Tag Archives: 28mm

Historicals, Misc, Pulp

A White Russian, And Other News

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A bit quieter around the Warbard right now; I’m having most of my gaming time sucked up by the Lead Painters League 5 and real life; Corey is however away for the weekend at the Dak-Kon convention up-Island and promises lots of photographs upon his return. He’ll probably be doing a run of Amulet of Fire at some point over the weekend, too.

white rus rifleman
A Brigade Games White Russian rifleman in fur hat, first of a unit. Click for full size.

I’ve been painting various things, most of which I’ll wait for the various rounds of LPL5 to reveal, but here’s one of my new projects – a small foray into the Russian Civil War with a unit of White Russian riflemen, figures from Brigade Games, paint scheme not completely historic but based on inspiration from the Osprey White Armies book and some of the great resources shared on LAF’s Back of Beyond forum. Expect to see five or six of his squadmates in a future LPL5 round!

Minor update, a few hours later: I posted this photo to LAF’s Back of Beyond forum and asked for feedback, and got some excellent advice from some of the local experts. I especially like the fact that Russian troops often had coloured cloth inner parts on their fur hats; this was news to me and it’s a chance to make them more colourful yet!

Fantasy, Galleries, Inspiration, Painting, Pulp

An LPL3 Archive

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As discussed in my last post on entering LAF‘s LPL5, here’s all ten of the images from my 2009 LPL3 entries. I finished somewhere in the bottom third of the pack, but certainly didn’t enter with any expectation of doing much better — I entered to give me incentive to work on my painting and photography, which worked out just fine!

LPL3’s bonus rounds were “Germans” for Round One, which I botched; the German WW1 stormtroopers I did for Round 7 were supposed to be my Round 1 bonus entry, but I ordered them too late. Round 5 was “Cavalry”, which I managed with my first 15mm fantasy unit painted in years. Round 10 was “Lost Worlds”, bonus points for an exploration team, a “native” team and “monster” or similar — pegged max bonus points there, and a photo I’m still proud of!

The entirety of LPL3 is still archived over on LAF.

  • LPL3 Round 1 – The Rancourt-James Safari, 1922
  • lpl3 2
    LPL3 Round 2 – Not Stopping For Lunch
  • lpl3 3
    LPL3 Round 3 – Merchant Sailors
  • LPL3 Round 4 – Dwarven Priests & Bodyguard
  • lpl3 5
    LPL3 round 5 – Cormyr Lances (15mm)
  • lpl3 6
    LPL3 Round 6 – Jim ‘Lucky’ Collins & His Crew
  • lpl3 7
    LPL3 Round 7 – Strosstruppen 1918
  • lpl3 8
    LPL3 Round 8 – Post-Apocalypse Family Robinson
  • lpl3 9
    LPL3 Round 9 – Mercenaries of Carpentras
  • LPL3 10
    LPL3 Round 10 – Pardon Me, Coming Through!
All ten of my LPL3 entries!
Pulp

Lead Painters League 5!

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lpl ad
[L]ess than a week left until Round One of the Lead Adventure Forum’s famous and awesome Lead Painters League opens; I entered in 2009 in LPL3, sat out 2010’s LPL4 for a variety of bad reasons, and decided to get my arse in gear and enter LPL5 this year when it was announced a while ago!

Three rounds of the LPL are themed rounds; you can enter anything at any time but get bonus points for following the theme. These theme rounds, especially the big blowout final round, Round 10, are among the most interesting of an already interesting league! LPL5’s special rounds are Round 1: Civilians; Round 5: Africa; Round 10: Scenes from the Movies. I got a good batch of civvies in for Round 1; I think I know what I’ll submit for Round 5 & Africa, but haven’t a damn clue what I’ll do for Round 10 this time around…

I think I’ll do a gallery post in a day or so of my LPL3 entries, just to inspire me to keep on the ball with LPL5 this year.

Entries have to be in by Saturday 12 March at 1200GMT, if you’re inspired to enter. I have no expectation of even getting into the top half of the standings, but it’s a great excuse to finish figures, take good photos, and kick my painting up a notch – entering LPL3 definitely made me a bolder, better painter!

Inspiration, Pulp

A Classic Lost World Image

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Via x-ray delta one on Flickr, this image (no source is given) is a classic “Lost World” illustration!

... garden tour gone bad!

I want a 28mm miniature of the guy on the left in the front, with bandaged head and machete! (I have lots of mighty hunter types with guns, but a shortage of assisstants, helpers, native guides and flunkies to fill out the rest of the safari party…)

Click through to Flickr for larger verisons. Lots of other neat pulpish and 20s/30s images on x-ray delta one’s photostream, too. Well worth checking out! Posted under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Terrain, Tutorials

Repainting Commercial Stone Walls

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Pegasus produce a range of prepainted plastic 28mm wargaming scenery; all the stuff I’ve seen has been well cast but mostly badly painted. The stone wall sections are good value for money, though, with six 6″ sections for $10 at my Friendly Local Gaming Store.

I picked up a pack, took them home and while repainting them, took enough photos to assemble into a quick, hopefully inspirational, how-to.

Stone Wall Painting Tutorial
(Click the image to see the full-size version at Flickr)

Pulp, Terrain

Building A 28mm Tent

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There’s been previous versions of this tutorial posted on Lead Adventure and the Speakeasy, but I figured it’s worth reposting here.

After killing a dress shirt (black ink leaking does that to white cotton) I realized it would work nicely as material for a large safari/expedition tent. I used a CD as the base, with small blobs of milliput holding long toothpicks vertically as the poles — three on the front, three on the back. After the putty holding the poles was dry (and reinforced with a bit of superglue) I wrapped thick sewing thread around the tips of the poles, with a dab of superglue holding it in place and a bit more superglue stiffening the thread after it was secured.

Model Tent
(click through to Flickr for a full-size image)

The fabric was cut twice as tall as it needed to be, and draped over the thread at the tops of each wall, with a generous layer of white glue on the inside of each piece. The walls were folded over, squeezed together and held whilst drying by clothspegs.

Two layers of shirt-weight cotton plus white glue makes for very solid walls!

Loitering Within Tent
(click through to Flickr for a full-size image)

The removable roof was made by first draping a piece of plastic wrap over the tent walls, then carefully folding and pinning the piece of glue-soaked cotton into position. I folded the eves up and trimmed them after the first coat of glue was dry, and it fits well; between the glue and the folding it’s more than rigid enough to hold it’s shape.

There’s an extra piece of cotton to form the floor, and most of the interior furniture is made of offcuts of basswood and styrene, with putty for the blanket and pillow. The maps were found on the internet, shrunk to appropriate tiny sizes, and printed out. The red coffee mug in the centre of the large map is a scrap of round styrene.

I’ve still got a good sized piece of this shirt; eventually more of it will live again as smaller tents to accompany this one. Recycling — it doesn’t just involve a blue bin, you know. Not for wargamers, anyway!

Pulp

The Seagull

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Seagull Boat
The 1933 PopMech “Seagull” boat.

In 1933, according to Popular Mechanics, there was the Seagull, which “…skims water at seventy miles an hour.”

In 28mm resin, in the present day, we have this:

28mm Seagull
28mm Seagull

Painted and lightly modified back in 2009 by myself, produced by the eccentric and excellent Tobsen77 from Germany. The paintjob is inspired equally by classic wood-and-white yachts and the gleaming metal of The Spirit of Saint Louis and other 20s/30s projects.

It still hasn’t appeared in a game, actually. One of these days it will, possibly as the one-man escape craft of a dashing-but-dastardly Leader of the Evil Conspiracy. Can’t you just picture it zooming away from a dock, leaving hapless minions and frustrated pursuers equally behind?

(My take on the Seagull has previously appeared on Lead Adventure and elsewhere, but heck, it deserves another moment to itself.)

Links

Links: General & Personal Wargaming

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General & Personal Games Sites:

Update, 22 May 2011: Work has started on weeding this list. Don’t expect fast progress, but at least it’s something. This time, I went through and tagged all the Geocities URLs as Dead Links. Actual link fixing will be happening as and when I get to it – feel free to contact us if you have suggested links or want to report a new URL for a site!

Because this section has gotten so large, I’m working on some ways of reorganizing it. I don’t want to go to an alphabetical listing, and many of these sites cover a lot of different areas of the wargaming hobby, so I’m going to start organizing by “Mostly…” categories, using the (in my opinion) most prominent, interesting or best area of a site to figure out where it goes. Eg “Mostly Painting”, “Mostly Galleries”, etc etc. I’m still going to wind up with a large list of unclassified sites, but at least a rough subject sort will be possible… I’m always looking for feedback.

So far, I’ve got The Essential Wargaming Sites, General Wargaming Sites, Mostly Painting, Mostly Paper Models, Mostly Scenery & Terrain and Mostly Links.

Continue reading Links: General & Personal Wargaming →