Category Archives: Workbench

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The Secret is out, an Un-Dead Warband

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Places like Paul Freilers (Torrance, California) were magic and I could spend hours there just dreaming among the oh so cool treasures!

Back in the beginning (early 1980’s) when I first started to collect and paint miniatures it was only a hobby to relieve stress from work, an outlet for my creative/collecting desires. I didn’t play games with them, I simply bought figures I liked, painted them and stuck them in a small cabinet I had. Most of the first figures were from the Dungeons & Dragons world since that was the rage at the time, for me Historical’s would come later but it was fantasy first.

Like most folks I painted the “good guys” to start with, some Wizards, Elves, a few Human hero’s, my collection grew. One day while in a shop looking at figures, I noticed a rack of books with small rule books allowing you to play games with these miniatures, sort of a way to bringing them to life. I now became interested in playing with these miniatures, found a group in Santa Monica’s Aero hobbies (sadly closed) that played and I signed up for a Saturday session. I was hooked, my minis now had a purpose in life!

Back in the day painted mini’s were not always that common in games, well painted was rare, and basing…whats basing?

I painted, I played, but after only a few sessions the Game master of our little group failed to show up for our Saturday adventure. In his place I was nominated to run an adventure (perhaps because in of all the group my minis were actually painted in more than two colors!) so letting my imagination go I winged the group through a made up on the spot adventure. Afterwards I figured I had done so poorly that they would never have me as a GM again but to my surprise the players said it was one of the best sessions yet and could I do it next week! I agreed but without telling them that I had no idea what I was doing, that most of my die rolls had nothing to do with actual rules, I just rolled dice and then interpreted results, balanced with what I thought should have happened for FUN! Most players back then had little knowledge of the rules anyway…thank God for those GM screens!

Sure I read the “Hobbit” and had to have three trolls for under the bridge!

I realized that as a GM, players relied on me to bring the “bad guys”, the monsters, NPC’s, the things in the game they had to fight, out think, and overcome. I started painting Goblins, Orcs, and the various things one finds in D&D dungeons. Remember Kobolds? Lots of those! I would go down each week to the hobby shop to see what new treasures had come in, yes, remember when you had to “go to the shop” to see figures!

Fast forward to 2018, D & D is long behind me, I’ve been playing “historical games” for many years and with many different groups. One of the groups I have played with the longest is the “Dogs of War” in Los Angeles, they had gotten deep into a game called SAGA by Studio Tomahawk, dark age battles involving warbands instead of full armies. I was never a big fan of Ancients, Dark Ages, or the Medieval period although I had painted several large “Tactica” armies, Romans, Huns, and played that for a while. Still this new SAGA “Dark Ages” period interested me, especially since it had “Vikings”. Several of the movies from my youth involved Vikings and had left strong impressions on my young mind, adventure, gold, sex, and hacking apart your fellow man to get them! What’s not to like?

Who better than Kirk Douglas to play a Viking!

Yes, my dad and his buddies had a habit of taking me to all those movies their wives were not interested in, Goldfinger, Fantastic Voyage, The Longest Day, etc.… (thanks dad!). I’m sure my mom was not thrilled about me going either but go I did (thanks Mom!). Movies like “The Vikings” staring Kirk Douglas. Tony Curtis, and Ernst Borgnine as well as “The Long Ships” with Richard Widmark and Sydney Poitier were what SAGA was about! I got roped into a few SAGA games with a “lender” Viking warband and was hooked! Soon boxes of “all the Vikings in the world” were headed to my house (I bought almost the entire line of Foundry Vikings). Warbands of Vikings, Saxons, Normans, Teutonic Knights, and Moorish hordes poured off my workbench! I painted, played and enjoyed SAGA for several years but then like many other popular games it grew and produced an updated version SAGA II

It was the move from SAGA into SAGA II that worried me. Now SAGA II changed a few things around (for the good) but it introduced “Fantasy” warbands and “magic” as an option, yet another peroid, and one I was not interested in starting, my lead pile is big enough! . As we moved into SAGA II some of the group leaned towards creating some “fantasy” warbands, in fact they fairly quickly built them! Ha! “Not me” I said “NEVER, not going to happen” I told them, over and over, right up to the point while watching one of their silly Saga Magic games I picked up the “Age of Magic” supplement book to help look up a rule. While looking through the heavily illustrated book I saw a skeleton warband in 28mm and felt faint….my head started to spin…..I spun straight back to my youth once again, I’m sitting in a darkened movie palace, gobbling down popcorn, and watching “Jason and the Argonauts”.

Burned into my memory was one of the last scenes where after Jason kills the Hydra and steals the fleece the local king cuts out the Hydras teeth and scatters them on the ground to release long dead victims, “Children of the Hydra”, only skeletons now to catch and kill Jason and his band. The Ray Harryhausen’s master piece of animation that brought the “children of the Hydra” to life was when I fell in love with skeleton figures.

What young boy was not inspired to create his own adventures after seeing this!

The “Master” of stop motion Ray Harryhausen works with one of his skeletons on the set!

Now this photo in the SAGA II  Age of Magic book was not the first time I felt that pull from my past as far as skeletons are concerned, it was years ago on one of those trips to the hobby shop for some new D&D figures that I first saw skeleton mini’s! They were quite possibly the first skeleton minis ever made in 25mm, and knocked me over, I had to have them!  They were modeled in the style of Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death, or “Totentanz” renaissance wood block prints from the 1500’s. As I recall the sets were produced by Minifigs in 25mm and the range was called “Valley of the Four Winds” or “VFW” for short. I bought perhaps 30-40 figures in the range and had them on display in my miniature’s cabinet for years, even after becoming mostly “historical only gamer”. Yes I did some Victorian Science Fiction, Battle Tech, even Starship Troopers. As the years passed, I started to sell off most of my unused fantasy figures to create space and cash for the historical figures. The cherished VFW skeletons went to greener pastures, but I never forgot them….

Pretty impressive for the early 80’s….many of the GW crowd who might think they came up with this stuff were still learning to walk.

Original packaging from the still popular among collectors line. (out of production)

It was after returning home from that game at the “Dogs” clubhouse that I felt the urge to see those old skeleton figures and what was produced in 28mm Skeletons nowadays, heck just “looking” wouldn’t hurt… Little did I know that like a fish below the boat looking at the bait, I was in dangerous water.

 

Wow! found an old picture of my painted VFW skely’s! Painted Circa 1981

Wow, there are tons of skeletons out there nowadays!!! A dozen or more manufacture’s, different period’s, styles, historical and total fantasy to choose from. Now being a very “traditional” type I was not impressed with the many times overblown sculpts popular with some gaming systems and manufactures, I yearned for the style I remembered from my younger days. I wanted Skeletons from “Jason and the Argonauts”! Well it was not long using the power of the internet that I found what I was looking for. The bait was looking good!

I couldn’t believe how close these figures looked to the figures in “Jason and the Argonauts” and then I read the box that proclaimed “Children of the Hydra” doh!

There it was, a box of 24 Skeletons looking as if they came right off the silver screen! They were pretty bare “bones” (pun intended) and had only options for spear, sword, or bow, and a few Greek style shields. I figured I’d just take a look at prices and availability but  before I knew it my shaking finger hit the “buy it now” button… the hook was set, and I was into the net called “Age of Magic”

The figures arrived and while unboxing them I remembered they were plastic, I had to assemble them and oh boy what a lot of parts, small parts, fiddly parts! This was going to take time. The good news was that there was little flash, and mold lines were not bad at all. Yes, there are a lot of parts but with some proper glue and a bit of patience I built the first one and he (?) looked great! I soon got the hang of assembly and could churn out 5-6 of them in about an hour. You get plenty of options for body parts, and since they are plastic the posing possibilities are nearly endless! They even have options for a few coming out of the earth which is really cool and something I definitely wanted. I actually really enjoyed building these! The box says you get 24 figures but if you want you can use extra pieces to make partial skeletons emerging out of the ground, or as casualties, and increase that number. I think I got 28 figures all told with a few casualty markers (pile of bones) to boot!

Now normally I have a habit of not revealing my new projects until they hit the table, it’s fun that way, the big reveal. Now with the Corona Virus, Sheltering at Home, and social distancing get togethers are done for a bit so I have decided to just share my build of this warband here.

Ok, enough! Let’s see the figures!

REMEMBER “clicking” on the picture will give you a larger version.

Some might question the basing choice since I went with a “fairly” simple flocked base instead of a more intricate “undead looking” base that many people use. Well several reasons,

  1. I didn’t want the base distracting from the mini, sometimes “skeletons” are  a bit plain.
  2. We play mostly on “grass” covered mats (and see above)
  3. Skeletons, even with their armor, weapons, and dressing, can be a bit monotone so the green color really helps off set this.
  4. There was going to be a lot of skeletons and simple is faster!
  5. I had a plan to “tie” in the basing with the figure! (see further down)

While there are a few bases designed for “clawing out of the earth” poses its very easy to take spare parts and create your own. I actually found creating varied poses was a lot of fun and pretty easy given the thin plastic. In part two of this series on the “Undead Warband”  I’ll talk more about the nuts & bolts of building and modifying.

My crazy brain like to analyze figures before I paint them, what are they doing, why are they doing it, what are they thinking, etc. I find it helps me in selecting how to paint and pose them. With the “skeletons” I started thinking, “well their frekkin dead so what keeps them going?” and thought “ok, dead equals no “life force” so to reanimate them the Necromancer gives them a magical shot of “life force” but how can he keep this up for a whole army?” well he doesn’t! Once they are brought to life and sent off they have the ability to steal “life force” from any living organism they contact.

So if you look at my bases you see that the grass where the skeletons walk is black or brown, wilted and destroyed as the “life force” is pulled away. Yea, I sometimes go down the “Rabbit Hole”……

These are just the first five of 30 that I’ve done already, they are fairly simple as I was using them to develop a style and paint selection for the rest of the army. I will post picks of the others soon. There are also quite a few other components to this army to be revealed in future post!

Static Grass gone Wrong

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Several years ago I decided to learn to make my own “Static Grass Tufts” and as part of that I built myself a negative ion grass applicator. Now those who know me are well aware that when I go, I go big most of the time, and this was no exception. Not content with buying one, or a simple small conversion using a cheap 9 volt battery powered electric bug zapper, I went full tilt and made a 120 volt powered applicator that Darth Vader would be proud of!

Fun to learn about, build, and have it work but its not that practical for most “wargaming” applications.

It works great, full coverage over big areas!I guess if you were do some large battlefield or convention terrain it would be great but as the wise Tim D said “Tufts? Why?, I buy all I want online”

Me being sorta stubborn I was determined to justify making it and having just finished  some 15mm French Cavalry I decided to use it to static grass the bases!

Just used it on the Cavalry, what do you all think? Perhaps a tad too much?

I might give them a permanent “in cover” bonus the next game! “Dam! is that French Cavalry on our flank?” “No sir! just some oddly shaped bushes”

Seriously the applicator works great, but for basing where you also have a “metal” figures the electric “charge” causes the grass to gather on it as well! For terrain and other projects its great but really more of a model railroaders item or even static “plastic” modelers tool. For basing a plastic squeeze bottle like the ones used in restaurants for ketchup or mustard works fine for basing.

Gripping Beast 28mm Viking Bowmen conversion.

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Steve Gausche life long gaming pal! We had just re-based his ACW troops on magnets!

For most of us the current situation has given us a change in schedule, for me working at home equals no commute time, less shopping trips, dinners out, visiting, trips, and gaming with my friends (booo!). When I saw this coming I vowed to try and use all the unexpected time to do things that have been put off in the past. If you have been following the post here (please subscribe! top right home page) you will know that one of the goals was to organize my website better and post more often! So while going through files I found several partially completed posts and articles that for one reason or another never made it onto the site. One of them was the “second half” of Stevie G’s “Byzantine Birthday Bash” article. Remember it was when I painted up some Byzantine Cataphracts for him and he accepted them with “wow great! but…I would rather have some plain old Viking archers”. Well I never finished the article “Stevie G Birthday Bash part two!” so here it is, finished.

Byzantine Birthday Update! In the last post “Byzantine Birthday Bash” I talked about Steve not being totally enthused with my gift of the Byzantine Cataphracts and while loving the figures he just felt he would not use them much. It was decided that I would keep the Byzantines and instead paint him up a 12 figure unit of “Viking archers” since his Viking war band was currently using a unit of spear-men to represent archers. I had gotten a pack of Gripping Beast archers from Steve months ago and was going to give them some custom additions to make them look a bit “cooler” on the battlefield. This would be the addition of bowstrings and arrows that are normally missing on molded figures. I have a very nice Viking Warband (even if I do say so myself) and I took great care to make my bowmen look realistic, like they were really firing their bows. My Viking warband uses all “Foundry Vikings” as I regard them as some of the best ever produced! The adding of bowstrings and arrows to figures can be tough since many sculptors have never shot a bow, or figure that the end user wont care about the missing parts.
When I opened the Gripping beast package of 12 “bowmen” I was somewhat disappointed in the poses and sculpts. First the poses are really only three, Standing firing, kneeling firing, and moving / drawing arrow. There is a bit of fiddling with the basic pose to try and make them look different but in my opinion it fails. I felt when finished  this unit would look very much like a unit of “toy soldiers” no matter how it was painted.

The GB figure with just a bit of preliminary modification to see what was possible.

The GB figures with just a bit of preliminary modification to see what was possible.

Well me being me, I decided to do something in an attempt to remedy this by trying to give some uniqueness and variety to the figures. As I pondered how to do this I started to prep the figures for bowstrings and arrows. I quickly found that this was not going to be easy given the figures current poses. Many of the arms were at wrong angles, resulting in the bowstrings having to pass through the figures face or body.

Arms were at the wrong angles or to short making major modifications a must!

Arms were at the wrong angles or to short making major modifications a must! Three of the same figure. The second one shows original position with out bow, arm pulling back an imaginary arrow. First figure shows the bow installed and the attempt at adding the bow string. I would have to cut off his head to make it work and archers rarely held a bow in this position except when on horseback. The third figure shows how I corrected this by cutting off and repositioning the arm.

A small bit of reach was added to each arm to correct it's proportion.

A small bit of reach was added to each arm to correct it’s proportion and angle. A brass rod pin holds it in position while filling and sculpting as well as adding needed strength!

Simply bending the arms would not work either since the arms were a bit short in the original sculpt. I resigned myself to the fact that to make this work I would have to extend all the shooters arms as well as change the orientation of the knelling shooters arms by cutting / pinning/ filling them for every figure. Even the moving figure had a raised arm and hand that made one wonder what he is supposed to be doing. I solved that by putting an arrow in his hand as if he just “drew it” from the quiver and was about to nock it up.
As I delved into the project I also decided on other small modifications to “individualize” the figures from one another with additional shields, weapons, and hair styles.

Pro Tips: To avoid damage to figures when trying to bend arms, legs, or other thick parts use a good quality pair of needle nose pliers BUT lay a small wrap of leather in between the pliers and the figure to avoid marring or damaging the casting! The compression of the leather will give you a better grip and allow more force to be used. Also the area is thick, hard to bend, and to avoid distortion, try making a few cuts with a hobby knife or thin blade saw on the side you will be towards. removing a small amount of material there will make the process easier and look better. Fill the tiny cracks with gap filling super glue.

VK9

A bit of a change in hair and a shield creates just enough difference in the figure that combined with different paint schemes makes the group look much more realistic. The lengthened arm now works to create the right balance of dimensions between the arrow, bow, and arm. The first figure now clearly gives the impression that he has fired one arrow and is getting ready to fire a second.

The “Bow Strings” were made of steel wire, cut, and super glued. I thought I might add a wrapping around were the bowstring is connected to the bow but decided that in this scale I could just paint that on and get the “effect” without all the work.

The arrows are made of thicker brass rod and “arrow heads” made by gently hammering tips flat then filing. I also sculpted “flutes”, the feathers you see on the end of an arrow that makes it fly true. They are a bit big perhaps but I think they will look right after painting.

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The “fletches” or feathers on the arrows are rough and would be historically as arrows had to be made quickly and cheaply in time of war, they were also not expected to be used over and over. There were better arrows made but those were rarer and used more for hunting or when individual accuracy was needed. Dark Age bows in warfare were more of a massed effect weapon than a specific target weapon.

I wished that the figures were arching up a bit, they are all shooting straight and level. Most archers would have been used as a group and be kept back to use their range so their aim would be higher.

VK8

I have used thick industrial thread for bowstrings at times but it can be fiddly to do and not look that great. Using small steel wire is much easier and sturdier. Brass wire is used for the arrows as it is easier to shape and work with. Two part sculpting epoxy “kneadite” was used for the feathers.

The other side of the figure shows where a sword out of the “bits box” was added and a belt sculpted on to make it look right! Shields and swords were added to many of the bowmen as they would have carried them for defense or when called upon for melee support!

The easy addition to the center figure of a arrow in his hand and the bow string make a huge difference!

Probably 3 or so hours of extra effort was put into modifying these guys prior to paint but the results are well worth the effort in my opinion.

These guys were actually rewarding to do and not that hard especially since I have done this for fifty to 70 others before in my warbands. It just makes archers sooo much better looking that for me it’s a must do!

Yea! Now these bowmen look like a proper threat! Well worth the effort!

with the modifications, additional weapons, shields, and a some paint they look a cohesive yet individual unit.

The bright side of “sheltering at home”

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Given what’s going on in the world for almost all of us our day to day lives have changed. I know for me I have had a few weeks off (paid thankfully!) and the company now has me working at home. This “sheltering at home” policy has created some problems but also some opportunities. The opportunities are because of the extra time I have at home, no commute, no trips here and there, just more time, time to do some of the things that just always got put off.

One of those things was to spend a bit more time on my “poor” website! I say poor because I just never finished transferring and rebuilding from the “old site”, just how unfinished it was becoming apparent to me after going through a saved version of the old site and seeing how much was missing on the new one.

The old site had been built in the old style of separate pages and areas unlike the new “blogger” style of just doing post after post and using “tags” and “categories” to sort the articles based on user searches. It does make the transferring of old pages a bit difficult since you can build the page but no one will see them unless the happen to poke around your site. Nowadays blogs let subscriber’s know via email or some type of messaging when new content goes up. I wanted to keep most of these old pages as “pages” since some of them are quite long and a bit much for a post. So, what I have decided to do is move them over as a “page” but then do a small post “announcing” the “new” or really transferred, updated page with a link to it. Here is the first of those, enjoy!

Prussian Airship Project

WWII Train Track “How too”

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Several of you have asked how I did the train tracks for my WWII 20mm set (featured in the last posts Battle report) and I remembered that I had taken pictures of the process done a few years ago intending to do a “workbench” article. So, digging deep I found them and wrote up a bit on what I did.

I use HO scale for my 20mm WWII games, yes it is just a bit small being 1/87 scale and 20mm being 1/72 but it is hardly noticeable and given how much is out there and how cheap you can pick it up for its a winner. I had done several games using the HO scale track before but it looked a bit phony just laying on top of the game map. Most train tracks are on a raised “roadbed” and I put my mind to trying to figure out how best to accomplish this. The raised roadbed would not only look better it would make the track stay in place better on the game table, as well as create the “berm” for troops to hunker down behind and tanks to go “hull down”

The first step was to determine the “roadbed” size for the different pieces of track I planed to use.

The roadbed is made from 3/16 plastic PVC sheet that you can pick up from plastic supply vendors (sign shops carry it many times). It comes in 4′ x 8′ sheets but most suppliers have some cut offs or will split a sheet for you. It’s a very handy material for all sorts of wargaming projects.

After determining the different sizes I would need I made a master for each type and then traced enough outlines to the PVC

Care has to be taken at each step to make sure the “ends” all match size wise so the track is interchangeable from piece to piece and end to end. I then used a bandsaw to cut the “angle” on each side. If you do not have a bandsaw you can use a small hobby copping saw. When doing this “angle” I created irregular sides to make the pieces more natural looking. Just take care to make sure the ends remain uniform. The first saw cuts are made straight, the second pass the cut is made at an angle and irregularly.

All the basic roadbeds done.

A Dremel rotary tool with a rough grinding tip followed by sandpaper smoothed out the sides again to make it look natural.

While not essential I went an extra step and used magnets on each end of a section so that they would stay together better. If you do this pay close attention to the polarization on your magnets.

I should mention that in the picture above the magnets are all FLUSH MOUNTED! The picture shows how I made sure the polarity was correct by using my “master” track, then sticking the next track pieces magnets to that “masters” magnets, applying a small amount of super glue and using the “master” track to push the other tracks magnets in to place. This assures a flush mount with no gap. By then sliding the track pieces sideways to separate them instead of just pulling them apart the glue can dry without bonding the track pieces together. When finished the magnets on both pieces are flush to the ends of the track.

All the PVC was primed using a good automotive primer. I use fast drying Krylon black primer.

Cheap brown poster paint did the trick for the earth color berm.

The tracks received the same treatment, Krylon primer, then brown poster on the tracks as well.

The next step is to mount the tracks to the roadbed. Take your time and get the track EXACTLY centered so no matter what combination you do they line up! Do one track as the master and then you will line every other track to match that one.

Once I had the “master track” set and pinned in place I glued the track down with Super Glue (not cheap stuff hobby quality) then carefully painted white glue in between the tracks and sprinkled rock “ballast” in and around.

When done right all your tracks should line up no matter the piece or order the are laid out in. The track on the left has only the black primer coat and a thin coat of cheap brown to give the wood, iron and rust effect. The track on the right has been finish painted. Wood, bare steel, and rust highlights make it look real!

Green flocking, the same shades that I have done my game mats with is added to help blend in the roadbed. Bushes, brambles and tufts were the used to break up the sameness and again make it all look more natural and realistic.

The finished product! I was pleasantly surprised at how good they came out and how well they work in games.

Next project is to do just a bit more track, 1/2 sections and end sections with bumper stops. I also want to do a few bombed out and destroyed sections. Then onto repainting the train engines and rolling stock to make it look more WWII period European. If you enjoyed the article please leave a comment!

 

An Ax at 1-1 scale

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OK, about time I posted something up here, not that I haven’t been busy but I’ve just not had anytime to post stuff! Well I still don’t have much time but even a small post will make me feel better…

My project for part of November and most of December was prepping for the Holidays and working 6 days a week which doesn’t leave you much time to paint, build, or play! Now I added to that work load the decision to make my daughters Christmas gift, well one of them. My daughter is a avid camper and hiker, while growing up with us, and now many times with her friends. Several times over the last couple of years she has borrowed my camping ax to use and hinted that she could sure use one of her own.

The condition my $5 ax came to me in!

While up in Washington camping last year my wife and I stopped at a little church bazaar and I picked up an old, rusty, beat-up Estwing camping ax for $5 and thought I would try and restore it for her. Little did I know what a project it would become!

Estwings come with a ring type compressed leather handle and it was completely rotted. cutting it off reveals the steel “tang” The new handle was cut to shape, split, and routed out to mate to this tang using two part epoxy.

I like to push the envelope sometimes and this project was no exception, I got into acid etching using vinegar, lemon, and a battery charger, engraving with Dremel tools, gun bluing, as well as expanding my woodworking skills by custom making the handle out of a chunk of south American “Ipe” wood. This wood is dense and super hard, 3 times as hard as oak! So dense that it doesn’t float in water it sinks!

I’m pretty proud of the handle its shape came out great and is a joy to hold. I also added about a 1 ½ “ to the normal length so as to add a bit more leverage and force in the swing.

My daughter loved it, ran out Christmas morning went to take pictures on the wood pile, and post to twitter, kids!

Into the steel of the ax I etched and ground images of trees, mountains, lakes, and activities we loved to do when camping.

Now she says “Dad I need a second ax to go camping with so I keep this one nice!” oh well I guess I’ll start checking swap meets for another bargain ax….