Laser waterslide decals, Contrast paints for hair

Slightly the worse for wear today, so after a day at work having to use my brain, I decided to have an evening doing non-brain-strainy stuff.

I have (as commented on Twitter yesterday) some laser decal paper. This has the advantage over inkjet that laser printer ink is waterproof, so you don't have to spray the printed decals with acrylic spray before you apply them. Also, I happen to be the happy owner of an A3 colour laser printer, - a parting gift from IT at my last job - it had been sat in a pallet outside the tech office for 3 years unopened, and we were shutting the company down… The downside is the colours are a little less vibrant than with an inkjet, but that's a small price to pay for a heck of a lot less faff.

They're a little more fragile than ... Actually, thinking about it? I strongly suspect the custom decal folks in our hobby use laser-printed paper, so that may not be the case :D I am aware that (after some playing) you need to make sure the surface you're applying is smooth (ideally spray gloss varnished) and dry (patience!), and also not to remove the decal from the water too early, in case not all of it lifts.

You are also going to have to cut around your design fairly carefully, and you need to re-gloss varnish afterwards before you apply your final sealant coat. I haven't tried using MicroSol and MicroSet, but I suspect these or Humbrol DecalFix would also help.

Either way, these have come out pretty well....

I've now got 8 of the Shieldwolf Shieldmaidens done with Fireforge Templar shields. Another useful discover - Citadel Contrast paints are GREAT for hair. Snakebite Leather, Aggaros Dunes and Skeleton Horde make great shades of blonde over a white undercoat, Gore Grunta Fur does a great redhead, and Cygor Brown does a good mid-brown/chestnut.

Customising the Shieldwolf shieldmaidens

Well, only a bit, really. Yesterday I found a box of Fireforge Teutonic Foot left over from the Night's Watch project, with lots of tall shields, perfect for what I wanted. Just had time to affix a few before Anne\s work Xmas do yesterday.

I also got a new toy from Amazon - nice cheap (£6 and small change) AA battery powered display turntable. It's only annoyance is it doesn't have a power switch - it's on as soon as you insert the battery. But it's smooth and slow. And it was very cheap.

And yes, I didn\t use the DSLR on the tripod for this, because I stupidly left its SD card in the Mac in the house, and it was hosing it down when I came to shoot the test shot yesterday.

Shieldwolf Miniatures plastic 28mm Shieldmaiden Infantry/Rangers

Evocative box art...

If you're following my RPG blog, you'll notice I've been running a series on cheap fantasy-usable plastic minis for D&D, and one of the things I spotted were the Shieldwolf Miniatures range. Now - memory serves me that they got a wee bit of stick on an episode of Meeples for the bare midriff look some of their sculpts on their first go at the Kickstarter had, but I'm happy to report that the end results are (barring four bodies that you don't actually have to use) loads better, and not going to freeze in winter. (Note, they actually successfully rebooted the Kickstarter having cancelled the one linked above, earlier this year, which I'm annoyed I missed.)

...but no help for guessing what the
figures will look like.

A clever design, in that the body comes in two parts, with either a plain upper back or one with a cloak, which glue on. The heads are a bit of a tight fit in the resulting small hole, but other than that they go together pretty well, even if the poses can look a bit awkward. You get 24 bodies, but enough arms etc to make 20 figures: there are actually enough to make a complete set with crossbows, which I might buy a second box for at some point. The weapons are a bit more fantasy than some folks might like - I've seen people use sword arms from Perry knights with these, which seem to work quite well, and with a bit of filing there are other heads from other ranges of female plastics that could work, too. That said, the heads are fantastic (in both senses), with some great helmetless windblown looks. Most of the rather nice shields are, annoyingly (but only so to me), round with moulded detail: hence I haven't fitted shields yet, as I need 20 plain plastic heater shields from somewhere for the unit these ladies are intended to be. (I need to go hunt in the leftovers of my Fireforge boxes from making the Night's Watch, I think.)

And here we are. These probably won't
rank up on 20mm bases, given the
amount of 'cloak swirl'!

Anyway - between various other things today I've assembled 4 just to see how they go together. The plastic takes Humbrol 'yellow' Precision Poly Cement very well, but then they're manufactured by Renedra, so I've come to expect that. A teeny bit fiddly to assemble, and the point of contact with the base is literally the feet, so you have to be sure to file them flat - smart move would be not to make the sprue contact point on some of the bodies be the sole of the feet, guys! The plan is to use Contrast paints on them, and see how they come out, so a trip to the Rift is in order if I can get there in time tomorrow, as I need white and one of their metallics and some more undercoat :D One other minor gripe is that it seems to be impossible to get the banner blowing the same way as the bearer's hair! (I may fix this by cutting it (no, the banner!) off and replacing it, especially since I need a specific design on the banner, and it's going to be much easier to print it or produce custom decals, I guess.)

Anyway - despite the odd grumble, I actually really like these.

My Night's Watch

Being reminded by a comment on a previous post that my Night's Watch got very little love on this blog, I shall rectify that, having dug out the box and tidied them up, with a couple of photos, since I'm blogging on a related subject for the Sage DM.

The foot. These are a real mix. Essentially, take a box of Frostgrave Soldiers, a box of Frostgrave Barbarians, some Fireforge foot Sergeants and archers, and some Gripping Beast Dark Ages Warrior heads, and throw them all up in the air along with a handful of resin cloaks from somewhere back in the days of early Warhammer. It's made a little complex by the Fireforge heads being different to the Frostgrave and GB ones in terms of how they fit, but otherwise it was a bit of a riot of mix-and-match.  

By comparison, these were relatively sane. Essentially they're Fireforge mounted Sergeants bodies and horses,  Fireforge mediaeval Archer arms, and GB Dark Ages Warrior heads. 

Painting was largely spray AP Matt Black, with very dark colour drybrushes - green on the cloaks, grey or blue on armour. Horses were my standard black undercoat, various shades of brown, white socks, AP Barbarian Flesh noses, AP Red Leather harness, and of course mostly bay.

More on the 15mm PSC Churchill NA75 conversion

Just a quick note: if you're planning on doing this, by far and away the best source for the 75mm parts is the PSC M4A1(76)Wet kit.

Why?

Well:

a) the bits you need are specifically marked as 'not required for this kit'. (Good old PSC 'almost generic' sprues!)

b) the British used the Sherman IIA (aka M4A1(76)W) in Italy, so you can use the rest of the kit.

Problem solved :D

15mm PSC Churchill NA75 conversion

OK. I was going to blog one of several outstanding IABSM battle reports, but I'm feeling a bit smug just now, so here goes something else.

Churchill sprue

After the fall of Tunis during WW2, there was a certain degree of dissatisfaction among the Churchill crews, as it was felt that the 6pdr gun fitted was a bit light on range, but more importantly its HE performance was inadequate for an Infantry tank. To this end, Capt. Percy Morrell of the Royal Engineers came up with the devious idea of fitting an M3 75mm gun (from a KO'ed Sherman M4) to a Churchill IV. You can read the whole story (in his words) here, but let's just say it was an interesting feat of engineering.

Battlefront actually make one of these, but that's kind of not the point, since they're probably a tenner a pop after postage, and I have boxes and boxes of Shermans and several spare Churchill sprues from PSC.

M4A2 sprue

The conversion turns out to be very like Morrell's only in miniature. Build the Churchill body, set it aside. You'll then need the marked pieces from the Churchill sprue, and also from the Sherman sprue (I used an M4A2).

Assemble the shell of the turret, and then take a file to the front to flatten off the curve. Affix the trunnion, the (thin) mantlet and the 75mm from the Sherman, then add hatches and commander to taste.

And then, as they say, here's one I prepared earlier. I left the tank off the back, as several other folks models don't have it, and it's a pain to make fit.

Morrell? Got a promotion to Major and an MBE.

Enjoy!

"To Britain's Shores"; Leofric The Drunkard

As you can tell, I
don't like painting
faces.

After that sterling performance in the Saxon raid on Mill-town on Key-nes, it seemed to me that good old Leofric needed a figure. Finding a Saxon drunk in 28mm is not easy, so after a bit of searching I gave up and headed for the spares box, in this case, lots of Gripping Beast and Wargames Factory Saxons of various types.

As it turned out, what I ended up using was a spare Gripping Beast metal figure - it's in fact the "Penda - last Pagan king" one. He's meant to have an axe in his hand, but this being Leofric, he's got a drinking horn (from a Wargames Factory Saxon Thegns musician) instead.

Painting was the usual approach - Army Painter plate mail spray, Army Painter acrylics and Strong Tone ink wash. Leofric's based on a 2p piece, with Tamiya Dark Earth texture paint, and static grass from Javis Spring Green and Gale Force 9 Arid Grass.

James doing his photography
homework.

The photo was taking using an improvised light box - a Really Useful Box, a piece of white card and some Javis basing material - by my son James. who had 'macrophotography' as his homework from photography club at school this week.

He's hired, I think!

Wargames Factory WSS Artillery - final images

Remember a while back I knocked together some artillery for my imagi-nation? Wargames Factory WSS infantry, with arms, equipment and guns from a (slightly out of period) set of Victrix Napoleonic British Artillery.

I did kinda promise a picture of the finished result, so here we go:

Wargames Factory WSS Artillery

Yes, you did read that right.

I need some for my Imagi-nation army, the Duchy of Elland, and (despite the title of this post) Wargames Factory don't yet make any.

Now, I could have bought some metal artillery, but to be honest, I couldn't be bothered :D So after a little research, I acquired a box of Victrix British Napoleonic Foot Artillery, and (at Salute) a spare sprue of Conquest Games' horses (for the aforementioned nefarious purposes).

Now, I'll be the first to admit that the guns are probably well out of period, but ... hey, it's an imaginary army, so I'm not going to get that worked up about it.

The image on the right gives you a rough idea of what I managed: gun, limber, arms and tools from the Victrix box, onto WF WSS Infantry bodies and the heads with floppy hats. The limber horse is from the Conquest Games sprue, because a) it doesn't have a saddle to speak of, and b) they actually make a horse that's only walking. Missing from this shot is the extra bit of harness to affix horse to limber: not quite sure how I'm doing that yet, but a spare rifle strap from the WSS Infantry set is being eyed up.

I've in fact made two sets of guns and crew, and the final painted versions will be on the Duchy's blog in the next week or so.

As an aside - the Duchy of Elland blog is reserved for (for the most part) in-character updates and battle/campaign reports - modelling activities will continue to be posted here, with a link to and from the other blog.

EIR Legionaries with lorica hamata....

Given I have umpteen boxes of Warlord Romans, and a spare box of Wargames Factory Caesarian Romans which are a little out of period for the rest, I thought I'd have a play.

The detail on the WF bodies is a bit soft, but they are wearing mail (lorica hamata) rather than lorica segmentata, so I figured that a unit of EIR legionaries with mail (maybe for use as raw recruits) might not be a bad idea: the helmets, however, look wrong and the shields are oval.

So... take one WF legionary body and arms. Add either a WF Roman auxiliary cavalry head or a spare Warlord legionary head and a blob of green stuff, and a spare Warlord legionary shield (I have loads, due to buying a couple of dozen of their metal ones.

They seem to look OK - I'll have some pictures up when I get some painted.

In other news, I've painted 16 Warlord Eastern auxiliary archers and a couple of small bolt throwers and crew, and knocked together some movement trays for my two ECW Royalist pike and shot regiments prior to a battle on Monday. Also took part in the Norman Cross club's interclub tournament a few weekends ago with Grahame from the club - WAB pairs. We ran into a couple of interesting sets of opponents - the Danes+Assyrians were particularly lethal! Suffice it to say, we get trounced, but the club as a whole came second, and Dale won the Flames of War. 

I haven't forgotten the horses, and I will try and get the next article up soon. Work's been busy, and frankly when I get home, being a vegetable in front of the TV is about all I aspire to.