PoR Painting Contest Almost Done

Thanks to being stuck at my mate's house on Sunday (literally trapped, road was closed off thanks to some people running around so I couldn't drive away) I didn't have as much time as I thought I would but I did get some work done, so I am happy with that. 

The photos are not the best as I took them at night and I don't have any good day light lamps at home, so I will take better ones in the morning for my final entry.

The last thing to improve will be adding wear and tear to the armour and maybe some highlights on the armour plates too, my only concern was that I am not sure how to highlight camouflage, I just think it will look like a mess. I don't normally put many highlights on weapons as I don't think they need it, but that is also one thing I can learn to do better.

PoR Painting Contest Update

On the 19th of May I have posted about entering the Pride of Rodina Painting Contest and I had every intention of painting more regularly with more updates, but as it often happens life had different plans for me. So I am bit behind but I am confident I can finish my entry over the weekend to look at least bit decent!

As I am writing this I have already made more progress than on the photos but didn't have time to take new photos of it, so I wanted to at least share how my Veteran Kazak looks with basic colours and before any washes & highlights. 

I have already finish a camouflage pattern over the sandy armour and hope to get all the highlights done on Saturday, mainly on the gun, the backpack roll and everything that isn't camouflage. On Sunday I will finish the base and be ready to submit before middnight. That is the plan anyway, lets see if I can do it.

Pride of Rodina Painting Contest

The Pride of Rodina is hosting a Kazak painting contest, I am getting bit late into it but there are still over two weeks left so I should have enough time to paint one model! The model I will be painting is the Veteran Kazak with T2 Rifle (from Ariadna Starter Set). It has been one of my favourite models in the game for  a long time and if I did play vanilla Arianda, he'd be in every list. 

The colour theme for the model will be desert based, though as you will be able to tell from the photos, he won't be on a desert base. I haven't decided yet on the camouflage pattern but it will be either mostly brown or with a mix of green. I will be drawing inspiration from the French Foreign Legion as I use this model as a Moblot in my French army (as there isn't enough unique Moblot models yet) and all my French will be painted as my take on Ariadna's MRRF Foreign Legion. 

So far I have the model built, primed and based. By the time I post next it should have base colours done. 

USARF "Speed Painting", Part 3

Considering my pace of painting the miniatures is far from fast I should change the name of these articles, but I am committed to consistency! This "third step" was not part of my initial plan, it came out of necessity to get some of my USARF models done to the very basic tournament standard to look decent on the table from distance. 

I was very undecided what to do with the bases. First I wanted to make them match my Caledonia so I could use them all as a vanilla force and they would have the same bases, but then decided to go with a very simple desert bases instead. Mainly because I didn't have much time to paint them before the Northern Open 8. I will be adding some more terrain to the bases so they are less flat but I am happy with the colour, I think it goes well with the green.

Which is another thing I am undecided on. I still haven't figured out how to break apart the green, it feels like it is too much. After I am done with all the other colours, I think I will do some subtle camouflage on trousers and perhaps other cloth too, just so the only flat green are armour panels.  Though I will admit that when I played with them it didn't look as bad, that they are all mainly green.

As you can see from the photos, the miniatures are still very much work in progress and in the pre-washes stage. I would like to get all the base colours done before doing the washes for shadows and then highlights. That should very much improve on how the minis will look. I only had time to do some of the other colours, like metallic silver and flesh, which is why you don't see many browns or grey yet, and why everyone's hair are still green.

Before the tournament I have also picked up a new unit to proxy for Traktor Muls as I wanted something different for my USARF. These models are from Anvil Industry game Afterlife, they are called Unity Council Bastion Support Platforms. Their website sells them with more weapon options but I bought them on a wargaming show and they only had the missile launchers. I have also found on their website unit called Republic Taurus Gun Tractors Mk.II, which looks closer to the Traktor Muls so I might get those instead later. 

USARF "Speed Painting", Part 2

Continuing with my (not so much) "speed painting" of USARF, I have completed the next step. Which, as I have predicted in the previous article, has taken much longer than the first step. For my USARF I have decided to go with black on weapons, pistol holsters, straps, boots and chest vests.

The difficulty of this step was making sure everything is painted neatly and the black isn't all over the place. So I ended up spending lots of time with my super small detail brush on the straps which were not always easy to reach. Weapons and boots were the easiest, most of the surface was done with a larger brush and then detail brush again on the surface near hands and other parts of the mini. Chest vests were fifty-fifty, some miniatures has them mostly accessible while with few others they had arms and guns going across them.

I am not sure yet what will be the next step because so far I have not decided on the end result, as in I am not sure about the final colour theme. Mostly likely I will do metallic silver to finish the guns and then flesh, so the minis look playable. I can then do the bases to complete the "table top" look. I do want to add grey and brown to the mix as well. I did try to add a different shade of green of armor plates but not sure if it works. Might need to complete one miniatures to decide.

Welcome to Serenity Valley

I have been playing wargames close to a decade now but never had my own gaming table. Infinity was the first game that made me want to have one, and our Northern Alliance was also a big influence because most guys have their own table and I wanted to do my part to contribute to the Northern Open events. Since Ariadna is by far my favourite faction, I wanted to theme my table around it and also do something different from most tables I have seen, which are either industrial in theme or "generic" sci-fi cities.

I plan for this to be a series of articles about my progress on the board with reviews of the various terrain I have bought, from how difficult it was to build and how practical it is in the game. As I am writing this, the table is painted and game ready but not finished. The terrain is done in basic colours for the most part, so there will be plenty of updates to come as I'll do my best to finish it by end of the year.

And yes, I decided to name my table after Firefly show, after all my Caledonia Browncoats need somewhere familiar to fight!

Serenity Valley as it is today.

My first idea was to make an airport table, with runway and jetfighters and such but as I thought about it, I didn't see how I could make it practical and look good/realistic. I have then came across this Rust Pointe product, which I thought looked perfect for Ariadna settlement. The theme for the board changed to be half hovels settlement and half military base.

The current buildings I am using are from Zen Terrain, Death Ray Designs and Warsenal. The scatter is lots of Death Ray Designs, some random bits and few from Micro Arts Studio. For the gaming mat, I used mouse pad mat from Deep Cut Studio.

Currently I do not have plans to add terrain before I get the current things painted more. The main thing I need to get for myself though are some trees, I have been borrowing those from other people for some events but it works without them too.

I think that will do for the intro to the board! Here are some photos for you of the board building progress and set up during different ITS events.

All terrain arrived, time to start building!

Spraying Zen Terrain things green before putting it together.

Progress...

Buildings all sprayed and built!

First mock up set up.

Play-testing before Northern Open 5.

Set up at Northern Open 5.

Bunker gets a swanky new paintjob.

Set up at Birmingham Games Expo.

Set up at Gribbley Gaming Event.

USARF "Speed Painting", Part 1

Carrying from my USARF conversions, the next natural step is to paint the army! I bet many of you are like me and ended up with too many armies too quick, and don't have enough time to paint them all. Since I do not have an airbrush yet, I decided to try "speed paint" with just a paintbrush. From what I understand with airbrush people are able to undercoat an army with some highlights quite quick and then pick out the details with a paintbrush; which is the idea behind this.

The plan is to get all of the models undercoated with green, dry brushed for some highlights and washed with dark colour for some shadows. Then I will follow it up painting the straps, skin, weapons and other details in different colours. I might also do some camouflage, haven't decided yet.

Inspiration for my USARF army was taken from this image, where the uniforms are green camo and more or less everything else is black. I want my USARF army to be very uniform in their look, so they look more like a regular army.

The first step was to get everything green (well, all but the K-9 Antipode, the wolf will be mostly grey so I will do that one differently). I have used The Army Painter "Army Green" spray for undercoat, then Games Workshop "Rotting Flesh" (old name for the colour, it is very light green, like if you mixed little bit of bright green into white) for dry brush and finished it with Games Workshop "Nuln Oil" (black) wash. I think the result is quite nice, even completely green the details have definition thanks for the darker shades and brighter edge highlights.

The whole process didn't take long either and I have done around 30 minis this way. Though I am fairly certain the next step will take lot longer as I will be painting all the straps and weapons black, plus some of the pouches.

Tartan day

Tartans take lot longer to paint than one would think. I spent most of the day just painting and I only managed to finish five of them. Still at least three more to go. Keep in mind please these are before any washes or highlight so barely half finished models.

The red one and green one were more or less copied from some of the Corvus Belli studio models, I liked the colours of the green tartan and was looking for something relatively easy for the red. The yellow one is the same tartan I did for my Cameronian, I don't want all of my guys to have the same tartan but I want some troops to be from the same clan. The blue one is based on Modern Pride of Scotland (I think) but mainly I was just using the available blue colours I had. The grey tartan is based on a kilt I bought in York not that long ago but I couldn't find its name. I use it on my Grey Rifles so they have something grey, I prefer metalic armour. 

Next in line is William Wallace, Isobel and Cateran. At some point I probably will do the inside coats of my Scots Guard but haven't decided yet on what tartan, so that will come later. I have lots of models prepped for basing and have to finish that first. 

Caledonian Volunteers

How fitting the first Caledonia proper post is the backbone of every army, our precious cheerleaders! For now I have seven of these and I used to think it was more than enough but sometime I feel like I do need more chain rifles. They are pretty much in every army I play, even just one or two to fill the gaps for cheap Orders so they are the only unit so far I have done to the table-top standard (or at least first five of them). The rest of my army is almost ready for it too and should be posting those over the course of next week.

I had two inspirations for my Volunteers, Firefly and the Black Watch. I do love the army green but it is used so much on my other units I wanted them to be different. Then I remembered the Browncoats from Firefly series (and the film Serenity). They do seem little bit too dark overall but I think the colour combination works. At first I did consider giving them different tartans or at least having all tartans match across the army but I like the different styles, Black Watch seemed fitting to keep a link with the current real Scottish military.

You'll also notice one of the unfinished troopers has different colour scheme. I wanted one guy to stand out and try camouflage colours for whenever I play an Infiltrating Volunteer, which I some time do. I will keep the Black Watch tartan but otherwise switched colours around.

As for bases, this is how far I will take them for now. I have lots of models to do before Northern Open 3 so I want to keep it basic. The original idea was to make them highlands green on top of the brown but I am starting to like them so I might just add little but of grass and other small scatter. Will decide when the rest of my army is on the same level.

Freedom Delivery System: Traktor Muls

I want to make my Traktors very rusty and dirty, more than the studio miniatures. I just think it fits with the whole Ariadna setting more than them being clean and shiny like most of the remotes of the other factions. Well, at least the body. The guns I imagine are something that is replaced often so they would look bit less worn.

I have a way of doing rust on miniatures which I think works well, at least I like how it comes out but I never tried it on vehicles before. So, I am doing the Traktors in two different ways.

This one, I'll do the whole thing rusty to start with and then layer the green on top of it, followed by more damage to the paint in form of scratches and such. So the end result should have very little green on it. I think it could really show this Traktor has been in the service forever.

Then the second Traktor will look bit newer. I am doing the opposite way, I started with green and metal  and will do the rust on top of it across the body.

I haven't decided yet what I'll freehand on them but for now I am leaning towards giving one Caledonia icons and the other one will be USAriadna, since those two I'll play the most.