I Made a Tree

What do you do when your getting a bit tired of painting the same thing over and over (I'm painting napoleonic British at the moment). That's right,  you guessed it,  you make a tree!

I started off with some jewellers wire and just started twisting,  and let me tell you wearing gloves or something to protect your fingers is a must as I ended with l up with a lot of puncture wounds. 

Once I had an armature I was happy with I hot glued it to a card base and started applying polyfilla (other brands of wall filler are available). As it started to dry I carefully scored grooves into it to look like bark which I think turned out quite nicely. 

Gray undercoat, burnt umber wash and multiple brown and get dry brushes and then I could glue on some foliage.  

Not a bad tree,  it'll be a nice feature in my western town (Malice), somewhere for those high noon showdowns to happen!

Wands!

Why wands I hear you ask, well a good friend of ours is getting married soon and my wife attended her hen night which had a Harry Potter theme, so she asked if I could try making some wands. 

So like any good modeler I applied my googlefu and 10 minutes later I had a method all mapped out!

A quick trip to get some wooden dowel and glue sticks for my glue gun and I was ready to go. Each one measures approx 12 inches,  I rounded off the ends and smoothed them out with sandpaper and then I went to work getting creative.  

I had quite good fun trying to come up with different designs,  you'll see a few have more natural carved textures,  just for variety. 

Once designed I undercoated all of them white and then painted them with acrylic art paints

Once painted I gave them all a good coating of spray varnish to protect then from all the wand waving and "expecto petronus" casting!

Roman Scorpio

 Its not really, in fact its probably too big to be honest. Its actually an old dwarven bolt thrower, I think it may be a Marauder Miniatures one,  I'm not sure. 

I had to build the stand out of balsa wood and I'll have to modify a couple of legionaries to act as crew but I think it looks ok!

Jomsvikings for Saga

Saga has been a little neglected in my gaming world of late, however local gamer Joe decided that it might be fun to put on a Saga tournament at Wellington Warlords annual Call to Arms event. So in the interewsts of being an active participant in this little hobby of ours I signed up to roll dice for a weekend (with the agreement of my wife obviously!).

However this then begs the question 'What force to play?' I've always played Saga with Anglo Saxons, there something about the plucky Fyrd kicking some Viking butt that has always appealed to me however I thought I'd be a little silly and play Jomsvikings. Why Jomsvikings, well because they're completely nuts, have a weird battle board, can only have hearthguard and warriors and cannot take any allies or mercenaries. So it should prove challenging.

Oh did I forget to say that I'd only painted 4 of them at this point? Tournaments are always good motivation for getting something finished aren't they!

I needed 7 pts of Joms, we would only be playing with 6 pts with the 7th being an option should we choose to mess with our lists a little. This didn't really help me as I couldn't have anything but Jomsvikings so it would just have to be a bucket of hearthguard and warriors. So here we have my 6 pts of Jomsvikings (the 7th being some beserkers I heard kicking about thai never got used).

6x Hearthguard

6x Hearthguard

8x Warriors

8x Warriors

8x Warriors

Warlord

Almost all the models are Gripping Beast, I picked these up second hand and have been meaning to paint them for a while. I've also thrown in a few Footsore models too (I think they're from the Goths range) and added a casualty to the Jomsviking Warlords base, its one of the terrible Wargames Factory plastics that I dragged from the bits box!

The tournament was a blast, I went in to it with a master plan, try and get my warlord into combat with my opponents warlord as much as possible. And guess what, it worked as I managed to get my warlord killed the most times out of the six games. I didn't take many pics,  however here's two of my games:

Here my Joms valiantly try and defeat Alix's Norman's (I lost!).

Reg's Vikings try to steal my livestock! Turns out they wanted to be stolen as the cow killed two of my warriors and the sheep beat my hearthguard in melee!

I didn't place anywhere, but then I never expected to, it takes a deft hand to make Jomsvikings effective in Saga v2, and a deft hand I am not!

Joe is planning an Age of Crusades tournament next year, I think I may have to take part, simply to make some connections and promote the hobby. 

More Romans - SPQR Maybe?

I've kind of got into painting Romans, there's something to be said for factory painting, especially when you get into a groove.

These are the same as previous, I think I must have about 60 of these from one of those Warlord Games Roman starter sets, I've also got some cavalry to do too along with a batch of Celts, which may just end up being some local auxiliaries or I may have to do a full ancient celtic force. Those Victrix chariots are just lovely!

Kids are the future, of gaming!

Like many people I have kids, two boys to be precise,  and I'm guessing some of your kids like playing with daddy or mummy's toy soldiers. 

Well below is the outcome of a pleasant sunday afternoon diversion with my 9 and 11 year old where a small Panzer company and a US Recon patrol clash over a crossroads somewhere in Normandy.

The two forces move onto the field of battle

Operation capture the crossroads, who will get there first,  the Jagdpanther or two M8s?

M3 vs PzIV, oh no!

Meanwhile panzergrenadiers try to slow down the two speeding M8

The second squad of grenadiers capture the crossroads and dig in while a jeep patrol sprays them with machine guns. To the south an airborne squad threatens the Stugs

The final outcome turn 6, both sides claim the objective,  this sector of the Normandy campaign is in stalemate!

Both my boys had fun, I adapted Bolt Action and Flames Of War, managed to get the rules onto a single A4, made everything generic (tanks, vehicles and infantry).

Maybe I'll refine and publish on here at some point for feedback.

Space Toys are Fun

I'm busy working on painting my Jomsvikings but there's only so much pastel shades and axes you can paint before you implode, so for a fun deviation I decided to paint up an old toy I managed to recycle from my boys toy box. 

It's supposed to be a Y-Wing but I moved the engines forward and then started kit bashing from my bits box. 

I figured that it would work well for both Star Wars Legion and 40k, I've added a few old 40k decals but kept it neutral so it doesn't place it in a genre.