Friday 27 April 2012

From the Shadows...

Quickly painted up one of Clan Eshin's best; this should give Paul a nasty surprise next time his Vampire tries to tear through my Clanrats!





In other news, work has begun on the next batch of Clanrats in the wake of yet another loss to Paul's Undead on Monday. It was a close run thing, but all his new toys proved to be too much for Queek Greyclaw yet again. The one good thing to take away is that I think I'm learning to use the army a lot better (even though I'm losing). I've not changed my list at all since our first game and I've been getting better performances each game. I've reached the stage now though where I can see what needs changing, and what would work better based on how I've been using the army. More on that in a future post...

Thursday 19 April 2012

Go-Slow Month

It looks like April is going to be a slow month again. Maybe it's the bad weather putting a damper on my motivation? Maybe the new year enthusiasm takes three months to wear off? Either way, things are on a go-slow, so there's not much getting done on the hobby front. I do have one thing to show though, a project that's been in the background for a month or so (started during the build-up to Alumwell/WMMS)

A week or two before the WMMS, March's edition of Wargames Illustrated came out. In it was the return of Paul Davies' "How to" articles, and this one happened to be 'How to make a Watermill'. I read it, and instantly thought what a great addition a watermill might make to our Thirty Years' War display game. All other projects were dropped as I began carving out foamboard, balsa wood, lollipop sticks and coffee stirrers in a frantic effort to build a watermill before the WMMS.

As you can guess by the complete lack of a watermill, I didn't get it finished it time for the show but I've not given up on it. I've been quietly plugging away at it in the background. It's still not complete, but I thought it was about time I showed off my efforts (and it's a convenient way to fill out the blog in what is otherwise an unproductive month...)




Various views of the mill building; foam board walls constructed
following Mr. Davies' templates, with balsa and coffee stirrer timbers



Another few shots with the roof included. The roof is just thick (2mm) card,
with individual tiles cut from cereal boxes and glued in overlapping rows.


The roof as it currently stands, just over halfway to constructed. 
So there you go. Cutting and glueing all those individual tiles for the roof is pretty time consuming, and I'd certainly have gone for a quicker method if I hadn't already passed the 'deadline' for the WMMS, but I actually prefer not having to rush this stage because I think the individual tiles give a much better look overall.  It's also oddly therapeutic gluing little tiles in little rows!

Of course, the astute amongst you (assuming you're not all just bots, and there actually are real people reading this...) will have noticed the lack of an actual waterwheel. Well, that's the "difficult" bit to be honest, because I need to measure it up so that the mill as a whole sits seamlessly on the terrain boards and so far I've not got round to it. I will eventually need to make the wheel if we intend to use this for future games, but in the meantime I can carry on with the tiling...

Thursday 5 April 2012

Long Time No Post

Well, it's been a while. A couple of busy weeks, followed by a couple of weeks with a complete lack of motivation to do pretty much anything.

I haven't been completely idle though. I did manage to finish painting those Moria Goblins I started a while back.




These take me up to 83 models painted so far this year, which keeps me ahead of schedule for the inevitable  drop-off in productivity that I'll experience later in the year (or indeed, the drop-off that I'm experiencing now!) Next up, I should really get back to more Skaven. I've got the next batch of 40 Clanrats waiting to go, and the Goblins have provided me with a nice distraction to get me ready to go back to the rats.