Monday 27 November 2017

Lamps

Hi all

maybe one of the most boring titles in blogging history but I hope you enjoy the content at least.  For my urban project I've been wracking my brains on how to add layers of detail without cluttering the piece so much that miniatures can't be used in the games!  To this end I'm always walking the aisles in hobby shops of various types looking for inspiration and often finding it in the most unlikely source.  This is largely the fault of Jez from the blog "Carrion Crow Buffet", who is always doing something spectacular with just a bloody button or something! (no jealousy there at all :-) ). 

So in a shop called "The Range", I found some lovely little beads that I thought I could do something with.  They are pearlescent and vaguely teardrop in shape.  The first thing I did was glue a cocktail stick into the bottom of the bead.


I then cut the stick to size and reached for my trusty glue gun.  Squeezing a roughly round blob of glue onto baking paper, I then stuck the other end of the cocktail stick into the glue, flattening it somewhat.


Once the hot glue cooled and hardened, I took it from the baking paper and voila.


With a touch of black paint....


and in my newly built houses... sorry for the photo




nice and simple detail with a minimal outlay and takes about 5 mins exc drying time.

hope you enjoy
dGG


Friday 24 November 2017

Urban Project - Nash Road (WiP) part 2

Hi all

progress is slow but it is being made. I'm starting to get a little worried that I'm not going to finish the project in time and I'm not sure how I can get speed up!  Still I beaver away at it....

Last time I'd completed the ground floor and the gardens, a significant sized piece of work.  This time I managed to only complete two of the top floors for the three houses. So here they are (nearly) finished...

number 2 Nash Road.  Note the rooms are all differently decorated inc carpet colour.

small bedroom at the front of the house, master bedroom on the right and fitted bathroom at the bottom

rear view

small and horribly green (i still find these in old council properties)

my hand moulded bedroom furniture, very grubby - eeuuughhh!

movie posters on the wall and a digital alarm clock, finish this room

classic Athena poster!




couldn't resist adding a road sign

and a satellite dish and TV ariel



number 4 is a bit PINK!!
lurking in the bathroom...



more 80's film posters and Wicked

the small bedroom

more detail from my existing street furniture collection added for effect



I'm still yet to finish number 6  so that will have to wait until next week and then you can see the whole street.  After that we will see as I'm kinda making it up as I go along now....

hope you enjoy
dGG


Tuesday 21 November 2017

Skips!

Nah not the crisps....

Hi all

Refuse Skips
A little while back I bought some TT Combat mdf kits for my Urban Project.  These included the Bus Stops, Play Park and Refuse Skips.  I finally got around to putting a couple of the bits together and I thought I'd start with a quick win - the skips.  These are a really nice kit and for £4 I think a real bargain.  I have two gripes only, firstly and this is only a minor thing - they have branded the side of the skips with company names, this is fine but it means I was unable to use the name of local companies to me which would have been more meaningful for my very local campaign.  Secondly and most importantly - the scale, these kits are big! billed as suitable for 28mm - 32mm they are definitely on the top end of that scale! clearly aimed at the Knights Models games Batman the Miniatures Game and the like.  Come on TT Combat, there are a lot of other games out there other than BMTMG! It goes to show the scale creep that is really prevalent in modern miniatures gaming at the moment. Anyway the negatives to one side, I actually really like the models and they are dead simple to put together and to paint.  They also gave me a chance to practice some new (for me) weathering techniques.  So this is how I did it, don't forget that this was the first time I did these techniques so be gentle....

First of all I primed the model with a grey car primer


I then mixed up a metallic rust brown paint, made up from Vallejo "Saddle Brown", "Orange Brown" and some GW "Runefang Silver".  Once I got the colour I liked, I added it to the areas I would be most likely to weather.



I then gave the whole model two coats of hairspray (which I had to buy, much to the amusement of the cashier at ASDA).  Once each coat was dry, I covered the model in the colour I wanted the skip to be, in this case a mix of cheap acrylic paint and GW "Tallarn Yellow".


While it was drying a used the flat edge of a wooden coffee stirrer to gently rub away the yellow to reveal the layers underneath.  Now I rubbed a bit to hard in places and went down to the grey primer but that worked for me too as it looked like it went down to the base metal of the skip, but it is a warning and I might prime other models with brown primer if I don't want the grey to show (or just be more careful).





the model on the right is a pinkish orange, yes I have seen skips this colour!
Of course with this stage completed I moved onto the next part and that was to fill the skips, I wanted both to be filled as an empty one just doesn't exist - does it!  Easily achieved by adding blue foam bricks and mdf castoffs and filling the rest with fine sand. I then poured watered down PVA glue into the skip about 5 times, allowing it to dry thoroughly in between.


Finally I painted the mdf scraps and bluefoam to represent wood beams and bricks and covered the whole lot in a black/brown wash to "dirty it up", I then dry brushed some bright rust to the very edges of the skips and voila!





and on the boards with some acrylic resin traffic cones that I also got from TT.



See what I mean by big! The nasty trio of mercenaries hunting Anna are head height to them, still they are very nice and a welcome detail to my emerging boards.

hope you enjoy
dGG

Thursday 16 November 2017

The force is strong in this one...

Hi all

Image result for x wing miniaturesnot a very original title for this post, but I had my first games of X-Wing last night.  I know, I know where have i been for the last couple of years? In my defence I've been attempting to limit the number of new games I take on in recent times - boxes and boxes of unused games and miniatures, some still in their cellophane wrappings line the shelves of da Grotto.  That said, both Rich and Chris took an interest in X-Wing at Salute! this year and bought into the game.

So Rich hosted a gaming night last night, the first we've had in months, it was just me and him as the other members of the Herd were busy, so we took down his sadly under-used fleets and took them for a spin.

I lost... 



a lot....



but I really loved the game, so did I lose?


.....erm yes.....yes I did....all of them...








but I did really love the game.  Nice simple mechanic, not too many tokens on the board (unlike my beloved Bushido) and beautiful, cinematic miniatures.  Rich put on some Star Wars music and the room was filled with the sounds of us trying to impersonate the whine of a Tie Fighter engine (bet you're all doing it right now!).  Yes I even piloted the "Millenium Falcon" resulting in it's destruction - twice!  A sad, sad day for the rebellion...

So better late than never, I 'm loving a bit of X-Wing and it's going on the shopping list.

hope you enjoy
dGG