Merry Christmas

It looks like I wont be finishing anything off this weekend so I thought I'd wish everyone a Merry Christmas and say thank you for looking at the Blog.

Right now I am trying to base up some Mounted Merry Men who have been painted but don't have their shields attached or proper bases. I have made the bases out of plastic card and have undercoated them, but have to clean the house today as the folks are coming around Christmas Day. I may not do anything more on this till after Xmas Day as I am also working this week.

I have been chatting with mate Tyrone about doing an African ImagiNation project in 20mm loosely based on the Crisis in Congo in the sixties. In my mind I am calling the nation Pomgolia, ANZAC's will get the joke hopefully. I am planning to get some French Paras from Indo China and will use some left over WW2 Tanks that do not really fit into my WW2 armies. I also have lots of terrain that may need a slight mod to fit so it will be a cheap project (how many times have I said that?).

Napoleonic Boats.

I have two Games of War Boats for my Napoleonic Peninsular War Collection, which I intend using for my Pirates project with just a change in Command figures and Marines. The sailors will work as they are.

The project is just a small scale one as I like the Sharp and Horn Blower books and TV shows and am not really into large scale set piece battles.

I intend to go back and do some more work on the sails as they look too plain.

Another Mega Blocks Black Pearl.

I have had some success bidding on a few items on Trademe (New Zealand only trading site).

I first won Legends of The High Seas in excellent condition for a good price. I have been searching for this a couple of years. Turns out I bought it from a Club mate but did not know until I won.

I then won a Playmobile Pirate ship which I had watched for a few auctions going unsold, but decided to get it even though I thought the price was too high. I was not sure of the scale but had seen one being converted on a Blog post somewhere. Same price as LoTHS actually so I don't know why I held back now.

I have just won a complete Mega Blocks Black Pearl for NZ $35. It seems complete as far as I can tell so am very happy. This will be made into the Black Pearl Pirate Ship.

The cost for the four Ships is about $150 NZ plus the cost of converting them which is much cheaper than buying four resin Ships which would be much smaller vessels.

More Nazi's

I remembered that I had painted up these figures for my World War II German Armies. I think that they would work just as well for Inter War Pulp Games. I am planning to paint some Copplestone and Brigade Games Germans for my BOB Chinese Forces at some stage which will also do double duty as a Body Guard for these figures.

The Female is from Copplestone while the males are from BoltAction.

I hate Nazi's

 The Archaeologist figure has been completed for months while I thought about a gang for him. He is a Copplestone figure with a WestWind head. The eight riflemen and Belgium Officer have been sitting on my desk cleaned up and based while I got distracted by other projects and was not quite sure what to do with them all. Then it hit me,  SA Troops conducting field trials on newly designed uniforms (sounds like a reasonable cover). Any treasure stumbled across (like the Ark of the Covenant) would of course be discreetly smuggled away. I then added a Foundry Officer figure (with Eagle insignia removed and lower pocket trimmed to an early pattern), a Pilot figure and the female Archaeologist converted from an Artizan figure.

Edit, since my friends keep referring to my Leader as Herr Flick and the Female as Helga, I have decided to rename them as such. I keep forgetting what their names are anyway!

So the gang so far comprises; 

Archaeologist's Fraulein Helga and Herr Pfister.

Designer/Diplomat Hugo Boche.

Airman Germann Hoering.

Oberleutnant Flick

Eight Riflemen.

The Stranglers- Golden Brown

Golden Brown, funny I don't remember this video but have had the Greatest Hits Album for over twenty Years (or is it closer to thirty?). Anyway the set is inspirational for Pulp settings.

28mm WW2 Soviets

While downstairs in my gaming room looking for something, I noticed this forgotten project from this time last year. I wanted to do a big Late War game with a mate but we never got around to actually doing it. I had been inspired by another Bloggers project and wanted to copy oops I mean to do something similar.

I painted the Scouts first but had to order some more figures to complete the platoon so moved onto the Infantry. I wanted to make a rag tag look for them so added a few Partisan figures and an Artizan Leader. Not sure why I stopped doing this as I had enough figures to complete a Platoon. I also painted the Crusader gun and crew and then added a German crew made from Warlord plastics.

The NKVD section are figures I painted for a Stalingrad Demo game we put on years ago. I may rebase them as I don't like GW bases but am unsure if its worth the effort.

How I paint Flesh, without a wash.

I was asked on TMP by someone (who's name I now cannot recall) about how I paint flesh. Since I had these figures on my desk awaiting a gap in the queue, I thought that I should document the process. I also wanted to record this for myself as I had problems matching these figures to the earlier figures in my Pulp collection. I had made a mistake in the second skin layer and had to go back and repaint the figures which is annoying and is why the painting look a bit out of order in the photos.

I use GW's older paints for skin as I get a better result than using Vallejo paint. I have a good stock of these for the moment but will have to find equivalents at some stage. 

I start with a can of Black Automotive undercoat which may need to be touched up with GW Chaos Black. 

 I then roughly paint the flesh using Tanned Flesh trying to leave the eye sockets and gaps between fingers black.

I then mix a roughly 50/50 mix of Tanned Flesh and Dwarf Flesh and pick out the high points of the face, neck and hands.

I then use Dwarf Flesh to pick out the extreme high points on the face hands and dot the knuckles.

I then touch up the eye sockets and define the edges of the hands, weapons etc with black and put a small dot of white in each corner of the eyes. I often have to redo the eyes several times using black and white using a sharpened toothpick.

On other projects I also use Elf Flesh as a further highlight and don't always remember to paint in the eyes.

I will document my method of using a wash on the next batch of Robin Hood figures I paint.

Furniture for the Castle and Tavern

Most of these items are from Mega Miniatures.  I realized that I could use some of them for my Pirates I changed plans and mounted some items on Renedra plastic bases. Other items were glued into place. I still need to finish the fireplace and then have some items for the treasure room to do.

Cu Chi Tunnels

During my recent trip to Vietnam we visited the Cu Chi tunnels (pronounced Coo Chi according to our guide). The visit was rather rushed as we arrived late in the afternoon leaving us very little time to fire any weapons. I have owned several guns so was not really worried about it. I was also squeezed into the middle of a Chinese tour party when going under ground which was very claustrophobic, so I exited the first available hole. You could not really see much other than mud walls so I didn't feel like I missed out on anything.

I think the best advice I could give is make sure you allow plenty of time when visiting here so you can get to do everything.

Ventilation hole in Termite mound.

Trench.

Termite mound.

US manned Tank (according to guide)

Sandals made from old tires.

I prefer this type of Tunnel.