Buck's Blog

Sunday involved a fair amount of Mother’s Day activity, Saturday my daughter wanted me to teach her how the change the oil in her car, and Saturday night was virtual D&D. I also needed to sort through all my pulp figures and reogranize them from five Really Useful Boxes to six to make it easier to find figures I needed for a specific game. All of that limited my painting time.

I also made a good start on several regiments of Prussian Landwehr cavalry figures in 10mm. I hope to finish them this week and post pictures. When I complete them, I’ll just have two regiments of Prussian Dragoons to finish up all the 10mm Napoleonic figures that have been staring at me for a couple of years, filed, primed, and mounted on sticks for painting.

Several years ago I picked up a wooden display case at a craft fair (Bieglerville, PA). I made some backgrounds and placed some of my figures into the case.

You can see that the backgrounds stretched all the way across the shelves. You can see that some of the backgrounds didn’t make sense any more as the figure on display changed but the backgrounds did not. The second shelf from the top originally held some undersea figures, but those were consigned to a storage box, and the background no longer aligned with the figures on display. Also, since fanfold paper is no longer common and can’t be used in normal ink jet or laser printers, if you look closely you’ll see annoying, abrupt breaks in the backgrounds, which I tried to cover with trees and bits of foam. I decided it was time to revamp this display case.

I decided to print backgrounds and glue them to sheets of balsa wood in approximately 10-inch and 6.5-inch sections. The thought was that as I changed out which figures I wanted to display, I could just print a background and replace a single panel. When I painted some new figures I wanted to display, I could create a custom background for them.

I am pretty happy with the end result.

As you can see, many of these figures are ones figures that are unlikely to find their way onto the tabletop for a game but were fun to paint and make a good display for guests are not “into” wargaming. It was a fun, one-day project that I think turned out nicely. Now hopefully life will return to normal soon, and people can come over to game and see this in person.

I woke up very early this morning, and I managed to finish painting all the figures from the Whiteout Kickstarter from Sally 4th.

These were fun figures to paint. I used a lot of contract Apothecary White for the base and then painted in a few details.

Continued to be quarantined due to the plague panic, I manage to get a lot of hobby work accomplished. In addition to finishing up the editing of the 17th Century supplement for Feudal Patrol and get most of the editing done on the Meso-American supplement, I managed to get a lot of figures painted. As with most weekends, the week was spent on figure prep and base coats, and then I did the detail work while listening to movies streaming off my media server. This weekend, I listened to a bunch of the Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals and a half dozen Hopalong Cassiday movies while painting. I also got my weekends mixed up and thought Sunday was Mother’s Day, so picked up IHOP family feast breakfast to go.

The “main event” for this weekend was to complete a platoon of British paratroopers from WWII. I had completed the first half with figures I had collected here and there over the past year, but I was missing a few more riflemen, PIAT teams, Bren gunners. I ordered Crusader figures from Badger for most of what I needed, but Badger also carries Artisan, so I was able to get their paratrooper PIAT teams, since Crusader doesn’t seem to make them.

When the smoke cleared, I had a reinforced platoon, including three PIAT teams, a Vicker’s machine-gun, and mortar, and a 6lb anti-tank gun. These are now ready for action!

Having completed my main objective for the weekend, I then started pulling some odds and ends out of the painting box and knocking them out.

A couple weeks ago I posted some pictures of the OWS smugglers and highwaymen that I painted. When I ordered my missing British paratroopers, I ordered five of the smugglers I was missing. I painted these in all red bandanas with the idea of making them an easily identified unit during a game.

I picked up this pack of looting Vikings at Cold Wars. I don’t remember the manufacturer. They were fun to paint.

I had a dozen or so Reaper Bones figures in the painting project box, that I have been delaying painting. I don’t like working with the original Bones material, and I think the features are mushy. One of these figures I have in metal too, the one carrying the tray, and that figure is so much nicer than the Bones one. I keep four 4L Really Useful Boxes of figures that are filed, based, and primed, and I decided to paint a few of these Bones figures to make room in one of the project boxes. Here you can see four of them. I really like the woman with the rolling pin. The figure second from the right is of unknown origin. I painted her to be my wife’s character in our D&D campaign.

Chris gave me this figure. It is Reaper Bones but in the new Bones Black material. While the details remain mush compared to a metal figure, the black material is WAY better than the old white material. This figure was fun to paint.

Over the years, I have painted a handful of figures that I just wanted to paint and am not sure they will ever make it onto the table. I usually just place them on a shelf in my painting room, where they gather dust. I came up with the idea of getting some baseball display boxes from Hobby Lobby (on line) and putting some figures in them for display. I will probably do a couple more, but here are the four I did early Sunday morning while everyone else was still asleep.

Months ago I purchased a Delorian from Back to the Future for an 80’s movie and TV game I plan to run in the future. It came in a plastic display box. I painted the surface gray and placed the Imperial Assault figures from Rebels on it fighting Darth Wader (Darth Vader as a duck). These are affixed with putty, so I could take them back out and use them to game.

Last, but not least, I bought into the Sally 4th Whiteout Kickstarter a few months ago. I ended up with 12 figures, a gyrocopter, and a snow mobile. Here are the first four that I finished. The others I’ll finish this week. These will be for a pulp game based on Ice Station Zebra. That game is deep in the queue for convention games, but I wanted to get them painted for when the muse strikes me.

It was a pretty productive weekend. This coming weekend, I should finish the Whiteout figures and the Bones figures. Next in the queue are some Pulp Figures iconic movie monsters and a group of Gypsy musicians. Then I hope to knock out several battalions of 10mm Napoleonic Prussian infantry and cavalry that have been filed, primed, and glues to sticks for a couple of years.

No, I’m not talking about members of Congress! I am talking about figures I purchased from Outpost Wargaming Service from Badger Games. These really appealed to me a year or so ago. I bought a bunch — a few were out of stock. During the plague lock-in, a lot of stuff in my painting queue is moving to the painting table at a faster-than-normal rate.

These were a nice break after painting the Ozz figures with a lot of figures in Napoleonic style uniforms. With these, I could paint them in whatever colors I wanted. Of course many were in dark cloaks, the better to conduct nefarious enterprises in the dead of night.

Many of the WSD smugglers and highwaymen have mounted and dismounted versions of the same figure. I actually didn’t realize this at first. I was going to paint all the dismounted figures first and then the mounted figures. Then I realized there were many matched pairs and I started painting them at the same time.

I really like the dragoon figures. There were mounted and dismounted versions of them as well; although, there were limited poses.

I see a scenario in which two rival bands of brigades want to loot from the coach. One of the people in the coach is secretly a hero type. Dragoons rush onto the table to the rescue. There will be at least four distinct factions.

I didn’t take pictures of every figure in the line. There were a lot of them as you can see from the work in progress photos.

I mixed into this batch of figures a few others from the project box as well.

I began this batch of figures last Saturday, so they took me a full week to complete. I will combine these with the Old Glory duelist figures to make some fun scenarios, but I don’t know when I’ll get them on the table with all the “social distancing.”

At Historicon 2020, the HAWKs are planning to run a large What A Tanker! game, but we plan to use 1:48 scale tanks inspired by Leonardo DaVinci. Most people are familiar with the round tanks from DaVinci’s mechanical drawings. Twenty something years ago, there was a published set of rules, called Leonardo Plus that also featured trapezoidal (and much more practical) tank designs. I had planned to complete all six tanks I signed up to contribute in time to deliver them to Don at Cold Wars, but the push to get all the Ozz figures painted delayed that plan. Since being locked into my house for almost a month, I have been knocking a lot of projects off my to-do list.

Below are some work in progress shots of the round DaVinci tanks.

I mailed these three off to Don last week so that they can start to play test the game and get the HAWKs comfortable with the rules.

For the trapezoidal tanks, Duncan got us all started by building skeletons or frames for them. Then a few hours with an Xacto and some super glue were easy work building over these skeletons.

Then came the fun part of painting the tanks. In this case, I didn’t spray prime them; I just brush painted them.

These have been packed in a box and are on their way to Don. I can’t wait to see them and the tanks built by the other HAWKs on the table at Historicon 2020 — or whenever the next HMGS East convention is.

I attached the sails to these canoes today, so here is the final product.

I am actually enjoying being self quarantined on the weekends. It minimizes the honey-do list. As someone who pegs out the “I” meter on Myers-Briggs, I have been practicing for self quarantine my whole life. I was able to complete quite a few figures this weekend.

The first thing I did was open a box and find four of these Eureka Miniatures Hawaiian war canoes. I bought them months ago when Eureka first released their new Hawaiians. I didn’t want to assemble them before the move. There is not much to them. Picture I found on line show these canoes and un-ornamented, so there wasn’t a lot of detail to paint. I had to reach out to Nic Robson in Australia to figure out how to mount the sails on the masts. I hope to complete that this evening.

The second thing I knocked out was two packs of Pulp Figures I purchased months ago. They are redesigns and re-issues of figure sets I already had. They may have been the free packs I got when ordering enough figures online.

Three conventions ago Chris and I split a box of Oathmark dwarves. My intent was to build them without heads. In the most recent duck Kickstarter from Star Hat miniatures, I convinced Darcy Perry to offer sprues of duck heads. As part of my Kickstarter I ordered several sprues. I finished the figures while painting some other Viking figures. The delivery of the heads is delayed based due to COVID-19.

Greg 3D printed three Saxon huts for me before I moved from Maryland, but I just got around to painting them this weekend. I think they turned out pretty nicely. This picture shows some Vikings that some of the HAWKs painted for me before I moved in front of one of the three buildings.

Before Cold Wars, I was painting Ozz figures like crazy, but I didn’t have time to paint these three personality figures. These are named brigade commanders for the Wars of Ozz rules.

As a club, the HAWKs is looking at running a large, spectacular What a Tanker game using Leonardo DaVinci tanks. Duncan has made some skeletons of trapezoidal tanks for us to complete, but I also ordered three 3D printed ones online in 1:48 scale. I assembled and painted them this weekend. The printing was somewhat crude, so they look good at “gaming distance” but don’t stand up well to close inspection.

I’d say that is was a pretty productive weekend, and I even knocked out a couple of honey-dos.

I had ten Oathmark Viking figures partially completed since before my household move and purchase a handful of Bad Squiddo shield maidens at Cold Wars. This weekend, I had a chance to get them painted.

As with most Bad Squiddo figures the sculpting and the casting of the shield maidens is excellent.

I can’t wait to get these on the table with Feudal Patrol.

I ran into Joe Corsaro at Cold Wars. He told me about these cool Russian mechanical grenadier figures for his Venus 1888 line of figures. I have most of his females on mechanical horses, but I hadn’t seen these. So I bought five and painted them up. The assembly was really easy, all the parts fitting nicely. He says he has some really cool VSF coaches coming soon, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them.

I saw this set of McGuffins at the Crooked Dice booth, but I originally passed on them until Greg convinced me that cats and dogs would live together if I didn’t buy them. I painted these up this weekend. I like the Holy Grail and the Maltese Falcon.

Next up is the assembly and painting of Leonardo DaVinci tanks and Saxon buildings.