Video Nasty

I've developed a cunning plan.

I have a variety of projects that I'd like to crack on with, but I also have lots of Japanese infantry that I'd like to get done to add to the Bolt Action army I painted during an earlier phase of interminable pandemic-related lockdown.

Basically, I'm going to do both together. I figure that just banging through dozens of very similar Japanese models with contrast paint will be effective, but also deeply tedious both for me and you, my valued and numerous audience.

So, you should find that each time I post for the foreseeable, I'll have some "new" thing, and then some number of Japanese bits that I've added to the pile.

Here we go then. New bit!

That's the McGuffin marker from the 7TV Apocalypse set. I'd like to claim it's part of some master plan that I've painted it now, but really it was just on my desk already so it was readily to hand as something to do.

Like all Crooked Dice models it's really well made with lots of details that all show up well. So that's nice.

Japanese bits!

Yep, there they are

These are the models I need to bring two of the squads I have up to full 15-man strength. So that's also nice.

Right, there you go. Six models painted, quick post written, job done. Have some scores.

Painted: 15

Acquired: 31

Lead Pile Reduction: -16

 

Black Hawk Down

Not much else to say about this! I've painted a big chunk of resin, in the form of this crashed UH-60 Black Hawk.

Time to swap insurance details with whoever fired that RPG

This comes from Britannia Miniatures, as part of their Mogadishu range. For me, though, it's going to be featuring in a variety of post-apocalypse setups - I've got plans to do more of that sort of thing this year as it's a genre I really like and I have various little projects that would fit. A side effect of endless Coronavirus lockdowns is that I've built up a few painted things that have either never seen a table yet, or have only been out once or twice, so I've no particular need to rush other stuff through and I can muck about with stuff like this for a while. 

Thankfully this wall broke its fall

It's a hefty chunk of resin, I'll give it that. Nice and cleanly done, too, although for my purposes the stone wall the helicopter is lying against is mildly irritating. Still, I'm happy to live with it and I don't think it was expensive (I've had it lying around for years) so overall I rate this model as "fine".

It's that kind of top-notch consumer advice that keeps people coming back here, I'm sure.

Anyway. Since the last post on here, I realised I'd not accounted for some models I got on the front of a magazine, so my scores are actually getting worse at the moment:

Painted: 9

Acquired: 31

Lead Pile Reduction: -22

Still, no further purchases planned at the moment and none of the shows are on, so things should start moving in the right direction again soon.

Walking the Line

For something like 600 years now, Pete and I have been either planning or actively playing through the Bolt Action campaign from the Germany Strikes! book.

We're reaching the end - the last game for us to play is the second part of a Maginot Line scenario. Before lockdown began, at some point in the mid-nineties, we played the first part which saw French relief forces trying to break through the German lines attacking the defences. I was able to get enough units through to give me some sort of relief force, so the next step was to actually prepare the fortifications.

To that end, I've pulled together an excellent set of defences, which will definitely halt the German advance in its tracks (so long as they don't do anything dastardly like sneak around the end).

Please advance on these from the front only

So, let's have a look at the details.

The slot of doom

The door of somewhat reduced doom

First of all was a Coastal Defence Bunker from Warlord. I thought this kit came out pretty well, although I took issue with the claims that the roof was removable and the doors able to open. In the event, I had to glue the roof on so that the bunker would keep its shape, and the doors ended up glued so that they'd appear to hang properly.

I then followed that with a Flak Bunker (also from Warlord).

Slot, and this time, roof of doom

Door plus ladder of lesser doom

Again, I like the look of the thing once it's done, but again the box claims you can open the doors and remove the roof. The doors, ok, I think that could have been possible but I didn't bother. But the roof can't be removable if you're going to glue on the ladder, and if you're not going to glue it on I think it's going to get broken and/or lost. Also, without the roof glued on the whole thing wants to bend out of shape. Anyway, long story short, I've glued the roof on.

Bunkers need weapons. On the Maginot Line this means cloches, so I have these:

Dakka dakka dakka dakka

Machine gun cloches that I picked up from Salute some number of years ago (told you this had been going on a long time). These go onto the top of above-ground blockhouses, so they'll sit on the roof of the bunkers. For the flak bunker that means I'll need to come up with some sort of cunning base arrangement, so I'll look to do that before we have the game.

Finally, some of the blockhouses on the Line are buried, and armed with big guns in turrets. I therefore needed some of those...

Boom boom boom

I got these along with the cloches. They're from a company called Last Man Last Bullet, which I can't say I'd ever heard of before I started searching for Maginot Line bits. At least some of them are in fact 20mm scale, but I can't remember which and I can't say that it matters. The important thing is the aforementioned big guns (twin howitzers in fact).

Right, that's some painting done, so we must inevitably come to some numbers. Here they are!

Painted: 99
Acquired: 108

This seems to show that I'm hovering around breaking even. Having spent some time this weekend contemplating the ridiculous pile of unpainted stuff currently in my garage, I really should try a bit harder on that... Keep watching to see if I develop any willpower over the rest of the year!

Getting Terrain Locked Down

I've given it some thought, and I'm of the opinion that this whole "global viral pandemic" business is a right pain in the arse.

One of the more minor ways this has manifested is in the Wargames Illustrated 7TV day in July being cancelled - scarcely a surprise, but still an embuggerance. That's particularly the case as I'd been beavering away on terrain for the event.

Still, there will, of course, be other 7TV events at some point. So, eventually, all of this will be worthwhile again and I'll be able to break out the insane table I have planned.

Right, that's enough of that - the world already has an abundance of Coronavirus commentary, but at the same time is woefully under-supplied when it comes to pictures of terrain that I've painted. So let's attempt to redress the balance with this...

First of all, a ruined factory!

This is a Sarissa Precision kit I'd picked up about 18 months ago and never got around to, so it was particularly nice to get this done at last. Part of the challenge was finding somewhere to keep it - it's pretty massive.

Then, a satellite dish!

 

I really like this model. It's a Crooked Dice resin job, and in my experience those are always really nice clean casts. As I write this, I realise I should have taken a photo of it with a figure for scale. It's big!

Wow, that was informative.

Both of these things were big, but they only count as one thing each. Thus, the impact on my scores has been limited...

Painted: 19
Acquired: 77

Anyway. Since the 7TV thing has been cancelled, I'm going to do something else! So, watch out for that, whenever that happens. There's every possibility that the next post might make considerably more sense than this one.

Slow Motion Car Crash

Another quick post for a quick paint job.

I'm still working on terrain bits and pieces for the Wargames Illustrated 7TV day in July, on the possibly overly optimistic assumption that it will still happen despite global pandemics and WI staff changes.

So, in that vein, here's a crashed car!

This is, like the crashed pickup truck from a couple of posts ago, from the Walking Dead scenery pack.

Given that there's very little detail to it, it took very little time to paint! Still, every little helps, so here's what that's done to my scores...

Painted: 17
Acquired: 77

Barnstorming

A quick post for a quick paint job!

I'm still working on bits and pieces of terrain for the 7TV day in July, and the latest is this cheeky little number:

A "ramshackle barn" from Renedra. This was a very easy thing to build, and possibly even easier to paint!

True, the doors don't open, and I've glued the roof on. I think this will be needed to hold it together, but it does mean that putting anything inside is a bit trickier than with MDF buildings.

Still, nice easy model, looks decent, so that'll do.

Right, tedious accountancy time...

Painted: 16
Acquired: 77

Getting on with it

We're more than a month into 2020 now. Given that I'm trying, yet again, to paint more models in the year than I acquire, you would expect me to start out by painting a lot and being restrained about gaining new stuff. 

I've not done that. 

Still, I've managed to get off the starting blocks, so let's have a look...

That'll probably buff out

It's a truck! Specifically it's a truck with a big dent in it. This is part of a Walking Dead scenery set that I got thinking it would be useful for post-apocalypse purposes, so it's slightly odd that I'm not using it for that. Instead, this is going to form part of my planned table for this year's Wargames Illustrated 7TV day in July. So will lots of other things, so I really need to get on with it.

Ok then, so I've only painted one model so far. That's ok so long as I didn't get loads of new ones, so it's something of a shame that I've received a few things I've ordered recently, and ended up with 77 models going onto the pile.

Still, it's a start, things can only get better from here, et cetera.

Let's kick off this year's scoreboard then, just for the look of the thing:

Painted: 1

Acquired: 77 

Best get back to it then...

Hasty Wrap Up of 2018

Hello once again!

Hey, remember when I last posted, and said I had two things to post about so I'd split it in two? No? Well, that's not really surprising since it was more than a month ago. Whoops.

Since I never got that posted, and since then I've painted some stuff on a third project, and it's now a new year, I'll abandon my original plans and sort of smush everything together as one. This gives me some chance to clear the backlog and start afresh, staying on top of things this time.

The Hobbit Goblins

Right, first things first. In our gaming group, we had a brief flurry of interest in the new version of the Games Workshop Middle Earth Battle Game (I think it's called that, or something like it anyway (if only I was on the internet and could look this up)).

Five goblins!

A further five goblins!

Surprise! Five more goblins!

All together now

This prompted me to dust off the Escape from Hobbit Town box I bought several years ago, and I blasted through 15 of the goblins before getting sidetracked again.

In the event, I enjoyed painting these models more than I expected to. They're single pose plastics, which normally I don't like, but it had the advantage of making it much quicker for me to get stuck in to painting. They're reasonably detailed, which I didn't really spot looking at the bare sprues - slapping on some paint showed things up so they were nicer models than I'd thought. It also helped that I'd deliberately worked out a very simple paint scheme for these using Vallejo paints:

Skin - German Camo Beige
Loincloths, straps, weapon handles and pupils - German Camo Black Brown
Hair - Neutral Grey
Bone, eyes, teeth and highlights in hair - Sky Grey
Metal - Gunmetal Grey

I gave the whole thing a brown wash too to pick out detail, and it worked well enough. In fact I was all set to blast through the whole set, but then...

15mm WW2 Terrain

Every year at Christmas we do a big game with the four of us taking part, over the course of a day. This year we opted for the Berlin scenario from the Bolt Action Tank War supplement. We played this at a somewhat insane 9600 points per side, which came about as we played in 15mm and used our Flames of War forces.

I'd had some urban terrain at this scale kicking around for something like 15 years (there's a scary thought) so I figured it was now or never and dove into it. This was clearly a stupid thing to do as it was a lot of effort and it'll probably be a very long time for I use any of that stuff again, but it was nice to paint up something I'd been holding on to for ages. Plus, you never know, we might start that 15mm Tank War campaign we've been talking about forever.

In the spirit of getting this post actually published, I'll go without photos of the terrain specifically for now, but I took a few pictures of the game itself. As might be expected, this was carnage - even on an 8 foot table and at 15mm, we had so many tanks that a lot of bunching up took place, and both sides had rocket launchers available as well as lots and lots of guns. Kieron wrote up a proper report on the game so you should read that, but it was an amusing affair which is the main thing. We also won, which is of course excellent.

The table, before things kicked off

Pete doing some planning "Hmmm, that seems like a good hill to
have lots of my tanks explode on"

The master of disguise maintains his low profile

A shot from early in the game. The lines didn't move
much as time went on, but lots of vehicles exploded

The middle ground - pretty much everything
in this section was wiped out by the end

The end of the game!
A victory for the Germans, but a costly one...

Wrapping Up the Year

Okay then, the important stuff! I've been diligently tracking numbers of models I've acquired against those I've painted, and for 2018 that's worked out really well. Totalling up the stuff I've painted recently and the 4 boats I got on the covers of Wargames Illustrated, I end up at:

Acquired: 34
Painted: 135

That seems pretty conclusive! I think the main reason for success here is just that I've bought such ridiculous mountains of obviously surplus models in previous years. I certainly took on new projects - Middle Earth, Post Apocalypse Top Gear - but generally I could do these with models that I already had so didn't need to buy more.

I'm going to try and keep that up for 2019. There are things I want to do - 7TV Apocalypse should arrive in the next couple of months, and there's a Pulp day for 7TV in the summer - but with the models I have on the way already and the bountiful lead pile in my garage, I ought to be able to address those without gaining too much more new stuff.

One thing I definitely want to do more of in 2019 is posting here. It's a bit of a weird one (I don't think anyone really reads this) but keeping a tally of what I've done and roughly when I did it is interesting and a bit of a motivator - it's nice to have things to write about. I might go back to an earlier version of things, and try for monthly updates - recently I've been hanging on to try to theme posts together, normally with the result that I don't post anything at all.

I'm going to have a think about projects, too. I can think of several that I'd like to do, some much easier than others. I'm going to try to figure out a sensible way of approaching things (and then almost certainly not actually do that) as it would be nice to finally get some things finished off.

Right, that's it. This post was pretty rambling and unfocused, but I've cleared the decks - so roll on 2019, let's get stuff done! 

Happy New Year everyone!

Bits and Pieces

Everyone get ready for a blog post with no real theme or purpose or anything!

Having done the "quick and intensive" route for a while to get my 7TV cast ready for the Apocalypse Day, I've spent some time doing "slow and meandering" instead.

First of all, here's a couple of Napoleonic chaps. I actually started these a few years(!) ago, and came across them in a drawer while I was looking for something else.

"Have you seen a drummer anywhere? He's about this big"

They were actually much easier than I thought they'd be to paint! I think in the intervening time I've developed a bit more patience for this kind of thing. That or my eyesight has deteriorated and I can't tell that they're terrible.

Next, it's... a bit of wall. I got this at Vapnartak this year from a company I hadn't encountered before called Templar Wargames.

I actually really like this piece! It's a nice, simple piece of terrain, and the quality of the casting was great. I had to do very little to get it ready to paint. I also like that it doesn't have anything on it to tie it to any particular period, so I can imagine it on the table for almost any period.

Right, enough gushing. Last thing to roll off the production line is a trip back to one of my longer-running projects - the French in Bolt Action.

As Bolt Action is a platoon-level WW2 game, "three squads and a machine gun" is a pretty obvious place to start, and tends to work pretty well. It's therefore somewhat embarrassing that it's taken me over three years to add a machine gun to this force.

"I'm pretty sure we should have been here earlier"

Still, better late than never. As usual I've separately magnetised the extra crew so I can reflect casualties more easily (something that is useful on a disappointingly regular basis).

It occurs to me that it's been a while since I last played Bolt Action, but I still have a hefty pile of unpainted things for it. I might have a go at tackling that next... and then again I might do something completely different.

That was a great little anecdote, wasn't it?

Anyway, numbers. I've added six more painted models here, so that puts me onto...

Painted: 81
Acquired: -2

The "acquired" total goes up a bit as I picked up a couple of cut-price die cast cars recently, and they're sitting in boxes until I decide what to do with them. Still, the "painted" total went up more, so it's all good!

Right, stand by for something more focused next time... 

Walls and so on

It's still post-apocalypse time here at Matt Towers. I've managed to snare Kieron into playing Terminator Genisys, which drives a need for more terrain, which has led me to more of this stuff.

Things!

I picked up some more of the Crooked Dice scrapwalls and a junk pile at Vapnartak this year. For once, I actually painted things I'd bought within a fairly short timescale, so here we go!

First, the junk pile. Not sure what the big grey thing is, but look, there's some sort of wheel!

Whatever this is a pile of!

A wheel! Some sort of hose!

Then, the walls...

Corrugated iron and things!

Some sort of machinery and possibly a motorcycle chassis!

A big gate and a tyre!

A big red pipe!

As a sort of bonus, I also finished off a plastic survivor that's been standing around in my painting stuff for a very long time.

He's got flip flops, a can and a gun.
I'm not sure if he's doing well.

I made this by chopping up some of the parts on the Wargames Factory survivors sprue that aren't supposed to fit together, as a sort of protest against how inflexible that set is despite the huge number of parts it has. That was several years ago now that I think about it, but I've painted him now!

Right, that went a bit stream-of-consciousness-y. Now here's the numbers!

Acquired: -6
Painted: 25

You'll notice, because of course you've committed the previous numbers to memory, that the acquired number has gone up by two. That's due to free figures I got by going to Chillcon recently. I don't really know what I'm going to do with them, but they go on the pile so there we are...

Right. That's all for now, but I've got more on the way, so watch out for that!

A Brief Endo-counter

I don't care what anyone else thinks, I like that title and I'm pleased with myself for having come up with it.

I've painted a couple more things! I'm still working on post-apocalyptic stuff, so first off, here's a command endoskeleton for Terminator Genisys.

That thing is either for communicating
with Skynet or scanning barcodes.

This is the first of the metal endoskeletons that I've painted, and I'm a bit ambivalent about it. One the one hand, it's a nice sculpt, it definitely looks like the murderous robots from the films. On the other, that attention to detail makes some parts, especially the wrists, are very flimsy - the arm holding the communicator bends very easily and I'm just waiting for it to break. We'll see how this goes on the table.

Second, a counter:

We seem to have a special on beans and cigarettes.

In my mind, this is part of a stockpile after the apocalypse. But it could easily also be part of a shop or something. It's from Ainsty Castings like so many of my resin terrain bits, and it's been sat around for a while so it's good to get it off the pile and potentially into use.

So here are my ever-present numbers:

Acquired: -8
Painted: 21

A Barrier to Progress

This should be a quick one.

Another hangover from Zomtober managed to linger around on the painting table long enough to acquire some paint, so here we go:

From our new "urban monochrome" selection

There you are, half a dozen jersey barriers. I've got to be honest, these weren't the most challenging paint job ever.

They did make it to the table as part of the Necromunda resurgence with Kieron last weekend, so that was nice. 

There we go, as promised, short and sweet. Short and grey, anyway.

Right! Scores!

Painted: 170
Acquired: 161

Progress going down the toilet

Sometimes these blog post titles just don't make a lot of sense.

Anyway. I reached the end of Zomtober, and found I didn't really know what to do next. So I've been somewhat aimless in my painting for the last week or so, really just slapping some paint on anything that was ready to be done.

So, that's led me to this:

"Flushed with success" might have worked better.
Never mind.

A second portaloo! Obviously this will have loads of uses.

I followed this up with...

That's supposed to be a Make America Great Again hat, but
you can't really see it here..

Further zombies! These were sitting on my painting station so they just sort of fell under the brush.

Also, last weekend we took a trip to Fiasco at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. This was decent enough, but I was able to resist almost all purchases, coming away with a Reaper minis “not Arnie” for the princely sum of £1.89.

So, what’s that done to the scores?

Painted: 164
Acquired: 161

There you go, I’m motoring away now!

Zomtober Part 5 - the Big Reveal

Well here we are, the end of October, and with it the fifth and final week of this year’s Zomtober.

This means that, first of all, I need to post a zombie or survivor for the week. Here we go:

Muuuuuuuurrrrrr...andatory

It’s another zombie, one that I’ll admit I rushed, but it’s good to get a model off the enormous pile of unpainted models I own. The photo hasn’t come out very well for some reason, but he’s lost all the skin from his face, which is a nice gory detail for a zombie.

Anyway, with that out of the way I can move on to the main event, my somewhat over-hyped secret project. It turns out that it’s this:

Home sweet home

 A post-apocalyptic outpost, made from a toy caravan!

 I’d been planning to do something with the toy caravan for a while, and the idea hit me that might it would make a nice post-apoc terrain piece. I’ve tried to be fairly agnostic about what type of apocalypse this fits into, so hopefully I could use this for Terminator as well as zombie games.

Ideal for the young professional wanting to start out on their own and avoid being dragged off by cannibals.

So, some details. The inspiration for this is kind of a combination of a location in Fallout: New Vegas (a ranger station made of caravans) and the image of Andrea standing guard on top of Dale’s RV in the Walking Dead.

 My thinking is that this is someone’s hideout. They’ve wheeled it into position amongst some jersey barriers for some extra protection, and welded on whatever bits of junk they can find to block the windows and make things a bit less exposed.

Rusty corrugated iron always adds a touch of class

On the roof, there’s a sniper nest - a chair, a table (which I’m particularly pleased with - it’s a warhammer goblin shield with some legs made from offcuts of MDF and looks a lot like rattan garden furniture) and a bucket (from an old model train kit I’ve had for decades) for... sanitary purposes. There’s also a mattress in case things get bad enough that the roof is a better option than sleeping inside.

Great facilities for al fresco dining

The roof is accessed by a fencing section propped up as a ladder, and protected with barbed wire, which was a bugger to paint.

Overall I’m pleased with the result here, and I might be tempted to add a few more bits to it in the future. I think it’s versatile enough that it might make it to the table more than once, too.

All that said, I think it can sensibly only count as one model for accounting purposes, so doesn’t have a massive impact on my totals...

Painted: 161
Acquired: 160

Woo hoo! I’m back to a positive score! Admittedly I could have painted one model on the first of January to get to the same point, but still!