Normans for Dux Bellorum

Here are some recently painted Normans for (modified) Dux Bellorum. There are a few Bretons still straggling in and some foot reinforcements to come, but this is the bulk of the army.

The figures are Essex 15s, bar a couple of exceptions that we will note as we go, and they are all mounted on bases 60mm across.

First up, the light horse.

These are lovely figures to paint. Blocked basecoat and a dip is all I did with them.

Next, archers.

There are true Normans and some from the Breton DBA army.

More foot. This time heavy infantry, crossbow and levy skirmishers. The mailed chaps look to be Bretons and 9th/10th Century Franks rather than Normans, so I need two or three bases of heavy foot with kite shields to bring me up to 1066.

And to the big boys: knights!

Is the grandsire of Reginald Front-de-Boeuf amongst them, perhaps?

The standard bearer here and the chap with the Normans-in-Italy crisscrossed shield are not Essex. They came in a pack labelled Thistle and Rose and evocatively titled 'The Bastard'.

You can see the biggest bastard of them all above centre. He was a bit too chunky to mix with the Essex, so I put him on his own base.

Command base.

You might note a fourth imposter here. Although he came - black-undercoated and missing his lance - in the Thistle and Rose lot, he looks to me to be a Chariot figure. I should have got rid of the black undercoat because he doesn't quite match. Oh well, too late now!

I'm actually quietly chuffed with how these came out. The new wet palette did wonders in allowing me to easily mix colours for horse coats, so there is a lot of variety without the grief that ensuring such used to entail. I was a bit apprehensive about doing the shields at first, but using an ultrafine Gundam marker to outline the patterns beforehand made things very simple in the end. It was also pleasing to get to use up four figures from the bits and pieces box.

Can't wait to get them on the table.

But before I do that, I'll have to show off the Saxons...

Baggage

These figures (foot are Essex, not sure about the mules) were generously sent my way by the strong right arm of Simon Miller (Bigredbat), putter-on of spectacular multiplayer ancients games, all round top bloke and author of To The Strongest!

I'm not usually one to muck around too much with bases, but I thought I would try to go a bit fancier than usual for these.

To help me in future, I'm including a little reminder of what I did.

1) Paint the figures!

2) Set some puddles using larger stones and apply a mix of fish tank sand and glue.

3) Next, paint sand with a mix of watery earth brown, followed by a drybrush.

4) Apply glue. Pour flock on...

5) Shake flock off.

6) Add a couple of foliage clumps and dribble Klear over the water holes.

This was a lot of fun to do. Thanks again, Simon!

Father's Day in New Zealand

It's Father's Day in New Zealand today so thoughts naturally turn to the old man. I come from what used to be known as 'a broken home', but that term is not strictly correct. As children we never wanted for love or affection, but for various reasons mum's first marriage had to end. They tried, but it didn't work.

Dad went to Australia and we sort of lost touch with him, except for letters on birthdays and Christmas. He died in 1993.

The old man came into my life when I was about 13. My mum was trying to make ends meet with 3 young kids and had met M, who was a solo dad, at church. Early on he took me and a couple of friends tramping up the Hackett, and he would also build go-carts out of old armchairs in which the neighbourhood kids could race down the hill.

(photo of Hackett Hut taken from David Noble's blog)

He married my mother when I was about 14.

He is a thoroughly good man who has always done the best he can. He applies the same high standards to all aspects of his life. Whether he was building a fence for a stranger or painting a deck for his daughter he would work to the same level. I did not know at the time but he went to extraordinary lengths to get my younger brother out of a hole involving debt, bad choices and dangerous company. That brother turned his life around with M's help and encouragement and is now a respected and sought-after leader in his field. 

The old man is a Christian who lives from the conviction that a man must serve to be able to lead. He has led and served our family in equal measure, and we are all very grateful to him.

He also loves games. I already knew how to play chess before I met him, but he was and is a bit of a master. I've only ever beaten him twice, and the second time was days after he'd had a brain tumour removed, so probably doesn't really count (nah, it counts!). 

He introduced us to Risk, Careers, Escape from Colditz, numerous card games and, later, Settlers of Catan. 

In turn I showed him Commands & Colors: Ancients and Hannibal, which he enjoyed enough to order in from the US.

Anyway, he's about the best father you could hope for who's not actually your father, and we all love him about as much as you could love anybody.

Right now he's recovering from his third brain operation in a year and tomorrow he will learn what his options are with regards to future treatment. We all hope he can get through this. He's the kind of guy who can lose, but is never defeated.

I won't show him this post because he already knows how much I respect him, but it's sometimes therapeutic to put things into words even so.

Happy Kiwi Father's Day to all the dads out there, wherever you are in the world.

Painted: Dungeonquest minis

The humidity was a bit lower today so I took a punt and did some spray varnishing.

First up are some figures from the Dungeonquest boardgame (Fantasy Flight Games edition).

I'm not usually one to paint boardgaming tokens, but I thought they would make a good dry run for the Games Workshop and various other plastics I have lying around. These are very basic paintjobs, a dip, and a couple of coats of varnish. They are not works of art but they look serviceable enough.

We'll have to wait and see though how well the paint will stand up to the wear and tear of gaming with small children!

Recent (and forthcoming) arrivals

Despite the school term beginning again this week it's been quite a forward looking introduction to September at house Prufrock. A copy of Quartermaster General arrived from Amazon Japan (via The Book Depository) and I'm very excited about getting some people together and trying it out.

An upside of our brave new Amazonion world is that the shipping from Europe cost only 300 yen (about US$2.60), saving roughly US$30 on what it would have cost to order it from the States. Yay, a short-term win! The downside is that all those lovely old bookshops are now either going or gone, and on Amazon here ebooks are replacing English-language paperbacks (but assuming their price point!).

One almost feels formulated on a pin...

Anyway, to leave that digression behind, progress has also been made on the painting front. We are 30 Norman knights and 20 odd foot figures to the good, but I don't have pictures because the weather has prevented varnishing. My religion forbids me to flock bases pre-varnish, so we'll have to wait until the heat and humidity relents a little more before showing the troops in their dipp'd glory.

We also have another set of arrivals, this time from a TMPer: some shield transfers for Macedonians, Spartans and other odds and ends. A further TMPer order should arrive in the next wee while. The mix of Crusades-era Syrians and assorted Dark Age foot was a curiosity I could not resist and should prove a handy addition to my Dark Ages project and its sibling: Crusaders and enemies.

That's about all I have to report at the moment.

But it's been a funny old week. I am both very glad that my little son is safe sleeping in his bed tonight and heartsick that a littler boy who looks almost exactly like him was lost drowned washed up by waves on a beach.

And this while I await the arrival of 15mm Syrian horse from foreign shores (and label a blog post miscellaneous).

Here's no great matter indeed.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

A painting rebirth

A couple of old tricks approached in a new way have really changed the painting landscape around here of late.

One was setting myself up with a good wet palette.

I used to use a contraption that required two layers of foam topped with a sheet of cooking paper (or greaseproof, as we call it in NZ).

It was small, slimy, needed to be cleaned out quite often and was a pain to organise. It was much better than no palette at all, but if I hadn't painted for a while it became yet another barrier to actually sitting down and putting brush to figure.

The internal monologue would go something like this: "Hmm, you know, I could just about do a little painting tonight. Ahhh, but  I'd need to rejig that palette before I could begin. Can I be bothered washing it out, cutting the foam sheeting to size and soaking it for the appropriate amount of time?"

And we all know how rhetorical a question that is...

But recently I saw someone somewhere talking about another way to do a wet palette. It needed a shallower tray and instead of fluffing around with foam you used a paper handy towel to hold the water, putting your greaseproof paper onto that. When not using it you put another tray over the top of it (upside down) to keep the moisture in.

I thought about it for a while, then went to the 100yen store and grabbed the required items.

Needless to say, it has been a big success. The paint keeps for days, so the only prep I need to undertake before painting is to remove the top tray. Over time the paint liquifies, so if you do it right you can use older splotches as a wash or mix them with a more recent (and thus thicker) blob to do, say, a cloak, or horses in a slightly different colour.

The second thing has been to use the dip. I tried a dip substitute previously when I was just starting out, but it didn't come out very well so I shelved it. I'd pull it out again for things like pteruges, but more as a wash than anything. Of course, I used Future / Klear, but again as a wash, to bring a paint job together or to provide a protective covering.

And so I laboured for years with spray undercoat, brown wash, block colours, highlight, the odd wash, Future/Klear protective coat, spray varnish.

It works great, but it takes a long time and there are various steps that you end up dreading, and this all contributes to painting fatigue (or laziness, in my case!).

Like everyone I've experimented with various ways to improve and to speed up painting (some of them catalogued in painful detail on this blog!) and met with varying degrees of success.

The trouble for me is limited time, limited motivation, and a large lead mountain.

Anway, I again came across some posts (isn't the internet great?!!) and realised that maybe I should try the dip again, only this time using it more strategically. "Bugger it," I thought; "nothing's getting painted without it, so why not give it a crack?"

A little experimentation showed what I'd been doing wrong when I last used it: a) I'd been too heavy handed, and b) I'd used it on the wrong colours.

It seemed that the tricks were to dip your brush in water before putting it into the mixture itself (and then to come back with a brush or tissue paper to get rid of any pooling on the figure), and to use it on muted colours, coming back with a highlight if needed.

Having painted almost 50 figures a week since these changes were implemented, they have helped me to put a serious dent in the Dark Age leadpile - so much so that I'm probably going to need to buy more to 'fill in a few gaps in the collection'.

So far so good. I guess we'll have to see how long it lasts!

Lovely article in Slingshot 301

The most recent edition of the Society of Ancients'  journal Slingshot arrived in my letterbox this morning, so over lunch I had a quick browse, reading the first article, by current President Roy Boss, entitled "An Amazing 50 Years".

Well, what a cracking read it is. With this year being the 50th anniversary of the Society's founding, Roy talks a little bit about how Slingshot and the SoA have changed (perhaps moulded is a better word!) the landscape of ancients figure gaming.

As a latecomer to the scene (I only became a proper researching,collecting, painting and playing wargamer ten years ago), I have always taken the easy availability of figures, rules and information for granted, so to have Roy put the current abundance into perspective so well made me realise how much is owed to the founders of the hobby, and reminds one again why groups like the SoA who maintain a link with the early days of the hobby are worth supporting.

Thanks Roy, and thanks to all of those people, recognised and unrecognised, who have played their parts in the evolution of this wonderful little hobby of ours.