My toys have gone to bed

Cathartic and yet depressing, my hobby table has been emptied of everything even vaguely resembling paint or miniatures. All my toys are in boxes and ready for their final move to the new house.

I miss them already.

Brief intermission while we move again!

Warning - minimal hobby content, reader discretion is advised!

Its not often I post solely about real world problems however this one does impact on my hobby. You see we sold our home in May 2012, then moved into a rental property (bit of a dump really), then another rental property (very pretty!), then a caravan (luckily it was a brilliant summer), then lived on a plane for 40 hours (arghhhhhhhh), then a holiday home (in the NZ bush), then another rental (our cliff top aerie) and finally after 3 years, 6 moves and half a world of travel we're finally moving in to somewhere we can once again call home  - as we've finally bought a house here in NZ and move in soon.

So we're frantically packing our things up for the 4th time, I'm sure there are some things I still haven't unpacked from 2012. Anyway most of my hobby stuff is in nice neat little boxes now (erm.... actually quite big boxes, now my better half can see how much stuff I actually have and not how much I profess to have! )

So the blog posts may be a little sparse over the next month or so although I should be able to manage a write up of Panzerschreck in July which I'll be attending. Luckily I'll be playing with Paul's minis so shouldn't have the usual night before tournament painting panic to deal with!

Aah it'll be nice to have our own home again!

Laters
Ste.

More junk - This time it's fences.

It's all Ash's fault (honest). He talks me into playing Saga again, really twisting my arm and using his best emotional negotiation tools and wham! I decide to make some more terrain.

This post is short and sweet, after all how lyrical can one wax on the subject of fences?

These fences are basically lolly sticks, lolly sticks and some more lolly sticks, based on lolly sticks and textured with sand I knicked from the kids playground. Took about an hour to make but as I used PVA to glue them I had to wait a full day before painting them. I've another 3 squirrelled away somewhere so I have enough to make your average dark age village a death trap for any mounted intruders wanting to pillage my household wares, say maybe, oh I don't know, Normans?

Hmmm now who could be starting a Norman warband, I wonder?

More junk from nothing!

You may recall that in a previous post I exhibited my lovely little 15mm desert village of Do Ahh Diddy made from scraps of junk! Well I decided to add to that a little creative extravaganza with the British 8th Army forward Observation base of Dum Diddy

I cracked these out one Saturday afternoon when the weather was being unruly (as it often is here in Wellington). The kids were quite baffled why daddy was cutting up a toilet roll, bottle tops and biscuit wrapping however once complete they were quite pleased with “daddy’s soldier houses”.

As I said I crafted these from a toilet roll cut in half, I then cut a couple of plastic milk bottle tops in half and glued them at either end to provide some strength. Whilst this was drying I grabbed the corrugated biscuit wrapping card that I had set aside ages ago in my random bits box (how blokey is that, “it’ll come in handy one day” I must have thought) and squished it as the corrugations were the wrong scale. Then it was cut to size and PVA liberally applied and stuck down (elastic bands came in handy at this point). The remaining toilet roll tube was then used to cut blanks for the wall ends of each hut (the bottle tops weren’t smooth enough) and doors and windows applied.


Liberal application of sand to a card base and some random junk from the bits box was applied, spray undercoat of Humbrol dark sand and then various washes, dry brushing and a bit of spit and polish (along with a little blood as I cut my thumb without realising it) and hey presto – a forward ops base for the British 8th army to abandon/reclaim/abandon in the weirdness that was the Benghazi handicap!

If you look closely at my previous post covering the action at our recent gaming day at Chez Bowman you may spot my little obs post. They doubled up as excellent field kitchens for my CO's brew ups!

And talking of that recent desert extravaganza here's the objective token I received as a memento of the event.

I believe it was Paul who suggested we all made objectives to exchange on the day and this was the one that Ash painted up. I didn't have any models suitable so kit bashed something from my random bits box - Ali Baba's second hand gun emporium. Unfortunately I completely forgot to take any pics however if you had on over to Paul's blog you may just find it as he was the lucky recipient!

Its chaos at home.... so I think I'll paint some Orcs!

Soooo much is happening here at the moment that I'm running out of time to think let alone do any hobbying. However in between being the acting manager at work and buying a house I managed to paint some more of GW's LoTR figures. I know that I've being going on a bit of a GW rant recently and I do promise to tone it down (honest Robert !!) but to be honest it's just too easy. I've found the plastic orcs that they made for the Lord of the Rings strategy battle game to be bloody awful and a trial to paint. 

The detail is soft, the plastic very fragile and you have to try and exaggerate the shadows to get any definition. I'm not the greatest painter I freely admit, and therein lies the problem. Some of the older plastics are just so poor that you have to work hard to get a decent finish. I can't speak for the newer The Hobbit minis as I haven't bought any and I may never as I don't like the sculpts or style however the quality does look better.
And then you get some of the old lead minis sculpted during the Lord of the Rings Movies era and they are a joy to paint.

So here we have a single plastic orc (repaired), a converted Uruk Hai standard bearer and Shagrat. The orc was a bind and pretty boring, the Uruk was ok but then I have had plenty of practice with the previous 39 and then Shagrat who more or less painted himself and was a joy.

I didn't actually follow the movie colours or style which is probably why I enjoyed painting him as I didn't feel restricted. Very often I end up choosing colors on a whim so sometimes my minis look a little odd! Luckily that works ok in fantasy gaming, but not so great in historicals. Also I've tentatively painted eyes on Shagrat in my on going quest to give my miniatures the gift of sight, however I'm not sure my technique is right as Shagrat looks a little surprised.

These boys were painted in the course of two evenings to give myself a break from painting Saga Jomsvikings or FoW. And also because a certain someone who shall remain nameless (let's just call him Mr B) hinted that I may have strayed too far from the light of LoTR SBG.

Now I just have to get these guys on the board and roll some dice in anger, luckily I have a game planned soon.

Time to kick some Rohan butt (maybe)!