I've been busy!

I haven't posted much recently because I've been frantically painting bits and pieces to play some Pulp Alley with Gharak over the weekend. I'm providing the terrain, specifically a middle eastern town/market. I've pretty ch finished that and should have some photos up of it in game over the weekend. 

Today I've these civilians, good townspeople I thought. A couple of diggers (also useful for the as-yet unbuilt archaeological dig scene I would love to build!), a stall holder and two modestly dressed ladies. I think the green-robed stallholder and older digger leaning on his spade came out particularly well. I was running around Late at Salute looking for reasonable priced Muslim civilians. I totally forgot to give the Perry range a good going over and later remembered they did a Crusades range and lo and behold: civilians! The sixth from the pack didn't quite get finished.

I also finished the Constabulary with their second detective, who seems to be going for a role in Miami Vice. The league is now all painted and should get a run out over the next few days.

As if I didn't have enough to do, I've also found time to do some of that most hated of hobby jobs: rebasing. After finishing these Bashi Bazouk cavalry, I decided I wanted my Sudan cavalry to be on pill bases rather than rectangular and I'll mount them in Warbases trays. These were re-based almost without damage, but my Beja Camelry need more touching up.

A series of giveaways...

...by Tamsin at Wargaming Girl. Get yourself over there and check it out, it seems she will have something for everyone over the course of the next few days.



It is traditional that entrants spread the word so others can enter, to boost their own chances and to build up those page views! That is the purpose of this post.

Update: day three is now up and it's a good one!

No progress for me to post up, though I'm itching to crack on with more Sudan as my last batch seemed well received! But I really must finish the half-built and painted market for some Pulpy fun with Gharak next week.

Sudan: Mounted Infantry, Anglo-Egyptian OOB

Working thought the Salute lead pile, first of the unit for the refreshed Sudan project. These are the camel corps in melee pack, instead painted as Mounted Infantry drawn from the KRRC, which I already have a unit of. Fantastic sculpts these, very dynamic.

Oddly, these were only bought as the Perry stand was out of infantry firing lines! I gather Sudan was popular at Salute. I wanted to do my second ordinarily unit of infantry next, the Royal Marine Light Infantry. But I had the command for the RMLI already and painted them up at the same time, notably different to the KRRC with their white pipe-clayed helmets and packs. I wasn't sure what colour the bugle's cord should be but blue seemed to be fitting despite my best guess of green.



Im drawing up an force loosely suitable for engagements around Suakin. I decided early on to do an Anglo-Egyptian force, either to do relief operations of garrisoned troops, or as an 'alternate history' El Teb (I imagine a plausible scenario at the first El Teb where some Egyptian troops manage a fighting withdrawal and escape. while still a crushing defeat necessitating the deployment of British troops a reduced Egyptian field force is available). Sorry purists, I wanted both British and Egyptians without breaking the bank!

The Beja crash against the British line

The loose OOB for Black Powder looks something like this at the moment:

Commander-in-Chief

Brigade Commander leading a British infantry brigade
-King's Royal Rifle Corps
-Royal Marine Light Infantry
-Naval Brigade
-Gardner Gun

Brigade Commander leading an Egyptian infantry brigade:
-1st Battalion
-IXth (Sudanese) Battalion
-Bashi Bazouks on foot
-British 7pdr Screw Gun

Brigade Commander leading the cavalry and scouts:
-10th Hussars
-Mounted infantry
-Mounted Bashi Bazouks

Terrain: Modding Sarissa Precision buildings

I picked up a small Sarissa shack at Salute, making four of their old west buildings. But I was curious how well they would take to being converted. The plan was to trim and fill some of the rafters holding the roof up, and make the windows much smaller, leaving the shutters off and sand the endless to lose the sharp corners. I also picked up a resin dome at Salute for the princely sum of £1.50, so I flipped the roof and stuck it on. After filling and sanding, the pieces were ready to be sprayed white:

I painted it the same as my last two, working from 'buff' to white using watered down layers. I'm pleased that you can barely see the filled areas once painted.

The painting went a bit awry too much fiddling around trying to perfect it, much messier compared to the older one. You can't see well in this shot, but I lifted the roof half a centimetre or so with some balsa wood.

I also gave these two small features a fresh lick of paint, they were grey before and looked a bit too much like concrete, I also tried a greeny ageing affect on the fountain. The water was an unrealistic blue and has been changed to a muddy green. I don't think painting terrain is my strong point, but these are somewhat better at the second attempt!

Pulp: the Constabulary get a detective, modding hills

A brief post as I've not much finished to show you this week, though I've been juggling a lot of projects across the workbench. The missus also indulged me in a game of Commands and Colours Napoleonics. She was clearly a cavalry commander in a former life (who knew?), annihilating my French Cavalry brigade and pinning my right flank in place before riding into the sunset. All in all, a bit of a pasting.

Hobby-wise, to break up mostly prep work, I did add this detective to the Cairo Constabulary, an Artizan Designs sculpt.



I also picked up a couple more hills at Salute, with a mind to carving them up a bit. The first went from this:



To this:



Yup, much cursing as I carved it in half, splodged some wood filler to cover the polystyrene interior that I discovered inside. Useful as I can either have impassible rock faces or run hills agains the board edge, they won't sort the greater issue that all of my boards are variations on 'pretty flat'.

Anyway, I must get back to it, Gharak has me building an arab market for a Pulp game at the end of the month. While he enjoys the good weather no doubt! It is coming along nicely, I've even managed to find some stallholders and civilians to mill about in it.

More Mahdists finished, palm trees, draft OOB

Evening all! As the weather turns warm, then cold again in the UK, I'm steadily working through the current Sudan project.

I knocked these 16 Mahdists out in a week, though it was a week with quite a bit of painting time, maybe 12-15 hours all told. They will join the first batch I've already painted (though I need to repaint the bases, ergh), making a couple of units of Nile Arabs and the start of the Beja. I'm happier with the colours of the jibbeh's on this lot, I've used a lot of Vallejo Iraqi sand and tan yellow. They still need a squirt of Dullcote.



I'm making up a force for scaled-down Black Powder, aiming for just 8 models as the standard unit size (I think I will drop ranges by about 1/3rd to accommodate). This puts me well over half of the Mahdists infantry painted. As they are individually based, I've unit bases from Warbases to pop them into, this should make it easy to change system or scale if necessary.

I'm working roughly from the lists featured in Black Powder, slightly reduced to suit my budget and painting speed. However, I'm making an Anglo-Egyptian force rather than pure British. I think having both steady and less steady troops in the force should give the Mahdists more of a chance of breaking the line and make for a more tactically interesting game.

This is my draft order of battle for the Mahdists, I've the miniatures to field this, albeit in various states of readiness.

Khalifa (Commander-in-Chief)

Emir (Brigade commander) leading:
-Beja tribesmen with spears (warbands of 8 miniatures)
-Beja tribesmen with spears
-Beja tribesmen with rifles
-Beja skirmishers with rifles (5 miniatures)

The Beja will be fanatics, to represent their.. well, fanaticism!

Emir leading a reserve of:
-Nile Arabs with spears
-Nile Arabs with spears
-Nile Arabs with rifles

Emir leading the cavalry wing:
-Beja camel-riders (cavalry at 3 miniatures...for now)
-Baggara horse
-Baggara horse

I'd like to add more skirmishers (those plastic boxes just don't contain enough rifles!) and a captured Egyptian Krupp to add more variety and oppose the Anglo-Egyptian firepower.


The charge as the Anglo-Egyptian firing line would see it

I also popped a few of those palm trees that I got at Salute onto 60mm round bases, which as you'll recall can go into larger bases to mark out an area. The trees are a bit plastic-y, but at a fiver for 20, the price is great.



Next up, more terrain and starting to prep the next bloc of Mahdists while the enthusiasm is there!

Kali Cult leader; backdrop experiment goes wrong; for sale

Phew, is been a busy week, mostly poking about/sorting/assembling my Salute purchases. I've also just about finished off a second batch of Ansar for the a Sudan project, I'll post up pics once the varnish is dry, probably in a day or two.

In the meantime, another lady (yeah, another), this one came in a Mutineer miniatures pack, a range the Gharak and I ransacked for some future Pulp adventuring in India. I was after the other chap from the pack and  didn't have a good use for her, but thought she would match well with Gharak's Kali Cult, see here and here. As it was his birthday last week, I painted her up to match the ones I painted before for him. Unfortunately, her sword broke fairly early in the process and was too thin to pin. So she is wielding the broken blade of somethingorother for now!



I've also experimented making a backdrop to be used for games. In a model railway shop in York, I got a pack of gaugemaster backdrops, containing three 3'x1' areas of sky. That's a whole lotta sky! I planned to stick them onto mountboard which could be propped up behind the gaming board. For the first attempt, I ambitiously tried the 'portable option' - three panels of mount board which fold down to half the size, driven by the fact I couldn't find 3' length of mount board in my local area, A1 is a few inches too short. After much cursing and sticking, this was the result (with unpainted 28mm miniatures for scale):



Experiment a bit of a failure! The folds from the three panels show up really badly, particularly on the left side. Luckily I've two more pieces to make use of, next time I think I'll give up trying to be so damn clever and just stick them on one panel!

Final, I've decided it is high time for a bit of a clear out, I've posted some bits on LAF but will eBay them if they don't go there. napoleonic bits and Infinity, if anyone is interested.