Laserburn – Villa Part 1

31/05/2012

Last month I bought some of Brigade Models’ new 15mm resin sci-fi scenery. I didn’t paint the Villa as it was too Mos-Eisley for my setting. Instead I saved it for a rainy day – and today is rainy ! I added some GZG building components – but not too many – I have in the past found I have got carried away. Sometimes less is better.

Resin building and white metal components:

Resin building with components added:

The components were added using the All Purpose adhesive I bang on about, as it gives you 5 minutes to position stuff correctly. The small satellite dish came in two parts and was assembled with Stupid Glue:

Very little flash on these castings.

It’s been undercoated and tomorrow I’ll have an update on progress. I hope this building will only take a couple of days to paint to a wargaming standard. This is the first building I have done with an easily accessible upper storey. Should add some more fun to Laserburn games.

if I can do that then I’ll get back to some of the backlog of Critical Mass Games’ buildings.

Filed under 15mm Sci-Fi, Scenery

BoB – Chinese Warlord troops

31/05/2012

Cracking open a case of figures unopened for several years I found I’d painted far more then I thought ! 🙂

Here’s some basic troops:

Some Dare To Die troops – close combat assault troops, mounted on slotta bases:

Some SMG wielding troops (Bergman SMGs, check out the ammo pouches):

Some Chinese troops marching:

And some White Russians in Chinese Warlord service – mish mash of Russian and Chinese equipment.

I probably have 60 ordinary troops painted and 20 each of the others ! 😮

All figures from Copplestone, and all have about 10 avriants on poses, and are a joy to paint. 🙂

Filed under Painting, RCW / BoB

BoB White Russians

30/05/2012 4 Comments

Some of the White Russians have been seen before, but here’s some more stuff.

Officers:

Copplestone, with the exception of a Brigade Games “Storm in the East” Russian medic (top right). These are from my ‘Colourful’ unit of White Russians. Somewhat historically inaccurate they had fanciful uniforms but due to supply problems rarely wore the uniforms in practice during the RCW. It was only later they actually supplied all the troops (now in exile) with these fanciful uniforms. Mine are absed on the cadets in the film Dr Zhivago. (see p14 of the Osprey book, and plate E of illustrations)

Colourful troops:

Unit of officers:

Both the Colourful and Officers units are all Copplestone Castings models (BU34). However, they were ‘remodelled’ and the new figures come with rolled greatcoats over their shoulders, so ‘your money may vary’ if you buy them !
The White Russian armies were notorious for having more Officers than non-commissioned ranks, hence my naming of the unit as a unit of offficers.

This is the rest of the White Armies:

Ragged troops – short on uniforms, weapons and equipment. (BU23)

They have ragged uniforms, and a mixture of Russian and British equipment and rifles. Again with about 12 variants, I varied the paint schemes.

I have twice as many ragged troops painted as Officers, and the Colourful unit is an entirely separate group. So far no White srtandards/banners, and no ordinary White Officers – something to be added to my lengthening list of figures to paint. 🙂

Filed under Painting, RCW / BoB

Google Galileos

30/05/2012

Whilst waiting for various bits of IT to re-charge/upload…here’s some (amalgamated) comments that appeared on Skeptical Science recently:

You are forgetting the first axiom of deniers’ (and unfortunately that of too many elements of the media) that:

1) If you are expert in any subject, you are an expert in every subject in which you agree with my opinion.

The second axiom is:

2) If you are an expert in a particular subject, if I disagree with you on that particular subject your stated opinions are based on fraud and conspiracy.

And:

3) My totally uninformed opinion is just as valid and worthy of equal consideration as your highly informed and hard-won expertise, if not more so.

The third group are often the Google Galileos of the title:

Google Galileo: an individual whose knowledge of a scientific discipline is restricted to information sourced from Google, Wikipedia or other online sources (i.e. blogs). Within a period of a few weeks/months they feel confident to not only dismiss an entire discipline of science, but have gained the ability to “practice science” by commenting on online forums and constructing alternative theories using raw data obtained freely from public sources.

There’s more here.

EDITHmm, interesting. I drafted the Beastman post, then drafted and posted this one whilst waiting for all the photos to upload to photobucket. And then posted the Beastman posting….scratches head…speaking of which the haircut disaster was sorted yesterday at no expense by the same hairdresser…small mercies…

Filed under AGW

Special Guest Superstar DJ: Beastmen

30/05/2012 1 Comment

Back to Byakhee Rich’s efforts – Beastmen. Some superb models old and new and extensive use of magnets so he can put his heroes in chariots/position different arms etc.

Also his army is one of the first examples of us using ‘named’ cheroes and lords…Yarrash Warblade is his Minotaur leader. It makes for a much better atmosfear for the games.

Rich is a regular on Herdstone, the WHFB Beastman fan site.

Here’s some top picks of mine:

Yarrash himself:

An ancient pre-slotta Runequest Broo figure:

Baak:

Centigors:

Bestigors:

LOTs more photos are here. You can see why he got bored of brown ! 😉

Filed under Painting, Warhammer

Iron Sky – We Come In Peace

29/05/2012

Those nice people of the people at Amazon, sent me a package today, an exciting package of Ministry’s Relapse, Fields of the Nephilim’s Ceromonies, Laibach’s Iron Sky sound track and of course the Iron Sky DVD itself.

Here is the ending track from Iron Sky (NB: Open the link, and then sing along !):

So the Land of the Free
and the Home of the Brave
Are your stars still so bright
Does your banner still wave ?
Oh, the Land of the Free
and the Home of the Brave
Are you Heaven on Earth
or the gloom of the grave

So the Land of the Free
and the Home of the Brave
Are your stars still so bright
Does your banner still wave ?
Oh, the Land of the Free
and the Home of the Brave
Are you Heaven on Earth
or the gloom of the grave

We, children
We, children, are born in Sin
We are born in Sin.
That is why we must let
The Light,
The light of God into our hearts,
Children
We are all Children of God,
but to the whole we are Sinners
We are Sinners
We must let the Light, let the Love of God
the Eternal Love of God into our hearts
or we will Burn
Burn in Hell
Burn in Eternal Hell

You’ll have to watch the film to GET IT.

Go on you know you want to.

Filed under Film, Music

AVBCW Black Clad Legions

29/05/2012

Enough of those revolting peasants, here’s some of my AVBCW BUF Black clad Legion.

Normally, we only have one or two support weapons in our AVBCW games, with about 30 infantry (3×10 man sections) plus command and a tank or something. For bigger games we get more support weapons, so I got carried away. Here’s three HMGs:

The HMGs are all by Musketeer, but to spice things up a bit, I varied the command character using Empress figures such as the mortar commander. So each HMG stand is unique.

And here’s a mortar team by Empress from their Spanish Civil War range, and then a BEF (now Warlord) BOYS anti tank rifle team. On this occasion, I think the kneeling spotter is a bit silly as he’s going to give the game away of where they are !

You may now be aware that I often utter the phrase:

Bored now

(origin: Buffy)
As in: “The speaker is tired of this cr@p and is going to kill you.” Often used by parallel universe Willow before she does something horrifically nasty involving fangs and blood.

Filed under AVBCW

The Red Horde

29/05/2012

I unearthed the Reds I painted years ago…more than 40 ordinary troops:

I varied the troops with red armbands on right/left arms, and also red stripes on their fur hats;

As you can see Mark Copplestone is using a basic ‘dolly’ and tweaking it to achieve about 12 poses for each pack of infantry – not a criticism as many sculptors don’t even manage this number of poses for infantry !:

As a painter though who wants to field 30+ troops it gets too routine:

Hence the different paint jobs, with different markings and paint colours used to further expand the range of inDUHviduality of the figures

And first of the elite troops with the Budenovka:

I used a red/brown paint for the leather helmets, but this does not contrast well with the red stars on the front, so I’m either going to use a brown wash to enhance the difference in colour, or use a darker brown.

Filed under RCW / BoB

Red, Hot & Angry

28/05/2012

Red

Rummaging around for the Bolshevik standard bearers I knew I had, I found the Red commanders and characters, I’d also not planned on buying:

All figures by Copplestone Castings.

I have a small number of Bolshies I’ll photo and add shortly.

At this point in time, I was using metal washers, so as you will have seen the Bolshevik army standard bearer was on a smaller base than these characters – I’d decided characters went on larger bases then the peons. You’ll see more of this discrimination when I photograph my Chinese army as they were the first to get painted. The Whites also ‘suffer’ like this and they will all need to be rebased on standard sized bases. Renedra didn’t provide these bases ~10 years ago.

Hot


It’s so hot in here it’s running down the walls
And it’s dripping in my eyes from my hair
It’s hot it’s so hot
Living with a family that ate rock and roll
I discovered the golden rule
That big brother wasn’t watching me at all
Watching me at all

From The March Violets’ It’s Hot.

Here, it is very hot weather. Probably as hot as Mexico, and the cats don’t like it. Last month, it rained a lot and they forlornly look out the door, and asked me to “Turn the weather off“. This month, because it is so hot, they look at me and say: “Turn the weather off“. Spades however, has the answer:

Sleep upside down and inside out !

Angry

But my two new cats had a Mexicat stand off with Timmy. Timmy is the local feline thug, a Ginger Tom Cat who goes into everyone’s houses. I have found him upstairs in my house, and a neighbour has reported he’d destroyed a blind in order to get in through a window.

Photo is of all of them not looking at each other in the field behind my house by the place they get in/out of my garden.

And I’m angry because I got my hair/bird’s nest cut and they took a chunk out of my fringe so I look odd.
Odder than normal. 😦

In the meantime, I have also done a BBQ for my neighbour, a born again Christian spinster OAP and her friend from the Shetland Isles.
As you do.
😉

Filed under RCW / BoB

Standards & Banners

28/05/2012


Buddy you’re a young man hard man
Shoutin’ in the street gonna take on the world some day
You got blood on yo’ face
You big disgrace
Wavin’ your banner all over the place

From Queen’s We Will Rock You

My interests in AVBCW and BoB/RCW seem to have lead me down the path of fielding comparatively modern armies with anachronistic standards and banners.

Here’s some BoB Bolshevik standards – odd as I wasn’t really going to collect them, but then the Oooh, Shiney complex kicked in and the lead mist descended:

And the other sides of the banners – as you can see one has faded badly as I’d left her on the playroom windowsill for a few years and it’s south west facing…

All figures are Copplestone Castings.

And now some AVBCW stuff – BUF – including my Three Counties Legion one (Three Counties = Gloucester, Hereford & Worcestershire:

Figures from Musketeer and Empress Miniatures.

There’s not enough union flags being displayed IMHO in AVBCW games…
Malvern Hills Conservators & Abysinnians operating out of Malvern. Yes, Abysinnians ! See my AVBCW Malvern page.

NB: The two man stand (upper left) is holding a standard with the Malvern Town crest, and was a present to me from Tym – many thanks !

Miniatures by Musketeer and Empress Miniatures (Tym’s are Foundry Darkest Africa)

The AVBCW flags were created using images from the ‘net, printed out.

All the banners were then added to steel pins I got from Foundry, folded over and glued into place using my glue of choice, all purpose clear adehsive which takes a short while to set (shorter than PVA) and so keeps the moulded in wavy effect easier.

I then painted the edges of the flag – a very important tip !

Filed under AVBCW, Painting, RCW / BoB

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