Been a while

Well I have been off the blog for a while, mainly due to other commitments ect. What have I been up to latley.

Well Painted the first of the PT boats, which consists of 6 German S-38's, 1 German S-30, 2 Raumboote and a Rescue boat. They came up better than I thought they would. Will try and snap some photos soon.

I am currently working on the British fleet, starting today I hope to have them painted by the end of the week.

Then I will move onto the Japs, USA & Merchants.

I recently parted with my 6mm Napoleonic French and in place I purchased:

1 x War of Spanish Succession Starter Box
1 x British/Saxon Foot Booster
1 x Standard Foot Booster
1 x Bavarian Army Pack
1 x Dutch Army Pack
1 x Pack of Battalion Guns
1 x Pack of Horse
1 x Pack of Short Mitre

The War of Spanish Succession is an interesting period that I have been reading about for the last few weeks, and certainly a colorful period.

The rules I will be using is Might & Reason by Sam Mustafa, with the addition of Sun King by Greg Savvinos

This should give me for each side about:

13 Infantry Brigades
6-8 Horse Regiments
4 Dragoon Regiments
2 Bases of Artillery
8 Stands of Generals

Each Brigade/Regiment is 2 stands strong. Infantry will be based on a 60*30 base with 24 figs per base at the moment, I may increase to 32/36 figs possibly, Horse will be 9-12 figs per base, Artillery on a 60*60. CinC on a 40*40 and sub-commanders on a 30*30.

The main rule set is based on the Seven Years War & War of Austrian Succession, but the supplement from Greg allows you to play the battles of the Spanish Succession.

This make's it easy to build an army fast, as you can either build to the points list or write a scenario.

So this will be interesting to get into once I have finished the PT boats. But between finishing the boats, I will be once again going off to Nicon (North Island Con) here in NZ over Queen's B'day weekend (5th June) to play some 1st Volley 15mm Napoleonic rules.

Should be a good weekend.

Well thats what I have been up to of late, will try to get back on track with the blog

PT Boats

Well recently purchased some PT boats of PT Dockyards. So I started to assemble/clean them today. 45 Boats, I must admidt I was sceptical about 1/600 PT boats. But after recieving fantastic service of Dave at PT, not to mention speedy postal work my worries faded away.

A warning though about cleaning the guns. Make sure you use a sharp knife, steady hand and have a bit of patience as I found that the guns are well cast but a small slip will see a barrel disappear.

So with all of the boats now cleaned up, will start to assemble them tomorrow. The boats probably wont make it onto the blog, well at least for some time.

With a lot of projects on the run, we will see what comes up next.

Offline for a bit

Well I do appologise for my absence, I took a 5 day break over the Easter Weekend and have been busy with work.

All that I have managed to do is pick up a copy of Pathfinder RPG & Beastiary.

Now as there is bound to be some people that will take a dig at Pathfinder, and I would like to ask all visitors to leave the AD&D4th ED is better than Pathfinder ect at the Door.

To give you a little bit of background, the last time I played D&D / AD&D would be about 15 years ago. So when looking into it now that I have "grown" up a little I read the pro's and con's of both systems.

I do not know what drew me more to Pathfinder, guess it was the price difference of Pathfinder with the Beastiary book compaired with the AD&D 4th ED stuff, at the end of the day they will probably cost me just as much.

So after not playing for well over 15 years, I start my adventure fresh. Well when the books arrive.

I will be adding the adventures, purchases to the blog as I get into it. Always wanted to be a DM. Now I just need to find some other keen players.

At present just myself and Craig, so three other players and were away.

Will even throw Dark Heresy in there at some point as well.

Well bit busy this weekend, so will plan on an update on Monday

So where to from here

Well I finally finished those fences off, it took a while but I got there in the end. So with them done where to from here....

Well to go with the fences, I need some troops. I have been researching a lot lately on the American Civil War, and with that in mind I purchased some Baccus 6mm figs.

At a 1:10 ratio I have sorted out The "Stonewall" Brigade, these are going to be based on two game systems.

The first is Guns at Gettysburg by Dave Brown, a very similar system to General de Brigade (Well it's pretty much the same)

The second rule set, Piquet and using the supplement Hallow Ground.

Now a question that is asked on a regular basis is what shade of grey, or what paint should I use for the grey. Now the short answer that I have found is well, there was that much variance it doesn't matter.

From a lot of reading that I have done, the Confederate uniform started off as shades of blue, and faded to grey, now please feel free to correct me on this as I am still learning.

Over the coming few weeks, I will be starting to paint the Confederates and I will be bringing you along on the journey, in the hope that you can learn from what I have done and be able to apply to your own miniatures.

An old classic

I recently acquired an old classic board game of trade me. 1974 copy of Avalon Hill's Panzer Leader.

Now to say the least, it is definitely a used copy but for only $12.50 NZD including shipping it was a bargain.

After looking at the counters and the maps, I decided something needed to be done about the state of them, as most had water damage and definetly had that musky smell to them.

I recently stumbled upon a website which has re-done the counters and are available for free.

So with a craft knife, ruler, artists mounting card, spray glue and the tokens printed off in colour I have set to making a new set of counters, I will in time be replacing the maps with the updated maps.

This will be a longer term project and the counters and maps will be done when cost and time permits.

I have already printed off the German ones and mounted them. I am in the process of cutting them up today. Will post some photos of the old ones, and the replacements.

The final stages completed

Well, it took a while to make these but I am very happy with the final result on them. Here are a few more progress shots on the static grass effect:



PVA applied, with the PVA I have found it is better to apply thinner and lighter rather than in big blobs, something that I used to do:

Not sparing any expense, I heavily applied or sprinkled in this case static grass over the PVA:

Now this next step took me a while to get it right, but using the handle of the brush I lightly tapped the grass into the PVA, going over it a couple of times to make sure that the grass would stick:

Now I managed to work on a section at a time, so applyed the PVA, then the grass, pressed it down. I then turned the base over and flicked the bottom of the base from left to right then right to left.

Turning the base back over again I found that just the one application wasn't quite enough for my liking.

So below you see me loosely sprinkling the grass over once again and repeating with the brush.

And the final result from the grass:

(This base was one of the few where there wasn't quite enough grass, so went over and re-applied after the photo)

After the grass was applied, they should look a little something like this:

Now ignore the colour in this shot, as you can see it lightens the wood more that it actually is.

I will get to posting a few more photos in the next couple of days outside when the weather improves.

So all in all I managed to make 12' worth of fencing, plus 4 corners which measure 50mm x 50mm in an L shape.

Just below are the corners:

One final note, which will help if you feel the height is still a little high, I did this little extra step.

Where each rail crosses over at the start point and the next cross join with one finger on each join (Not in the middle of the rail or it will snap) apply a medium 5 second count then move onto the next.

I went through each section (When I refer to a section I mean each 15cm section) twice. It has dropped the height just enough.

Take your time with this as I found I am a little heavy and heard a couple of snaps. But because the wood is reasonably soft it only broke the top rail - not in two to just split it, however has not affected the visuals at all.

Hope that you have enjoyed watching me go through this, don't think I will be making anymore for a little while now.

A tad on the sick side

Well with the Wife being sick the last three weeks, I seem to have caught something finally and it knocked me off my feet for a few days. Only just starting to feel a little better now and I have finally knocked on the third row.

As well as that layed out the 1st of 4 corners.

Just a few photos, I have now clipped them down a little as well so all that is left is to add the static grass.