Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Carthaginian Sub-General (B-9)

This grizzled veteran of many victories will command the Carthaginian centre.  The miniatures are Crusader or A&A, with the right hand standard from Aventine (I need to paint a design on that!).  Nick Speller painted them very nicely, for me.  I will admit I wasn't keen on the minis, in the lead, but they painted up splendidly and I'm delighted with them.

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

Snowballs in the dust... (B-10)

Now having spent 3 months producing a set of rather realistic-appearing terrain, my mate Ian and I have just spent an evening fixing little white balls all over it....   

The reason for this madness, is that we need to mark out the hexes that are (nigh-on) essential for Command and Colors. Each hex is around 13cm across the flats and will hold one unit (there are c.120 units in the game).  I decided that the minimum we could get away with, in terms of indicatiing the hexes, is a map pin marking the apices. 

To position the map pins, we made a template from a thin sheet of clear plastic, marked the apices out, and cut a 10mm cross at each one.  We then pushed the pins through the plastic into the foam, carefully removed the plastic sheet, and whacked each pin with a hammer, which anchored them in the MDF beneath the foam.  The really nice thing about the map pins is that they can be removed without damageing the boards in the event that we want to use them for non-hex games, at a later stage.

You can just make the plastic sheet out by the glare, below:


Below is the board with the plastic removed, and some punic troops drawn up in line.


Whilst the pins are slightly obtrusive, they are, unfortunately, a necessary evil. There will be around 750 map pins across the entire table.  I'd like to than Ian for his help with the 4 boards we finished!

Monday, 5 April 2010

'arfer table

This is the right hand side 8' of the table, finished (bar the hexes).  The main change since the last photo are that I've dyed the lighter fields to darken them, and drybrushed all the tufts of static grass to make them blend in.  On the day, there will be trees and haystacks. 


I'm really pleased with how they came out!  Tomorrow Ian is going to help me with marking some hexes out.

Sunday, 4 April 2010

Hannibal (B-12)

Here is the great man himself.  He seems to be remonstrating with the levy spearman; perhaps the levy want to retreat, but the veterans won't let them through.  Tough! 


These minis were painted by the very talented Nick Speller.  I varnished and based them.   They are Crusader except for the nice Aventine mini on the left and left-hand vexilla (Aventine do great standards).  The Hannibal is, appropriately, an old Salute giveaway miniature. 

Only 12 painting sessions to Bletchley!  I've still got 2 units of Greg's Bruttians to finish and base, the casualties to complete, the boards to drybrush, hexes to mark out, packing and a couple of other minor tasks.

Still Frantically Flockin'...

...I just started the final flock of board 8.  Today I'm listening to Johnny Cash and Cat Stevens, who are making the work light.

Here's board 7 which has more ditches, and which is consequently more lush than the average:


In total I think I've used around £150 worth of 10 different grass and flock products.  The vegetation still needs to be drybrushed.  I'm very pleased with the small amount of Silflor "weeds" I bought, which are tufts with small "leaves" attached; I'll be buying more of them.

Saturday, 3 April 2010

Board dressing

I've been frantically flocking my terrain.  My concept involved a lot of bare earth, and it looks like it'll be realised (if only because I don't have enough silflor clumps or time!).  The lush, green vegetation will be largely confined to the ditches, and I'll be drybrushing it lightly at the end, which will hopefully tie in in, better.


Greg, this is what the rest of the fields should look like, finished.

Friday, 2 April 2010

A shwubbery!


My mate John Smillie has completed the olive trees that I have long coveted.  He made them  individually using sea-moss and wire, and I think they are far superior to the bottle brush trees I usually use.  I just need to paint the bases to match my terrain, and add some Sliflor.  He's promised to make me some Cypress trees, which would look very good with my Roman buildings, using the same method.  He's also making some haystacks...

This is the last weekend I have to finish flocking the terrain boards... should be busy!