Gaming Room part 1

Finally, I have made a start on the gaming room. Over the last 6 months or so I've played a fair few games on other people's tables. The one thing I've learned is that the scenery of the table-top battleground can make the biggest difference to a game. It needs to be functional, pleasing on the eye, and convincing(in a caricature sort of way).

War Veteran

I took a trip to another local beach/port at Shoreham, to get some more ideas for my Seaford project. The main interest was seeing if the area had the makings of a WW2 German invasion scenario, which it did due to the railway bridge, port, deep(ish) river estuary etc.

India Rifles

Well, I finally got around to finishing them. (Although they need a little more inking and basing). I can't say more about them at the moment, except they are for my Seaford project. I can't tell you about the Seaford project as its top secret and I'd have to kill you if you found out. OK, I'll throw you a teaser.....

These are a WW1 retained India unit, that will fight on the south coast of England in WW2. There are other clues elsewhere on this site......hint: South coast?, WW2? Also think of a war film with Michael Caine in it (yes I know that doesn't narrow it down much).

All will be revealed....slowley, over several postings.

A change of plan

I haven't posted anything for a month as I couldn't paint again. I had a little bit of treatment that improved my eyesight, which then meant I needed my glasses changed again! But I'm all set to paint again now. I've just started on the following projects:

• 28mm India Rifles for my "Seaford" project
• 28mm Rolls Royce armoured car
• 54mm Sikh infantry
• 54mm Hyderabad State Force Cavalry Brigade
• 40K Cyber hounds (hard to explain these!)

Thanks to a couple of introductory games with some local gamers (big thanks to Shaun, Paul and Tom), I am now really into WW2 and a big fan of Crossfire rules. Also, against all my intentions to not impulse buy, I bought some Bolt Action Falshcumoger, Filshmergens, Fulshjoggers, German Paratroopers. I would try to mitigate this lapse of discipline with an excuse, but it would be a poor one involving aliens or ash clouds - so I won't. I guess I shouldn't even mention the North Star figures I accidentally purchased on the internet, while testing to see if my PayPal account was funtioning correctly.

Anyways, work is busy this week, so I'm just priming stuff. But next weekend will be a full-on painting weekend. I am also going to impose a painting points/reward system on myself (infantry = 1, large stuff = 5 etc) in an effort to a) get some of my collection actually painted up, and b) limit the growth of my unpainted collection! Watch this space.

Quickshade Soft tone versus Dark tone

I decided to have a dabble with the Army Painter Quickshade products. I chose "Soft Tone" and "Dark Tone" (at £18 for each!). After checking various websites for examples of miniatures painted using Quickshade, I came to the conclusion that the Soft tone would not be effective on dark colours. So I painted up 4 Empire Pike men in very bright colours as test models. Basically this went something like:

• White undercoat.
  
• yellow & green for the tunic/pants.
• brown for the pike shaft, boots, straps.
• Chain mail for the breastplate, helmets, pike point.
• Elf flesh for skin.

I used very bright Bilious Green and 2 slightly different yellows (John Inman Lemon and Freddy Mercury Sunburst I think). After this I applied Dark tone to 2 of the models and Soft tone to the other 2. I used a brush to apply the QuickShade (I'll post another article about the "dipping" method). I'll let others judge the results from the above pictures. What I learned was:

• Apply good coats of base colour as the quick shade will show up weak coverage.
• Quickshade darkens everything, so use brighter/lighter colours.
• You need to brush away excessive pools of Quickshade that form on the model.
  
• Thin Quickshade with turps or white spirit - NOT Water.

Overall I think the Dark Tone is the better shade, although the Soft Tone will take the edge off flat areas of bright colour. Dark Tone exaggerates recessed detail - not a bad thing for miniatures (especially for cartoon/Manga stuff). QuickShade is definitely good for painting up large lots of rank and file troops to gaming table standard.