Tales of a hobby butterfly

Thought it would be cool to add some stone walls.

Hunted out some scrap foambord and marked out the bricks with a pen then using a ball of tin foil rolled it over the board to give a stone texture.

Been getting interested in guards of traitors toll but am lacking in space to store a town full of buildings.

So have decided to work on some scratch built fantasy buildings using scraps and bits and bobs from the wobbly wobbly craft pile of doom.

The main plan is they will need to fold  away for storage.

If anyone fancys a go at making some for their own town the pdfs of the templates I came up with are here

At the moment they look pretty plain the next step is to add some texture with the help of coffee sticks, some textured filler and some plastic packaging windows they should look a bit cooler.

They are held together with blu tac which is not ideal, Rhi had the great idea of using velcro pads to hold them together so am going to pick some up and try that after work

I think the plan at the moment is to make 5 to start with, will try adjusting the height of the lower section so they are not too uniform, also may be able to make single story houses just by using the top part. It

Had 2500 points of empire of man for the old world built and undercoated for a while now.

The soldiers are from a kick starter oakbound studios did a while ago a few 3d prints of older models have been scattered in as champions

Was having a real problem deciding what colours to paint the dapper chaps in pufling pants, so decided to ask on the house of water discord the first answer was almost instant from Gerry with Averland so that solved that.

It was then time to hunt out the yellow and black speed paint.

I believe Averlands banner should be a big red sun but went with a griffin as the unit has the griffin banner which increases the rank bonus, I think the only way these dudes will survive is by getting as big a rank bonus as possible to help win or draw combats.

These little chaps gave me something to do on a damp afternoon.

2 squads of 5 ork bikers

A squad of buggies and another squad of boar boys.

Speed paints are great for models of this scale.

Now these units are done I can treat myself to painting up a gargant which I have been looking forward to

Thought I would start the new year by hunting out an old project I started a while ago.

I kind of fancy the idea of completing armies for epic games through the ages starting with the 80s adeptus titanicus through the editions to the fancy new legions imperialus.

As each set of forces is completed I can give each set of rules a go to see if they are as cool a 9 year old me remembers them or if its rose tinted glasses.

After a fun day sifting through the bitz box of doom I hunted out loads of epic bits and bobs.

The titanicus titans turned up first which was lucky then I uncovered a tub of 1st edition space marine dudes, they had not fared so well and quite a few of them had been squished  by the chunky land raiders so I decided to 3d print some old school marines to replace them.

I split the Rhinos, land raiders and whirlwinds up equally and then devided them down into the formations from the 1st edition space marine book.

Then I added 2x tactical 1x assault and 1 x devastator platoon to each force

These two forces should let me play most of the scenarios in the rule book. In the advanced section of the rules it gives the option to add titans from titanicus so can add some titans to bulk up the points for larger battles.

Painting epic stuff is great with speedpaints was able to get this all painted up in a couple of evenings.

The vehicles do not need to be on bases but I stuck them to washers so they stick to magnetic sheets for storage I don’t want any more squished marines.

These warlord titans had a good bath in dettol stripping back layers and layers of paint.

Decided to magnetise the weapons and they are now ready for some games of old school adeptus  titanicus

The sculpts are still awesome to paint and I love the models with their iconic beetle backs and interchangeable weapons. The card void sheild trackers in the bases even survived the years of neglect.

Next step is to get some second edition forces in the go.

I already have a chunk of space wolves painted and ready to roll.

But I feel the need for an epic waaaaagh so got to work stripping and sorting out my orks of doom.

With the bits I have I can make a core unit of snake bite boyz supported by boar boyz and 2 units of squiggoths although they are not 2nd edition sculpts I’m sure the orks won’t mind.

The next boyz mob will be evil sunz looning around on battle waggons supported by warbikes mobs and some other battle waggon types.

The special choices will be taken up by a slasher gargant and a Warboss.

Recently I have had a fancy to play some small scale Napolionic skirmishes on the table top, with that in mind I set about deciding on which country to build a force for. As always a new army starts with a rummage through the pile of shame.

I found some cool stuff, the warlord peninsula veterens set, some spannish gurillas on horses an old victrix cannon with no crew and some thugs and deserters from the silver bayonet.

It was with this last find that I decided rather than going with the 95th rifles and the brave charismatic Richard Sharpe I would go with Sergeant Hakeswills robbers and rogues, a vicious band of thugs and cutthroats plundering baggage trains and chasing pay chests not caring if its British, French or Spannish gold.

Turns out I had enough chaps to make a 400 point force for shakos and bayonets this rule set should work perfectly for the small scale skirmishes I have in my minds eye.

The only other thing I needed to do was have the whole thing built and painted in 5 days as I had a new game arriving at the end of the week and I new if it was not done by then it would slip back into the shame pile.

With that in mind I went with a simple undercoat, block out colours with speedpaints followed by a bone drybrush then army painter strong tone and a matt varnish. Bam 💥  job done.

The force itself is based on a spannish list as that opens up options for gurilla infantry and reluctant line infantry which I think will fit the idea of the small force perfectly.

The small force will be lead by the French deserter pot au feu  who turned up in sharpes enemy

He is ment to be in a green uniform but I forgot so now he wears a nice red uniform probably stolen from an officer he shot I’m the back or looted from a baggage train.

These chaps were mostly painted over a weekend once again with the superb army painter speed paint, strong tone wash and some drybrushing.