February 2026 Recap

18/03/202616/03/2026 by crudboy

Its a new year and the Monday Knights are trying new games. We’ve picked up the second edition of Barons’ War. A few of us are feeling our way through, getting familiar with this medieval rule set, and as a result there was at least one game each week during February, Another game that the … Read more

December 2025 Recap

12/02/202613/01/2026 by crudboy

December was a short month for the Monday Knights as we only met for three sessions due to the Christmas holiday break. The main event for the month was the Christmas party which involved everyone playing Space Gits. We had 12 players, so we split up across three games. After each game everyone was ranked … Read more

November 2025 Recap

30/12/202517/12/2025 by crudboy

The Monday Knights didn’t meet during the first week of November due to the Melbourne Cup public holiday, but on the second week we held our annual MK Cup DBA Mini Tournament. With ten participants, our 3 game tournament was open to any army from any time period and as a result there was a … Read more

October 2025 Recap

26/11/202524/11/2025 by crudboy

During October we started our Battletech campaign, based on the Hinterlands campaign book recently released by Catalyst Games Lab. The campaign began at Scale 1, meaning that starting player forces have a 3,000 BV limit to choose two Mechs, and well as two free pilot upgrades. Our campaign organiser created a number of contracts that … Read more

September 2025 Recap

04/11/202516/10/2025 by crudboy

There was a lot of OPR: Grimdark played at the Monday Knights during September. We’ve picked this game up recently, with many people being new to the game, led by a few with more experience. It has given some of the older gamers a great opportunity to dust off their old Warhammer 40K collections, put … Read more

July/August 2025 Recap

10/09/202503/09/2025 by crudboy

July saw the exciting conclusion to our three month Necromunda campaign. Every gang gathered for a final, all-in, free-for-all battle! Nine players engaged across a 6×4 foot underhive battlefield in a scenario devised by our arbitrator. Each player drew random objective cards from several decks based on their factional alignment. Objectives were varied, and could … Read more

June 2025 Recap

13/08/202515/07/2025 by crudboy

As winter sets in and the days get colder, wetter, and shorter, plenty of games and gaming stories were shared every Monday night at the Auburn Bowls club. The third and final phase of our 2025 Necromunda campaign got underway, leading lots of loot, injuries, and laughs. Due to the high injection of funds during … Read more

Monthly Conquest night at the Monday Knights.

20/06/2025 by floppy

Here are the Monday Knights we play loads of different games, with that in mind we are trying to make at least one night where we make sure that we have some conquest games. So here we announce the start of our monthly conquest nights are the Monday knights We are going to kick off … Read more

Regis Victoria Report

11/06/2025 by floppy

The first Conquest tournament, Regis Victoria, attracted six participants due to a last-minute illness. With support primarily from Zepnix Games, the event emphasized enjoyment over strict painting requirements. ShadowMK emerged victorious with a 3-0 record. The tournament was deemed easy to manage, with plans for future events, including demos at PAX Australia.

May 2025 Recap

10/06/202506/06/2025 by crudboy

We kicked off our 2025 Necromunda campaign in March and that continued through April and into May. The second phase of the campaign begun with a multiplayer game with the gangs of Sabotage trying to poison the supplies while the gangs of Control tried to stop them, across a 6″ x 4″ foot table. In … Read more

February 2025 Recap

25/04/2025 by crudboy

As is usual for the Monday Knights, there was a wide variety of games played this month. Alpha Strike saw lots of action once again, but with a twist. Players participated in a draft style mini tournament, where each player brought four battlemechs to put into a draft pool and each player took turns to … Read more

Regis Victoria: Conquest, The Last Argument of Kings Tournament

11/03/202511/03/2025 by floppy

The Monday Knights is proud to host it’s first ever Conquest, The Last Argument of Kings Tournament. On the Kings birthday long weekend the Mondays Knights will host this tournament on the Saturday 7th of June. Conquest Last Argument of Kings World Community TournamentRounds: 3Points: 2000Painting Requirement: No, we do not require fully painted armies, … Read more

January 2025 Recap

10/03/202510/02/2025 by crudboy

This January, as with most January’s at the Monday Knights, was filled with practice for some of the games that were part of CanCon 2025. CanCon is a popular gaming convention for the Monday Knights, with many of us taking the 7 hours drive from Melbourne To Canberra for a long weekend filled with wargaming, … Read more

November 2024 Recap

03/12/2024 by crudboy

Towards the end of any year a lot of our members start to focus on the games that they intent on playing at the CanCon gaming convention in Canberra on the Australia Day long weekend in January. As a result, November saw a less diversified list of games being played. We kicked off November with … Read more

Stop printing miniatures with your 3D printer

03/12/202420/10/2024 by jbarton11

By now pretty much every one has heard of 3D printing, and because you’re probably involved in this hobby even own your own or have used 3D printed models. So you probably don’t need me to tell you how they are so good at producing tiny little figures for us to play with. But I … Read more

Tournament Recap: Knights Of The Sphere

15/09/2024 by Aether Null

The “Knights of the Sphere” Alpha Strike tournament was played out on Saturday the 14th; a dozen players attended from multiple clubs to play Battletech: Alpha Strike and compete for their chosen great house! The day was a great success, with the player pool filled with our very own Monday Knights, several members from NWA, … Read more

August 2024 Recap

03/12/202408/09/2024 by crudboy

The month of August was witness to a great variety of games played at the club, including the conclusion of the current Necromunda campaign, and the beginning a slow-grow Conquest league. With the final games of the planned Necromunda campaign played out earlier in the month, all five players came together again for a final … Read more

5 Easy Steps for Ice Bases for Miniatures, this is how?

28/08/2024 by floppy

It has been a while since we did a blog post about anything other than what has been happening or upcoming events. I thought that I would share my Ice bases I made for my Nords from Para-bellum games. I am expanding that army now in our very own slow grow event I thought I … Read more

Knights of the Sphere – Alpha Strike Tournament

21/08/2024 by Aether Null

We are running an Alpha Strike Tournament at 400PVPlayers will be backing one of the great houses to aid in claiming the title of first lord, or just get paid well while doing it. Event Door Entry: $20When: 14th of SeptemberTime: 9am-5pm (Schedule in players pack)Where: Auburn Bowls Club (2B Munro St, Hawthorn East VIC … Read more

July 2024 Recap

21/08/202407/08/2024 by crudboy

As usual there was a large variety of games played the the Monday Knights during July. The highlight was our Battletech tournament. Ten competitors gathered on Saturday 22nd of July for the Monday Knights annual Battletech Auction Tournament. Each participant was given 100,000,000 C-Bills to bid on a mix of 4th Succession Wars era Mechs. … Read more

June 2024 Recap

09/07/2024 by crudboy

Our Necromunda: Underhive and Frostgrave campaigns continued in June, along with many other games being played. The Necromunda Dominion campaign kicked into high gear with the Take Over phase. During this phase of the campaign, players are attempting to take control of other players’ territories which were gained in the Occupation phase. Surprisingly, not many … Read more

May 2024 Recap

11/06/202410/06/2024 by crudboy

The month of May saw the beginnings of two campaigns within the club for Necromunda: Underhive and Frostgrave. Other Games included Battletech Alphastrike, Conquest, ADLG, Car Wars and Star Wars Legion

April 2024 Recap

03/05/202403/05/2024 by crudboy

April 2024 saw a fair amount of Legions Imperialis being played at the club. This month saw the debut of a 3000 point game. Otherwise 2000 point games were the most common as everyone builds up their armies. Other staples this month included ADLG (Art De La Guerre), Conquest: Last Argument of Kings, Kill Team, … Read more

Conquest Dweghom

01/05/202418/01/2023 by floppy

Conquest Last Argument of Kings, Dwegholm army painted for Cancon

King Leonidas of the Spartans

01/05/202417/09/2021 by jbarton11

Just one figure in this Mythic Battles Pantheon update. This time it is one of the hero figures: King Leonidas. You might recognise him as he’s gained a fair bit of notoriety as a bit of an arse-kicker. I don’t have a huge amount to say about him, so I won’t write much. The colours … Read more

5 Hoplites for Mythic Battles Pantheon

01/05/202403/09/2021 by jbarton11

A little continuation of the Mythic Battles Pantheon project. Another troop unit, but this time it’s time for some Hoplites. Now, historically the Spartans would have been called Hoplites (and also probably would have had a spear as their primary weapon) so the last post and this one are a little mixed up. However, this … Read more

3 Spartans for Mythic Battles Pantheon

01/05/202420/08/2021 by jbarton11

Mythic Battles: Pantheon (MBP) is a miniature boardgame produced by Monolith Board Games. MBP features characters from Greek Mythology in a 2-player boardgame; essentially collecting items from a board and controlling areas. Monolith are a French mob who Kickstart games with heaps of miniatures and end up with pledge totals in the millions. Not miles … Read more

Aeronautica Imperialis Tau Tiger sharks

01/05/202406/08/2021 by jbarton11

Not a long post today; a bit of a continuation of our last post. Along with the Barracudas from last week, I also painted a few of the larger Tiger Sharks. The colours are identical to the Barracudas from earlier. The larger surface area let me do a little more in terms of the camouflage, … Read more

Dwarf Blood Bowl Team

01/05/202430/07/2021 by floppy

My first project for the year and it is my Dwarf Blood Bowl Team by Games Workshop. It has been a long time between projects well over six months and this one was just hanging there for some time. Part of the problem is motivation, I have not been motivated to paint anything. But I … Read more

Aeronautica Imperialis Tau Barracudas

01/05/202422/07/2021 by jbarton11

Our group has been playing a bit of Aeronautica Imperialis of late as we slowly start to come back to gaming. In previous posts we’ve featured some Ork and Imperial planes. This time it’s the turn of the Tau. An advanced race of Aliens with sleek looking aircraft that apparently highly value pragmatism and effectiveness. … Read more

Flames of War US Armour Tank Crews

01/05/202409/07/2021 by jbarton11

Another batch of vehicles for this commission. I spoke last post about the two different crews (or at least crew appearances) that were included. Today it is the turn of the ones wearing tanker uniforms. First up we have some M10 Wolverines; these are open top tank destroyers. So you actually get a look at … Read more

Making Tropical Scatter Terrain

01/05/202425/06/2021 by crudboy

A long term goal of mine is to build a tropical island game board for my 28mm games of Star War Legion (Scarif) and Legends of the High Seas. The most obvious part of the landscape of any tropical paradise is palm trees and other lush ferns and bushes. So I set about creating some … Read more

Making Fantasy City Board Tiles

01/05/202418/06/2021 by crudboy

My main motivation for this project was to make a modular 3 foot by 3 foot board for Frostgrave. I’ve played plenty of Frostgrave in the past but I have never had the feeling of fighting in the streets of a fantasy city with the usual gaming mats I use. So this project was aimed … Read more

Flames of War US Armour – Infantry Crews

01/05/202414/05/2021 by jbarton11

The next part of the US Army tank project is done. This chunk contains the vehicles crewed by US Army infantry uniformed figures. I’m not enough an expert to know whether there was any difference in the organisation of said vehicles, but in Battlefront‘s kits they included crews come differently uniformed. First up are the … Read more

Flames of War US Armour – Tanks Alone

01/05/202407/05/2021 by jbarton11

Another fairly meaty project I’ve taken on. This one is 20 WW2 American armoured vehicles. A mix of Half-tracks, tanks (mostly Shermanns) and self-propelled guns. They’re all by Battlefront from their big starter box. I’ve finished most of the tanks, but not the crews. And with a number of open top vehicles in the mix … Read more

Custom Gaslands Cars

01/05/202430/04/2021 by jbarton11

Gaslands is Osprey Wargames‘s foray into post apocalyptic vehicle combat. Think Car Wars and Mad Max. We’ve covered it a few other times in the blog and we do play games every couple of weeks or so. The game gives grown men an opportunity to play with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars again. Scaled at … Read more

Aeronautica Imperialis Fighta Bombas

01/05/202423/04/2021 by jbarton11

We’re back, our short break was not so short and sort of became a little bit of a recharge session for all of us. The last year’s been crazy for everyone and we’re all no exception. But we’re back and ready for another year of tiny little things! First up for me is a bit … Read more

2020 the year we had to have!

01/05/202415/01/2021 by floppy

2020 was the year that we had to have, if it could go wrong it did. but we survived, sanity checks passed, and here is 2021…. So it is time to review my year, in 2020 I had time to paint stuff, however 2020 also threw other issues at us. This is everything I got … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon Cluster Project – Part 2

01/05/202408/01/2021 by floppy

Clan Jade Falcon Cluster Project – Part 2 the wrap. Here we are at the end of the project, and what a project it was. I am a little over mechs, but I know there is more coming, so I have stop being precious and suck it up. With the whole cluster done here, … Read more

4 Clan Blood Scorpion mechs

01/05/202401/01/2021 by jbarton11

Mechs, Mechs and more Mechs. We’ve had quite a bit of Battletech content lately. But with the Kickstarter out, Tex doing his thing and a couple of decent computer games it is actually a really good time to be a Battletech fan. I did the Kickstarter and ended up with around 40 Inner Sphere and Clan mechs arriving at my door a few weeks back. And I though I should paint a few of them. So I started with some of the Clan, and I desire to do something bright, crazy looking and not that common. Yeah, I should have done some Fire Mandrill shouldn’t I, but I did’t and instead I did some Clan Blood Spirit.

Clan Jade Falcon – Delta Supernova Eye 2

01/05/202426/12/2020 by floppy

The last Star of mechs for the Clan Jade Falcon – Delta Supernova Eye 2 With this star I paint the final mech I have not painted before, this means that I have one of every 3050 mech in this Cluster. Mechs of the Delta Supernova Eye 2 Fenris uller puma Koshi Dasher Fenris Uller … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Delta Supernova Eye

01/05/202421/12/2020 by floppy

The final push to get the my Clan Jade Falcon Cluster complete, starting here with the Final Supernova Delta. This is a recon unit really, with light and fast mechs. Mechs of Delta Supernova Eye Fenris x2 Uller Dasher x 2 Dasher 2 Dasher 2 Fenris 1 Fenris 2 Uller

Clan Jade Falcon – Delta Supernova Strider 1 and Strider 2

01/05/202418/12/2020 by floppy

Delta Supernova Strider 1 and 2, here we are at the end of the paint project. I am glad to be done, with new stuff incoming (at the time of writing at least) I am going to end up with a new project soon, I am not sure I have enough foam to hold it … Read more

Soviet BA-64B

01/05/202415/12/2020 by jbarton11

Another random project in what is the year of random projects. This time it’s a Soviet WW2 armoured car, I’m sure anyone following along had that in their top couple of guesses. This model is actually a scale plastic kit by Tamiya, as part of their 1:48 range of armoured vehicle kits. It’s a great … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Charlie Supernova Strider 1 and Strider 2

01/05/202411/12/2020 by floppy

On to the good stuff, the Elementals. The two striders in Charlie Supernova are both from a 3rd party manufacture, they are much bigger than the old metal elementals, to the point you can only fit 3 on a base. they also make some headhunters which adds nicely to the units. I really like the … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Charlie Supernova Beak 2

01/05/202408/12/2020 by floppy

Charlie Supernova Beak 2, is a mix of mainly medium mechs with a heavy thrown in. The Blackhawk is also a 1st gen plastic mech. It is a little lumpy but looks ok. The Mechs of Charlie Supernova Beak 2 Dasher Prime Config Black Hawk Prime config Loki Prime Config Puma Config B Ryoken Config … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Bravo Trinary Beak

01/05/202405/12/2020 by floppy

The Beak for my Clan Jade Falcon – Bravo Trinary, is a nasty little piece of work. The Mad Cat has 4 Streak SRM6’s two to the front and Two to the rear, as well as 2 ER PPC’s. I had to custom build parts of this mech and I think that is my fav … Read more

Industrial Area, in 2mm

01/05/202430/11/2020 by jbarton11

This is one of those side projects I’ve had going on for a long, long while. One of the games we play from time to time is Hind Commander: a modern era 3mm wargame focusing on helicopter operations. While another game I’d like to play is Modern Spearhead, again in 3mm. One thing that both … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Bravo Trinary Eye

01/05/202427/11/2020 by floppy

The third and final part of the Bravo Trinary, and this time is the Eye. The eye’s being a mix of light/medium mechs makes is very flexible. This time we have two mechs I have yet to paint and display the Dragonfly (Viper) this mech’s cockpit reminds me so much of a DC 3 ww2 … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Charlie Super Nova Beak

01/05/202423/11/2020 by floppy

My Clan Jade Falcon – Charlie Super Nova Beak Star finally complete. with this project I can see the end of the road. I have been working pretty hard to get it all done while under lockdown, and while I write this, we have been given release to get our lives back.. so my painting … Read more

4 Viking Bezerkers

01/05/202420/11/2020 by jbarton11

Bezerkers are meant to be crazy and nothing says crazy like a half (or fully naked) north European with that look in their eye. Give them something sharp and point them in the general direction of shorter people, and well … it’s not really a surprise that they hit England like a Semi-Trailer and were … Read more

Painting Factory Seconds Gaslands Gates

01/05/202416/11/2020 by General POTUS

Unfortunately there is still no opportunity to do any physical wargaming with Melbourne still in Coronavirus lockdown. I have played a couple of games of Battletech using Tabletop Simulator. While satisfying and a good chance to catch up with my gaming mates, I do miss rolling dice & moving miniatures. In between games & waiting … Read more

We’re BACK! Monday Knights first Club meet after Coronavirus Lockdown

01/05/202413/11/2020 by General POTUS

First night back at Monday Knights after over 100 days of Coronavirus lockdown. I got to roll some dice playing for the first time in a lot of months. Congrats to Big Nige for his win & the great Team Yankee. (Damn those Soviet Hinds!) The game was a quick 85pts Soviet vs USA Team … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Bravo Trinary Talon

01/05/202409/11/2020 by floppy

Having finally completed the Alpha Trinary, I got moving on My Clan Jade Falcon – Bravo Trinary Talon Star. I have a deadline and that sound is looming so I had to get a move along, I would like to finish 1 project this year. This is my chance, however the year is closing fast. … Read more

First World COVID Problem – No Paint Stripper

01/05/202406/11/2020 by General POTUS

Here is another one that falls under the “First World COVID Problems” banner. I have tinkering with the idea of updating my 1990’s 2nd Edition lead Skaven Bloodbowl team to the current Plastic & Fine Cast resin versions. To maintain some potential interchangeability, I thought that I would paint the new Skaven miniatures in the … Read more

Mail Call – Gaslands Factory Seconds

01/05/202402/11/2020 by General POTUS

Very happy with today’s mail call After painting up the Gas Lands wrecks I thought I would grab some proper Gas Lands gates & dice. Found some “factory seconds” on Etsy and thought I would give them a go https://www.etsy.com/listing/624738520/ … aslands-ho https://www.etsy.com/listing/768344129/ … -skid-dice While I was on the web site & already paying … Read more

Four Dakkajets

01/05/202430/10/2020 by jbarton11

We don’t usually do much for Orktober (we’re not massive fantasy or GW players), but with not much gaming I figured I may as well try and get at least one random project with some Orks in this month. And I’m happy to say that I’ve just scraped in. These are some DakkaJets for Aeronautica … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Alpha Trinary Beak

01/05/202426/10/2020 by floppy

The final post of my Clan Jade Falcon – Alpha Trinary Beak, or the last part of the Alpha Trinary really. The Beak is meant to be the weapon that does all the fighting for Jade falcon. These Mechs can take on most things, the Vulture has a pair of LRM 20’s, Large Pulse and … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Alpha Trinary Talon 2

01/05/202423/10/2020 by floppy

We are back with more Clan Jade Falcon. Here is Alpha Trinary – Talon 2 it is almost as big and Talon 1. However this has only two assault mechs, with three heavies that all hit pretty hard themselves. The Loki has a Pair of ER PPC’s and a Targeting Computer, making it a nasty … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon – Alpha Trinary Talon 1

01/05/202419/10/2020 by floppy

I am back with progress on my Clan Jade Falcon, this time with the first Star of the Alpha Trinary, better known as Talon 1. This star is an assault star. Clan Jade Falcon name their stars after the primary purpose based on weight. A bit of back ground on the types of stars used … Read more

Painting Random Terrain Stuff

01/05/202416/10/2020 by General POTUS

I had just finished writing up a couple MK blog posts about painting PSC StuGs and my last couple Vanguard Forces of the Abyss war-band figures when I had this email exchange with Flop. I had great visions of powering through another couple of painting projects to either add units to existing armies or just … Read more

Six Incursion APEs

01/05/202412/10/2020 by jbarton11

APE stands for Armoured Personal Exoskeleton; which is the name for the USA’s battle armour in Incursion. Incursion is a Wierd World War 2 game, set it an imaginary universe where WW2 didn’t end and instead things got wierd. There are a number of such settings, both in pop culture and miniature gaming. For example … Read more

Clan Jade Falcon Cluster Project – Part 1

01/05/202409/10/2020 by floppy

My Clan Jade Falcon Cluster Project is my biggest Battletech undertaking. Lets start with a how the clans are arranged. Rank Unit Consists of Warrior N/A N/A Squad Commander Squad 5 Warriors Point Commander Point 1 ‘Mech, 2 Aerospace Fighters, 2 Combat Vehicles, 5 Elementals, or 5 squads. Star Commander Star 5 Points Nova[55] … Read more

15mm Medieval Mounted Troops Part 2

01/05/202405/10/2020 by floppy

Finally after all these years I have put paint to the 15mm Medieval Mounted troops. This time I have two light horse with bows, two Cavalry with fire arms, 4 heavy Knights and 4 not so heavy knights. Light Horse with Bow’s The Light horse with bow are a very new purchase, I need some … Read more

Templar Army wrapup

01/05/202402/10/2020 by jbarton11

This is just a short little post, mainly of some pictures to show the Templar and Crusader army in its full glory. Let’s start with some numbers: 248 miniatures: 51 Cavalry and 197 infantry 70 bases 47 ADLG units & 3 command tokens 1 camp Over 150 hours preparation, painting & basing. To put this … Read more

Abyss Warband finished – for now…

01/05/202428/09/2020 by General POTUS

Short post for tonight. Gamers all know this feeling – the feeling of satisfaction of painting that last miniature to complete a project. This week end – painted my last three figures to complete my Vanguard – Forces of the Abyss warband. Well – the last “unpainted” miniatures have been painted at any rate Back … Read more

Clearing off the painting table…

01/05/202425/09/2020 by General POTUS

*Originally posted in the Monday Knights Forum, 18 Jan 2020* Yep – happens to us all, make a good start on a new army project, smash out enough painted miniatures to be passable on the table, then distraction and loss of momentum kick in. The Blood-Masques and Warlock miniatures have been sitting on my painting … Read more

Proxy Imp Swarm – Part 2

01/05/202421/09/2020 by General POTUS

It is tough putting together Imp swarms for Vanguard for the Forces of the Abyss warband. Unfortunately the Mantic games Forces of the Abyss sprues only have one Imp figure per sprue and each swarm base needs four or five figures per base. My first attempt at proxy miniatures was using resin grots from (now … Read more

Templar Knights

01/05/202418/09/2020 by jbarton11

It’s time for the big show. French failed aristocracy pumped up on faith and the desire to kill heathens (or poor people). Templar Knights By now there’s not much more I can say, there aren’t any original colours on here. The miniatures are again Legio Heroica, but they’re not the Templars from that range. Instead … Read more

Saga Order of St John – Knights

01/05/202414/09/2020 by floppy

I have pulled the trigger and finished off my Saga Order of St John – Knights, with two units of Hearthguard (Knights) and command. As I write this I realise I am basing this whole force all wrong. I know I built this as a saga force, which with out thinking I used round bases … Read more

Flames of War StuGs – My first PSC Experience

01/05/202411/09/2020 by General POTUS

I have gotta admit – this has been a VERY long term project. Like all others, it started with some enthusiasm, but after some early progress, interest waned and the whole tray of StuGs sat on the shelf gathering dust. Assembly and painting began back in April 2013 (Yes – over 7 years ago), but … Read more

Innersphere Mechs Part 2

01/05/202407/09/2020 by floppy

Continuing on from my Part 1 I have the follow up all completed and ready to go. With Battletech still waiting on the Battletech Kickstarter, I should complete the rest of the IS mechs. we have here: Jenner Mercuray Panther Trenchbuchet Centurion quickdraw Enforcer this gives me 20 Mechs in this scheme. and overall some … Read more

Homemade Foam Miniature Storage

01/05/202404/09/2020 by crudboy

I recently dusted off my big old box of BattleTech miniatures and opened it to find an assortment of miniatures I had collected over the years, some painted, some partially assembled, but most of them still in their original blister packs. If I was going to assemble, paint, and take these miniatures out to play, … Read more

Making Graves

01/05/202431/08/2020 by crudboy

Who doesn’t like a graveyard setting in their favourite fantasy skirmish game?! I certainly do, so I went about making a few for my current favourite games of Frostgrave and Kings of War: Vanguard. My first step was to find some plastic kit grave stones, since it takes more skill than I have to sculpt … Read more

That Battletech project I have been putting off

01/05/202428/08/2020 by General POTUS

When I first got into Battletech, I really struggled with a paint scheme to do the miniatures justice. I tried some camouflage schemes and some of the complex traditional Inner Sphere liveries as well. Camouflage seemed a little pointless with giant nuclear robots crashing through the forest in the universe of the third millennium trying to … Read more

Battletech Clan Ghost Bear Decals

01/05/202424/08/2020 by General POTUS

I am pretty sure that my eye sight was a lot better and my hands were a lot steadier when I painted my first batch of Battletech Clan mechs about twenty years ago. I have always enjoyed putting 3025 era Battlemechs on the table & most of my effort had gone into painting Inner Sphere, … Read more

Templar Infantry

01/05/202421/08/2020 by jbarton11

Finally some Temmplars. I think I’ve done quite well. More than 5 posts into a Templar project and not a single white tunic or red cross on anything. But that’s all going to change over the next few posts as I finish off this project with wall to wall, hard core Templars. A sea of … Read more

Innersphere Mechs Part 1

01/05/202417/08/2020 by floppy

With Battletech being still in favor, I had a look at how many Mechs I had. It turns out I have a lot of Mechs, more Clan then Innersphere I thought. That may not be the case, so here in my Innersphere Part 1 I am going to go through the first half of all … Read more

Crusader Turcopoles

01/05/202414/08/2020 by jbarton11

Another feature of Crusader armies were the Turcopoles. The Crusaders had learnt the effectiveness of the mounted bow from the Saracens and so had started to include them in their own armies. Sourced from the Eastern Christian kingdoms, and I’m sure other relevantly skilled groups, they were still Christian by equipped and dressed more like … Read more

CORONA VII Wrap Up – Play by Mail Battletech

01/05/202412/08/2020 by General POTUS

Melbourne is into week 2 of stage 4 Coronavirus lock down. This has followed on from two separate stage 3 lockdowns which has prevented the Monday Knights from holding club meetings since June. Four Monday Knights – Lord T, Baron, Snowflake and JB11 – piloted Clint, Wolfhound, Vulcan and Javelin light Battlemechs in a “play … Read more

Crusader mounted knights

01/05/202410/08/2020 by jbarton11

I’ve finally added some Knights to the Crusader army. With over 130 troops painted it’s good to finally have something that we all associate strongly with the era. I’m not sure there’s anything more iconic to the Feudal/Medieval period than the Knight holding a lance atop a charging horse. Again, these miniatures are Legio Heroica. … Read more

Battletech Unseen Mechs

01/05/202403/08/2020 by floppy

We have an upcoming game of Battletech, Lance V Lance (4 on 4) at 5000 BV 2.0, from the Master Unit lists. I decided that I should use some Classic Battletech Unseen Mechs. Why are they unseen, well that stems from some of the mechs look remarkably like those from Macros, Robotech, Crusher Joe … Read more

Making a Mausoleum

01/05/202431/07/2020 by crudboy

Frostgrave‘s first scenario is called The Mausoleum, and it requires, you guessed it, a Mausoleum as the central terrain piece. As I am totally into Frostgrave and Kings of War: Vanguard at the moment, and the fact that cemeteries make great backgrounds with fantasy skirmish games, I needed no other motivation to get stuck into … Read more

CORONA VII – Play by Mail Battletech

01/05/202429/07/2020 by General POTUS

Unfortunately Melbourne (Australia) is still in Coronavirus lock-down which means that there will be no club meetings for the foreseeable future. Faced with the prospect of not rolling any dice for some time, I have offered to umpire a “Play by Mail” Battletech game with slightly modified rules to allow for a multi-player game with … Read more

Making Sacred Stones

01/05/202427/07/2020 by crudboy

A while back I had the need for some sacred stones for both Frostgrave and Kings of War: Vanguard. I decided to make two, a rune engraved stone block, and a more elegant obsidian monolith. As with most of my projects I started with one of my favourite materials, XPS foam. For the stone block, … Read more

15mm Medieval Mounted Troops Part 1

01/05/202420/07/2020 by floppy

I have finally started painting parts of the 15mm Medieval troops I have had for a very long time. So I have broken down this project to different troops. I have started with my 15mm Medieval Mounted troops as a multipart post. Firstly because there are a lot of horses secondly because I am finding … Read more

Large Crusader spear block (56 figures)

01/05/202413/07/2020 by jbarton11

Crusader armies needs large block of spear men. After all, the humble spear was the primary infantry weapon for almost every organised army until the musket got good (pikes are just long spears). If you were to go and ressurrect someone who died in battle, chances are it was a ‘he’ used a spear. Hell … Read more

Battletech Blue Fist Mercanary’s

01/05/202406/07/2020 by floppy

After painting all the red and mostly red on the SAGA force, I thought it time to sit down and start doing some Battletech. In a new Scheme for a new Merc force. I have alot in candy apple red, that I did years ago, though I do need to finish the rest of the … Read more

Crusader bow and crossbow

01/05/202429/06/2020 by jbarton11

Part of any good Crusader army are some missile troops. For this army there is a fair bit with decent numbers of both crossbow and bow infantry. As with the rest of this army, it is all Legio Heroica miniatures from their Feudal and Crusader ranges. While these two ranges are nominally for different portions … Read more

Homemade paint storage

01/05/202427/06/2020 by jbarton11

Sometimes I feel like, as well as miniatures, I collect small pots of paints. I’d reached the capacity of my existing storage (some acryllic racks by Back 2 Base-ix, an Australian manufacturer). Now, these are good little products that go together nicely with some nice ideas. However, they’re not cheap, will take a few weeks … Read more

Levy pike & farm tools – Huge new 250 figure project

01/05/202422/06/2020 by jbarton11

This is the first post of a new army project I’m in the middle of. This army is another Crusader army, but this time it is the Templars. However, there isn’t going to be any Templars for a little while as I’m starting with the generic crusader component of this project and even then at the bottom, levy heavy end. This is a big project, probably my biggest yet. There are about 200 foot troops and 50 mounted, as well as a pretty cool looking gate tower (serving as camp).

Saga Order of St John Spearmen

01/05/202415/06/2020 by floppy

My SAGA Order of St John warband continues to grow with the some Fresh faces as Spearmen. These are still the Fireforged Games troops, that I also used on the Crossbowmen. I have been block painting the my Order of St John to speed up the production of units, but also so I don’t burn … Read more

AK Interactive’s Matt Varnish

01/05/202408/06/2020 by floppy

AK Interactive have released their 3rd Generation Acrylics, clearly they have been doing the research and work on making new paint formula’s. Until now I have been using the Army Painter Matt or the Testors Dull coat, however the Dull coat in the last application just was not matt and it also dulled down some … Read more

Saga Order of St John Crossbowmen

01/05/202401/06/2020 by floppy

My 2nd point for my SAGA warband is Order of St John Crossbowmen. I have used Fireforge Templar Infantry I have used 8 of the box as Crossbowmen. With 24 in the box I have two more units of 8 to paint up, one with Spears and one with hand weapons. That will give me … Read more

The Warpstone Snorters

01/05/202430/05/2020 by floppy

The Warpstone Snorters Bloodbowl Team

Saga Order of St John Mounted Warriors

01/05/202425/05/2020 by floppy

I have finally painted my Order of St John Mounted Warriors. I have only had these since 2015, these are the Fireforged Games Mounted Sergeants. Bases are old Galeforce 9 bases, and they’re going to be part of a Saga crusader warband. The real story here is not the Men-At-Arms; it is the horses. I … Read more

Battletech: 2nd Line Clan Mechs

01/05/202418/05/2020 by floppy

Late last week we had some of the Covid-19 restrictions eased, Earlier in the week somebody suggested that the maximum number of people possible gather for a game of Battletech. Having not thrown a dice in anger in some 50+ days we jumped at it. On the Friday I was working out what mechs to … Read more

Painting the Ogre Blood Bowl Team

01/05/202408/05/2020 by floppy

I finally stopped procrastinating and got Games Workshops Ogre Bloodbowl team painted. I painted the whole team with the Scale75 paint range. Out of all 6 Ogres 2 are sort of converted as you only get a couple of poses.

Ludus Magnus

01/05/202427/04/2020 by floppy

Painting the Ludus Magnus starter set with Scale75 paints. Micon, Infelix and Marcus Furious.

British Napoleonic Infantry

01/05/202420/04/2020 by jbarton11

These have been painted for a while (since January), just waiting to be photographed. These were for an event in January (i.e. before COVID-19 stopped all such shenanigans), where we played a Blucher campaign of the 100 days. I was assigned the British/Allied Reserve Corps, which was 7 bases of British and Brunswicker infantry. This … Read more

Random 28mm Fantasy Miniatures

01/05/202410/04/2020 by jbarton11

These are quite an eclectic bunch of 28mm fantasy miniatures I recently finished painting for a commission (so I’m not sure of the manufacturer for most). A mixiture of old GW metals and more recent resins by garage and small manufacturers. Nothing particularly special, but this has been the bulk of my painting for a … Read more

Making a 28mm Fantasy Cabin

01/05/202402/03/2020 by crudboy

Buildings are possibly the most useful and versatile pieces of terrain you can have in any 28mm game. If you only have one, it could be the farmhouse in the middle of a field. If you have a few they could be the edge of a town. If you have a lot they could be … Read more

L’Art de la Guerre: The Monday Knights Get Biblical

01/05/202428/02/2020 by floppy

L’Art de la Guerre (ADLG) is an enjoyable and easily learned ancients and medieval wargame. The Monday Knights wargames club will be hosting a five round, two-day tournament. The event theme is “The Monday Knights Get Biblical“ 200-point armies should be chosen from the “Ancient” and “Classical” sections of the army lists. Allies that are from sections outside these are not permitted.

2020 – A new decade

01/05/202404/02/2020 by floppy

It is 2020 and it is a new decade. with the passing of the last decade we have done a lot in the world of gaming. Gone are days of people maintaining their own blog, doing painting in a rush to get content done. So we as a group have grown and started to share that work load. After all life is getting in the way far too often for do everything our selves.

The 2010’s as I look back them, I got much war gaming done, however towards the end last year it is easy to say I lost motivation. Life in a way had been stopping me from painting, as is evident on how many posts I made on the subject over the last year.

Mountain Gut Busters

01/05/202422/01/2020 by jbarton11

This post is from one of our members who is not a regular contributor. Big thanks to Shadow for putting this article together and taking the pictures. It has been a little quiet on the blog; Christmas is a big period down under and it’s not until after the 26th of January that things get … Read more

Clearing out the painting table

01/05/202418/01/2020 by General POTUS

Yep – happens to us all, make a good start on a new army project, smash out enough painted miniatures to be passable on the table, then distraction and loss of momentum kick in. The Blood-Masques and Warlock miniatures have been sitting on my painting table for far too long. I admit that a little … Read more

Ogre Bloodbowl Team

01/05/202406/01/2020 by floppy

Games Workshop released a new team in December, the Ogre Bloodbowl team. I just happen to have on gifted to me for Christmas. So very happy. Another one of our members has also picked up the same team and painted it up already you can find that article here. Shadow did a brilliant job on these minis. I am here to review the mini’s and put my spin on the paint Job.

Abyssal failed assassination attempt

01/05/202408/11/2019 by General POTUS

Still reeling from my defeat last week at the hands of the Trident Realms commanded by Lord T, this week I got to the Monday Knights club meeting early to smash out a quick game before my opponent Floppy had to leave. Only a short report this week, not much positive to report about the … Read more

Rescue the Princess

01/05/202404/11/2019 by General POTUS

It is fair to say I may have been a little cocky going into my third Vanguard game. Once again, I was facing the Trident Realms warband commanded by Lord T, this time the scenario was “Rescue the Princess”. The reason for my confidence? I was lucky enough to be the defender in this scenario … Read more

Vanguard Terrain

01/05/202431/10/2019 by jbarton11

One of the things that came from Mantic was a few of their terrain packs. These feature special terrain pieces that are used for most of the scenarios in the rulebook. I think this is really cleaver, aligning the random objectivy sort of things you get with the rule book is not hard to do, … Read more

Northern Alliance Dwarves and more

01/05/202428/10/2019 by jbarton11

I’ve done a few odds and ends for my Northern Alliance warband. First I finished my 5 dwarves. These are very basic, very weak grunts (decidedly un-dwarven characters). Still they’ve proved useful taking objects, sacrificing into things, finishing off downed figures, supplying an out number and adding to the size of the warband. This last … Read more

Thunderbirds

01/05/202425/10/2019 by jbarton11

A couple of us have picked up some of Games Workshop’s new dog fighting game Aeronautica Imperialis. We’ve played a handful of games and some of us are further along in our painting than others. Our early impressions are the game is pretty good. The miniatures are great: they look good, have nice detail, go … Read more

Stealing Supplies from the Nightstalkers

01/05/202422/10/2019 by General POTUS

I haven’t made any progress with painting my Vanguard Abyssal army since my first game last week. Truth be known, I haven’t had much of a chance to give Vanguard a second thought much less do any preparation for my second game. As a result, I packed the very same list & miniatures as I … Read more

First Game for the Forces of the Abyss

01/05/202418/10/2019 by General POTUS

Boiling steam and smoke announced the arrival of the furious horde of demons which set loose from the bowels of the earth on an unsuspecting village. Unprepared for an attack by loose bowel demons, the Trident Realm defenders desperately attempted to light a signal beacon to summon armed assistance to drive the invaders back to the … Read more

Making Frostgrave Arcane Circles

01/05/202415/10/2019 by crudboy

Once again, Frostgrave‘s Ulterior Motives gaves me another opportunity to make some interesting terrain. This time its Arcane Circles. In this post, I’ll show three different types I made. The first is the simplest. Its just two circular pieces of XPS foam glued together. A table hot wire cutter makes it super easy to produce … Read more

Some ranged attack & some flying attack

01/05/202408/10/2019 by General POTUS

The first game of Vanguard for my Forces of the Abyss is coming up this Monday & I still have a bit of work to do. So far, I only have a Despoiler, five Lower Abyssal grunts and a stand of proxy Imps painted up ready to go. Starting to think a little bit about … Read more

Making Pits and Craters

01/05/202401/10/2019 by crudboy

If you play Frostgrave with Ulterior Motives, you’ll need a pit. If you play Rangers of Shadow Deep you’ll need some fly holes. I play both, so I decided to make some of these important holes in the ground. For a fly hole or crater I started with a piece of 3mm PVC sheet and … Read more

Send in the grunts

01/05/202424/09/2019 by General POTUS

Time to make some in-roads into putting my Vanguard Abyssal warband & flesh out the ranks with some grunts. The Forces If the Abyss Vanguard Starter pack has a plastic sprue of Lower Abyssal “grunts”. They are a multi piece kit with plenty of weapon and head options – enough to put together five Lower … Read more

Making 28mm Trees

01/05/202419/09/2019 by crudboy

I recently began playing Rangers of Shadow Deep, a game by Joseph A. McCullough of Frostgrave fame. As with Frostgrave, Rangers of Shadow Deep is full of scenarios that provide plenty of opportunities to make interesting terrain pieces. The second scenario in the core rulebook is set in a forest with some “nest trees”. So … Read more

Proxy Imp Swarm

01/05/202407/09/2019 by General POTUS

So these minis aren’t Mantic minis. I went scratching around my bits box looking for something to do a little colour testing before I started hard core painting my Abyssal demons. They are actually a bunch of resin grots that “Lucky” from the Monday Knights gave me as a birthday present a while ago (OK … Read more

Snow Trolls

01/05/202407/09/2019 by jbarton11

As part of our Kings of War: Vanguard experience I picked the Northern Alliance. The Alliance likes the big boys and like POTUS said in our previous post that’s almost invariably where painting a faction starts. Not one to disagree with our fearless leader lest I be the subject of a barrage of abusive tweets. … Read more

Abysall Despoiler

01/05/202405/09/2019 by General POTUS

Found myself with a little time and thought that I would just slap a base coat of Flesh Tearer red onto my Abysall Despoiler – after all who doesn’t go straight to the big guy when starting to paint a new project I probably should have taken some more WIP photos as works were under … Read more

Making Frostgrave Well of Dreams and Sorrows

01/05/202404/09/2019 by crudboy

I say Frostgrave, but this is a generic 28mm pool/well/fountain for whatever tabletop game you’re currently playing. KoW: Vanguard anyone?! I started by cutting out three discs of XPS (insulation) foam on my hot wire cutter. I have a homemade circle cutting jig, which is just a piece of 3mm MDF with a pin in … Read more

Late night Motel Demons

01/05/202402/09/2019 by General POTUS

The last couple of weeks has kept me on the road & spending far too many night in 2-star motels. Getting thoroughly sick of nothing to do but watch Netflix on my mobile phone, I packed a model making travel pack & made a start on putting together my Abassyl Vanguard miniatures Made a start … Read more

Into the Abyss

01/05/202429/08/2019 by General POTUS

…the journey begins…. It has been far too long since I have had the pleasure of fantasy table top wargaming. Mantic Games were very generous in providing a number of stater & booster sets to the Monday Nights War Game club to get us started & I was crazy enough to put my hand up … Read more

Vanguard First Contact

01/05/202428/08/2019 by floppy

The First contact I had with Kings of War: Vanguard was interesting to say the least. The books and miniatures arrived, and we jumped right in. When we started playing games it was with small 100 point forces to get used to the mechanics. I learnt the hard way, didn’t use the rules correctly, had to learn … Read more

Assembling Kings of War Vanguard Basileans Warband Set

01/05/202422/08/2019 by crudboy

My club got onto Mantic’s recent club promo and I was lucky enough to score myself a Kings of War: Vanguard Basilean warband. When I got it home I greedily tore open the box and started gluing figures together. Stopping only occasionally to giggle with glee. The box contains 15 miniatures and multiple copies of their … Read more

Nightstalker: Mindscreech

01/05/202416/08/2019 by floppy

The Nightstalker Mindscreech was the first of the model I wanted to paint: It is big, and cool looking. I a;sp wanted to get back into 2 brush blending. It is not something I have done in a long time so I am very rusty. Using some Scale75 paints, GW, P3, Coat de Arms, Vallejo and … Read more

Making Gloomhaven Treasure Chests

01/05/202409/08/2019 by crudboy

Actually, the title is a lie. This isn’t a post about making treasure chests … more like buying treasure chests. Because, why fumble about with craft when you can buy great, affordable, minis from the Wizkids Deep Cuts range. In fact, between the Deep Cuts and Nolzur’s Marvellous Miniatures ranges, you can also replace most … Read more

Making Battletech Trees

01/05/202426/07/2019 by crudboy

I’ve always had a thing for Battletech, but I’ve never had a thing for flat, paper maps. So I thought I’d try to make those paper maps more interesting by adding some scenic trees. Whenever I have looked into buying 1/300 scenic trees I was never able to find anything I liked. I did eventually … Read more

Vanguard: our club, our story

01/05/202419/07/2019 by jbarton11

A few weeks back Mantic Games asked for some volunteers to put together some warbands for their Fantasy skirmish game Kings of War: Vanguard. With some free toys on offer the Monday Knights were only to happy to put our name forward, and lo and behold our little antipodean club was selected to participate. A … Read more

Making Stuff: Frostgrave Giant Worm

01/05/202415/07/2019 by crudboy

One of the things I like about Frostgrave is that it gives you so many opportunities to make stuff. When I started playing, one of the first things I made was a Giant Worm for The Worm Hunts scenario from the original rulebook. After some googling I came across The Sword and the Sprue website … Read more

Making Stuff: Gloomhaven Damage Traps

01/05/202410/07/2019 by crudboy

I recently started playing Gloomhaven, which has me hooked. As with any tabletop game I play, I thought it would be fun to build some terrain for it and help make each game a bit more visually interesting. A simple build to begin with are the damage traps. The Gloomhaven token for damage traps depicts … Read more

Games-Workshop Contrast Paint’s

01/05/202401/07/2019 by floppy

A review on the new GW contrast paints. Where they fit in the greater scheme of painting tools.

Unseen Battlemechs

01/05/202427/06/2019 by jbarton11

Trophy work in progress – One Night Battletech Madness

01/05/202426/06/2019 by General POTUS

The Monday Knights will be hosting a Battletech completion a little later on in July – the “One Night of Battletech Madness” I thought that I would have a crack at making some trophies for the event & here is the work in progress of the trophy for “First Place” I started with a plastic … Read more

Launching our new Blog.

01/05/202417/06/2019 by floppy

The plan is for those of us who have blogs that we don’t wish to maintain, is to slowly migrate them over to here. Any sort of planing here will most likely go out the window and it will be on big hit. Who is going to be writing, these are possibly the things we … Read more

Some Battletech

01/05/202420/05/2019 by jbarton11

In the lead up to our recent tournament there was a lot of ADLG played. Since the tournament we’ve been playing a few lighter games. One of which is Battletech; the arrival of the new box set lead to someone looking for a few games and we all have a few mechs to run. However … Read more

Hospitaller Commanders & Mounted Sergeants

01/05/202419/05/2019 by jbarton11

I didn’t get time to take photos of these earlier (things have been a little crazy). But they were ready for the tournament a few weeks back so that is the most important thing. These are commanders, which are essentially just tokens in ADLG so they can be on almost any sized bases. I use … Read more

Crusader Heavy Spear

01/05/202423/04/2019 by jbarton11

Some more miniatures for my Crusader army. This time they’re not Hospitallers, but rather general Heavy Spear from the period. There’s not much rhyme or reason to the shield patterns. There’s only about 6 colours (white, black, yellow, blue, green and red), but the random mising makes it look quite colourful. Particular when you compare … Read more

Hospitaller Sergeants with Crossbow

01/05/202420/04/2019 by jbarton11

Many of the colours (armour, coats, straps, skin, etc) are the same as for the Brother Knights. However, there are a couple of new bits: Crossbow: Wood – Base: Sandalwood (SC-26) Wood – Wash: Sepia Shade (VGC 73.200) Metal – Base: Gunmetal Grey (VMC 70.863) Wash: Black Wash (VGC 73.201) Quiver: Same as the Brother … Read more

Knight Hospitaller – Brother Knights

01/05/202401/04/2019 by jbarton11

This is the start of a Medieval army for Art de la Guerre. Rather than go something nice and generic that’s brightly coloured and could do any of a dozen lists I’ve gone for something different. I’m painting a Knights Hospitaller army in black: which is none of those things. However, it’s a project I … Read more

Soviet Navy Fleet

01/05/202431/03/2019 by jbarton11

I’ve been a bit slack posting, but still fairly productive in my painting. This Cruel Seas fleet is another paid job for a friend. I’ve mixed the colours up a little this time, and made them very, very dirty. I’m pretty happy with the result, I think some of the chipping could be a little … Read more

Cruel Seas Torpedoes & Val Bomber

01/05/202414/03/2019 by jbarton11

I’ve painted three sets of torpedoes for myself and a couple of commissions and bright old me decided to do them all together in a batch. Sure it was efficient, but doing the same thing 24 times tests my patience. I’ve done a couple of different colour schemes to help game play; each torpedo belongs … Read more

Saviours II

01/05/202409/03/2019 by jbarton11

This is the last batch of miniatures from here’s Neegan. They’ve been done for a while, but I haven’t taken many pictures for a little while. First up is Laura. I’ve gone with a theme of Army Surplus Raider for her: uniform green pants and shirt, green pack and desert tan boots. Skin: Base: Sandalwood … Read more

German U-Boat

01/05/202415/02/2019 by jbarton11

Just a quick post of a one off model I painted as part of the IJN commission. It’s not IJN, but rather a German U-Boat that was the bonus model. Super simple scheme, but I’m pretty happy with how it looks.

Saviours I

01/05/202407/02/2019 by jbarton11

Mantic Games‘ Here’s Neegan was one of my gaming Christmas presents. I haven’t played it yet, but the current plan is to play the scenarios at the club with a few clubmates. We’re aiming for 4-Feb, so that means I need to get painting them. The good thing is I don’t have a heap to … Read more

Japanese Coastal Boat Fleet – Part 1

01/05/202405/02/2019 by jbarton11

It really is Feboatary. I’m painting an IJN fleet for a friend and this is the progress thus far: the Sampans and the Kamikaze boats. This first post is the crazy stuff from the fleet box. Sampans: I think this will be the only sailboats I’ll be painting for Cruel Seas. I’m not sure if … Read more

German Schnellboots

01/05/202403/02/2019 by jbarton11

Cruel Seas is a new 1:300 scale Naval game created by Warlord Games. I’ve got a soft spot for Naval miniatures and on an impulse I picked up a box of the Schnellboots, because they’re just so damn pretty. I’ve since picked up a full German fleet and I’m also in the middle of painting … Read more

Balaeric Slingers

01/05/202408/01/2019 by jbarton11

These are the last miniatures I’ll be painting for my Carthaginians for a while. As a force they’re pretty much finished; I’ve got well over 200 points in LADLG terms and I don’t think there’s much more useful I can add. The last little unit for this force is 4 bases of Balearic Slingers (LI … Read more

Ligurian Javelinmen

01/05/202407/01/2019 by jbarton11

Another mercenary unit for my Carthaginian army: Ligurian Javelinmen. Nothing particularly special with these guys. As poor mountain men I didn’t want the colours to be quite as vivid as the Celts so I made them a bit of a muted hodgepodge. I also tried a different vibe to the shields, based on what Little … Read more

Kudra

01/05/202420/11/2018 by jbarton11

After quite some time away from my Malifaux miniatures I got very keen over a couple of days and started on a new crew. I’ve had Sandeep’s crew sitting round assembled for a little while and I really wanted to get started. I saw the box art for Kudra and wanted to have a shot … Read more

Ancient Greek/Carthaginian Camp

01/05/202415/11/2018 by jbarton11

The last ingredient for my Carthaginian army this weekend. I need a camp and the rules are pretty liberal on what it can be (even the base size is a ide range). I chose the smallest base possible 40mmx80mm and started filling it with stuff. I started with a Greek style tent from Baueda Wargames, … Read more

Anglo-Danish Hearthguard – Dane’s Axes

01/05/202415/11/2018 by jbarton11

Again, these have been sitting around waiting for me to base with static grass, but now they’re done and there weren’t any shields. Yeah! Most of the colours are the same as for the Anglo/Viking Warriors. However, I made the following tweaks to the common elements Chainmail, Helmet & Axe Blade: Base: Oily Steel (VMC … Read more

Anglo/Viking Warriors

01/05/202413/11/2018 by jbarton11

My Saga (Viking Age) army is Anglo-Dane and their warriors . However, there is not a lot of difference between some of the figures for the different factions so I can also use these as Anglo-Saxon or Viking (and probably others too). I haven’t given them a consistent colour scheme as it doesn’t really fit … Read more

Carthaginian Army

20/07/201910/11/2018 by jbarton11

The elephants I just posted represent the last major piece of this army! It’s been months in the making, much of it procrastination, but I’ve got a full ADLG army with a few options. You actually might notice something missing: my camp. I had finished it, but I experienced my first bout of frosting with … Read more

Elephants

20/07/201908/11/2018 by jbarton11

I’ve got a pretty simple rule for list building Ancient Armies: take the maximum number of elephants. I don’t think this method is the best, but I like elephants and if a list can taken them then it really should. The ADLG Carthaginians can take 3, so I painted 3 elephants. Body: Base: NATO grey … Read more

Carthaginian Heavy Spear

20/07/201907/11/2018 by jbarton11

Some actual Carthaginians for my Cathaginian army! These have been a bit tedious: 48 miniatures all exactly the same. I didn’t do any fancy shields as the surface has significant curvature and I’m not comfortable enough in my free-hand on such a tricky surface. To get these done quickly I mass-painted them on sticks (you … Read more

Spanish Scutarii

20/07/201925/10/2018 by jbarton11

More non-Carthaginians for my Carthagenian ADLG army. I’m keeping to mainly reds for this army, but I’ve used a slightly different red to most of the others (a slightly deeper red). That coupled with the shields helps them stand out from the others. Body: Flesh – Base: Medium Fleshtone (VMC 70.860) Flesh – Wash: Sepia … Read more

Carthaginian Command

20/07/201922/10/2018 by jbarton11

These were painted in the last couple of days with some of the other miniatures and had just been waiting on photographs. I didn’t record the colours, as they’re pretty much just bits and pieces from the other figures. But I did take lots of pictures. I’ve painted them with different coloured, matching capes to … Read more

Numidian Light Cavalry

20/07/201910/10/2018 by jbarton11

A quick update with some more 15mm Ancients miniatures. This time it’s some Numidian Light Cavalry. I’ve reused the colours from the Numidian Light Infantry (the riders) and the Iberian Cavalry (the horses). I’m planning on doing another 2 bases of these as that maxes out the Carthaginian list and I think I’d like to … Read more

Celt/Gaul Warband

20/07/201907/10/2018 by jbarton11

One of the options for a Carthaginian ADLG army is Gallic Warriors. I’ve painted quite a few of these as I think they’ll be useful for a number of forces. I think these could be run as Gauls, Celts, Britons or even Germans. Some of the colours I’ve used are below. However, I didn’t record … Read more

Another Chaos Dwarves Team

20/07/201911/09/2018 by jbarton11

If you’ve been following this blog for a little while then you’ll have seen this team before. A little while ago I painted a Chaos Dwarf team in black and green. Well someone else liked them so much they also asked me to paint their team which was the same. The customer didn’t have a … Read more

Iberian Cavalry

20/07/201918/08/2018 by jbarton11

These figures are a continuation of my Carthaginian forces. This time it is 5 and one third bases of Medium (or maybe Heavy) Iberian Cavalry. Another group of miniatures I’m very happy with. I find 15mm very time consuming, but also very rewarding when they’re done. I think they look pretty good, especially the shields … Read more

Jabba the Orcs

20/07/201916/08/2018 by jbarton11

Another Bloodbowl team completed as part of a commission. This set is from Impact Miniatures. They’ve been a bit of a battle to be honest. They’re cast from “Trollcast”, which I’d never heard before checking out the website. I’m not a fan of the material, it sort of accepts primer (they came to me with … Read more

Walkers I

20/07/201929/06/2018 by jbarton11

My first batch of 10 walkers. I’m sure I will need more, and in fact I have another 8 I will paint up before too long. I’ve made these much darker and simpler than the heroes. Simpler because there are so many, they’re not the heroes and they’re dirty and grimy any way. I didn’t … Read more

Rick, Carl & The Governor

20/07/201928/06/2018 by jbarton11

These three don’t really belong together (OK, the first two do…). However, I put them together when doing pictures so they’re staying together. First the Governor (Brian Blake), he’s the origial scary bad guy from the comics. I wanted a prepper vibe for him, so it was a couple of muted colours with a bright … Read more

Scavengers

20/07/201928/06/2018 by jbarton11

A couple of weeks back I had my first games of Mantic Games’ The Walking Dead: All Out War. I must say I quite enjoyed it. The game is set in the universe of The Walking Dead Comics (on which the TV show was based), so it’s not quite what you might recognise from TV. … Read more

Beastmen

20/07/201906/06/2018 by jbarton11

The last few miniatures from this team. Again, I wasn’t very excited by these guys. I think they’re a bit too similar to each other. Plus they look a little chubby. It’s unfortunate too, as they’re dynamic looking sculpts. Just too much similarity between the models, and it’s not like they can be assembled in … Read more

Chaos Blockers

20/07/201906/06/2018 by jbarton11

This post contains another few miniatures from the commission I recently finished and delivered to the customer. The scheme is the same as for the Chaos Dwarves. However, these miniatures are Games Workshop’s plastics. I must admit I’m not terribly in love with them. They’re a bit same-ish; I used as much variety as possible, … Read more

Bloodweiser Babe

20/07/201904/06/2018 by jbarton11

Willy seem to throw this miniature in with almost every Kickstarter. I know I’ve got one lying around somewhere. I’m not 100% happy with the face, but as it is, I’ve already put a huge amount of time into her. As such, it’s going to stay as is. I’m very happy with everything else. Skin: … Read more

Minotaur (Chaos Dwarf)

20/07/201904/06/2018 by jbarton11

The colours on this guy are just a grab bag from the other miniatures in this team. The only two original components are the red face and the black beard. I’m pretty happy with how he’s ended up, another great mini by Willy. Face: Base: Cavalry Brown (VMC 70.982) Wash: Brown Shade (VGC 73.200) Drybrush: … Read more

Bull Centaurs (Chaos Dwarf)

20/07/201928/05/2018 by jbarton11

I’m pretty happy with my progress on this team. I’m also quite happy with how they’ve come out. I think these two are the best of all so far. In particular the skin formula has come out great. Skin (Human): Base: Medium Fleshtone (VMC 70.860) Wash: Red Shade (VGC 73.206) & Sepia Shade (VGC 73.200) … Read more

Hobgoblins (Chaos Dwarf)

20/07/201927/05/2018 by jbarton11

I’ve made some more progress on the Chaos Dwarf team. This time it is the other filler unit for Chaos Dwarves: 6 Hobgoblins. The owner asked me to try and replicate the studio art colours. I never quite got the green yellow enough (my first try actually landed way too yellow, and trying again gave … Read more

28mm Middle Eastern Archers

20/07/201924/05/2018 by jbarton11

These have been sitting around for a while; I’ve got 8 of them, and only 4 are finished. I’d planned on putting up all of them in a single post, but I had just finished these when I heard that Saga version 2 was coming out and only the Dark Ages book was going to … Read more

Numidian Light Infantry

20/07/201919/05/2018 by jbarton11

Another quick post of some new miniatures. These are a handful of Numidian Light Infantry for my Carthaginian Art de la Guere army. Because of the small scale I don’t make any real attempt to blend or do much in the way of transitions. These are much quicker to paint: plenty of washes, drybrushing and … Read more

Chaos Dwarves

20/07/201915/05/2018 by jbarton11

Someone has asked me to do another commission. The request is for 27 Chaos & Chaos Dwarf players to a basic table top standard. So I’ll be going with some speed painting techniques to get these done nice and quick, but looking good. The first step is a basecoat in black and then an azimuth … Read more

Human Lineman I

20/07/201909/05/2018 by jbarton11

I’m mainly painting these miniatures to learn how to paint Non-metallic Metal (NMM). I figured I would start with the linemen and work my way forward to the positionals. The idea being that I would improve as I go, so the players I care about will look better than the players I don’t. I figure … Read more

Saga Heroes

20/07/201902/05/2018 by jbarton11

It’s been a long while since I last posted; Christmas, a surprise house move and a couple of other life events have meant I haven’t posted for quite a while. However, I have been fairly productive, so I’ll be putting up a few posts in fairly quick succession as I clear some of the backlog … Read more

Romans

20/07/201919/02/2018 by floppy

Romans, yep, Romans….

I have finally gotten paint on the Romans that I purchased back on 2007. I bought the army for Field of Glory, after looking at DBM back in the day and well.. hating the type player that played it, FoG was a real change of pace.

then I might have gone overboard….

Flesh Golems

20/07/201916/10/2017 by jbarton11

I’ve finished the last two miniatures for my Necromantic team. Very happy with how these turned out. I went back to the Werewolf flesh for these guys and I thing it works great. I also think it looks great next to the USC colours I’ve had for these guys.

Wights & Ghouls

20/07/201915/10/2017 by jbarton11

These two guys are almost entirely made of armour, so their colours are pretty much the uniform colours from the Zombies. However, there is one new part: the skeleton which I wanted to paint blue.

M1 Abrams Tanks

20/07/201930/09/2017 by jbarton11

These have taken me an age to paint, they’re quite large with quite good detail. It’s also not super exciting painting and they’ve been sitting around in various states of half finished.

AH-1F Cobras

20/07/201931/07/2017 by jbarton11

Some more work on my US Team Yankee force. I’ve painted a full flight of AH-1 Cobras. These are another great plastic model by Battlefront, one of their good ones and they were a pleasure to assemble.

Infantry in Woodland BDU

20/07/201921/07/2017 by jbarton11

I’ve not particularly enjoyed these figures. It’s a long tedious process. God knows how I would go with a second platoon, or a Russian swarm.

Zombie Linemen

20/07/201916/07/2017 by jbarton11

I painted the flesh for these gentlemen differently to the Werewolves. I went for a sickly green.

M113s, M163s and M901s

20/07/201907/05/2017 by jbarton11

After the 3 test models featured back a couple of months ago, I got going and produced another 13 AFVs in 3 different variants.

Coryphee Duet

20/07/201910/03/2017 by jbarton11

After a little break to finish off the Russian vehicle commission, I have come back to my Malifaux crews.

M113s in MERDC

20/07/201908/03/2017 by jbarton11

I think this last project is probably one of my most excessive. I’ve decided that I want to paint my US cold war force in one of the MERDC schemes.

Johanna

20/07/201905/03/2017 by jbarton11

It’s taken me an age and several attempts to paint this miniature. My main challenge was the face; I had tried the techniques I’d used to great success with Ramos, Howard and Joss.

Arcane Effigy

20/07/201925/01/2017 by jbarton11

Another product of the Cancon surge, this guy was pretty simple. He’s based for the Ramos crew, but gets a workout with Colette as well.

Performers

20/07/201924/01/2017 by jbarton11

With the main act complete, I’ve moved on to the supporting act. This time it’s two showgirls.

Cassandra

20/07/201911/01/2017 by jbarton11

Cassandra is Colette’s henchmen (second tier character in Malifaux). Previously a rival, Cassandra now works with Colette.

Colette

20/07/201908/01/2017 by jbarton11

Work on my new Malifaux crew has been awfully slow. Part of it has been my unfamiliarity with the colours. I’m not particularly comfortable painting skin, particularly on females.

1/100 Zvezda M109A2 Review

20/07/201923/12/2016 by jbarton11

Zvezda produce a number of 1/100 model kits for Modern and Cold War vehicles.

Russian Vehicle Commission V

20/07/201905/12/2016 by jbarton11

I’ve finished 8 of the 12 Hinds, the other 4 are going to sit for a little bit while I recover from painting soooo many vehicles.

Russian Vehicle Commission IV

20/07/201901/12/2016 by jbarton11

Some progress at long last. No WIP pictures this time, just vehicles. Sooooooo many vehicles. The colours and techniques are the same as the T-72s so the WIP pictures and colours wouldn’t reveal much.

Russian Vehicle Commission III

20/07/201917/11/2016 by jbarton11

The last steps to complete were some weathering. Although you could probably argue this started with applying the paint chipping in the previous step.

Russian Vehicle Commission II

20/07/201913/11/2016 by jbarton11

Some more progress on the T-72s.

Russian Vehicle Commission

20/07/201909/11/2016 by jbarton11

I’ve started a pretty epic painting commission for Team Yankee which is Battlefront’s new Cold War gone hot game.

Werewolves

20/07/201926/10/2016 by jbarton11

It’s been a very unproductive few months here at Nanotanks with illness, and then a bit of a painting funk taking over for a while.

Orc Star Player

20/07/201923/10/2016 by jbarton11

I’ve finished the last miniature for my Orcs. I think the chainsaw star players are some of the most iconic Bloodbowl miniatures.

Magnetising Scourge Cruisers

20/07/201922/10/2016 by jbarton11

It’s been really slow around here. I’ve been sick, in a bit of a painting procrastination phase and just generally being way to quiet. However, things have finally started moving again. I’ve got a couple of painted miniatures to varnish and photograph, but before that I’m going to do a quick post on some assembly and magnetisation I’ve done for Dropfleet Commander.

Mannequins

20/07/201905/08/2016 by jbarton11

I’ve been excited to paint Colette’s Showgirls for a little while, but also somewhat intimidated. Most of my painting is fairly earthy in tone. It’s mainly military camouflage which is usually pretty drab and green/brown (for obvious reasons). However, I’ve got a real chance with the Showgirls to step things out to brighter and more vibrant colours. So while the Orc State bloodbowl guys were a bit brighter, I’m now going to pretty it up a little and get a fair bit brighter.

Mechanical Doves

20/07/201929/07/2016 by jbarton11

A few simple models, and the start of my Colette crew. I haven’t finished every model I’ll use with Ramos (I haven’t even finished my core crew to be honest), but I’m keen to do some more interesting colours and the showgirls will give me plenty of chances to use some pretty bright and vibrant colours.

Before that though I wanted to just get some things painted – to whit I’ve quickly done up the three Mechanical Doves that come in Colette’s box. I didn’t go wild with these; they’re pretty cool little miniatures and I think adding to much more will just make them distracting. One thing I did do with these was to paint the base colour on with an airbrush.

First the colours for the dove themselves.

Goblins

20/07/201916/07/2016 by jbarton11

Very few original colours on these guys. The only thing I haven’t used on other figures is their flesh colours. Inspired by the success with my Troll I’ve put together another mix of colours that’s distinct from the other 3 combinations I’ve used (Orc, Black Orc and Troll). This combination is much more yellow with only a slight greenish tinge to the colours. Fortunately, my paint collection was initiated with a Vallejo Model Colour military set and so I have plenty of greens, browns, browny-greens and greeny-browns.

Alban Miniatures v Warlord Miniatures 95th Rifles

20/07/201905/06/2016 by floppy

Alban Miniatures recently went back to being a private collection again after being on the general market for some time, they made a whole range Napoleonic figures in 1/56th scale (28mm). So the only thing to do is look at the Alban Miniatures beside the Warlord Miniatures for the same unit. So I choose the 95th Rifles as the miniatures that I will look at.

Both Warlord Games and Alban Miniatures make figures for the 95th rifles, and I do enjoy the 95th rifles, it had to be done.

French Corner shop

20/07/201922/05/2016 by floppy

The French Corner Shop is by a company out of Perth, in Western Australia. Called JTC Laser-cutting and Design. It is a quite an attractive building, and being an Aussie startup I should support them.

French Corner shop 918

It is a good looking building. and will look great with some furniture inside of it as well.

Orc State Logo

20/07/201917/05/2016 by jbarton11

Not in the mood for painting or modelling this evening, but I was feeling a little creative. So I spend a couple of hours creating a logo for my Bloodbowl team. Seeing as the colours are based on Penn State; I also based my logo on Penn State. The original: Orc State: I used Libre … Read more

BA-64

20/07/201915/05/2016 by floppy

It was tough to find a suitable BA-64 for Bolt Action, but I found a 1/48 Kit in a model store, I got it and built it.

Troll

20/07/201906/05/2016 by jbarton11

Another miniature I really like from Meiko Miniatures. While not the Troll they sell with their Orc team, I prefer this troll. He does, however, look to have some issues regenerating (hopefully that doesn’t foreshadow his in-game performance). I didn’t want to paint the flesh blue as when combined with my blue uniforms it would make everything look pretty monochromatic. Instead I picked a greenish-yellow scheme that I’m pretty happy with. I might use the same colours for my goblins.

Ramos’ Crew

20/07/201905/05/2016 by jbarton11

Another class photo. This time it’s my Ramos crew thus far.

More Steam Arachnids

20/07/201902/05/2016 by jbarton11

I painted another 3 steam arachnids and that now means I’ve got 6 fully painted up. I have another 3 I will paint soon, although I think 6 should suffice for most games. Still, maybe I just go crazy one time and throw spiders out for the sheer joy of it. As I was painting these I noticed 2 of them were missing their funnels. I have no idea when or where they fell off, so I think I’ve got to deal with them never being there. Funnily enough, none of the ones I am yet to paint are missing theirs. I’ve put all 6 completed spiders together for their class photo.

Warlord Games Soviet SU-76

20/07/201901/05/2016 by floppy

I got hold of a Warlord Games, Soviet SU-76, this is pretty handy for the Soviet force for Bolt Action I am building for an upcoming tournament, as a filler army.

Warlord Games Soviet SU-76 924

Howard Langston

20/07/201930/04/2016 by jbarton11

Howard is my favourite Malifaux miniature at the moment. In the game he’s amazing; expensive and fragile, but amazing. He’s pretty easy to get in position, works really well with Ramos, can do 3 attacks in a turn and has a instant-kill trigger. I suspect most of you who have played Malifaux will have either run or met him, so don’t need me to tell you what he’s capable of.

Riverboats

20/07/201924/04/2016 by floppy

Who new a US Civil War game about the navys of the time could become a cult classic, well ok it became a Monday Knight Classic, mainly because of the hours of pleasure that we have had picking on this game, but that is Riverboats.

That said a game of Hammerin’ Iron finally happened and I was there to witness what can only be called Riverboats!.

Lighting and Photography

20/07/201917/04/2016 by floppy

While I lived in the US and started this blog, I have been slowly working on my photography skills, part of that is the lighting I use to take photo’s for this blog. I was lucky enough early on to get some pointers from Dave Talyor who at that time and most likely still does was taking photo’s for War Games Illustrated (Along with everything else he does). While at a Battle Front hosted Flames of War GT, I got to get some tips, stuff to get me going. So very handy and I have slowly been progressing in my ability’s. But I was finding that unless I go into photoshop all my images were just a little too dark, this is where the lighting comes in.

So I went shopping.

Plastcraft Game Station Review

20/07/201914/04/2016 by jbarton11

As a present the better half picked up a Plastcraft Games Train Station. This piece is part of their ColorED range and is designed for Malifaux. The kit consists of a number of PVC sheets that have had one side printed with the patterns you see on the box. There is also some texture on the printed sides that gives some nice 3D texture to what is otherwise flat sides.

Orc Starting Team

20/07/201911/04/2016 by jbarton11

With the recently completed Blitzers I’ve now finished with my starting Orc team. I’ve got a few more things to paint (a couple of Goblins, a Troll and a Star Player (w/ Chainsaw), but I’m going to take a little break from BloodBowl and paint some other stuff. I’ll end this little series with a … Read more

4 Ground Damaged Detached Building 1

20/07/201910/04/2016 by floppy

I recently got hold of the 4 Ground Damaged Detached building 1, I really like the pre-painted pieces of terrain, I am not sure why, as I hate pre-painted miniatures, but the terrain works for me. That doesn’t mean I wont repaint it at all.

Damaged Detached House 1 — Damaged Building 1

Orc Blitzers

20/07/201909/04/2016 by jbarton11

Blitzers done. The colours are exactly the same as used on the linemen I painted earlier. These and the Black Orcs are my favourites, although that could soon change when I paint my Troll.

More Armada fighters

20/07/201929/03/2016 by jbarton11

Just a quick little post with a few more pictures of my Armada fighters. The first thing I’ve done is added a wash to the X-Wings. I think this is a significant improvement.

Rubicon Models Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer Review

20/07/201927/03/2016 by floppy

Firstly a big thanks to Tyler for the series on Muskets and Tomahawks, it was a big help as I went through surgery and gives all of us a chance to read well constructed articles that don’t ramble on like mine tend too, about one of the most colourful and fun periods to game in. I do wounder if Tyler would like to do a series on Bolt Action at some point, as Tyler dips his toe in to 28mm WW2. I am back now and we are off to a running start, while recovering I had a chance to catch up on some new and old projects. So here is the first.

Rubicon Models released their Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer, well I had to have one, not only because it is a cool model, but because I really wanted to do a force for Bolt Action with Hetzers in it.

Rubicon Models Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer Review 930 — Image from Rubicon Models

As soon as I got my hands on one I had to review the kit, and here are, my Rubicon Models Jagdpanzer 38(t) Hetzer Review.

Muskets and Tomahawks In Action

20/07/201921/03/2016 by Tyler

Tyler here, writing to you one last time. You may remember from my last couple posts that your regular author, Floppy, heroically pioneered a new Field Hockey goal defence technique. It involves stopping the ball with your face. It didn’t go well, which is why I’ve been writing to you. For the last couple weeks … Read more

My Twatifaux – Day 2

20/07/201915/03/2016 by jbarton11

Where will our illustrious hero Ramos end up. Will he be recalled for the ages as a freedom fighter who fought oppression, or as a terrorist who tried to bring down the beautiful society crafted by the guild. Read on for more disorganized Malifaux experience ramblings.

Unit Types in Muskets and Tomahawks

20/07/201913/03/2016 by Tyler

Hi! This is Tyler, writing to you today because Floppy forgot to duck. I’ll be continuing my discussion of Muskets and Tomahawks with a look at the types of forces you can build, and how they look and feel on the tabletop. First, an update on Flop’s health. He’s through surgery now, and recovering well. … Read more

My Twatifaux – Day 1

20/07/201913/03/2016 by jbarton11

I’m playing in Twatifaux this weekend. It’s my first Malifaux tournament and it will end up doubling the number of Malifaux games I’ve played from 5 to 11. Before starting I’m going to note a couple of things.

Muskets, Tomahawks, Head Wounds, and a Few Acres of Snow

20/07/201906/03/2016 by Tyler

Hi everyone. My name is Tyler Jefferson, and I’ll be your guest author for the next three Sundays here on ‘What Could Possibly Go Wrong?’. Why, you ask? Because your usual author, Scott ‘Floppy’ Bartel, got his skull stoved in playing field hockey. I’m reliably informed that he managed to sustain about as serious a … Read more

Brass Arachnid

20/07/201929/02/2016 by jbarton11

There’s not a huge number of colours on this model. It’s mainly about modulating the colours. Again blue is a feature of the flame to tie it together with the other models (in particular the Electric Creation). The filters applied to the body were dilute and applied unevenly; the intent is to give some colour variation. The brown makes the pale yellow metallic richer. The brown blue wash hints at oxidized brass and adds some more depth and interest (in particular in some of the recesses).

Bolt Action Army Verdict

20/07/201928/02/2016 by floppy

My Bolt Action Army played well in the VBAL last weekend, it however could of been better, I did sink a lot of points in to two anti-tank guns that could have been better used. The season 3 dot net changes also meant that some weapons are not as effective as they once were.

IMG_20160221_155905 — Above is the best painted army of the day, The Fins have come to play.

Electrical Creation

20/07/201927/02/2016 by jbarton11

I’ve shifted from Bloodbowl to Malifaux for a little bit. I’ve got a bye in Bloodbowl so it will be a few weeks until I play again. While, in just 3 short weeks I am playing in a Malifaux tournament (Twatifaux). As a result I want to get as much painted as possible so as to give me variety in what I run. This little guy doesn’t spend long on the board to be frank. I tend to be killing him in order to create a scrap marker that then starts my Steam Arachnid engine. Still, one day I might keep him round past turn 1.

Steam Arachnid Swarm

20/07/201925/02/2016 by jbarton11

I put 3 individual Steam Arachnids up earlier, and when I was looking for colours I noticed a couple of things missing. I’ve now painted a swarm and a little trial and error cleared up the rest of the recipe.

Victorian Bolt Action League

20/07/201921/02/2016 by floppy

The Victorian Bolt Action League held by the Bolt Action Alliance crew, kicks off today with 1250 point comp at Games Lab in Melbourne, and I am there, with my DAK.

Orc Throwers

20/07/201913/02/2016 by jbarton11

Again most of the colours match with the linemen I painted earlier. One difference you might note is that the numbers are there. I finally found some numbers I was happy with, and after patiently waiting I’ve got them. I’ve gone back and added the numbers to the other finished guys, but I don’t think it’s worth pictures.

Black Orc Blockers

20/07/201902/02/2016 by jbarton11

Some more progress with my Orcs, the Black Orc Blockers are now done. Again, I’m happy with how these are turning out; I’ve got some momentum going on with these guys.

The colours are, in large, the same as the linemen. The main difference is I used a darker skin tone on the blockers. Firstly to add a little visual interest and also to help when playing (it makes it easy for me and my opponent to identify the different player types).

Post Cancon Report

20/07/201901/02/2016 by floppy

My Post Cancon Report. Cancon is over for another year, was good to get back to an Aussie con, unfortunately this year, I didn’t get any time to go around and talk to anybody, or take photo’s or really do anything fun. As it turned out Blood bowl took a lot longer than I had … Read more

Richard Sharpe my Crystal Dragon Entry

20/07/201910/01/2016 by floppy

Richard Sharpe is a fictional character by Bernard Cornwell, for the Sharpe series set within the Napoleonic Wars, all the way from India to after the wars in 1820. This series span off a TV series staring Sean Bean, named Sharpe.

I have here an Andrea Miniature in 54mm scale of Sharpe, this is my first entry in to the big model format, and I hope to do this model justice and be able to enter this into painting comps.

Orc Linemen

20/07/201928/12/2015 by jbarton11

Another new system? No, this system has been round for years…

My scheme is based on the Penn State University uniform: dark blue and white. Penn State was where I did my post graduate education and it seemed a good enough colour scheme to try on my orcs. The green of their skin offsets nicely and I felt like the challenge of white, but not too much white. For those who don’t follow US college football, this is what I’m going for:

A Year in Review

01/05/202423/12/2015 by floppy

A Year in Review, and what a year it has been, I get to look back at the year and see what we have done, and where we are going. Firstly it has been a long year, much has happened. At the start of the year we didn’t really know where we would be by June, then along came Bane of War which was fantastic, I am sad that I will miss this next year. Adepticon which I will miss next year again I am pretty sad to miss this, it is a great Con and you have to go to it. Then we moved back to Aus in May, and I traveled down to Hobart for a Flames comp, that was a load of fun.

Ramos

20/07/201922/12/2015 by jbarton11

Another Malifaux figure done. This scheme is more like the box art, but I wanted to make the coat a little more of a sea blue colour to it. I’m going with a blue theme for this crew. It’s the Arcanist colour and I think it suits Ramos. I’ve used the same colour on the baby arachnid he’s holding that I used on the larger Arachnids that I posted earlier. Again blue to tie it all together.

Cancon is Coming

20/07/201906/12/2015 by floppy

Cancon is coming on rapidly, only 48 more days until I land in Canberra for the festivities to begin. But not all is going well games are not filling up like they used to.

Now it is almost time to get serious about painting and getting ready, signing up or is it?

Joss

20/07/201921/11/2015 by jbarton11

Continuing my journey into Malifaux I spent a heap of time painting a bunch of bases using the same colours as the Arachnids, and now it’s on to actually painting some figures. I’ve started with Joss as he’s got a nice large area of easy to access muscular skin and I wanted to try a couple of skin techniques I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while.

More Terrain

20/07/201915/11/2015 by floppy

More Terrain, yep I have been flat out building and painting terrain, why cause I really couldn’t be stuffed with painting minis for the moment. So while I lack the motivation for Mini’s I have worked on some terrain. This is more a dump of everything I have not done in a full post. So there are a few pieces in here that over all look great and I want to see how they look on the table.

MK1881 Ares Blood bowl Team

20/07/201908/11/2015 by floppy

MK1881 did a kick starter for the Ares Blood bowl team, I want to say around a year ago, I recently dipped the toe back in to commission painting. One of the members of the Melbourne Blood Bowl League had this team and really wants to play with it, however it was not painted. Being a fantastic looking team I took the commission.

MK1881 Ares Blood bowl Team 940 — Full Team

Blood Bowl Chaos Team

20/07/201901/11/2015 by floppy

Blood Bowl was one of those easy to get into games, it is good fun, however Games Workshop have dumped the game, along with all other non core games, what we are left with is a Living Rule book, and unlike some of the other specialist games that change alot over a short period of time, Blood Bowl is quite stable, the Teams don’t change much, and everybody plays with the same teams as everybody else, no country has it’s own teams. Because it is being played in leagues around the work the development of teams is tested by alot of people in different ways, it makes for a community that works together. But really it is the mini’s that are great now, there are a long list of kickstarters out there that have produced teams, and if you are lucky or have enough “spare part” you might just have some old Chaos players made by Games Workshop…

Gotham City Telephone Booth

01/05/202428/10/2015 by jbarton11

Batman week continues with another scenery item. Our simplest piece yet – the Gotham Phone Booth. Sure it’s not much to look at, but it was a fair bit of work to put together. I had a couple of issues with this model. The main one being that it hadn’t been cut through all the way; it wasn’t too bad, but it took a fair bit of work to get the pieces out and clean up. The other issue is that there is an acrylic box that goes on the inside. This is made up of 4 sheets of 3mm thick acrylic and it’s just a little too big. As a result it had to be filed down to get it to fit. Neither of these was a big deal, but it did mean it took about as long to put together as the SWAT van and it’s a fraction the size.

SWAT Van

01/05/202427/10/2015 by jbarton11

The good people at Knight Models were generous enough to send a few terrain pieces for use at PAX Australia. While most of these are being assembled by Mind Games Melbourne (who are helping me out). One of the items I am assembling is Knight Model’s SWAT Van. This model is laser cut from 3mm MDF and went together really easy. I smoothed out the edges with some Squadron Green putty and added clear plastic sheet windows (old blister packaging). Aside from that it’s pretty much just been assembled and painted straight from the kit.

Joker

01/05/202426/10/2015 by jbarton11

Probably the last miniature I’ll get done for PAX. I’m quite happy with how he turned out. He is bright.

SWAT

20/07/201922/10/2015 by jbarton11

Told you it’s been productive: I’ve finished 2 out of the 3 SWAT miniatures. Unfortunately I didn’t note the colours down so they’re lost to history.

Commissioner Gordon

20/07/201921/10/2015 by jbarton11

There’s been a little Batman progress over the last few days. The impending PAX deadline (end of October) has brought these guys to the front of the queue. Where better to start than a BFF for Batman?

I went for a fairly standard look for Commissioner Gordon: charcoal suit, light blue shirt, blue tie and a brown overcoat.

SAGA

01/05/202404/10/2015 by floppy

SAGA, a game set in the dark ages. Vikings raiding the world etc. what is there not to love. I have two very unfinished war bands for Saga, the Jomsvikings and Scot’s. I have only had them since the game came out, a very long time ago, of course what is embarrassing is that I have never played a game either. Well with the latest addition to the rules out, Crescent and Cross, moving the battle’s to the middle east, I finally find something to bring me back to painting knights.

Pond’s

01/05/202427/09/2015 by floppy

Pond’s add an interesting feature to any gaming table, in game terms they vary between game, some Infantry can enter but not tanks and stuff. so the use of them is as much as for area denial as well as a feature a cleaver commander can use to aid themselves in the mission on hand.

Battletech

01/05/202420/09/2015 by floppy

Battletech gets rolled out a couple times a year, it is one of those games that is good to play every so often. The biggest problem being that it takes along time to play the game.

Recently we have had couple of nights of Battletech, both games finished, which surprises most.

Hill’s

01/05/202413/09/2015 by floppy

Hill’s are an interesting thing in wargaming, we use them in so many different games, but most are small round and flat on top. So in part two of my Terrain making I am going to show my take on hills.

ADF Helicopters

20/07/201930/08/2015 by jbarton11

I’ve made some progress with my Australian Helos: a couple of MRH Taipans (NH-90 transport helos) and ARH Tigers (Eurocopter Tigers). The ADF use a 3 colour camouflage scheme and painting it has been a welcome change from the modern US schemes which are just one or two colours. The only painful part is the colour patterns are consistent between helicopters. I’ve tried to reproduce this, but obviously at 3mm it’s almost impossible to be precise.

First the Tigers – I did 7 of these (I broke the tail off one, and I don’t think I’d ever run all of them).

Tree’s

01/05/202430/08/2015 by floppy

Tree’s, Tree’s everywhere. On the Terrain building exercise, this week it is all about trees. I have been working to get as much done as possible over the last week, ready for a big day here playing some Flames of War.

http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x78/thefloppy1/Minatures/Terrain/20150828_161947_zps9dwjijt8.jpg

Graveyard

01/05/202423/08/2015 by floppy

Graveyard’s add a very nice feature to any gaming table, put a village with it, and you have something that adds a little theater to the game. Over the last weeks I have been busy making terrain for some of the 28mm games I play. This week it has been all about the graveyard.

Graveyard 947

Rubicon Models M4A3 Sherman 105

01/05/202416/08/2015 by floppy

I picked up the Rubicon Models M4A3 Sherman kit some time ago, I have finally had a chance to sit down and build this kit.

Rubicon Models M4A3 Sherman 105 948

I am always impressed with the amount of options that Rubicon Models packs into each kit. It is something I look forward to each time I build one of these kits.

4Ground Ruined House

01/05/202409/08/2015 by floppy

4Ground Ruined House is the start of some World War II 28mm Terrain, I picked the kit up at the LFGS when I was in there to get some paints, yep impulse buy is there nothing better.

4Ground Ruined House 949

Steam Arachnids

20/07/201909/08/2015 by jbarton11

Another voyage into a completely different system. This week it’s Malifaux by Wyrd Games. First off I want to say I’ve never really given plastics much thought; I guess I was a little old school and hadn’t really moved on from metals. The quality of Dust’s figures hadn’t really sold me either: great vehicles, but soft detailed infantry. However, I’m in love with the Malifaux plastics. They’re on a par with the Knight Models Batman miniatures, but because they’re plastic they’re able to be much thinner without bending or breaking.

Back2Base-ix Paint Rack’s

01/05/202414/07/2015 by floppy

Back2Base-ix Paint Rack’s came in I set to putting them together, I again choose the perspex versions of their racks as they look a lot better.

While I get to putting I was thinking about the organisation of my desk, I really need a clear space to work on and with the new racks I finally have nearly enough space for all my paint. Well at least the paints that I keep on my desk. There is also a lot of airbrush paints out by the airbrush.

Painted Catwoman

20/07/201912/07/2015 by jbarton11

My progress with Batman miniatures has been painfully slow. Which is really a little sad, as they are spectacular miniatures and do paint up very nicely. Maybe that’s why – I do tend to paint them pretty carefully and slowly.

However, I have finished another one. I’m sure you’ll recognize Catwoman, and while there aren’t a thousand colours on there, she did take a fair bit of effort. It was well worth all of it, and I’m stoked with how she’s turned out. I think I’m happier with her than Batman.

Infinity Combined Army

01/05/202408/07/2015 by floppy

Infinity Combined Army starter from the new edition of the rules N3, by Corvus Belli

Infinity Combined Army 952

X-Wings

01/05/202427/06/2015 by jbarton11

I’ve been a bit negligent of the blog for a little while. I’ve been doing hobby stuff, just not posting. Anyway, this is just a quick post of the X-Wings from the Star Wars Armada core set. I don’t plan on playing much of the Rebels, but I thought I’d paint these up. And, although not as good as Rule37 painted X-Wings, I’m happy with how they turned out. I’m not sure what the next blog post will be, I’ve got a worse than usual case of gamer A.D.D. at the moment.

Old Games Revived

01/05/202422/06/2015 by floppy

Old Games revived, sometimes they are revived because they are good systems that you just needed a break from, sometimes nostalgia, and sometimes because the game went from a wild power creep to something else.

Enter Malifaux, the knights had some encouragement but some have gone back to look at the game.

Flames of War Tournament Wrapup

01/05/202409/06/2015 by floppy

We just had two tournaments in two weeks, while at the same time there was also a tournament in Sydney, which none of us went to.

We will start of in Tassie, with the Kingston Kup in the middle of a Tasmanian winter, and finish with Badgercon, where the lads from Bendigo held a series of tournaments for their clubs open day.

Kingston Kup

01/05/202425/05/2015 by floppy

I missed last weeks post, living in a hotel is not conducive to getting stuff to write about, but we have found a house and not it is back on the important stuff, gaming…

Kingston Kup is a Flames of war comp held down in Tasmania, they boys down in Hobart put on a comp each year and the Monday Knights normally send down a group to catch up with friends, and play some games against people we normally don’t get a chance too. This year is no different, and this year I am making the time to go down and play as well.

For the most part I was going to play an easy transport army, but the comp this year requires many different lists.

Star Wars Armada Fleet Tool

20/07/201909/05/2015 by jbarton11

It’s been a productive time in Nanotank labs over the last couple of weeks. Almost no miniatures have been painted, but a couple of other miniature related projects have progressed nicely. The first one is a fleet builder for Star Wars Armada that I’ve called swaft. I’m a fan of minimalist interfaces so it’s fairly … Read more

Tie Fighters

20/07/201928/04/2015 by jbarton11

Star Wars Armada is the latest high buzz miniatures game to come from Fantasy Flight Games. I’ve avoided getting into the other Star Wars title, but I’ve been looking for a playable capital ship game and I’ve got a lot of time for FFG’s writers and editors. As a result I’ve given this game a go, and I’ve got to say I’m very impressed. However, this post is not a review of the game, rather a short post about how I painted my Tie Fighters.

King Tiger Platoon

20/07/201927/04/2015 by floppy

A King Tiger Platoon is a great looking addition to any Flames of War army, I did already have these painted but I was not happy with them so I re-painted them.

King Tiger Platoon 955

US Army Apache Helicopters

20/07/201926/04/2015 by jbarton11

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted. I guess with ANZAC day having just passed it should be something more Australian, but US Army count as an ally. Moving on, I’ve painted a couple of Apache gunships. Overall I’m quite happy with these. I’ve moved away from the black windows as I think this would turn the whole model into one very dark blob. The window adds a bit of visual interest and I’ve added it to a couple of other 3mm models that will be added over the next couple of weeks.

Warlord v’s Rubicon T-34/85

20/07/201919/04/2015 by floppy

Warlord v’s Rubicon T-34/85

I had the chance to get models from both company’s, so I am racing them in my first ever 1 v 1 test.

Having started the Russians I couldn’t say no to T-34/85’s so here we go as we test both kits to see which one win’s out on the first ever Floppy’s Model Kit Challenge.

Wargames Factory WW2 Russians

01/05/202412/04/2015 by floppy

Wargames Factory WW2 Russians, were part of the Kickstarter package for WW2 Assault I looked at last week. It has been a long time since I looked at the Wargames factory products as the last time they were very very bad.

Wargames Factory WW2 Russians 957

I am happy to say that I am very impressed with this product. It is a really nice surprise to see what has changed over the years.

WW2 Assault Tactical skirmish Combat

01/05/202405/04/2015 by floppy

WW2 Assault Tactical skirmish Combat, was a kickstarter that I backed late last year. I was hoping that it would have been on time but it was not, however it was only 2 weeks delayed that is a win in my book. It is a 28mm WWII Infantry combat game.

WW2 Assault Tactical skirmish Combat 958

Adepticon 2015 part 2

01/05/202429/03/2015 by floppy

Adepticon 2015 part 2, I played in two comps Epic Armageddon, and Bolt Action Tank Wars. Both were a lot of fun, I have known the Epic Community here in the US for a long time, but until now I had never made the time to play with them.

As for Bolt Action well this was my first event, my first game and it was a load of fun.

Adepticon 2015 part 1

01/05/202427/03/2015 by floppy

Adepticon 2015 part 1, I finally have time to sit down and write about my experiences. I finally got to be a con attendee and just spend time walking around talking to people who allow us to experience events like this.

I did a lot over the four days of the con so this is going to be broken up in to two or three articles, there was way too much to do for me to fit it all in one article.

10mm Monorail

01/05/202421/03/2015 by jbarton11

I’ve been working on a few terrain pieces the last couple of weeks in preparation for Conquest 2015 where I’m running a tournament. One of the scenarios I’m planning on running is Moving Target which require a monorail/train to act as the moving target. Hawk Wargames sell a Monorail that fits in perfectly with the Art Deco vibe of the buildings. I wanted something fairly modern looking and not too bright – public transport is usually fairly subtly coloured. I spent a bit of time browsing various real world liveries and eventually settled on a two-tone grey scheme with red accents. A bit of time with the airbrush, masking tape and brush provided me with the following.

Adepticon Preview

01/05/202413/03/2015 by floppy

Adepticon Preview

Adepticon is just a week out, I have almost finished all my painting. Or at least I would have if everything had arrived.

I missed last year so this year I am really looking forward to Adepticon again.

Dropzone Commander Tournament

01/05/202410/03/2015 by jbarton11

I’m running a Dropzone Commander tournament on the 5-APR-2015. If you’re in Melbourne (Australia) and interested in a game of Dropzone Commander then head on down to Melbourne High School and participate in Melbourne’s inaugural Dropzone Commander tournament. More details can are on a dedicated Reconquest 2015 page. Signup is available at the Conquest website. … Read more

ADF F/A-18F Super Hornets

01/05/202409/03/2015 by jbarton11

I’ve made a little progress on my Australian Hind Commander strike force. No actual Helos yet, but I started with something simple. Australian F/A-18s are painted in a very similar scheme to the U.S. versions. The colours I used were: Top-side: USAF Medium Grey (VMA 71.120) Under-side: USAF Light Grey (VMA 71.121) Canopy: Dark Sea … Read more

Portable Warfare™ The Sergeant

01/05/202405/03/2015 by floppy

Portable Warfare™ The Sergeant carry bag. One thing that gamer’s use a lot of are containers for storage, Bags for travel, we like to keep our toys safe and in good order.

This is the 2nd Portable Warfare™ bag I have purchased, I also have other brands but these fit the bill for some light travel solutions.

3mm Egyptian T-55 Armoured Brigade

20/07/201903/03/2015 by jbarton11

Another chunk of 3mm progress. And while not quite a full Brigade, there are 3 battalions of T-55s. First a couple of pictures of individual bases.

DAK Transports are finally finished.

01/05/202401/03/2015 by floppy

DAK Transports are finally finished. I had been holding off sending or posting photos of some of these because I needed time to finish them all, this competes what I need for Adpeticon Bolt Action Tank wars. It all looks good so I am pretty happy.

Paint Problems

20/07/201919/02/2015 by floppy

Paint Problems, we have all had them. I get them often enough that I thought I might do a post about them. In this case my problems came up while painting the Bolt Action transports.

3mm Israeli Isherman Battalion

20/07/201917/02/2015 by jbarton11

It’s been quite the productive week, the last of the models I’ve recently finished is an Israeli Isherman M51 Battalion for Modern Spearhead. One thing I like about the Israelis is that you don’t need to paint huge numbers; I’ve got a huge number of Egyptian T-55s that will take a fair while to finish.

First I’ve got the commander: the rules just have him on the same base as the others. However, I’ve decided to base them very differently on 20mm discs. It makes them nice and distinct, without requiring a heap of work on a little diorama.

28mm Camel Cavalry

20/07/201917/02/2015 by jbarton11

Another random project I’ve been working on. These were a Christmas present from my better half. These are 28mm Camel Cavalry for Gripping Beast’s Saga Crescent & Cross. Crescent & Cross takes Saga from the Dark Ages to the Crusades. Given my enjoyment of factions that have a certain self destructive capacity to them, who better than the Mutatawwi’a; the Mutatawwi’a have a mechanic where they can martyr their own figures to gain special abilities.

My progress with these has been pretty slow, but I did start with the biggest miniatures. Who doesn’t love camels?

6mm Sho’ts

01/05/202415/02/2015 by jbarton11

I’ve been a bit inattentive here of late; the reason has been a bit of progress on a number of other projects taking up my hobby time. First project completed is the 6mm Israeli tanks that first featured a little while back. I’d been putting off putting on the decals because it was a fiddly P.I.T.A. task, but I liked how they looked. I finally got around to putting them on and I’m really happy with how they look.

First a picture of three of them, the hardest decals are on the turret: these are a Hebrew character and a numeral that are really small.

Flock Box

01/05/202412/02/2015 by floppy

Flock Box is a great tool, those people out there that do Scale Rail modeling will have seen similar products by Noch etc. essentially we charge “Static Grass” and put a opersite charge on the miniature and base. This causes the grass to “Jump” on to the base, where we have hopefully applied glue.

Warlord’s German Halftrack

01/05/202405/02/2015 by floppy

Warlord’s German Halftrack the SD.KFZ 251/1 Ausf C has just landed on my desk and I get to put to it together and do a review, paint it up and make it all pretty and stuff

The Amazing Deadpool

01/05/202430/01/2015 by floppy

The Amazing Deadpool, was an episode of season 2, the Amazing Spiderman. This Amazing deadpool however is by Knight Models. While Deadpool is from the Marvel Universe, Knight Models first game was for Batman. There may well be some rules coming for Marvel universe characters.

If you can get the rules for free from the above website.

4Ground 10mm Terrain Review

01/05/202429/01/2015 by jbarton11

One of my Cancon acquisitions was a couple of 4Ground’s new buildings for Dropzone Commander. These were a prize supplied by War & Peace Games. These kits come flat packed in a zip-lock bag and are made up from pre-painted MDF and thick card. 4Ground have used a number of different thicknesses and colours to provide some texture and depth to these buildings. Something that is noticeably lacking from most MDF kits, which have a habit of looking very flat.

Cancon Pictures

20/07/201928/01/2015 by jbarton11

I didn’t take many pictures this year, mainly as I was playing. While the playing didn’t go too well I had a blast – mainly destroying buildings which won me a couple of 4Grounds 10mm Art-Deco buildings as a prize. These will feature in a later blog, as they’re pretty sweet. Now, however it’s just a handful of pictures.

Adepticon

20/07/201926/01/2015 by floppy

Adepticon 2015 is coming, rapidly, just weeks to go. March 19th – 22nd.

Adepticon is huge, the first time I went, I was blown away with the size of it. This year it has moved to a bigger and better venue, I am keen to see it all again and get some games in.

This year I am avoiding Flames of War, I am a little over that game, even though I had a great time at the last event, I am over it. I also have not had a chance to play everybody that is online in different forums, that play other games, so this year I am playing in Epic Armageddon and Bolt Action Tank Wars.

Bane of War V

20/07/201920/01/2015 by floppy

Bane of War V has been and gone, and it was a fantastic weekend of gaming for all.

BOW_V_header

I really enjoyed Bane of War, it was a great event, Red on Blue where ever possible, it was well run, and having the comp inside the Texas Military Forces Museum is a bonus.

Test Israeli Sho’t

01/05/202406/01/2015 by jbarton11

A little something different and larger than normal. I think I’ve previously mentioned that I was going to do some 6mm AIW. The first component of this is a number of Israeli Sho’t (Improved Centurion Tanks). I’ve finished one as a test model, and I’m quite happy with the result. The colour is a little … Read more

Dropzone Commander Resistance

01/05/202405/01/2015 by floppy

Dropzone Commander Resistance was a force for Drop Zone Commander I had to get, clearly designed as an insurgency force, but it had choppers, and it was shiny so I couldn’t resist.

I didn’t buy the starter box like I should have but rather I started collecting by getting what ever blisters the local store had. Which was not much but it was a start. This was meant to be a slow build not something that I felt i had to have completed in a week or two.

E-7A Wedgetail – Complete

20/07/201921/12/2014 by jbarton11

The final step in this build was to print up some custom decals. I used Bare-Metal Foil‘s decal film. This product is a clear film that can be printed on with a laser printer. They’ve a number of variations with different colours and laser printing options all available. It was simply a matter of creating some images and then finding a high enough quality printer to print them out. At this scale even the huge markings on these planes are still only 2-3mm across so you need a good printer. I printed the following image, note the three different copies. I ended up using one and a half.

Year of Painting

01/05/202420/12/2014 by floppy

My Year of painting has been pretty disrupted, a Trip back to Australia in March that ended up being 6 weeks, took pretty much all the wind out of my sails. I really didn’t get painting again until I started this blog. I was lacking some motivation, and really this blog provided me with goals that I should keep to. I find deadlines always help me get stuff finished.

Year of Painting 970

The Blog it’s self is a really good tool for me to get my work out there, I enjoy painting, and so I can show off to a wider community, I hope that I am producing some good work for people to look at. If there is anything people want me to explain more drop me a message, I know my writing is not the best I am also working on that, It is good to get back in to working on some weakness that I have.

So on too what I have completed, what misses, what hit’s and what I am looking forward to

ADF Air Units – O8 Miniature Review

20/07/201920/12/2014 by jbarton11

A large number of 3mm tanks, trucks and Helos arrived the other day: the core of my ADF strike group. Rather than just showing some finished models I’m going to show some pictures of how they arrive and provide some thoughts on Odzial Osmy’s (O8) miniatures. The numbers in brackets are the O8 product codes.

E-7A Wedgetail – Painted

01/05/202417/12/2014 by jbarton11

Another bit of progress with the Wedgetail this evening. It’s now fully painted – all it’s waiting for is for me to print and apply the decals and then give it a good seal with dull coat.

Not much to say really. The main colour is White Grey (VMA 71.119). The details are either Medium Sea Grey (VMC 70.870) or my standard black mix (50-50 mix of black and a dark grey). Lastly I used NATO Camouflage Wash (MIG-1008) to give it some depth and pick out the flap lines.

3mm vs 6mm

20/07/201916/12/2014 by jbarton11

Another member of my gaming club and I are planning on doing a bit of 1:1 AIW fighting in 6mm. As a starting point we ordered a few tanks, including some T-55s. Seeing as I’ve got some T-55s that also just arrived for my 3mm AIW it seemed like a great opportunity to compare these two scales.

DAK Infantry Squads

01/05/202415/12/2014 by floppy

The DAK Infantry Squads are finally complete. I needed a lot of motivation to finish these two but they are done. It is not like they were not nice to paint, they are Perry Mini’s it is just I really lacked the want to finish them.

DAK Infantry Squads 974

DAK Squads

Egyptian BMP Battalion (1973)

20/07/201910/12/2014 by jbarton11

I’ve finished my first Modern Spearhead unit. It’s the core of a Egyptain Infantry Battalion for the Yom Kippur war. I’ve still got to add the organic mortar company, but I’m waiting on an order from PicoArmor that includes those miniatures and a heap of T-62s.

The structure of this Battalion is 3 companies of infantry each mounted in BMP-1s. They’re not big companies so each has only 2 stands. With my basing of 2 vehicles per stand that means 12 tiny little BMP-1s plus one for the Battalion HQ.

1/600th Ultramodern Marines

01/05/202410/12/2014 by floppy

I am very lucky to know some amazing former US Marines, some of which server on Sea Kings and later on V-22 Osprey’s. So in an Ode to them I have painted up an ultra Modern Marine force for Hind Commander. I have completed the air part of the task force, the ground part of the task force is next.

Dropzone Commander vs 3mm

20/07/201906/12/2014 by jbarton11

Just a quick couple of pictures that give an idea of the scale of a couple of the smaller Dropzone Commander units next to a few different 3mm miniatures. The two DzC miniatures are the Prowler (orange/green coloured) and a stand of 3 Destroyers (Grey coloured).

Painting the Rubicon Models Panzer III

01/05/202404/12/2014 by floppy

Painting the Rubicon Models Panzer III, has been pretty easy, the model it’s self was a pleasure to put together and painting is no different.

Painting the Rubicon Models Panzer III 977 — undercoat on Rubicon Models Panzer III

I am going to go through the process I use to paint tanks and some other larger models, I do use a Modulation Style to begin with. Then I will get into the details.

Completed Terrace House Hex

20/07/201903/12/2014 by jbarton11

I’ve finished this relatively small little project to build a 2mm terrain hex for use in various games from Hind Commander to Modern Spearhead. The buildings are from Brigade Models, while the greenery is made up of various Woodland Scenics foliage products.

E-7A Wedgetail – Radar Dome, Antennas & Winglets

20/07/201902/12/2014 by jbarton11

Today I finished the scratch building of the Wedgetail. The details that separate this from a normal 737 are the numerous antenna, bulges, radar domes and winglets that protrude from the fuselage. There are literally dozens of these, but at this scale they would be barely noticeable, continually break off and turn it into a little porcupine. None of which lend me towards adding them. However there are a few bits that need to be included:

Rubicon Models Panzer III

20/07/201926/11/2014 by floppy

Rubicon Models Panzer III arrived on my desk a short while ago. I have been keen to see how these go together, for my DAK force some Panzer III’s are always welcome. There is a lot of very happy people out in the community raving about these models. Now that I have received my order I can get to and put it together.

Rubicon Models Panzer III 980 — Rubicon Models 1/56 Scale Panzer III

Modern Spearhead Plans

20/07/201925/11/2014 by jbarton11

As well as Hind Commander I’ve been looking at a few of the other rule sets out there that can be used with 3mm. One that’s interested me is Modern Spearhead. While its intended as a 6mm rule set it works on bases that are 1 1/4″ square (30mm). This size base will work for 3mm as I can put 2-3 miniatures on the base to give more of a group feel. Each base in Spearhead represents roughly a platoon, so it should have around 5 tanks in it, but that will look like a car park. Before committing to anything I experimented with a few different configurations.

Painted Destroyers

01/05/202425/11/2014 by jbarton11

Not a huge amount of progress at the moment. It’s coming to a pretty busy period with a lot of work and also a lot of social activities. Both of these combine to mean not a lot of miniature progress. However I have some Dropzone Commander minis that I’m quite happy with.

The Destroyers are a race of cuddly teddy bears that the Scourge took over at one point and turned into massive, cuddly, weapons of destruction. I personally think they’re just misunderstood – not all 10′ tall creatures with guns in both hands, big teeth and scary eyes are dangerous. Anyway I’m quite happy with how they’ve come out: the bright colours of the weapons help to make them a bit more interesting than just grey and brown.

Land of the Free

20/07/201923/11/2014 by floppy

Land of the Free wars from 1754 until 1815 in North America, I have looked forward to Land of the Free since I got told about this rule set coming out a while ago. I have a soft spot for all things colonial. Back home I would love a decent set of ideas for the Eureka Stockade (1854). So the wars between France and England in North America leading into the War of 1812, even the war against Mexico hold a lot of interest for me, the Rule set of Land of the Free does cover the period from 1754 until 1815 in North America.

Robotech Tactics kickstarter unboxing

01/05/202420/11/2014 by floppy

Finally the fabled Robotech kickstarter has arrived, well wave 1 has at least. I have a number of friends back in Melbourne wondering if they will ever see anything in return for the mountains of coin they shelled out. Unfortunately I think retailers in Australia will get retail product before the kick-starter backers will.

E-7A Wedgetail – Body work

01/05/202418/11/2014 by jbarton11

A sick day meant no traveling out to game tonight, but that did let me get a bit of progress on the Wedgetail. First up I removed all the bits I didn’t want on there: wingtips, landing gear and print. After a half hour playing with the Dremel and some needle files I ended up with the following.

28mm WW2 Painting Round Up

20/07/201917/11/2014 by floppy

My 28mm WW2 Painting, has been going along at a rapid rate. This Blog has kept me motivated for the short term, I hope it will do the same for the long term. Of course because I only post here every 3-4 days, I am finishing stuff well before they get posted. So to catch up here is a round up of finished pieces.

Rolljordan Necromantic Fantasy Football Team

01/05/202413/11/2014 by floppy

I have had mixed success with Kickstarters over the last couple of years. With slow turn around on Relic Knights and well we all know about the delay’s that Robotech has had, but this past week I received my Rolljordan Nectomantic Fantasy Team.

Pak40 Anti-tank Gun

01/05/202410/11/2014 by floppy

I had the Pak40 on the table at the same time as the 88, really I should have finished these along time ago, but the lack of motivation was a killer.

Pak40 Anti-tank Gun 984 — Black Tree Design Pak 40 and Crew

Developed Terrain Hexes – Progress

20/07/201909/11/2014 by jbarton11

It’s been a little while since I posted anything much here. It’s been a case of too many projects on the go and I’ve not knuckled down and actually done much with any single one. That and I was demoing games at PAX Australia last weekend, which pretty much knocked me out.

DAK 8.8cm Flak 36

01/05/202406/11/2014 by floppy

The 8.8cm Flak 36, this models is by Blitzkrieg, the crew are Perry Brothers. There is great pleasure in working on great models.

DAK 8.8cm Flak 36 986 — 8.8cm Flak 36 with crew

Bane of War

01/05/202404/11/2014 by floppy

This year I had a chance to get to Bane of War in Austin Texas. It was my first trip to Texas and was keen to get there and have look at the local scene and get a bit of wargaming in.

Warlord Games Kradschutzen Platoon

01/05/202430/10/2014 by floppy

I started work some time ago on a Bolt Action platoon of Warlord Games Kradschutzen. Motorcycle troops were all around the early and mid periods of the North Africa theater. These troops were the fast moving Infantry and recon for the desert DAK forces.

DBA 3.0 :- Review

01/05/202427/10/2014 by floppy

DBA was my first entry into Ancients, I had not played any ancients before and was keen to give them ago, with out wanting to jump in the deep end and get going WRG or DBM at the time a whole group of us looked at BDA.

DBA 3.0 :- Review 988

E-7A Wedgetail – The start

01/05/202426/10/2014 by jbarton11

Mentioned elsewhere in this blog was my the start of my latest Hind Commander strike group. I’ve found my E-8C JSTARS enormously useful in my USMC task force and so I’d like to include another AEW&C asset in this force. They are also not typically available as retail models so provide a nice little conversion opportunity. My next task force is going to be an ultra-modern Australian Defence Force (ADF) strike group based on the Recon doctrine. The current AEW&C used by the ADF (operated by the Royal Australian Airforce – RAAF) is the E-7A Wedgetail which is based on a 737-700.

Warlord Games Panzer IIc

01/05/202425/10/2014 by floppy

What I have finished.

I have been working on a Warlord Games Panzer IIc for Bolt Action.

The Warlord Games Panzer IIc I have is a resin model with left and right Track, Hull, and Turret. with metal Barrels for the MG and 2cm main-gun.

Overall the quality is fantastic. I wish I had of started this blog back when I was first cleaning and assembling it, for photos. Like with all resin models I get I clean with warm soapy water to remove any mold release and other residue from casting, then dry fit everything before I start with paint.

5mm Dice Frames Review

01/05/202416/09/2014 by jbarton11

Much to my surprise my 90mm hexes arrived after less than a week from ordering them. Maybe I’ve got low expectations provided by a life time of Australian retail, but I wasn’t expecting them for another week or two. Any way, I’m not going to talk about the hexes, because I threw something else random in with the order: 5mm dice frames.

Developed Terrain Hexes – Layouts

20/07/201909/09/2014 by jbarton11

My plan is to build some developed sectors using Brigade Models’ 2mm buildings. These will be perfect for any Hind Commander games and also any other 2/3/6mm Microarmour I end up playing with. One of the games I’m thinking of trying is Modern Spearhead, which uses 3″ square urban sectors. Now, in my last post I discussed my distaste with squares so it’s going to be hexagons. After some playing around I also found 3″ (75mm) to be a little small for what I wanted to do. So I ended up going with 90mm hexagons. I think 3″ squares to 90mm hexes is a perfectly reasonable progression.

Street grids on hexagons

20/07/201907/09/2014 by jbarton11

Hexagons are awesome: there one of only 3 regular polygons that tessellate (the others are triangle and squares). What makes them unique and awesome is that there are no diagonal neighbours. For example, each square has 8 neighbours: the 4 that share an edge and the 4 that share a corner. What makes the diagonals difficult is that there not the same distance away as the edge neighbours. If you’re trying to move around a square grid then you need to have rules that deal with diagonal movement and that’s messy. However for hexagons there’s no such issue: each hexagon is adjacent to 6 others and there are no diagonals.

Dropzone Commander – AA Unit Analysis I

20/07/201916/08/2014 by jbarton11

Unfortunately I’ve been sick all week so there’s been no painting. Next week is also going to be lousy for painting as works sending me to NZ. However, I’ve been doing some more playing with Dropzone Commander unit statistics. This time, I’ve compared the core AA units for each faction: the UCM Rapier, the PHR Phobos, the Scourge Reaper and the Shaltari Kukri.

Dropzone Commander – Sabre vs Katana Analysis

01/05/202410/08/2014 by jbarton11

In a previous life I did a lot of mathematics, and sometimes I turn this to productive use. Other times I turn it towards miniature gaming. Now, when a lot of people try to analyse games they typically calculate the expectation for an outcome and compare that. Expectation is one way of looking at probability, particularly if you run a casino or lottery. However, if your experience of the probability is going to be a couple of hundred events (like in a game of something) then it’s awful. As guess what – the expectation is unlikely to come true. Some examples of the failure of expectation: a dice roll gives you 3.5, your pay-off from the lottery is about 50c for every $ you put in and everyone has 1 testicle. What we’re going to look at is the probability of what you want happening, which is harder to calculate, but much more useful.

Sohei – 3x Warrior Monks

01/05/202406/08/2014 by jbarton11

Finished these a couple of days ago. It’s 3 Naginata armed Sohei warriors for Ronin. I’m happy with the painting on these. Nothing too flash, but a decent table-top job. The figures are by North Star Military Figures, and are decent, but a little out of proportion in places. The hands and feet are huge, … Read more

USMC Transport Helos

20/07/201929/07/2014 by jbarton11

Just a quick update with another batch of USMC helos. There won’t be many more after this, I think the final piece of this force I’ll put together will be a few more AH-1Zs to round out a full strike group. However, with these 5 freshly painted helos I’ve got a fair amount of transport capacity.

First a trio of medium lift helos. The old CH-46 is still flown by the USMC, but is being replaced by the V-22 Osprey. I’ve not found a model of the Osprey I like yet, so this will remain my medium lift for the time being.

More USMC Vehicles

20/07/201909/07/2014 by jbarton11

This is the last batch of USMC vehicles and completes enough for an entire strike-force (rather than the half strike-forces we typically play with). The new additions are some HEMMTs and M-ATVs. The colours are the same as I’ve used previously.

First are 3 unarmed trucks (HEMMTs). Completely unprotected and pretty easy to kill, these are essentially just targets. However I quite like their look and they are big. The last picture has a AA battery to give some idea of the scale of things (the bases are 20mm wide).

Sohei – Warrior Monk

01/05/202419/06/2014 by jbarton11

I don’t do a lot of work in progress pictures. However, I felt in the mood while doing this guy a little while back so I took a couple of pictures of him as I gradually made progress. This is a 28mm figure from North Start Military Figures that they’ve released in companion with Osprey’s Ronin game. Ronin is described as a cinematic Samurai skirmish game. It’s a pretty cool, fast little game. The theme also invites bright, stylised miniatures.

Painted Prowlers and Intruder

20/07/201910/06/2014 by jbarton11

The last week has seen quite a bit of painting progress, with a couple of partially completed pieces put aside until after the Dust had settled. One of these projects was a chunk of Dropzone Commander stuff. The unit I’ll feature today is some Prowlers. These lovely little fellas are a small close combat walker that’s supposed to get nice and close to a target tank and inject hot plasma through a proboscis that it spikes through the armour. Really, they just want to get nice and close and cuddle with tanks – they’re just misunderstood.

Russian Armour

20/07/201907/06/2014 by jbarton11

I’ve actually painted some 3mm stuff. In spite of the name and purported purpose of this site is seems I do more of everything else, other than that. This is not everything, just a few samples of some modern Russian armour I’ve been painting for no particular game or game system.

First, some BMP-2s. I’ve got a full company in 1:1 (that’s 12 – 3 platoons each with 3 vehicles, a company commander and 2 vehicles for the MGs). However, here’s just a few pictures of a sample:

Littlewars Photos

01/05/202405/06/2014 by jbarton11

Just a quick post with some photos of our Littlewars event. It was a great day. Thanks to Nic @ Eureka for doing all the hard work getting it going, JB my partner in crime, Lord T for the Axis and all the other players for coming along and making it a great day.

Little Wars Objective II

01/05/202430/05/2014 by jbarton11

With Littlewars this weekend there has been a lot more modelling than posting. It’s been a little frantic with trying to do all the usual life stuff and also squeeze in getting as much as possible ready. However, I did take one quick picture this evening of the work on the objective so far. If you’ll recall from an earlier post this is meant to be a statue that will be what everyone’s trying to get close to in our King of The Hill style game. I’ll post some information after the event when I have more time, but it promises to be pretty cool so anyone in the Melbourne area should get on down this weekend.

Dust Walker Madness

01/05/202418/05/2014 by jbarton11

Progress – happy progress. I’ve finally finished 5 KV walkers to finish the bulk of the painting. I’ve also shuffled the platoons around to introduce Winter Child and reduce my painting requirements. Any way I’ll detail the new platoons later this week and do shots of each platoon together. Progress is also being made on the scenery, so that will feature soon. Lastly I’ll preview how we’re going to run the day and describe a couple of rule alterations to make things flow for newbies.

Any way, that’s enough waffle – on to the walkers.

First the KV-3. This variant is not so good. The gattling cannons maul infantry and light walkers, but so do most SSU units so there’s no real need for this walker. Unfortunately it’s not much good against aircraft (apparently due to the arms not being able to elevate far enough – that’s one Soviet engineer who is Gulag bound). However it is sexy and so perfect for a demo game

Little Wars Objective

01/05/202411/05/2014 by jbarton11

The Littlewars event we are running is a King of the Hill style event where the aim is to be the only side close to an objective at the end of each turn. As such we need an objective that’s worth fighting for. With the plan to have the fight occurring in a city it seemed natural to have a square with a statue or fountain in the middle and that would form the objective.

A fountain seems a bit dull, and while a group of children playing ring-a-rosie a la the centre of Stalingrad might be poignant I’m not sure how I’d pull it off.

Dust Warfare Mi-47 Helo & Heroes

01/05/202425/04/2014 by jbarton11

I made some progress this week with a couple of Dust Warfare units for Little Wars. I finished the Mi-47 transport walker that’s been the subject of an earlier post about Anarchy Models’s stencils. I’m pretty stoked with how this has come out. The stencils are great and I’m happy with the heavily weathered look I’ve gotten. The storey behind this helo is that it’s survived the winter’s skirmishing after a busy autumn and now as spring is arriving and the grass is starting to reclaim the battlefield it is off to collect a new walker.

Ruined WWWII Buildings – Complete

01/05/202411/04/2014 by jbarton11

I posted a picture of one of these buildings about a week ago. These are being painted for a Dust Warfare event at Little Wars that I’m running with a couple of others. The plan is to have an urban fight over the ruins of Zverograd (an imagined Russian city from Dust) and so we need ruins.

These are good little buildings coming as laser cut MDF. The one you see here is in 6 parts and all together are 22cm by 38cm. They’re the result of Commission Figurines KickStarter. They don’t yet have them up for sale on their website, but I’m sure they will soon. Any way on to some pictures.

E8C – New Photo

01/05/202406/04/2014 by jbarton11

This is the first project that really hit this blog and so it seemed like a good spot to do some experimenting. One of the biggest challenges with photographing miniatures is dealing with the depth of field. Miniatures have a certain look when photographed. Namely a small part will be in focus and most of the image is slightly out. This really characterises photographs of small things. In fact there’s a technique called miniaturisation where people take a picture of real life scenes and “miniaturise” them to make them look like they’re actually pictures of small scale models. Here’s an example I found on the web (sorry the owner doesn’t allow direct linking.)

Ruined WWWII Buildings

01/05/202403/04/2014 by jbarton11

I received some laser cut MDF buildings a couple of weeks back. These are from a Kick-starter done by Commission Figurines. They’re 28mm scale which is ever so slightly on the small side for Dust, but really it’s not very noticeable and without the height boost provided by the figure base would probably be perfect. These buildings are really just WWII, but I’ll be using them for Weird WWII, as I don’t play WWII.

New Dust Warfare Project

01/05/202429/03/2014 by jbarton11

In the interest of continuing to jump around projects like a mad man I’ve got a new project lined up. Myself and a couple of others will be running some demo games at Little Wars, which is a convention that runs down here in Melbourne (Australia). Now, where still working out the details of what we will be doing, but basically I’m going to need to paint some Dust minis and build some terrain. Fortunately I’ve been wanting to do these two things regardless. So Little Wars gives me a clear motivation and a deadline; two things that greatly improve my productivity.

Painted Batman

20/07/201911/03/2014 by jbarton11

It seems I am jumping around a fair bit at the moment, so let’s continue the pattern and introduce another line of minis. This one is by Knight Models who have the rights to produce Batman miniatures. Now, they’re not cheap, but Knight have done a spectacular job of sculpting these and the game around them is pretty good with a definite Batman feel to the combat. However, this is one of those ones that is almost completely about the miniatures.

Painted Dropzone Commander

01/05/202406/03/2014 by jbarton11

Another post and another change of topic. This time its Dropzone Commander (a 10mm Science Fiction game I’ve mentioned a couple of times previously). These minis had been sitting on my desk until I though of a scheme I liked and after a fair bit of back and forward I went with a Tan/Green striped … Read more

Anarchy Stencils and Dust Mi46 Helo Part I

01/05/202428/02/2014 by jbarton11

This is a bit of a double post. First I want to talk about a recent KickStarter I got in on. Late last year Anarchy Models ran a quick starter to get some stencils produced. Their campaign was successful and ended up unlocking 38 stencils. Their stencils are designed to be used as masks on … Read more

USMC Infantry Painting

01/05/202421/02/2014 by jbarton11

Note: this is a draft I had put up and delayed posting while I took some pictures. I just happened upon it and so figured I may as well publish. It’s taken me twice to publish it correctly too; now I have pictures. Quick little update vis-a-vis the USMC force that I wrapped up a … Read more

Pirate Commission – Part V

01/05/202411/02/2014 by jbarton11

Despite the lack of posts this project has actually moved a fair way along. Very hot weather has made spraying difficult so I have been putting off varnishing and instead just painting more miniatures. First, I’ve finished painting the Red Coats; there are 24 of them all together (20 regulars and 4 leaders) and I’m … Read more

Ke-Ho Washes

01/05/202402/02/2014 by jbarton11

After a long hiatus on this project I’ve finally made some progress. Not a heap of progress mind you, but still a decent amount. The next step after the base colours is adding a wash to bring out the panel lines, rivets and other details. I use oil paints as they have a long working … Read more

Cancon 2014 Pictures

01/05/202431/01/2014 by jbarton11

Not much going on this site, but I did go to Cancon and pump out a few pictures. These pictures are mainly of the Flames of War and Epic games going on, but there’s a few other things too.

Dropzone Commander Skimmers

20/07/201922/01/2014 by jbarton11

My chosen Dropzone Commander faction, The Scourge, use skimmers. According to the fluff these sit about 2-3 feet above the ground levitated by some advanced alien technology that no one really understands (Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”). As Dropzone Commander vehicles are not based I have, like most others, … Read more

Pirate Commission – Part IV

01/05/202404/01/2014 by jbarton11

After a busy Christmas I’m finally back at the painting desk. The first priority is to finish off this pirate commission. This instalment features a couple of strips of generic, boring pirates. I’ve tried to keep the colours varied with a mix of browns and greys with muted brighter colours. I’ve also thrown in the … Read more

Happy Seppuku Base Stamps

20/07/201919/12/2013 by jbarton11

Happy Seppuku manufacture textured stamps for creating you own textured bases. If you’ve ever dreamed of having something more exciting than sand on your bases, but are put off by the expense of cast bases then these might be of interest to you. They are pretty simple to use, in fact there are just three … Read more

Pirate Commission – Part III

01/05/202416/12/2013 by jbarton11

A little progress, not heaps, but a little. 2 more stands done: one of pirates and one of Red Coats. These are coming out well and are actually quite fun to paint. These are not quite finished, I didn’t put down a final layer of Dull-cote. It’s just the gloss varnish. They will look a … Read more

Pirate Commission – Part II

01/05/202410/12/2013 by jbarton11

Quick little update on the latest commission. Just a handful of these completed. The Redcoats got a little boring so I threw in a quick pirate for some variety. Great little models these from Rebel Mins and are quite nice little sculpts. I’m not at all happy with how the pictures came out. I will have to get some better lights as the exposure is just too long and there are too many vibrations in the room.

Pirate Commission – Part I

01/05/202405/12/2013 by jbarton11

Another commission has come my way. It’s 15mm again, but this time it’s pirates. This is just base coating again. I’ll start with a test model to see how it looks and I’m pretty stoked with this bad boy (OK – good boy). Colours used are the following (as much for my reference as anyone … Read more

Ke-Ho Base Colours II

20/07/201902/12/2013 by jbarton11

I finally decided how to go with the Ke-Ho and added the yellow lines. And, all in all I’m quite glad I did. I’m really happy with how the base colours have come out and now I’m going to give it a quick spray of gloss varnish to protect the model and make the washes … Read more

Ke-Ho Base Colours

01/05/202427/11/2013 by jbarton11

A little time with the airbrush has put the base colours on the Ke-Ho. It all started with a dirty green base coat (Green Brown VMC 70879). The Model Colours don’t work straight through an airbrush so you have to thin them. I’ve found another Vallejo product – their Airbush Thinner (VMC 71361) to be … Read more

Hind Commander Battle Report

20/07/201924/11/2013 by jbarton11

Ultra-Modern USMC vs Soviet Hind hoard For those new to Hind Commander I’ve previously posted a quick synopsis on the game. The battlefield was fairly unremarkable, a few ridges and small stands of trees surrounding a large town that was just on the Russian side of the front line to the north. A small helicopter … Read more

Ke-Ho Undercoated

01/05/202421/11/2013 by jbarton11

A quick little update (mainly pics). I’m undercoated the Ke-Ho in grey and then done some shading. I’m using a technique called colour modulation. This technique involves creating exaggerating highlights and darks in the early stages. At the early stage it can look a little goofy, as it over-emphasises natural lighting and makes it look … Read more

Ke-Ho Colours

20/07/201920/11/2013 by jbarton11

Some colour thoughts: The following colours are inspired by Battlefront’s hobby article on painting 15mm WW2 Japanese armour. I’ve no idea how accurate this is and frankly don’t really care: they’re just inspiration for me as the Empire of the Blazing Sun never existed and ball tanks aren’t a real thing either. Base: Green Brown … Read more

Ke-Ho Ironclad Assembly

01/05/202416/11/2013 by jbarton11

Didn’t feel like painting this evening so I busted out the Ke-Ho and started doing some assembly. I had already done a fair bit of trimming and smoothing the parts and a close examination had revealed a couple of things: I had a few air bubbles, but these were very minor and only one part … Read more

Hind Commander Quick Review

01/05/202412/11/2013 by jbarton11

Before putting up some game reports and other Hind Command stuff, I’m going to give a bit of an introduction. Hind Commander is a pretty small game that most won’t have heard of from a small Polish publisher Assault Publishing. This will be a very short review, in the next couple of weeks I intend … Read more

USMC Wrap-up

01/05/202431/10/2013 by jbarton11

I’ve finished and even played a game with the USMC forces that have been built up throughout the life of this blog. I’d neglected posting about these of late, the last minis painted for it (some OH-58Ds in olive green) I hadn’t even posted about. So I’ve just taken some pictures and thrown up a … Read more

Russian Su-27 Flanker – Base Colours

01/05/202429/10/2013 by jbarton11

I’ve had these on my desk for a while and I’ve been itching to paint one in a bright blue camouflage scheme I spotted a while back. For some reason the pictures of these are always done in some crazy camouflage scheme. I’m not sure if it would work, but maybe the point is to … Read more

Dropzone Commander Plastics

20/07/201920/10/2013 by jbarton11

Dropzone Commander, produced by Hawk Wargames, has been around for a while. The game is in an odd little scale – 10mm – that’s not particularly popular (6mm and 15mm on either side are quite popular). This game has created quite a bit of debate: it’s not cheap, it looks spectacular and is not the … Read more

Ke-Ho Ironclad Unboxing

01/05/202416/10/2013 by jbarton11

I’m back after a bit of a hiatus spent travelling: both for work and fun. One thing that did arrive before my departure was a Ke-Ho tank for Dystopian Legions. I haven’t seen much in the way of online information about this little kit so I figured I might document my experience with it. This … Read more

Police Precinct Commission – Complete

20/07/201926/09/2013 by jbarton11

Just a final few shots showing each of the units/types together. I’ve also put in a proper background and set the camera up a little better to give some slightly better shots. These disappear tomorrow, and have been a fun little project. They’re not 100% complete as the client wants to add the wash.

Police Precinct Commission – Part V

01/05/202426/09/2013 by jbarton11

The last few models are finished. It’s now just time for a quick spray of varnish, pack them up and deliver them tomorrow. I might, if keen, take some pictures of them all together with their varnish on. A couple of my favourites are here. The hostages/arrestees have one of my favourites. With the charcoal … Read more

Police Precinct Commission – Part IV

20/07/201922/09/2013 by jbarton11

Back in the painting swing of things now, 3 more strips completed over the weekend and only 3 more to go. That means I should be finished with these sometime next week. After that it’s 2 weeks on the road with the family and work, so things will be a bit quiet and any regular … Read more

Police Precinct Commission – Part III

20/07/201919/09/2013 by jbarton11

After more illness than I’ve had in the past 5 years (damn kids and pre-school) I’ve finally made a decent bit of progress on the 15mm painting. Not many words save to say this is now over half complete and I’m now slicing through them pretty quick so this should be done really soon.

Police Precinct Commission – Part II

20/07/201908/09/2013 by jbarton11

Not a lot of progress, a very bad bout of gastro laid me out for pretty much the entire week. However, I got back to things over the weekend and I started with some 15mm Police. As this is just a base-coating job: washes, etc to be done by the customer they are pretty plain, … Read more

Police Precinct Commission – Part I

20/07/201901/09/2013 by jbarton11

Just started work on a commission of 15mm miniatures. These are for use with Police Precinct which is a cooperative board game that was the subject of a successful KickStarter a little while back. While it doesn’t require any miniatures, the client is making a custom 3D board with 3D buildings, cars and of course … Read more

Dust Mil Mi-47 Helicopter

01/05/202423/08/2013 by jbarton11

Another Dust miniature, this is one of my favourites. The look of the miniature has grown on me; initially I thought it was a bit bulbish and rounded, but now I’m all for it. This look also fits in with the feel of Dust: there’s a 50s Pulp feel to the art and the Mi-47 … Read more

Dust IS-5 Heavy Tank

01/05/202421/08/2013 by jbarton11

I’ve got another Dust piece completed. For those waiting for 3mm, soon I’ll have another couple of helos up and then it will be a couple of group shots ahead of some Hind Commander game. However, for the moment it’s about the big stuff: 32mm. The Dust vehicles are pretty cool as they come with … Read more

Dust Winterchild II

01/05/202430/07/2013 by jbarton11

Winterchild is complete. I’m pretty happy with how he came up. The metallic effect has worked pretty well. I used an ink instead of the washes I’ve experimented with previously and it made things quite a bit easier. I needed fewer coats to get a nice colouration and the coverage is much easier to manage. … Read more

Dystopian Wars Aristotle class Battleship

01/05/202430/07/2013 by jbarton11

I’ve had a little bit of ADD of late: jumping round from project to project to project. An ongoing project I’ve had is my Antarctican Dystopian Wars fleet. This is one of those projects I come back to every so often to break out a couple more models, get them painted and (all to infrequently) … Read more

Dust Winter Child

01/05/202410/07/2013 by jbarton11

I’m going to step away from the 3mm stuff for a little while and continue to make a mockery of my title. Like many a wargamer I play a number of systems (too many if I’m honest). So we’re going to use this as an excuse to take a bit of a diversion (apologies if … Read more

3mm Middle Eastern Town

01/05/202407/07/2013 by jbarton11

I’ve been doing some other projects for a little while, including working on my photography. However, I have done one little 3mm project: a small Middle Eastern town to act as both a strategic objective and small piece of obstructing terrain for Hind Commander. After all, what else would you do with a USMC force? … Read more

USMC UH-1Y Venom

01/05/202426/06/2013 by jbarton11

Another batch of helicopters. The other light helicopter used by the USMC is the U-1Y Venom. Based on the venerable Huey, the Venom is a utility helicopter that’s primarily used for transport. This one is pretty simple, the colours are essentially the same as the Viper. The only difference is there are no missle pods … Read more

USMC AH-1Z Viper

01/05/202412/06/2013 by jbarton11

Finally it’s time for some helicopters. We’re going to start with the attack helicopters. The most modern attack helicopter the USMC use is the AH-1Z Viper. The Viper traces its heritage all the way back to the AH-1 Cobra used during the Vietnam War and shares a lot of components (but not its looks) with … Read more

USMC F/A-18

01/05/202404/06/2013 by jbarton11

Some more pictures of the USMC strike group progress. This time it’s the fixed wing assets. The USMC operates a large number of F/A-18s in both ground and air-strike roles. Hind Commander doesn’t require many airplanes so I will just be doing 2. The scheme is pretty simple and has been pretty consistent throughtout the … Read more

USMC Vehicle Painting

20/07/201930/05/2013 by jbarton11

Given the name of this journal is “NanoTanks” it is probably time for some tanks. My current build is an ultra-modern force for Hind Commander. Hind Commander is a miniature game focusing on helicopters. The particular force im building is mainly made up of USMC units with some attached USAF ELEMENTS. The E-8C build from … Read more

E-8 Build – Decals & Finishing Up

01/05/202422/05/2013 by jbarton11

Before applying the decals I did a pin wash into the joins on the wings and tail. I used AK-Interactive’s Grey Wash for Kriegsmarine Ships (AK 303) for this step. While not the intended subject for this range, I find this wash is good for light grey models and so perfect for the E-8C. Because … Read more

Brigade Models Buildings

20/07/201916/05/2013 by jbarton11

Just a quick little post to show how Brigade Model’s terrain looks next to some Odzial Osmy 3mm vehicles. Note that the buildings are meant to be in 2mm scale, while the vehicles are in 3mm. As such the buildings are a little small. However, if you put them in little built up areas then … Read more

Soviet Rocket Artillery Battery

20/07/201915/05/2013 by jbarton11

My E-8C project is on hold for a bit while I wait on some more decals arriving. This pause has given me some time to focus on another piece for my Soviet Hind Commander force. Namely, I’ve put together a Rocket Artillery Battery. In Hind Commander these forces are off-table so there are no rules … Read more

E-8 Build – Base Colours

01/05/202401/05/2013 by jbarton11

A bit more progress on the E-8 tonight: I’ve put on all the base colours. I used a grey primer as that’s what looked best when I did some test sprays on a piece of cardboard. Then came a layer of Deck Tan (VMC 70986). I use an airbrush for this type of painting and … Read more

E-8 Build – Colour Research

01/05/202430/04/2013 by jbarton11

The E-8’s paint scheme is pretty simple: they’re grey. There’s some markings and a couple of other bits and pieces, but grey is the definite theme going on with this one. Now I have some grey primer lying around that I could use, but that just seemed too easy. It also doesn’t feel like the … Read more

E-8 Build – Body work update

01/05/202426/04/2013 by jbarton11

The model’s been sitting on my desk for a couple of days and I just noticed a casting defect. The front engine mount is not like the others. I’ve highlighted one of the original pictures below. Not a difficult fix, a couple of minutes with some small side cutting pliers removes the offending metal and … Read more

E-8 Build – Body work

01/05/202425/04/2013 by jbarton11

As a first project we are creating an E-8 JSTARS plane in 3mm (1:600). The E-8 is a modern AWACS plane that’s currently used by the US military. There aren’t any miniatures of the E-8 available at the moment so we will have to get a little creative. Fortunately the E-8 is based on the … Read more