Month: January 2018

“Setting The Scene” by Pat Smith

~ Colonel Mustard ~ Leave a comment

I was lucky enough to order a copy of Pat Smith’s awesome book “Setting The Scene” before Christmas and it turned up on my doorstep recently. What a happy way to start the New Year!

Now I have always been a big fan of Pat’s amazing 28mm modelling on his Wargaming With A Silver Whistle blog and this new production just continues on Pat’s excellent work. I am not a 28mm modeller and was not planning to do any Winter games or scenes right now, but none of that matters. There are so many good ideas and tips and inspirational photos this book is not to be missed if you are a keen wargamer and modeller who likes to build stuff. This is relevant to whatever scale or period you are interested in, but I guess even more so if you are cemented in World War Two like me.

Pat covers many aspects of terrain building from creating a mat, making trees, rivers, bridges and also tips on painting vehicles and figures. So much eye candy and amazing photos of his stunning results I cannot help but keep flicking through the pages. If you are looking for some inspiration and a standard of terrain to aspire to then I suggest you sign up for the reprint which I am guessing will get a run. Drop Pat a note on his blog and get your copy!

Setting The Scene

Walls Walls Walls

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After building my Loic Neveu terrain bits and pieces I found I still had some of his low country walls. So striking with my hot iron I quickly glued them all down to a piece of 3mm MDF to make a rough two field kind of configuration. Then a layer of PVA and fine sand, plus some rougher sand nearer the ends of the walls.

I wanted some random scrubland so used a few different types of grass, flock and tufts to cover the field areas. The walls were undercoated black and then highlighted. In retrospect I should have used more browns for the stonework as it came out a bit too black and white. I may change it. These are quite small walls and I realise I should have put a 20mm soldier in here to give you an idea of scale. But these will definitely get some usage in my next games.

 

More AB Figures British Infantry

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 2 Comments

I finished up another squad of AB Figures British Infantry this week. I am slowly replacing all my plastic figures with metal ones. The AB ranges are just the best. Not much else to say! There are enough different packs to make up plenty of squads without repeating the same guy twice. The detail is so clear on these figures it makes them a real pleasure to paint. I find that just blocking in the colours and then doing some highlighting is good enough. I did buy a proper set of British Army Uniform colours, shadow, base and highlight, which has helped a lot. Trying to mix a British khaki is really tricky so i stopped trying to do it!

These guys are all based on Australian 10 cent coins which are not only useless for anything else but perfect size for individual bases. If you don’t own any AB Figures in your collection you really need to change that. I pick up all mine from Eureka Miniatures in Melbourne, they have such a great range of World War Two figures, its tempting to keep loading up. Next up i need to paint three PIAT teams to try and finish my British company. Check out my pictures below, i am still struggling to take half decent photos with my phone. Lighting seems to be difficult with small figures.

 

More Wrecked Vehicle Terrain Bits

~ Colonel Mustard ~ 3 Comments

More terrain bits from Loic Neveu that i have finally painted up. I mounted them on MDF first as they are quite delicate around the edges. They are nicely detailed and paint up well with out too much trouble. I used plenty of weathering powder to create a dirty, rusty look. Not much else to add. They fit well into my 1/72 scale stuff and will provide extra cover in my war torn urban situations. You could also use them as objective markers too. Loic has a bucket of interesting stuff on his web site https://neveu.blog4ever.com/articles

Just a quick blog as the photos are self explanatory!