Your Car Is Ready M'Lud

Here's a preview of a new release from Warbases. It's a 1:56 scale (28mm if you like) model of a Rolls Royce Armoured Car and is an absolute steal at £9. Have a look at others offerings in this scale and you will soon rush to snap this one up.

One of my chums wanted one to add to his 'Dads Army' collection so I finished this one off in a green and black camouflage scheme reminiscent of World War Two. You could use this model for early World War One in north west Europe before the trenches got in the way, the Middle Eastern Front out Palestine way or even the Easter Rising in Ireland. Purists will say that you need wire wheels for WW1 or a different turret for the Middle East but that doesn't bother me.

The car comes as an MDF kit complete with resin turret and, like I say, a snip at nine quid.

The kit breaks down into two lasercut MDF sheets, two sheets of lasercut thin card and a resin turret. An instruction sheet can be downloaded from Warbases. I would recommend studying the instruction sheet for a minute although I found that the actual build was mostly a doddle although I did make a couple of little boo-boos along the way.

Construction starts with the three largest pieces of MDF which can be released from the sheet with a little bit of encouragement from a sharp hobby knife. Do this over a cutting sheet or a piece of hardboard and not the dining room table (Mother/Wife will not be happy).

OK, what bit goes where? It's actually quite hard to get this wrong as very often the pieces will only fit one way round, think of it as a cleverly designed 3-D jigsaw.

There now, that wasn't difficult, was it?

A couple of end plates go on this end.

Then a couple of side bits.

And two bigger bits on top. These form the arches for the rear wheels.

Put that bit away to dry and find the bit that looks like a robots face. (Psychiatrists can ignore that statement)

Turn it over and add the bits that make a box and a V-shape.

Now find the buck-toothed robot with the big nose and stick it on top.

I sometimes worry about my sense of humour, you shouldn't.

This cunningly shaped piece gets covered in a skin of thin card and then glued onto the chassis which you put aside a short while ago.

If I was to admit to a boo-boo here it would be that I should have got the card skin flush with the top surface but I didn't. I fixed that bit later.

The next two pieces adds the distinctive Rolls Royce radiator shape which is comforting as up to this point the model is literally an abstract 3-D jigsaw thing-ish shape.

The addition of the bonnet skins and the rest of the bodywork skins confirms the illusion.

Be careful with the flaps over the radiator as they are slightly fragile. I toughened them up with a touch of brushed on superglue down the angle of the hinge.

Turn the whole thing over and add the axles and the chassis ribs which beefs up the whole rig.

Add the running boards.

The mud guards and the roof and the spare wheels. I filled the inadvertent gap between the side and the roof with some modelling paste.

And the headlights and the toolboxes.

I built the road wheels but kept them and the turret separate for painting.

At this point I will pause and talk about glues. MDF kits are traditionally associated with white PVA glues. I'm not a great fan of PVA, it takes a long time to dry and I will normally use a different type of glue if I can manage it. However PVA is water soluble and you will never glue your fingers together with it.

Impact adhesives are useful too but can stain or otherwise seep out and interfere with painted surfaces so I try to minimise their use in MDF kits.

My current favourite is brushed-on superglue. It comes in a little bottle with a brush attached to the lid (don't ask me how the brush doesn't clog up), it stinks a little bit, will glue your fingers together but it does dry fast. You do have to be careful in that you have to be very sure that you have the right bit in the right place at the right angle as it is difficult to change your mind after a few seconds.

This is the kind I use.

I know this is a Rolls Royce armoured car but I took a leaf out of Mr Fords book here and painted it black.

That phase didn't last long and the final finish looked like this. I don't want to go into a lot of detail about painting (you will have your own style) but I used a variety of dry-brushing, some wet-brushing, some ink washes, and some highlighting.

How do you think it looks on the tabletop?

The buildings in the background are scratch built by me.

Please comment on this and do not feel afraid to ask questions.

Life and Freedom

Life has been very hectic recently with no end of coming and going. Probably everyone goes through stages like this from time to time.

One close friend has died, another has just had a stroke, a third waiting to go in for an op and another trying desperately not to go under the knife.

In wargaming terms I had lost my painting mojo, got fed up reading military histories, got stuck into clearing out some storage, started glueing some things together, started reading a non military history book, got my painting mojo back and am now wondering what the fuss was all about.

I have my freedom and that's what counts, and, it's my birthday tomorrow.

Here's a sneak preview of what I have been doing:

And also:

Keep watching!

Je Suis Bruxelles

Words fail me except to say that I plan to visit Belgium later this year with my wife and some friends.

A Troopers Tale

Well, there we were, four merry men sitting in my car on the way back from a show. In between dozing off, one of the guys in the back started a conversation about figure painting. I mentioned my white over black undercoat style which was a new approach for him.

Here is how I do it.

Phase One, mount the figure on a painting stick so that you can turn the figure around to allow easy access to both your eyes and the paintbrush. Some guys use paint pots or nail heads but that's not what I do.

This is a Dixon US cavalry trooper from my spares box. The horse is attached to the painting stick with a blob of Blue Tac. The rider is superglued in place, I use the gel variety to keep the superglue from running riot all over the figure and I wait until it is completely dry before painting.

I paint the entire figure matt black paying particular attention to the undercuts and bits where it is hard to reach. These will be the deep shadows which help emphasise the sculpting of the figure.

Once that is dry I carefully drybrush the figure in white taking care not to fill in any of the shadows. I use a biggish old brush for this and I try to stroke the figure from top to bottom and as little from side to side as possible.

This is the basis of the white over black undercoat style which I use on some figures. The next phases are all about colour and you can go at least two different directions from this point.

One is to apply colour washes to the main colour areas using a thinned down coat of paint. I am assuming you are using water based acrylic paint here. I'm not sure if you can achieve this effect if you are using enamel paints.

The thinned down paint allows the dark areas to show through keeping the shadow effect going. It sometimes takes more than one application of thinned paint to get a suitable density of paint on the highlighted areas.

Here you can see darker areas showing through the chestnut on the horse and also some white highlights too. It is possible to cover the rest of the white highlighted areas with further colour washes until the entire figure is completed.

The second way of colouring the figure is to use a two colour or a three colour scheme (Foundry triads are great for this) to colour each area with a shade then a standard colour and finally a colour highlight. The shade goes on first avoiding any black and totally covering any white. The standard colour goes on next but only on the major raised areas and then the highlight colour on the very fine raised areas.

There is a third way you can do this which involves the shade, the standard and the highlight colour being applied in quick succession i.e. wet which gives a more subtle merging of colour.

You can see the second method in use on the body of the horse here.

Choose whichever style which suits your eyesight, your time available, your desired end result or whatever to complete the figure. I often use a combination or sometimes all three methods on the one figure.

You may well end up with a figure something like this. A close inspection will reveal everything from black shadows, shaded colours, standard colours and highlighted colours.

We could be done here but I add another stage i.e. an ink wash. I use the little bottles of Army Painter acrylic washes. These are water based and dry reasonably matt and are very easy to apply. You just splash it all over (joke!).

Here it is, still wet and a bit shiny.

I usually matt varnish my figures unless they are 'Old School' but that is a different story. I use Winsor & Newton artists acrylic matt varnish, available from all good art stores and hobby shops.

Here is a close-up of the completed figure (as close as my camera will allow). Just look at the subtleties of the shading. Is it worth the effort, I think so.

Hessians in the Frame

Todays purchases were modest, some paint, you all know what paint looks like, a few collies which I've posted about before and some Hessians which were a first for me.

A Warlord Games box of AWI Hessians costs £18 and looks like this.

The contents allow 30 miniatures to be made up, 24 musketeers, fusiliers or grenadiers including two officers, a sergeant, a drummer and two ensigns and 6 jaegers.

There is a multiplicity of head options which need to be carefully analysed but you can get something like this from the box.

The various options are fully detailed in a four page handout, shown below.

As you can see there is a ton of detail to get through as well as loads of flags and I'll post the results when I get there.

The War of 1812, No, The Other One!

While searching for some figures I had recently misplaced I came across a couple of boxes of unpainted lead.

The first box was full of bags and bags and bags of figures. A closer inspection revealed them to be Napoleonic Russians suitable for 1812, Napoleons Russian Folly.

One bag contained 14 figures, an officer, an ensign, a drummer and 11 rank and file.

I wonder what ruleset I had in mind when I bought these?

The figures are quite chunky and 15mm from foot to eye.

There were 13 bags labelled 'Musketeer' and 4 bags labelled 'Grenadier'. Apart from a few different officer poses these bags were all identical, i.e. the rank and file figures were the same.

I'll need to check my painting sources but it may be that it only needs a suitable paintjob to differentiate a Grenadier from a Musketeer in 15mm in this period.

The only manufacturer I can think that they may be is Tabletop Miniatures, long since defunct. Does anyone recognise the figure code on the base? It appears to say PN 10.

The rest of the box contents included a bag of Pavlov Grenadiers, a couple of big bags of cavalry, some line foot artillery and some line horse artillery.

These figures will be up for grabs later this year although I am tempted to paint them up and use them for something like upsized Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames, or maybe the old WRG set or maybe even Black Powder.

The second box remains untouched athough I expect that it will contain a French army suitable for 1812.

More Markers

Remember the disruption point markers I made from US one Cent coins?

They are great but only have a value of one each.

For Warband you need markers with a variety of values. Pendraken make nice little semi-circular ones from MDF.

I 'tarted' mine up a bit.

The one's and two's are obvious. I'll do the three's and four's later.

I couldn't find a Warband unit to demonstrate the markers with (my hut is a finite space and I looked everywhere but couldn't find them) so I used some handy 6mm Baccus units.

I can't decide whether to add static grass to them.

What do you guys think?