St Teilo's Church

A while back I traded some figures with Matt. Since I didn't want any of the figures he had on hand, I took him up on an offer of a scratch-built building.

After browsing through the pictures of some historical buildings he took on his blog, I asked for a church building based on St Teilo's Church, pictures of which I have posted below:

We decided on a single-hall structure, and Matt went off to work...

Two months later, I picked up the church from the local post office, and what I saw was simply stunning. I'll let the photos do most of the talking. I've posed it inside a walled enclosure I bought off ebay and the trees I recently bought.

A wounded knight seeks sanctuary at a church

The gate swings open, and he is greeted by the friar and a lay follower of the church

The porch is removable. Note also the Celtic Cross made by Matt

The door swings open...

Matt has recreated the interior of the church too!

"Lie down upon this table and rest, my good sir."

The bell in the belfry actually swings!

I don't think anyone could have made a better trade than this one. :)

Added: Matt's post on this building here.

Class Photo

It took about twenty years, but here they are now.

All 2000 points of them, and every one of them painted by myself.

There are the women of the scout squad, the three tactical squads with flamer/meltagun and heavy weapon, and sergeants with melee weapons, the assault squad accompanied by the chaplain, the terminator squad with flamer and assault cannon, the Thunderfire Cannon with Techmarine, the dreadnought, and the command squad with the Captain, standard bearer, apothecary, champion, sergeant, and veteran.

The core of this force started almost twenty years ago with just 15 figures in three squads which I meant vaguely for some sci-fi skirmish game. When Thomas and Adrian started painting their 40K armies last year, I decided to refurbish my force and well, one unit led to another and pretty soon I was gunning for a full 2000 point army, thanks to fg who supplied me with many of the figures.

It's perhaps a testament to GW's staying power that one can still easily buy figures for a line that is in fact 25 years old.

Now to take a break and get ready for my 15mm Attalid Pergamenes and perhaps finally learn the Impetus rules...

Added: The army by daylight.

The luck of the Irish, or the Emperor's foreign regiments

After I received the Vistula Legion, I noted that I had room for just four more bases of infantry in the box I use to store my Napoleonic infantry. I toyed with the idea of getting four bases of Italian infantry to bolster my foreign regiment presence...

Then while looking for flocking materials on Sunday I uncovered the 15mm Napoleonic figures I painted years ago when we were doing Republique - all three units of infantry took part in the Battle of Fuentes d'Onoro. I soaked the bases in water, plucked the figures off, and then re-glued them four-to-a-base and I have four bases of infantry and one of cavalry. A lick of paint similar to that used by the ebay seller (Medium Flesh - go figure), some flocking, and they are ready.

So here they are, the Polish (infantry bought painted, now with their own colours), the Regiment Irlandais, the Legion du Midi, and the Legion Hanoverienne.

Welcome back to the fold, boys. Now let's go bash some Brits and Austrians!

Tehnolog Walls

The Tehnolog cannon and orcs came with two ruined walls and connecting corners which are modular in that they allow more walls to be added.

I glued the walls to a piece of mounting board with the sides sealed by masking tape (this is a really important step, I think), and then added a floor made from another piece of mounting board in the inside. I chopped up the sprue and added some bits of plasticard and dowels and glued them to the base as rubble, followed by a scatter of gravel and then sand.

Once everything is dry, I sprayed the whole thing black.

The plan was to spray the black-coated model with my can of grey primer afterwards and then give the whole thing a wash. However, due to its age the grey primer came out of the nozzle a little gooey, and gave a textured paint effect, which was not unpleasing.

When the spray paint is dry to the touch, I painted the steel windows and exposed steel beams in black again and then steel. Finally, I gave the steel structures a wash of Devlan Mud, allowing the excess to pool and stain the surrounding concrete, and then give the rest of the structure a thin wash of Badab Black.

I really like the heft of these walls, and of course the cannon is a delight. Perhaps I should get another box, this time with different figures; at 54mm, they are not really what I need, but I suppose I can always use them as statues.

Rolling Thunder

"Cannon, see that Eldar Farseer there? F**k him and everyone near him"

With no game this weekend, I managed to get some of the toys I received this week painted.

First up is the "counts as" Thunderfire Cannon, with a Devastator sergeant posing as a Techmarine. I chose to give him the hand-held device in one hand, and a powerfist in the other since Techmarines have servo-arms which give them close-combat bonus, and because the arm looks cool, especially when pointing. The kneeling pose is also very "gunner", which adds to the whole look.

I didn't have any specific shoulder insignia decal for him, so I superimposed a skull - the symbol of my boys - on a red sunburst pattern that came in the Dark Angels Devastator decal sheet, on the basis that it looks sort of like gears.

For the cannon itself I decided to pattern it after WW1 field guns - all painted in one colour. Most of the pictures I found on google are either black-and-white (duh!), and the colour ones are mostly museum pieces or abandoned guns in advanced stages of decay. I thought about weathering the gun to show chips and rust, but then I decided that as Marines, they would probably take better care of their equipment - after all, we are not orks. So I sprayed the whole thing green, painted in some of the missed spots, then washed it liberally with Badab Black, allowing pooling specially in the spokes of the wheels. Some "beading" occurred on some areas, which gave the appearance of oxidation. A brush of medium green highlighted the edges, and some black on the muzzle suggested soot.

The wheels appeared to be single pieces of metal with no separate tyres, so I drybrushed grey on the area that would contact the ground, and then silver to suggest bare metal showing through worn off paint. Since my marines are based on rocky rather than muddy ground, I did not add any mud stains.

The finished model looks plain; unfortunately there are no flat areas to apply the chapter symbol and there is a stark absence of skulls - not like my boys at all...

All in all I am pleased with the model. I am now working on the walls that came in the box too. If Rick does decide to build an Imperial Guard army based on Warzone figures, a few of these wouldn't be amiss.

More Toys

Two more packages bring in more toys for this week.

Shown here are a few of the 40 trees I bought from an ebay seller treefella.1. When I saw his poplars on sale I contacted him and basically bought as many trees as he could fit into a standard postage box. I got a total of 20 poplars and 20 deciduous trees (at one pound and a pound fifty respectively). Four of the trees broke off their bases in transit, but it should be an easy job to fix them back with a blob of epoxy each.

Posing between the trees is a unit of Duchy of Warsaw infantry I bought in an arms race with Rick, who is recruiting some 500 Austrians to try to throw off the French yoke. They have now been given their regimental colours by the Emperor (having a colour printer at home really helps), and I have repainted their eagle silver instead of gold which the painter has erroneously done.

With these two lots in, I am down to just one item awaiting delivery.

Time to get down to the serious business of painting.

Toy Overload!

Two packages arrived in the mail today for me, and fg handed me some more Space Marines to round up my force while I passed him some LOTR figures wahj passed to me earlier. It's all good.

Anyway, this is what I got today:

First up are these 15mm AB French Napoleonic infantry in pre-1806 uniforms. I got them because they were the only non-Legere unit DPS had on their ebay store at the moment and I wanted to buy a unit on impulse. Unfortunately they missed my request on basing the skirmishers on standard bases. No matter - they still look capital and will add variety to my force.

Then there are these 54mm plastic figures from the Russian company that makes Robogear. They come in semi-hard plastic and look quite good. I've posed them next ti my Perry WOTR infantry and on 40mm bases for comparison.

And then there's the one I've been really looking forward to: the cannon that came with the orcs.

I've planned to use it as a Thunderfire Cannon with the tracks from a Robogear vehicle, but looking at the whole package now I am inclined to paint it as is. I've also asked fg for his Devastator Squad Sergeant to use as a Techmarine because I don't really like the over-the-top way those guys look. I really like his pose and his gear, which give the impression of an artillery spotter, and the cannon looks suitable Gothic Sci-fi.

Lots of painting ahead of me...

Perfect Ten

Say what you like about Games Workshop, but I think they got it right when they designed the Terminator.

There is just something so determined in the face of a Terminator that says: it can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with... it doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Some Terminators just want to watch xenos-infested worlds burn.

In fact, I don't care much for the more animated poses as seen in the new Space Hulk and the Dark Vengeance set; to me, the square "in your face" look is a classic and you shouldn't tamper with a classic.

And say what you want about the Army Painter technique, but I got the other five Terminators that I need to round my squad up to a ten completed in two days with the Army Painter spray paint and a wash of Badab Black.

And if I thought a squad of five looked menacing, a squad of ten looked... at least twice as menacing!

Next up, fifteen Space Marines, hopefully done in a jiffy with Army Painter spray once more.

I'll be back... with pictures once I'm done.

I think it was the dismount

I must say I faced a lot of inertia getting these guys done, but here they are.

I had to cut the left hands off at above the wrists and re-attach them at a different angle to make them look natural, so it was quite a laborious process. I cut a lot of corners when painting them because I was rather fatigued when I got to that part.

Still, I've got a special scenario planned for them the next time we play Strandhogg.

With the pistoliers done, my next target is to round up my Space Marines to a 2000 pts force, and quickly so because the next big thing (well, one of the next big things at any rate) is to paint up some 15mm figures for our Macedonian War project.

Impetus cavalry movement tray

I made a few movement trays for out Impetus armies as we have decided to stick with the standard DBX basing for flexibility.

While I chose the standard 2 x 2 configuration for my infantry units, for my cavalry I decided to go for a 1-2 configuration to save on the number of figures needed and also to give that "wedge" look.

You can just about make out the pieces of plasticard I used to create the niche for the front base. The space can be used for little dioramic touches like broken weapons and shields, or rocks and tree stumps.

Triple weekend

We had a bit of a party atmosphere this evening as all seven of us were able to make it for the session. Cocktails, beer, cakes and chips, War movies playing in the background... it's all good.

I had to split my main table into two and mobilise my coffee table to accommodate three games.

On the larger part of the main table Adrian and Thomas played their first game of 40K 6th Edition.

Thomas' Blood angels

Adrian's Eldars

 On the coffee table fg and wahj learned Impetus by playing.

wahj's Cathaginians bear down on wahj's Romans

On the smaller part of the main table Rick and Martin replayed the Battle of Corunna (the Rio del Burgo and Corunna Bay conveniently dividing the table from the giant (28mm) aliens and superhumans battling it out with outlandish gear.

The French push the British off Monte Mero

I spent most of the time helping Rick and Martin with the rules.

Corunna was fought on a rather narrow frontage, which scaled to a mere 2 feet in Age of Eagles scale.

As in the historical battle, the rough ground meant that the French cavalry didn't do much (in this case they did not move at all after the first turn), and it came down to an infantry fight.

Rather than to fight over Elvina as their historical counterparts did, Rick sent two of his divisions to his left to outflank the British position on Monte Mero, while Martin sent his reserves to counter the move. After much to-ing and fro-ing, the French had advanced much further than they historically did, but the British still held their own and held the road leading towards Corunna.

I think we are growing to enjoy AoE, and fg and wahj didn't think that badly of Impetus, so I guess we can settle on the rules bit and get down with the business and painting and playing from now on. There was a question of whether we should move into WW2... let's see, guys... let's see.

Some more impetus

The Impetus project is picking up momentum and Martin just sent out an order for almost 50 packs of Xyston figures.

I know I pledged not to start a new period, but my contribution to this project is limited to an allied Greek contingent of DBA size, so it's not really a breach...

Anyway, we all plan to base our figures on DBX basing and use some sort of movement trays instead of going for the full Impetus mini-diorama, tempting though that may be. I made a test tray out of my remaining plasticard, and when I opened my cupboard to get a few bases of my Hittites to test the fit, found this:

A model of a Greek temple wahj left at my place, I believe. It's probably a bit small in scale ("The centre has to be at least... three times bigger than this"), but it should do fine as a decoration if not an actual terrain piece to fight over.

Meanwhile, Martin found a piece of classical ruins terrain that I gave him a long time ago... Things are just falling into pieces, aren't they?

Eldar Warp Gate

Or something like that. My 40K fluff ain't what it used to be.

Anyway, when Adrian announced that he was going to turn his focus from Ultramarines to Eldar, I decided I would build him a terrain piece for his army.

I sort of had an idea what I wanted, and after some browsing on ebay found the exact thing - the keel from the Dark Eldar Ravager:

Technically that should be the rudder, but that's what it's sold as in the bitz shop, which was selling in lots of three, making it easy for me to decide between a six or an eight-arched structure.

Once the keels arrived, it was a simple job of levelling the botton (or top, depending on how you look at it) and gluing it to a used CD with normal solvent glue, and adding a 40mm round base to the centre of the CD to hide the hole.

After making sure that the arches are aligned to their opposite members, I sprayed the whole thing with gloss white paint. The coverage wasn't perfect, but because the plastic is grey, that lent a bit of "shading" to them.

Once the whole thing has dried, I set gems used for nail art onto the arches using double-sided tape used for photos - using glue would have been too fiddly and taken too long, and I can more easily change the gems if Adrian didn't like the colours I chose.

This is what the Warp Gate looks like next to a Space Marine scout I just happened to have handy. The Eldar (Dark Eldar?) rune on two of the arches still need to be painted to make it look visually balanced, and there still needs to be some sort of a centrepiece on the plinth in the centre, but I'll leave Adrian to work them out. I suspect it can also work for High Elves in a fantasy setting, and I believe Thomas has some from the Island of Blood box set.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the remainder of the can of spray paint and gems... Suggestions?

We all need a little impetus...

I've been finding it hard to complete my unit of pistoliers the past couple of weeks, but something happened over the weekend which prompted me to finish them this evening... more of that later.

Here they are.

The flag is based on the coat-of-arms of the House Duggan - I grafted the lance from the Perry mounted men-at-arms box as I thought the Warlord ECW cavalry one looked too "modern".

Now I have to prep, prime and paint the dismounted version of these guys.

Back to the story as to why I suddenly found the impetus to complete them.

During Sunday's session Martin mentioned that he was in the process of painting up a 15mm Alexandrian Macedonian army and asked if we wanted to do something in that period. Remembering that wahj had a large Republican Roman army, I thought we could play one of the Macedonian wars. wahj then told us that he also had some Carthaginians painted, which meant we needed a little bit of alternative history: Philip V lands on Italy and links up with Hannibal!

Some discussion on the ruleset followed, and we decided we would try to give Impetus a try. The use of mini-dioramic bases stirred fg's and my interest, and I now find myself pledging to field a DBA-sized Attalid Pergamene force (after having visited Pergamon a few months ago), which should work out to a subgeneral and three units. fg has yet to decide between another Hellenistic Greek contingent and the Gauls/Galatians. The best thing is our forces can play ally to either side, which will lend us more flexibility in the structure of our campaign.

Purchase is likely to take place next month, with the campaign scheduled to start perhaps December, depending on how fast we paint.

Meanwhile, I really want to complete the dismounted version of my pistoliers - I've got a specific scenario in mind for them, you see...

Battle of Fuentes de Onoro

Today marks a special day in the history of our little group as we played our first Napoleonic game.

wahj and I had a British and French Napoleonic army in 20mm plastics more than 20 years ago, with which we played Napoleon's Battles, but we haven't played a game in years. When Martin expressed an interest in the period a couple of years back, I bought over 300 painted 15mm miniatures off ebay while he slowly painted his Anglo-Portuguese army up. Then earlier this month, he announced that he was ready for a game, and we both read the Age of Eagles ruleset (which we both bought earlier), and I picked out a scenario for us.

After some browsing, I decided on a scenario based on the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro. As with the original battle, the Allied army faced the challenge of either holding their flank or extricating the isolated 7th Division defending the village of Poco Velho, while the French had the task of turning the British flank and destroying as much of the enemy forces as possible.

Rick setting up the French IXth Corps, ready to storm Fuentes de Onoro. The isolated 7th Division is seen in the middle.

wahj and Martin took the roles of the Allied commanders (wahj being our "traditional" British player, and Martin being part-Portuguese), while I played umpire cum French Army commander (Massena), and the two less-experienced players (fg and Rick) commanded a French corps each.

I tasked fg to bring his forces wide around the Allied right flank to cut the 7th Division off and destroy them while Rick pinned the rest of the Allied army with an attack on Fuentes de Onoro itself.

fg's VIth Corps and the French Cavalry Reserve deploy

While fg stuggled to get his corps across the river, Rick's surprising charge along the road drove the British out of the town in a single turn!

The French charge across the river to take Fuentes de Onoro

The town would change hands several times during the rest of the battle, but while the bulk of the Allied forces raced to link up with the 7th Division, fg's VIth Corps managed to ford the river and drive them from the village.

With the village lost, the Allied forces began to deploy from the road and form to face the French, and their three batteries tore up the French 3rd Division.

The French drive the British out of Poco Velho, and the Allies deploy from march column to face their attack

With the bulk of the Allied army now deployed for a fight between the two objectives, I decided to commit Junot's Division towards Fuentes, which we judge will turn the battle towards the French's favour and force the Allied army to withdraw, and so called the game.

The whole game took about 3 hours including setting up the over one hundred bases of figures.

Except for the rather unpredictable melee results, we enjoyed the rules. There are some areas which are not covered by the rules relating to fighting in BUA, but most of the time we were just thrilled by the sight of over 500 figures in colourful uniforms being shoved across the table, and taking pictures so we can have bragging rights.

Rick was so inspired by the spectacle he is now thinking of getting an army to provide my French an opponent, which gives me an excuse to further expand my army...

Resina Planet Khaos Gor

I came across the figure in the centre of the picture - a Resina Planet Khaos Gor - while ebaying for stuff and thought I would add it to the ranks of my small beastmen warband.

Unfortunately, despite its name, the figure's size is closer to that of an Ungor than a Gor, especially when you notice its delicate legs... It's still a nice figure, regardless.

I suppose I will convert him into an Ungor hero of sorts using the Ungor bow bits I have, and lose the back-banner.

Movement Trays and a new backdrop

Taking it slow thise weekend - just primed some figures and finished up my movement trays. I'm also trying out my new backdrop - part of the box art of the Mage Knight Keep that Adrian gave me. The foreground is just a wallpaper downloaded free.

Here's a shot of the pistolier horses on my DIY movement trays.

And here's a shot of Perry artillery on a chariot base.

Land Speeder Storm WIP

To show you just how much a non-fanboy I am, I only just yesterday read about the Space Marine Land Speeder Storm which is a Land Speeder customised to transport a scout squad.

Now I've been thinking of getting my girls a ride, but didn't want to use the GW model, so once again I went into Mekboy mode...

A night of googling did not turn up anything I want, so I decided the best way to start would be to go down to the toys section of my local mall on my way back from work today.

This is what I got.

It's a "made in China" die-cast toy car with a pull-back drive system. It measures 5" bumper-to-bumper and is just about the right size. It's all of S$6.90, which is like US$5.50. It came in blue or yellow. Even though I know I am going to paint it over, I still got the blue one.

Two screws hold the main components together.

With a pair of pliers I removed the headlights, the axels and wheels (including the drive system which looks like it has future orky applications...), and the rear half of the cabin piece...

 leaving this as the main structure to build upon.

The main problem will be covering up the spaces left by the wheels - I'll be looking at ebay later to find some bits that are suitable, failing which I will need nmore plasticard.

I realise I won't be able to actually fit my scouts inside the cabin, but I plan to at least get a driver figure.

This might take a while...