Quarantine time is hobby time.

Stuck in the house, oh my!

      Well it's day one of "safer-at-home" (cute phrase) here in Wisconsin so that means, not much changes.  Now I can enjoy guilt free hobby time since we aren't supposed to go anywhere and I work from home, another bonus.  I've taken advantage of this time to start looking at my miniatures situation and making some decisions.  One of these is that I have some things that I'll probably never use and they should start to slowly make their way out of the house.  My plan is to have a box where I can put stuff I "probably" want to get rid of and if in a year or so that box is still around I get rid of it.  Unfortunately that doesn't take a lot out of my lead pile.
     When it comes to the lead pile I think I've found my answer for speed but acceptable paint jobs.  It came from Dr Faust, and it's a style I've seen but never tried.  Basically it's a shadow to start and then layer up highlights from there; I used to paint the middle and then shade and highlight.  I'm getting a reasonable speed but the figures look good enough for me.  It also isn't too far removed from advance techniques that I want to use on model figures.
      Now for the good stuff, what have I finished!  In keeping with my previous post I'm putting up at least pics of what I'm finishing with the goal that in 2021 I'll see a lot of progress.  So here it is!
   After about a year of sitting in my room I finally completed 11 French destroyers in 1/2400. 

Escorts forming.

Hull numbers even!

Scatter terrain, you can never have enough!!!!  These are a mix of Crooked Dice, Mantic, reaper, Scotia, Things from the Basement, and some others.

Vendor stalls for the villagers

Goodies for the underground lab of evil!

Is it wrong to have pews near a gallows?

A Eureka boat I had sitting around.

I did complete a lot of vehicles including a truck & trailer from Puppet's War, a Bolt Action KV1, more gaslands cars and a repainted GZG 25mm vehicle.

A really nice model with good crisp detail.

Probably my last KV since I now have 2.

Figures and figures by the dozen.  I don't remember the final tally but it was a good amount.

Foundry and Old Glory African Natives

Old Glory porters

More GW minis for my buddy Duane.

RPG minis, some pretty old school.

More SpecOps from The Assault Group

Foundry minis for Darkest Africa

I can't leave out buildings, that's my thing!  I completed a Charlie Foxtrot Russian farm and an Acheson dark age house.

CF models go together very nicely.

Each floor and roof removable.

Nice resin piece for my vikings.

     The total that I completed is:
7 Dark Africa/Pulp
7 Dark Africa casualties
44 Dark Africa tribesmen
14 Dark Africa porters
10 GW oldhammer minis for my bud Duane.
3 Vietnam minis
14 miscellaneous RPG minis
4 market stalls from Mantic
31 pieces of sci-fi scatter terrain
1 tractor and trailer for sci-fi
1 sci fi apc
1 kv1
2 houses
4 gaslands cars
11 pieces of medieval/modern scatter.

The end of the year udpate

Other work from the year:

      Finally an update!! Distractions are the name of the game and besides other stuff I also build scale models, usually plastic.  The Armorama site has campaigns that I participate in, mostly to get me building from my stash of kits.  These are themed builds with a start and stop date along with a ribbon that is added to your profile if you finish in time.  I've done 7 so far and one of them was a WWI theme open to air, sea, and land models so I chose the ICM WWI Russian Infantry set in 1/35 scale.

     The figures went together pretty easily but the gear needed to be dry-fitted as the molding included spaces for the gear to lay in.  The bolts (really the top of the bolt assembly) of the rifles was a separate piece!  Very fragile and not very long.  The kit comes with A LOT of extra gear and weapons and included is a sheet listing what each piece is, kind of like a box of chocolates.  I'll speed to the end and give some finished pics.

     We also had a year long campaign for the SWAMPS model group that meets in south Milwaukee.  last year's build (September-August) was the new Tamiya Stuart tank in 1/35 scale.  As is usual with Tamiya kits it went together very easily and the detail was top notch.  I chose to go with the Russian tank driver and follow markings I found in one of the many eastern front books I have.  These are all the completed kits for the group.  I tried out some of the new weather techniques that are popping up (filters, modulation, etc). 

     I started trying my hand at making grass tufts for both minis and models and the early results are promising.  I just need to try out floor adhesive and some different blends before I make a large pile of them.

     Some more medieval minis came in to reinforce my growing army, a successful Kickstarter!

    The plan for 2020 is to continue chugging through my lead pile without adding to it!  So far it's been a month of resistance and it's a start, since I have enough minis for all the projects I want to do.  The level of detail new miniatures have make it hard not to pick up really nice figures even though I have the same type, but not quality, already paid for and sitting in a box.  I'm going to start painting up my 6mm BAOR/USSR forces and get more terrain done for that.  One of the two black friday deals I took in was for Cold War Commander in hardcopy.  Between that, Mein Panzer, and Fistful of Tows 3 I should have something that works.  Purchased MDF buildings and ships need to be completed.  On to 2020!

A hill is born

Summer Time, Terrain Time

     Summer finally hit, and its moving along, so I started doing things in the garage.  Spraying primer and building terrain becomes an option for modelling time.  I've been thinking of hills and terrain features besides the 1" stepped hills, usually one or two levels high.  If you watch the spaghetti westerns there is always some elevated position where a shooter, sometimes with a really long brass scope, takes a shot; but those are almost never in wargames.  Obviously space is an issue and as I think about it most rules don't have anything to cover really high terrain (some do, usually skirmish games).  The topic of more realistic terrain came up on a Meeples & Miniatures podcast and I agree that more "realistic" terrain is needed.  I can contribute to the cause!  The other driving force for my building this year is that my carefully horded pile of styrofoam is really in the way in the garage and either needs to be used or tossed.  Now, since I didn't pay anything for the foam other than the item it protected I'm loathe to throw it out.  The time came to either build with it or toss it, so building it is!  I also cut up my last 4x8 piece of mdf into big blobs with which to base my terra forming projects.  

     The first piece I worked on is a sloping, wide hill that looks like a plateau that has 3/4 of it eroded away.  I have to be careful to make game terrain "gamey" instead of "modelly", it needs some flat spaces for figures and mysterious steps to give the small creatures a way to get to other parts of the hill.  I've made a few buildings that have too much rubble now that I look at them so I want to find a nice middle ground.  These uber-rubble buildings look ok but not really flat enough for groups of minis.  I want to avoid terrain where it looks like some cleaning crew came by and got rid of all that pesky rubble.  So what did I create?  Here's the final product.

The left side

View from the front, facing the enemy

The "working side"

     And here's how I got there. I started with one of the mdf blobs that I prepped by applying stain to both sides.  Once it has dried I figured the piece would be heavier than most pieces I have and I didn't want it to flex in the middle and split the piece like a 6.5 earthquake.  I grabbed some scrap 1x2 and glued two pieces along the length.  I used Gorilla Glue adhesive that comes in the caulk-like tube.

Support glued on

     I built up the hill with styrofoam.  Since this is going to get plaster over it, the regular loose foam is ok, I didn't use any pink insulation foam on this project.The pieces were glued down with Modge Podge.  The foam that would cover my strengthening strips had a channel cut so the foam would be flat.

The base of styrofoam

The glue of choice

     Here are some in-progress shots.  These shots were taken before the painting began but after construction.  First I trimmed it and took off sharp corners with hot wire cutters.  The basic shape stayed the same but I tried to eliminate obvious 90 degree areas. Once that was done I did covered the foam with Woodland Scenics (used for almost all of the construction, WS from now on) plaster sheet.  Once that dried I started gluing on rocks that I cast up from lightweight hydrocal and filled any gaps with WS casting plaster.  A coating of WS Shaper Plaster was applied to the bare plaster sheet to cover the grid pattern of the sheets and in between rock sections to soooth gaps.  The gray in the pictures is "anti-skid" paint (paint with sand in it).  It gives a nice scale sand look and is my go to product for texturing buildings.  It was applied to flat spaces so I would end up with a rock formation with dirt for the horizontal surfaces.  It saves me from having to use sand or grit for the whole project, it was only needed to touch up areas or build spots up.

    After painting, using house paint from Menard's (hardware store), I put some vegetation around and a bit of flocking for grass growth.   The Modge Podge bottle gives a bit of scale to the hill. 

Quite a height to fall from 

The business end.  The dino is an Acheson 28mm spinosaurus, a Reaper ogre, and some Foundry African figures

A native scans for invaders.

     The piece is about the size of a small kitchen table, not too heavy, and taller than most terrain I've seen or made.  Three of these pieces would fill a 9x5 table pretty well.  It hasn't been bloodied in battle, yet though so it may be a dominating piece of ground. I play and plan for skirmish games usually so having figures separated from each other isn't a big deal.  In a game with movement trays it would have limited places to put troops though.  Because figures could be much higher (a real 12"+) than those on the ground, range could be an issue if ranges are short.  If guns shoot 12" you may not even be able to target someone below!   A couple of rules I like won't have this problem since they have some significant ranges for shooting (A Corner of Hell, Spectre Ops, and others).  It'll make a nice spot for snipers though and take their targets out of the short range band.  

     So overall I'm happy with it.  I'm sure it cost me a good amount of money but to have a unique piece that changes the battlefield is worth it.  Building it also gave me the chance to work with materials I haven't used or had a lot of experience with.  I look at each piece of terrain as a learning process.  Mistakes can be learned from and better ways of doing things found.  I think I'll end up buying some bulk hydrocal from a building supply house and I may have found a good source of big blocks of styrofoam (stay tuned for that).  

The heat of summer

 Summertime in the city

This summer is seeing hot and humid weather come and go so my normal terrain building binge is smaller this year, I normally use spray cans for terrain and spray outside. But in the heat I managed to hit the Iron Maiden concert at Tinley Park, with Ghost opening.  An awesome show!
We had another painting challenge and even though my output this month is less, I predict a big pile of completed items next month.  Here's what was accomplished this month:
 I completed 6 1/600 non-combatants from PT Dockyard.  They were based up like my other ships and I just used boring names like "750tn coaster" instead of coming up with actual names, more generic that way?   I also tried out some soldering on the masts.  I've had bad luck with pieces breaking off my minis, after they were painted and done, and it's a drag.  So instead of using the supplied rod I took thin brass and knocked together some sturdier ones.  My soldering skills are very rough but hopefully with more practice it'll get better.

The rest of the new stuff.  We have 7 French 1/2400 GHQ destroyers (labels are on them now) for Naval Thunder; battleships are next for the French.  I also finished some 6mm sci-fi tanks from Adler/Darkest Star that I've had in bags for about 7 years.  There are 3 pieces of 6mm modern UK microarmor that were done.  These were bought in 1986 at GenCon and I've painted them 3 times already.  This is their final strip and repaint and will show up in some what-if Cold War games.  The garbage cans are resin from Scenic Express and will be used for scatter terrain, nothing fancy but useful.

 I finally got decals on my Timmee 1/48 AC130.  I found an old set of Microscale gunship decals among my modelling stuff and threw them on.  They aren't "historically accurate" for this particular bird but the bird is a plastic army plane with imaginary guns.  I think it dresses it up nicely.

I put the "Ghost Rider" nose art on it.  The big seam line is pretty pronounced on this toy and since the plastic is flexible it doesn't go away easily.  I could have gone all out on it but it's a game piece and if I put in that amount of time it'd never see time in a game.  

In progress...

  Here's what's in the pipeline so far.  My wife challenged me to build buildings for my imagi-nation modern Africa so work begins.  These are 2 foamcore buildings I started.  They'll get time in my 28mm games and will be generic enough to possibly fit into colonial games as well.  They need some paint and extras (doors, awnings, etc) but a few more of these and I'll have a nice base for commandos to raid.

While working on the buildings I thought I'd knock together some brick buildings for it, but realized I needed a few more.  Casting time!  And since I was messing around with my Hirst arts molds why not order his new brick sets and some sci-fi ones?  I don't like scribing brickwork but also don't want to always have to buy brick buildings.  These fit that middle ground nicely.  Shipping from Hirst was fast, I know there's more to order.

An MDF ruin that was sitting on my shelf for years came out of storage and was constructed.  Some rubble was glued on and I'll add a bit more of detail.  

The last 2 sections of my Hudson & Allen castle awaiting some dry brushing.  They were washed along with some homemade scatter terrain and an O scale RR building.  

The corral for 28mm western games.  It's mdf fencing from Gamecraft minis.  

More stripped down micro armor primed and ready for paint.  The 6mm pile is slowly going down.

A closer shot of one of the African buildings.  The roof is towel glued to a cardboard frame and is removable.