Adventures on the Wargames Table

As mentioned in my previous post, I've been painting a Great War Miniatures Mk IV Male Tank for my BEF. All pictures are clickable. It was surprisngly simple to paint and I'm quite pleased with the results. Here's my recipe. Black undercoat (make sure you cover any little gaps!) Base coat all the green/brown areas with GW Charadon Granite. Highlight these areas by heavily drybrushing with Foundry Drab shade. The heavier effect is best achieved by several successive lighter applications of paint. Apply a very light second highlight (with a large, soft brush) of Foundry Drab mid. Tidy up the remaining black areas, i.e. the tracks and exhaust, etc Tracks and HMGs are just given a very light drybrush of GW Boltgun Metal. The exhaust was painted using Foundry Tan shade, followed Foundry Tan mid. The tank number and name are just painted in white. I was pleased with the 'A17' on the flanks, but a little disappointed with the lettering for the tank name...

Another year whooshes past! Where do they go and why do they seem to be passing faster? It's probably my age ;o) At the start of the year I set out my grand plans and yet again I've managed to largely ignore them. So what are my thoughts for the last year or so in terms of gaming? First the good bits... Shows I've managed two this year. Penarth way back in January and then my first ever Salute in April. Thoroughly enjoyed them both and got a real gaming boost from each show. I would definitely recommend trying to get to some shows each year. Try make a list of purchases, or pre-order, to save you impulse buying all sorts of stuff. Events In March, Scarab Miniatures ran a one day Great War event near Nottingham. We made it in to a family weekend away and a splendid time was had by all. The event itself was superb fun both in terms of the games, and being able to meet some fellow WW1 gaming enthusiasts. With Scarab now re-located rather closer to the South West I ho...

As you can see from the photo below, all of the block painting has been completed for the rest of my Saxon warband, but I've still got to get them dipped and matt varnished (and based!). However, the weather has been so cold and wet recently that I've been unwilling to risk the dip/varnish going cloudy. So, they'll have to wait for some better weather. In the meantime I shall be turning my attention to this.   I picked up this Mk IV up at the Great War gaming day earlier this year so it's high time it was built and painted. I think it will make a nice holiday season project. This year we're not planning the usual mad dash around the relatives. Instead we'll be spending most of the hols at home. I also hope to slop a bit more paint on these fellows. I may also look at making some barrage blasts similar, perhaps, to those splendid models made by Orange Dave (see earlier post). His top tip was to use CD's as they're ...

OK, so nothing's actually finished yet, but I thought you might be interested to see how they're coming along. Here's the initial 4 point warband. The Warlord in the centre, flanked by his hearthguard with (ghostly) rabble behind. A closer shot of the Warlord and the right wing. And the left wing. As you can see the Warlord and Hearthguard are ready for the dip, but as it's rather smelly I'll wait until I've done the Warriors then dip the whole lot in one go. The figures are Gripping Beast plastics (Warlord and Hearthguard) and Musketeer (Warriors). In fact, the Warriors are actually from the Early Saxon range but I'll give them mostly larger shields so they'll be fine for 9th-11th century warriors. More progress soon I hope.

I'll start with a quick apology for the blog being so quiet for so long. This has been due to raft of recent real-life stuff, holidays and more recently being rather poorly. Right then, on to the toy soldier stuff! Having seen the splendid results achieved by a variety of other gamers using the dip (e.g. Phil Hendry, Saxon Dog, etc) I thought I'd give it a whirl for getting my Saga warbands ready for action. I had a few plastic Gripping Beast Vikings ready so I sprayed them white and set to. Here they are. and The armour was painted black then thoroughly drybrushed with GW Mithril Silver until it was really silver (as advised by Phil - thanks). The flesh was painted in GW Dwarf Flesh then very quickly highlighted with Found Base Sand Light. Everything else was mainly a Foundry 'light' shade with a few GW browns - no highlights. Then I brushed on the dip, ensuring that it did not pool anywhere on the figure. Give the dip 24 hours to dry properly before...

Here's the latest addition to my BEF army for The Great War. (click for a larger image) This means that my support weapon tally is now two HMGs and a mortar. Painted and based as described previously on the blog.

I've been thinking of going along to the Bristol Big'Uns club for a while now. They're based in Iron Acton (35 miles away) so it's not exactly local for me. Club night is Sunday evening which usually consists of a quiet evening in front of the telly - or pehaps a bit of painting. Hence the lack of attendance so far. But with the Summer hols now a distant memory I met up with fellow Great War-gamer Dave (aka "Orange Dave" on the Scarab forum) for a game of TGW using the new Over The Top supplement rules. Now Dave has a pretty impressive collection of WW1 British figures whereas mine is somewhat more modest, so we decided to play the Storm the Hill scenario from the main rulebook using the OTT 1917 lists plus the rules for supporting artillery barrages, etc. As we both had British forces the "battle" would be a training exercise. Which is fine as all the main protagonists of WW1 made good use of such training before many of the big attacks. Dave dr...