Industrial Wild West Part 2 - Prospector's Office

I thought the first building I'd make was the Prospectors Office. There are quite a few "mystery " components on the mdf sheets, so I will be starting with the more obvious builds and hope to figure out what the mystery pieces are for by a process of elimination. The sections for this come from Sheets 1 & 4 of the kit post.

I decided that base sections would be easier to paint un-assembled before any weathering was added.

For painting I will be following the tutorial instructions from Lead Adventures forum member "Michi". The results from shown in this thread will tell you why. I hope mine come out half as good.

For my own reference as much as yours, the technique is:

• No primer is necessary. 
• Choose a base colour and apply it with rough strokes of a flat brush. That will leave some wood (MDF) shining through. 
• Repeat that with increasingly lighter shades of that colour (three or four layers). 
• Wash the entire building with a very watery black wash. 
• Apply another wash of a dust colour of your choice. This wash should be rich with pigments. You can take away too thick areas with fresh water while the wash is still wet or with alcohol when it has already dried.
• Finally apply a rather light drybrush of sand or light grey colour.

As ever I got a bit carried away and painted them up without inbetween shots. You've not missed much though. Here I've done the base coat and 3 lighter layers. The sign was painted in after this process.

A big decision was whether to make the doors "open-able". As most the other scenic pieces in the set a obstructions it was decided that having a building to duck into would be good, so off they came. More on how they are re-attached later.

The Front roof segment sits tight tot the front signage so was glued in place. The rear roof section just slots over tabs on its own. The tabs were slightly thinned to make removing\replacing the roof section easier to get the figure in the building that bit easier.

The section in place.

The construction so far before any washes are added.

 Another missed photo didn't document the buidling after the 2 washes (One thin black and other a thin  burnt umber\sienna mix), but here I've applied the light dry brush of a mixed sandy brown colour.

To hinge the doors I though some fabric would be the best bet. I initially cut some thing lengths of denim, but they frayed and fell apart. Luckily I have small felt offcuts from another project which hadn't been thrown out yet, so they were pressed into service with white glue. (At time of writing the dried results have not been fully tested!) The hut interior was also given a quick layer of white.

And here is the finished structure.

Raft Making

The next "Song Of..." campaign battle takes part on a river, with the warbands on boats or rafts, so I thought it was a good incentive to make some simple, roughly hewn rafts.

 For the body I was going to need some "logs". I know that a walk in the woods can produce a bundle of sticks, but I rarely see any thin and straight enough for a raft (or 4 in this case). I also had a bag of sticks that I'd bought ages ago with view to making a wooden palasade (which never got past the whittling stage). These are from a Pet Store and are sold in a bundle for Rabbits,etc to gnaw on.

I decided that 6 stciks would make a raft of suitable width. 2 logs (nominally the thickest) were chosen to be the edge logs and had one length sanded to make a better gluing surface. The remain 4 logs had 2 sides sanded so that they would press up together and glue more effectively.

 Glue alone would still be a bit brittle, so holes were drilled through the logs (fore and aft) and wire threaded through (I used a straightened paper clip). The Edge logs were not drilled all the way through to hide the scratchy wire ends.

The raft was assembled with the wire and white glue between the logs.

To strengthen the bond I also squeezed white glue in the joins on the underside of the raft, using a finger to push the glue down into the gap and wipe off excess. It was all left to dry.

 The raft needs some sort of basic steering mechanism. To represent this a couple of pieces of matchstick were assembled on the back of the raft as a rudder handle (the back of the handle dipping to table\water level). The "oar" was then given a quick light brown wash and (once dry) the whole lot given a quick spray of matt varnish to cover any shine from any visible dry glue.

Here is the end result with prospective crew. Ideally some sort of string could be glued across the width as binding rope, but I couldn't find any thin enough that didn't look out of place. Once the models are on the effect is good enough to work anyway I feel.

Freddy vs Scooby

MacSver and I played our first ever game of Faith and Fear last week. I've had the rules (both Faith and Fear and the expansion Kooky Teenage Monster Hunters) for years but never turned the pages on the table before. So I dug out some carefully chosen figures for some spooky fun...Freddy Krueger vs Scooby Doo! (and friends)

Troll Trader Industrial Wild West Set - Part 1

My new Dead Man's Hand pickup has predictably had me looking at Terrain for my hobby shed table. My wallet doesn't stretch to the pre-painted 4Ground Wild West buildings (or at least I don't want to stretch it). Also, for economies sake (remember I used to contribute to the frugal gaming blog).

Troll Trader in the UK may well be familiar to sci-fi and fantasy ebay addicts (I know I've made several purchases in the past). They sell a line of basic mdf Wild West buildings that I am presuming is their own line (on the website they are listing under TT Combat Buildings). Their Industrial Wild West set (for around £30GBP) caught my eye, especially as elements could be played in other genres than Wild West.

So I took the plunge into my first mdf kit, which I plan to build and document over the next few weeks (my hobby time is sadly limited and split).

First up, this is what came through the post - 8 A4 sheets for laser cut mdf.

Sheet 1

Sheet 2

Sheet 3

Sheet 4

Sheet 5

Sheet 6

Sheet 7

Sheet 8

It all looks very nice. One main thing to note is that the above pictures are the complete contents - no instructions or final picture for guidance, so I'll be be referring to the ebay sale picture below once I get past the basic buildings in the build.

Battleshed Diaries

A quick referral for you. My gaming buddy, MacSver has decided that his side of the story needs told and has dived into a blog of his own. It won't be just a set of posts completely contradicting my view of events however.

Alongside the sci-fi and fantasy skirmish games we mostly play he also has regular games of Saga, Flames of War and even Warhammer to name a few. He's also partial to an immersive boardgame or two (Firefly I think was his latest hit).

I'm also hoping that he will let slip some details of his projects he eludes to during our games but wants to surprise me with later. And publishing his high rolling Battleshed Dice chrageing technique would be nice (I'm sure his side of the table runs over lay lines or something!)

Anyway it'll all be happening at http://macrminiadventures.blogspot.co.uk/ if you fancy.

IHMN - Victoria's House Staff Painted

She won't be amused by the wait, but after a bit the Palace House Staff are ready to attend. A combination of Ironclad Miniatures and Wargames Foundry figures.

From left to right: Young Maid Rose, Mrs Bridges the Cook and Lady Isabel, Lady in Waiting.

From Left to Right again : Down from the Balmoral Estate, Groundskeeper William, Head Butler Mr. Bridges and Maid Agnes.

The final section of the gang consists of 6 IronClad Miniatures Palace Grenadier Guards, who are on the table as we speak...

15mm Skirmish Box - another AAR

It's school holidays time and with some downtime I pulled out the Skirmish box for a quick game with Arabiansquire - one of the reasons the whole project started in fact. It's the first game of SoBH )or any wargame) he's played in quite a while - he's been seduced by the dark side of the local gaming club (Magic The Gathering!), so I gave him the humans and a reasonable middle ground.

Claymore 2014

Saturday saw ArabianSquire and myself attend Edinburgh's main Wargame show, Claymore. We got there nice and early for a good look round to see what Participation games were where and spot out any potential purchasing targets (although I had my mind and budget pretty set before we arrived)

First game played was a WWII Bridge assault game (which we'd missed playing at Carronade). Good simple, well led participation game, although my D Platoon were obviously shaken by the glider landing and couldn't hit the enemy!

A quick trip across the hall and were at a very nice sprawling Wild West Mining Town. Given my latest Dead Man's Hand games, we had to play.

The game was another simple set of home spun rules, and after an unintentionally combined effort to rid the town of a Mexican gang the final showdown between the Arabiansquires Lawmen and my Drunkards went the way of the later - mostly because The Lawmen had spent most their ammunition on the Mexicans!

In the Main Foyer Hall a couple of comnapies were out in force. One was Mantic, who had demo games of Mars Attacks!, Dreadball and Dead Zone all out on what was a busy table.

However for the majority of the afternoon Arabiansquire was playing at the impressive Spartan Games table, where they were demoing their soon to be released Firestorm Planetfall game.

Very impressive it was too, and everyone seemed to have a good time playing.

The game is loosely scheduled for an Autumn release so no doubt will be in line for an Xmas purchase...

And talking of purchases, what business did the traders do with my wallet? Well, after finally getting a Gang for Dead Man's Hand I felt I'd better look out the rulebook, and linked to that picked up a bargain box of 18 Black Scorpion Miniatures Cowboys and Mexicans. And whilst all that was still in my head went all 15mm with Bluemoon Manufacturing's Cowboy and Personalities sets (courtesy of the Old Glory UK).