Leven Miniatures Blood Bowl Stadium

 

Mick at Leven asked me to paint a rather large 6mm building for him, no rush he said, take your time.. he said...…

Well I did that right enough. No real excuses other than Mick made it real easy to allow it to slide. Eventually though I finally did get it done and Lee delivered it at Joy of Six (I had to work). It's not yet up on his website but I suspect it's available if you email him.

It's Leven's interpretation of a Fantasy American Football pitch first envisioned by Games Workshop as Blood Bowl. A game I really enjoyed when it came out way back when. I have even been tempted by an old copy I saw at a show, fortunately I managed to resist as I have far to many distractions as it is.

I did not quite get all the pieces to fit right when I built it up because I made the mistake of trying to do the basing at the same time. A real shame as when I dry placed them they fit perfectly together with no gaps at all.

I knew how I wanted it to look right from the off. The main focus was always the roof as I wanted to try and match the roof I painted on a wizards tower for Mick a few years back. Since taking the photo's Mick wanted flags adding to the tower tops, these I did as bright red pennants on pallet paper and attached to brass pins. Unfortunately I did not get round to taking any pictures but I felt they were a nice touch.

Joy of Six and Spends

Joy of Six has come and gone, I was really looking forward to this years as we were having a year off from putting on a display game. The only issue was getting to the event! Unknown to the organisers and most of Sheffield's population the vast majority of the roads around Hallam University was closed for a bike race. Sheffield Council have form for incompetence in organising events. Just the other year they had a marathon but failed to order water and only on the day realised cancelling the event!! Par for the course the people standing at the barriers did not know alternative routes nor it seemed did they care. Eventually we found the way in but I know more than one had to park miles away and walk in after trying and failing to find that one road out of many that got you in.

Regardless the attendance was good, not sure how it compared with last years but again space was all used up and plenty of games and traders were in attendance. The food remained good at prices that were reasonable, something that is getting rarer at shows making it the only show I don't take a packed lunch to.

I did not get any photo's of the show, just never got going with that sort of thing. Plenty of good looking games though, it was kind of weird seeing another Waterloo game in the same spot we had a couple of years ago and impressive it was too.

Most games were display but plenty of games were also participation. One such me and Lee played towards the end of the show which I was not really keen to play at the offset as by this point I was feeling rather tired. Turned out to be a great opportunity. The rules are based on Too The Strongest and is the ECW version that looks to be coming out in the future. I am a real fan of the ECW and so am a little difficult to please. I have to say that to this point no ECW rules have really grabbed me but these have a great feel and the mechanics whilst simple are very clever. Hopefully we will be getting our hands on playtest copies so we can try them out further. They are close to wrap up so I doubt we will have much influence on their development but I think these will be our go to rules for ECW.

They look to be able to play out medium sized games (15-20 units a side) in a short evening and should be able to handle very large games without to much trouble. We had around 15 units per side and the commands were all over the place to stimulate a confused command were neither side were ready for the battle and this came across well as you tried to make units work either together or separated by terrain or distance. We both got the gist of the rules relatively quickly and started to explore tactical options and how the game mechanics worked these moves out.

It's enough to say that when we turned up at the show we were selling our old Baccus casting s and getting new ones in the future. Now the plan is to keep the old, carry on painting them and get them on the table then get the new stuff and replace as we go. I am even thinking of trying out To The Strongest rules for our 6mm ancients because if they play as fast and have similar mechanics they could work well for next years game.

Of course a show is nothing without it's purchase. First stop was Leven Miniatures though it was mostly to drop off very late models but I did buy a few bits. Having painted no buildings for myself for well over a year I just did not want to increase the hoard too much, plus I actually don't know which buildings I need. I do know though that I will need to add to my ECW suitable buildings and the Medieval MED18 Large Manor & Stables will work. I also bought GEN18 Spanish Windmill, I really should have bought another one or two of these so will get more at a future show or post. Lastly a retired stone building that originally was in one of the American ranges but again I think I can use it elsewhere.

No one got rich off me with Baccus just getting a small order mostly because I forgot to sort out a list of what else I need for my Magnesia army. So two packs of elephants when I needed the, I bought two packs of Celts, naked fanatics and light cavalry. In both cases as the packs I wanted were sold out (buy early not late!). Again I needed more Celtic infantry than just one pack so need to add to these. The light cavalry will be OK though.

We returned home and everyone had a great time. Lee is buzzing over the ECW and picked up a raft of painted figures as well as about completing the lead required for next years display game. I have a few ECW cavalry regiments on my desk awaiting paint so it's got me revved up as well.

Talking of painting desk, two battalions of 15mm SYW Prussians are about to shuffle off whilst I have three British Dragoon regiments for The Boy's Peninsular army and another four phalanx blocks just marching on behind the cavalry. It's going to be very 6mm for a few weeks.

Leven Miniatures Soon to be Released Middle East/Egyptian Range

I was give eighteen buildings by Mike to paint at Joy of Six and have recently finally finished them all. As per usual they were good castings to work on and as they are all the same finish batch painted them for a quicker result.

Given the number of buildings I will just do group images in this post and save the individual shots for later.All will work with the current ranges though these are more ancient than the original range/

This collection tends to be a little more complex than the original range with less square buildings. The range includes temples but also more left field items such as a boat yard and even a potters workshop.

You can check out Levens facebook page here for any updates and whilst they are not yet on the site you can contact Mike for ordering information.

Not many suppliers of wargames buildings start a range with such depth, eighteen buildings as an add on for a range is something to shout about and I can't praise Mike enough for such commitment to his projects.

Many of the buildings have courtyards with tiled floors. I did think about painting some of these with lots of colour but decided that would detract from the look Mike was after.

I will certainly be buying some of these buildings for my 6mm Ancient project to mix in with the other buildings I already have. I just need to get a few of the buildings I picked up for me at Joy of Six painted before I do, otherwise I will feel the pangs of guilt. Or not......

Been a Long Time...........

This is either a Led Zep post or at least something Lead related. Well a little bit of lead and a whole lot more resin.

I actually finished painting these buildings weeks ago and had done most of the work on the tiles that they are based on. Then I kind of forgot about it for a week or two. All three buildings are from the Leven Miniatures medieval range. 

I wanted to paint up a larger farm tile that could be used for my ECW army with a view of using it for Napoleonic's without it being too much of a stretch. The farm I had in mind would have a hedge and water filled trench, nothing as grand as a moat but something that would make crossing the hedge somewhat of a problem.

The building in the foreground is MED16 Medieval Town House £2.60 here it represents the original farmhouse that has now been reduced to use by the farmhands whilst the country gentleman farmer now resides in MED12 Medieval Manor House at £3.00. 

The last building on the tile is MED15 Small Medieval Cottage £2.60 but works so very well as a storehouse. I have followed my usual basing system adding some of the Baccus figures from a mix of civilian sets. Can you spot the rather excellent Perfect 6 scenic items? I have added a mix of creates, barrels and sacks to the base to give the look of a working farm. The health & safety boys and girls won't be happy I can tell you.

I added a couple of bunches of rushes to the water to make it a bit more interesting. The water itself is layers of PVA and Army Painter intermixed with brushing's of paint to try and give the appearance of depth. Not a bad result but I am sure it would have come off better with the use of water products,

A better view of some of the Perfect Six scatter terrain. A horse is tethered near the hedge helping itself to a free meal!

The lady of the house stands at the front door looking for a man to boss around, one guy is trying to make himself invisible behind his mattock, I don't care for his chances.

Meanwhile slightly hidden is a poor fellow loading the wagon before gathering the horses ready to head off to the market. If he gets a move on he may get away before the first soldiers descend on the farm.

In all three cases I have painted the buildings at least once, indeed all three examples are on Mikes website. The original MED15 Small Medieval Cottage was done with wooden tiles whilst on my version I have used slate, both styles work well giving it a different look each time.

The hedge is simply Olive Green Bushes from Woodland Scenics glued in place with good old PVA. I am currently well on my way to painting up a whole new range for Leven and hope to have them finished if not blogged by the weekend.

Joy of Six - The Spoils

As I mentioned in yesterdays post I spent most of my time at our game (so no pics at all of other games) but I did get a little retail time in.

Not that I did that much buying, I could have bought from several of the traders, near misses were Heroic's and Ross for either more WWI planes in the hope of getting me to paint something up or the Russian WWII ones I want to go onto. Rapier for a bigger mix of Ancients but I have to admit I really don't yet need to diversify.

I just got two packs from Baccus, some Egyptian Marines to add a bit more diversity to my Persians. Eventually the Persians will have a large and multinational army, lots of colour and type. I also bought a pack of Prodromoi Cavalry these will actually be used as more Companion cavalry but provide a few more poses. I was going to buy The Boy more Napoleonic British but he really has enough I have yet to paint to buy more......yet.

Something on my to get list for quite some time which I finally picked up from Leven Miniatures is a pack of green stuff for when I need to do a bit of filling or modelling. 

Keeping with Leven for the rest of the way I bought a couple more buildings to go with the others already bought for our Ancients games. These will give me a reasonable sized town.

For my ECW and Napoleonic's I have bought three more of the Medieval range. These are all fairly new releases and as such not yet painted by me and so rather exciting to get at them.

After seeing these buildings painted by Craig Armstrong I just had to buy them, these can be used with Lee's Roman's for Ancients but also plugged into our Peninsular Napoleonic's.

I really love these buildings, as you can see I have rather restocked but that's well below half the story as Mick has given me a whole box of Biblical buildings for a range he will be releasing as soon as I get them all painted. No pressure then. I will be buying a load of these as well as they are bloody marvellous. This is where Leven Miniatures really scores big, most of their ranges have good depth rather than a selection that needs high levels of repetition to make up more than a few buildings. Indeed his latest range is Old West with 18 codes and 25 buildings in total!

So not too big a pile, enough to set my paint to finished ratio a step or two backwards but I have been reasonably busy over the last month making some room in the to paint boxes. I even should finish two things this week maybe a few more and I have more that is finished just waiting a moment to post them.

Leven Farm Tile - The Buildings

Oh it's been a long time since I last painted any buildings but I have been working on this project in the background for some time. As many will know I do like to produce building groups on tiles with farms being quite popular. 

So no surprises then that these three buildings will be made into a 17th Century farm which will be used for our ECW games but also for the Napoleonic games. The buildings are from the excellent and ever growing ranges of Leven Miniatures these all from the Medieval range and quite suitable for later periods.

This one will be on a tile 240x120mm and is based on an idea I have had running through the old noggin for a few months now. I hope to get it finished in the next week or maybe two depending on the amount of hobby time I can allow myself.

Wednesday saw me with rather more than expected when I woke up about 1.30am having forgot my night time meds (despite my reminder alarm!) not able to stay in bed and too late to take them I set too at 2am and painted till Cath got up at 7. The result was three 26 figure Persian Levy units painted and just needing basing plus some work on the buildings above. Good job I have Wednesdays off work and I even had time to do other hobby stuff but by 10.30pm I was more than ready to call it a day. 

Italian Guard Infantry 6mm Baccus

Nearly finished with the Italian Guards for our Project Russia 1812 with just two more Battalions after these four. These are Baccus French three old castings and one new.

All four wear bearskins, first up is the Velites with a mainly white uniform. I find white somewhat tricky to paint as a base colour. I even used a different white to go over the crossbelts that is only noticeable if you pick up the figures for a close look. I probably won't bother again.

Italian guard units tended to have the sons of wealthy Italians within the ranks which suited Napoleon as it tied these families to his cause and the fathers of these men as the units were not usually involved in fighting. All this changed when Napoleon went east.

Wearing French uniforms also meant I had those tricky straps to paint on the backpacks. As usual I just painted the two straps, that third always looks wrong. 

Next up simply termed Guard Infantry and a different uniform in that these guys were a dark green jacket. I added a Leven tree to the base just for kicks. 

As you can see the Leven trees look really good, I still need to plant a load of these trees in multiples for larger area forests and woods.

I don't see any of the Italian Guard units getting much use as they really did not get that involved in battles, but they will get to fight at least once. I have the Guard Conscripts on order so these should get painted up within the next six weeks leaving me with very little left to do for the Italians for this project. I probably will be painting up a few more standard units for the Peninsular and any other battles or campaigns to come.

Building of the Week - Leven Manor House

I painted up the display version for Leven ages ago and immediately ordered one for my own collection but alas took forever to get round to painting it. No matter I really enjoyed painting this model even though it was a real quick paint. Unfortunately at the moment the building is not available as it was rather tricky to cast from the original mould so will be re-released once a fresh mould has been made.

It's easy to see why I like it so much as it's got loads of character, it's just a pity that the light is too poor to take shots of it outside.

I really like all the different angles that the roof and garrets give it, I know I will be able to fit this in with various Napoleonic battlefields. Not so much for our ECW ones but possibly for other periods we have yet to get into.

The building for all it's shapes is still a fairly blockish building but that adds to it's charm and actually acts as a nice foil to the other manor house that Leven released about a year ago.

I popped the house on a temporary base to show it with a unit of Infantry to give an idea of scale, works rather well for me. I don't intend to base the building at the moment but may do later if inspiration or need occurs.

Building of the Week, Another Leven Farm Tile

I'm not sure how many of these I have done now but I have quite a few and all are different. This one is no exception as two of the three buildings are firsts for me.

I was hoping for better weather so I could take the pics outside but poor light and on off rain meant that was never going to be a good idea so inside shots only I am afraid. I tried something a bit different for me and added a second stone colour to the buildings. Whilst I was doing it I really was not too sure and expected a repaint but once finished I was rather happy with the result.

The tile comprises of FAR15 Stone Farmhouse £2.50, FAR20a Farm Outbuilding £2.00 and FAR20d Farm Outbuilding (pigsty) £1.50 and bits from ACC02 Dry Stone Wall set £3.00 all of course from Leven Miniatures. 

It really belongs in a European setting and a little later than my planned use of it but with the added bits I think it can pass for a Napoleonic tile if you push it a bit.

I added a Baccus tumbril to the yard to add a little interest but also some of the Perfect Six Scenic range of scenic items. In this case one of the larger barrels from the set and a couple of the newer releases in a couple of sack clusters.

I am quite pleased with the result, the extra bits really break up the yard area and with the latest releases from Perfect Six I could have added a farmer, his dog and even a horse awaiting the tack to be brought out to be harnessed to the cart. Expect to see a few carts in the future with sacks or stacks of boxes in them. Now please kindly remember to shut that gate.

Building of the Week Leven Miniatures Grain Store

The last of the buildings for our Ancients project that I have in hand is Leven Miniatures MID12 Grain Store retailing at £3.00 though I choose a far less mundane use for this building. Instead it will represent the Government or Religious centre of the region. Having looked at a lot of mostly Persian buildings from a mix of ancient to early gunpowder periods I decided to try and be brave and go bold with the colour. This will after all set it apart from the rest of the buildings.

It's not actually quite as dark as it looks in the photo's with the dark sand colour actually more of a golden yellow. It's by far the bigger of the buildings I have bought from Leven's Middle East range which I am really pleased about.

It's also hard to see the two domes on the rear section of the building on the picture above but it's good to show some of the detail on the inner sections of the building.

I will need to buy a few more buildings to flesh out the settlement and also allow this building to be left out of games where we just need a village rather than an area of greater importance.

Like the other buildings in the range that I have painted this one has a nice texture that shows through the paint and adds to the look of the finished model.

So considering all the buildings of this range I have painted I have to say I have been very pleased with the quality and results. I wanted to keep up with the quick paints to go along with the rest of the project and indeed it has delivered on this.

Having watched a game of Commands & Colors Ancients at Kev's last week I can see us using some of the mechanics from that game used when we finally get to play a game. I have continued to build my forces up and will be looking at the Persians as a second army to start whilst Lee builds his Romans up. I doubt very much we will be ready for a game this year but I expect to get a few games sometime in 2016. That is of course if we don't just get sucked into lots of Napoleonic games.

Building of the Week Leven Middle East Range

Following on from last weeks Building of the Week I again present a couple more buildings from this range. On the left is MID02 Desert Dwelling selling at £2.50 and to the right MID05 Large 2 Storey Dwelling selling again at £2.50

 Given the fairly straightforward design of these buildings it can be a little difficult to make them interesting but Mike has worked into them small details such as the patches of render missing with brickwork showing through on MID02.

The roofs are also textured allowing the painter to dry brush or ink detail in place. This time I went with the ink but when I get some more I will dry brush to see the results. I wanted these to paint up quickly to fit in with the whole concept of the project but again with a limited amount of time spent on them they still come looking good. Mike did not leave off with just render patches but the walls all have texture that you can't pick out with the camera so well but stand out on the table.

I went with Vallejo Black Grey for the windows with no lighter grey highlight as they would not have any glass in them so wanted a fuller darkness without going jet black. On the right hand building you can see some of that texture I was talking about above.

These buildings would work for a number of periods and I can see them on WWII and Modern tables. The range is large enough that you can get a good sized town without to many repeats. I would guess that this is the largest range of Middle East buildings on the market right now.

So Leven have provided me with a couple of rather nice buildings that will make up part of my small town when called for in our Ancient games. Now all we need to do is work out if we will be using Hail Caesar or another rule set. It's possible we will use some form of Commands & Colors Ancients as Lee has now bought these. What ever we use we may be some time off from being ready as Lee's Romans are a little cavalry light. He has four Legion bases and seven Auxiliary infantry. He has more unbased units but that's his lot at the moment. I on the other hand have six heavy foot, five companion cavalry a couple of horse archer units, four heavy balister and plenty of light infantry. At the moment I rather fancy my odds.