Mythic Battles: Pantheon - Scenery

These are the terrain pieces from Mythic Battles: Pantheon - a selection of 'Broken Columns', 'Crow Trees' and 'Lugubrious Trees'. Lugubrious, huh? That's the first (and probably the last) time I've ever heard any gaming piece described as lugubrious. Anyway, they are suitably twisted and gnarled as befits Mythic Battles rather dystopian vibe. 

The trees were modified a bit. Some of the 'Crow Trees' had their avian occupants clipped off so they don't look quite so identical. The 'Lugubrious Trees' all had an animal skull and a Spartan shield moulded on, most of which I carved off. A couple of the trees had replacement shields added, scrounged from the bits box. I think they were from Foundry miniatures originally. As the shields had identical patterns cast on, I filed one smooth for variety and painted a Classical Greek style dolphin on it freehand. This took a bit of trial and error, not made any easier by the fact that I had already glued the shield in place before I decided to paint the design, meaning the overhanging branches kept getting in the way of my paintbrush. Hopeless planning on my part, but the final result was worth the effort

The trees all come with integral bases, but the columns don't. As they are plastic and very light, they are rather prone to being accidentally displaced when in play, especially the taller ones. To give them a bit more stability I decided to base them.  They are intended to be individual pieces on the game board, so that heroes and monsters can pick them up and hurl them about, but I decided the taller columns would be based in pairs as they are most at risk of being toppled inadvertently. There are still enough single column pieces to replace a 'double' piece when one gets thrown and removed. The bases were built up using thin plasticard and textured with a mix of PVA glue, filler and fine grit. Small stones were used to represent rocks and rubble. After painting, the addition of  some grass tufts completed the bases.

As a bonus, the trees and the broken columns will do double-duty in other games, but it did make me realise just how little usable table-top terrain I have. I suspect that the focus of my efforts in the New Year will be to rectify that.

The Perfect Captain - A Farewell

We take many things for granted. Things that have been around for so long that it feels like they have always been here - and always will be. But, my friends, all good things must come to an end.

If you follow any of the popular wargames forums, it probably hasn't escaped your notice that The Perfect Captain's website is set to close sometime this month (October 2020). We can only hope that all the files will be available in another format, but that isn't very certain right now. TPC do have a Facebook group, (I will refrain from expressing my views on FB for fear of upsetting someone) but I shall miss the webpage.

I can't remember now how I first stumbled across The Perfect Captain, but it was the discovery of their Red Actions! rules that first kindled my continuing interest in the Russian Civil War. 

What I do remember is being struck by the quality of presentation, with graphics that would not look out of place in a commercial rule set.

And here's the thing. These are not commercial products. Everything on the Perfect Captain's website is available 100% free, gratis and for nothing. Their only request is that if you download the rules you make a donation (or give up some time) in support of a charity of your choice. Undoubtedly some will have ignored this request, but I like to think most wargamers are basically decent and willing to give something back. I can't help wondering how much all those donations have amounted to over the years. So apart from providing us with a wonderful and inspirational wargaming resource, perhaps The Perfect Captain's enduring legacy is also a humanitarian one. It's a heartwarming thought.

Thanks and farewell, TPC.

Love this artwork

Unit cards for Ironbow - perfectly capturing that period feel

The Perfect Captain channels Blue Peter.
Make your own sanides-style tablet for the Hoplomachia rulebook 

Red Actions! cards and counters. 
Where have I seen that face before comrade?

Rebel Scum!

And proud of it!

Some figures almost paint themselves. Others are a real trial of patience. These guys fall into the latter category. Truth be told, they were a real b✽✽✽✽r to paint, but they turned out right in the end.

These are the Rebel Troopers from FFG's Star Wars: Legion core set. They've been sitting on my painting desk in various stages of completion for months now. They are nice figures and I was looking forward to painting them, but first I had to make some decisions about the kind of scenery I intend to use and some appropriate colour schemes. I know there are people who happily mix Snowtroopers with Shoretroopers, or forest-camo clad Rebel Commandos with Tauntauns - but I am not one of them.

Early on I decided that my Star Wars: Legion forces would be operating in arid to semi-arid environments. At a stretch they would also have to look okay in more tropical or temperate settings, but they would not be seen (dead or alive) on Hoth.

With that in mind I decided to go with lots of pale sandy and earthy tones suitable for arid settings, with some green shades and a three-tone camo pattern to fit in better with more vegetation-rich scenery. It was a bit of a compromise, intended to get the most utility out of the figures, but I was happy with it.

I had expected the camo pattern to be the most difficult part of the painting process. Certainly it was time-consuming but it went fairly smoothly. Perversely,  some of the 'simpler' areas turned out to be the most difficult and frustrating. This was mainly because I struggled to achieve the blend of colours and tones that I wanted. As soon as I got one part right, it made another look 'off'. In my head I knew exactly the look I was after, but achieving it meant a seemingly endless round of trial and error that I had not anticipated. There were moments when I came close to chucking it in, or stripping everything back to the bare plastic. 

The whole process took so long that by the time I finally finished them I was really fed-up with the project and they were quickly packed away out of sight. There they stayed while I moved on to other things. Several weeks later I remembered them, dug them out and with the benefit of fresh eyes,  I looked at them again and thought "hang on - they look rather good!" 

Here they are, so you can judge for yourselves.

Motorcycle Emptiness

This little beastie is a companion piece to the MDF shed model in my previous post. It came in the same kit, but I had set it aside for another day.

It is a very basic kit; just a bare motorbike silhouette with a few extra bits added to give some detail.

It only took a few minutes to glue the handful of components together, but it still looked quite 2-dimensional and I wasn't very satisfied with it.

I could have let it be, but being me I couldn't resist tinkering with it to add some more detail. This is probably one of the reasons why my projects take so long, but I know that if I had just left it 'as is' it would have bugged me.

It would have been easy to go completely to town on detail, but I restricted this to the barest areas around the wheels and frame. These were built up with thin strips of plasticard.  The frame and forks should really have a round profile. In reality they would have been tubular, but I decided this was just too much effort when every other part of the model was 'square'. My only concession to this was to file some of the sharp edges off the MDF components, the exhaust pipe being the most obvious area. 

Detailing begins. The basic kit with additional rear mudguard added.

More detailing. Forks, frame, mudguards and supports added.

The exhaust pipe filed to a rounder profile.

As I'm no expert when it comes to vintage motorcycles I scouted around for some useful reference photos as a painting guide. The model is probably quite generic anyway, but a search of the internet produced a few useful examples of which the BSA M21 seemed to be the closest match - so I based my colour choices on an example of that.

Painting the model was quite straightforward. The whole thing received a base coat of matt black and then the various details were picked out in appropriate colours. As if to prove that I make things up as I go along, half way through painting I decided that the fuel tank looked wrong without a filler cap. This was remedied with a thin sliver of round plastic, glued on top of the tank. It's a small but important detail - at least I think so. 

The finishing touch was to add the registration number to the front plate. A hunt through the bits box unearthed some micro-scale decals that were just the right size. Each of the letters and numbers were added individually. This was by far the fiddliest bit of the build but I think it sets off the whole thing a treat.

I did have a look through my collection for a suitable rider, but have no appropriate figures for an early to mid-20th century motorcyclist. However, I did find an old Citadel fantasy 'Arabian' horseman who was begging for a chance to swap his steed for something with a bit more horsepower. Please excuse my silliness. I just couldn't resist :-)  

"Nice bike, but I still prefer my chopper"

Until next time...

"Oh the devil in me said, go down to the shed..."

Sundays - usually the time when I'm at my most productive, hobby-wise. This was a nice little Sunday project - well several Sundays to be honest, because even at my most productive I am still rather slow!

I admit that I have been rather sniffy about MDF scenery. There are a lot of really cleverly designed MDF buildings available now, but once built many still look a bit too - well, MDF. I've seen some great examples that overcome this with clever use of paint, washes and coloured pencils, but to my eyes they still have that uniformity I dislike.

So, this was an experiment to tackle some of the issues that have put me off MDF buildings. My chosen 'test bed' for this was the free kit I received for completing last year's Great Wargaming Survey. As it was free, I wasn't too concerned if I screwed up. The idea was to try out a few techniques to see what worked best. My modest aims were to add some wood grain texture and to disguise the rather slab-like roof and the unsightly tabs where the various roof parts slotted together.

I started by scribing wood grain into the panels using a hobby knife and a fresh blade. I have used this technique successfully to represent wood grain on scratch-built buildings made from plasticard styrene sheet, but MDF has very different properties and I wasn't sure how well this would work. 

Being fibrous, the surface where I scored the MDF was quite 'feathered'. My first thought was to sand it down a bit, but I was worried this would only produce more stray fibres. In the end I found that lightly rubbing the surface with the tip of my finger was enough to remove most of the stray fibres. I was quite happy with the result.

After scribing all the panels I added a few extra details. The inner door latch was fashioned from a staple and a round-headed pin was used to make the door knob. Door hinges and brackets were cut from thin plasticard and glued in place before painting. 

I was quite unsure how to go about painting the model. I knew the effect I was after, but this required a bit of trial and error. The whole model received a base coat of pale grey (Humbrol Matt 64 - Light Grey). MDF is insatiably thirsty stuff and with hindsight I would have been better opting for a cheaper option, either an aerosol car primer or some cheap craft paint. 

Once the base coat was dry, I started adding thin washes of Citadel Agrax Earthshade to bring out the wood grain and achieve the grey-brown look of aged wooden boards. I overdid it in a few paces and had to knock the colour back with a thinned down wash of grey. Once I was happy with the overall tone, all areas were lightly drybrushed with more Humbrol Light Grey. Weathering and dirt patches were applied with a mix of Citadel Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. Finally, Foundry Phlegm Green was applied in thin washes and then drybrushed to simulate patches of damp on areas at the base of the shed and the lower part of the door. I could probably have added more weathering, but I was afraid of overdoing it. Learning when to stop is always a tricky one.

Painting progress - the first wash of colour over the base grey.

So far, so good - but the bare MDF shed roof was in need of attention. I opted for fine grit sandpaper to represent roofing felt. This was easy to trim to shape and apply with PVA glue, thus concealing the tabs holding the roof components together and providing some much needed texture. Once dry, a layer of PVA was spread over the surface of the sandpaper to soften the texture a bit. Strips of styrene were glued down to represent wooden battens and the roof was then ready for painting.

I thought that painting the roof would be far easier than the woodwork, but it took at least three attempts to get it right. My first two attempts were way too dark and looked completely at odds with the paler wood effects. Several coats of paint did have the unintended advantage of further toning down the texture of the sandpaper which was still a bit too rough despite the PVA treatment. In the end, I got it right using a mix of mid-grey with a hint of green. Light weathering with Nuln Oil washes and Phlegm Green completed the process. I think it does a pretty good job of representing roofing felt.

To complete the shed I added 'glazing' by attaching a strip of clear plastic to the inside of the window frames.

The final task was to make a scenic base cut from 2mm styrene sheet, with individual paving stones cut from thin styrene sheet.  The base was textured and painted with my usual basing technique. Static grass, tufts and foliage added the finishing touches.

I must say I'm rather pleased with the finished model. There are still some details that give away its heritage, but overall they are not too obvious and I don't think it screams 'MDF'. It has turned out better than I expected and has helped to raise my opinion of MDF scenery quite a bit.

Here's where the story ends. 

Well actually - no. Now I need to find a use for the shed. I already have a couple of scenario ideas, but that will be for another time. Watch this space - but don't hold your breath!