Feeling a nudge towards Sludge

So, I made a bit of a jump forward in time. I have been focussing on getting stuff done more than documenting it lately. Apologies for that. That said, I’m quite pleased with how it all turned out. The photos may all seem a bit dark, and that is partly because I have terrible lighting in my home for photographing minis. It is also because of the very dark paint scheme I went with.

Making more sludge

In my related terrain project I briefly talk about how I made sludge for basing my army. As I mentioned there, I used a mixture of even parts of wall filler and wood glue, to which I added black and brown acrylic paint, some flock and some sand. Compared to last time I used much more flock and sand, and I do feel that this made the basing look grittier, which was a good thing. At the end I sprinkled a bit of flock on a few bases to break up the brown.

The whole army (apart from five bases of line infantry) were done in an evening, which wasn’t bad at all. It was a pain to get the sludge between two ranks of infantry and between the horses. To do that I first glued on one rank/horse, surrounded that with sludge and then glued on the next rank/horse. This meant, however, that I had one wobbly mini on there while trying to fill out the rest of the base with the muddy mess.

Yes. I could have waited for it to dry, but pah!

Once dried, I think the result was better than anticipated. Basing really does tie an army together! You notice that especially with this army, which is actually an amalgam of different eras: ACW, Napoleonics, ECW and some medieval knights!

I think the dragoons might be my favourite unit, but all in all I think all turned out pretty well, especially considering how quickly I went through them (granted, over an extended period). It’s amazing how far a black prime, white drybrush and some speed paints take you!

I’m still missing two arcanists and two officers. I haven’t found any suitable miniatures among my sprues, unfortunatly. Especially for the arcanists. I might turn to my FDM printer again, like I did with my foot knights.  Oh, I also still need two flags to attach to the bannerless standard bearers.

I might also just leave these last details for now and continue with the second army. The future will show!

I started off with a unit of line infantry. These are multi-based, even in the regular 28mm version of Sludge, where they recommend three minis per 40mm base. Instead, I am going for ten minis in two ranks on a 32mm base.

Yes, I just took a line and chopped it in half. This looks surprisingly well at a distance and I’m not bothering to fix arms with green stuff unless I really have to.

In the background you can also see my initial idea for the Jagers. I’m planning to also multibase these, with two minis per 20mm base. I’m not sure which minis I’m going to use as Jagers exactly. More on that in a future post!

The game is called Sludge. It is set in a post-apocalyptic future of endless waves of soldiers grinding each other down on mud-ridden battlefields. I therefore am looking for a colour scheme that fits this setting. I want also want it to be stark and dark.

In fact, I’m reusing the trick from my previous Killteam project, where I have a black basecoat with a light drybrush of white, over which I paint mostly Speed Paints.

The Dictionary of Color Combinations by Haishoku Soukan. I bought this little gem of a book at the local museum. I had already imagined to use a darkish red and grey for my first army. Flipping through the three-colour section I came across the above combination with brown.

Yes, I’m not going for the exact tints the author is suggesting. I’m going for an approximation.

The four images above show the dry-brushed starting point and the finished concept for the line infantry. I do like it, but I’m thinking to leave the cross-belts (or whetever they’re called) with the white drybrush, to introduce a bit more contrast to the model.

In fact, like I did below. Note that I haven’t painted the guns for most of the minis yet and I want to add a splash of Nuln oil on the metal afterwards. Because dark ‘n stark.

That’s it for now. I’m now slightly distracted by a box of Sorcerer Kings First Blood, which I intend to play with on 2 October.

There once was a man, he was Dutch,

He had miniatures, oh! Way too much!

So, he put them online, but just for a time,

And kitbashed two armies for Sludge.

(The rhyme works best with a slight Dutch pronunciation of Sludge…)

Some time ago I saw that someone had used an ECW Epic battles sprue to make some Turnip13.5 minis. This idea apparently stuck with me. So when I was getting rid of stuff, I got inspired instead.

I started off with the following sprues:

• Three Napoleonic sprues (French, Prussian, and British) for Waterloo Epic Battles
• An ACW Epic Battles sprue, assembled and partially painted

To my shame, I went and bought even more WI sprues second hand through the interwebs:

• One ECW cavalry sprue
• One ECW Scotch infantry sprue
• Another ACW infantry sprue
• Another English Napoleonic cavalry sprue

The shame doth not end, for I’m actually expecting another set of sprues to come in via the post. I traded these for some of the miniatures I did get rid of via the Hobby Swap Shop in the Discord.

This should give me enough for most of the infantry, cavalry and cannon for two armies!

So what is the plan? I checked the Sludge rules and found that a suggested size for a ‘standard and interesting’ game is 350 points per side. So I made the following army list to start with:

Command

Commander – free
Bodygrd (2) – 20
Officer (2) – 40
Arcanist (2) – 20
——+
80

Infantry

Line infantry (5) – 50
Line infantry (5) – 50
Shock troops (5) – 25 (elite)
with Grenades – 5
Foot knights (5) – 50 (elite)
Jagers (5) – 25
——+
205

Cavalry

Light cavalry (5) – 25
Lancers – 5
——+
30

Artillery

Field gun (1) 30

——
345 TOTAL

The idea is that this will be the basic list for both armies. I might swap the Arcanists for a Chaplain and the Lancers for Dragoons for the other army, just to make it a bit different, but let’s just get one army done first.