The Westfalia kickstarter miniatures arrived!!!!!

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The Halfmen from Westfalia Miniatures arrived the other day!!! Thank you Kawe the figures are little gems indeed! As you can see above my kickstarter order was quite large. I will build a Dragon Rampant army with 9 units. 1 spear armed one , 1 helebard armed one, one peasant one , one bow unit, one goat rider unit, the paymaster on giant, a mixed spear and bow unit, a sorcerer with acolyte , and Dietrich von Schalke the army general. So a lot to paint and glue. This project will take me through the winter month and then right on time for the next GoT season I will do more of the human type of fantasy figures!

So here are the figures I got:

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The army general

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The paymaster on giant

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The sorcerer with his acolyte

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The goat riders

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the peasants

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the archers

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the helbardiers

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and the spearmen

Of course I have figures for the leaders musicians and banner bearers for each unit. Next up will be pictures of the units when I built the figures.

Crisis 2016

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It is only 51 days until Crisis 2016!!!!!! It will be held on November the 5th 2016 from 10 am to 5 pm . The address of the venue is Hangar 29 Waagnatie, Rijnkaai 150 2000 Antwerpen Belgium. For pictures of last years convention go here. You have to scroll down a bit . The pictures start after the Tactica 2015 report!

The Tin soldiers just published the traders who will attend Crisis. So here it is, the list of traders attending Crisis 2016 complete as hyperlink ( sorry there are a few I couldn’t find an address for) Happy shopping :

Adler Miniatures
Ainsty Castings
Alchemist Miniatures
Baccus 6
Bad Squiddo Games (The Dice Bag Lady)
Battle Foam Ltd.
Battlezone Miniatures
Bicorne Miniatures
Black Scorpion Miniatures
BreakingWAR
Brigade Models
Bristle Bag
Brother Vinni
Caliver Books
Charlie Foxtrot Models
Close Quarters
Colonel Bill’s Wargames Depot
Comitatus Figurines/ Studio Tomahawk
Conquest Games Ltd.
Crooked Dice Game Design Studio
Dave Thomas
David Lanchester’s Military Books
Dax Magic
Decors & Miniatures
Dust Studios
Eagle Figures
Early War Miniatures
Elladan.de
Emperor Toad
Empress Miniatures
Fantasy En’ Counter
Figures in Comfort Ltd.
Figuurtje (‘t)
Fire Forge Games
Fischkrieg
Flag Dude
Freebooter Miniatures
Frontline Games
Games N Stuff
Germania Figuren
Glenbrook Games & Painting Service
Gramodels
Great Escape Games
Gringo 40s
Gripping Beast
Hawk Wargames
HB Modelsonline
Heer 46
Hitech Miniatures
Hysterical Games
Imaginative Miniatures
Ironclad Miniatures
Kallistra Ltd.
Karwansaray Publishers
Klip ‘ n Play
KR Multicase
Kraken Wargames
L’Antre Jeux
Lesley’s Bit Box
Macrocosm Miniatures
Magister Militum
Mantic Games
May ’40 Miniatures
MBM Models
Micro Art Studio
Millenium Books
Miltary Modelling: IP Trade &Services
More Terrain
Najewitz Modelbau
NanoStrategie
Neoby Distribution
PK-PRO
Plast Craft Games
Plastic Soldier Company Ltd.
Prodos Games
Products for Wargamers
proTOOLS
Redoubt Enterprises
Sally 4th
Scale 75
Schilling Figuren
Sgts’ Mess
Shed Games
Sheepgames
Shellhole Scenics
SHQ Miniatures
Spectre Miniatures
Steamforged Games Ltd.
Stronghold Terrain
Studio Miniatures
T&S Painting Studio
Tabletopper NL
TGCM Creation
The Assault Group
The Gamestore
The Last Valley
Thomarillion
TooFatLardies
Trolls Under The Bridge
Van Dijck Models & Figurines
Varosh Gamestore
War Mage Games
Warbases UK
Warehouse Games Gmbh (Fantasy Warehouse)
Warfare Miniatures
Wargamer PL
Wargames Foundry
Wargames Illustrated
Wargames Terrain Workshop
Warhouse Games
Warlord Games
Warmill
Warmonger Miniatures
Warploque Miniatures
Wendy’s Miniatures
Worean Shop

The giveaway figure for the first 1500 through the door, this year, is Queen Maud.

 

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Say hi to Queen Maud. Sculpted by, my very good friend ,Paul HIcks and cast by Griffin moulds, she used to answer to the name Matilde of Flanders before she got married to William the Bastard. Misses The bastard quickly changed her name to The conqueror when her husband went on a excursion to Britain in 1066. As a true couple they shared troops to conquer this country and become King and Queen.

Hope to see some of you at Crisis Antwerp this year!

The TSS tiles before flocking commences

Here are all tiles I am working on at the moment . I finished dry brushing the rocks and will start flocking everything at the weekend.

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As you can see the original flocking is not the same on the boards, so I will have to change that during flocking. The flock used will be the one you can see on the river boards. But this will only be the flocking base I will add different shades and length of grass to make it look more natural.

Started coloring the rock faces of the hills

I managed to dry brush the first layer of the rock faces in. This is a heavy drybrush of a medium grey. This will be followed by a few more layers of increasingly lighter shades of grey.

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The colors are only different on the pictures as the lighting wasn’t equal on every picture. Sorry.

Completed the earth shades on my Hill tiles

I completed the earth shades of my hill tiles yesterday. I used a basecoat of light brown, a wash of van dyk brown and a highlight of light brown. All done with an airbrush.

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The above picture shows the basecoat and the wash only. The following pictures show the completed earth shades:

Now there is only the gravel and the rocks to be painted then the flock.

 

Another step in building my terrain contour hills

I managed to add rocks gravel and sand to the first 4 terrain tiles:

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Only another 7 to do. Next step is painting the rocks and sand .

I used old TSS tiles to build Hill contours

The next project in my terrain refurbishing project was creating a hill contour to elevate the terrain another 4 cm ( the hight of a tile) . I will use these to represent contour lines on the table like on maps.

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On this picture you can see the old tiles . These were donated by my good friend Simon. Thank you again Simon!

The white slabs of Styrene will be the conectors between the different tiles to make the contours modular. They were shaped with a template and cut with a hot wire cutter. This is the template in action:

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Here you can see the hill contour build up with styrene and cork bark:

And in another configuration:

Next step was to add ready mixed filler:

That is how far I got last weekend. I have another 7 tiles to do. I will add pictures to the blog when I do the next step.

The next step of the renovation of my river tiles.

Here are pictures of the first layer of the river painted . I used a mix of PVA , ready mixed filler and blue paint to get rid of the styrene structure on the board:

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I will post pictures when the river is completely painted. Before flocking the boards I will start doing hill contour boards too. I want to do the flocking on all boards simultaneously to get the look consistent.

Next step in redoing my TSS river tiles

Over the weekend I could do a bit more work on my river tiles. Next step was painting the gravel and rocks in a basecoat brown ( I use Schminke acrylics for all my terrain painting).

Then I applied a wash of Van Dyk brown ( Schminke) . I made the wash myself , following the instructions found on this video by the terrain tutor.

 

So you get something like this:

Then I did a dry brush with the basecoat color:

After that I did a wet brush ( basically a heavy dry brush with more paint on the brush then with a dry brush) followed by a dry brushed highlight on the rocks:

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This is the result up to now . Next step will be the water then flocking and gloss varnish for the water. Will be back when the next steps are done.

 

Refurbishing my TSS tiles.

As I said in another post a few weeks back I wanted to improve my trusty TSS tiles / boards. These are tiles measuring 1foot by 1 foot or 30,5 x 30,5 cm square. I have lots of them and after acquiring a foam cutter I even did some by myself. So after using them for years I wanted to give them a make over. I started with my river tiles. When they come from TSS ( Total System Scenic) they look like this:

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As you can see the river clearly shows the structure of the styropor used to make the tiles. Doesn’t look very natural when you ask me. So I wanted to do a better water effect on these river tiles. But before that the banks have to be done properly. Like this :

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I added gravel, sand and little stones to the river banks. Next will be paint and flock. With the following tile I wanted to recreate a steeper higher bank of the river . I used cork bark, ready mixed filler Styropor and gravel,sand and stones, to come up with this:

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Here are some more pictures of my other river tiles:

The last board has a very thin layer of filler on the actual river to get rid of the styropor structure. I will do this to the others too but will mix paint with the filler to have a bisect to work with too. So over the next week I will add more so watch this space!