Paint Table Saturday 234 - Odds and ends, finished Bretonnians

Hi All,

A quick one before we rush off to the last regulation meet of the season.

Just trying to tie up loose ends. Safari giant is now primed. Peasants and Monks are just about ready, but I still need to build the wagon and War Altar. Broke out me old trees to try and finish them up. The Army photo will be composed soon.

Here are the finished shots of my April submission to the Old World Army Challenge.

This months output.

Three Noblesse D'Epee (75points) and the Marquis Frederic Cobert 10th Level (66points)

L' Ordonnance (60points)

The two Laborers that came with the cannon, I will use them as part of the camp followers for the baggage train. (0points)

Thanks for looking.

Mapping Progress

Hi All,

Just wanted to share some minor progress I've made in mapping of late.

I think you'll all recall my Mighty Empires campaign.

Monfel is the area I want to map more closely to give more fluff to the Bretonnian army I've been making for the OWAC.

One of the main issues I was having was how to get my head around the scale. Mighty Empires makes things seem pretty big and I thought that maybe each ME tile represented 250 - 300 miles if we think about an army moving approximately 10 mile per day. This makes these territories absolutely huge. The Adventurer Conqueror King system is based around 24 and 6 mile hexes so I was trying to figure out how to glom on to that.

I finally figured it out. Each one of my Mighty Empires hexes would be 96 miles, four 24 mile hexex across. It then dovetails neatly with the ACKS 4 to 1 hex map. Of course they didn't have the hexes oriented the way I wanted, so I had to make the above hex grid after much trial and error.

I had to blow up my original hand drawn map about 400% to get it to roughly fit my new grid. I'm trying out some things , hence the notations, but I think I'll leave the terrain as is and only start adding sub hex features on the next level down.

I intend to use Welsh Pipers guide to help with that some. I used Omni Calculator to help me get my head around the area of a 96 mile across hex. This list of Countries by land area is also helpful in collecting ones thoughts.

Anyway, that's all for now.

Thanks for looking.

Terrain Tuesday 6 - One Tile at a Time

Hi All,

The terrain builds have ground to a very slow pace as I'm trying to finish up the Old World Army Challenge. You should check it out if you haven't already. There is lots of great stuff and the participants will be posting up their finished army shots in the coming month.

But I did manage to tile the Stable Barn.

I still need to stucco the sides, finish the forge and forge roof. I thought I had some DAS, but I found some Fimo for doing the chimneys. Maybe I have DAS somewhere.

Seeing Blue finish up some trees got me thinking about my sad little forest. I'll try to bang these out as well. For the army I just have to scratch build a wagon and paint the final three camp followers. I would love to paint up a War Altar, but I can't seem to find the Monk figures I know I have somewhere.

The teachers strike here has added a lot of uncertainty and anxiety into the mix for me, so we'll see what happens.

I'd also like to welcome Paul to the blog. Let me know if you have a blog, it's not in your profile.

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Paint Table Saturday 233 - Bretonnians in the home stretch

Hi All,

Well, today was supposed to be the day I finished these.

But I encountered a slight problem.

Three out of the four knights did not fit their horse, I should have dry fit them before painting.

After some expletives and a little bending by hand, I decided to make up some green stuff and put it under the saddles to fill that gap. So it's hardening now and I'll paint it tomorrow.

I spread the excess putty very thinly onto a 25mm round base and textured it with my greenstuff world mesh roller. This time I put vaseline directly on the putty instead of trying to coat the roller. It worked much better.

We'll see if I can bang out the camp followers for the final army shot as well. I would also like to add a War Altar, but I haven't found the monk figures I have or received my Max Mini order.

I cataloged some of my Sci Fi collection, I'll post more on that soon.

Thanks for looking.

Fighting Burnout and getting a handle on the collection

Hi All,

As I blunder forward in the hobby I come across things that speak to concepts that gnaw at the back of my mind. Occasionally they come to the fore, only to subside as some other idea bubbles up. This past week two ideas came back up.

Fighting Burnout, restoring Mojo

Someone, I think it was Curis, posted a link to a blog I was not familiar with. The top article was about fighting burnout. The blog is called When Cannons Fade, the said post is here. In it the author develops the concept of having small groupings of miniatures and making a d20 table to keep it sufficiently random to keep your interest up. I like this idea as you can put stalled projects on the list. But I digress. The other part was a link to a youtube video talking about our tendency to be hoarders. I, for one, really need to stop buying the new shiny and/or the too good to pass up deals. I'm starting to buy things I already have and inadvertently getting a lot of doubles.

This leads into the next thought.

Getting a handle on the Collection

I have zero idea of how many models I have in total. I have vague recollections of things, but no precise idea of where they are in my shoddy storage system. I'm pretty sure I have doubles of a ton of stuff. I'm also pretty sure that over 75% of what I own is unpainted. In comes the concept of 100% painted. Now the idea of a general accounting of models painted versus bought/ in the leadpile is nothing new. Anthony, over at the Lead Collector, introduced me to the idea of focusing on trying to bring the ratio of unpainted down by posting about the 100% painted challenge. I think this also ties in a little bit with the "no unpainted models" thing. I need to hold my feet to the fire about painting, rather than buying so much stuff.

So, what's the plan?

Well, my hobbying is a little bit dictated by finishing the Old World Army Challenge and getting ready for Kublacon on Memorial Day weekend. So I think it looks like this.

1. Finish April OWAC submission
2. Finish terrain, extras for final OWAC Army shot.
3. Help my son get his Orlock gang ready for Kublacon
4. Paint up a Mordheim Witchhunter band?
5. Unit cards/ sheets for Genestealer/ Abdul gangs
6. Space Apes (Jokaero)?
7. Squats?

Anyway, you get the idea. Somewhere amongst all that hobbying is taking the time to catalog the collection an get painted unpainted ratios. If you have thought on how to organize a database I'd be glad to hear them. I'm thinking Excel type thing and adding linked sheets based on categories. I was thinking of starting with 40K as I have less of that.

Terrain Tuesday 5 - Coaching Inn, again

Hi All,

Not super productive lately, but I have done a little more work on the inn and stables. Mostly in the evenings while we watch tv.

So I finished the roof and added leading to the windows of the inn. Yo can see I added a chimney too, I just need to clad it in DAS and sculpt the stone work.

This is the stuff I'm using for the window leading. I thought I was being original, but I think they painted a lattice in the windows in the original. A good option if you didn't buy this stuff already.

I started tiling the stable roof. You may have noticed a few issues with the roof cap on the inn. The double wide tiles didn't seem to look right, so I ended up trimming a few of them down. For capping the walls the double is definitely too big, so I'm going to score a single width to make a peaked tile for it. Still obviously need to texture all the walls. The forge roof seems to be too large as well. I think I'm going to cut the overhangs flush with the cutouts. I'm not sure what went wrong there, but I cut everything out 20 years ago so I'm not sure what's up.

Thanks for looking.

Paint Table Saturday 232 - Very little progress

Hi All,

This week seemed to be filled with everything but hobby time. My son ran an amazing 3000m this morning and may have qualified for the National meet later this Summer. I'll know for sure tomorrow.

I mostly painted the horse flesh and underneath the caparisons, so it doesn't look like much has happened.

I added a chimney, finished tiling the roof, and then put some active mesh in the windows to act as window leading. This is not in the original build instructions, I just thought it would look nice.

I also received my foam coat from Hotwire Foam Factory to try and put a protective coating on my Mighty Fortress.

That's all for now.

Happy Hobbying!

Paint Table Saturday 231 - Must stay focused

Hi All,

Well I had to take my Mulligan in March. The track meet and the Easter Holiday just sucked up my time and wore me out. Minimal progress this week, but closer to the end. I'm starting to feel the pull of other projects and got sucked into the idea of adding a War Altar, but on to the pictures.

Pretty much finished the highlighting. Need to do their mouths but I was getting confused as to who had their mouth open. As I age my vision has gone very weird. I have been near sighted all my life, but have recently found it increasingly difficult to focus in my normal near range. I had to break out the optivisor to confirm who was close lipped in this bunch. The check pattern is still a tad wonky, but I'm going to go with it. It's a toy, not a museum display piece. The horse flesh needs to be painted and the models based. Similarly the field gun needs some more work. Not shown is the baggage train and additional camp followers. I'll use the two laborers as part of the five and then some Reaper Townsfolk for the other three.

While I was looking for things to make my baggage element I found the various wagons and Carts that Richard "Orclord" Hale gave me. These had apparently been damaged in shipping to him and he gave them to me to help with my caravan scenario. Which of course I had also forgotten about. I believe this and the other things were painted by John Blanche. I want to do my best to just restore them and mount them on sturdier bases perhaps.

As I start to lose focus and think about the Caraz Lumbar scenario from the Siege rule book, I refound the plastic toy I want to use for the giant. I need to shave off some mold lines and I'm not sure if I'll strip, just spray primer over the current paint job or just paint directly over it. Decisions, decisions. The Mantic Dwarf casualty is just there as a lark. I found him looking for the Reaper Townsfolk Monk figures I want to use for the Bretonnian War Altar. No luck finding them of course. Benoit is there for scale.

My Uscarl squats also arrived in the mail, along with Jason Lye's sci fi Slayer figure. The guns on these seem a little flat, so I've ordered some autoguns from Maxmini. I also ordered some accessories for making the war altar. The Eureka space apes and gibbons were also thrown in there because I had originally meant to do Ape-ril. Gah!

Last, but not least, I started putting my Ambull scenario figures into the Battlefoam cases I bought. As per usual the stock trays don't always organize the figures the way I would like. I may use JB's technique here to make my own instead of buying more. Funny how you become aware of relevent posts after you make a big purchase. Oh well.

Happy hobbying everyone.

Stop playing with unpainted figures

Hi All,

No terrain this week, I've been too busy with various things and don't have any progress to show.

What I'd like to talk about today is the tendency of people to play with unpainted figures. What with the spate of pictures from Adepticon shown on various places on the internet I noticed a disturbing amount of unpainted figures and even unfinished or place holder terrain.

I'll just come out and say it, this is completely anathema to Oldhammer. Let me repeat. PLAYING OLDHAMMER WITH UNPAINTED FIGURES IS JUST FLAT OUT WRONG!

If you are just having a laugh with your mates, trying out a new rule system, taking a dive into a new genre then you have a little bit of leeway. Showing up to an event with unpainted stuff? Well that's just not cricket, as they say. The other problem with playing with unpainted models is that it is a slippery slope to playing with full on unpainted armies. Eventually you can get in a game without having to put in any effort at all. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that is not what this hobby is about. I made a promise to myself when I went to my first Oldhammer event, and I have kept it ever since. I will never bring unpainted models to play with. Period.

But some people do, and the more you let them the more they do it. Or so it seems. So I would like to suggest that there be some penalty to plonking down that unpainted model or unit. Perhaps a stat penalty, some modifier penalties, or perhaps both?

To get the ball rolling, how about a simple d6 chart, roll for each unpainted unit, character, vehicle at the start of the game after deployment.

1. Poor Close Combat training -1 WS
2. Poor Firearms/Bow training -1 BS
3. Not enough PT, M is 1/2
4. Not committed to the cause, -1 Ld on rout test
5. Not the sharpest tool, subject to stupidity -1 Cl
6. Anger Issues, Subject to Animosity, -1 to Ld  bonus. If already have Animosity as a trait -2 to Ld bonus.

Agree, disagree? Can the table be better? Just spit balling here. The point is there should be some tangible price to pay if you can't be bothered to put any effort into actually painting your models.