Take Me to the Church...

This is another little break from painting Infinity figures as I do some terrain.  My wife bought this for me as part of a village for Christmas to go along with my Napoleonics and other period gaming.  I find painting terrain less difficult than miniatures because I don't put a lot of effort into it.  I try, but I don't find it incredibly exciting.  I do realize that it can really make for an awesome looking table so I tend to go back and forth on how to do it and make it look great.  Months later I'm still going... "I need to get to that some day."

Well, that time has arrived.  I recently painted a figure that I'm excited to show you guys, but first I wanted to give him a nice backdrop.  So here's a church!

At one point I was going to try to give the windows a stained glass look, but all the mess from casting there wasn't enough flat surfaces to do a good job.  I honestly tried.  Second though was to cut out some plastic and paint them to look like stained glass and insert them into the windows.  But, all the windows are different sizes so that would have been a lot of work.  Like I said, I get a bit lazy with terrain.  :)

This is the Medieval Parish Church from Magister Militum.

Next post is a White Wolf.  Can ya guess?

Cheers!

Rod

My AHPC Bonus Round 3 - "Home" Entry

//ProxyHost/*/.../Tx/DoucetCorp/ANewHomeOfDiscovery

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The buildings are all 15mm and made by Brigade Models.

A Small Town in Mexico

Well, I'm wrapping up this project with a few last minute additions.  We're on the home stretch!

First off I painted up another building for my town.  This is the stucco stable from Old Glory miniatures.  The roof is detachable too.

The next building is the Old Glory Sheriff/Marshall's office.  I'm using it as a railroad station.

Now that's done.  It was time to take a picture of the finished map.  There's bits hanging off or draped awkwardly, but on the game table at the convention it will fit right.

Tomorrow I'll be on the road to the convention.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

Rod

Making Mexico

So, the countdown has really started.  Friday November 5th is when I'll be running the game at the convention.  And thanks to a crazy work schedule I'm a bit behind and having to work like a fiend!!

The table will be 8 ft x 5 ft which was larger than any gaming mats I had.  So the quick solution was to get a piece of felt cloth cut.  I picked a tan color I liked at the fabric store and had it cut 9 ft x 6 ft. so a little would hang over the edge.  Then I picked up 3 different colors of spray paint and went to work.  Here's the results with some of my terrain as I'm figuring out the final layout.

Also to provide a bit of cover and give it the proper feel for this area of Mexico, I needed some mountains.  I obviously don't want anything too large that will get continually bumped into when folks are reaching for figures, but still large enough to provide some cover and fill in some table space.  I bought a piece of insulation sheath and started cutting away.  Besides the pieces you see in the picture above I have these below getting a good coat of white glue.

At the suggestion of my wife I went to Hobby Lobby and picked up a couple of packages of cacti.  These unfortunately were not that cheap... oh well!  At least I'll have them now.  Mounted on some larger disks and here's the result.  This actually turned out better than I was expected so I'm really pleased with the results.

And finally I finished my Villista artillery crew.  Unfortunately no one makes a crew for Villistas that I could find in 28mm.  So I took a Knuckleduster figure and cut of his pistol so it would look like he's reaching for the gun.  The other figure is from Gringo 40's.  The 75mm is also from Gringo 40's.  Not my best picture, but at this point the battery was going dead so I'll take it.  :)

Hope you are having a great week friends.  Viva Villa!

Rod

Dot - Dash - Dot...

Two more weeks until the convention and I'm furiously working away at the finishing touches to my Mexican Revolution game.  First thing was to add a bit of terrain to the board.  It's not really necessary for the game but visually I think it will give some appeal.  I'm talking about telephone/telegraph poles.  I will have these running parallel to my train tracks.  I got these at the hobby store.  They are made for model trains (O-gauge), which as you can see from the picture are a little tall for 28mm figures, but they looked more comparable than the HO scale poles.  I got 10 total, but only painted up 4 for the purpose of this game.

I also needed 6 more Villistas to fill out the ranks of my infantry.  Not wanting to buy another pack of 30 troops from Old Glory I decided to buy 6 old west figures from Knuckleduster.  And 2 troops from Gringo 40's.  I picked two to be my future artillery crew and the rest became line troops.  Here's the one's I picked for that role.  (artillery coming up in the next post!)

The first 5 are from Knuckleduster:

This last one is from Gringo 40's.

Pancho Villa Goes to Church

This weekend I decided to visit one of my "finished" projects, the Mexican Revolution.  I used the quotes there on finished, because this is one of those projects I plan to add bits and bobs to as I feel like it.  I have what I need to play a game, so at this point anything new just adds more flavor to the game.  I've had this church sitting in my resin pile for over a year now taunting me to paint it.  So, I setup my airbrush and went to work.

Sadly, I have no idea who makes this church or where I even got it from.

Pancho Villa and a couple of his Villistas finish searching the church.  The Federales have removed all the ammunition they had been storing there just a few days before.

I've been itching to play with my Mexican Revolution figures for a few weeks now.  So I wouldn't be surprised if you see this church again in the very near future...

Let's talk about Grass...

I've been playing around with terrain here lately.  I'm a big fan of modular terrain.  I like having plenty of little bits and pieces of terrain to just scatter around and have a constantly changing game board.  I've seen several folks do grass with Teddy Bear fur and I have really been itching to try it.  So I went to the local fabric store and bought a big batch of fabric that I though would be good for a test run.  I cut out some pieces and set to work with my trusty airbrush.

The figures are 15mm Viet Cong to give a feel for the actual size.

This one is meant to be a corner piece of the game table.

The best part about this grass is I'm not allergic to it... and don't have to mow it!

Fallschirmjäger - HQ and 1st Platoon

Last year I completed a British Armored Squadron for Flames of War gaming.  With the late war battles of Market Garden for inspiration and the sound track from "A Bridge Too Far" blasting in my head I set about painting the Irish Guard.  That army saw a lot of action at my favorite game store, but now that I've moved to a new house it's a bit of a drive to make it to there to play.  There are stores that are closer but they don't play Flames of War unfortunately.  So now if I want to play I have to invite a buddy over.  Which also means I have to supply a second army.

So, while I'm working on my Mid-War German and Soviet armies, I will occasionally side track and paint some Germans to fight my Brits.  Best part of painting Germans is that I can use them for both Eastern Front and Western Front.  So who knows?  These Fallshirmjager may see action against the Soviets, or my SS Panzergrenadiers may end up fighting my Brits.

Here's the HQ for my Fallshirmjagerkompanie.  I've painted both command stands without Panzerfaust so they can be cheaper, but I have one extra with a Panzerfaust just in case I have some points left over after I add the other toys.  There's two Panzerschrecks to add some punch!

Here's my first Fallshirmjager Platoon with 3 full squads.  You just can't have enough infantry right?? 

And... just to add some more terrain I got some trees from the hobby store and mounted them on bases.

That's the latest updates.  My 2nd Platoon of Strelkovy are still in progress.

Rod

Russian Church

My birthday was last week, and my wonderful wife surprised me with all kinds of goodies.  She had asked for hints on what kind of gifts I might like so I suggested I'd like some of the Eastern Front WWII terrain from Total Battle Miniatures.  I was really just expecting a building, maybe two.  She got me two houses and a barn... AND A HUGE CHURCH.  I had to say I was totally shocked when I unwrapped this thing.  Obviously, I couldn't wait to start painting it!  Unfortunately the postal service decided to have an impromptu football match with the package before delivering it to my doorstep so I had some repairs to make before I could even start.  But with some glue, green stuff, sweat, cursing and eventual tears I got it fixed enough to start priming.

Here's a some pictures...

The building consists of 4 pieces.  The bottom piece is a heavier type of resin than the other pieces.

And now the real question.  Just how big is this church?  Huge.  It will definitely be the center of attention when its on the table.  Here's a picture with some proud 15mm troops waving the Soviet flag.

I have to say I'm really impressed with this model.  Also, according to my wife Total Battle Miniatures rushed the order to get it here on time.  So I definitely recommend them as a class act if you happen to be considering ordering any of their stuff in the future.

Thanks for dropping by and having a look friends!

Eastern Front Log Cabin

For my Flames of War Eastern Front campaign I started shopping around for some terrain.  I wanted to have some buildings to scatter around the battlefield.  I found a company called Mark IV Miniatures that has some really nice buildings.  I ordered a couple just to see what they would look like in person.  You never know when this stuff will be hit or miss.

Anyway, this is the first of the two log cabins I ordered.  I really like the look of it.  What's really neat is that it has an interior too.  It was really easy to paint up and I'm quite pleased with this purchase.  I think I'll be picking up a few more buildings in the near future.

More stuff coming soon.  Hope you all are having a good week.
Rod