Trewets Spring clean challenge

So she who must be obeyed came to a table top games convention with me before COVID19 hit the world.

We saw a few great games being show cased around the hall,but one captured her heart.

”This would be so great to play with the grandkids “ was the hook that backing the Kickstarter was floated on.

Having been on one of the OTT boot camps before and chatting to AZ might have had something to do with this also.Just saying ! AZ your to blame ! Warren you are guilty of some of the enthusiasm to do with gaming too!

I have looked over several of the other projects on knightly knights to decide on a scheme  for the representation of heraldry for my knights.

Some of the minis are in ‘white’ armour,that is to say they are in metal with no tabards ,surcoats or padded jacket. Simply wash or dip and varnish and they are done.

The problem with the rest is that knights around the 1400-1450’s used individual heraldry on the battle field ,especially the french. I have 36 to paint and I admit to being a lazy painter of bulk troops.

I have looked at some jpegs of heraldry and decided on doing a full troop with the same shield , the minis will be used more for fantasy games than historic ones so it does not matter too much.

colours in heraldry mean some thing

Red (Gules) = Military fortitude and also magnanimity. Blue (Azure) =Loyalty and in addition, truth. Black (Sable) =Constancy, and sometimes grief. Green (Vert) = Hope, joy and also loyalty in love. Purple (Purpure) Royal majesty, sovereignty and also justice.Yellow depicts GOLD (Or)and white depicts SILVER(Argent)

According to the English heritage web site colour should not be put on colour in heraldry.

In a lot of shield designs the use of animals is quite wide spread and I was thinking of using some decals that I have to make the whole aesthetic more uniform,and easier to pull off.

I have a choice of black or red space wolf head decals,so according to the heraldry rules these can only go on a white or yellow shield . As the army will be fantasy the rules can be broken. I like red armies on the table top,there is something about them looking good.
So I and gravitating towards a red ‘field ‘with a black Wolf head  ‘charge’.

More monster mayhem for the role play.

Most of my figures are used as war game pieces or role play minis .

So they get a fair bit of handling.

There are several ways I protect my hobby darlings, depending on the speed and effect I need at any given time.

Bulk armies tend to get base colour primed then base colour details added and dipped in army painter dip or washed with ink for a shade layer.This is followed by one or 2 varnish layers.

If Army Painter dip was used it will be 1 layer of anti shine Matt varnish.This is almost indestructible on the table top.As Army painter is polyurethane based.

If it was washed with ink then 2 layers of  Matt varnish

If I paint a hero figure using blending or other technics I will gloss 1 layer and 1 layer of Matt to knock back the shine.( gloss tends to be tougher than other varnish,so I use that layer as added protection.)

Here are the armies I have spring cleaned and varnished to date

In one photo you will see some shrooms that are going into my D&D dungeon when we get to play soon.I am also scratch building some blue tokens for the oozes that are also going to be there. These are made by mixing aquarium turquoise stones with a generous amount of PVA in a pot and spooning them onto an empty base.Job done .

Two different spiders one painted with colour shift paint and the other following a untuned tutorial on coconut crab camouflage . I am thinking of getting another and using white and blue  camouflage for a phase spider.

I have worked in the motor trade in the past and you would be amazed at some of the horror stories that I have heard about people using rattle cans!

1 Point the nozzle away from you( don’t spray your face)

2 They are pressurised . DO NOT heat with an open flame or similar heat source ( NO FIRE!) and don’t dispose of in the bonfire , they WILL explode.

3 Depending on the paint you may need a spirit thinner like meths or white spirit to clean up after use.
4 They will over spray( spray past the object you want to paint and cover stuff you don’t ) so either contain the spray in a box or cover everything you Don’t want sprayed or even both.If you are precious about delicate skin use gloves!It might also save on your cleanup !

5 Some paints have toxic carrier and solvents so please read the label and if in doubt spray outside with a mask to protect you.

Now with that out the way. Rattle cans spray better when they are warmer than the surroundings. They are pressurised so more heat will increase the pressure in the can giving finer spray and more paint out the can than normal.

To heat a rattle can place it in hot water for about ten mins ( not boiling water ) you have to pick it up later !Shake well as instructed and follow the instruction about the distance you spray at.Spray in a side to side motion starting away from the figure and finish off the figure.

The closer the more paint that will contact your mini.

Atmospheric conditions can affect your spraying. If it is too windy the paint will gust away from the thing you are trying to paint. Some paints and varnishes are adversely affected by moisture.

So pick a nice warm day with little wind and little humidity.

The romans got the same treatment that the Knights got, careful clipping from the spruce and gluing together. They also had a very very small amount of ‘flash’ around the shields which was easily scrapped away with the back of my knife.

Both the Warlord and Perry miniatures are very well molded with very little flash and as an old modeller this is less than from a metal mini, and much easier to do.

the Roman and Knight are mostly metal as a majority colour so I primed both with a metal primer from Army Painter.This save base colour painting most of the mini.

You don’t have to use the Army painter cans you can use standard car body primer ,either the normal stuff or one for plastic.Just make sure it is not the high fill stuff as this is formulated to fill gaps.It will fill the detail on a figure with ease.

I made a start on the Roman auxiliary unit for wash, colour and water slide decal.

The Perry miniature knights are the first project started.

below are a few photos of the box and a miniature spruce.

Next up was the building of the plastic Knights.
clip them carefully from the spruce making sure that the glue points for the arms fits flush to the body.

I use a liquid cement to glue these together, they are a bit fiddly but with practice it got easier.

As I use most of my wargamming stuff for several different systems the models were glued onto 2p pieces,so that they can be used separately or rank and filed in a movement tray( WARBASE are MY go to for movement trays) https://warbases.co.uk/

the pennies also give the figure some weight limiting the figures falling over.

I test sprayed the trays a green to see how one would look.

Over the Covid 19 lockdown I have painted a lot of my projects that have been on the back burner or packed away for extended time in cupboards with the promise of “ I will finish that later”

So the list as follows is…

find , build and paint roman army from Warlord  (it is somewhere in there! Honest!)

Build and paint Perry miniatures knights box from way back when.

Paint the Super Fantasy Brawl figures so that the gran kids have a colourful game to play and beat NaN and Grandad

Finish the elder wind riders locked away some time in the 1990’s

Paint  some single figures to break the monotony of the bulk painting.

Monsters for the forth coming D&D campaign must be sourced and painted.