“Will this invalidate my corrosion warranty?”

Right change of plan. Last week I said that I was going to use September to get some progress done on some of the projects I’ve had hanging about half finished for far too long. Well that’s now gone out of the window, as September is now going to be another “He-month” as both Jez over at “Carrion Crows Buffet”, and myself are returning to Eternia for another round of “can you guess who this is supposed to be!”, where we produce our own versions of famous Eternians, from everyone’s favorite seventies cartoon and toy franchise. Now this has really put the pressure on, but I’ll get to that later.

Firstly I had to find something to do for this week’s posting, this was a pretty easy decision, as the only other project I was even remotely close to finishing was my Prussian Naval fleet for “Dystopian wars”, I decided to dig out the two waterline versions of the “Metzger Class Robots”, as this would just leave the fifteen bases of planes and they’re movement trays (that I haven’t bought yet) left to paint. Hopefully I can do these as an “add on” to a week’s painting at some point. So after a bit of a “clean up” with the file the separate “gun hands” were glued into place and it was outside for a spray over with the matt black (I love it when it’s dry and warm, don’t you), then once dry all the bits that the spray missed, and there were a few I’ll tell you (awkward shape, you see) were touched in with a brush, this was followed by a dry-brushing with chain-mail, and then in a change to our “regular program” I painted the heads, bodies and a couple of bits on the arms dark grey (no chocolate brown of Leather brown?, well no decks to be honest). The light grey and black stripes were added to these areas next and then the coffee “dots”, and after I painted in a few details and the funnel tops and I added a little lime green to the windows in the heads the painting of the robots was just about finished. Now a small apology as normally I wouldn’t use transfers on my figures as I look at this as “cheating” a bit, but I came across this sheet of “GW” numbers and skulls (of course there are skulls, it’s GW isn’t it!), and as they were written in a nice “Germanic” style I decided to save time (and if I’m honest there was no way I could have painted them as neatly as this). I cut out a couple of numbers and applied them to the right hand side of the chest plate, and a much smaller version of the same number to the back of the heads. Next the figures were given a coat of “Quickshade”, and once dry I could start work on their “watery” bases. This consisted of giving the entire base a coat of porcelain blue and then dry-brushing this with a lighter blue (sorry the names worn off of this pot so I can’t say what it’s actually called), and finally another dry-brush with white, this I also flicked up the edges of the robots to give the impression of spray and foam. Then it was a spray over with matt varnish and “Heinz is your uncle” they were done, Now the eagle eyed amoungst you will have noticed that the colours on the watery” bases doesn’t really match the colour of the sea in the background of the pictures, this is because though they were painted to match the cloth we actually game on (see “Land Ho” post to see this) the pictures are taken against the cloth from Myles’s copy of “Dreadfleet” (Thank you Myles for letting me use this). Well that’s my Prussians basically done, hooray something finished!! (Well sort of).

Now back to my side project of putting a warband for “Frostgrave together, as you may recall last week I showed you the first three members of my “Happy band” of adventurers. Now to create your warband you have 500 points (sorry Gold Crowns) to spend on your “band members”, so here is what I’ve come up with for mine…

“Bugbear Moonbeard” Soothsayer (free)

“Stiorra” Apprentice (200 gc)

“Ragnar” Barbarian (100 gc)

“Uhtred” Man-at arms (80 gc)

“Hookton” Archer (50 gc)

“Finnan” Infantryman (50gc)

“Villas” Thief (20 gc)

As you can no doubt see from this list I still need to add four more figures to complete my “band”, but for now this is what I’ve been doing to the figures I do have. First job was to “hack” away all the unwanted bits, this meant filing away the skulls on my wizard’s knees and beard and lobotomizing him with the sander ready for his hat. Then I added copious amounts of hair to cover over the marks left when I removed stuff. I decided to give him a long robe as I wanted to cover the chain-mail “skirt” he was wearing, and then I gave him a satchel to put all his magical “bits and bobs” in. Next his apprentice had her fur loin-cloth filed away and her furry boots “de-furred”, on the left side I added a long boot top too, but you might not see this on the finished figure. Then I added a bodice around her waist and some “puffy” sleeves over her bare arms. I then added a large blob of putty between her legs, this will form the support for her skirt. Lastly my barbarian had his right hand removed and replaced the opposite way round (he was originally throwing a spear but as he will end up with a sword instead, his original hand position would have looked odd). This new joint was then covered with a thick wrist band. Lastly I covered his bare legs with a little “greenstuff” to represent trousers under his loin-cloth. So some progress has been made, though not as much as I’d hoped and now I’ve got even more figures that I need to add “greenstuff” to before next weeks post, Oh why do I do these things? It’ll be interesting to see how I get on (for me especially!).

Till then, cheers Roger.