Back to the 28mm Germans and Long Grass

I’m making one last push to get the Black Tree Design 28mm Germans finished this weekend.  So far it looks like I’ll get the full platoon done by Sunday, this post however isn’t about the Germans but more about the bases they’re um based on.

I wanted to put some tufts of long grass on a few of the bases to help break up the flat look the green flock I’m using causes.  I was looking on eBay when I thought I probably should do them myself.  I tried this method a few years ago and it turned out crap.  Back then I blamed the technique for the bad results, unfortunately the current results prove that it was my implementation that needed improving.

I had an old brush laying around that was gunked up with glue and had the right looking bristles for what I wanted.

Cut a small length of around an inch or so.

Fold it in half, this takes practice and the first few lots of bristles shot our of my hand and across the table.

Twist the end nice and tight, dab a small ball of super glue on the end and wait 4-5 seconds.

Then simply put it on the base of the miniature.  I’m just using the cheap superglue you get in packs at $2 and I find I can stick the tuft on the base and in about 10 seconds I can use a toothpick to move the bristles around and they stay where I want them.

Tomorrow once they’re completely dry I’ll use some small scissors or nail clippers to cut them to the lengths I’m after.

One nice effect you can see in the photos at the top of the post is that the superglue makes the base of the bristles go white when it oxidises.  I’ll subdue that somewhat later with a green/yellow ink wash.  For some bases I’ll try putting little dabs of paint on the ends of the bristles to make them look like they’re flowering.

More photos of the Germans themselves once they’re done.

Dungeonbowl!

While searching the net for some Napoleonic terrain ideas I came across this on a Mordheim terrain site.

I instantly thought of Dungeonbowl.  I’ve made some corridor and room pieces out of mdf in the past (think Space Hulk) and they looked good but moved around on the table a lot and just lacked that little something.

These however seem to be the perfect idea.  Interconnecting rooms made out of a sturdy little box that shouldn’t shift about of the table, allows for great scope in detailing and with a lid becomes it’s own storage box!  What’s not to love?  I’m making plans to build a couple of these.  A big room like in the photo on the right and for starters four of the smaller square rooms around it.

Once I’ve done the math and worked out the room sizes and door placements I’ll put some plans up here for comment.

After all the cardstock terrain I’ve been putting together lately I’m really looking forward to “building something”.

I’ll just have to paint my Skaven team now.

Paper or PDF?

Every now and then I’ll get an email like this one:

Hello Tim Coombes,

You can re-download SuperSystem 3 to get the latest version, the 3rd printing.

Please follow the links to download the file(s).
They will be active for you until Aug/01/2010
SuperSystem Third Edition: http://www.wargamedownloads.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you
Greg Moore
http://www.wargamedownloads.com

This is one of the main reasons that I prefer the pdf rulebook over the paper versions.  Why bother with FAQ’s and addendums when you can just get a corrected copy of the book?

I still print out the pdf books for use at the game table as I like to highlight certain rules and passages to help when playing the games, not something I’d like to do to an actual rulebook.

I’m very keen to get my hands on an iPad or similar device so I can try that out at the game table.  Having all the rules at your fingertips in an electronic format allows you to search entire libraries for certain keywords.  Better still it allows you to look stuff up on the Internet when the rulebooks don’t seem to have the answer you’re after.  Hmmm… maybe I could buy my wife one for Christmas.

Eureka 15mm Naps Arrive

The Eureka 15mm Napoleonic miniatures arrived today.  These are great quality miniatures that require little to no cleanup.  There is detail everywhere, much more than I’m going to bother painting but the great thing is that all the usual weak points such as plumes and bayonets have been sculpted a little thicker to make them stronger.  Which will help since these are going to get a bit of handling being used for skirmish gaming.

I was going to use 20mm washers for the infantry and 30mm for the cavalry but decided to go down a slightly different path.

They’re maybe a millimetre or two smaller and they’re not magnetic like the washers would have been but they’re cheaper.  And cheap is always good.

All based up we have the Russians to the left and the British to the right.

All done in fifteen minutes and with $1.10 worth of “bases” left over.  I’ll leave then to dry tonight and I’ll start painting the Russians tomorrow night.

Sorting out the Super Heroes

Searching through the mass of HeroClix miniatures it quickly became apparent that it was going to take “a long time” to find the dozen or so figures I needed.  So I foolishly decided to kill two birds with one stone and sort the miniatures while I went along.

This is what it looked like about halfway done.

I had previously started to sort the miniatures into their appropriate release sets but this time I decided to group them by their teams affiliations.  WizKids have made this easy by putting team affiliation logos right there on the base.  This has left me with about a dozen plastic bags worth of teams and two huge loose piles of figures, the non team specific ones and a whopping pile of bits where the mini has come away from the base.  These are mainly the flying characters which come shipped separate from the their base.  Sorting them out is going to be a couple evenings worth of Googling and gluing.

Right now though I have found all the minis I need and have a small collection of other cool looking minis that I’ve verified against the S2 Character Sheet Builder.  So when I the mood gets me all I need to do is grab a bag of miniatures and start making some cards for that team.  Justice League is up next and then I’ll switch to the Marvel universe and have a look in at the Avengers.

All that will have to wait though because tomorrow night me and the boys are going to roll some dice.