Painting Challenge 2020

Another year of painting

     I took part in another monthly painting challenge with fellow gamers.  It's a way to get us motivated to get stuff done and encourage the others.  Anything is game and any stage of completeness is fine.  This month of January I focused on finishing stuff taking up painting room space along with pushing on with mini painting.  Here's what I got done (all 28mm this time):
Orthodox church
2 middle eastern houses
4 watch towers from the Wild Geese kick starter
Minis:
      2 Inuits
      6 goblins
      4 African tribesmen
      4 vikings
      2 warthogs
      1 beaver
      1 dinosaur
      2 rpg figures for D&D
      10 Syrians
      10 GW fantasy minis for a friend.

     For February I'm looking at a Russian house, the terminal from the Wild Geese set, more Syrians and African tribesmen.  More GW figures for my buddy will be in the mix and maybe some Gaslands cars.  Even if there's no challenge for February I still plan on getting through these at least.  I'm still managing to avoid making game purchases, and that's OK.  There are still a lot of minis I'd love to get but the idea of clearing a tote worth of minis is starting to become more appealing than adding another tote to the pile. 
    My next update will be an exploration of DIY grass tufts, and they are self-adhesive!

2020: The year of living without deliveries

Now that's a pile!

     The year 2019 ended with me searching through my lead/plastic/resin/mdf pile in search of parts of a project that has pushed it's way to the front of my mind (1/600 pt boats, fyi).  Searching leads to organizing which leads to the fish to the face: I have A LOT of stuff!  Stuff is being polite.  I like to store my unfinished inventory in plastic totes and I'm up to eight of them now, one is just mdf terrain and 2 ships that have to be built.  This isn't counting three totes of bits and pieces that I plan on using for scratchbuilding, the "junk pile".  So the big fish that hit me in the face is that I shouldn't be buying anything, at least until I get this stuff painted, and even then I'll probably not live long enough to get it painted.  Add to this my model kit hobby and playing 5E D&D and I have quite a collection built up of things to fill my free time.
    There are a lot of reasons why I've ended up with a large closet worth of stuff and almost any wargamer or model builder can relate to how it gets to this stage.  At least now that I've recognized the problem it's the first step to healing, right?  I've made it through the end-of-year sales and various tempting emails that come in with a discount code. In an effort to start reducing this pile I'm going to try a strategy that I haven't used in the past: finishing one type of mini before starting on something else.  I'm a painting magpie so I have lots of opened bags and various minis laying around, all in various stages of completion.  I'll still have some odds and ends on my desk but I'm going to make an effort to eliminate groups of minis, first up Mongrel 1980s Syrians.  I picked those up years ago and it's a big enough group that I feel like I'm doing something but not so big that it will take a year or more to complete, unlike my darkest africa stuff.  I'm still painting a friend's GW collection on top of this, about 200 minis.  Buildings and vehicles are a separate category.  For those I'll be finishing one before starting on another, not normal for me.  I have four 28mm watchtowers nearly done and I'm going to do the final weathering on a Puppet's War tractor trailer.
     To get this herculean task complete I plan on posting updates as I get stuff done.  Very little has been completed for 2020 but here's a shot of what's "close" to getting done.

Waiting for nature to take it's course.

     The towers and figures have been painted and my brown house paint has been applied for the base.  When I get enough done, usually a full cookie sheet, I take a day to do all the grass work, so I'm about halfway there.

Finally something is done!

     I did manage to finish Mantic 28mm plastic walls that took a lot longer than they should have.  The Mantic terrain crates are really nice but some of the pieces are bent and I had my first experience using boiling water to straighten them and it worked nicely.  I play skirmish games normally so things like walls are always in demand and these are nice modular pieces.  I still have random things on my desk, minis, a 25mm GZG vehicle I'm jazzing up, repairing the roof of a 28mm Armorcast building, and some 1/300 Skuas.

     So here's to 2020 being the year when I clean out a tote and hopefully more!

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 new nation is born!

Lbotu welcomes you!

     We are pleased to announce the birth of a new nation to in the African coninent, Lbotu!  As many miniature gamers know, it's sometimes easier to create your own country or countries than using an existing place with its people and institutions.  I can't get the drive to create one for my SYW Russians but for moderns, it's been floating around as an idea for a while.  I finally got down to business and, using AK47 1st ed. for the method, I creaed Lbotu as the home for my 1970-2017 games.  It's probably a mix of movie nostalgia and current issues that make it ripe for gaming ideas.  I plan on providing some background on the people, places, and things that make Lbotu a country of contrasts.  Mercenaries, guerillas, aid workers, well wishers, and business interests all swim around the cities and countryside, sometimes creating exciting reactions.  Some of the rulesets that I'll be using for games in Lbotu include Spectre Operations, At Close Quarters, Black Ops, Skirmish Sangin, and Dogs of War.  I hope to avoid reactions to games set in actual locations to avoid political and personal sensitivities that fellow gamers might have.  As an imagi-nation nobody's relative has seen service there and it's not in the news.  As a pretend place, I'm not making light of the difficulties that happen in that area of the world.  If anything it would be interesting to see more research done on the state of African affairs and ways to alleviate problems.  All commentary, news, reports from the field, and other material is a creation of my imagination and in no way represents any real people.

 Background:   Lbotu (el-bow-tu) was founded as a Belgian colony in 1630 as a friendly port on the western side of Africa for it's traders.  The coastal area was soon developed by European business interests, resulting in the cities of Elenville and Brudes, both on the coast and at the mouth of rivers.  The inland areas became sources of goods through farming, mining, and timber.  The harsh measures used to rule the Congo Free State didn't materialize in Lbotu, mostly due to the amount of foreigners doing business and residing in the country.  After the Treaty of Versailles Belgium ceded Lbotu to the British to run.  The constant mixing of nationalities, religions, and cultures created a system of "controlled chaos" in which it was easier for all involved to be accepting of each other because the alternative would be too costly (costly = trade).  Because of the open nature of Lbotu Britain was able to run Lbotu with a minimum of oversight and force.
     In 1964 independence was granted as Britain started to disassemble it's colonial empire and calls for independence within Lbotu grew.  The change to local government was relatively peaceful compared to other parts of the continent and the British system of government continued with the new ruling parties.

Resources:  The natural resources of Lbotu have become an important part of the national economy as trade routes around the Cape of Good Hope became less critical for the movement of goods.  After the 1964 independence the Lbotu economy fell as support from Britain fell off and a push to maximize national resources increased.  Past environmental impact from this period, "The Uprooting" as it was known, created tensions between business and environmental forces along with friction between urban and rural dwellers.  Fifteen years of unrest, including the birth of various resistance groups, was ended at the 1985 "Tcheweya Conference" which codified environmental laws and procedures that would allow sustainable use.   While the extremes were not happy with the accord reached, it did quell the growing violence that was disrupting daily living.


More work to come........
   

In the jungle, the mighty jungle...

What lurks in the jungle?

     The gaming group I'm in is embarking on a campaign in a fictional land that is a mix of African and NW Frontier terrain and peoples.  Since I collect natives and actually have no colonial troops, I'm looking at the savannah and jungle areas of the map for my people to inhabit.  I have around 200 African native types now (no Zulu) that are a mix of Old Glory, Foundry, and North Star.  They break down into 130 spear/melee, 30 bow, and 40 musket.  I still have probably another 200 to finish so this is definitely not the final tally.  I also got the Old Glory set with the Chief, captives, servants, and even a guy in a pot, definitely a good set to add some character to your village.  Speaking of villages, I need somewhere for my chaps to inhabit.  I did buy the set of huts from Old Glory but, as a modeler, I wanted to try making them myself since I wanted a lot of them and it would be cheaper in the end to make them instead of buying all I need.  I came to the realization that I like lots of buildings, in any game where beings are.  A medieval town of 2 houses is fine but 8 would be better.  Fighting over a large Soviet village is more entertaining, especially when those buildings break up line-of-sight.  I can always go with a smaller settlement but I like to be able to go big if I want to.  Even if the structures are wood that a HMG can shoot through, they still break up the table and SMG troops become pretty valuable. 

     So how do I get a bunch of huts for a low price?  I use towels and PVC!  

4 half-way done

The pvc sections

The tools of the trade

     Here are the steps for making a hut, finished hut pics to come in the next update.  Everything done below is done with the proper safety gear and space to work.  Power tools are in use and plastic is flying around so be careful!

1.  I bought a 36" long piece of 3" pvc pipe.  You can get more or less, 3' was easy to handle compared to an 8' piece.  Through trial and error I came up with 2.75" as a good height for my hut walls and proceeded to cut the pipe into 2.75" chunks with my power miter saw.  

2.   I then marked the doorway by tracing a piece of masking tape, about 2"x1.75".  I drilled a hole in one corner and cut the doorway out with a jigsaw.  Lots of plastic dust from this,  wear eye and breathing protection.  Heated pvc is not good for you, in fume or dust form.

3.  For the roof I cut out a piece of cereal box card in a 4" circle using a circle cutter.  A cut on a radius allows it to be folded to make a shallow cone.  This was superglued to the pvc, I use Gorilla gel super glue.  

4.  The grass roof comes from an old towel and I trace various circles using items at hand (a CD, a paint dish, a yogurt lid, and a glue bottle in decending order).  When cutting fabric a pair of fabric scissors are very handy.  These circles were glued to the cardboard and then on top of each other, going from largest to smallest.  The top pic shows the "cd shape" towel glued down.  I use carpenter's glue, slightly diluted, to do this step.  This is one an item you can buy in gallon jugs from the hardware store.  If you build a lot of terrain the hardware store is going to save you a lot of money over the game or craft store.  

5.  Once all this is dry I take the diluted glue and coat the roof so that the towel fibers can be "shaped" downward to make it look more like grass.  I also painted the hut with gray anti-skid paint.  This gives an earth look without looking like someone put gravel on the walls.  It also primes the pvc for later painting.
6.  Now comes painting.  For the hut I use a medium-dark brown and the roof is painted with a yellow-beige.  The interior is painted the same as the exterior.  When the whole hut is dry I gave the roof a coat of Army Painter dip, medium.  It shows the crevices and also protects the roof.  

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).  

To space!!

Klingons off the port bow!

     I'll admit I really like Star Fleet Battles.  That may get me committed in some states but I bought it about a year after it came out and my role-playing buddies joined me in littering space with hulks of starships, it didn't hurt that we were huge Star Trek fans (and I still am).  The original series had enough ship battles to fill my young wargaming mind with plans to command cruisers along the neutral zone.  At that time we just played with the counters and paper mat, I don't think we even knew where we could get little ships but that would have been the ultimate in toy-game-friend time.  We had a couple of expansions but never went beyond that or got into tournament gaming.  Over the years we moved to other games and SFB started it's growth of rules, exceptions, and errata.  I did purchase the Captain's edition and had a 3-ring binder of rules, which wasn't played (no surprise).  Fast forward to 2016 and during one of our RPG sessions we discussed Federation Commander.  It certainly looked nice and now I had the means and ability to buy ships!  So I got it and a couple of the boxes of ships, Klingon and Federation, from ADB.  As I read through the FC rules they sounded a lot like SFB, only  prettier, so I broke out my old SFB, it's one game that I won't get rid of and has gone to Japan and back, and I started reading.  There are some differences between the two but not so much that if you played SFB you'd be confused by FC.  

     It's 2018 now and other projects had pushed my Starfleet plans to the back burner but I finally got down and started painting.  I have to paint up some minis before I play just because I have them.  I could play with the counters and have a perfectly fine game but to me the minis are the chum that brings in the sharks.  It's easier to picture the ships moving in to attack while the tense Star Trek music plays.  So what was I painting?  

The battle force forms up

The left wing

Lead ship

I like these flight stands

      So now for the gritty details. 

         -flight stands are from Corsec engineering.  They use more powerful magnets and have a variety of styles, base sizes, and add-ons (on the left is a 2 dice dock, middle has a numnber dial).  I use these stands for any game that needs something to fly: WW2, space, modern jets, UFOs.

         -  The colored things are those loom rubber bands that were the craze about 8 years ago.  They are just looped until they don't fall down, usually 2 loops, and they allow me to quickly change colors as needed for identification.  Yes they can be seen as colored things flying along but I feel it's a nice trade off for playability and they're not that distracting.

         - The star mat is from Hotz.  There are mixed feelings regarding shipping and communications but I got this anyway and it's nice.  The hexes are 2".  

         - I put magnets in all my planes and these ships are no exception.  I get mine from KJ Magnetics who make a wide variety of sizes and shapes.  Perfect if you have to magnetize some small thin planes.  I've used them on my mi-24's in 1/300 scale.  What tools I use are pretty basic.  I bought a variable speed cordless drill ($20), a pack of bits, along with a pin vise and bits.  I drill in slowly, like milling, and check my depth frequently.  Some would cringe seeing that bit cutting its way in but I want my magnets secure, I've had glued-on magnets pop off before.  I've got some pretty sizable planes and drilling helps to keep them tight on the stand, I use epoxy to glue them.

        -Decals.  Yes I put decals on a lot of stuff, including 1/300 armor and 1/2400 ships.   I was a modeler before a gamer and things look better with decals, whether or not they are readable from 12" away.  So I searched and found some at JupiterIVdecals.  He prints to order so they are always in stock.  He also answers emails so if you have a question just ask.  I picked up Federation and Klingon sheets.  They went on without trouble and I hit them with a little Solvaset.  To me they really make them ships instead of just play pieces.  I don't speak or read Klingon but each ship has a different name.

Where's the beef, I mean targets?

    A lot of space game scenarios can be gleaned from actual or planned earth history.  One such idea is the convoy.  You can make the cargo as important as you want so you can justify any ship being in the escort group.  Likewise you can use  any  ship in the attacker role.  Want a "submarine" sneak attack or a full bore assault by capital ships?  Along with the SFB ships I purchased I got some freighters.  I don't recall many from the original series so colors and markings were my choice.  Most of the warships are going to be pretty bland (I'm focusing on Kilingon, Federation, and Kzinti) so I decided to use some of those often neglected colors in my paint racks.  

A small group on Corsec stands again

Topside

     For these I painted their base color and then did the structure with a mix of gunmetal and steel.  Being bright and pretty unexciting I spiced them up with decals.  BAM!  These particular ones came from the spares box, mostly an old helicopter kit but also some armor markings as well.  I didn't do anything too wacky so they can be race generic but I can easily see some marked with current company logos.  Maybe a giant load of Starbucks for some weary crystal miners?  Games should be fun and sometimes those silly details add a nice vibe to the game.  

Kirk's a no-show?

     Ok, so you've noticed by now there aren't any Federation ships on this page.  Yep, they aren't done.  They are being worked on though.  I had to do a bit of filling but the frigates and early light cruisers are primed.  They also got the magnet treatment.  Once the Federation gets done it'll be time to put on games, of both SFB and FC.  It's sometimes hard to get people to play SFB if they've only ever seen or heard of the later versions, but playing the original box game version isn't bad and it's under 40 pages.  The math required isn't tough, adding and subtracting, so I'm not sure where people think they are going to be doing accounting or stats.  So future updates will have some space clashes to report.