The Tool Shed

A Quick Post

I decided that I needed a few more small(ish) pieces of scatter terrain for my games to make them a bit more interesting. So, first off is a shack which was made from coffee stirrers and a small block of foam. 

Rob 

Prehammer?

Starting More Stuff

Odd weekend this week, with the Queen's funeral and the extra bank holiday.  Not managing to finish much at the moment but I am managing to start stuff. The title of this post refers to the two very old figures I am painting at the moment both of which were realised around the same time as the first edition of Warhammer in 1983. 

Skarlos, Half-Elf Hero

Bryan Ansell's Heroic Adventurers - September 1983

 

I need some villagers for the next scenario in the Scouring campaign and so any lightly armed figures are top of the list. A couple of the ruffians may have to swap sides for this scenario to make up the numbers. Anyway, Diann was purchased as the stand in for an aborted Terror of the Lichemaster campaign. So far, I haven't bought any figures for this campaign and so I am searching round my collection for suitable miniatures to fill in the gaps. 

Diann the Girl thief,

Dungeon Adventurers Starter Set - Version 2 - October 1983 

The Prancing Pony

The next scenario - Skirmish in Bree requires a model to act as the Prancing Pony so I think this Oldhammer self-built inn is a perfect Standin. This was last fantasy building I made in the nineties before WH40K completely took over. Like all of my nineties buildings they are all showing considerable wear and tear. So, this one will need a bit of a tidy up.  I don't intend to completely repaint it but will add a few features such as a couple more windows much like a did with other buildings (DIY SOS) and a general touch up. 

I Think I might have a Use for This...

Just spent the weekend sorting out my home office and finally got round to ditching the cardboard desk.  I have been using it for the last two years and I just managed build a proper one. I was just about to crush it and put it in the recycle bin when I realised it would be good source of strong,  unwarpped and most importantly free base boards for wargaming. I have had on the list, a couple of 2" x 2" boards for Scouring of the Shire campaign and wargaming in general. 

To give them a bit of texture (but not too much as I want them basically flat), I stuck some foam card to one side. One side the card was peeled off first and you can probably tell which one didn't come off neatly in one go unlike all the other bits!

I then rolled up a ball of scrunched of aluminium foil over the surface to give it a bit of a texture. This is much easier on a small board but a right pain on two 2" x 2" boards. Finally, a coat of PVA and sand.  

Vexed by Blogger (As Usual) 

Blogger seems to be doing something weird to some of my links to other blog pages and I have seen it on other people's blogs...  Any ideas anyone as it does not seem have an obvious cause? 

Rob 

Ruffian Huts Rebuilt & Ruffians Mustered

 Where Have all the Ruffians Gone?

Obviously its too hot to paint indoors at the moment (in the south of the UK), so a quick relocation to the garden seemed like a great solution. And  a very pleasant afternoon was spent yesterday finishing off the rework of the ruffian's huts. Not surprisingly this also led me to dig out the out my finished and half finished band of Sharkey's rogues. From the previous Scouring of the Shire campaign. Anyway back to the buildings. 

'Wake Up!, Sharkey has work for you'

Added a bit to detail to all of the buildings including lock bars for the cells and door handles on the others. My reasoning is that the ruffians would have stolen as much as possible from the hobbit holes. So the blockhouse and guard house have nice brass door handles which haven't been looked after. 

Guardhouse

Poor State of repair, weeds on the roof

Blockhouse & Cells

After the walls were covered in filler and sanded. 

Basic white finish!

The walls were originally finished in a mid brown but the colour was just too damn close to the tarpaulin roofs and so had to be lightened up. 

Original wall colouring

Sharkey's Rogues

To be fair these were also painted very quickly to get ready for the Shire campaign, but definitely not my finest work.  I am generally not keen on doing paint stripping on miniatures (read any post where I have to do some paint stripping), but the one official GW ruffian did go into the paint stripper. The rest will be rebased and given a general tidy up. 

The Ruffians weren't any better than the huts!

Sharkey however, is the one figure from this lot which I do like and will not be changed, except to paint base back to black. Which is the correct colour for bases and not brown or bright  green as was the GW fashion back in the 90's and early 2000's. 

That looks much better!

Now I do really like the official Citadel Lord of the Rings miniatures, but at £8 per character figure (Not including postage).  I don't like them that much. Even the basic figures on eBay aren't cheap. Although I am tempted to get a couple of them.  

There are a number of half finished figures that never made to the campaign in time. So, I attempted to create my own versions of the characters (from the 2nd edition source book) with all the right equipment using Frostgrave sprues and stuff from the bits box. Here is the first one - Sid Briarthorn, ruffian leader. 

Sid, the ruffian leader

Rob 

More Scenery & LotR Stuff

 Boromir Arrives on his Mighty Steed

Ambushed on the way to Rivendell

In the end I opted for a simple black scheme on the horse to try and make it a bit more imposing ( Where Have all the horses gone?). But overall he goes well with the version on foot.

 

Scouring of the Shire - Ruffian Huts under Refurbishment

I made these  huts a few years ago for a Scouring of the Shire campaign. They were done in a hurry and I was trying to find ways of not doing much painting.  Whilst I quite like the design, the stone effect wallpaper didn't really work, and the woodwork was a bit rough (ok very rough). So in light my previous attempts on the cityscape photography board. I thought would attempt to remove the wallpaper and attempt to the texture the walls. And give them a general tidy up. They will then also be suitable for the city scape board. 

Unlike the other foam card used to make the cityscape board, the card on these buildings wasn't easy to peel off. I ended using a long Stanley knife blade (the kind with the snap off sections) to slide between the card and foam layers. This did make the foam a bit rough, but this actually helps the design. I even managed to get the paper and card off of the hut with a covered porch with doing any major damage. 

Sections of brick were added and then the remainder of the walls were given a light coat of poly filler. Which when dry, will be given a gentle sanding to dial down the roughness of the walls. Then it tidy up and painting. 

Speedy mark one ruffian huts

Already looking better

Rob 

Crooked House, Rangers & Strong Tone

 Crooked House 

Finished off the crooked house, it has turned out a bit more dirty than I was planning which is probably due making the wash too dark on the plaster work. Also it doesn't show up very well on the photo but the house  leans to the left quite a bit hence the name.  

I originally painted the windows and the drew on the framework with a fine permanent marker pen but it just wasn't neat enough. So I printed some windows out on a laser printer and gave them a quick wash with some Nuln oil. Fortunately by printing the paper  on a laser printer the printing wasn't affected by the Nuln oil.

I deliberately limited the amount of features on the sides of the crooked house as I intend to make a couple more town houses that can be placed alongside this one. Enough to make all the remaining houses for the Thistlewood scenario. 

Dwarf Rangers

Ready for anything.

Finished off the first two dwarf rangers who will act as an allied contingent for the Halflings and as the dwarves for Thistlewood. In the Thistlewood scenario, Joe Dever doesn't list missile units directly, instead it simply states that 20% of the army of the good have missile weapons. So I am splitting out five of the fifteen dwarves who will be armed with bows. 

A Stronger Tone?

I bought some Army Painter strong tone last year, tried it and didn't really get on with it. But I thought I would try it again for painting up the goblins as an alternative to using multiple citadel shades. I have 30 of them to paint up so want a reasonable speed painting method. I am not totally sold on the end effect but it was certainly better than I was expecting. I will now paint another one up using my usual Citadel shade technique which is using different shades on different parts. To compare against this goblin. 

Step 1 - base colours

Not really sold on my choice of colours either!

Step 2 - Strong tone wash

Rob 

Halfling Hounds

 The Swedish Vallhund

Ranger & faithful companion

One of my design aims behind my halfling army is to use figures and units that would generally fit in with the Halfling's of Tolkien's Shire. So no halfling war machines or halfling heroes riding dragons, which I have seen in other ranges. 

The Rangers catch some rustlers in the act!

However, I think a unit of halflings with hunting or guard dogs seems entirely in keeping with a Shire themed army. I did look at suitable figures from a number of different ranges with guard dogs from Citadel's Farmer Maggot being an obvious choice. I do already have the Farmer Maggot and his hounds, but want make a couple of units, so needed more than three hounds. They are currently selling for £8.20 for Farmer Maggot  and his three hounds on the Citadel website. Which would make each hound about £2.75 (with a spare Farmer Maggot or two).  Warbases also do a nice set of dogs but they are a bit on the small side. 

The whole pack

Whilst nosing around Salute, I came across these hounds by Bad Squiddo Vallhunder (8) (badsquiddogames.com) at eight for £8.  

Vallhunder are Swedish cattle dogs. The Swedish Vallhund was originally bred as a drover and herder of cows over 1,000 years ago. In real life they are bit on the small side (See above). But just right size for halflings.  And at £1 each, a much more reasonable price. Giving me a couple of useful animal handler units. 

So as expected, it was fairly quick to paint up all eight hounds. I am in progress converting up a couple of extra rangers to act as permanent animal handlers. 

Grand Designs

Finished building the crooked house, now ready for painting.  

Rob 

Finishing & Starting Stuff

 Finished the Last Giak

So I have finished all of my current collection Lone Wolf figures, there are still a few more to get but their  'normal' prices means I will watch and wait. There are plenty of other interesting projects out there which my money will probably be spent on first.

So next up is the group shot of all the miniatures in my collection. 

The whole gang. 

This group has  taken over twenty years on and off,  so cover multiple types of my styles over the years. So despite the differences I quite like the fact they don't all look the same. One of other  perennial questions is around basing and certainly those recently painted figures were based to fit into current armies and groups. 

So on to the next projects.

Started Something New

Just completed the first of the Pixie Riders from Miniatures (oakbound.co.uk), a great little figure who fits in nicely to Fae army. I have another two to complete and hopefully will be start of light cavalry unit.

The Pixie leads the sprites into battle
(Playing around with the light)

Stuff in Progress

I haven't forgotten my Thistlewood project but fancied a bit of a change of pace. So looking through my buildings collections. I have done a bit of tidying up of my 30 year old buildings and started to build a few more to complete the ones necessary for the scenario. I can't do any further work on this house until I get some more coffee stirrer sticks!

Its the first time I have used egg box cardboard for the tiles and I am really impressed by the result. It didn't start out to be a crooked house but once I noticed it, I decided to work with it. A lot of old houses are not perfectly square and few odd angles are perfectly normal.

Progress on Buildings so far.

Rob 

Wizard's Tower

 Almost Halfway on my Bingo Card

Finished the little wizard's tower I have been working on. The shape was inspired by a yogurt pot which I used as  the base for the stone work. Which was made out of modelling clay that, I found left over from one of my daughter's art projects. The rest was bits of card and coffee stick stirrers. So a very cheap and satisfying project. 

Bingo

This completes another trio of bingo card squares. I am approaching halfway and the remaining squares are things that I will have to make a particular effort to complete. But that I suppose is the point!

10. Scratch build a piece of scenery. (incorporating a few prefab pieces to kit bash something new and unique counts).

The wizard's tower obviously. 

11. Paint a monster (Fantasy, Sci-Fi; any suitably “monstrous” creature.)

Make up your own joke.

Great fun to paint and a really good opportunity to practise painting skin on a larger miniature. 

12.Convert a model (Can be as simple as a weapon swap, or a re-pose).

A simple arm swap to convert this miniature.

Rob

DIY SOS Part 2

Finished One!

Finished off refurbishing the farmhouse. I did end up adding more windows (in this case four) which doubled the number of windows from the original build. I also finally added some door handles which have been missing for the last 30 years. The door handles were made from little balls of Milliput which I originally made as eyeballs for the Oldhammer shields which now also are used as small toadstools. An increasingly useful scenic item. 

As this was a tidy up rather than a complete repaint, I left the walls and woodwork alone but did do a bit of dry brushing on the roof tiles. I may go back and add a bit weathering. 

It now looks quite pleasant with the flowers borders around the house. 

Now with added wagon wheels

Rob