Vallejo Paints

I've been trying different paints on and off for a while now and while I love my Tamiya paints they are just a huge pain in the ass to work with.  Great finish, a great range of colours and the price cannot be beat but the actual process of using the paints, the smell and the fact that some colours tend to react violently with others makes them unfun to work with.

The Vallejo range has always been on my radar but I've kept away from them, mainly due to cost but since I needed to get some more paints for the Fallschirmjagers I figured I'd just bite the bullet and get some.  I really like the idea of the dropper type bottle and the fact they mix well with GW stuff is a bonus.  And given the range of GW and Mr Hobby stuff I have I shouldn't need to get much more of the Valleo range until the other stuff runs out or dries up.

So I grabbed the following colours from Gus at Zepnix Wargames based on the following painting reference I found on the Warlord Games website.

German Grey (Vallejo 995): Uncovered helmet
Black (Vallejo 950): Webbing, pistol holster, rifle ammo pouches, boots, bayonet scabbard
German Field Grey (Vallejo 830): Trousers and breadbag
Luftwaffe Uniform blue (Vallejo 816): Luftwaffe tunic, field cap, officer's peaked cap
German Camo Orange Ochre (Vallejo 824): Canteen
Middlestone (Vallejo 882): Panzerfaust
Camouflaged jump smocks and helmet covers (Beige 821, Green 823, Brown 984)
Military Green  (Vallejo 975): Mess tin and gas mask container

Gus even threw in a bottle of the Army Painter strong tone Quick Shade ink which is fantastic for a few reasons: firstly it was free :), secondly my GW inks are running low and thirdly I've heard good things about their ink range and have wanted to try it out.

So I'll probably start painting the Black Tree Fallschirmjager models either tonight or tomorrow night, photos will follow as soon as I have something worth sharing.

Ok since I just couldn't put you through one more boring post without photos I thought I'd share some of the not so blurry photos of the church in action last Saturday night.

I just love my Zuzzy matt, the texture here while not totally appropriate just looks amazing.  The British had the upper hand for a while and managed to force almost half of the German forces to retreat into this this scorched earth garden.

Ok I'm off to undercoat my first squad of minis.

10 Hours and 39 Minutes

I just received an email from em-4 miniatures stating that my order has been shipped, after being placed only 10 hours and 39 minutes earlier today.  This is just amazing service, almost unheard of really.  I'm used to an order sitting in the "processing your order" queue for around a week or two, or longer... yes Black Tree I'm looking at you.

To be honest I buy my dice, tokens and bases from em-4 simply because their prices cannot be beaten, now I can add amazing service to the list.

Gutshot Action Slips

Gutshot went down rather well with the guys from the club and but two things kept it from flowing as smooth as it could have: firstly I hadn’t read the rules as well as I should have and spent quite a while looking things up, especially hand to hand combat.  Secondly we were using plain playing cards for the action deck and each character was assigned a number and took an action when their card was turned over.  This led to a lot of “so who’s 7” and “didn’t 4 die last turn?”

Every time we played I’d say “look I’ll make up some cards with photos of the miniatures and this won’t be a problem next time”… and for whatever reason I wouldn’t make the cards.

Well now I have.

I’ve got another 9 miniatures I need to paint before I can make cards for those, for now though this 12 should suffice.  I need to start basing all the cardstock buildings as some of them are starting to distort.

Miniatures and terrain… check.  Action cards and tokens… check.  Read the rules… check.  Time for a Gutshot campaign methinks.

Works in Progress?

I’ve got so many projects on the go at the moment I feel I need to make a list of where everything is at in an attempt to work out where my time should be best spent.

So in no particular order here I go:

15mm Napoleonic Skirmish

I’ve got the Russians painted but I need to finish them off with a wash and a varnish.  Haven’t done anything with the British.  Need some terrain too.  Song of Drums and Shakos is a little particular about the terrain quantity and size so I’ll need to sort that out first.

28mm WW2

Where I’m spending most of my time at the moment.  A day or two of painting should finish most of the Germans and British I’ve already started.  I’ve got a platoon each of US Airborne and German Fallschirmjagers that haven’t even got an undercoat yet.  A couple infantry guns, anti tank guns and a Flakvierling are in various stages of (dis)assembly and painting.  The terrain is eating up most of my time here but the results are looking promising.  Sick kids and general laziness have stalled any progress this weekend.

10mm WW2

Haven’t touched the Pendraken stuff in a while.  Probably not a huge amount to finish painting here, maybe 20 stands or so (they paint up quickly).  I just need to finish off the bases on the stuff I have painted.  I’m happy with the terrain I’ve done for this so far.  I need to get a decent table mat, I’m looking at the Euro Fields one from Hotz Mats.  Could use it for 28mm too, the flip side of it is plain green which is also useful.  I should just buy one but I might make a trip to the fabric store and see what I can find first.

28mm Western Skirmish

Not much to do here really… sort of.  Most of the minis are painted up.  Enough for five of us to play with a heap of opponents to shoot at.  I have the Hotz Mat which is great.  The cardstock buildings are starting to warp which is not surprising but disappointing.  To fix these I going to add balsa wood guides and mount them onto MDF.  This means I won’t be able to stack them for storage anymore but it will allow for some little details to be added to the bases.

28mm Superheroes

I really need to get this on the table more.  The kids are asking me to play a lot and I keep putting it off because I don’t have the right terrain and the minis aren’t based yet.  I plan to resolve the basing issues this week and just playing with what I have terrain wise right now.  I’ve got plans on making some Gotham City rooftop terrain tiles but I won’t start that for fear of stalling the WW2 terrain even more.  Batman will just have to chase The Joker through a ruined European Village for a few episodes.  Then again I could just get the HeroClix maps laminated and use those for a while.  May even be able to simplify the game for the kids by using the grid rather than measuring… hmmm I’ll have to think about that one for a while.

28mm Star Wars/Sci-fi

This is another blank slate where all I have are the rules and some miniatures.  Although like the superheroes I could use the Star Wars Miniatures maps to start with and the 1” squares may prove useful there too.  There’s also the 28mm mass combat rules I started based on Blitzkrieg Commander.  It’s playable but I need to make some more bases and build more terrain and lots of it.

1/600 Aircraft

It’s been ages since I got my aircraft onto the table.  There’s a heap of aircraft to paint up yet and I haven’t even touched the US and Japanese aircraft.  All I need are some magnets and a good weekend at the painting table.  And as much as I love my hex map, it is getting harder to roll it out flat after being in storage for so long.  Maybe I could get the Euro Fields matt printed double sided with a 1.5” hex pattern on the other side, more expensive but twice as useful.

Wargods

Considering the amount of money I’ve spend in these minis I really need to get them on the table soon.

And Everything Else

Doctor Who, Song of Blades and Heroes, Fear and Faith, Bloodbowl, Dungeonbowl, Mud and the Blood, Modern Aircraft… oh the list goes on.

So What To Do About It?

The 28mm WW2, Superheroes and Sci-fi skirmish are equally vying for my time at the moment.  So in order of priority* based on:

• How much time/effort/money is required to get it on the table.
• How long it has been since I promised my kids we’d actually play or play again.
• How interested I am in playing.
• How interested everyone else is in playing.

* subject to change at any given moment.

It goes something like this:

1. 28mm WW2 Skirmish
2. Supers
3. Western Skirmish
4. 10mm WW2
5. Star Wars/Sci-fi

The rest of the list gets too hard from here on in.  The top three are pretty much focused on terrain building and once I get the majority of the WW2 stuff knocked over I can see me working on a few pieces of each at any given time.

Dave Graffam Buildings – Wrecked House Part 1

While waiting for the glue to dry on the split ruin building I started working on the wrecked house.  This build was a lot faster than the previous one, so fast in fact that I found myself waiting for glue to dry on this building.

While the column supports were optional in the previous build they’re really needed in this one.  Not so much for the strength in my case but to actually hold the floor in place while I drill and pin it to the walls.  The cardstock columns looked too fiddly to muck around with so I drug out the ever useful balsa wood.

Two 6.5mm strips back to back, cut to length and then glue to the floor.  I gave the glue on the floor fifteen minutes and then glue on the upper floor.  I was happy enough with the results that I added two to the other building too.  An inkwash and a light drybrush should do the job when it’s all dried.

A couple shots to give you and idea of the size of the wrecked house.

While waiting for glue to dry elsewhere I added a few bits of rubble here and there.

After all the construction so far there’s about a third of the MDF sheet left, which may be enough for the tower and ruined cottage.

But even working on three buildings per $5 sheet we’re only talking about $1.66 per building.  Not too shabby at all.

Dave Graffam Buildings – Split Ruin Part 2

Spent a little more time on the split ruin this morning and it just keeps looking better.  I eventually settled on using cardstock for the roof and it looks better than I thought.  It helped that on this model you fold the roof over so it is actually two sheets of cardstock thick.  I’ll have to do that with all the buildings I think.

Here’s a few shots of the building assembled and based.

I’ve added a little bit of sawdust, pebbles and wood chips to add a little 3D rubble.  The rubble on the artwork is great and won’t get in the way of the miniatures so I’ll leave that alone.

Working on the wrecked house now while waiting for the glue to set on this one to dry.  Tonight I’ll start painting the edges of the MDF and give the rubble a grey/black paint/wash and then tomorrow night I’ll look at flocking the rest of the base.  If I’m feeling adventurous enough and I’m not too tired from work I’m thinking of putting a little stone wall near the side door, we’ll see.

These Dave Graffam buildings really are the business.  They’re simple to build, look good and still allow you to get your hobby groove on what’s not to love?

Dave Graffam Buildings – Split Ruin Part 1

Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?  Well I’m no John “Hannibal” Smith (Murdoch maybe) but I’m always happy to improvise.  I had intended on using 3mm MDF and a hot glue gun to put my first Dave Graffam building together but a few test runs of the hot glue gun showed that I had maybe 4-5 seconds before the glue dried too much to reposition the MDF.  This was just a little too quick for me to use it on my first build (ie I’m fit to bouts of procrastination).

First up I cut out one side of a wall section and then traced it onto the MDF.  I took care to make sure the straight edges were in fact straight but the ruined edges I took less acre with.  This is a ruined building after all and I intend to paint the edges so I can hide am edge that’s out a 1mm or two.

I went with adhesive spray to stick the artwork to the MDF because it dries fast and doesn’t tend to run or drip everywhere.

One of the reasons I couldn’t use the hot glue gun is that I wanted to “pin” the walls together.  I have a roll of 0.9mm wire and a 1mm drill bit in a hand drill and it cuts into the MDF like butter.  I drilled into the wall section about a centimetre and glue them in with super glue.

Then drill two holes into the opposing wall section, line the edge with MDF glue and press together.  I let that join dry while I cut out the rest of the artwork and MDF for the opposite wall.  It’s starting to look good even with just three walls and the floor artwork sitting in place.  Again I left it to dry while I cut the floor pieces.

Floor pieces all cut, glued and ready to put into place.  MDF glue on all joining edges and two pins on the left and right edges really give the floors strength.  Not that there will be a lot of weight on them but there’s no chance of getting any bowing that happens with some multi story cardstock buildings.  This build does come with some columns to insert which would help with a cardstock building but I won’t bother with those.  I may paint up some balsa wood pieces and stick them in but I’ll wait and see, they may just get in the way of moving the miniatures around.

Only have the roof left to build now, I was going to just make it out of card but I’m thinking I’ll get some balsa wood or try to find some 1.5mm-2mm thick card.

 

Once the roof goes on I’ll base the building on some 3mm MDF and add some piles to the floors to help break up the “empty box” look that it has going.  Some small off cuts, pebbles and sand should do the job.  One of the other Graffam buildings has some furniture to build so I’ll make some for this too.

About 3 hours of build time to get this far and I’m guessing maybe another hour or two to finish off.  It’s a little slower than I had hoped but things will be a lot quicker on the next ones now that I’ve worked out how to factor in the extra thickness of the MDF to allow the internal walls to match up with the external walls.

Once the construction is finished and the paint dried I’ll give it a coat of matt varnish, especially the floors and outer walls where most of the handling will be.  A great thing is that if a section does get damaged all I have to do is print that page out and glue it over top of the damaged bit, easy fixed!

The actual size of the building is surprising too, I had imagined it much smaller.  A squad could quite easily hunker down inside.  The wrecked house and ruined tower builds are going to be downright impressive!

Back to the 28mm Germans and Long Grass

I’m making one last push to get the Black Tree Design 28mm Germans finished this weekend.  So far it looks like I’ll get the full platoon done by Sunday, this post however isn’t about the Germans but more about the bases they’re um based on.

I wanted to put some tufts of long grass on a few of the bases to help break up the flat look the green flock I’m using causes.  I was looking on eBay when I thought I probably should do them myself.  I tried this method a few years ago and it turned out crap.  Back then I blamed the technique for the bad results, unfortunately the current results prove that it was my implementation that needed improving.

I had an old brush laying around that was gunked up with glue and had the right looking bristles for what I wanted.

Cut a small length of around an inch or so.

Fold it in half, this takes practice and the first few lots of bristles shot our of my hand and across the table.

Twist the end nice and tight, dab a small ball of super glue on the end and wait 4-5 seconds.

Then simply put it on the base of the miniature.  I’m just using the cheap superglue you get in packs at $2 and I find I can stick the tuft on the base and in about 10 seconds I can use a toothpick to move the bristles around and they stay where I want them.

Tomorrow once they’re completely dry I’ll use some small scissors or nail clippers to cut them to the lengths I’m after.

One nice effect you can see in the photos at the top of the post is that the superglue makes the base of the bristles go white when it oxidises.  I’ll subdue that somewhat later with a green/yellow ink wash.  For some bases I’ll try putting little dabs of paint on the ends of the bristles to make them look like they’re flowering.

More photos of the Germans themselves once they’re done.

Paper or PDF?

Every now and then I’ll get an email like this one:

Hello Tim Coombes,

You can re-download SuperSystem 3 to get the latest version, the 3rd printing.

Please follow the links to download the file(s).
They will be active for you until Aug/01/2010
SuperSystem Third Edition: http://www.wargamedownloads.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thank you
Greg Moore
http://www.wargamedownloads.com

This is one of the main reasons that I prefer the pdf rulebook over the paper versions.  Why bother with FAQ’s and addendums when you can just get a corrected copy of the book?

I still print out the pdf books for use at the game table as I like to highlight certain rules and passages to help when playing the games, not something I’d like to do to an actual rulebook.

I’m very keen to get my hands on an iPad or similar device so I can try that out at the game table.  Having all the rules at your fingertips in an electronic format allows you to search entire libraries for certain keywords.  Better still it allows you to look stuff up on the Internet when the rulebooks don’t seem to have the answer you’re after.  Hmmm… maybe I could buy my wife one for Christmas.

Making the Hero Cards

With the final look and feel of the cards sorted (well for now anyway) I decided to get a couple printed out and laminated.

I started by cutting out the cards, using a cutter makes quick work of this.  Then fold the cards along the centre line.

 

My first thought was to put six cards per A4 sheet but I ended up sliding in the last two once the sheet had taken and was rolling though.  It’s very important to hold the sheet while it’s moving through the laminator as you don’t want the cards to move.

Once its though you’ll have something like this.

And when you’ve done them all you’ll have this.

Which after you’ve cut up will give you this.

I just use scissors when cutting these out, they don’t need to be stacked or shuffled so their size isn’t so important.  Just make sure to leave 3-4mm around the edges to keep the seal and your fingers will also appreciate it if you round off the corners.

I’m working my way though both the DC and Marvel universes and trying to match up miniatures I have with stats that have already been created for the Super System.  There’s a few annoying omissions such as no Harley Quinn but that’s something I really can’t complain about and it’s something I can remedy by sitting down and nutting it out myself.

Now to sort out the rest of the miniatures.  I started this ages ago and have got six boxes like these full of teeny little heroes.

Just got two more boxes to unpack and sort…

Almost 2,000 of the little buggers before I stopped counting.  What else can I say except I love those 99 cent deals on eBay.

I’m thinking about debasing some of these and putting them on the 30mm rolled shoulder display bases such as these from eM4.

A bit of work but they should look nice.