Gesso is black wizard juice!

Having read several peoples' success stories of using gesso to prime miniatures, I thought I'd give it a go. Mostly because when I spray undercoat miniatures, I have to do it in a carpark and it tends to rain whenever I do (apologies to everyone else in Kent for that).

Looking online, a pot of gesso tends to set you back around fifteen quid (or just under a tenner here:  Pebeo 500 ml Studio Acrylics Auxiliaries Gesso, Black ). In my local art shop though, I found a pot discounted to four pound something:

Score one to team me! Double score, as it's a non-toxic type, rather than one of the ones that give you cancer (seriously, I've seen the labels that warn about the carcinogenic nature of some gessos...).Having done plenty of research online about how much to apply, whether to thin the gesso and other hints and tips, I ignored it all and slapped some on a test mini:

An Artizan chap that was in the queue of things to undercoat. As you can (sort of) see, I slapped on a nice thick coat of gesso, poking it into all the nooks and crannies with a brush that I wasn't particularly attached to:

Leaving it overnight, I found that all the rumours about gesso are true, it's actually magical! as it shrinks as it dries, that globby, detail-drowned miniature dried into this:

Mmm, crisp. There were a couple of spots that were bare metal (where the gesso had shrunk), but that was easily remedied with another dabbing of gesso.

Fear factor aside (it's a bit disconcerting globbing gesso onto a miniature the first time), I think gesso is awesome, and may retire my cans of spray primer. It's cheaper, odourless, and I can do it in the comfort of being indoors. It's probably a little quicker too (for me, at least - when I spray undercoat, I spray the front, the back, each side and then front and back from an angle, and still usually need to give them a once over with a brush to hit some of the more awkward spots). But mostly because it works a little bit like magic!

Having been converted to the joys of gesso, I cracked on and undercoated some other goodies:

In non-gesso related news, another couple of Slayers have come out of the stripping pot:

(Yeah, I know. The Muppets are awesome.)

A World Aflame

My advance copy of 'A World Aflame: Interwar Wargame Rules 1918-39 (Osprey Wargames)' [link to buy] came last week, so I thought I should probably post up a quick review of sorts!

'A World Aflame' is a new set of wargames rules published by Osprey (of ubiquitous reference volumes fame) written by Paul Eaglestone (PDE of Empress Miniatures fame).

Eaglestone had previously released "And was Jerusalem builded here?", a 39 page pdf of rules for fighting engagements in the Very British Civil War (VBCW), the imaginary conflict that is currently sweeping the nation (well, not literally currently), and this set of rules is built on that framework, but in greater depth (and much prettier too!)

Although this volume focuses mainly on the Spanish Civil War (for which Empress produce a range of rather nice miniatures) there's plenty here for the VBCW enthusiast, as although the rules themselves are designed to be useable for the entire 1918-39 Interwar period, period and regional flavour are added through the use of Scenarios and Chance cards, amongst other things.

Before I look at the book proper, it's worth mentioning how much I enjoy Eaglestone's style of writing - this isn't a rulebook for rules lawyers to brandish at a tournament, it's the sort of book used by a group of adults getting together to create a narrative set in a period of history that interests them by pushing little men around in a gentlemanly fashion, perhaps over a snifter of something, and as such the tone throughout is conversational, and makes for an exceedingly pleasant read.

Presentation throughout is as high as you'd expect from an Osprey production, with the usual plethora of high  quality illustrations throughout, taken as they are from a variety of existing publications. There's also a number of colour photographs of miniatures 'in situ', which provide a great deal of eye candy and inspiration. My favourite would probably have to be "Anglican League Militia take control of a vital communications point", the 'vital communications point' being the local phone and post boxes. If pushed, I would probably say it's a pity that there isn't a large diorama or somesuch to pore over, but that would just be me being fussy.

The Rules: written as they are in a 'retro' style, aiming to "pay homage to rulesets written by such wargaming legends as Charles Grant and Donald Featherstone", 'A World Aflame' gives you the tools to play fun, fast-paced games that mix high adventure with a dash of tongue-in-cheek humour. I won't go into too much detail here (buy the book for that!) but rest assured the book contains rules on how to move, shoot, and measure the morale of your little lead men, as well as less generic rules as smoke and sending runners carrying orders across the table... There's rules for a whole plethora of period weapons and armour too, including rules for boats and planes as well as the expected armoured fighting vehicles (yes, including improvised ones! ). 

The book contains sample units for a variety of conflicts, both the Spanish and Russian Civil Wars, as well as Warlord China and (the one that's most caught my interest) the aforementioned VBCW, ranging from militia rabble to Regular Army Guards. 

The book also contains a sample scenario to show the sort of game you can play using the contents of the book, 'Suicide Hill', aka the Battle of Jarama, February 1937. It's a three-day/three-game scenario, with special rules, orders and suggested chance card decks (from a selection of example cards at the end of the book), complete with a map and some more pictures of miniatures in situ for you to get excited over.

If I had to pick my three favourite things from the book (entirely arbitrarily, and if you were to ask me another time it's likely I'd choose three entirely different things) they'd be:

3 - The rules for attacking armoured fighting vehicles with a crowbar. More specifically, the fact that the second paragraph ends 'Good Luck!' Strange things amuse me.

2 - The Flashman effect - I like the fact that there's a special Legendary grade of officer that you can use in special scenarios that is, well, legendary. It's such a flavourful little rule that it makes me want to convert and paint up some miniatures for use as named characters in a campaign...

1 - Chance cards - the SCW flavoured examples in the back of the book make me want to write up some more of my own to use with VBCW, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. They're a great way to add period flavour to a game, as well as some tongue-in-cheek humour (if that's your cup of tea). I mean, look at 6milphil's chance cards for the sort of thing I mean...


Right, that's probably enough blocks of text to turn anyone from off from reading to this point, so I'll wrap it up here. I could give the book a rating, or a percentage score, but I think a more pertinent score would be this:

A photo my young lady took. Yes, that's me prepping some miniatures having finished reading this book. Sat on the floor at the coffee table as I couldn't wait long enough to sort out the desk that I normally use. If that isn't a glowing recommendation, I don't know what is...

I'm not dead...

...but my laptop was. I've managed to Zombie Jesus it (again), so I should be able to get back to posting more regularly.

In the period of dead space where I was unable to post (well, other than using the hateful app), I've inevitably not actually finished anything. I'm halfway through making some cork terrain:

As soon as I finish these up (they're currently textured and waiting for a chance to paint) I'll stick up a step by step. When I've not been elbow deep in cork at the dining table, I've been inefectually dabbing paint on two squads of Stormtroopers. Note to anyone who thinks painting two squads of white armoured troopers will be fun? You're wrong. But I will prevail, before I get distracted by something else.

Like 'A World Aflame', Osprey's set of wargaming rules for the interwar period coming out later in the Summer, as my advance copy arrived this week (it's good, I'll post up a review once I've had a chance to give it a more in-depth looking over).

Other than that, not much happening. Booked some wedding venues, which threatens to eat somewhat into the hobby budget, but I've got enough old projects on the lead mountain to keep me busy for a while yet...

Most amazingly, I only got a single miniature in the month since my last post:

The old Dwarf Lords of Legend Slayer, because (as has been mentioned previously) I loves me some Slayers. Maybe at some point I'll actually paint some...

This chap brings the tally to:

57 vs 85 = -28

Final thought: I'm a little scared to turn my laptop off, in case my Zombie Jesus-ing of it wasn't a long-term fix...

Busy prepping Stormtroopers

When this happens:

Exceedingly base-ic

As this seems to crop up every now and then of the various fora I frequent, I thought I'd post up how I fill the slots on my slottabases (for when I'm basing miniatures with an integral base, or more recently, rebasing prepaints like Star Wars or Dungeons and Dragons miniatures). Some people swear by Green Stuff (too expensive, and I always end up mixing up too much), crazy epoxies (science!) or covering over the slotta with a rizla (although admittedly I have tried this, and it wasn't great. I largely stuck Rizla to myself with superglue); I swear by this:

No? These:

Matches. They're the perfect size to fill the gap on a standard slotta. And handily, a friend of mine was managing the bar they're from when it closed down, resulting in me getting a ridiculously large box of them. Not enough to last a lifetime though, and it will be a sad day when I finally run out of them. Anyways, back to the basing:

Measure your matchstick against the base, marking off the appropriate length with your thumbnail,

A quick snip with a pair of clippers, followed by a trim with a knife if it needs it,

and in it slips! A quick dash of superglue and voila:

we have a faux solid slotta! [slight diversion: as I'm using cheap pound shop superglue, which seems to sometimes leap out of the tube, at one point I managed to get my hand soaked in superglue. Which was fun. And explains the mess on my mat...]

Set yourself up with a little assembly line (and yes, that is a baggie of Stormtroopers, that's just how I roll):

and in the time it takes everyone else in the house to watch 'the Voice' you'll have enough bases ready for two squads of Stormtroopers and a couple of characters... [interesting trivia - one of the finalists on the Voice has served me incredibly potent alcoholic beverages called Pigfuckers. True story.]

Star Wars The Essential Guide to Warfare - a not-quite review...

So, my copy of Star Wars - The Essential Guide to Warfare [link to buy] came today! And yes, it is as awesome as it sounds.

All in all, it's a history of warfare in the Star Wars universe, with 21 chapters organised chronologically from the rebellion of the Rakata (pre-KOTOR) right through to Darth Krayt and the new Sith order.

Each chapter covers a particular period of time (or aspect of warfare within that period), such as chapter 7: 'Begin, the Clone War does' or Chapter 15: 'When the Empire struck back', and has 'factual' information (illustrated gorgeously throughout) as well as a variety of sidebars, such as 'War Portraits' of noted individuals and communications between key characters (my favourite so far being one from Admiral Ackbar to his niece about how the Rebel Alliance has to put their trust in people that could technically be categorized as mass murderers in order to succeed).

Now, the meat: how useful is this book to me as a wargamer? It's a little lighter on hard and fast force organisation information than I'd like, although that's more to do with the fact that the Rebels are a ragtag bunch than anything else (although it does have organisational information for Stormtroopers and the Imperial Navy, which is handy as trying to work it out by trying to count them onscreen whilst watching the films is difficult and makes you wonder whether George Lucas was even considering the verisimiltude of the military orgaisations he was portraying). [aside - worse comes to worse, I'm fairly sure the old WEG miniatures game rulebook had suggestions as to how the rebel forces were organised, even though it's old enough to probably be non-canon now...] Most of all though, it's useful as a source of inspiration: there's lovely art throughout, with everything from Imperial propaganda posters to Darth Talon (red Twi'lek Sith with tribal tattoos), there's plenty of eye-candy to make me want to paint and convert things. Also, at 246 pages long, there's enough scenario fodder to keep a gaming group in ideas for a fair while...

Now, I've not read the entire thing cover to cover yet, so these are just my first impressions from flicking through looking at the pretty pictures and looking up things that were of immediate interest to me (like the aforementioned force organisation of the Imperial Army), but it's certainly got me pepped up to get some Stormtroopers ready for repainting (well, that or play some Star Wars Battlefront, we'll see how my attention span goes).

Also femtrooper pin-ups like this:

and this:

Are canon. Although the actual lady Stormtroopers don't approve, with reasoning like "As for going into combat with a bare midriff, I wouldn't recommend it". Glee!

I was looking for some sort of image that would encapsulate how I feel overall about the book, but it turns out that googling 'Boba Fett approves' and 'Boba Fett thumbs up' brings up some fairly weird stuff, including a blog devoted entirely to Star Wars themed porn. Which is probably as good a point as any to end this post on.

Why you gotta player hate...

...on IG-88?

Gotta love MC Chris. On that note, gotta love IG-88:

I've been in a Star Wars kinda mood recently, hence digging out a load of the old Wizards prepaints, the first of which to see the business end of a paintbrush being this. He got finished off today whilst we watched the classic Star Wars trilogy back to back. We were originally going to watch all six, but realised that none of us in the house actually owns the prequel trilogy... Cue a walk into town, where in HMV we find that they haven't done the prequel trilogy since they released the Blu-rays a year ago, and they didn't have those in stock either... Yet another reason for me to be angry at George Lucas. But I also bought a large cake that we ate whilst savage ewoks tore apart the Emperor's finest, and I can't stay mad through that...

And yes, I know, I strayed from the canon colour-scheme: his bandolier should be black, not brown, and the buckle isn't bronze, but I fancied injecting a little more colour. And anyways, although you can't really see it in this picture, I painted in the extra detail of the ammo on the belt that wasn't sculpted on, so that should allow me some leeway...

Unfortunately whilst painting IG-88, it seems I forgot to double coat his base with glue, as I realised when I put the first wash on his base and the sand started lifting... cue a rush job to mash it back down, recoat it with glue and repaint it (admittedly it would probably have been easier to scrape it off and start again, but once panic set in I didn't think of that...)

It'd be an unusual week though if there were a post that pushed the tally positively without something else dragging it in the opposite direction, which bring us to this:

Five Slayers, bought for the two on the left which I thought were the last two modern sculpts that I needed. Until I dug out my box of Slayers though, when I found out that the two on the right were also different to any I already had. Which brings the tally to:

57 vs 84 = -27

and led me to dig through my stripping pot, to see whether I now had enough different sculpts to make a unit of 30 (the current maximum size), which revealed these:

As well as some em4 minis that I was stripping to use for various modern or Judge Dredd projects, there were some classic Marauder Slayers, which brought my total of different sculpts of them to 9 (of a possible 10, according to an old catalogue, though I was sure I'd seen more), and bringing my unit total (counting the old Games Day Slayer on Daemon head as a 4 model unit filler) to 28. So close! Ideally I'd like to get the Slayer stood on Dragon head mini that appears every now and then on eBay, but I can't really justify spending any money on this project right now... Although I will admit that I'm tempted to make up a Slayer army using the Storm of Chaos list using the spares (I've got a bunch of duplicate Slayers, as well as Ungrim and Garagim Ironfist and a couple of the chaps with axes on chains...)