in the cauldrons.
2) Prepped my Khurasan "Space Demons" - I've glued the bodies to washers as singles (25mm), pairs (32mm) and triples (38mm). Somehow I ended up with an extra body. I'll hang onto it in case I can find a use for it or acquire an extra head.
3) Fitted the Old Glory cuirassiers to their horses
4) "Fixed" the flock on the terrain pieces. Having doused one piece with 25% PVA using a dropper, I realised that was a mistake and decided to try something I've done successfully in the past - spraymount adhesive. There seems to be a lot of loose flock on the pieces despite repeated tapping, shaking and such-like. I guess over time the excess will flake off.

Anyway, here's a pic of the completed pieces:




Might do later:
1) Glue riders to horses
2) Glue heads and spines to the space demons


Next onto the workbench:

1) Prime and paint Old Glory 30YW cuirassiers
2) Prime and paint the space demons (these will be a fairly quick job - black metallic spray paint, colour/metallic washes, basing, mouth details)
3) Finish painting Sarmatian "other cavalry"
4) Finish painting Scythians