Building of the Week - Ardennes Farm House

OOOOP's nearly dropped the ball just two weeks into the new year. Well I did have a building prepared but it has a lot of base work so that one will have to feature next week. So instead I have another new to me building, Leven Miniatures FAR13 Ardennes Farm House at £2.50 

It's a fairly standard building and I have dressed it for Napoleonic's so not the brightest looking building though if you follow the link above you will see another rendition of it and it's glorious in it's colour. I will have to take note and do a few brighter buildings :-)

It's a basic paint job followed by a few layers of drybrushing and topped off with a Nuln Oil wash to further dull the poor building down and further define the stonework and other detail. 

I will be basing this building as I will with all my buildings after a chat with Lee last night. We played about with a load of my painted buildings on the Quatre Bras board and they worked both ways, though based seemed to hold better than loose so that's the way forward by the looks.

This will mean a few sessions adding buildings to some 60x60 tiles as well as at least one large tile for the built up section for my town which I am happy to say can continue to grow again post the conversation yesterday.

Building Momentum and Tuft Luck

Got home from work yesterday to a parcel from Leven Miniatures which was no surprise but what was inside the box was unknown. No I was not losing my mind, just one of those situations where you just don't know the score.

Let me explain, 

Mike: I have some new buildings I want you to paint up.

Ian: Great, what are they?

Mike: I will send them to you with a few images of how a couple of them will need to be painted, feel free to paint the rest as you wish.

Ian: OK no problems, look forward to getting them.

Ian (Thinks to self): What buildings, I don't know what buildings.......... oh shinny....... What?........Buildings?.......More Shiney......rinse and repeat  :-)

I guessed a few of them as I was aware what was on the horizon but others are utterly new to me. So you can expect all the buildings above and a few of the ones I want to get painted for the Quatre Bras board on the table over the next month or two. That's the 13 buildings you see here and maybe the same again of my own, yep 52 looks an easy ask for '14

All the buildings pictured above have either just been released or are due to be released in the coming months so these are going to be the first seen painted in most likely all cases.

Not that I stopped there, with some of my spare Christmas money I have bought some more of the excellent Tajima1 tufts as you can see from above. The bottom left are for the 28mm's I am working on now and the ones that will arrive early February, bottom right for the 6mm Napoleonic's whilst the others are mostly for 15mm though will find themselves up and down scale as needed.

So other than time I now have no excuse not to be flicking the brushes around. Lets see if I can get one of the new buildings painted up and blogged before the week is out.

Blog Giveaway News and my Villain Themed Entry

First up The Miniatures Man is celebrating 50K hits and hoping a few more bloggers will discover his rather excellent blog. You get a real nice mix of subjects and it's a fun read but don't just take my word for it, go and have a look and maybe go after some of the prizes on offer.

The second themed round was villains and whilst on the search for a suitable figure found this one on the Black Tree Design website. Well I thought he is certainly one of the biggest villains to plague the earth and as I was actually buying some figures for Sniper Reminders decided to base him on one of the reminder bases.

Talking of Black Tree, they have a 50% off sale at the moment that finishes Friday I believe so it's a great time to buy their figures which on the whole are an excellent range.

I did not realise until I had painted the uniform that were he tended to wear the armband was instead an eagle. If I had realised before I would have filed it off and painted the armband on in it's stead but having mixed the coat colour I was not brave enough to go down that route.

Being a fairly plain uniform I changed my style to a little bolder for the shading which whilst I like it won't replace my current look. Mostly it was a good figure to work with though a few details like the badges and medals on his chest were not crisp making it hard to do a good job on them.

So it's another entry in the challenge and I am very confident I will not be painting this figure again as I was a little uncomfortable at the time even if he felt right for the theme.

Bakers Dozen, Or a Bloody Lot of French Infantry!

This is the first time I have painted up so many 6mm Infantry in the one go, it's also hopefully the last! It was such a simple chain of events that lead to this situation. Firstly I had not painted up any Napoleonic infantry for a few weeks and I was a bit behind and wanting to get ahead. Well six battalions did not really look like much so I grabbed nine. OK rather a reasonable amount and three months target in one go, but that just left another three in this box, may as well do them as well. Oh this one's not Prussian, lets do that as well. See anyone could have fallen for it, but alas it was not anyone (else) it was ME!

That in case your wondering is 364 infantry figures which I added four command figures to as obviously I did not have enough to do. The guys on Shakers are all Baccus new castings whilst the command is Adler as Baccus do not do infantry mounted command at least not yet. 

My usual basing system was used and seeing as I have a fair few tufts added these a little more than when I was starting to dry up. I averaged about one line for every three or four columns, well they are French after all, not that our rules deal with the difference between column and line only paying attention to squares.

It was a bit of a slog but also the most time effective way of painting so many figures at once.The most negative point is that it dulls the mind and my quality did drop off needing me to refocus. Also there was no quick stints at the table, one to three hour segments had to be booked but on the plus I have bitten deep into my requirements for Waterloo. I now need just nineteen more French Battalions of Line and two of Light and I have all the French I am to supply for the big game in 2015. This means infantry wise I am really ahead of the game and can relax into painting the last battalions.

Each Battalion has the usual four Voltigeurs out front as is usual on my bases, well you have to fill the whole 60x60mm base don't you? All at the moment carry the eagle but when the time comes I will snip off the extra's for the second etc. battalions. 

I love this shot, really shows off the new Baccus infantry really well. The flag is also Baccus and boy does it benefit from painting the edges of the flag to finish off the deal. I can't understand how some painters can through in serious time on the figures and basing then leave the flag edges looking horrid.

As far as guilty pleasures go, mine is the straps on the backpacks, I just love to paint them as just two years ago it was one stage to far for me and now I would never dream of leaving them out. What's the change? Good quality small bristle brushes. In my case Rosemary & Co Series 33 10/0, turns a chore into a joy.

I am not saying this is the last of the Napoleonic 6mm that I will do during the challenge, though it might be the last of the French though that's in doubt as I still have six more battalions prepped. I also have a number of Prussian Landwehr that need my attention as well as a few battalions of already painted figures that need just a few figures adding to make up yet more finished battalions. On top of that I have some of the new  Baccus French Command figures I have made a start at and will fit in soon.

Before most of these though I will get the Zulu's I have on my list to paint finished, that's a lot more 6mm!!! But before that I am working on 28's with a few 15's probably thrown in for good measure.

Your Masterpiece on a Tile

One of my post Christmas posts was regarding my lovely Partisan Tile that I received. Part of the joy was that it was 100% unexpected. Having something someone had created based on my own work was both thrilling and delightful. 

I mentioned I was going to try and get details of where you could get yourself sorted with one of these babies and sure enough Cath has come through with the help of Dawn the person with the great idea of giving me the present in the first place.

So if you want something rather special nip over to Katezart-Design, but before you go, how much would you expect to pay for such a fab item?

Your way off, I say way off. One of these tiles (measuring just under 4") will set you back the sum of £3 plus cost of postage. Less than you would pay for a painted figure!

So if you want one, all you need to do is provide a few good shots of the figure you want to be tiled up and the usual details to get it back to you and then the hardest bit, you have to wait for it to land on your doorstep. So what are you waiting for?

Santa Clause Wot I Gave

I don't see Santa Clause in the same light as Secret Santa so I am happy to spill the beans on who was my victim. I was a little perturbed when I was given Fran, or the Angry Lurker as my target, thanks babe. I spent a fair bit of time going through Fran's blog before deciding what to buy and paint. I decided Si-Fi and as a supplier Ground Zero Games so next up was what to buy?

I went for three remote controlled robot weapons which rather annoyingly are shown with a 15mm figure who looks like he is the controller. Why annoying? well first you don't get the figure and second it does not tell you this. So I felt a little flat when they arrived and no time really to order any as I had left it a tad late.

One other reason I went for these was that Fran had already said the GZG's vehicles were a pain to make up so thought I would save him the bother of making these up. Actually they were not too bad if you ignore the legs on the walkers. The wheel version came in eleven parts  the walkers in six which given the scale was a fair amount.

The sun bleached them a little, this is closer to the colour I painted them. I was trying to match a faction Fran had already painted, hope I came close.

Detail wise they were great, though not a lot of scope to tart them up. I tried to get close to the blue that Fran uses for his lenses but figure a quick touch up and it will fit right in.

All in all I think the Secret Santa and Santa Clause went well. One parcel I know of however failed to arrive though that is in the process of being sorted out and I look forward to hearing it's eventual resolution.

However Cath struggled a few times trying to work out issues and requests due to running both this year. Cath has already agreed to run the Secret Santa this year as she had a blast and all the kind messages for both really made it for her so thank you all very much for helping Cath have fun as well.

Cath has asked me to see if I can get someone else to run the Santa Clause though (the smaller of the two themes) so if anyone want's to take it on or has a spouse with the nounce please step forward. If no one want's to take over either myself of Cath will still run it. See below for how it was run last year.

£5 or equivalent worth of miniatures to be painted up and given to your target receiver

Names are randomly picked for who you will send to and who will send to you

You need to have a blog to be part of this so the painter can get ideas of what to paint.

Presents to arrive by Christmas, can be anonymous or come with your details, all up to you.

Of course if someone takes over they can change the rules.

Building of the Week - Leven Miniatures Large Town House

Last week did not see a building of the week as I was really caught up with painting up a boat load of French for Project Waterloo and did not have the space or time on the table to fit in even such a quick project as this. Many of you will recognise this building as I have already painted it once though much better maintained than this poor devil. Another Leven Miniatures MED06 Medival House £2.50 which is destined first for Quatre Bras, then Waterloo and finally my town. Actually if we end up basing the buildings which is possible the that order may be changed.

Not much effort is required to change the look of this building from well maintained to run down, below is a picture of the first one of these delightful buildings that I painted up.

I have quite a few more of the medieval range buildings to paint up to use for the two Napoleonic projects and will mix these in with more of the German buildings as well.

Due to the numbers needed I will be painting some up in batches, obviously I will want some to look very similar to each other as well as having some looking rather different. The majority will be more run down and will become the old quarter and will be set on a larger tile so as to have them closer together with winding streets, indeed I plan to do a number of larger tiles to allow my town to be more European and less Milton Keynes.

All the buildings shown above are already earmarked for Quatre Bras though I have a few more already painted that may be used. On top of this I have fourteen buildings already prepped that will be painted up and inserted plus more awaiting prepping.I will start to keep count on the number of buildings I paint this year, I am sure that's going to be more than 52 ;-)