It seems a lot of people have the same difficulty I have with water feature terrain. I’ve already sold my first stagnant pond on TradeMe for the reasonable sum of $17. So this weekend I built this larger pond and put it on auction. I figure I’ll keep doing this until people stop buying because I can always use the terrain myself. All the earnings naturally go towards purchasing more models and/or modelling supplies.

I’ve also been stealthily assembling 6pdr Portees and the 17/25 pdr guns I have as the June 1 kick off approaches for the PitYak painting contest.

And to think I spent all that cash buying dollies when I could have just made my own. Ah well, I didn’t actually spend that much much…and twisting wire takes time!

Well, here it is in all it’s glory: the next 6 months of my modelling life.

The budgeting works quite nicely and is definitely affordable. However the painting schedule terrifies me. Even broken down on a weekly basis it’s incredibly daunting. Keep in mind that it takes me around 3 evenings to paint one 28mm figure. To be cranking out 5-10 15mm figures a week along with gun carriages and vehicles is definitely going to be a challenge. Still at the end of it I will either be locked away in a Bedlam or a master of 15mm figure painting! Huzzah!

The only down side of this cunning plan is that completing the Mordheim table is probably going to be delayed for some time…or maybe I’ll be able to squeeze it in for a little variety?

There’s a contest brewing on the Pityak forums that involves a 6 months modelling project. This seems like the ideal opportunity to get my lazy FOW force onto their feet. The photo shows what I’ve painted already which is basically just vehicles and a few Universal Carrier crew members.

I’ve already planned my 1500pt list and purchased most of it what I have left to buy is:

• 2 British Rifle Platoons. 2 x BR742, 2 x $28.
• 1 Universal Carrier. 1 x BR210, 1 x $16 or 1 x BR212, 1 x $14.
• 2 15cwt Trucks. 1 x BR432 (resin), 1 x $14.
• 2 Quad gun tractors. 1 x BR277 (resin), 1 x $14.
• 3 25-pdrs artillery pieces. 2 x BR574, 2 x $26.

For a grand total of $150, spread over 6 months that’s $25 a month which is well within my budget. The tricky part is going to be assembling and painting this lot in 6 months! The major sticking point for me is painting and basing the infantry nicely.

The work I have to do over six months is:

Paint (in order of difficulty):

• 1 White scout car and team.
• 2 Stuart ‘Honey’ tanks.
• 1 Armored car.
• 4 Quad gun tractors.
• 2 cwt Trucks.

Assemble and Paint (in order of difficulty):

• 3 ENTIRE Rifle platoons. That’s 9 bases each of Infantry for 27 bases in total! This is the most daunting part of the project.
• 3 25 pdr guns and teams.
• 2 17/25 pdr guns and teams.
• 3 6pdr Portrees and teams.
• 2 Universal carriers.

The Mordheim table is seeing a lot of gaming recently…and every time I play on it my desire to finish the whole thing ratchets up another notch. Reiklanders versus Undead last night playing the ‘What’s Yours is Mine’ scenario by Pancreas Boy. There was a clash on the central bridge featuring discharging a blunderbuss, lots of ineffective archer fire and some evil magicks. The Reiklanders prevailed only because of some terrible dice rolling on the part of the Undead which was unusual because I’m a legend for crappy dice rolling! It’s always a bit demoralising though when the dice seem to be against you…

These shots were taken using a nice folding mini-tripod I picked up from TradeMe last week. The tripod makes it ridiculously easy to take non-blurry ‘eye level’ shots of the action – particularly beause my table is raised about 3′ on foam blocks.

This is just a couple of photos of my workspace for no particular reason (and people say blogs are self-indulgent). Currently my hobby occupies one half of a two car garage. It’s stinking hot in summer (acrylic paints dry very quickly) , cold in winter (good atmosphere for a game of Mordheim) and is occasionally occupied by a friend or relative’s car. However it does have lots of bench space, an old couch and a storage cupboard. I’ve also found the noggings are excellent shelf space, provided you don’t mind 4 inch wide shelves. They hold terrain painting supplies as well as various unfinished buildings. The whole area is usually a terrible mess. I suspect that’s because this hobby is a creative one and I scratch build a lot, or maybe I’m just a messy bugger.

My gaming table is an ex-chocolate factory steel and rimu table which is sturdy enough to hold any amount of weighty Hirst Arts based plaster terrain. It also doubles as a work-area as you can tell from this shot. Look carefully and you can spot the balsa ship, the various unfinished Mordheim canal pieces, a cardboard box packed with 2000pts of unpainted Vampire Counts and the Games Workshop paint station my wife purchased for me (in a successful attempt to stop my mess from spreading into the house). My toddler son absolutely loves getting into the garage these days. He stands on those empty 40L plastic pails to get up to table level. This morning I introduced him to the pleasure of sawing up balsa beams with a (blunt) Tamiya hobby saw.

He also enjoys re-organising my yoghurt containers of cast Hirst Arts blocks which occupy almost all of my other work bench. Between this bench and the cupboard I stack all my basic terrain building supplies. That’s 1mm, 2mm and 4mm balsa sheet, 3mm and 5mm MDF and lots of 5mm foam card (aka artist’s mounting board) scrap. The cupboard is reserved for dice, rulers, rulebooks, White Dwarves, completed terrain and painted figures. The painted portion of my 2000pts Imperial Guard force lives in those carboard filing boxes on top of the cupboard. It’s been a while since they’ve come down from there too.

Anyway, that’s my workspace.

I’ve finally got around to breaking out the drybrushes for the Balsa ship. Here’s the usual ‘three drybrushes’ scheme I use for painting balsa. First, prime everything black then with a 2.5cm hog’s bristle brush drybrush with Resene’s ‘Barista’. This colour is similar to Games Workshop’s ‘Scorched Brown’ but considerably less ruddy.

Then drybrush a second coat of Resene’s ‘Root Beer’ which is an almost perfect match for GW’s ‘Bestial Brown’. This coat is applied as vigorously as the first, although make sure your brush is really dry. I typically give it a good number of swipes on a large ‘palette’ of scrap cardboard first.

Finally apply a light drybrushing of Resene’s ‘Sandcastle’ which is basically a light sand or khaki colour. There’s no real match in the GW range…a blend of ‘Bleached Bone’ and ‘Commando Khaki’ would be close though. Finally break out the detail brushes and start well, detailing! The windows and trim on the ship need to be detailed yet.

The more astute reader may realise this is exactly the same scheme I used to paint the WHFB modular Fortress. However because of the different textures and the amount of paint the surface captures while drybrushing it appears quite different when applied to plaster than it does to balsa wood.

I’ve also thrown together some rigging from balsa dowel, bbq skewers, brass eyelets, epoxy glue and ship modeller’s nails and ‘rigging’ string. The masts have yet to be drybrushed so they’re just primed in this photo. Right, now the ship is nearing completion I really have to finish those Mordheim canal tiles.