Wrapping up 2018

2018 was a time of change and transition. I left my life long home in Southern California for the Kansas City area. This disrupted even more, an already disrupted hobby. It took several months for things to get sorted out. I am still sorting some things out, but, overall, my hobby space is set up and I am ready to blast into 2019 full bore. I found a group of people to game with, and there are several gaming conventions in the area each year. In addition there are a number of historical sites I have yet to visit and, all the other activities a large city has to offer. 

Painting 

I had previously posted  some things I had painted this year. Here I will add to it. First up are some Old Glory 25mm Japanese Monks. These guys are fairly simple, since they live an ascetic lifestyle their clothes are devoid of much decoration, though their outer smocks tend to be brightly colored.

I did have a good time painting them. I plan on using them for the Ronin/Diasho/TOH trio, as well as larger battles with a Lion Rampant variant. I also did some Ninjas of Iga for ToH.

 I liked painting these as well. I wasn't too sure on dry brushing the black but it turned out decent. The next group are for my 15mm Mexican American War project. Here I have the Mississippi Rifles militia unit for the Americans, the cuirassiers of the Mexican army, and some dismounts for the US Dragoons. The militia are Minifig, the cuirassier and the dragoons are Musket Miniatures.

Net up are some El Cid Spanish foot for Saga/Lion Rampant. When I bought these the person had them listed as Saxons. So when I had painted the first batch back in 2017 and posted them, someone pointed out that they were Crusader Miniatures Spanish. That was fine with me anyway because I had already started  collecting cavalry for that army.

Next up are some 20mm Fallschirmjager. They are FAA figures. Since they are all wearing "Bone Sacks" I painted them up for Crete. There are some later war armaments in there so those guys can't be in Crete, but, everyone else can.

I plan on using these guys for Bolt Action and Chain of Command. I like this scale rather than the 28mm, though I do have 28mm armies as well, it just gives a better look as far as ground scale goes. Next, are some 20mm SCW Carlist Requetes.

 I really like these figures. They are from the HPC line. Unfortunately they are really too big to mix well with the Minairons figures. Since I have a decent quantity of the HPC figures I plan on playing more Bolt Action/Chain of Command games with these, and using my Minairons stuff for Bayonet & Ideology. Hopefully the guy that has the HPC stuff gets that back into production before too long. Last, but not least, are a few French and Indian War Coureur de Bois.

These will see use in Musket & Tomahawk games, and who knows, maybe the new Osprey rules that are coming out soon.

Looking Ahead to 2019

There is lots to look forward to in 2019. We have a trip to northern China planned for the fall, The Nelson Atkins Art Museum in KC has an exhibition on Napoleon, plus some possible trips to Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge. As far as my hobby, I definitely have plans and goals to set. First off I plan on doing the "Ultra Pledge" put forth by Mark Severin aka Extra Crispy. Said pledge consists of not purchasing any miniatures, or terrain in the coming year. You can buy basing materials and such but no actual minis or terrain features. While there are some things I would like to pick up, I need to do a reset on my hobby and get it to the point where things are not backed up for years. My painting will continue to be somewhat eclectic, at least for the first half of the year, as I clean up all my odds and ends stuff that was lying about. But, here are a few goals that I have ready to go and in the painting queue;

15mm ECW Rebasing for Baroque and finishing the rest of my figures

Finishing my 28mm WW2 Japanese project

Finishing my 28mm WW2 Warlord Chinese army

Rebasing my 15mm Feudal French and Classical Indians for Impetus

Put together my Gangs of Rome Starter kit.

Assemble and paint my 28mm Shogunate Japanese buildings

Play a game at least twice a month. (board or mini)

Finish basing my SYW project

Base/Rebase my 6mm Napoleonics for Grande Armee

Blog much more

Improve my writing, so it is more enjoyable for you lot to read.

In addition I should be able to at least start my 15mm WSS  project, continue the Mexican War project, and maybe delve into ToH as well. Looks like it will be a busy, but fun, year ahead. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you found it interesting. I hope that you all have a wonderful and blessed New Year!

A LOTR Christmas

Back in March when I was preparing to move out of California, to Kansas, my 28 yo daughter asked that when ever it was that I bought the ole dirt farm (my words, not hers) if she could have some of my painted figures. Needless to say, that was a little gut wrenching. But, it stayed in the back of my mind as I moved and got settled. Then I had an epiphany. Why don't I find a Fellowship of the Ring set and paint that for her. Why wait till the old man croaks?. We are both big fans of the movies, and enjoyed watching them together when they came out. I was able to procure a set thanks to a TMPer and I had it in my hands by mid/late July. As you know, most gamers, unless they are deranged, never start a project early. They start it when they really have to. I am no exception. So I started around Thanksgiving and had them done in plenty of time to get to California before Christmas. I am not the speediest of painters, and I wanted to do my best work. I wanted to paint them like the movie so I perused film stills to get the colors as close as possible. I also wanted them to look like they did post Rivendell/pre-Moria since Gandalf was involved. Here is the first group, the Hobbits.

I am a block painter so I blocked in the main colors, did a bit of drybrush highlighting, then did a sepia wash over these fellas. Oh, and I gave Sting a little blue hue. When flocking I have been mixing static grass, fine flock from Woodland Scenics, and some rock together, brushing lightly watered down PVA (the water in the brush), then sprinkling the mix onto the glue. I have never really watched how to use static grass properly, but I just like the texture it gives the base. The next group is the lot that made it to Edoras.

I was really pleased with Gimli, and that was my daughters favorite as well. There were some details that I could not glean from screen shots so I ended up watching a portion of the movie to try and get a glimpse of equipment items. Legolas' quiver was one. I like how it turned out, just not sure of the color. His bow was another point of contention as I had seen screen shots of s red brown and one that is almost a lt grey/white color. I went with a red black color and did some dry brushing with Vallejo red leather. I liked the end result. On all of the Elven blades I used a new paint I had gotten in one of my ModelBoxes, Aged Silver by Instar. It gave a nice glimmery metallic finish to those swords, and made them stand out. Here are the last two.

These two were fun to paint, particularly Boromir. Now I think Boromir should have black on, but, I had seen a screenshot with it looking more leathery. So I went with Vallejo Black Red with a Vallejo red leather drybrush and a black wash. I don't really like painting black that much so it worked out better anyway. Gandalf was pretty simple and overall I was happy with the result. These guys are as good as I can paint, and while I will probably try out new techniques from time to time, I don't really intend on improving too much more. I enjoy painting, but for me the end result is gaming.

 I need to practice a bit more with the photo box I bought on ebay. It works pretty well. The only issue I had was that the LED runs off a USB, and the cord was too short to have the box on top of the desk.  I'll try to have some better angles the next time I post. When might that be? Well I was planning on a larger post with more painted minis, as well as a year in review/look ahead to 2019 for this coming weekend, so look for it then. That is all for now, I hope you enjoyed this post.

Fort Osage Fall Muster October 27, 2018

When I got settled here in KC, I started liking events and certain things here in the area on Facebook. One of the nice things about doing that is that it will connect you to other events that you knew nothing about. That was the case here. I found out about this several months ago and saved the event on Facebook. So when the date came up I was fortunate that it was a beautiful sunny fall day, in the 60's and no clouds to speak of. We traveled to Sibley MO, about an hour away, to check out the fort and the event. We arrived early afternoon, and thankfully found a place to park. The lot is kind of small with the event going on. We were treated to some nice views.

We started our visit at the appropriately named visitors center. They have a small gift area, theater, and a small museum downstairs. I was a little disappointed since the building is rather large. There were some nice displays none the less.

The visitors center also afforded some beautiful views of the Missouri River.

We then proceeded over to the fort itself. The fort is a reconstruction of the structure that was there in the early 1800s. It served as a frontier station and trading post back then. The location is also a stopping point of the Lewis & Clark expedition. We arrived there just in time for the cannon firing exhibition.

After doing that three or four times out marched the infantry reenactors.

They then performed a firing demonstration.

We then walked around the fort and poked around a bit. It is a small post so not a whole lot to see. It does give you an idea of frontier life, and how isolated these guys were that were posted there.

And a peek out of a blockhouse firing port, not much visibility. I imagine the air in the blockhouse would get nasty pretty quick firing flintlocks inside.

While its not a big place, it is certainly worth a visit if you are close by. Probably not something I would go do again but fun and cool none the less.

Modern Micro Armor AAR

Since I have been here in Kansas City I have been graciously invited to come out to game. Unfortunately getting settled and having moved from California created quite a bit of work for me just getting my personal stuff in order. Well I am finally to the point that when I was invited again this week to game, I jumped at the chance. We were going to play at Tabletop Games & Hobby in Overland Park. I had been there once before, a week ago to pick up some paint. It is a lovely store, clean, and well stocked. And I have to emphasize clean. It is a pet peeve of mine to go into a filthy hobby store.  Anyway, the gaming section is sizable, and reminds me of The Brookhurst Club at Brookhurst Hobbies. Here are a couple shots.

It was a bust place last night, role playing, our game, a fantasy game behind us with 15mm figures using Hail Caesar, X-Wing, and a few other games. Our game was a modern battle, '80's Germany. It was a continuation of a game started at the Recruits convention (which I missed unfortunately). A British armor unit was counter attacking a dug in Russian unit. The rules we used were A Fistful of Tows II. They work well and I will probably pick them up at some point. I was initially put off by the cost, but the mighty tome you get for your money is more than worth it. So I was Russian and I was tasked with the defense. Here is a shot of the table.

The Brits could come in at the bottom of the picture all the way to the left and down 2 feet along the side. So essentially the quadrant to the lower left in the picture. There were two wooded hills flanking the town, an orchard behind the hill to the left, and a wood all the way at the back of the board. I had 10 BMPs with infantry, 10 T72s and three BRDMs (two with at missles). The hill on the left I put three BMPs and dismounted the infantry, the town held three T-72, and the wooded hill to the right had 3 BMPs with dismounted infantry, as well as 3 T-72. In the orchard behind the left hill I had a small reserve of 3 T-72 and three BMP. Since the at missles had a long range, and the BRDMs are not all that sturdy, I placed the two missle firing BRDMs in the woods at the very back. The Brits came in on the left side directly across from those fields on the left of the road. Chieftains rumbled up the hill and I sprang my ambush.

Soon the hill was full of blazing vehicles, both mine and theirs. Some of the Chieftains crossed the hill and engaged my reserve as well. The rest of their force headed to the town.

We battled it out with long range fire, but I took the worst of it overall. The Brits forced the position but paid a heavy price to do so.  They certainly would have been susceptible to another Russian attack. I really enjoyed the game, it was nice to finally meet some folks here. I look forward to doing more with these rules. Sorry about the picture quantity, I was busy playing. 

What's Been on the Painting Table?

Just a short post to share my latest finished work. Things have been progressing nicely. I had finished about 150 15mm Confederates that were a repainting project. Initially I had bought about 450 figures, that looked good in the pictures and when I got them and inspected them they looked ok. So then I bought another 150 painted Rebs from the same person, they came in a baggy piled together. Needless to say I just decided to repaint them. Then after recently reviewing the 450 figures, I decided to redo them as well, fitting in 24 or so between my regular painting. I am following, in general, the paint scheme they have and just giving them a new coat of a similar color over the existing uniforms, then repainting the rest in my usual colors. While they look repainted after the block painting, the sepia wash gives them some definition and detail, and makes them look pretty decent. They are a mix of manufacturers I have noticed Old Glory, Minifig, Stone Mountain, and a couple others.  In addition I have been working on some MAW Mexicans, mostly Musket Miniatures, with a few others mixed in. Here are a few shots of them based and flocked.

They are all based for Fire & Fury, and they have been given new flags for the most part. Here is a shot of what I am working on next, Some HPC SCW Carlists, Essex Pavises, and some Musket Miniatures Mexican Cuirassier.

I was a little disappointed to discover the size disparity between HPC and Minairons. I may just keep the HPC stuff I have anyway. We will have to see how I feel. In the mean time I am going to paint them up. I did manage to finish gluing about 340 SYW Austrians to their bases today. I'll show those off next time I post.  Well that is all for this round, I'll be posting again soon.