More WIP - Wargames Factory WSS Cavalry

No photos this time, as there currently isn't space on the workbench :D

I picked up two boxes of the cavalry a while back, and in fact I've used about half a dozen to make various officers and standard bearers. The rest I've been meaning to turn into a cavalry regiment for a while, and today I finally got started.

First off, the bad - same complaint as the artillery horses: there is no way of fixing the horse to its base bar two points of glue and a prayer.

On the good side, this box is amazingly versatile - 6 identical horse sprues, 6 identical and seriously loaded rider sprues. I can do no better than quote the manufacturer's blurb:

[It] can be made into 12 horsemen and comes with 12 horses, 12 sets of legs for riders, over 50 torsos (including armored torsos for cuirassiers) and over 60 heads (including tri-corn, helmeted, grenadier and dragoon headwear).  They can be armed with a brace of pistols, muskets/carbines and/or swords.  Heads and accessories are interchangeable with the WSS Infantry set for even more options!

I'm not even sure one couldn't fiddle a set of ECW cuirassiers out of this box, to be honest. There are certainly enough spare heads/torsos/arms left over from the average infantry build to produce mounted standard bearers, etc. as well. Again, EMA Plastic Weld works much better than the Humbrol/Revell stuff, which at least meant I didn't wind up with a headache after assembling 18 horses and riders.

 As I have guests for the weekend, painting them (other than the undercoat, which is done) will have to wait till Monday.

WIP - Wargames Factory WSS Artillery

Finally got cracking on my Imagi-nations cavalry and artillery for the May Bank Holiday (with the added motivation of a game with Grahame at the club on Monday).

I got started with the artillery: they're actually pretty nice, as are a lot of Wargames Factory's more recent sculpts.

Om each of the two identical gun sprues you get 4 crewmen, with a choice of half a dozen heads, plus one mounted officer, and a selection of arms of various sorts. In addition, the gun carriage comes with a choice of 8pdr or 12pdr barrels.

Assembly is pretty straightforward - standard 'multi pose' plastic 28mms, although Wargames Factory have switched to a non-keyed head/neck joint compared to their earlier figures, and they've, rather annoyingly in my book. made the figures simply glue on to their supplied bases by their feet. (Compare the WSS infantry, which have their feet stuck to the usual small manhole cover.) This is even the case for the mounted officer, which has a pose which means its horse will only have two points of contact with the base: not convinced by this.

They'd have gone together better if I'd remembered my discovery from the Parthian marathon, namely that the usual Revell/Humbrol 'yellow tube' liquid poly is NOT the best glue for WF plastics, but in fact the EMA Plastic Weld applied with a brush.

I've also started to discover that the 'yellow' liquid poly gives me a headache after about 10 mins, so unfortunately, these half dozen figures is as far as I got today.

Building some 15mm Germans

Having finally got the table clear of scenery makings (for now - Tim-the-builder's hopefully here later next week with a supply of 2' hardboard squares), I figured it was about time I got some of my assorted 15mms at least sorted and assembled. Plastic Soldier Company have announced their new Warsprays are available (at Triples, which is this weekend), so hopefully my order should turn up sometime soon. In the meantime, having everything ready to paint is a Good Plan, right?

The end result of an afternoon's clipping, de-flashing and gluing is a company, pretty much, of Heer - 9 x 8 man sections, 4 MG42s with crew on tripods, two FOOs, 4 Panzershrek teams, and 9 bases of Big Men.

Most of the figures (the grey plastic) are from the contents of one and a bit Battlefront "Open Fire" boxes - I've still got roughly another three squads worth, which is handy because the max I need for Blenneville or Bust is 11. The metal are partly from a BF Panzergrenadier HQ Company box I won in Tamsin's last giveaway (note to the keen, today she's giving away a box of Warlord ECW foot, which deserves a plug!), and some from a couple of HG Weapons Platoon packs I bought off Dale at the club.

My original plan for the Heer was to at least look at the Wargames Factory figures. They're OK on their own, but... permit me to demonstrate:

Battlefront plastics

Wargames Factory plastics

As you can see, the WF figures are much spindlier. In WF's defence they may well be closer to realistic proportions, but given the very limited range, they really do not match the BF stuff.

The production line

Today, I'm assembling Wargames Factory horses. 72 of the little <deleted>s, (Ok, fair enough, 48, since I did the first two dozen a couple of weeks ago.)

By about the third box, I'd got the process sorted.

And that's just the sprues for
12 horses!

• Unpack box, remove 2 sets of 6 horse sprues, 6 sets of harness (2 x saddle blanket, 2 x girth, 2 x chest strap) sprue. Ignore sprues with 3 heads with reins unless you want your horses with reins.
• Stack horse sprues in order, There are 4 different sets of halves, but half of them have the pins on the left hand side base, half on the right, so you can only mix and match a bit.
• Open EMA Plastic Weld, find brush. Put bottle somewhere where it's in easy reach and you can't knock it over even though it's superglued to a beer mat.
• Grab a horse sprue, clip out head, tail, two halves, clean up if needed.
• Hold entire assembly together (tail and head both have locating pins that are held in place by the body).
• Run a line of Plastic Weld around the neck joint, then down the back, round the tail. Squeeze together. (Capillary action is wonderful - the glue will work its way into the join.)
• Run a second line between the two halves of the base, squeeze. Set aside.
• Repeat with the other 11 horses, doing a bit of mix and match of horse halves where you can.
• Grab one saddle sprue, clip out the bits, clean up. Drop grey plastic chest strap on grey carpet. Swear. Spend five minutes finding it (there are NO spares for the harness (or for that matter the bows), and I need all 72 horses).
• Grab two horses (I find this bit easiest working on pairs),
• Take one horse, run a spot of Plastic Weld on its underside, use to attach girth.
• Dab Plastic Weld on neck under mane, rump, top ends of girth. Slot front end of saddle blanket under mane, over ends of girth.
• Brush Plastic Weld on horse's front, affix chest strap.
• Bluetak horse to length of 2"x1" for undercoating.
• Repeat with next horse of pair.
• Repeat with other 5 saddle sprues.

That's 72 Wargames Factory Persians,
20 Old Glory cataphracts (a mix of
Parthian and Palmyran, 'cause, heck,
 they're damn close), and 3
A&A Palmyran command

And there you go. 95 undercoated horses. I have to say, the set of Army Painter clippers I picked up from Warlord at Hammerhead are a real boon for making close cuts to remove parts from sprues that then need minimal cleanup.

Tomorrow, the rest of the riders!

"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 announce pre-painted 15mm figures

Just ran into a video from Gencon of an interview with the lovely Daisy Nanton, Wargames Factory's Director of Sales, featuring, among other things, their new pre-painted (yes, you read that right) 15mm WW2 Germans. I can't quite make out what she's saying at 02:30 on the video, but they're a combination of some kind of printing and a bit of hand painting, and will retail for $60 for a company of 84 figures, with British and Russians (and I hope Americans, since they have them in 28mm) to come.

Sounds... very interesting. If I'd known about these while one of our club was at Gencon, I'd have had him grab me a box! My one observation is that their field grey looks a bit more greenish than I'd go for, but I guess a suitable ink wash would both handle the shading and tint the colour a bit.

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.