Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Paint What You've Got Finale



First, apologies to Dave Stone. I had intended to have this posted at the end of last month to finish up the Paint What You've Got Challenge, but the house that I live in at the farm has been under renovation since January and the last two weeks of have been nothing short of horrific - with my wife in South Carolina with all the horses and my son away at University, it was felt that with fewer people in the house this would be the best time to tackle such a big project.


This is my kitchen, and because of all the wood floors being refinished (the entire house has wood floors except the bathrooms) I was without a stove for 9 days during that time because it had to be taken out 😡 


It's definitely been an adjustment living here while this is going on - all furniture, pictures, window dressings, everything was removed from each room for new drywall, paint, and lighting.


All part of the challenge of living in a 125+ year old farm house. But it did force me upstairs into the studio (as that thankfully didn't need any work) any time I was home so I did quite a bit of hobbying. 


In addition to completing the castle from my last post I also finally knocked out this massive tile project. This photo was before I started the detail work with vines, cobwebs, overgrowth, etc.


These are from Lunesdargent Workshop and their Paths To El Dorado Kickstarter - I have even more Egyptian themed tiles from Lunesdargent that I need to get to as well but that is way down the line.


These were waiting for me when I returned from South Carolina last year. One giant box weighing close to 50lbs if I remember correctly - they are made from polymer strengthened sandstone which is stronger than hydro-stone but definitely increases the weight.


There has to be well over 400 individual tiles that I hand painted, weathered, and detailed. Talk about absolute madness lol!


To make these tiles a little easier to work with for a game I glued different shaped rooms and hallways onto black foamboard so they could be used in a modular fashion. That way I could essentially build different boards each time they were used.


This is a fantastic little objective marker from Crooked Dice, and perfect for an Indiana Jones adventure.


Long corridors like this create fun possibilities for all kinds of neat traps.


All the extra details really give the tiles a real pulpy type of feel that I was after.


Really pleased with the end results, but now because of both the weight and odd shapes of the rooms and corridors the real challenge is going to be how to safely and securely store them?


I also completed some Perry Union horse holders that I've had for probably seven years now - I have since fixed that rifle 🤦‍♂️ I can't believe I forgot to paint that before I took the picture.


These are perfect for deployment points for Sharp Practice, and will work for marking dismounted cavalry when we get to them. I'm currently working on the Confederate horse holder vignette right now.


I also finished up another group of Confederate sharp shooters.


I know Old Gory gets a lot of eye rolls for their sculpts but I do like the character, especially when you compare them to Perry plastics.


And finally I made some covers for all my 4Ground wagons. Why these never came with that option is a real head scratcher to me.


I made them out of tissues and Mod Podge and am super chuffed with the results.



Can't have a Civil War game without some covered wagons and that was a little project that was long overdue to be completed.

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

30 comments:

  1. Wow! That tile set is pretty damn amazing! I’m loving that Indiana Jones pic. Good idea to base them so that they can be used in sections. Also some nice ACW stuff there too. I like the wagon covers you made. Great hobby goodness here. 😀

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    1. Thanks a lot Stew! Had a bit of fun with staging the Indy photo, really made me hope for getting a pulp game in this year using these tiles.
      As you well know, can never have enough ACW stuff 😀

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  2. I'm always impressed when gamers remember wagons, but those tiles are something else. . .

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    1. Agreed, must have wagons... and lots 😀
      Let's just hope I can get the tiles into a game soon.

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  3. Excellent work Ivor, and all the extra details to each piece adds so much character. No worries on posting late, I was giving everyone time to get their posts up.
    Totally feel for you with the house renovation, when we moved into ours 3years ago I spent 6 weeks effectively living in a wooden box !

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    1. Much appreciated Dave! Despite it being very time consuming adding all the little details was actually a lot of fun, like I was creating a movie set 😀
      Mate, living in the house during a renovation is nothing short of brutal lol

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  4. What an acheivement, completing al those tiles and bringing them o what I would say is display standard !
    Great work on your ACW, one of my favourite periods to game although you;re pretty brave imo doing it in 28mm.
    I had one wagon for each Brigade I owned, one extra for a division and a further 'corp' wagon.

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    1. Cheers Joe! Go big or go home right?! You're a 54mm guy right lol
      Yeah, I definitely need some more wagons to do something similar to you 🙂

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    2. Haha, i have armies in all scales, bt 54mm is the only choice(for me at least) for skirmish games)
      My ACW collection is 15mm, regiments vary from 10 figures to 30figures+. The union force is based on 6th Corps (a double sized corps) and iirc Early Corps.

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    3. I can't remember if I've seen you're ACW collection 🤔
      Maybe you'll have to dig them out and have a game in the future lol

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  5. Wonderful looking room, terrain, figures...and the covered wagons will add a lot to the future tables!

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    1. Cheers Phil! I actually liked how much the wagons looked on the table that I order some more 😀

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  6. Nice, I wish I was able to get my head straight to finish all my projects, or at least one or two :)

    I'm also trying to get some Confederate painted, but then came some Napoleonic stuff in the way.

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    1. Cheers mate 😀 Believe me, I'm all over the place too in regards to projects - but I think that might be a good thing as when I start to hit a creative wall or get bored with on project I can move on to something else. I was working on some Confederates over the weekend too and then moved to some British from the Zulu wars instead 🤷‍♂️

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    2. Interesting, I have had a look at Zulu wars, but I also had a look at The Indian Mutiny, and some other stuff.

      What really puts a stop on my painting is that I can only apply primer by brush do to weather and the fact that I hate priming.

      One other thing, have you tried Sharp Practice, its a Black Powder age miniature game at a smaller scale then one normally play.

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    3. Seeing the movie Zulu as a young lad definitely left a big impression on me, and I absolutely love a last stand/impossible odds story so it has been something I've wanted to do, really since I was a kid.
      I'm in the same boat with the weather, this year though I primed all kinds of different stuff before the cold temperatures hit - that way I had lots of options on what to work on when the time came 😀
      I absolutely love Sharp Practice! We just started playing it at the club - and my last blog post was actually about our first game. It's by far my favorite initiative sequence game and the "Tiffin" card really makes for unique turns and decisions as a player. Honestly, I'm not sure how much fun I'll have if I go back to a traditional "I go you go" turn sequence. I really recommend checking them out - but it works best with small numbers of units, it's a skirmish game, so if you're looking for big games and big units and lines of men it's probably not for you.

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    4. I live in Scandinavia, so it's cold most of the time or rainy, and last year it was a heatwave in the summer, paint dried before it even could leave the brush.

      Yeah I got the Sharp Practice 2, I am making a Confederate Force based on some of the Confed lists in SP2 and I'm using scale 1:72, and I'm looking into making a French Force to, and I wanted to make a Spanish Guerrilla Force in scale 28mm.

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    5. That's too bad about the weather, but from everything I've ever read Scandinavian is a great place to live.
      1:72 scale sounds interesting - are they plastic models then? Is it easier to source figures in that scale where you are or is it a better value monetarily. I love metal figures but they definitely are more expensive than plastics, I could get way more for my money if I only bought plastic figures.

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    6. The 1:72 scale figures I have are made out of plastic, they come in boxes, most infantry boxes have 50 to 51 figures for around $9 to $12 depending on who made them, at the moment they are the easiest to get, but I picked them mostly because of the size as they take up less space... and I had some from when I was a child, I do have metal minis from from when I played Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy, but having to carry them around was a pain, literally.

      I know that in the US there are sold minis in 10/15mm scale.

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    7. I believe I know the figure types you are talking about - made by Airfix, MPC, Revell, Italeri, Ertl and companies like that. It's too bad that the shipping would probably be cost prohibitive because I have quite a few boxes of these types of figures that have been sitting for years and years I would just give to you.

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    8. Thanks for the offer Ivor, the corvid19 is also making trouble as new rules were made that makes it hard to impossible to get things into Europe.

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  7. Great work on those tiles Ivor! The 'twine' vines are a great touch! I just went with the straight wash for those same tiles. But I can see that maybe doing up some vines to just lay in place depending on the game, maybe worth a bit of hobby time.

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    1. Much appreciated Terry! Yeah, really happy with the end results on the tiles and definitely would recommend the twine to give them a little more visual appeal 😀

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  8. Fab work on the tiles Ivor! Hope you have some pygmies and snakemen to plonk in their for gaming purposes!

    The ACW stuff likewise looks amazing. Almost tempted to get some myself after seeing all of them. Just enough for a skirmish game.... Hrm... Wonder if I can get this past the wife? LOL

    Good luck with the renovations! That floor looks so good. I'm absolutely useless with diy stuff, so I'm always impressed when I see those that are the opposite to me!

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    1. Thanks a lot Dai! I've got some of the Northstar Congo jungle tribes and some really cool zombie Conquistadors that will be perfect for the tiles I think 😀
      Realistically for something like Sharp Practice you'd only need maybe 30 or 40 figures and you'd be set - you just have to get Stew to convert over to 28mm lol
      After next week hopefully and we'll be 100% complete... fingers crossed!

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