Apologies to regular viewers - this is a bit of a rant.
As part of my Bolt Action purchases I got a British machine gun and crew. I couldn't quite see from online pictures how it all went together.
Luckily in the box there was card which said go to their webpage for instructions.
However when I tried to go there I got the message.
"This is somewhat embarrassing isn't it. .... Either it as been moved or you typed a wrong address."
And I thought is this a message for me as if I've made a mistake, or about them not having the advertised page available. But if it was them, then I'd expect an apology for it not being available and a redirect. Then I thought, what a bunch of arrogant smug sanctimonious gits. You provide a guide to a page then insult people who follow that guide.
At the moment I'm not sure whether to buy anything else for Bolt Action, or from Warlord Games. Maybe I'm just being too reactionary, but stuff them; I'm a customer and I expect an advertised service. Bah humbug!
Rant mode off.
Normal service will be resumed soon.
Some chaps at the club have been getting into Bolt Action and we played a game a couple of weeks back. It was a good game a good to see 28mm figures on the table.
And so with the voices calling and the waves dragging me down into another project, I went on ebay and bought some British stuff. The plastics will take a while to assemble and paint, but I was lucky enough to get 8 metal figures, so I thought I'd base them and do them as a paint test exercise.
Here's what I got (so far...)
Here are the metal figures based and undercoated white. I don't know the manufacturer but they are nice sculpts.
And here they are after being sprayed with Vallejo air golden brown. I reckoned this was a reasonable starting point.
Then I applied a different wash to each figure just to see the effect for shading. Black was just a little too dark and the Army Painter stuff a bit too light. About right was Devlon Mud / Agrax or the Vallejo Umber so I reckon these will be used on the rest of the models.
And a last pic for now with better lighting showing a start on highlighting and painting the faces and packs and all that. Turning out not too bad so far.
And just to show another project slightly delayed by all these new things. I hope to finish these Napoleonic Brits in the next week or so.
More pics later.
Here's just a little update. Mostly this is just me finally settling on colour schemes and the like.
First up are the horses and armour choices. Picture 1 has the horse at the back left in Italian armour and the other two in German. At this point I changed my mind on the Italian.
So I replaced the Italian armour with German. And now I'm thinking German will do. I've also decided that only 3 horses will be armoured. I was going to do 6, but I reckon now I want to see more of the horse.
Here are the test examples for the bows. Livery of blue / yellow and white / blue for one unit. I'll make a start on actually painting them soon.
And for the second unit, blue/ red and red/ white. They should make a decent show on the table.
The armoured chappies. I regard the armour as pretty much done. Just the boots and belts and other colourful stuff to do.
The standard bearers. I wasn't too sure about a colour for the jacks on the two chaps on the outside. Eventually I decided just to go with basic metal plates. Colour on the figures will come from boots and belts and eventually from the flags.
This Thursday at the Perth club will see us kick off our Lion Rampant campaign. As always it will be interesting to see if there will be a slow start to grab territory or if players will just get 'stuck-in' for the games and the potential glory.
I have two projects getting painted just now, the Napoleonic British for a friend and the 28mm Wars of the Roses stuff. I'll post pictures of British when they have some more paint splashed on them, but for now here are the horses for the Wars of Roses / Lion Rampant forces.
I always start with a white undercoat then apply different shades as something between a wash and a normal paint coat. The idea is to get the paint flowing freely so it settles in the folds and creates it's own highlights and shadows.
I still use the Colour Party horse paints I bought many moons ago as my main paints. Then I just add whatever other browns are on hand. I start with the lightest bay colour, add a little darker bay or chestnut colour and do another horse or two, then add more mid or dark brown and do another horse, and so on. Gradually I work though the horses with each slightly different.
At this point I don't care about the horse furniture as it can be painted over later. My focus here is always to get a good looking finish to the coats.
The next stage is to add the shading to the legs, mane and tail. I used commercial washes this time instead of my usual DIY approach. I had to apply several coats of washes to get a good effect. Umber was a good wash, sepia was not, and black was the best. The idea here is to get the darker hair effect with the wash but to still allow the base colour to show through.
The next stage is to add the leg and face markings. From a Historex catalogue I had years ago, I've always remembered them saying that horses rarely had 1 leg or all 4 with markings. So I tend to do my horses with two or three legs with markings.
And believe it or not, that is essentially it. There are little details to finish off. I have to go over some of the looser strands of manes with a smaller brush to make sure they get painted darker. Then the eyes and then the hooves on the legs with markings will be painted lighter.
I don't know how long all this took because I paint other things and do different bits on different days, but these 11 horses probably took less than an hour to get to this stage.
And I'm only working on 11 horses because I'm going to replace the head on horse number 12. I thought it was smart to have a head with fancy armour and plumes, but then when I came to paint it, I changed my mind and wanted something more simple.
More later.
