A change of scale and period...

Kerr and King's 15mm crashed Fiesler Storch objective marker, which I need for one of the IABSM games I'll be running a couple of times this year,

Just undercoat and a couple of (in one case still wet) base coats so far. I may redo the plane depending on what camo scheme I decide to give it, because that first coat looks rubbish (I already changed my mind once!).

Some Dux Brit Compendium work

Prompted by @sprandell on Twitter asking some questions, I did a good half-hour's work on the Compendium tonight, initially adding his questions and answers to the Rules Clarifications section, and then wrestling with several tables, initial caps and 'fillos' which had come unstuck from where they were supposed to be in the document. Not as productive as I'd have liked, but useful work nonetheless :D

Yet another Saxon building - 4Ground this time!

The basic (unglued) shell.

Dug out of the Storeroom Of Temporal Insufficiency (© Jeff Knusden), I found a 28mm 4Ground 'Anglo-Dane Hovel'. It's probably a bit late for my Dux Britanniarum period, but it's still an interesting comparison.

Much more detail work with the laser, as well as 4Ground's trademark pre-painted MDF. As it's a half-timbered building, they've done a slightly different means of connecting corners, which means you don't get their nasty interlocking fingers effect you do on their WW2 buildings. Goes together nicely - so nicely I could toss the completely un-glued basic shell (floor + inner and outer walls) across the room to Reuben and it didn't break apart. The trick's in the floor, which has little locating 'pins' for the walls to, so you aren't trying to hold the whole thing square with three hands while glue dries.

Having a bad thatch day - I need to let the PVA dry then
add more PVA and give it a comb :D

They also get points for providing teddy-bear fur thatch cut to size (Timeline's isn't, Sarissa don't provide any), and for a colour instruction sheet. They lose a couple of points for it being small and unreadable by those of us with older eyes, and another for two of the pieces (window and door frames) being fragile enough to break while offering them up to the hole in the wall - fixable but annoying

I decided not to plaster this or add extra timbering - what do you think?

Next up, another Saxon building from one of Sarissa, Warbases, Original Laser Designs or Blotz depending on which arrive first (or when I get to Hammerhead, whichever is the sooner :D).

Last couple of bits of Hammerhead prep....

Picture: Steve J Morgan CC BY-SA 3.0

One batch of 3D printed sandbags from Thingiverse, and one very large (2m x 1.2m) pull-up banner design for the game.

If the picture isn't a clue, and you haven't seen the Hammerhead games list, you'll just have to wait till Saturday. We're at GA04, right outside the bacon sarnies :D

Timeline Miniatures Saxon house done.

All fairly simple in the end. Nice kit, goes together easily. Trying to decide if I prefer it with the small base, compared to Warbases and Sarissa who don't, and on the whole I think I do, as it beds it into the surrounding terrain a bit better.

Mostly pleased because you wouldn't know it was MDF by looking.

Onward with the Saxon house...

Mostly painting today, and glueing and trimming the teddybear fur.

I'll probably do another pass on the timbers, than do a layer of PVA and one of paint on the thatch tomorrow, as well as paint and texture the base. I appear to have run out of grass and flower tufts, so a trip to Trains4U may be in order.

More MDF buildings in progress...

Look what the postie brought!

This time from Timeline Miniatures (now distributed by Hoka Hey Wargaming).

With perfect timing (thanks Alan), since I've just finished the Warbases and Sarissa buildings. a small packet was handed me by our long suffering postie this morning containing their Saxon hall (most of a foot long!) and a smaller house.

Both come with enough teddy bear fur to do the roof (and to spare), and are quite nicely done kits. Unlike the standard Warbases design, the floor isn't just a plain square, but has notches in to accept the walls, which makes for a lot less swearing while trying to get the basic building shell to sit square while the glue dries. I certainly could have used PVA rather than brush-on Loctite.

Night time spraying - it's about time I did some
horses or something, as that railing needs to be
black again before the wife moans.

Unlike the Sarissa offerings, the timbers aren't lasered on, but a separate layer, too. In fact the only real gripe is that the separate doors have no attachment points to the wall, but that was easy enough to fudge.

There's no crack/finish detail on the walls, so I applied a thin layer of Polyfilla in each panel and spread it with a finger. Undercoat is AP Skeleton Bone, which is my standard 'plaster' undercoat, and I'll probably finish painting it tomorrow.

And that's the Warbases Mansio done...

...barring basing, which I need a bit of a think about, as I now have a cluster of buildings (the Mansio and its outbuildings, plus the Warbases ruined villa and outbuilding) that I'm debating whether to base as one group or two.

Wall texture is PVA + ballast as before. Definitely (for those who followed the interactions with Warbases on Twitter) easier with the instructions, although I would recommend when it comes to putting the four walls and base together, using something that sets faster than PVA :D

Basing the villa part 2

There. All done.

I dug out some Tamiya earth filler to fill some of the gaps where the building wasn't quite flat on the base, then added three rounds of drybrush, various emulsions "Pain Au Chocolate", "Mary Jane" and "Ivory Tusk". Then it was out with the PVA, multiple shades of static grass and some grass tufts.

Job done. Annoyingly the foam board has curled very slightly at the ends, so I may slap a layer of PVA and paint on the back to see if I can coax it to straighten again.

Basing the villa

After a bit of thought, I decided the Sarissa villa needed a base.

One sheet A3 black foam board, roughly cut with a bevelled edge. I've sealed the edge with PVA and then spread more PVA and laid some mixed rock/ballast (no idea where it came from) on it.

First layer of paint is raw umber acrylic (I'd have used the ubiquitous Sandtex bitter chocolate, but it's at the back of the store cupboard :D). I'm aiming as per the Realm of Battle boards to drybrush with a couple of lighter grey/browns before adding some flock and static grass.

In related news, I just backed this Kickstarter, for 3D-printable design files for Dark Ages buildings - it's from the Najewitz Modellbau folks. who used to do resin buildings (as reviewed on Meeples) but have branched into doing all their business as 3D designers.

Hammerhead preparation

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

This is equally true, it appears, of our club scenario designs for wargames shows. It's pretty safe to say that, once again, the rules we ended up wit at the end of this evening bore absolutely NO resemblance to the ones Dan turned up with at the start, despite them being almost 100% based on our tried and tested "bloke with a rifle" rules as originally created by Rob for our Dead's Army game.

On the good side, we do now appear to have a squad-level (rather than man-level) version of said rules!

As to what the game is? Check the Hammerhead site, or guess from the pictures ;D

A quick raid on Hobbycraft

Per recommendations from folks on Twitter (and the fact that it's nearer the local supermarket than B&Q or Wilkos) I picked up some artists acrylics from Hobbycraft to continue work on the Warbases Mansio - no photos since it doesn't look much different from yesterday ;) They're the student end of the Daler/Rowney range.

Also picked up some A3 foam board for basing the villa, and some Loctite brush-on superglue for those bits of MDF buildings where waiting for PVA to cure is a pain :D

Catching up

Sarissa's Dark Ages Villa, with quite a bit of
customisation and general tarting up. Figure
by Bad Squiddo Games (Cartimandua).

Yes, I am still alive, honest.

Those of you following me on Twitter should at least be aware of that, since I've been managing to keep the #hobbystreak hashtag going, usually in my lunch break (but by the skin of my teeth on a couple of days), since the start of the year, which, if nothing else, is keeping me saner than otherwise :D

A combination of being the only available tech at work over Xmas, dealing with James' UCAS applications and getting him to open days (compounded by his depression, needless to say), and an unexpected death in late January (a close friend who passed away while staying with us, for which I wound up doing most of the local organisation for the funeral while his wife was back in Shetland). Most of my scant free time wound up keeping up with pre-booked musical commitments and organising Hereward Wargames Show, but...

*heaves mighty sigh of relief*

I actually got to sleep in my own bed and with no guests in the house, for the first time in two weeks on Wednesday. (I now understand why some of our guests don't like our various spare beds - the sofa bed is a thing of horror!) And I'm actually sitting here in the living room with a laptop and nothing to do for most of the rest of the day.

So. Plans:

• I'm going to move the master source of the #hobbystreak posts to here, as I do keep hitting the Twitter limit (me, verbose?). They'll still get crossposted.
• The next episode of The Miller's Tale will happen once I've cleared the mess in the music room (various stuff got dumped in there to make space for the sofa bed - the house has been chaos, as if you hadn't figured! :D) which should (I'm not promising) be this week, I know what it'll be about, but you'll have to wait and see :D
• The Dux Compendium will get finished. The batch of buildings I'm just about finished with (see Twitter) has me somewhat inspired. Currently, Anne is out Wednesday evenings as duty vet at the dog track, and since I'm no longer booked to record with the Meeples folks on Wednesdays, I'm aiming to make that my serious writing evening. (As an aside, on that score, I am rather miffed to have missed the British Library Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms Exhibition :)
• Ongoing modelling projects - a Cruel Seas Kriegsmarine fleet,  more Dark Ages scenery, some Peninsular forces for SP2, and maybe the Skytrex WW2 naval fleets I have kicking around and some War of The Roses 28mms.

OK. Fingers crossed, the world is back to some semblance of normality.

Catch you soon!