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I paint small metal and plastic figures and rarely get to play with them. But that is fine with me.

28 April 2023

Can't See the Woods (Part One)

 No really, these are tree bases, but there are no trees. War is  hell for the arboreal world as well apparently.

In my last post I mentioned I would be working on these mdf bases I picked up on Etsy, and "Winterising" them so they'll match my Winter gaming set-up.

Assembly was very simple - they came in two main pieces that were very simple to match up and wood glue together. The hole cut-outs had the round wooden discs included so I stuck them aside in my hobby drawer as one never knows when one might need something like that.

White glue was applied liberally  all over then sand from a local beach to give a nice texture. Sprayed brown once dry, dry brushed with a couple successfully lighter brown highlights and then I sat and pondered if I should add a bit of grass here and there. I decided "no", the trees in such a cold area sucked up any food that weeds or grass might have required so nothing else is able to grow on these things!

Snow about the edges is a mix of white glue and Woodland Scenics Snow Flock applied in two layers to give more depth and now they are sat ready for a quick spray of matt varnish to set everything. 

Pikachu presides over this parade of bases. I'll be  kicking the little yellow rat back into his Pokeball in good time, he eats all my cheese.

Now tell me this wasn't an exciting post!? 

I get it, "more minis, less.... non-minis Dai - yawn". 

Can't promise my next post will show off any painted miniatures as I have lots more terrain stuff to get on with. But I'll try. 

Stay safe out there - Dai


14 April 2023

Works in Progress




 Lots going on at my hobby station of late! Nothing actually completed, but work progresses on a number of projects per the pictures to follow. 



These are 3D printed Universal Carriers for my 2023 WW2 Greeks project. I found them on Etsy for a steal. What arrived were nice crisp sculpts, though of two different types of Carrier, but I can work with that. They were crew-less though, so I found some spare Soviet infantry and started hacking away and whilst the end result looks somewhat crude up close-and-unpainted (Crew's helmets look close enough to those worn by the Greeks to me.), I think they'll do just fine on the tabletop from 3 feet! I also needed "pintle-mounted Bren Guns" on them so sourced some nice metal bren guns from The Assault Group in the UK, trimmed a paper clip down to stick them upon and drilled holes for the pintle mounts to settle into on the Carriers. Finished result I think looks good enough for gaming! 

*More on said Greeks in a future post.



Sticking with the vehicles theme here's a German Panzer IV Ausf-H that is primed and ready for paint. I plan to add this as an alternative tank option to my Late War Winter Germans collection featured previously. "Where's the era appropriate Schurtzen?" I hear you ask in my addled schizoid brain, well dear reader those are going to be built and painted separately for ease of assembly and painting. 

Along with the tank, featured here are three Soviet riflemen that I had bits left over to build after crafting the Carrier crews shown above. Thought it would be good to have a few spares in squads where I didn't include a Light Machine Gun toting fellow. They need some basing pumice adding then priming prior to being ready for paint.


A less exciting option - these are some mdf tree bases I found on Etsy. After our last game in my previous post, I realised that I need not only more fencing and trees themselves, but also some better defined bases for the trees I do have so they stand out more for gaming purposes. (Line of sight, etc) So far these have been assembled, gritted with sand from a Monterrey area beach, sprayed dark brown then highlighted with a lighter brown craft paint. All that's left is to apply snow, though I'm trying to figure out how best to go about this step in an effort not to use up all of my Woodland Scenics  snow flock but still applying enough for the bases to look good on my Winter table set-up? I'll see what I can come up with.


Last up is a second batch of mdf fencing for much talked about Winter setup. (I did not feature the first set, for some reason, though honestly they are not really exciting enough to feature in their own post, right?) Simple 2-piece kits that I found in an online sale years ago. They have been primed the same dark brown as the tree bases and given a light dusting of white spray paint. Next step will be to pick out the vertical posts with dark brown and then apply snow effects and the odd grass tuft. Densmol was right, one needs far more than just one set of fencing on a 6x4 foot table!


No progress made on my Dieppe Canadians as I've not been in much of a mindset for painting lately, but I feel that'll change next week, so hope to have something new and actually "finished" to show off soon!

Stay well out there.