“Rats & Reporters”

“So are the giant mutant rats reported to be running around just outside the city real? Or like the ‘human mutants’ and ‘killer robots’, just another figment of some peoples over active imaginations? Well, all I know, I haven’t seen any while I’ve been out here…perhaps I need a bigger piece of cheese (wink). I’m Moira Tiffin for Salvation City News, now back to the studio”.

“And cut”

“Do we do another take Jeff? I think we need another take, I can do better”.

“It’s fine”.

“Fine!!!! I didn’t get voted Salvation City News’ favorite personality three years running by being fine!”.

“It was also…live”.

“Oh… well, in that case I guess it was fine then”.

Ok I realise that last week I said I was going to add a few “stars” to my “Into the Wasteland” cast list but they will now have to wait till next week, as I was a bit short on time this week so I thought I’d cheat a bit and paint up my “mutant rats” and “on the spot news team” instead, they might not be my star turns but “Moira” definitely thinks she is! Again these are taken from my prize winning order from “Moonraker Miniatures”. As always they were based up on “tuppences” using “Tetrion” filler before they were given a spray coat of matt black.

Moira was begun by painting her skirt in dark red, this was then highlighted in pink burgundy, and lines of deep bronze and lemon yellow were added to form the “Tartan”. Her jacket was then also undercoated in pink burgundy, and then highlighted in polish crimson, shoes and jumper next, sand and more lemon yellow taking care of these. Her stocking were then done firstly in flesh tone 7 (I think I’m going to start referring to this as tan flesh) and leather brown, this was then highlighted in the same but with much more of the flesh tone added. Her flesh (and Jeff’s below) was then undercoated in European flesh and highlighted (after eyes were added), with this mixed with pale flesh. Her hair is chocolate brown with chestnut highlights, her jewelry is copper with bright gold highlights and her microphone is dark grey with light grey highlights, oh and a touch of chainmail on the handle.

Jeff, Moira’s long suffering cameraman had his trousers undercoated first butternut was used for this, and then this mixed with coffee, formed the highlights on his “chino’s”, coffee was then used on his T-shirt with cream highlights added to this, his waistcoat is orange with orange mixed with cream forming the highlights here. His “all important” camera was done in dark grey with a heavy highlight of light grey over this (except the strap which was left black with a dark grey highlight). A dot of day-glow green for a light finished this off. His shoes and belt were added next, chocolate brown with leather highlights being used here. Then after his flesh was added (see above), his hair was undercoated in citrus orange and highlights of sand were applied over this. Lastly I dry-brushed the computer on his belt along with his belt buckle in chainmail and added the circle on his back in cream before painting the letters “SCN” in it.

My “James Herbert” movie extras were really rather simple to paint (which is why I chose them to be honest), two of the “veritable vermin” were left black and then dry-brushed with a mix of black and chocolate brown, this was also used as the undercoat on three more of them, and these were then dry-brushed in just chocolate brown. The final one was undercoated in coffee and dry-brushed in cream (he might become the leader or just another “rat in the crowd” I haven’t decided yet), next all the eyes were dotted in with some black except for “whitey” whose I did in dark red (albino style!), this was also run along the mouths of all of them before I added their teeth in cream. Their tails, ears, noses and feet were then undercoated in “tan flesh” (see much easier), before these areas were highlighted in continental flesh, see simple.

Guess what… everything was then given a coat of “Quickshade” strong tone before the bases were painted chocolate brown, that was then dry-brushed with khaki and then again with coffee. A few small areas were then picked out with a little scenic green, and then those areas were flocked with some “Javis” summer mix hairy grass. They were finally finished off with a “blow over” of matt varnish spray. I’m over half way through my “Wasteland” figures now, I hope you are enjoying these chaps as much as I’m enjoying painting them. So till next week.

Cheers Roger.

“The Gooder’s”

“There are those who believe that the people outside the city are just as good as those privileged enough to live inside it, with access to medicine and clean water, and are raising an army to force Cowley and his cronies to either submit to their demands or to gain access by force. They call themselves the WPRA”.

“WPRA?”.

“Wasteland people’s repatriation army…we just call them the gooder’s”.

“Gooder’s?”.

“Short for Do’gooder’s”.

So we come to the second little group figures for my “Into the Wasteland” project, “The Gooders” a bunch of misfits out to save the world (whether it wants saving or not!), led by the charismatic “Ham” Tyler, a self-styled “Robin Hood” of the apocalypse this little group has big plans, but very little idea or chance of achieving them, often causing more harm than good they mean well.

After pulling out four more of my “Future Warrior” figures by “Moonraker Miniatures”, I added in the “free” Mad Max figure I got with my last order from “Copplestone Castings” to make up the unit, they were all based up on “tuppences” and had their bases built up with filler before they were given a coat of matt black. Now before I go any further can I just say that these chaps were considerably harder to paint than lasts weeks as there was much less uniformity to their attire, so rather than write a short novel listing how each one was painted I will just cover some of the basic painting and list the other colours used (mainly so you can see how many there were!). So I began as always by dry-brushing all the “metal bits” with chainmail, and then added the “camo” with a base of deep bronze green, then splodges of pink burgundy and coffee, were painted over the top of this, from then on various parts were picked out with either the colours listed below or mixes of two or more of them (often as highlights). So in no particular order, I used… Pink Burgundy, Orange, Dark Red, Bright Red, Flesh tone 7, Copper, Light Blue, Coffee, Cream, European Flesh, Pale Flesh, Olive Green, Chestnut, Stone Green, Dark Grey, Light Grey, Blue Grey, Light Blue, Royal Blue, Porcelain Blue, Aquamarine, Chocolate Brown, Leather Brown, Butternut, Dark Sand, Sand, Khaki, Bright Gold, White, Black and Day-glow Green. This was followed by a seemingly never ending round of “touching up” as I went round and round the figures correcting any mistakes or inadvertent paint splodges, and more than one case of bits I’d forgotten to paint in the first place, so much so that as I needed to get the “Quickshade” on them by Wednesday night, to let this dry enough to flock them on Friday (otherwise they can be too tacky, and the hairy grass will stick to the figures, something that happened a bit last week), it was half past eleven before I was happy enough with them to let the “shading” ensue!

As well as the figures above I also decided to finish something I started many moons ago, that I thought would also be appropriate for this project. I bought the oil drum (along with several others) from “Scotia Grendel” I think and knocked up the stand it’s perched upon from some left over bits of balsa I had about, and that’s as far as it ever got…until now. I started by drilling a hole in the lower side of the top, and after gluing a short piece of florists wire into it built up the tap around this with some greenstuff, then it was based up on a “Heroscape” token (I use these to denote objective markers), before it too was sprayed black. I then “stippled” royal blue around all the areas that weren’t going to be rusted. After this I mixed some royal blue and blue grey on a Pringles lid and stippled again, to show where it had faded in the sun. Next rust was stippled on the other areas along with a touch of chainmail. The stand was then added in chocolate brown and butternut, before it too was “Quichshaded” After this was dry more rust, chainmail and a bit of orange was again stippled over the rusty areas. I also added a little clump of rubberised moss at the one of the back legs to add a little interest to the base. I was going to paint “Gas” on the top, but decided that this might limit its usefulness, as now it could contain anything from water to fertilizer, dependent upon the scenario.

This and all the figures were then based in my normal fashion, and after this a final coat of matt varnish sealed the deal as it were. I think I’ll add a few “star” characters to my cast next week, so till then…

Cheers Roger.

“Into the Wasteland”

Well the best laid plans as they say, I know I said at the start of the year that I wasn’t going to buy any more figures this year, but I didn’t say I couldn’t win some now did I? As you may or may not be aware, a few of weeks ago I had some really great news. Bryan of “Vampifan” fame (check out his excellent blog via the link at the bottom of the post) informed me that I had won his “One Million Views” competition. £50.00 to spend with any wargames vendor of my choice (Hooray for me!!). Now strangely enough I had spent the night before looking at the “Wasteman” range of figures by Thunderchild Miniatures, now I first saw these at Salute last year, and I was impressed by the characterful sculpts back then, and I was really inspired to do a bit of “Post-apocalyptic gaming”, but the spanner in the works was the prices! £7.00 for a single 35mm figure, I don’t think so (I really am that stingy, you know). So where to get some “post-apocalyptic goodies” from without breaking the bank?… Moonraker Miniatures of course! They produce the old Grenadier “Future Warriors” range sculpted by one of my all-time favorites Mark Copplestone. Now I already own many of these figures from back in their Grenadier days so I know they are nice (you really can’t go wrong with Marks stuff though), and at £1.50 a figure much more within my budget. So a list of what I thought I needed was made up (£48.00 with £2.00 postage) and sent off to Doug at Moonraker, and I sat sweaty palmed awaiting their imminent arrival…but after a couple of weeks no sign, turned out Doug had put the wrong address on the parcel (luckily they were sent recorded delivery, so went back to Doug, how he does this at £2.00 P+P lord knows!!), apologies were made and he chucked a couple of extra figures in too before posting it out to me again, so I now had £51.00 worth of figures, Win,Win!

I have now also downloaded a set of rules “No Future”, from the free wargames rules site, and dug out my old “Ainsty” scenery (I might re-do the bases on these, or might not haven’t decided yet), I’ve sorted out my “factions” and a couple of “heroes”, now all I have to do is paint them. Anyway, I thought I’d start with the “Fed’s”, (Lewis, Bodie, Shaw and Doyle), these are the Federation Border Troopers tasked with keeping the “great unwashed rabble” out of “Salvation City” and out in the “Wastelands” where they belong, along with “Colonel Lynch” head of the Troopers, “General Cowley” (erstwhile leader of Salvation City, since imposing military rule), and his personal bodyguard “Collins”. I’ll add a bit more to their backgrounds in later posts.

Painting was begun as always with a spray coat of matt black that was then touched up by hand, before all the weapons were dry-brushed with chainmail. Next the boiler suits were undercoated in dark grey before being highlighted in light grey, the pants and accoutrements on the other two figures were undercoated in coffee before cream highlights were applied. Then the jackets and pieces of body armour were undercoated in navy blue, before royal blue highlights were added, to give the troopers a more “worn” appearance the body armour was then dry-brushed with chainmail. Turning to their flesh next, I mixed flesh tone seven (dark flesh) with European flesh and this was used as a base before highlights were added (after the eyes were added of course) in a mix of European flesh and pale flesh. The “black” trooper had his flesh done in chocolate brown and when I was highlighting the others I mixed a spot of that into more chocolate brown and used the result to highlight him. Hair came next this was either more chocolate brown with chestnut highlights, chestnut with orange highlights, sand with lemon yellow highlights or black. I used a little bright red, porcelain blue and shamrock for the ribbons of “Cowley’s” ill-deserved medals and then added some details on the three “senior ranked” figures in bright and pale gold. Lastly I added “Collins’s” lips in pink burgundy, and a few details on the trooper’s equipment in “day-glow” green.

All the figures were then given my usual coat of quickshade “strong tone” before being based as normal, except that I added less flock than usual (not sure why, but I think they look better this way), a final coat of matt varnish finished them off. I shall be staying with this project for at least the next few weeks. So expect things to get a little “down and dirty”, as we meet more denizens of the Wastelands…

Till then, cheers Roger.

https://vampifansworldoftheundead.blogspot.co.uk/

“So Long Merlin!” (weeks 44 & 45)

Well as you might have guessed (if you are a regular reader) from the title of this week’s post, I have now completed all the figures listed in my random painting generators “Very British Civil War” list (or Merlin as I call it, don’t ask why!). I started these way back in October 2014, and twenty two posts later we have now reached to this momentous moment. So as I stated in my last post I had pulled out all my remaining Irregular miniatures VBCW figures for one final push before I start a new project next week. Last time it was the last few coppers that received their coats of paint and this time it was the rest of the rebellious civilians who gained there colours’. Now this group contained two of the dreaded standards in amongst their ranks but I’ll get to how I did these later. First let’s tick off the final two boxes…

Box 6 – (3x Civilian Lewis Machine Gunners, and 1x Civilian Standard Bearer)

Box 15 – (3x Civilian Machine Gunners, and 1x Civilian Standard Bearer)

Now before I started painting my civilians I decided to add a little variation to them so after sanding off the top of all of their heads I added flat caps to one and all and beards to a couple of them as well. I also added a bit of extra length to a couple of the jackets, turning them into Mackintosh raincoats, and I added a waistcoat to one of the standard bearers. Next I added the cross pieces to the top of my standard bearers poles using short lengths of cocktail stick, then after basing them on two pence pieces they too were strayed matt black along with the bobbies from last time.

After the basecoat was applied they were all dry-brushed with chain mail over the guns. All of the suits were then undercoated and highlighted with either, dark grey and a touch of black, these areas were then highlighted with just dark grey, chocolate brown again with a touch of black and these areas were of course highlighted with chocolate brown, or just dark grey highlighted with dark grey and white making (surprise, surprise) a light grey. The only additions to these were the chap in the brown raincoat on which butternut was used as an undercoat, and a mix of this and coffee was used to highlight it and the chap sporting the blazer which was undercoated in a mix of black and royal blue with just royal blue highlights. Flesh next, Flesh tone seven was used this time as the base colour to add a little more variation over the previous batches and after the eyes were added, I highlighted them in European flesh. I then added the highlights to their boots, so out came the leather brown and dark grey to do this. Hair came next couple of the figures hairlines were undercoated in sand and highlighted in lemon yellow and others were chocolate brown highlighted in chestnut, one more was given grey hair in dark grey and light grey. Shirts were either light blue and porcelain blue or coffee and cream. That just left the caps to be added in either chocolate brown or dark grey and highlighted in butternut or light grey and then the checks on the caps were done in butternut and coffee or very light grey.

Now those of you who have been with me for a while may remember that I painted the banner on the last of my “standard bearers”, by printing out a picture of a trade union banner (after re-sizing it in my photo software) onto some paper and, cutting this out double length (e.g. with a plain back piece) with and extra piece in the middle for the “loops” that were marked and cut out in the middle. I then painted over the top of this (painting by number style), well that’s exactly what I did again this time, cheating…well a bit but I’m rather pleased with the results, Then I painted the backs to match, before cutting a diagonal line across the back piece so I could hook it around the pole, once glued in place with PVA I added the ripples to the flags,(these will stay in place once the glue sets), and used a little superglue to fix in to the back of their hands for extra security. I then touched up around the edges of the flags and where the two edges of the slice met at the back before all of the figures were given a coat of Quickshade strong tone, and then they (along with the coppers from last time) were based in my usual fashion. Lastly they had a final “blow over” with the matt varnish.

And that’s it, fifty one civilians, forty policemen (and one policewoman), nine horses, one field gun, one heavy machine gun, four flags and three dogs later, I am just about done. Please don’t ask for a battle report as I have no rules or suitable scenery to go with them. So what am I going to do with them now they are finished…well I really don’t know I hadn’t thought this far ahead, at the moment I am toying with the idea of putting them on a “bring and buy” at a future show to help finance a future project (without the Border collies of course, they will be staying with me!), I’ll see how the mood takes me at the time. But for now I’ll leave you with the long overdue group shots I been promising for “oh so long now”.

Till next week, I’ll stop now as it’s time for tea and cheers Roger.