Otter way to go

So the time came to set off on holiday!

We got to the boat, and before we set off I set him up near the driving (?) seat.

And there he sat for most of the week as we sleepily floated around North East Anglia.

Until our last full day… where I thought I should get a couple of pics on the mooring seeing as the category I was shooting for was the Outside one!  So, not wanting to drop him into the drink I popped him into the leg pouches of my shorts… hopped over the side… and realised that the model had snapped off his base 🙁

I grumpily took a couple of “nature”shots before going back on board!

When home I used the incident to tidy up around his feet and hopefully make the base look a little cleaner. I still need to rim the base black again and then look to the rest of the crew but for now this mini is finished!

Now I didn’t document my progress, mainly as I always forget, but more because I hadn’t really planned to start! If you want a painting guide there are far better people than me for the task!

After cleaning the model I thought about how I wanted to base the mini. I had an idea years back of putting some pirate models (not these but heyho) on bases that looked like decking of a ship so that the approach I went for.

The first step was to remove the puddle base from the mini as closely as I could.

A while ago I “liberated” some coffee stirrers for the task, so found a couple and just started eyeballing them to fit into the slight “inner” bit of the base. I superglued the Otter to the base with out pinning (FORBODING) and got him based.

I made use of a weekly D&D game to get the bulk of the painting done (the joys of trying to introduce kids to the game means there is a good amount down time!) Here is a pic of where I got to.

I got him finished off on the Monday, and then covered him in Army Painter dip, great for sealing over the gen 1 speed paints.

I then matt varnished him and then done?  NO! Once again, despite a rather warm day… I got frosting, making a mess of the job.

Thankfully Gerry came to the rescue, suggesting that gloss spray followed by another matt should sort it – which it kinda did, just needed a little touch up here and there.

Another year and so far another failing attempt at doing a Spring Clean Challenge i was looking for something small to procrastinate with.

My local gaming club are going through a Burrows and Badgers period which is great but i already had too many projects on my list for this year, but i could resist digging out a spur of the moment show purchase from a couple of years back – a good about of Piratical animals from the B&B range.

So far the only time previously that i had opened them up was for a demonstration of my deadzone terrain (using kids magnet toys) and as i had left my DZ army in the car i grabbed these as a “practical” show and tell after testing the stability with a tin of kidney beans – Science!

I was further inspired as a week or two before we were going on holiday to the Norfolk Broads, for a boating holiday so why not paint a pirate and take them with me on our voyage of the high seas (the broads are slightly tidal and we could have gone to Yarmouth – spoilers we didnt but we could have)