In Your Face, AP Quickshade!

I found a 1 litre tin of dark wood stain at Aldi here in Australia for $8.00, works out at something like GBP 5.15, EUR 6.30, $US 8.40. As AP are still flogging the 250 ml. cans on their website for EUR 25.00 I think you can safley say I won't be buying any more AP Quickshade!

Home-made shading varnish and unwanted guests!

I've created an AP Quickshade-type varnish for about half the price using a 250ml tin of Wattyl estapol and a small bottle of Prooftint. After decanting a small amount of estapol into a glass jar and adding about half a capful of prooftint I've got the shade I wanted for varnishing my creations. I toyed with buying some pre-mixed varnish, but not being sure of the shade in the containers I didn't feel like shelling out for something that wasn't what I was expecting. Plus the pre-mixed shades were all around the $AU35 mark (still cheaper than the $AU45 asking price for AP Quickshade).

My method, though, came in $AU26 ; the estapol was $16 and the prooftint $10. Substantially cheaper than the asking price for AP Quickshade.

I'm happy with the results too; the varnish pools in the folds and crevices, but where the surface is flat, the original colour is still clearly visible. Maybe I let my last can of AP Quickshade get too gluggy, but I found it was obscuring a lot of the detail, especially of dark colours. I'd have to compare it with some of my earlier figures using the AP product to make a fair comparison.

Some of this...

...plus a little of that...

...equals this...

...and this!

Below is one of the unwelcome guests I spotted in the shed when I opened the garage door. It's partner scuttled away under the lawn-mower, but this one stayed in it's nook pretending it wasn't there. I was going to put something close to it for a size reference, but thought the better of it seeing it's a venomous Red-Back Spider, related to the North American Black Widow, apparently!

This one is about the size of the end of my thumb, from knuckle to thumb-tip, approx. 2cm.

Whatever you do, don't tell Mrs. Rosbif as she'll probably burn the shed down to get rid of them and then fumigate the ashes before setting fire to them again, just to be sure ;-)!

Incy-wincy spider and her killer fangs!

Saving Private Ivan?

Nyet!

Private Ivan belongs to the State! His blood is destined to be spilled on the steppes of the Motherland in the Great Patriotic War Against Fascism! (And if his mother says otherwise, we have a space in the gulag just for her).

Commisar Jimski's Soviets are coming on well. I was not happy with the effort I'd put into painting these figures as Jim had undercoated the figures in white, while I usually use black. I find black more forgiving as gaps between the colours don't show up as much, whereas they were glaringly obvious to me with these figures. You are always your own worst critic, but as this is my first commission, I wanted to get it right.

I thought I'd give the first few a coat of Army Painter - Dark just to see how they looked, and lo and behold, the Army Painter magically covers up all the blemishes! I'm quite please with the result; I hope your are too, Jim!

 

But wait; there's more!......more Spanish!

Probably the last Spanish unit for the moment. This one is a generic mid-war unit based on the uniform of Espoz y Mina's guerilla 'divisions'. 

The figures are from HaT's Spanish Guerilla set which also features the armed monk I used on the command base. The officer is a head conversion of the officer figure from HaT's 1808-1812 French line infantry set and the flag bearer is a conversion from the march attack figure.

My kids call them the Hatters and think instead of national cockades, they should have little signs saying 'This model 10/6' a la Alice in Wonderland!

This time I've used the Army Painter - Dark varnish which I'm quite pleased with. I thought it might be too dark, but it's turned out alright. I'll just finish the bases and give them a matt varnish spray and they'll be ready for action!

The full unit in column formation

Advancing and firing figures

Command conversions

Command again

Battalion in line

Supercalafragilisticsexpealidocious!

While Mrs. Rosbif took the junior Rosbifs and Granny Rosbif to see the Mary Poppins stage show yesterday, I got to have the whole day to myself to do with as I pleased! Not a lot to show for it, though, as my hard-earned free time was spent re-touching flaked paint and applying Army painter by brush to the rest of my Peninsula-era French army. All the infantry (bar my regiment of Bardin-uniformed infantry), the command figures, the horse-gun battery and my Hussars are now varnished with Army Painter. To go, I still have the Chasseurs a Cheval, Dragoons, Cuirassiers and the foot gun battery. (As a force for the Spanish theatre, I know my collection shouldn't have Cuirassiers or the 5th Hussars. My excuse is that I sometimes fight Austrians, so they can legitimately be for the 1809 campaign. I do have plans for painting the 1st-3rd Hussars and more dragoons.)

I also converted one of the British command figures from wearing a belgic shako to the more appropriate cocked hat, and tried my hand at making a vineyard row from used matches, corkboard strips and medium flock. See the results below.

Waterloo 1815 mounted officer with HaT Peninsula officer's head

First row of vines. I'll make several rows and flock the bases, too. You can't campaign in Spain without vineyards!

I've also come up with a detachable base for troops in skirmish order, as I find it hard to estimate in inches and using the tape measure can sometimes just be fiddly. Instead of permanently fixing figures to skirmish bases and then swapping them in the midst of battles (not to mention the laborious process of duplicating whole battalions), I've made a 2" skirmish base from sheet metal that my figures stick to, as they all have magnetised bases that keep them in place in the tool-box when transported. I've flocked the edges to match the bases and left the centre bare, so that the figures stick. So now, when skirmish figures are detached from parent units, or whole French battalions are broken into skirmish order, it's just a matter of popping them onto a base and they are the regulation distance from one another and no arguments. The Revell British rifles set also come with detached packs for the action figures, so I added one for each rifleman not wearing a pack.

Skirmish base for rifleman sans figure

With added figure

No after-action report form last week's meeting as it was my turn to do kitchen duty. There were supposed to be at least 3 campaign games scheduled, but due to lack of opponents, there was only one Napoleonic game and it wasn't even campaign related, so all battles had to resolved by the umpire. Fortunately, our battles this round have mostly been resolved in our favour with one outright victory and a couple that the opposition only just managed to save, leaving in a weakened position. I believe this coming week I shall have my first battle of the campaign. So far my role has been more in the diplomatic arena, which I've enjoyed (getting into the role of early 19th c despot) but I am looking forward to a bit of table-top biffo!

Winter

June spells the official start of winter here in Australia and right on cue, the weather gods have brought miserable cold southerly winds and rain up from the Southern Ocean. After a few relatively mild and dry winters, this is something of a shock, but there's nothing like sitting by the fire nice and warm while the rain pelts down outside. I know the northern hemisphereans reading this are saying 'That's not winter!', but this is about as bad as it gets here.

The reason for this digression to things meteorological is that my latest batch of photos were taken indoors because of the foul weather outside. I've used my new Spanish farm buildings as a backdrop, plus a couple of my scratch built trees. The first unit are not Austrians, but a French battalion in white, depicting the short lived 1807 uniform. I've based this unit on the 15e Ligne which participated in the original 1808 campaigns in Spain in their black-faced white uniform. The Army Painter certainly worked a treat with these chaps. Also pictured are my horse and foot batteries and my command figures.

15e Ligne

Command figures

In column of attack

Horse gun battery

Horse guns again

My Divisional command figures

'Monsieur, your horse's arse makes more sense than you!'

Foot gun battery

La belle filles

Converted command figure.

Pointing finger of original has been replaced by Hussar sabre and hilt removed from scabbard.

My first command figure and one of my first mounted figures, too. Horse equipment painted brown, not black. Oops!

I had my first Napoleonic battle since beginning this blog last Friday, but forgot my camera! My Highlanders had their first taste of battle and true to form did not let me down. I had them in line alongside one of my line battalions and was charged by 3 French battalions in column. If my opponent had concentrated all three on one of my lines, instead of sending 2 against my line and 1 against my Highlanders, or spread out so that the remaining 3 battalions could also join the charge, he may have had a chance, but he didn't, and my massed volley ripped his attack to shreds!

Previous to that, our cavalry had been involved in a stoush that left my Hussars reeling, but in following my retreating horse, his Hussars placed their flank point blank against my guns. POW! bye-bye French Hussars!

My rifles and detatched light companies had the better of the initial skirmish combat between the main forces, although in the woods on my right flank, weight of numbers were telling against my highland light infantry. He survived a divisional morale check and withdrew his battered forces to regroup and came up with a clever ploy to discomfort my pursuit; instead of offering a solid line of infantry against my line, he opened a gap just wide enough for his surviving cavalry to gallop through in column, if I was stupid enough to offer him a target (which I almost was!). As it was, I had to put my line infantry into closed column to counter this threat which complicated matters somewhat.

By this stage the game was more or less over, with a moral victory to the British, while on the other half of the table, my partner was having a devil of a time against his French opponent who had stopped the British advance cold and took, lost and retook the village that was central to any advance by either army. In effect the centre of the table was one big pivot point, with one wing of both armies advancing while the other retreated.

This night was a warm up for new members and old ones who hadn't played for a while to familiarise themselves with the rules before we embark on a grand campaign in the next week. Already there is skulduggery afoot with diplomatic shenanigans and disinformation being spread! This'll be a first for me, so stay tuned for more.

Army Painter Quickshade

I've taken the plunge and bought a tin of Army Painter Quickshade - Strong, after seeing the results on other blogs and have experimented with it on one of my French HaT line battalions. It seems to engender strong opinions, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway. I'm still not convinced that it's more economical or more effective than a bigger tin of varnish from the hardware store, but I'll look into that in the future.

I found that the best way to spread it after dipping wasn't the prescribed flicking, but blowing on it after letting the excess drip into the can. I tried the suggestion of holding it with pliers while dipping and flicking, but obviously that's what you should do with metal figures, not plastic. The base of the first figure got a bit mangled by the pliers. The pictures in this posting compare one 12-figure battalion which has been dipped, with one that hasn't. I've then compared a close up of 2 of the same pose.

I know it's not to everyone's taste, but I quite like the effect it gives, especially for the skin. It defines the creases and folds of cloth well too. I like my figures to look a bit campaign-worn and not too shiny and new, so I think I'll keep on dipping the rest of my collection.

Dipped battalion.
Feeling a bit light headed after all that huffing and puffing!

Undipped comparison

Front view comparison. Left undipped, right dipped.
Left figure has light brown over-trousers, while the right figure has white trousers dirtied by the dipping process.

Rear view of the same pair