[15mm IABSM]¶
South of Cherbourg¶

Prime night! I primed the latest reinforcements to the US Army by airbrushing Vallejo surface primer black 28.012, now the whole force is ready to be painted.


[Frag]¶
Board and Miniatures¶

While casting the molds 1-2 times a day to build up the needed number of squares, I removed the mold lines from the EM-4 miniatures in parallel.

I will not use the backpacks supplied with the models, as these fighters are not on a campaign, but on short arena fights. This leaves them with big holes in their backs, though...

To cover these I printed the following quite simple geometric forms on slighty thicker than usual paper

and glued two stacked pieces to each back to represent the body armour.

For the planned way to base the models, the bar below the feet is not helpful, so I removed it. Insted, I inserted a paper pin in one foot of each model. They will first be used to hold the model while being painted, later cut down and used to secure the model in the base.

The paper armour was then sealed with gloss varnish, before rinsing the models in warm soapy water to remove any casting residues.


[Terrain]¶
Modular Fence System¶

In our recent game (and first ever) of Warfork Fantasy Battles - Warhammer for Adults it became apparent that my supply of linear obstacles is quite limited - the walls you see on the photos in the AAR are all that I have. Among them only three corner pieces and no gates. Also, I do not have any sections to represent destroyed parts - which would have been of use with the cannon rules. Besides, these walls were done around 1998 - a time when my skill was a lot less developed than today.

Lets do some terrain!

What I do not like about many linear obstacles that you find pictures of online or which are even available to buy, is to recognize them as linear wargame modules. To illustrate what I mean lets take a look at the first fences I built for Warhammer 40,000 many many years ago:

The way the fence posts are placed is not as you would find them in reality, the posts would be evenly spaced, not two near each other as where two sections meet in the model fence.

So when designing my new fantasy fences, I thought of how to design them to disguise the obvious joins of the sections. The joins will be visible anyway, as there will be a physical join and I probably will not manage to line them up perfectly - what I am trying to achieve is to not have the joins obvious at first glance.

In the end I settled for the following design (designed in OpenSCAD):

The idea is, that the half posts on both ends join up to form a full post, like in the following two pictures:

The balsa wood for the posts and logs is ordered, the base plates I plan to get from the local DIY store. I will ask for sheets of 5mm MDF in 6" width - this way all the sections will have the same width. The long sides I will then cut by hand to get them in irregular shapes.

Let's see how this will turn out.


[Frag]¶
Board and Miniatures¶

The weekend before last, I was on Norman's Stag Night, where I talked to Marco who told me about this nice, funny and quick game simulating PC shooters as a boardgame while we talked about the hobby we share.

I really just wanted to take a look at it online - but some clicks later I had bought a copy.

And found to many additional rules - like the capture the flag mode. For this type of game, the miniatures provided with the game might not be enough though - so I would need some more. I was always fascinated by the troopers from EM-4 Minitatures, but they never fit any of my projects. Now there was my opportunity...

Boardgames are optivally boring - flat, just coloured paper... A 3D board is so much better. Enter Hirst Arts Molds. I own quite some of them by now, and played around with some of the 1" floor molds. When placing the walls in 3D as well, they need some kind of broader foot, otherwise they will fall over. So I would need larger tiles, the 1.5" ones, so that the wall foot as well as the base of a miniature fit into each square. So I ordered some of them, enough for the flat floor squares as well as a mold for the power up fields, transporters and respawn points.

Thank you Marco... just another project I have no time for... ;-)


[15mm IABSM]¶
North of Caen¶

I experimented with different washes on the models,

British Infantry WWII

British Infantry WWII

British Infantry WWII

British Infantry WWII

and finally decided for 73.201 Black Wash, thinned a bit with water over basically the whole model except the uniform. Using a brownish wash with the skin was making it too similar to the uniform, the black wash gave more contrast. Also the Khaki had a better contrast to the uniform with black in my mind.

The wood of rifles and the spades were highlighted with 70.983 Flat Earth, the olive equippment with 70.888 Olive Grey.

British Infantry WWII

Finally, the backpacks where lightened up again with a quick drybrush of 70.988 Khaki and 70.951 White.

British Infantry WWII


[15mm IABSM]¶
North of Caen¶

The stones are all painted and drybrushed. After this step, I went over the models again with Black and British Uniform to cover all the errors I did so far (mainly on the boots and lower legs due to the drybrushing of the bases), and repainted the helmets in Russian Uniform where the colour started to peel off.

As the peeling started, I now gave the models a coat of gloss varnish, to seal the current state. Especially the helmets, where I picked the models up mainly for doing all the bases, should be safe from chipping now.

Also, the gloss varnish will help the washes which are to follow to flow more easily.

British Infantry WWII

British Infantry WWII


[Warfork 40,000 - Rogue Confrontation]¶
Trazior Underhive¶

The wall sections are cleared of flash...

Trazior Underhive

as well as the tower levels.

Trazior Underhive


[15mm IABSM]¶
North of Caen¶

I highlighted the bases in my usual two drybrushs. The first

British Infantry WWII

does not really change the colour (only slightly), but dampens the brightness of the basecoat.

Here the second drybrush

British Infantry WWII

where you can also see the first individual stones painted.


[15mm IABSM]¶
North of Caen¶

I painted all the bases in the usual brown of my base style, paying extra attention to not get paint on the boots or the uniform of kneeling/prone models.

British Infantry WWIIBritish Infantry WWII


[Warfork 40,000 - Rogue Confrontation]¶
Trazior Underhive¶

The girders supports were all deflashed, which took forever. The outsides were quickly done, but all the insides... When I was finally done I glued them together. I used Lego blocks and an additional baseplate loosely fitted on top to get them straight.

Trazior Underhive

The top row are the ones where I cut the pins in half, the lower row are with uncut pins. I am missing one girder, probably still in the big box...

Trazior Underhive

The support beams were just a matter of minutes to remove the flash.

Trazior Underhive

I now started with the wall section, which are quite quick compared to the girders, as there are only 4 smooth sides to deflash.

Trazior Underhive