Painting

Lead Painters League 7!

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Over on my favourite wargaming forum ever, the Lead Adventure Forum (LAF), the approximately annual Lead Painters League painting contest has begun to accept participants. This is the 7th time LPL has been run, and it’s always great fun to spectate and vote, and even more fun (although also more work!) to enter the contest. I participated in LPL3 in 2009 and LPL5 in 2011, and have sent my entries in to participate in LPL7 now.

It’s a fun, friendly competition, very much in keeping with the overall spirit of LAF. Participants submit photographs of teams of five (or more) figures; they’re randomly paired with one of the other participants, and may the best team win! The use of groups of five figures – all of whom have to appear in the main photograph together – makes LPL a balance between painting skill, photography skill and presentation skill. It’s a great chance to stretch my painting abilities and my photography skills, and clear unpainted or unfinished figures out of the lead mountain.

I should be able to finish this year’s LPL, including all three bonus rounds, without buying any more figures. It helps that all three of the bonus rounds are close to areas of interest, and it’s nice to put a ten-week fifty figure dent in the unfinished figure pile!

The rules are in this LAF thread, and as I write this there are only 18 entries in for 50 total slots, so get to it and enter!

Conventions

Trumpeter Salute 2013 After-Action Report

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Corey has already done a nice report from the field on his gaming Friday evening, with some great photos, but here’s the rest of the weekend from my perspective!

We headed over from Victoria Friday afternoon, making good time and even seeing orca whales from the ferry, which I haven’t seen in years. Friday evening I spent flying in Rene’s perpetual World War One air combat game. I was doing fairly well until a Fokker Dr1 slipped in behind my Camel and blew me away in one savage burst!

camel
Smoked Camel! Attempting to defend a Brisfit bomber, I let a Fokker Dr.1 triplane slip in behind me and he blows my engine clean off it’s mounts! Click to view larger over on Flickr.

Saturday turned out to be “Soviet Saturday” for me! I played the 30mm Dust Warfare skirmish system with Martin (an old friend) and his nephew Riley (this was Riley’s first gaming convention!) and another gamer in the morning, Weird War Germans vs Soviets over cardboard ruins Martin and I had been up until 2am assembling! It’s a fast system with some interesting features, and I want to have another bash at it at some point.

Saturday afternoon it was time for my big Russian Civil War game, with a full set of six players and loads of toys on the table – the White Russians had a SPAD XIII for air support and a field gun, while the Reds had a huge horde of cavalry, an armoured car and an armoured train! The cavalry did better this game than they have ever done before, completely shattering one wing of the defending White force by themselves.

reds
Red forces advance! Sailors on either side of the train and armoured car, and a huge Red cavalry unit in front, heading towards the woods!

We rounded out Saturday evening with more Russian-German action, this time a WW2 Eastern Front scenario of a scratch Soviet force trying to hold off flanking attacks by German panzers. The 15mm figures and vehicles were really well done, and the terrain was elegant. It was a close fight, with the Germans losing a fair number of tanks to Soviet infantry but being positioned by the end of the game to push their untouched reinforced infantry units into the Russian villages with their remaining tanks in support.

Sunday Martin and I played Colin’s very nice and well-run War of 1812 scenario, a re-creation of the Battle of Crysler’s Farm 200 years after it actually happened. I played the invading Americans with two other gamers, and we got our asses absolutely handed to us by the British/Canadian/Mohawk defenders. Nevertheless, we apparently did better than the Americans had actually done historically – we did manage to drive one of the two big British infantry regiments from the field, but the effort wrecked my brigade, while Canadian militia light troops and British cannon drove the rest of the Americans off!

1812
The Americans advance confidently toward the British-Canadian defenders. A few turns later they’d be lurching backward in a considerably less controlled fashion!

The rest of my twenty photos from Trumpeter Salute 2013 are over on my Flickr account. Corey and Martin (who both have more capable cameras than I do!) both took more great photos, so I’ll try to get some of those up here on the Warbard soon.

Conventions

An evening in the air at Trumpeter Salute 2012

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Trumpeter Salute, the best annual miniatures convention on the west coast of Canada (sorry, Gottacon. Your relentless focus on GW turns me off) is happening again this weekend and I am again reminded of why I come to conventions: to be inspired.

This evening found both Brian and I playing aerial games, although he had considerably less success with his World War One 1/72 than I did in Leviathans, where I fairly handily destroyed a British aerial cruiser and destroyer. Our third member, recovering GW player Sean, was evolving. Or something involving tails. I didn’t ask.

And the spending has begun. I picked up some Saxons for my eventual Dux Brittanium, Sean some ECW/30 Years War and Brian also managed to spend a great deal of money. And we haven’t even hit Pulp Miniatures yet.

But now, pictures:

Leviathan cruiser on cruiser action

German World War One aircraft, 1/72 scale

British World War Two aircraft, 1/300 scale

More photos tomorrow, including of Brian’s RCW game.

Historicals, Painting

All Of Them

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Doing final organization for my Trumpeter Salute Russian Civil War game this evening, I did something I’ve never actually done in the two years of this project — laid out every single painted, game-ready RCW figure and model I have together. The lighting in my dining room is awful, so this is a terrible photo, but it’s fun to see everything laid out for review!

rcw_review
Whites on the left, Bolsheviks on the right. See text for more details, and click for larger.

On the left, the White Russians. Officers and machine gun in front, two dozen Cossack riflemen, then a couple more officers, then 32 rifles from a regular rifle regiment. All of my White Russian figures are from Brigade Games.

In the centre, the 77mm field gun (nominally Red), sixteen cavalry, one armoured car, and one protected railcar. These figures are (so far, at least) all deliberately painted without much in the way of identifying insignia, so they can and have appeared for both sides in our games.

On the right, the Bolsheviks. Officers, machine gun and banners in front, and the long column is forty ordinary Red riflemen. Far right is twenty Red Sailors and their leaders, and behind them is the Red militia of 15 rifles. The Bolsheviks all happen to be from Copplestone.

This gives me a total of 56 White rifles, 75 Bolshevik rifles, and a grand total figure count (including gun crews) of exactly 190 figures, apparently. I’ll tick over 200 fairly soon, as there’s another round of White rifles to paint up. That’ll pretty much finish off the regular infantry, although I do want another section or two of Red sailors. After that it’s off to more of the toys and quirky bits, tchankas, armoured cars and such!

Historicals, Painting

The Workbench This Week, 3 April 2013

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Even more chaotic than usual as I prep for Trumpeter Salute 2013 this coming weekend!

sandbags
Protected car festooned with Bolshie flags, and other random clutter!

The centrepiece is, of course, the sandbag-and-rail tie flatcar that will be one of the centrepieces of my Russian Civil War game. I got the sandbags to a satisfactory paint job, and if I have some extra time before Friday I’ll do one last round of drybrushing and weathering on the whole car. I can’t really call it an “armoured” train car, so I’ve been referring to it as the “sandbag car” or a “protected railcar”. Anyway, it looks good, especially with some red Bolshie flags hanging off it to proclaim it’s current owners to the world.

The US Navy gunboat sailors crowded around the back of the railcar are part of my “Well, I’m painting, might as well paint something else” drive. They’ve sat on my painting bench for a terribly long time — you can see them in the blurry background of quite a number of previous workbench photos on this blog… a bit of extra paint moves them slightly closer to being done, at least!

The six extra Russian cavalry (Brigade Games Cossack figures, to be precise) are also coming along nicely. That’s the Cossack horses in amongst the sailors there.

Three days until Trumpeter! (although I only really have Wednesday evening to myself, with other commitments Thursday then off to Vancouver Friday… yikes…)

Links, Science Fiction, Stargrunt

Links of Interest, 28 March 2013

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Short links of interest post while I buckle down and get more cavalry painted for our Russian Civil War games — why is it that six damn horses take as much effort as two dozen infantry, anyway?

Burn In Designs do paint racks, buildings and other laser cut stuff. I rather like the vertical paint racks that minimize the footprint they take up.

Mad Mecha Guy do more lasercut stuff, this time 15mm science fiction buildings and bits. The chap behind MMG is also apparently the sculptor of Ground Zero Games’ awesome new engineering mechs.

Terrain For Hippos is an entertaining blog with loads of photo tutorials of short, straightforward terrain projects, all presented by a semi-literate cartoon hippo named “Grot”.

Speaking of painting horses, I just discovered this huge infographic JPG via DeviantArt, which goes into all the many variations of horse colour, including useful information like which colour of mane, tail or hoof is usually seen with which coat colour.

Finally, the interesting folks over at Naval & Military Press have just started their Easter Sale which means 20% off across the board on a huge and fascinating array of specialized military history titles! I’m saving this quarter’s gaming budget for Trumpeter Salute in ten days, but NMP’s booklists are always full of tempting items!

Historicals

When the Chinese met the train, a RCW game

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In a cavalcade of firsts this Sunday, my (mostly) freshly-painted Chinese met their match in our new armed train, all being played on our new gaming mat, some 6′ by 9′ of fully flocked canvas drop cloth.

The game, a preview of Brian’s Trumpeter Salute convention game, was  the defense of a small Russian town by a combined White and Chinese force. Thankfully for the Whites, they had managed to scrounge up a field gun plus a machine gun. The wealthy Chinese warlord Wu Do also brought one along to the party. Facing against them were a large Red force, including the newly-built armed train and the armoured car.

Opening shot. Red armed train the back, Whites in the foreground. Chinese are out of shot to the left.

Due to a lot of luck, the Chinese ended up being the central troops in the game. They had lots of officers and their cards kept coming up, so they quickly occupied the central building and started taking fire. Another squad rushed up a hill, only to discover what happens when a HMG opens up on you when you cannot respond.

The maddest moment of the game came when Sean’s Reds cavalry attempted to run down the White field gun. The gun was right in the middle of town, which meant that his close assault was rudely interrupted by two squads of Chinese, including the Warlord’s aggressive Household troops. This did not end well for the Red cavalry, which were slaughtered to a man (and horse).

Red cavalry attempt to run down the White gun. Chinese infantry and Wu Do in the foreground.

By the end the train had done its job and had cleared a route into the town. We called it when it became clear that the Chinese would retreat (having no interest in defending this particular muddy bit of Russia to the death) and the Whites were too weak to hold back the largely untouched Red infantry (even if they couldn’t move due to bad card luck.)

(As usual, we used Through the Mud and Blood from Too Fat Lardies. An excellent rule set all ’round)

Historicals, Pulp

Chinese Warlord Cards & Blinds

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Corey recently started painting up a Chinese Warlord force from Copplestone 28mm figures to extend our Russian Civil War gaming in a more Back of Beyond direction, and he’s actually getting units painted and ready for the tabletop (normally I bug him about being the world’s slowest painter…) so I sat down with Inkscape and created a basic set of cards so his Chinese Warlord forces can run in our Through the Mud & the Blood-powered games.

This isn’t quite the full set I made for the Red & White Russian forces; it’s currently missing a LOT of the cards needed for a full M&B game. It works just fine for a Chinese force allied with a White Russian force, though, which is how they’ll be appearing in the next while, until the force gets bigger.

The PDF is four pages long. The first two pages are the cards, set up to match the earlier Russian cards. Page three has the basic graphic needed for colourful markers for a Warlord force – we use these to mark units that are activated or units that are on overwatch (what M&B calls “Wait For It”). The last page is a pair of blinds.

RCW_Warlord_complete_24March2013 — PDF, 349Kb — this file is Copyright 2013 Wirelizard Design/Brian Burger; permission granted to copy or print for personal use.

I’ll do up a full set of Warlord Chinese cards eventually. When I redid all my Russian cards in January I reconfigured the SVG file in Inkscape to make it a LOT easier to edit and create new versions. I’ll also be producing a set of British cards, so my long-neglected Brits in tropical kit can join the Back of Beyond madness in proper style.

Pulp, Reviews, Terrain

28mm Pulp Baggage Review

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Phil of Slug Industries (and Adventures in Wargaming, his personal blog) has recently released a set of 28mm pulp luggage. Cast in resin, you get six steamer trunks, four suitcases and three hatboxes, a nice selection to dress up any pulpish scene, provide objectives for your skulking players to try to locate, or just provide cover on a dock or train station platform!

This plethora of options is especially broad when you decide, as I did, to order three full sets of this luggage! Counting the three miscasts Phil threw into my order, I now have 42 individual pieces of baggage. Douglas Adams would have approved of this number, and so do I.

baggage
Thirteen pieces of baggage from 6mmPhil/Slug Industries. Scale provided by a Copplestone Bolshevik on the left and a Pulp Figures US Navy sailor on the right. The grid on the cutting mat is half-inch. Click for larger.

The baggage pieces are all cleanly cast in a light grey resin, and I didn’t see a single air bubble or miscast on my sets. The largest of the steamer trunks is just over waist high on a 28mm figure; the smallest hat box just slightly bigger than a typical 28mm figure’s head. Most of the flash rubbed off with my thumbnail; a couple of the smaller pieces had a bit of more solid flash around the bottom edge that needed a moment’s work with knife and sandpaper to deal with. Even two of the three “miscasts” I got with my order are perfectly usable, with just a bubble or two around the handles on the sides marking them as “miscasts” – I’ve paid full price for resin pieces with bigger casting flaws in the past!

The largest of the steamer trunks is 1.5″ long, 7/8″ wide and 3/4″ tall (37mm x 23mm x20mm); the smallest trunk on the far right of the photo above is 5/8″ x 1/2″ x 7/16″ (16mm x 12mm x 12mm).

I’m busy getting ready for the Trumpeter Salute convention in two weeks and contemplating a run at LAF’s Lead Painter’s League 7 which starts just after that, so I can’t promise I’ll have painted examples of this baggage to show off terribly soon, but I will get some of it done after Trumpeter and post pictures here. It should be fun to paint, the details are nice and crisp. Metal steamer trunks can come in a wide variety of colours, and battered, worn leather for most of the suitcases is also easy and fun to paint.

I should add, in closing, that Phil doesn’t currently have the luggage listed on his Slug Industries website, but purchase details can be found at this thread on LAF’s Bazaar forum. Everyone needs more baggage to haul around!

Painting, Tutorials

Trying A Wet Palette

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I’d heard of “wet palette painting” before, but for no particular reason hadn’t sought out information on the technique or looked into it at all. Then a few nights ago I was rummaging around among YouTube’s wargaming-related videos, as one does, and this wet palette howto video from Corvus Miniatures caught my attention.

Turns out to be pretty straightforward – an old container lid from the recycling bin, paper towel, water, baking parchment. We had all those things knocking around the kitchen, so I set up a wet palette and tried it out while doing the main blocking colours on six Cossack horses from Brigade Games and a swamp-monster thing from Reaper.

Compared to the dry palette I’m used to (an old CD!) you get hugely extended working time with your paints, which is especially useful when you’re block-coating six 28mm horses and a highly textured monster. I forsee fewer sad little blobs of half-dry unusable paint in my future! Blending is also easier, which is nice when you want slight variations to make your horses (or whatever else) look more interesting.

Wargaming & Such (formerly Brian's Wargaming Pages)