Pig Iron Heavy Infantry

I have mentioned the Pig Iron Heavy Infantry figures in previous posts. I finally finished and based all the ones I have, so there are some photos below; I apologise in advance for the darkness of the pictures. The paint scheme is quite dark, and, although I was using my usual lighting setup, the pictures just came out very dark. Time to investigate new lights, or preferably just learn how to use the existing ones better.

Progress to September 2011

Three quarters through the year, the equinox a distant memory and the shops starting to fill up with Christmas stuff - must be October. That means it's time for another status report.

Figures completed since last report

The last report was in July. Since then I have finished the Dad's Army diorama. My Mum's birthday was last week, so it's now sitting in my parents' display cabinet, alongside the Blackbeard figure I painted for my Dad last year.

I'm just about finished basing a bunch of Pig Iron Heavy Infantry figures: the command group, wardroids and heavy weapons teams, so I should have photos of them next week. Other than that, the only other completed figures since last time are the first unit of Mantic Skeletons for my undead army.

Painting

Continuing my quest to complete the fewest figures in the longest possible time (I can't help but feel there's something not quite right with that goal), and having learned nothing from the grief of painting a number of unrelated figures at the same time, I am currently painting four semi-related and two random figures - to (hopefully) display standard.

The related figures are four Santa figures: Citadel Dwarf Santa, Citadel Space Santa, Foundry Plague Santa and Foundry Skeleton Santa. The two random figures are a Citadel Dwarf Big Game Hunter and a Citadel Dwarf Samurai. All the Citadel figures are very much from "back in the day".

The Santas are giving me a lot of trouble at the moment: red splashing onto white, black onto red and white etc., and they're taking a ridiculous amount of time for what are essentially going to be Christmas ornaments. I'm not quite sure I've broken the back of them yet, but hopefully another week or two and they'll be finished. I have the flesh on the Big Game Hunter and Samurai, but nothing else yet. The hunter will be in khaki, but I may try coloured metallics (using acrylic inks) on the Samurai. I think I was meant to experiment more this year, so that will definitely count.

I have finally decided on bases for the Reaper Marine and Lt. Kara Black. I had cut out a plasticard wall piece for the Marine, but realised it would be supported by 1mm along its bottom edge, so thought better of it. Instead, both he and Lt. Black will be on VoodooWorx Alien Temple bases. October should finally see them finished, only six months or so after I started them.

Modelling

I learned a lot from the Dad's Army Diorama project, even though I abandoned it in the end. Even small lessons, such as only using one pin when positioning the figure, will prove useful in future projects.

The current Santa figures will all require some sort of scenic bases, and while I'm not planning to go overboard, hopefully I can do something a bit more adventurous than usual. Similarly, I have plans for the hunter and Samurai figures...

General

I mentioned last time that I was in a bit of a funk about painting. I'm happy to say that has passed and I'm puttering along again.

I didn't sign up for the Open University this year (plenty of chances next year, one of the things I like about the OU), so the long dark nights should see me painting, and lamenting my lack of progress, on a regular basis.

I swithered for a while, but finally bought Dreadfleet from Games Workshop, although I won't be picking it up for a few days. I'm hopeful that it can used with other ships, e.g. those from Langton, to give a more traditional Piratey feel to things. White Dwarf, when it eventually turned up, (GW have changed delivery from the last Thursday of the month to the first Saturday (which means it finally falls through the letterbox on the Wednesday following the first Saturday)) stated that the vessels were about four inches long. At 1:1200 scale, that would mean 480 feet (about 146 metres), which seems rather large for the time. I guess I'll find out soon enough, but even if they can't be used together, the mat and scenery will still be useful for both.

There are some ideas for islands bubbling in the back of my mind, and I've ordered some Irregular 2mm scenery pieces in anticipation...

Bonus Pictures

A few shots of the figures I'm currently painting. Nothing too exciting, but I'll hopefully have some new stuff finished in the coming weeks, so proper pictures then

The Samurai and Big Game Hunter, flesh only so far

Mantic Skeletons 1

I bought the Mantic undead army in November 2010, and finally finished the first unit last week (September 2011). At this rate, twenty or so years should see the whole army done.

I painted the unit in two groups, separated by a few other projects, which probably explains the delay. I may attempt larger groups when painting the rest of the units, although I find it difficult to fit too many figures into the painting time I have.

The painting went fairly smoothly, although the Humbrol Matt Varnish did have a strange effect on the bronze - dulling it down more than I expected.

I didn't do any shield patterns on this unit, but the plan is to so some on subsequent units. Mantic provide stickers with patterns on them, so they should be relatively easy to apply.

Basing wise, I did more than just my usual textured paint. I used sand, flock and some Poison Ivy from Army Painter. This was only a tiny packet, but cost £4.00; when the time comes to replace it, I'm going to look for something cheaper.

Having decided from a couple of previous posts that I'm starting to overuse of the phrase "and finally, the group shot", I merely present a couple of pictures taken at slightly different angles of the finished unit (you can see the second rank better in the second picture)

There is a "skeleton bursting out of the ground" figure on the sprue, so I built and painted it as well, giving a total of twenty one figures in the unit. No big problem in itself, but they only supply twenty bases... I've used a base from another unit, so I'll need to replace it at some point.

Dad's Army 6 - Finished

I was on holiday last week, so took the opportunity to finish the diorama (pictures at the bottom for the impatient).

Following the abandonment of the full church hall model, I scribed a new floor piece, and started painting it.

Painting the floor

I spray undercoated the floor in black, then used a mixture of drybrushing and washes to paint it. The original flooring in the show was very light grey. However, I decided that if I tried to match that, it would look like concrete, so I settled on a "scruffy brown" look.

I started the washes using a largish flat brush. A number of passes later, when nothing much had changed, I realised that this wasn't the correct approach. I was sure I had some foam brushes, but couldn't find them. I picked up a packet of twenty for £1.99 from one of the local discount book places, and tried again.

Using a two inch foam brush proved much faster, and gave a better finish. I ended up with an approach where I put some paint on, decided it was too much, then washed it much thinner with the foam brush. Weird, but it worked.

Due to the washes going everywhere (as is the nature of washes), I had to redo the gaps between the boards, but the end result looks reasonably floor-like. Annoyingly, I forgot to do the edges, and only noticed when all the paint was packed away and I'd all but forgotten what colours I'd used. This was the first of a few occasions where I had to try and colour match what was largely free-painting (a term I may have just invented :-)), but I got away with it

The nameplate

I ordered a name plate from NameIt, with the inspiring text of "Walmington-on-Sea Church Hall". It's not very exciting, but should at least let people know what it's meant to be.

I had trouble getting the name plate aligned on a previous figure, so this time I was ready for it. I used masking tape to mark out the border of where the name plate would go. This also let me use pencil on the tape, so I could get it centered vertically on the plinth. A further piece of tape along the bottom edge let me drop the name plate against it, ensuring it was horizontal. This would be much easier to see in a picture, but I forgot to take any of that stage :-(

The name plate sticks reasonably well, but not was well as I'd hoped. The plinth is varnished, and I suspect it might be something to do with that. The next time I'll roughen up the plinth surface first, or use glue in addition to the sticky pad thing on the name plate.

Putting it all together

The final piece of the puzzle was drilling out the holes in the floor for the figures and gluing them in place. I was about half way through when I realised that I didn't have to drill out holes for both feet, and, in fact, one hole would give me more flexibility for the final positioning.

I altered the positions of a few figures from what I had planned. The biggest change was moving Mr Hodges to point at Pike, who's messing around at the edge of the board. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had drilled two holes for Mr Hodges, I couldn't quite get him positioned as I wanted: to do so would have exposed one of the holes. In the end, however, it's not too bad, so I'm happy enough with it.

One very unexpected occurrence was that the superglue lifted the paint off the floor at a couple of the figures. Worst affected was Mrs Fox, where the paint between her feet disappeared almost back to the plasticard. I touched it up without too much trouble, although colour matching was (again) a pain.

Still, everybody's in and settled. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it. It would have been great to have done the whole church hall, but it wasn't to be. I have learned a lot, even from the failed attempt, so there's probably one more blog post to come regarding lessons learned and future approaches to adopt.

Some pictures below of the completed piece.

It breaks down into five small groups:

Sergeant Wilson and Mrs Pike. Presumably Sergeant Wilson has upset Mrs Pike again, and is trying to apologise.

Mr Blewitt, Private Fraser and Private Godfrey. The Fraser figure is kneeling, which proved problematic when trying to find a reason for him to be there. In the end, I'm assuming he's pointing out Mr Blewitt to Private Godfrey, who's going to see if he can help - reaching, I know...

Captain Mainwaring and the Vicar having a chat. Warden Hodges is also part of that group, but has turned around to shout at Pike.

The aforementioned Warden shouting at Pike, who's probably acting out a scene from a movie he's seen recently.

Corporal Jones regaling Mrs Fox and the Verger with one of his old war stories.

Finally, the group shot

Final challenge

The final challenge is to transport the diorama, possibly in a rucksack, on public transport. I have some boxes that should fit nicely, but I need to make sure I don't scrape any paint off during the move.

Wish me luck

Dwarf Shortbows

I have quite a few things almost finished, and as I'm on holiday next week, I have high hopes of actually completing a lot of the stuff. Until then, however, it's more Dwarfs from ye olden days.

As mentioned on more than one occasion, I have no gunpowder in my army, and the army is composed of single figures (with a few exceptions). This may cause a few problems ranking them up, but does give, in my opinion, a much more interesting visual spectacle.

Memory is a funny thing. If you had asked me how many Dwarf shortbows I had in the army, I would have said about fifteen. However, on searching through the drawer for them, it turns out I have eight. I suppose with a musician and standard bearer (and possibly a separate commander), it takes the unit size up to ten or eleven, but still fewer than I thought.

Anyway, the archers below are from Citadel and Grenadier, circa 1980s, possibly 1990s.

Some members of the unit

Some more members

In the final group shot, one of the dwarfs appears to be armed with a spear rather than a bow. The picture below shows be does, infact, have both

I'm not sure where and when I got the Robin Hood figure below. According to stunties.com, it was a promotional figure from the Nottingham store opening. I have never been to the Nottingham store, certainly not back however many years it was, so I don't know what route he took to my army.

Finally, the group shot.

Ogres

I had planned in this post to lament the lack of variety among the new Citadel Ogres, and to show some of the far more characterful models they used to produce. However, while I'm certain the figures below are 1980s Ogres, I can't find many references to confirm that they are (other than the oriental Ogre which, ironically, was one I thought wasn't from Citadel). There are a couple of pictures on ebay, however, so hopefully I'm on the right track...

White Dwarf finally dropped through the letter box. It was over a week late - the second time in the last two months. I have read some rumours that they're only shipping to subscribers when they ship to retailers (a week later than it appears in their own shops), and I'm starting to think they have some credence to them. This is very annoying, if true, and yet another unannounced and unexplained change that makes things worse than they were (actually, that's slightly unfair, because I haven't bought any Finecast figures yet. My annoyance with the Finecast change is more that they pulled the metals without warning and without giving people a chance to buy any models they wanted. When they moved from lead to white metal, they at least had a big sale of the lead - and yes, I did just use the "s" word in an article on Citadel :-))

Anyway... grumble over and lament begins.

The description and background of the Ogres seems to portray them as nomadic, primitive and with a lust for war. To me, this describes a shambolic force with loads of individuals, rather than any coherent fighting force. However, when I look at the pictures, I see neat rows of marching figures, looking virtually identical. Possibly it's because there are so few figures in an "army" - I counted about 20 in a 2000 point force - that the similarities jump out; at least in a large force, you can spread the figures about, reducing the regular appearance.

So, having been saddened by the new figures, I turned to my few old Ogres.

made up of the following figures

The aforementioned oriental Ogre

and the standard bearer and musician

I have this old Grenadier (I think) one. No idea why I didn't paint the eyes, as they're considerably larger than on normal figures. Also not quite sure why I didn't have him as part of the group shot.

I have a couple of the old Ratmen Ogres lying about. I'll try and remember to include them in some pictures of my skaven models.

I only have a few Ogre figures, as I never really viewed the Ogres as "army" material - much more as a mercenary unit attached to another force. Given the blandness of the new ones (and the fact they're probably much larger),  I don't think I'll be expanding my warband any time soon. Another reason I don't think I'll be buying any new ones is that I spelt "Ogre" as "Orgre" pretty much every time in the first draft of this post. If I can't even spell the word, I should take the hint and move on...

Chaos Dwarfs

No Dad's Army news this week. I'm working on the new floor piece, but still have to paint it - yet another fun hour of scribing. I'm beginning to understand why people buy laser cutters: it saves so much time and effort. Sadly, it's not cost effective for me, but, when I win the lottery!!

I've just started painting the Pig Iron command group, wardroids and Imperial Guard Sentinels, so there's nothing to show with them either.

Instead, it's back to my Dwarfs and some more figures from many many years ago. This time it's the turn of the Chaos Dwarfs.

These guys were originally painted as a unit for my regular dwarf army, fighting alongside their less chaotic brothers (and a few sisters). Not sure how that fits with any background canon, but that's not my problem :-)

They go together as a unit as shown below

Being sneaky chaos types, as I was putting the figures away after photographing them, I found another one who'd been hiding (in a manly, Chaos way, of course).

I did pick up a couple of chaos dwarf centaurs at one point. It was during Citadel's "big hat" period, so I decided to replace the giant hat with something more sensible. It never really worked, so I didn't finish the test piece. It's still lying around, so maybe I'll revisit it at some point. If nothing else, it could join the Dwarf Cavalry unit.