Knight with Banner

 This weekend, we got dumped on with snow. Of my 25 years living in southeast Tennessee, I have never encountered so much snow. About 10" of snow. The temperature in approaching zero degrees F didn't help. Houses around here are not build for this sort of weather. 

The wife and I watched a lot of TV, but you can only watch so much. So, I retreated to the "soldier room" as it is called by my kids. I did start working on some more ships, but I ended up painting some fantasy figures

My fantasy world is occupied by a number of holy orders. One of which is the Knights of the Holy Chalice. I wanted to make a pseudo-religious, icon-ish banner to lead the faithful into battle. Gemini AI to the rescue! 

Banner depicting Saints Kimberly and 
Angela receiving the holy chalice from on high

I played around with different poses and styles and settled on a sort of Bayeux tapestry look. I thought about giving the ladies halos, but I thought it might be too sacrilegious. I printed them off in various sizes on my school's color laser printer and later did a little touch up with paint to bring out some of the features like the cup and the faces. If I could do it again, I'd make the bottom a little longer below the feet.  I have to say that its not too shabby.

Happy Close to New Years!

 In retrospect, it has not been an active blogging year. Could be due to a lot of things. I think one of the contributing reasons is that I wanted to focus my blogging efforts in posting after action reports instead of constant works in progress. Oh well. It is what it is.

A few end of the year odds and ends

Before I left for what might be our last annual Christmas trip to Chicago, I painted up these Eureka Miniatures orcs. I may have mentioned Eureka and a post long ago when they first came out with their line of 18mm fantasy. They seem to be first company to go gung-ho on the 18mm size. Early reviews said they were more like 20mm and didn't mix at all with other lines, so I never bothered to order any. Recently, there was a posting on the Facebook 15mm fantasy group that showed some of their orcs so I gave them a try. 

Here is a comparison shot of various manufacturers of orcs:

Left to right: 15mm dice, two Eureka orcs, Ral Partha
Europe (Demonworld), two Splintered Light Miniatures.

All seem to be compatible. The Demonworld orc has a cartoony head with a big lower jaw that looks like a throwback to Citadel orcs. 

Finally, the painted up version of the gunboat I showed in my previous post. 

Trip to Chicagoland

This year, my son joined my daughter and I to roam around downtown Windy City. It was a pretty warm day. Like last time, we had to visit the expensive stores on North Michigan Avenue, and we did stop at the three-story Starbucks for coffee (just what the world needs, right?). 

First we paid homage to the Bean in Millennial Park. It has an official title, but like many other structures in Chicago, the locals name things what they want. 

Afterwards, the kiddos were hungry for some lunch. Last year, my daughter and I went to have deep dish pizza, but we had that the night before. We ended up eating at a way overpriced Korean corndog place. They were good, but not $50 for the whole meal good. 

Massive $12 cheese pull

Me along the Chicago River standing next to a bust of the first non-native permanent settler, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Boy, do I look short and fat!

My kids, part 1. Behind them is the Wrigley Building. Corporate headquarters of the Wrigley Company, currently is still the largest maker of chewing gum in the world. Across the street from it is the Tribune Towers that was also built in the early 1290s. Interesting side, embedded into the lower facade of the Tribune Towers are famous bricks and stones from around the world. For example, there is a chunk of stone from the Great Pyramid in Giza, and one from the Great Wall of China. 

My kids, part 2. Here they are standing in front of the Marina towers, formerly known as Marina City. It was built in the mid-60s as a combination luxury apartments and offices. I got to go up there once as a kid. My parents had some friends that lived there. I remember listening to a Beatles album while my parents and friends drank Manhattans. 

Christmas market. In Chicago, its held every year in the plaza in front of city hall. Another famous large work of art is the Picasso Sculpture that is located on the plaza. It doesn't have an official name. Built in 1967, it was the subject to a lot of ridicule as people did not know what it was and found it too weird. But times have changed and its one of the iconic structures of the city. 

 My kids part 3. The Christmas Market is not very big and it was very crowded, considering it was December 23. But we got in, looked around, and had our dinner (brats and deep fried cheese curds...I snuck in a beer), which was much cheaper than lunch. I almost bought a cool beer stein but decided not to.

Game of Team Yankee

 Friday, I got in a game of Team Yankee at Will's gaming store. I'm not sure why, but I enjoyed it more than the Fames of War game I played two weeks ago. Will ended up winning, but I enjoyed blowing up his Soviet tanks with my M1 Abrams. Surprisingly, ATGMs on both sides were not all that effective.  Here are some pics of the game. 

I also finished up another pre-dread warship. This is an one off, test ship.

I used layers of corrugated cardboard for the hull and used styrene plastic tubing for the gun casemates. I also experimented with using different materials for the main turrets. Not all that happy about it, but it helped me figure out what worked. It is very loosely based on the USS Olympia, which I didn't know was rated a protected cruiser. 

Quick Game of Flames of War

Will, friend and owner of the closest gaming shop around, got some Flames of War starter sets. Will likes historical gaming but his clientele are 40K zombies (sorry not sorry) so it is rare to find someone who is willing to play historicals.  I have the rules and always wanted to play, but there were some things in the rules I didn't understand no matter how many times I read them. So, I jumped at the opportunity to play. I should have taken pictures, but my opponent was someone I didn't know and some people adverse to getting their picture taken by strangers.

Will acted as referee. I took the US and my opponent the Germans. I had more tanks but in addition to PzIVh tanks, he also had a battery of 75mm Pak 40 anti-tank guns that sat in a forest edge and picked off most of my Shermans. My infantry did manage to put some hurt on his infantry but he had a 2 to 1 superiority in numbers. The other advantage is that the German light machineguns do not count as heavy weapons, but the US 30 cal machineguns do. This makes a huge difference when having assaults as heavy weapons are penalized during assaults. Assaults are the main ways infantry can be effective. 

The Germans clearly won, but they lost most of their tanks and almost one of their two platoons of infantry. I think I would have done a little better if those nasty 75mm Pak 40s weren't present.

It was a fun game and it answered a number of puzzlements I had with the rules. 

Bytor and the Snow Dog

 This is probably the longest time I have gone without posting. Its not like I have not been doing anything hobby wise, it is just that I have not had the time to post. Also, a lot of things have been happening in my life, mainly my mother passing away over the 4th of July weekend. It was not unexpected but it was still unexpected. We came up for our annual summer visit to see my mom and sister and her family. We got there on the 3rd and she passed away on either very late on the 4th or early in the morning on the 5th. It further reinforces one of those morbid cliches that once an elderly person breaks a bone, it is quickly downhill health wise. She had broken her ankle in late November and it all went down hill from there. It has been hard and I am still processing it all. It does not help that I am the executor and have to figure out how to handle the estate.

In terms of the hobby, I have been on a roll to paint up as many 15s as I could. I really wanted to whittle down the pile. I have a new project that I have started so really wanted to clear the deck, so to speak. I still have a pile of lead to be painted but I feel like I can switch project now.

One of the last few figures painted is Bytor and the Snow Dog. If you are a RUSH fan, you will know which RUSH albums they come from. Yes, Bytor is a bad guy who fights and loses to the Snow Dog, but in a later song Bytor is a good guy that defeats the Necromancer. The main reason for these two is that long ago, in the very early 80s, one of the members of the D&D group I played in named his fighter Bytor. As he went up a few levels, the DM gave him an animal companion (familiar) that was a large beast that was part  arctic wolf/part polar bear. This was Snow Dog. They fought many battles together. I've aways wanted to have a model of these two in my 15mm world. This is my interpretation based on what I could find in 15mm scale:

I wanted a more fantasy Viking figure to be Bytor, but this Wiglaf Miniatures warlord did the trick. Nothing really matched my vision of Snow Dog. I thought of using a Reaper Miniature wolf or dire wolf, but they were way too big. I happened to find this wolf from Lone Gunman Miniatures and seemed to be a good size as it was a little larger than some of the other manufacturers' dire wolves. 

For fun, I played around with having them on a snow base, with some iced over puddles on Snow Dog's base. 

Now that I've got my 15mm painting out of my system, I am moving on to my next project. 

Kimangela

 I found this 15mm at the bottom of the pile. I have no idea who makes her, but folks on the 15mm fantasy Facebook page think it might be Battle Valor games. She was painted by committee, namely two of my colleagues at school, Kim and Angela, who decided on the colors including the hair color. 

For some reason, she has a mask on top of her head. It reminded me of the Loki mask from Jim Carey's movie The Mask. I painted it gold and then gave it a green wash. Hopefully, it will not have the same effect on Kimangela that it did on Jim Carey when he put it on over his face.

Battle with a Beast

 

A Hornblower shield maiden confronts an Andrewsarchus from Khurasan Miniatures. Boulder scenic made from dried up Play-Doh.

More Barbarians to Rage With

 A new line of fantasy barbarians came out from Mace Face Miniatures. It is their Hornblower shield maidens. I am not sure why they are called hornblower. You do get a lot of horn blowers in the command pack. 

This is a sample from the mixed weapons, archers, and command packs

I suppose that shield maidens is a good description. They have a nordic vibe to them as they are dress for cold weather. They appear to be ever so slightly smaller than Copplestone's barbarians. They are very well sculpted with a lot of detail. I have no idea who sculpted them, but they do resemble the style of the Copplestone barbarians. My only issue with them is they have a lot of flash or the little bits and squiggles of metal attached to them. I spent a hour or so last night cleaning up some of the figures. 

Other news

Ion of Archduke Piccolo put out some neat, easy to use rules for WWII naval battles. Ion's rules and the ships that he made triggered a major sense of nostalgia. Back in my high school days, my best friend Mark and I would have these epic naval battles using slightly modified rules from Avalon Hill's Midway game. Mark even built fleets of very simple but effective ship models out of mostly balsa wood and cardboard. Using the various paper ships that I have made, I might have me a battle using these rules. I may even get back into the ship building business. 

Finally

A picture of an imperial knight from Ral Partha Europe (DemonWorld)

15mm Watch Tower

 I've been working on this thing off and on for probably three years...mostly off. I took the advice of a crafter on YouTube to build it out of cardboard. I won't be doing that again. While very inexpensive, it was very time consuming and boring. I used a dollar store Christmas gift box as the base as it were. The battlement was made by gluing the lid to the main part of the box and then cutting out chunks to make the merlons and the crenels. The part that took forever was cutting out and gluing the stones to the sides of the walls. I used pulp paper egg cartons. They have a nice bumpy texture. I ran out of egg cartons and used regular cardboard for the outside and inside of the battlement wall. I should have made the floor of the battlement out of stone, but for some reason, I made it to look like wood planks. I used strips of card board. 

I sealed it all with a mixture of Mod Podge and black craft paint and then kept dry brushing it with lighter and lighter grays. For the wood, I painted it with a honey brown craft paint and then used made a wash of Future floor wax and burnt umber paint. 

I think it turned out OK. The stones are not to scale, but I don't really care. It isn't meant for diorama purposes. 

Recently, I bought a sheet of pink insulation foam. I plan to use that for my next terrain project. 

More Test Shots

I did some more test shots using my light ring on 15mm fantasy figures. They are better lit, but still look like crap in close up. They seem to loose their depth and three-dimensionality and look like they are poorly painted pictures. 

I look a picture of Baron Henri of Emoree awhile ago, but I thought I'd add a few more. For entertainment purposes, the barony of Emoree is a large county in the kingdom of Zarnagol. After the king of Zarnagol was killed in a final climatic battle, Zarnagol was plunged into civil war as many of the lords of the land did not recognize the king's infant bastard son as the legitimate heir to the throne. They were more against the child's mother, a powerful sorceress, who declared herself the royal regent. Conflict has died down over the years with little resolution as to who is to be king. Those who opposed the illegitimate heir pretty much do what they wanted and pay little, if any, lip service to the regent. The child is now 16, and with is mother's urging is trying to unite those loyal to him and make him the true king. Baron Henri fully supports the young heir, but many of his neighbors to the east, oppose him.

Baron Henri and his entourage. All are
Demonworld minis expect the knight on
the baron's right who is a Khurasan mini.

His household men-at-arms.

Slightly different angle.

The Baron's court wizard Zandu. Flanking him
are the Baron's battle champions. 

I threw up a brown background for the fourth picture. It seemed to have darkened them a little without hiding parts of the figures in shadows, which is what often happens without a light on them.

 

Test Shots With New Phone Light

 In one of my many endless quests for perfection, I recently purchased a ring light for my phone. My photos of figures always look like crap, and its often due to poor lighting. It was all of about $9 at Walmart, so I though why not take a chance. There are my results:

The first test shot. This was done using the light and natural daylight. 

 In the evening, I did two comparison shots. First shot is my normal way which is to adjust my Ott light to light up the figures. The second is Ott light + phone ring light.

Typical workbench light

With the phone ring light attached

I sent the pictures to a friend of mine and asked which he thought was better. He preferred the one with the ring light attached. He thought the other looked more garish. Of course, he didn't have the actual minis in front of him, which could bias his opinion. Also, I didn't tell him which was which in terms of the lighting used. He did say that the mounted elf and the orcs where I used the ring light were very shiny looking and wondered if I had used gloss paints. For the elf, yes; I had not sprayed it flat yet and a lot of washes dry glossy. For the orcs, I had already deglossed them. They seemed shinier than the elf especially the banner.

The quest will continue. 

Another Game of Scifi Carnage

 My wife went for a few weeks in February to visit family in China, so the boy and I had time to ourselves. This meant lots of eating out a restaurants and watching cartoons and Disney+. 

We managed to get a game. As usual, it was a scifi battle. I really wanted to use all the fantasy and medieval figures I've been individually basing for Dragon Rampant rules. But it was scifi or no game at all. 

The battle consisted of opposing sides rushing each other. There was a loose objective where I had to protect the president of the Galactic Union from the bad guys. Here are a few pictures I took.

Machine gun armed recon vehicle makes an appearance.

The president of the Galactic Union and his
bodyguard await the impending doom

As usual, the cyborgs and their xenomorph "pets" managed to overwhelm the combined efforts of the Galactic Union alliance. Even the mysterious alien Rocky with is powerful laser beam eye could not make ad difference. He went down fighting with all the rest. Perhaps a mecha on the good guys side rather than a small scout vehicle might have turned the tide. 

As a change of pace, I used the felt game mat that I bought years ago. It added a little touch to the battlefield and removed the need for measurement. 

Checking out 3D printed 15mm from Etsy

 There are a lot of interesting miniatures out there that can be printed, but until I take the plunge and buy my own 3D printer, I need to buy them pre-printed. I have already bought a lot of mostly aircraft, but lately I've been looking at fantasy figurines. Etsy seems to have a lot of shops that will print off figures, but most are in the 28mm to 32mm scale for TTRPG or in 10mm that is the latest craze. I came across one shop that had the license to print off various files and was willing to print off those pesky 10mm at 15mm. Unfortunately, I lost the packing slip and I can't seem to find the shop on the website. All I remember is that they are out of Poland.

I ordered these various foot troops.

They seem a little on the small side, but I will make a comparison once I've removed them from their stilts and base them. My big worry with all these printed miniatures is the possibility that things like thin weapons will get easily broken. Maybe some day they will make a printer resin that is like what Reaper Miniatures uses for their plastic figures that is reasonably hard but more flexible. 

As I recall, they weren't all that expensive compared to some of the other Etsy shops that sold comparable minis. The delivery time from Poland wasn't that bad either. Lately, some of the orders I've made from the UK seem to take forever. 

I will paint some of them up and see how they match up to existing 15s.

15mm Stone Walls

If you have followed past posts, I was spending a lot of time and effort to scratch build stone walls for 1/300 scale. Most of these attempts were less than satisfactory in my view. Having spend a lot of time recently painting up 15mm medieval and fantasy figures, and having made some 15mm structures in the past, I decided I wanted to make a few stone wall pieces at this figure size. 

If you watch any of the tutorials out there on making your own terrain, the number one building material is pink insulation foam. It the modeler's dream material. It can be cut, carved, and embossed. Buy a foam cutter and there is no limit on what you can do.  Unfortunately, pink foam is getting to be rather expensive. If I go to my local home improvement store (called DIY stores in other countries), I would have to buy it in large sheets that cost around $40 and that I don't think will fit in my minivan. In the USA, many of these stores will no longer cut a lot of building material because of potential toxic dusts and work safety concerns. Frankly, I don't really need 4'x8' sheets of the stuff.

What I used for my walls are the foam trays that are used as a sturdy base for packaging food items such as cuts of meat. One of the complaint that I heard about using this material is that it cannot be embossed.  I found that if you use a craft knife or single-edge razor blade, you can shave off a thin layer of the outer surface leaving a squishier surface that can be embossed. There is also different grades of this packing material and some seem to be closer in consistency to the pink insulation foam. The foam I used for my first wall section was more resistant to embossing even when I shaved it. Another foam tray (shown below) was more pliable.  Of course, its the luck of the draw what you end up getting. 

I cut strips of the foam of a more-or-less uniform width. I then embossed the stones with a ballpoint pen. Once embossed on both sides, I then glued them onto thin craft sticks that I bought for another project I'm working on. I rounded off the tops a best as I could using my craft knife and some light sanding. 

In addition to the long, straight sections, I also did some corner sections. I tried to make the ends of the wall sections as flush as I could, but they are not seamless continuations. 

For one of the long sections, I decided to have a gate. I built it out of pieces of styrene plastic. 

Once the glue dried, I sealed the walls with a mixture of Mod Podge, black, and burnt umber craft paint. When that was dried, I went over the stones with repeated dry brushes of gray. The base I painted brown and then flocked.

I was surprised that once I figured out the technique, I could quickly put out a number of walls. I think the whole project took about two nights to complete three long sections and two corner sections, and that was because I wanted to sealant to dry thoroughly. The gate was probably the most time consuming part of the project. Is it a high quality job? No. But it looks fine for the table top.