ACW Finished Regiment

Okay finished the first regiment with it's flags, North Carolina and a Blood Stained Banner.  Bad pics as always but I will nab the wifes daylight lamp at some point once I have more actually finished.

Started touching up the other 3 regiments of stuff I had painted about a decade ago and had stuck onto thier new bases. Progress pics once they're as done as I can manage. I will need to investigate some varnishing for this stuff I think as there is much more handling of the figures than there is with my 28's.

ACW Painting Guide

I have no idea if this will be of any interest/use to anyone at all, and to top it off, the pics are from my mobile so aren't very good.

Anyway, this is how I have gone about painting up my 15mm ACW confederates.

1. Start off by gluing the models to the base with superglue, once dry pva up the base and add sand, clean the edges before it all dries.

2. Spray them black.











 3. Drybrush with grey, (may want to use blue for union) This is just to pick out some of the detail as if you've ever tried painting base colours on a small/busy matt black model, you'll know how hard it is to figure out what is what.











4. Paint on the base colours, start at the bottom of the model and work up, and from the bottom layers up. take your time here, do it in batches when required, all the shoes, all the trousers, jackets before belts etc.











5. The idea is to get the hard to reach areas before you do top layers so that you don't mess up on the outer layers trying to get into a deep area. Remember that the black undercoat can show through in the hard to reach recessed areas, that's fine as it creates a natural shadow anyway.











6. Dry brush the base with some browns to pick out the texture of the sand.











7. Ink it; The obligatory Devlan Mud wash to add shading to the model, this adds depth to the flat base colours and if you're careful in your application, the last bit you'll need to do on the models themselves.











8. Paint the base edge green to match the gaming mat/board/tiles etc. PVA areas of the base around the bigger bits of sand then add a sand/flock/static grass mix. This will leave your base with a mixture of drybrushed brown base material, flock and sand, this takes time to figure out what works and what doesn't look so good to you, chances are you're just being picky.














9. Lastly some of my older painted models, added to a base that was painted brown with green edging and PVA'd up with a mix of flock and sand.













Colours used. Snakebite Leather (Boots, belts and pouches), Calthan Brown (base, guns, beards and hair), Goblin green (base edge), Sobek Green (trousers, it's blue!), Tausept Ochre, (Butternut jackets, hats), Dheneb Stone (Blanket roll, hats), Tallarn Flesh (skin), Astronomican Grey, Adeptus Battlegrey (Hats, a couple of jackets), Mithrill Silver (Bayonets) Chaos Black, Skull white (bits on the officers) The Butternut jackets was something primarily associated with North Carolina regiments as far as I'm aware, I read it in one of those random articles somewhere and it'd been mentioned elsewhere so I figured there must be some truth to it.

Bloodbowl

Picked up a copy of Bloodbowl from Ebay which arrived yesterday, going to have a few games today with friends, brother in law etc to see if everyone likes it and then it'll be getting teams bought in and painted up for a league. Much fun.

ACW Base Test

Okay testing sizes of bases, in the blue uniforms, arrayed in 4 x 1  1" x 1" bases with 4 figures to a base. with a seperate commander base on a 2p, will probably be made to a 1" x 1" base as well if I go this route.

In the greys on the right, arrayed in a 3 x 2  40mm x 20mm bases with 3 figures to a base. Commander integrated for blackpowder, can be seperate for Warmaster variant (Still to be tested)

I'm not sure I like the one on the right so much, I can't get 4 wide on that size base, and 2 deep doesn't quite fit either, however it will leave enough space along the back of the base to put unit details on if I want to go down that route.

The ones on the left, looks a lot tighter and more regimented, but not sure how I want it all to look. Loose or tight ranks.  The ACW wasn't as tightly regimented as say the Napoleonic era where the left one would be a no brainer for the look of it, but at the same time, does the one on the right look too loose.

BKC Germans

Seeing as I'm taking pictures, here's my finished (So far) WW2 Germans. Couple of WIP's, my painting competition entry and then the finished ones. Fallschirmjaeger on the left and middle, Heer on the right. Everything is from Pendraken, the infantry are German Para's Army Pack and added are the 2 Pak40's, 2 Stug III's, 3 Opal Blitz Trucks and 3 SDKFZ 251/1's. The draught horses are some butchered high elf chariot mounts for warmaster.

So next for these I need another 6 transports for the company on the left, the Heer will remain on foot and the addition of an Engineering section and some Panzer Companies to finish it all off. Then it'll be the Russians up next.

Dystopian Wars

Well that's the main bits of my Empire of the Blazing Sun all painted up. Still got details to pick out and insignia to add on the paintwork but they'll pass a basic exam for tabletop use.

Need to see about the lighting for taking pics, and i'm still not sure about how dark the Cruisers are, the missus thinks it makes them look worn.

Extra stuff to do

One of my friends bought me the Empire of the Blazing Sun Naval Battle Group for Dystopian Wars for my birthday. We'd played a game at Claymore and found it quite fun, the other one that was pretty good fun was Saga.

Either way the other thing he's been looking at is Bloodbowl and ACW. I already have a bundle of 15mm confederates in various states of paint (Most not even undercoated yet) And we found a copy of Johnny Reb at the show so he has that and I have the Warmaster alterations for ACW as well, so that's something else that will need to get sorted and will put my other stuff back a bit.

So ACW, Dystopian Wars and potentially a bloodbowl team in the offing for over the winter alongside the very real Saracens sitting all tidied up and ready for basing in the box beside me.

Claymore Update

Well it was Claymore at the weekend, came back with more stuff for the missus than I did for myself! This keeps happening at shows, it was the same at Salute this year.

Anyway, bought the big Arab pack from Pendraken to make a start to her Saracen army. Got some of it tidied up, the horse archers are going to be a pain to clean due to the flash that has formed between the bow and the arm that will all need to be dug out.

Either way though it's given me the following for Warhamster
3 units spearmen
1 unit light horse archers
2 stands of med & hvy cavalry. (1 further pack of each will give me 2 units of each)
1 unit of archers

I'll get more packs from the likes of Old Glory and Magistar Militium to add more variety in the units, (including the compulsory camels that she wants)

So it's a good start, I'll work on this one over the winter I think and then start getting my crusaders. (and world war 2) Until then she'll need to be content with running down goblins and elves.

Starting Up

Well it's been a while since I did anything major wargaming wise. I've just joined the local wargames club having not done an awful lot over the last 7 years or so. A few campaigns of Mordheim over that time and a handfull of WFB games is about it.

Now I'm planning out what I want to get started on for the future after starting a 10mm WW2 army, so here's going.

Plans:
WW2 finish off 10mm Germans, got some trucks and half track transports,
Need more tanks, artillery and some bikes to use for recce.

Impetus
Still thinking about this one, started making sabot bases today so I can use my existing collection, something medievally in 28mm. Will likely get more later, but wether that will be for this period or ECW i'm not sure.

Warmaster
10mm crusades to be purchased, Crusaders for me, Saracens for her.

Stargrunts/Gruntz or something.
15mm scifi. Need to start buying, probably GZG infantry but this is lowest on the priority list right now.

We'll see how this goes through the year, budget is tight due to living in London for the upcoming Paralympics so most of this will likely kick into gear late in the year or next.