My Santa Clause Project & Happy New Year!

2014 was my first year blogging, and it was also my first year taking part in the Secret Santa and Santa Clause. The latter caused me a few problems as my recipient has his fingers in lots of wargaming pies! You would think that would make the gift easy to decide on - believe me it didn't! Coupled with the fact that the Blogger in question is an excellent painter, one that I knew I would struggle to match paint with, and I was in a right old dilemma....

Eventually I decided to create a small terrain piece that would serve as both an objective and a bit of battlefield decoration. I also decided to tie it in with the Blogger's beautiful ECW armies. Unusually for me I had the foresight to take a few pictures as I built it, so prepare for the wargaming equivalent of holiday photo's!

Here are the initial components:

I wanted to make a plundered wagon, perhaps part of a baggage train, with a few dead and wounded figures around it, and perhaps some strewn baggage....

The base was an offcut of ply covered in sand, and painted in burnt umber. I built the lovely 4Ground wagon and assembled some items from my bits box.

 

After a couple of dry-runs I decided on the placement of most of the items, and started painting:

 

 

 

 

At this point I neglected to take some intermediate photo's (typical), but rest assured there was a painted wagon (minus Lee Marvin - Laugh only if you are over a certain age...) with a few scattered bits of baggage and a couple of casualties. It was all looking a bit random. That's when the Current Wife asked if the bodies were plunderers or guards. I obviously looked puzzled. 'If they were guarding a consignment of wine it would explain why they all look drunk, she reasoned! I swear to god I have no idea where these occasional flashes of genius come from, but that must be why I married her!

 

 

I sourced some white metal bottles from Scotia Grendel, scratch-built a crate for the plundered booze and set about modifying the vignette. I also added another figure who looked as if he was on the point of emptying his stomach..........

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, after a bit of trial and error, and thanks to Mrs Pendragon, it turned out OK, and more importantly (at least to me) it told a little story that was readily obvious to the onlooker.

 

The recipient was the entertaining Mr Gary Amos of The Happy Valley, and thankfully (judging from his Blog), he seems to like it. Pop along to his post on the subject if you want to see much better photo's than mine!

 

 

And finally: As I said earlier, this was my first year of Blogging, and I have enjoyed it immensely. I have met some great people (albeit online, I hope to attend Salute to see if some of them are as weird in the flesh....), and it has given my painting a great big (much-needed) kick up the butt!

 

 

I would genuinely like to wish you and yours a happy, healthy and wonderful New Year. May it bring you everything you would wish for yourself. Here's to 2015!

 

 

Until next time.................

 

 





 



Secret Santa and Santa Clause

This year I participated in both the Secret Santa organised by Cath and Ian over at The Blog with No Name and the Santa Clause, run by Chris at Wargamer's Odds and Ends.

Many thanks to all of them for administrating these initiatives, I'm sure all the participants enjoyed them immensely - I certainly did!

The Secret Santa bought me a large package containing Grand Manner's Pilgrim Cross (which was on my Wish List) plus the bonus of a medieval beehive, which shows my personal secret santa had certainly done their research. Whoever you are, Sir or Madam, thank you very much!

My Santa Clause had investigated my Blog and came up with an appropriate gift: Three painted Italian Battleships to go with my Hallmark purchases from earlier this year. These delightful little ships should give me the impetus to get on with my naval project, although I will struggle to match the excellent paintwork!

 

 

And if that wasn't enough, the Current Wife purchased the Crusader Army Offer for me:

 

LRDeal - Lion Rampant The Army Deal 1

Army Deal for Lion Rampant, the new Medieval skirmish game from Osprey Wargames. It is made up from the Crusader Medieval 13th Century MCF figures.

1 Mounted Knight Unit (6 Figures)
1 Mounted Knight Unit (6 figures)
1 Foot Knight Unit (6 figures)
1 Crossbow Unit (12 figures)
1 Bidower Unit (6 figures)

which was topped up with some Fireforge Mounted Sergeants, plus two tickets for next year's Salute, so it looks like 2015 should be busy!

 

I hope you all have been as fortunate as I have, and received some lovely shiny goodness.

 

 

Until next time................

 

 

 



Planning Ahead

Whilst I'm having fun with my Wars of the Roses figures, I am also looking ahead to next year - I happen to know I am getting some early medievals for Christmas from the Current Wife, so I thought I would see what I had in the Shed of Delights in order to add to them in order to create a couple of retinues for Lion Rampant from the period 1250 - 1400 approximately - Scottish Wars of Independence, the Barons War, Conquest of Wales etc. - You get the picture.
Problem is I am a bit of a scale Nazi, and like my troops to suit each other on the tabletop if you see what I mean.

So I dug out miniatures from Perry, Ebob, Fireforge and Crusader for a bit of a comparison:

L to R: Ebob, Perry, Fireforge.

L to R: Crusader, Fireforge, Perry.



Whilst I can live with the Fireforge plastic figure being slightly smaller than the others (even with the outsize base - What was I thinking of?!), the Ebob figure unfortunately doesn't cut the mustard.
This is unfortunate on two counts. Firstly Ebob's Rebellion miniatures are some of the nicest ever sculpted, but they only blend well with themselves (and possibly GW's Lord of the Rings range). Secondly I have a fair few of them, but not enough to make two retinues! I may keep the personality figures, but will probably put the rest on ebay in the new year.
Generally Perry, Fireforge and Crusader will live together happily on the tabletop, to my mind. From memory Foundry were a little too small too, although I didn't have any to hand to check.

Eagle-eyed regular readers will have spotted that instead of black undercoat I am experimenting with grey. I am not convinced of its merits yet, but will report back later.

I am about to post out my Santa Clause and Secret Santa gifts, so that's another little job out of the way.


Until next time........

PTS, Update and Off to Normandy

Some progress on the medieval buildings for Lion Rampant - the Tabletop Workshop Chapel, and I have started Total Battle Miniatures' Market Cross:

 

 

They both need some major dirtying-up yet though!

 

During the week I received these - also for Lion Rampant, which will temporarily go into the Shed of Delights until I start assembling my medieval forces:

 

 

 

I completed my Santa Clause gift for a fellow Blogger, and have taken some photo's so I can post about it next year(!). I have also entered this year's Secret Santa, so looking forward to finding out who I'm buying for.

 

Neil Thomas' Microwave Wargaming  One-Hour Wargames popped through the door courtesy of Grumpy Mailman so I shall take that away with me next week - The cover is definitely different from Amazon's pre-order picture, it now has a WW2 theme. I like it less:

 

 

 

 

 

 

On that note I will be in Normandy with my mate Mog visiting all the pertinent sites next week, so looking forward to that immensely, not least because I love both red wine, and rustic farmhouse cider, as well as visiting battlefields! Hence, no blogging until I return with a loaded camera and some duty-free goodies. The downside is I have to clear my painting set-up from the dining room table before I go!

 

 

Have a peep here at Gingerbhoy Roy's Blog and have a go at his Naval November theme paint-up - I'm going to - another good excuse to stretch the painting muscles!

 

 

Until next time.........

The Santa Clause

Chris over at Wargamer's Odds and Ends has been organising a sort of secret santa type thing called SANTA CLAUSE and I have been very remiss in not promoting it, although I did manage to enrol for this Christmas, albeit at the last minute.

What if I offered you a fiver?

 

 

Essentially you are given the contact details of a fellow blogger and have to research their interests (via his or her blog of course) and come up with £5 worth of painted figures or terrain for them to open up on Christmas Day. Now I'm not a huge fan of December 25th, but if I can put a smile on a fellow-gamer's face by painting something outside my comfort zone, then why not?!

 

 

Thanks to Chris for doing all the hard work, and I promise to advertise it more thoroughly next year!

 

In the meantime I shall document the painting of my 'gift' and put up some pictures after Christmas (don't want to spoil the surprise, after all).

 

Until next time.............