A trip to Ikea

Back on the blog after spending a bit of holiday in the UK, during which I got myself signed up to host a Wolsung demo game at PolderCon on the first of May. 

For those who don't know, PolderCon is a wargaming event in Utrecht, in the Netherlands. This year there'll be 20+ different games to play, all hosted by volunteering wargaming enthousiasts. 

The day is divided into 4 time slots of 90 minutes, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. For each time slot players can book a spot to participate in one of the demo games. How many spots there are at the table differs from game to game, but is usually something between one and four. This makes the demo's quite 'up close and personal', without the distractions/interruptions of others who're just passing by.

The clubs I'll be using for the game will be the Ash & Oak, Inventors and Triad of the Lotus Dragon. Selection of miniatures is based on the contents of the various starter boxes, so there'll be 2 Heroes a side plus 2-3 henchmen. All the mini's are already painted (some of my older work, pics will follow), as is the bulk of the terrain. That means there's plenty of time to 'waste' on small details 😀

First up is the appartment building, which could use some furniture. The downstairs is going to be a shop, with the upstairs being the living area. All the bits are from one of Mantic Games' Terrain-Crate kickstarters. 

Painting was kept simple, with washes and Army Painter Speedpaint to help creating a little depth. I'm very pleased with the look 'Hardened Leather' gives to the wooden furniture on the first floor. Just one coat was enough. 

The blue chairs where done with 'Highlord Blue', which worked well despite the many flat surfaces on the chairs. I think it did a better job than 'Ultramarines Blue' would have done. One thing that did put a spanner in the works is that I was to quick with trying to do some touch ups with the blue paint: apparently the first layer hadn't dried properly yet and was reactivated by the new layer. This is why the darker chair turned out more blotchy in places - we'll just pretend it gets too much attention from cats 😸.

Here's a close up of the wooden furniture, plus some street furniture and markers for parcels and packages. Next up is more stuff to put out on the street

 

A trip to the dark side of town

After a covid outbreak in the house and distractions from numerous other sources, here's another update.

I got seriously distracted from the Inventors that were mentioned in my previous post. At first more Scylla figures caught my attention, which will be ready some time next week. Also there were those Shanty Town hovels that were lying around primed and ready to be painted (many thanks to my friend Stefan, who very kindly passed his hovels on to me). 

Before priming, all hdf was sealed by applying shellac (https://www.rustins.ltd/rustins/our-products/indoor/shellac-sanding-sealer). I learned about shellac in a video from OnTableTop's  'Gerry can ...' series in which Gerry shows you how you can seal your mdf/hdf. The reason for sealing is that by doing so, you stop the mdf from absorbing all your paint, which makes it much easier to get good coverage. 

I must say I think shellac works great! Applying it is quick and easy (I use foam from a blister pack to do this), it dries fast and isn't overly smelly/messy. Once dry, I only needed one coat of grey primer from a spray can to get perfect coverage. A downside of shellac is that it's a bit expensive, but I recon the bottle I got will last me for several years. I'll probably will also save plenty of time, effort, money, exposure to fumes and complaints from my neighbours as I'll need far fewer cans of spraypaint to get decent coverage, 

After applying a medium grey primer, I applied different browns and a dusting of copper and green to the various roofs. Walls, doors and windows were painted using mainly artist en masonry paints. Coverage of these colours wasn't that important, because I was aiming for a weathered, stripy look.

Weathering was done using some washes, drybrushing (with a very big brush) and 'Streaking Grime' from AK Interactive. To add more character, I added advertising posters which can be found here: 

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AgCNwicNek7bjWhzQu3RQOH_5nK7?e=9W0GAe

(the link on the Wolsung webpage isn't working, so I made a scan of the original print that comes with Micro Arts' Wolsung Advertising Columns) 

Below you can see some pictures of the finished result, plus two shots of one of the locals you can encounter in this part of town.

Clank, clank, tick-tock-tick-tock

 A quick little update with some models for the Inventors. This week I painted a bunch of golems, in the shape of a 3 Clockwork Servants and a 2 Wind-up Soldiers. They are nice little models to paint and are a quick and easy way to increase your henchmen choices. 

The little Clockwork Servants help your other, bigger, golems to perform at maximum efficiency. Lubricating joints, tightening nuts (no pun intended) and boosting the batteries - there's nothing these little fellas can't do. They're also handy for holding your tea while you're trying to decipher those oil-stained blue prints to find out where the red wire needs to go.

Playing with toy soldiers becomes a lot more exciting when the toys actualy shoot back. The cork guns of these troops have a limited range to minimize collateral damage - so one doesn't need to fear upsetting the neighbours by stray corks hitting their cat.

Next on the painting table are more Inventors to boss the golems around, plus an extra Lab Assistent and the pinnacle of golemic science: the Biocognitive Golem.

It's all in the family

Since the previous post I've been hard at work getting some paint on the Scylla. For these maffioso Halflings I wanted to try a different painting method than the traditional grey/black undercoat followed by layers and highlights. I decided to give Contrast Paints in combination with 'zenithal priming' a try. 

I first primed the models with Uniform Grey from The Army Painter, followed by a light spray of GW's Wraithbone from the top at a 45 degree angle. The idea behind this is that shadows become darker and highlights become lighter, provided that you let the primer shine through the actual paint your using. Contrast Paints are ideal for this, as are the various similar products that are now available (like The Army Painter Speedpaint or Scale 75 Instant Colors).

You can also use this approach with normal paints, but that requires you to carefully thin them down and applying them in very thin layers. This can create very nice results, but to me this feels like quote a slow proces, where it's the speed that made me think of this method in the first place.

I'm very pleased with the results, especially considering how fast and easy it was. Apart from the zenithal priming and using Contrast Paint, I only did a bit of drybrushing and the odd extra highlight (mainly for white cuffs and the like)

First here's little Julia Vendetta, carrying her favourite octopus pet - Octavian. Julia is the youngest of the Vendetta family and a much loved - if somewhat wayward - granddaughter of its matriarch. 

She's flanked by two of her slightly taller bodyguards. Size doesn't matter all that much when you're holding a tommy gun 😁

Two big cousins for those occasions where one needs muscle in addition to hot lead.

And the leader of the famiglia, La Donna: Sybilla Vendetta. In the background are her favourite tentacled friends from another dimension, who she summons if people don't show proper respect to the elderly.

 

Inventors going shopping, whatever could go wrong?

It's been a little while since the last update, mainly due to distraction caused by the 'Tale of x gamers' that's running at my local club. Members have (re)started their Warhammer Fantasy armies (6th edition), with the overall goal to finish a 2000 points army by the end of the year. I've started with a  new Vampire Counts army and have been mainly painting zombies 💀

Wolsung has not been relegated to the back seat however. I was gifted a set of shanty town huts from a friend, who got them via the Wolsung kickstarter (many thanks Stefan 😃). They are primed and ready for painting.

The marketplace is called 'done' for now, below are a few pictures of how all the bits look when put together

The inventors also got some attention. I made quick work of 2 Laboratory Golems, rapidly followed by a Lab Assistent, Alice Tinkerly and Thorvald Nielsgaard.

I'm very pleased with the finished result. The models are nice to paint and have very good detail. Contrast paint diluted with some medium made it very easy to get some dirty stains on the assistents lab coat.
Alice was painted following the colourscheme from the official artwork. I admit that my wife having 'copper blonde' hair might have caused some bias.

With Thorvald I decided to come up with an outfit different from his artwork, and had a go at giving him a tartan waistcoat and some tight green trousers (which ofcourse look very well on him - any Dutch readers will get the (lame) joke 😉)

We sell anything but the 'oink'

The market stalls have proven to be a bigger distraction from the Inventors club than expected - no painted golems yet. 

I had two big market stalls left, which needed more stuff to fill 'm with. 

The first stall sells all kinds of potions, elixers and ingredients to make those with. A whole host of different bits were dug out of the bitsbox. Small beads of various sizes were used to fill the boxes, along with bottles from Bad Squiddo and Tabletop-Art, along with parts from various Warhammer kits (although mainly from the Bretonnians - who have notoriously weird tastes 😉 ). So along with a 'white bunny killed at midnight under a full moon', one can buy snails, thrice-cursed ravens and rat-queue-navet - which are obviously all part of very dark and depraved concoctions...

 

The other stall has become a butcher's. All bits are from Tabletop-Art. Because of the limited pallet, painting was very quick. I put the biggest bits on translucent bases, which wasn't really necessary for the big crate but the barrel with offal is now less prone to being nocked over during play. 

 When I've got better light I'll put the whole market place together for a picture. Along with the stalls in the previous post I've got a fair number of baskets, bags and crates on clear bases that'll bulk it out nicely. Salespeople would be a nice addition as well - models from Guildball's Butchers Guild spring to mind 😀

Beautiful red apples, get them while they're fresh!

 

Another week, another post. Last week saw a flying start with 3 posts in short succession, but that's not going to be the regularity I'm aiming for in the long run. As long as stuff keeps moving forward, I'm a happy man.

Since the previous post I've assembled and primed a bunch of inventors. A post with pictures of primed models isn't very interesting, so instead I've taken pictures of some scenery I've worked on. I decided it was time to fill some market stalls with goods to sell. Gamewise empty stalls work just as well, but they are a bit boring. 

I've used bits from one of Mantic Games' Terrain Crate sets that I got via Kickstarter, combined with some flower tufts. I thought sealing the flower tufts with a mix of PVA, IPA and water would make them more sturdy. It worked in the sense that the flowers are now definitely very sturdy: there'll be no loose pettals in the storage box. The downside was bleeding of colours and a loss of volume. The result is not too bad, but I'm not sure if the method is going to be repeated in the future.

For the 2 stalls I've got left I'm going to have a go with green stuff and other bits&bobs.