Baconfat Log

Prussians, World War I, Space Germans, and a Zombie Dancer!

2012-02-08T18:07:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Just an update on aimless painting. First are some painted plastic Perry Prussian (PPPP) Jaegers, I did up for a small Black Powder unit. I only finished 8, ending with a tiny unit. Sadly arms disappeared off four of the half painted models. The cats, children, and vacuum cleaner all claimed innocence despite intense interrogation and torture. The thief must be some of my French models, so I going to find my 28mm guillotine and little plastic heads will roll.

The leader has the wrong blade of course, but Kreuz much like his English second cousin Sharpe doesn't let the rules interfere with his choice of weapons.

Yes some of our eyes are painted too large or close together.

I finished up a few more models for m late Great War British Army. I didn't base the mortar with crew, so that I could switch them out for heavier mortars, without having to paint multiple crews.

The Old Glory sculptor may not have been an expert on ordnance. The tear drop shape of the mortar appears reversed or the guys are about to drop the mortars down the tube the wrong way. Either way I can't tell which end is really the fuze or tail boom, nor wether part of it is powder bags or obturating rings.

Five more rifles and an officer, some of which have very flexible necks. I've read that the OG sculptor purposely modeled them this way as it is a little known fact that British won the war because of the their ability to turn their heads at angles which the Germans simply could not match.

Here's four of the old Warzone plastic models now sold by Prince August ( I think).

Zombies with lack of coherent basing scheme, left to right: Victory Force, not Barney; Victory Force; Blue Moon; unknown model

Here's a zombie stripper entertaining some undead dance enthusiasts.

And lastly a poorly breaded pooch.

- Baconfat

Black Powder Game, Salamanca Style Scenario

2012-02-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

Hi,

If you like poorly worded after action reports and mediocre photography, this post is for you.

Weekend before last I managed to get in a fun game of Black Powder. It was designed to resemble part of Salamanca. About 60% of the French brigades started on the table edge with reinforcements coming on later turns.

The British were prepared in line along the road and small village.

Left French Line, Dragoons, artillery; Center 2 line units; Right 2 line units

The French Dragoons charge some Rifles on the left destroying them. The French center suffers a little artillery casualties. Some of them manage to take cover from the artillery behind the trees. The French right cheesely skirts the right table edge, to avoid fire coming from village; their plan is to round the village and attack the Brits from the side or rear, negating their numerical advantage.

The French Dragoons on the right have been destroy by British Hussars (which quickly got disordered the rest of the game) and the Brits have moved forward and both sides damage each other with brutal musket fire. The French center doesn't really do anything. The French right moves slow down as the Brit Guards swing around to prevent the French from rolling up the line.

Close up the French right, crap a cannon is coming. And the Brits are hiding in the buildings as well. If you look in the back of the photo, you can see a Brit rifle unit that failed orders the whole game.

French reinforcements flood the field, the left have Hussars. The original center units have moved to avoid the Brit horde advancing. The left acquired a unit of Cuirassiers and another cannon.

The French left taken from the Brit perspective. The French Hussars rolled ridiculous order goodness, moved through the woods, charged the disordered Brit Cav and destroyed them. The opposing line troops stand and bravely massacre each other with muskets.

On the right the French roll incredibly well, move long distances, shoot well and melee well. They wipe out the Coldstream guards and an artillery battery. Another French unit occupies a building to negate the British in theirs. I believe some barely involved Brits even run away, but not the static 95th Rifles solidly stood out of the action as they did the whole battle.

The battle didn't go as anyone planned and we guessed it was a narrow French Victory. The Brits had one untouched Brigade, one almost wiped out, and another on the French left mostly shaken.

The French left Brigade was pretty beat up but would have probably finished off the Brit right shortly. The French right owned alot of Brit real estate and I'd guess the combined French could have encircled the remaining Brits and possibly won if we had fought to a silly bloody last stand.

Black Powders' most endearing quality might be the unpredictability compared to I go, you go rules. Also is the simple order system and movement of units, not requiring any complicated Algebra or compass.

Baconfat

Playing Favorites

2012-02-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

I've been seeing other miniature blogs posting their favorite influences. I don't know who started it, but the ones I remember were on the http://theangrylurker.blogspot.com and http://bigleesminipaintingblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/blma-playing-favorites.html.

Wargames Period: I like them all and have minis for ancients, medieval, Napoleonic, fantasy, sci-fi, modern, and WWI. But my first and favorite would be Medieval.

Though I'd like to some day run an Anglo-Zanzibar game. The game turns shouldn't take long as the war only took 40 minutes. Another fun game might be the Moldovan-Transdniestrian War, when after the battles the opposing officers would meet up and drink the night away. I wish we still fought like that.

Scale: 25-28mm. Smaller looks like painting would not be fun. Larger models and you might not be able to convince the wife you're not just playing with toys.

Rules: Chainmail Rules for Medieval Miniatures, published by Guidon Games and later TSR. The rules were simple and fun, despite a few gaps and contradictory areas. There's even a section at the back for fantasy miniatures which was the father of D&D.

Manufacturer: Perry Brothers. Great sculpts, cheap plastics, compatible with many other companies.

Metal, Plastic, or Resin: Metal. Resin is poisonous, metal will last longer than me, and I'm scared all my plastic will decompose before I die.

Club: Puyallup Wargamers.

Opponent: Whoever is across the table.

Film: I really like the Bernard Cornwell tv show based on the Sharpe novels. My favorite movies though are Kafka, Bladerunner, Where Eagles Dare, and of course the best war film ever made "Kelly's Heroes"

Book: Really it's books by Bernard Cornwell. As a kid I loved Tolkien or any Tolkien rip off.

Art: Some of those ancient Rogue Trader artists, Angus McBride, Perry Brothers.

Web: I check these three almost daily: TMP, the Lead Adventure Forum and http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/.

- Baconfat

Dragoons, Zombies, WWWI, Musketeers, Robots, Casualty Fail, etc...

2012-01-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

Hi,

First up are some dismounted Perry French Dragoons. The tops are chopped off mounted models, with dismounted legs.

Here are some old fantasy sci-fi German models. They were part of the Warzone Target Games lines, which are now owned by Prince August, which I believe used to be Dunken Models. They are about the cheapest decent sci-fi 28mm models one can buy. The smaller based models are old RAFM models, but I don't believe they're still available and I don't know the name of their line.

The robot looking dogs are old "clicky" Battletech models called "Fenrir". I have no idea what a Fenrir is, but I thought my evil space Germans, might want some robot puppies. Three of them are repainted in original colors, but one was already painted well enough that I only rebased him.

Here are some WFB Empire models I've been working on. A volley gun called a Hellblaster and a really big mortar. The following crew, I was planning on using as mercenary Germans for a WAB army, but they are really just WFB fantasy models. They're fun to paint, and I have about 40 crew I painted 20 years ago (incredibly poorly), that I plan to repaint shortly.

Lastly are a couple failure Warlord Black Powder casualty marker design failures. The first on left, kept letting the die fall off when the model was moved. The second, on the right, was a terrible failure as the base was a Herroclix base. The clicky base was dissasembled and repainted, but was a failure because it was hard to turn, and really looked crappy.

The best Black Powder bases I've seen are from a superior blog: http://wabcorner.blogspot.com Poker chip casualties are the best way to go.

I painted an WWI German Anti-tank rifle soldier, from Great War Games.

Here are some pics of Perry Prussian Musketeers still on their sprues, with pics of the box art involved.

The only problem I could find with the models is where the backpack joins the model at the bedroll. There's a ugly little spot that will need filler.

Here's a Herrorclix model that I partially repainted to be Dr. Who evil robot leader.

Next time, I hope there are some Perry plastic Prussian Jaegers done. I hope to include some progress of French Napoleonic artillery crew and Perry Prussian Fusiliers.

love, Baconfat

Drumbeat 2012

2012-01-07T20:55:00.000-08:00

Drumbeat 2012 was held in Seattle today. It was a pretty good show, with over 50 people, 12-15 large multiplayer games, a DBA tournament, and a flea market. If you didn't go you missed out.

I had my camera set on stupid and almost no photos came out.

Here's a fuzzy recollection of a neat The Sword and the Flame game I saw, one could pretend the haze is do to the burning train.

Here's a picture I snapped as I was falling down in a sand storm. It was of the aftermath a cool game of Force-on-Force. I was sad I didn't get a chance to play, but my morning game didn't end in time.

Long morning games pics from a truly terrific Black Powder game put on the the owner of the Panzer Depot (www.thepanzerdepot.com). This pic is of the almost complete initial setup. Good brave moral kind hearted God-fearing Austrians are on the left, while the dastardly children-eating Bavarian barbarians and cowardly French swine, can be seen if one would wish to see such a thing, on the right.

Here is a picture of my cavalry taunting the Bavarians that were shooting them to pieces. The cavalry being worn out by delivering such a taunting taunting, spent the rest of the game behind the cover of some Grenzers. You can see some of my artillery crew lounging by their guns. They also were not prone to effective violence.

Tons of reserves showed up and almost swung the battle into the favor of the good guys, but the Napoleon's forces of evil won the day. Here's some well painted Austrians with really neat flags by someone called the "flag guy" or "flag dude". I think it's a website that makes flags.

The Brigade Officer I was controlling had a staff rating of 7, but sadly my player rating must have been a 3 or 4. Despite that, I had tons of fun. I hope to make it to the Panzer Depot for a game someday.

Here's the only comprehensible pic of the second Black Powder game I managed to play. It was an English Civil War game, using the "Last Arguments of Kings" supplement, put on by the esteemed Drumbeat founder, Dick.

Mistakenly, my fellow team mates allowed me to control the main battle force and army general. It was an action packed game that ended in disaster.

Let's just say, that if I had been a Parliamentarian General, Charles I would still have his head.

love,
Baconfat

First Warlord Landwehr Unit...kind of....

2012-01-01T19:06:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I've been out of town and not posting, but I have managed to finish painting an unit of Prussian Landwehr, for Black Powder. I thought so, until I noticed I only painted 20, despite the book telling you to use 24 models for a regular size unit. I will have to paint four more, which really pooped on my sense of accomplishment.

There are only three poses for the plastic Warlord models. I varied the trouser and hair colors so no two models are the same and it's harder to tell that there are so few poses.

The flag came out awful. I got lazy and cut the one off the brochure in the box and while I was molding it the ink came off onto my fingers. I'm not redoing it, as I don't believe the Landwehr were authorized such frivolities and if they don't like it they can make their own.

Here's the troops looking terrible before "dipping" and touch up.

Here's a close up of the racoon eyes I had to fix, when learned that I shouldn't paint eyes while drinking heavily.

Scary Innsmouth Deep Ones wearing Prussian Uniforms.

I've actually been painting tons of other stuff and hope to post a unit of Jaegers soon.

- Baconfat

Black Powder Game Pics

2011-11-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

I played in an enjoyable game of Warlord's Black Powder hosted by one of the best painters in the local area. (his blog http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/). The scenario was designed around one in the book, Fighting Retreat from El Perez.

The initial setup had the British/Spanish on the table. The British mission was to get half of their forces across the bridge in the upper right corner, before a superior French force comes on to the table and defeats them.

The British decide to split their force and send half immediately across the bridge and leave the other half behind to sacrifice themselves and give time for the crossers to cross.

The French had a unit of Voltigeurs near the bridge to slow the crossing.

About a quarter of the French make it on the table and most just stand around ignoring orders. A unit of Hussars charge some Highlanders to only be defeated, run away, and leave the table. The French are doing so bad obeying orders, the British begin to advance in order to acquire the gigantic beer that magically appears on the battlefield.

Meanwhile the British jam up at the bridge and pour lots of ineffective fire into the church where the Voltigeurs are now hiding.

The French can't seem to get their horde on the table. Those on the field, continue to stand around and slowly lose the battle. Rockets and lucky rifle fire ruin their morale, while the two units of Highlanders start stomping all over the few French obeying orders.

The French finally decide to do something as almost all their forces fail taking orders and run off the table. The Heavy cavalry just sit there and take casualties.

Everyone agrees the British won easily, but technically I believe the French did. The British generals miscounted and ordered one to few units to cross the bridge.

It's the first game of Black Powder I've played and I hope there are many more. It was very fun, even for the French generals who need to throw their dice away.

Tales of a Jerky Junktown Vendor

2011-11-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Hi,

I enjoy collecting junk. Today I'd like to show you the junk I've recently collected for my hordes of toy army men.

First, I had to battle my way through two bored looking union protesters and hundreds of zombies buying inexpensive groceries to find this set of construction equipment, at Winco. The only cost me 5 bottlecaps. With a little bit of paint, rust, and wear, they'll make good modern or post apocalypse terrain.

Second up, a yard sale find. It's a giant hand, the back says, "Marvel Entertainment, 2001, made in China". It's either a Ironman hand or maybe a sentinel from the X-men comics. It's designed to be hung on the wall, but it makes great sci-fi terrain.

Here's some cheap flocking from Michaels craft store. They had multiple colors, none are realistic, maybe they could be used for grass on an alien world. The long stuff on the left is fake hair leftover from a Halloween costume. I'm going to cut and experiment with different lengths and try to create various forms of vegetation.

Woodsies, the wife bought these for me at Michaels, as well. Mini-wooden dowels could be used for all sorts of terrain projects. No more cutting the ends off toothpicks for me. You can see some regular toothpicks in the foreground to show you the difference.

Here's some craptacular sandbag walls from a bag of dollar store army men. If your friends don't mind sh!t terrain they could be used in any modern or sci-fi game. I think the German model is a Wargames Foundry, if you know what it really is, please tell me. The Brit is a Old Glory. Maybe the bags would look better painted.

Speaking of craptacular, here's a piece of styrofoam I picked out of the trash at work, when no one was looking. I started making a sci-fi tower, but it just didn't look right so I quit.

More garbage, I got this embossed tag off a pair of pants my wife bought. She likes buying things. It'll make a great sign for a burnt out store I'm making for my zombies.

Big giant rocks for an aquarium, from the local used store. Maybe usable in in a sci-fi or fantasy game. The spider web is tarantula. They spent some time in our pet tarantula's cage, before she upgraded her terrain to a little wooden cave. Dr Who Icemen love big rocks.

Giant plastic mech things. They're really not a recent find, unless you count stumbling upon a box of crap you forgot about in your attic. I bought them many years ago for like a dollar a piece at a toy store clearing stock. As a horder, I bought every model they had. There was at least seven different versions with different weapons and scales. I think they are Battletech. With a proper paint job, they might be the right size for low budget 40K titans and dreadnaughts or maybe Battletech models in a 15mm scale game.

Lastly, if you dig through wild owl poop, you'll find the neatest things. These are mouse teeth. I really don't know what I'll use them for. But if you've gone through the effort of finding owl poop and digging through to find stuff, you ought to use it for something.

Thanks for visiting.

love,
Baconfat

Prussian Artillery Crew, Rocket Men, and a Cyberman!

2011-10-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

First I've finished 3 more Prussian artillery crew and 3 more guns. Tabletop quality without much highlighting. Note Halloween is coming, that's why the pics look like they've been taken by candle light.

This brings the Prussian artillery park to six 6 pdrs (3 are Victrix British guns) and 24 crew. A start to a Black Powder army. The crew are a mix of Old Glory and a few Perry models.

Next, I finished (good enough anyway) three more Old Glory British Congreve rocket crew men. The fourth disappeared somewhere before painting.

That bring the total number of rocket crew to 11 and too many launchers for them to support.

Lastly, I rummaging through the junk mini pile and found a Herroclix Marvel Comics villain named Ultron. To Ultron's left (our right) is a RAFM/GW Cyberman. Ultron looks very much like a Dr Who Cyberman leader of some sort, all I need to do is jam a square wire frame in his little soft plastic head.

I have a few WW1 Brits, a few Fallout (video game) minis, and a couple zombies to paint then I'll start some Warlord Prussian Landwehr. Prussian Landwehr are rather dull compared to the exciting new Russians they're putting out.

I've broken down mediocre Prussian infantry into 38 painting and preparation steps. The first three are done: assembly, flash removal, and gluing to a base. Some paint before basing, by gluing to popsicle sticks or what not. To save time painting extra steps must be cut. The Landwehr have most been double based as their paint scheme is not that detailed that I'll need a lot of room. If you look closely, some of the troops are nicked on their hats and elbows. The child slave labor (I own them so it's not illegal) I employ for sprue removal is not very accurate.

love,
Baconfat

Zardozombie

2011-10-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

"The brains are good. The no brains is evil. The living shoot seeds, and make new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the zombie brings death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth ... and eat brains!"

Zed's adventures continue as he becomes one of the undead. Now you know why the Exterminators wore those silly helmet things, to protect their brains.

The zed Zed was made from two Heroclix models. Aquaman's head and Hawkman's body. Sure his braid has come undone, his boots don't go up past his knees, and the gauntlets aren't Zardoz cannon; but he looks enough like a dead Zed. I scribbled hair on his stomach and chest with a fine point Sharpie marker.

Speaking of zombies, I had extra plastic Perry dismounted Dragoon, so he joined the horde. I drilled a hole in his chest with a larger exit hole in the back. He's missing a hand because I couldn't find my baggy of zombie bits; I'll drill some holes and add bone stumps if I don't find it soon. I have enough zombies that the Dragoon and Zed should fit into the crowd without being to obvious.

Here's an ancient zombie miniature from out of business Grenadier Models. He came in the Dungeon Monsters box set (5002) available in the early 1980s. He's smaller than most of my zombies, but bulkier than the Wargames Fiddly plastic zombies. I don't give much thought to size parity in my shambling horde. People and potato chips come in different sizes, so should zombies.

Lastly is what I believe to be an old Mageknight model (no idea what it was called) but he appears to look like a "Charger" from the Left For Dead 2 video game. He had armor on that needed to be cut and scraped off, but I left some of his clothing because it was very Zardozesque.

The quote was from the movie Zardoz edited to be more zombielike.

On an unrelated note, I played a very enjoyable WW1 game of "The Great War". Sadly I forgot my camera and have no pictures for you. A terrific group of NHMGS guys showed up and their presence made the game incredibly fun. For pictures go to a quality blog at http://wabcorner.blogspot.com

love,

Baconfat

Late War British and Prussian Artillery Crews

2011-09-30T16:54:00.000-07:00

Intel reports have mentioned the Germans are bringing heavy machine guns to tomorrow's "The Great War" battle. Worried that the good guys might not have enough bodies to soak up all the German bullets, I quickly finished block painting two British infantry units including Lewis guns, as well as two Lewis guns to add to infantry units without them already.

The Old Glory models still need to be dipped, touched up, maybe highlighted, and have their bases painted in 19 hours.

I based them on washers, half with sand and half with wood putty. I'm curious which will look better. Wood putty may lose out regardless, due to how time consuming it is compared to white glue and sand.

Second is a group of Old Glory Prussian Artillery crews for my slowly growing Prussian army. They've been blocked painted and still need alot of work. Once them and their guns are done, I'll start working on a box of Warlord Prussian Landwehr.

I hope to have some zombies done by the next post.

Baconfat

Fix Bayonets 2011!

2011-09-24T22:43:00.000-07:00

I made it the afternoon session of Fix Bayonets II, I was almost late for that and almost missed out on being in a game. I know I missed out sleeping in, but I love sleep.

Bill V. was putting on a classic game of Imperial, which I managed to get in on. I haven't ever played the system, but Bill V. (true professional) made it run smooth as silk. I think it was the battle of Islandwala. Please forgive me if I'm wrong Bill, bad short term memory and my Zulu-Anglo War knowledge is weak at best.

The British made the error of separating their forces, as they were supposed to. The first wave of Zulus, arrives on the field.

The wave crashes into the first red line. I being a Zulu general tried to keep away from the big guns. I failed somewhat, but so did the British gunners.

The first British force is being completely over run. I would have ran back and formed with the others as quickly as possible. But the British are apparently too brave.

Guns over run.

Sorry for the crap AAR, whole turns are missing, I took a bunch of fuzzy pics and almost none of my allied Zulu Chief Adrian's left wing. I also missed all the cavalry action.

Bottom line, Adrian made it to the second line fairly unscathed and between the two us we annihilated two large infantry squares of British, before we all decided it was immoral to continue.

Bill's minis were also mostly classic Ral Partha minis, sculpted by Tom Mier (spelling) I believe and were terrific. I simply love the look of those minis. Smaller by today's standard, but incredible sculpts with nice proportions. I'm extremely jealous.

If you're out there, Bill V. thank you much for an awesome fun game! It was great. If you put it on again, I'd love to try the other side.

You can see more pictures of the great game and event at the Puyallupwargamers yahoo group or on a couple great blogs: wabcorner.blogspot.com or http://rassilonsmatrix.blogspot.com

Trench Warfare

2011-09-19T20:59:00.000-07:00

Met friends at the Game Matrix in Tacoma, WA for an impromptu "The Great War Game". The trench terrain I've been working on slowly was done enough to be used for a game.

The field was 8' x 4' and an assaulting British, French, and French Foreign Legion force assaulted trenches occupied by an outnumbered company of Germans (accompanied by a tank). Rough terrain really slowly the assault, but more importantly kept the tank at bay long enough for allied troops to reach the Germans.

Fun game, no points, just people showing up with random troops. We were refamiliarized with the rules which we hadn't used in awhile. A host from the SoCal Warhammer podcast showed up to see the game and has plans to host an exciting "Over the Top" game later this year.

The models didn't enjoy the game as much; casualty rates for our enjoyment were shockingly enormous.

More pics and a better synopsis can be found at a great blog http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/

Step by Step: How to Make Mediocre Sandbags Slowly

2011-09-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Hi, I needed sandbags to line the walls of the trench table I've been working on. I wandered around the Youtube and found several videos showing the use of Sculpey polymer clay. I thought I'd try it and tell anyone listening how it went.

1. Roll balls of the Sculpey into thin long rolls. The beer can pull tab is for scale.

2. Squish the Sculpey down with a flat surface, above and below. You can see I didn't squish it much. If your rolls where too thick you'll have unmanageable large sandbags. Most sandbags I see available for purchase or in sci-fi dioramas are way too big. Sandbags are actually not very big; soldiers need to be able to fill and move them all day; large and extremely heavy bags would wear the troops out quickly. I wanted my bags to be about as wide or just wider than a model's foot is long. I picked a large GW model as the foot model, so the bags wouldn't look silly.

3. Press cloth gently into Sculpy to give the sandbags texture. I pretty much ignored the sides and and only pressed on the top. I figured out quickly to match this step with the squishy one. I used an old worn out t-shirt (that I was wearing). Made nice thread marks, too big to be realistic, but looked nice, if they were really that small you wouldn't be able to see the texture.

4. Chop the sandbags into sandbag size chunks. Longer than wide. Use a rounded edge cutting tool. Flat cutting tools don't round the bag edges. I used the handy beer can tab.

5. Repeat steps 1-4 numerous boring times.

6. Ignore the fact that the bags don't have the little openings where sand is poured in and tied shut.

7. Bake in the oven as directed on the wrapper.

8. Panic, because you were distracted playing Fallout and didn't remember to check on them on time. They're ok though. Drink a victory beer after burning your self pulling them out of the oven and picking them up to look at them too early.

9. Spray paint the bags burlap for up until recent time sandbags. Today bags aren't usually burlap; they're woven plastic. Colors I've personally seen are desert tan, olive drab, dark green, and ACU pattern camo. I picked a dark tan, thinking I'd stain it to burlap color.

10. Curse, because you didn't use primer and the crap paint you used isn't sticking to the sculpy well. It's also to glossy and now you'll have to dullcoat or dust the bags.

11. Try spray painting the bags again with the same crap paint.

12. Curse some more. Because only some of them are covered. The paint isn't sticking and now it looks too thick.

13. Go inside and drink beer. The paint isn't drying fast. Drink alot of beer, the cure time is forever.

14. Check on the bags. Curse, they are still tacky and one of the cats has found them and some are contaminated with hair, a bunch are sticking together, and some are completely missing. Guzzle the rest of your beer and chuckle to yourself that the cat has little tiny sanbags stuck to it.

15. Throw the smelly sticky batch in your toy army man room and work on something else.

16. Two days later check on the little pieces of poop and curse. THEY ARE STILL TACKING.

17. Say screw it and dip them anyway. The stain or dip will settle in the the fabric marks and give it a nice textured look.

18. Curse, you brown stain has turned black since you last used it. Someone has broken into your house and turned your brown dip black.

19. Make a brown wash with some cheap craft paint. You've invested too much time and money into this project and should have bought some on the internet.

20. Come back a day or two later and realize they really aren't that tacky anymore.

21. Glue them to your terrain.

22. Curse, because they don't really mold to the terrain you're attaching them too and they're so small and fidgety you're getting covered in glue.

23. Victory beer! Sure you only attached half of the ones you wanted to but it looks good enough.

...or just do what a modeling vet told me to use later. Use self drying modeling clay. Screw Sculpey.

Tools you'll need:
Several packages of Sculpey (makes hundreds of sandbags)
primer
flat (NO SATIN) spray paint or just hand paint with acrylics
stain or dip or wash
brush
fabric
case of beer

Here's a couple preview pics of the trench table. First is some homemade barbed wire and second liquid in craters. The lighting in my lair is poor.

- love, Baconfat

Warlord Le Deal

2011-09-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

First post in 9 months. I was out of the country and unable to play with my toys, but now that I'm back I intend to play and post far more often.

I'd been saving my play money up for about six months and ordered the "Le Deal - French" from Warlord, and wanted to post a pic and ramble on about what a great deal it is. For $173 (free shipping) I got four boxes of Perry French Line, 2 boxes Perry French Heavy Cavalry, 1 box Perry French Hussars, 1 box Perry French Dragoons, 1 box Victrix Old Guard Grenadiers, and a Victrix blister containing two mounted French officers and a Pioneer.

That totals up to 235 foot, 57 mounted, and twelve casualty miniatures for $173. I can't think of a better deal anywhere.

Due to the fact I saved so much money I had extra cash to spend on some Prussians: Two boxes of Perry Prussian Line and a box of Warlord Prussian Landwehr.

The Warlord minis have the most extensive packaging. Sprues are wrapped in plastic and separated by card board. Perry and Victrix just toss the mini sprues in the box.

In the Landwehr box, you get thirty models: three metal and 27 plastic. The plastics consist of nine sprues with only three poses. There are two swords for every three men, the third has a little ax on his belt. I didn't know the Landwehr actually had blades.

Here's the three metal minis that come in the box:

I also made an order from the Perry Brother, due to the fact that Warlord doesn't carry Perry metals. The French needed cannon, so I picked up three line artillery six pounder sets. This was the first crew painted.

I saw that the Perry's sell a Fusilier conversion kit for the Musketeer boxes and picked one of those up. It includes four command figures and different backpacks. The only real differences I saw was that they had straight blades instead of curved. Two Prussian boxes and the conversion kit allow you to actually create four Black Powder size units. 96 models total: one small unit of twelve Jagers and three regular units 28 musketeers.

I also picked up one Perry Prussian six pounder piece to see how they compared to my Old Glory Prussian Artillery. The Perry models are definitely better sculpts and a little bit taller; the OG model is on the far right; you can't tell the Perry models are taller in this picture, but I swear they are.

The Dragoons come with thirteen mounted models and eight dismounted models. You can't dismount the whole unit. So I picked up three of the two miniature dismounted sprues so I could dismount the whole unit. 13 minis will make a small unit of skirmishers in Black Powder. Luckily the mounted sprues come with extra chests for the leadership. I'll simply cut some of the models in half and put the leadership chests on lowly enlisted legs. Here's the six I've painted already.

Delivery wise the Perry Package made it all the way to Washington State in less than two weeks. The Warlord delivery took 32 days, but they were kind enough to email me we the order had been processed and mailed. The Perry Brothers robot doesn't even email you a receipt for your purchase.

Baconfat

COBRA Ends the Year

2010-12-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

This is the last post for the year and until August 2011. I tried to get up to 365 models for the year, but quality was slipping and I was really running out of time. 340 isn't bad. You're in for a meager post of barely finished or unfinished stuff from the painting table before I put it in the cryogenic chamber.

First is Destro and two COBRA troopers. I actually painted the Baroness, but forgot to take her picture. The models are old "Warzone" models from Target Games.

Here's picture of a zombie apocalypse survivor, with her back turned to show you she's carrying a "Left for Dead" first aid kit; a failure of an attempt to make concertina wire; and a COBRA foe, Snake Eyes.

Lastly, are the unfinished troops I simply couldn't knock out by the New Year. A British WWI mortar crew, 2 officers, a previously unidentified French Carabiner (Hinchcliffe Models), and some COBRA ninjas. The wrapping things the ninjas are wearing on their forearms and lower legs were giving me Hell.

Well that's it. Have a Happy New Year.

Love, Baconfat

"Season's Plagiaristic Greetings"

2010-12-25T18:41:00.000-08:00

As my oldest (lazy) boy slept in and did not take out the garbage this morning. A long time ago I bought a a replica Helmet. It was listed for about $50 and, but it had a fracture and I bought for less than half. . Anyway, I had to try it on.

An imperfect fit! Okay, this is a posed shot; but the Old Glory figure has a similar helmet on too!

Actually this is not a real post, but a tribute to a funny post off my favorite blog, http://wabcorner.blogspot.com/

Again, Happy Holidays and hope everyone is doing well.

Remotec Lego Robot

2010-12-23T22:33:00.000-08:00

Hi Viewer,

A little off the normal topic. During the Seahawks game, I made a little EOD robot out of a Lego Advent Calendar tractor, a blank CD-R, and other assorted junk/model bits. We don't really use the big heavy metal robots anymore. The small plastic ones are lighter and quicker which makes them preferable despite the reduced capabilities.

Sprayed black, highlighted Vallejo gun metal, with a super quick GW Silver highlight job.

The road is a pressed sand and glue mix with loads of black paint (to give it an asphalt look), a black gray highlight, and a black stain. It's not that shiny in real life.

A lot of terrorists use red det cord. The copper wire would be the enamel coated copper wire used by the bad guys in many command wire IEDs. I only used one strand because the wire I found was rather thick. The electric tape was just a tiny strip of paper painted black.

I gave it away as a present, but someone was nice enough to take a picture for me. (Dean, that's why this one isn't yellow).

I also made a terrorist with a nice little suicide vest, but it disappear off the desk the day after I brought it in.

More Perry British Line, Awful Zombies, a French Carabiner, UNIT Soldiers, and a Sprinkling of 40K

2010-12-22T21:08:00.000-08:00

Hello Fellow Internet Traveler,

My lovely wife misplaced and recently found the camera, so I decided it was a good time to post more useless information in my attempt to use up the internet and waste the time of my SIX (!!!!!) followers. Yes six, that's right and I've been to five of their blogs and they all have great blogs. One doesn't have a blog, but I'm sure it would be interesting if he did have a blog. I know he has good taste or accidently hit follow.

Well I had seven followers, but one was actually a pornographer promoting websites. In the name of friendly bloginess, I visited his some of blogs. The material was very amatuer, had unattractive "performers", and the text wasn't in my English. I sadly let my 7th follower go.

On another note I've been really trying to paint as many models as days of the year. If you look to your right on my painting log, you can see I'm going to miss the target. If I wasn't leaving the country (very soon) for seven months, I might be able to pull it off. More importantly I need to pay attention to the family, finish up projects at work, and pack. I doubt I'll do any painting while gone as the living arrangements don't allow for such frivolities. I may post one or two times more this year, but after that I must bid anyone reading this a fond adieu.

Enough whining, here are 2 UNIT soldiers and their dashing officer and their abnormally large yet somewhat expressive melon head. For those who are not fans of Dr Who, UNIT stands for United Nations Intelligence Task Force. It should therefore be UNITF, or scrambled around UNFIT. I would have called them the Fast Action Response Team (FART), but North Korea and Lithuania voted me down when I brought the matter to a vote. Kim Jong Ill and Dalia Grybauskaite, YOU SHALL RUE THAT DAY! The UNIT is some sort of UN military team only filled with British people who defend us humans from the paranormal or extraterrestrial. Due to their extremely large heads and therefore thick skull, they do not wear helmets.

Here's six more Perry plastic British Line troops. There were seven but one of the cats absconded with one. He's lost so there's only six. I lose more troops to family pets than I care to think about. The ferrets wreak havoc on lower shelves when they break in; they can't resist knocking everyone over or occasionally stealing little men. We used to have a St. Bernard that would wag her big fluffy tail and fling troops across the room to often be later stepped on. We once had a cat who enjoyed chewing on pikes and spears.

Next up an unfinished French Carabiner from a manufacturer whose name is lost to my memory. If you know please do leave a comment. The colors of the reins and straps are not decided, because I don't know the most correct colors. And apparently the horse color is wrong, he should be black according to what I've read. They quit wearing white or something about the time they lost all their black horses in Russia. I have a small unit of these who are in terrible condition and painted really really badly. I have sworn to fix and repaint them all before I buy the Perry ones and place these back in box to be badly damaged again.

Here's a Blue Moon zombie standing next to giant Reaper zombie lady whose breasts are exposed. She is about as attractive as the ladies on my former porn follower's blog.

Now here are seven truly atrociously painted mediocrely sculpted zombies from Wargames Factory. Ok, the sculpts aren't that bad, except for the flash and lack of detail. I just hate assembling them. On second thought they really aren't that well sculpted, and I don't have to be a talented sculptor to notice bad sculpting. Also, there's something about the plastic that causes my always reliable Superglue to not work that well. Oh, and the necks are huge. I didn't assemble these, my favorite son did, in my plans to create zombie horde diversity. Strength through diversity! I did chop a few up to make creepy crawling zombies. I really do like Wargames Factory and their products and from what I've heard their great customer support, but I hate their zombies.

Here's a Mega Miniature Crossbowmen of unknown citizenship. He and about eight identical clones came in a pack of manlets I bought. I tried to give all his fellow crossbowmen away, but no one will take them. Comment if you'd like them, give me your email, and I'll mail them to you. I don't like duplicates.

Here is a 40K ork (orc with a k is how you write orc in the future) that I'm painting for my boy in return for going through the pain of assembling the nasty little zombies. He's almost done, but I figured I better take a picture now before the beautiful wife loses the camera again.

To finish on a boring note, I've been flocking parts of a trench table I've been working on and may never finish. I decided to put liquid in the craters and failed miserably. I put in a blackish ink mix and it looks terrible. I'll fix it and try a lighter colored fluid.

Next time I post I hope to show you some minor Global War on Terror Lego work I've been doing, as well as a zombie apocalypse survivor, and some Cobra troopers. I am easily distracted and promise nothing.

Merry Christmas if you like Christmas. I hope the wife gets me some toy army men and I hope yours gets you some too.

Love, Hugs, and Kisses,
Baconfat

Perry Plastics, Siege Junk, a Couple Zombies, and More!

2010-12-14T21:40:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I have a few pictures for you today. I should have more soon as I'm only showing you what I finished. There's quite a few more almost done.

First are 4 more Peninsular British Line. I painted them as the 6oth because they had both red coats and rifles in green. To my dismay I recently read that the all rifle units were in the peninsular. The only blue cuff units I could dig up I think are maybe the King's German Legion, the Swiss Roll-Dollins, and the French traitor unit (can't remember their name right now). Some of those had light blue and not my darker blue. I've painted the around 40 of them now and glued Peninsular heads on them, so they're going to the peninsula regardless.

Secondly are four more 60th Rifles. I painted them using the dip method except for the skin which I tried the Dalimore method. Four shades of untalently laid flesh looks worse than my dipped or washed skinned faces I normally pump out.

Here's a willy nilly pic I took to show anyone remotely concerned if they could mix Old Glory Nappies with Perrys. No, you can't, at least not in the same unit, unless the British models are taller than the Prussians.

Here are three more zombies. Next post should include alot more zombies. Well the first one is a Reaper model and the other two are Blue Moon, which I buy from Old Glory 25's. You may notice all my zombies have crap bases painted a boring gray. Well either I haven't come up with a good base scheme for my zombie horde or the walking dead simply don't deserve good basing.

Before you mentally criticize the next model, realize it was one of the first models I painted around 25-30 years ago, as a kid. I haven't got much better, so feel free to criticize all the other shoddy work. The Nick Lund sculpted (I think) Grenadier brand dwarf is one of the gunners for a giagantic bombard made out of enough lead to make sixty dwarves. Well, he's here because he was terribly chipped and needed rebasing. He might look worse now.

Now that I am rambling about fantasy models, here are two more GW Empire artillery pieces I've finished. They're metal and oldish, I don't know what else to say.

Here's a manlet I painted, I've now got about 20 of them painted now, for a giant siege battle I'm never going to run. The model is from Megaminiatures and the Perry model is there for scale.

I said I was only showing you finished models but I wanted to show you a silly sneak peak of another UNFINISHED random project I'm working on. When I was young and played with 75-100mm plastic army men with kung fu grips, my favorite were the valiant forces of Cobra. I did some scraping of a Target Games (out of business) model and started painting him like Destro. Destro, who for some reason has a metal mask that moves with his facial expressions. I imagine it's mercury based; I've always thought heavy metal poisoning was why the brave Cobra warriors never killed a single JOE.

I'm also painting up some Cobra troopers which would be farther along but the primer I used doesn't hold paint that well and Target models aren't that fun to paint for me.

COOOOBRRRRRRRAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for visiting.

love and kisses,

BAAAAACOOOONNNNFAAAAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Dozen Zombies and More!

2010-12-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

Hi,

I've added a number of zombies to the horde.

First this group of evil zombies are four Wall Street business men responsible for the world's financial crisis. The models are from Blue Moon's "Things that go Bump in the Night" line. Blue Moon make decent models but all the men in box 8 "I Can't Seem to Get a Good Night Sleep" set #2 all seem to have 1970's style haircuts.

Here is a Reaper Zombie model that I really thought was terrible. That was until I painted it. The sculptor outwitted my terrible painting with a good sculpt. Reaper zombies are quite large, maybe 32mm scale.

Here's two Mantic Games ghouls with zombie paint jobs, next to a dull witted Wargames Factory Zombie, sans arm. I didn't know where his arm was when he bumped into the painting cue, so I painted his dead a** anyway.

Here are some sliced up Heroclix models with additional paint for zombification. I know they're super hero ladies, but can't remember any of there names.

I've been expiramenting with chain link fence creation and here's what I've made so far. They are out dated metal cast (for broken bones) frames glued into cardboard. One is "dirt" and the other is on black cardboard, until I can figure out how to simulate asphalt.

I have a bunch of painted "Empire" GW models including artillery crews without artillery pieces. I painted a few up, here are two of four that are done. I simply painted the base colors, painted on "dip" and then flocked them. I'll have more done real soon.

This is a Ral Partha organ gun that I started ages ago and recently decided to get off the painting table. It's a silly gun that looks extremely heavy with no way to move it. An enemy could simply choose to avoid it.

During a zombie model search I found this prepainted ghost. I really appreciated how much better the minimum wage third-world country painter could paint than me. So I bought it and upgraded the base.

Lastly are four RAFM eastern Roman archers, that I painted 20 years ago (quite terribly) that I've touched up. Two of them appear to be missing heads or bows, but are really using the WAB 2.0 rule for Eastern Roman invisible bows and ghost heads. It's an obscure rule hidden in a French Canadian rules Faq that must be ordered via snail mail directly from Forgeworld, but somewhat useful versus NKE armies.

Baconfat

Learning Warlord Games Black Powder Rules

2010-11-30T20:04:00.000-08:00

Hi,

Just a quick post as I've not been painting the last two days. I've been reading and did a quick play test of the Black Powder rules. The book is amazing, it's full of clearly explained rules, witty humor, and pictures of impossibly well painted miniatures. They seem like they'll be fun and easy to learn.

To better understand some of the game mechanics, one of my dogs and I lined up a few army men and rolled for initiative. There was no terrain and they were lined up way to close (16ish inches apart). Not worth posting, except that one side was completely destroyed and the other left completely unmolested.

Here was my opposing general.

Army one (infantry) consisted of three standard size units of regular infantry with smoothbore muskets and two smooth bore foot artillery pieces. Army two (Hussars) consisted of four 12 model Hussar units.

You can see the armies foolishly aligned on a plain of paint flecked plastic.

When initiative was rolled the infantry grasped the...initiative. It turned instantly bad for the Hussars of Army Two. Each of the infantry units shot at the Hussar units directly in front of them. The Hussars all took quite a few casualties and became disordered or shaken. The unit that took four casualties from the cannons immediately broke, fled, and was removed from play.

The Hussars turn one: being disordered and shaken the remaining three units were forced to just stand their ground.

Infantry turn two: Once more shot the living "S" out of the Hussars, who turned tail and ran away.

It was a particularly stupid game and I won't try anymore play testing until I take the time to set up terrain on a large table. I would suggest setting the game up as instructed and not in a space small enough for a DBA checkers game. I also won't face battle against such a clever dog until I better understand the rules. I'm also going to read a Brigadier Gerard novel tonight for pointers on the proper use of Hussars.

Love Baconfat

British Rockets and Beginnings of Crawling Zombies

2010-11-28T15:10:00.000-08:00

Precious Reader,

I've completed some 28mm Old Glory British Rockets. Ok, maybe they're assembled incorrectly, but they did not come with directions. I found a blog, where someone else had assembled theirs and I copied them. I have since seen an Osprey book and either Osprey or I mounted their rockets a wrong.

I sprayed them with a gray primer. The painted wood is Model Color Azure. The rockets are Model Color Black Gray. The metal bits are Model Color Gunmetal Grey. The bare wood is Model Color New Wood.

After that I squirted white glue all over the base, dipped them in sand, and let sit overnight. The next day I painted them with a black Minwax wood stain. While drying I painted the sand brown, tan, then light tan using cheap craft store paint (Apple Barrel Brown, Crafts Smart Golden Brown, and Apple Barrel Sandstone). I applied a little flock and fake grass. When that was all dry I touched up the paint job a little bit.

I would suggest to anyone else, that they paint before assembling. The underneath parts where a chore.

I love Zombies, but I can't stand assembling Wargames Factory zombies. It's funner I just found if you chop some of them up. Chopped up zombies will assist with the variation, as I don't want any duplicate zombies. I added glue gun glue for guts on one. They're unpainted, except for the blood I quickly doused on simply for fun.

Love Baconfat

Prussian Artillery Crew Done...Not Well, but Done!

2010-11-27T11:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Cherished Visitor,

I've completed an eight man crew for one of my two Prussian cannons. The models are Old Glory metals. The first unit of my Warlord Blackpowder Army is finally done. Blackpowder armies are quite large with at least 15ish units each. The units themselves can be quite large as well. Standard infantry units range from 24-30 models; Cavalry range from 12-16; Artillery units are a single gun; I think I may have lots of artillery.

Here's a new shelf I recently acquired free from a great friend. The holes where one sticks the studs to hold the shelves are not the same on either side, except where I have the individual shelves currently. Normally I match the wood and add more shelves as tiny men don't take up much room. So I won't be able to maximize storage on this shelf unless I drill more holes. It's not an emergency, as almost everyone on it's not painted anyway. I think it take two more shelf sets (a grand total of six) to give every army man room to stand around and collect dust. So if you accidently stumbled upon this page and have some extra shelves you're willing to give away and you live in Western Washington, please leave a comment saying as much.

I've taken another picture of my filthy painting desk. The stuff in the back row space men things never seem to get taken care of. New additions include: some Rus which will probably end up in the lonely back row quickly (as I have no intention of making a Rus army), some more zombies, British rockets (put together incorrectly by me), a couple manlets (for siege fun), an ancient French Carabiner model of unknown manufacture, and a few fantasy pistol toting horsemen. I had spilt some paint and didn't want to waste it and the pistoliers were the first primed models I could get my hands on that needed that same color of paint. Normally, I cry over spilt paint.

Love Baconfat

Zombies, Rocket Crew, Cannon, Abandoned Buildings, and Terrain.

2010-11-25T22:40:00.001-08:00

Hello dear beloved viewer,

I've slapped paint on few more zombies. I'm up to 38 complete with another 30 something in the works.

First up, is a zombie child. It's a USX miniature which I believe is actually RAFM. The line is actually quite large, maybe 32mm scale and full grown USX/RAFM zombies probably won't be added to the pack. They dwarf some of the prepainted Horrorclix stuff. Regardless the undead child is in, because child zombies are very rare.

Second is a Heroclix Invisible Woman that's been chopped up and painted undeadish. I find myself forced into killing superheros to get a more fair ratio of female to male zombies. I shaved off her Fantastic 4, painted her a white tank top, touched up her pants and boots, stabbed her a bit, chopped off half an arm, and liberally applied blood. Heroclix actually are quite easy to zombiefy because of their soft plastic and prepaint equals priming to me.

Thirdly are two terrible prepainted sculpts. I believe they are for Dungeons and Dragons, but zombies are zombies and prepaints save time. All I did was dip them in wood stain to hide the sweat shop labor paint job and paint their bases gray. Zombies don't need to be pretty.

Here are two Mantic brand ghoul models. I saw a advert on theminiaturespage.com come that Wayland Games was offering free Mantic ghoul samples. Free is good. These ghouls had extrabits and are sculpted quite well. The downside is they had weird horns growing out of them (about three each) and what appeared to be railroad spikes randomly stuck in them. They were easily removed. I also removed some of their clothing, because they were both wearing skirts. Skirts would be fine if I was creating a Scottish zombie horde. They'll be a fine addition to the pack.

Due to the fact I'm painting these zombies for the Zombies board game, I painted uptwo of the official Zombies miniatures. They are very small compared to the rest of the pack members, but it seemed right to include a couple. People come in different sizes.

Here is an Old Glory British rocket crew. There done wether they really are or not. The little yellow straps all over their jackets was infuriating. I also have no idea what color the furry trim of the officer's jacket should be. I couldn't find any Osprey books or online pics to help. Yellow and white looked silly; so the trim ended up gray. I'll paint some rockets for them to shoot soon.

Below are some artillery pieces I've been working on. I painted the Victrix British cannon ages ago, but only recently based it. The other two are Prussian guns. The crew will be done soon and posted.

Here are two abandoned buildings that are nearing completion. I am going to make sidewalks out of thin foam board and throw in a little rubbish. You may notice there's a severe lack of rubble. I don't think I like painting rubble. I'm going to try and make some red brick buildings next and I'll make some rubble for that.

Lastly, I thought I'd show my one subscriber how I store my flat terrain. It's hanging on the walls wherever there's not shelves of little tiny toy army men in the way; but one picture of one wall will suffice. I simply carve little chunks out of the foam bottoms. They sit quite well on a nail in the wall.

Love Baconfat

Turkey Day

2010-11-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving fellow residents of the United States. I apologize for forgetting you, Canada you had yours over a month ago.

Terrain, Trees, and Zombies Part 2

2010-11-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

Hi again,

I wanted to show off this aquarium building I found at the local used store. It was deal as instant terrain and only $3. I bought it to be environmentally friendly. I always say "reuse, recycle, and re....something."

I also found this little thing that might be a cave.

Next up is a hill with an incredibly big skull or rock shaped like a skull. A few older blogs back one could see the work in progress. The pieces were insulation foam and a paperboard skull from a craft store.

Here are some of the trees I recently based. I can't remember what brand trees they are but they were incredibly easy to base. Each day I completed one 5-20 minute step.

1. super glue the tree bases to a 25mm washer

2. squirt pva glue all over the washer, then dip them in a fine sand

3. paint the hardened glue sand mixture dark brown

4. highlight the dark brown a lighter brown. Advanced hobbyists would repeat this process numerous times with continually lighter browns, but I am far too lazy for that.

5. spot glue grass and assorted ground cover or rocks

Here are some unfinished Prussian artillery crew, I read somewhere they had eight men per gun. That's nice of them. To the right are some British rocket crew. They're even more unfinished, but I'm having so much fun painting them I wanted to take their picture. All the models are Old Glory metals. The cannon is one of those Victrix plastic pieces. I haven't painted the Old Glory metal gun yet.

The last new item is some sort of landing pad for science fiction models. The vertically challenged space man and WWI tank are for scale viewing pleasure. It's made out of a piece of neato styrofoam and four wedding cake columns. Not from my wedding cake. I hand painted it with cheap craft paint, then spray painted it gray, then spread black wood stain all over it, and about 30 seconds of highlighting. I'll probably stick a few led lights on it, some Archer rub on decals, and maybe a way for the little soldier to get up and down.

Here is a picture of my painting area, I took as evidence. It appears someone drank a bunch of beer, poorly painted a bunch of miniatures, and left the table trashed.

Thanks for looking or reading. I've had nearly 100 views, most likely by disgruntled internet enthusiasts looking up the Canadian rock band which stole my Baconfat name.

Love,

Baconfat

Trees, Terrain, and Zombies

2010-11-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

Hi Accidental Blog Viewer,

I took some pictures of some of my latest toy army man projects.

First, I've adding to the zombie horde. I don't want any identical zombies, but I won two eBay auctions each with three identical "Horrorclix" zombies. With a little repainting, head/limb swapping, I've managed to get enough deviation to avoid duplicate zombies.

The second set are patients. The one on the right, has static grass painted brown for hair. I ran out of matching scale arms.

Here's a picture of all my newer zombie horde additions. We've these additions, I think I have 34 painted zombies. My favorite is the zombie ventriloquist also from "Horrorclix". I plan to use the horde to spice up the Zombies board game, so I've included two of the official Zombies miniatures. You will see no close up pictures for those as they didn't paint up well.

The unpainted buildings are $2 craft things I picked up at a Michael's Craft Store. I think they'll make quick and easy terrain.

I have to go to the store, I'll post the other pictures when I get back.

thanks

Remembered My Password

2010-10-28T19:48:00.000-07:00

If anyone has ever stumbled upon this blog, I apologize for never updating it. I had lost the piece of paper with my log on and the gmail I never use.

Here are some pictures taken since my last blog in July. I've built quite alot of terrain and painted numerous models.

Here's my work bench from August or September. 25 of the WWI brits are done, a bunch more are primed. I'll post pics of them hopefully soon. A few LOTR models, Perry British Plastics, W40K space marines, Pulp fiction, and Zombies, as well as some different Roman, ECW, and Hungarians all for Warhammer Ancients have been finished, since this picture.

Here are some of the British Penisular War. I think I spelt that wrong. I meant Peninsular War, I think.

Here's the beginnings of some ruined buildings. They could be used for modern or sci-fi battles, or even WWII in a pinch. They're actually almost done and don't look so awful. I'll post more pics as well.

They're made out of foam board, pinned together. Slathered in Elmer's glue and sprinkled with sand.

Top view next to a silly fantasy hill with a skull on it. I finished the hill and it doesn't look so stupid anymore. I'll post a pic soon of that too.

Here's a pic of the ruins, primed with black. I actually started to panic thinking they were going to come out like crap. They look good now though. I just can't figure out how to make sidewalks and I need to add some more rubbish.

Thanks for visiting. Next post I'll have some more terrain (buildings, trees, chain link fences), painted minis (Zombies, Brits, Ancients, and maybe even some space marines) , and a neat Aquarium building I found in a second hand store for three dollars.

love Baconfat

Minor Progress on Perry Plastics

2010-07-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

I've been extremely busy at work (13 days straight) but I did manage a little bit of progress on my Perry British. Actually after taking this picture I put a couple more hours of painting in and they're farther along than shown. I despise painting straps.

Second Batch of Perry Plastic British Started

2010-07-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I've started another batch of Perry Plastic British. There's 22 regular line troops with Peninsular shakos. They've been primed a displeasing watery white (Valspar Flat White). I glued them to 20mm cardstock bases, as I'm too lazy to buy magnetic strips and metal bases. 20mm is good for Sharps Practice and the fan made versions of Warhammer Napoleonics based off of Warhammer Ancients.

I used Vallejo Fair Flesh on the skin parts, though someone's hands got missed. I should have used a darker tint as I imagine a little time in Spain and Portugal would have given them a little human color. At least they'll match the first batch. I used Vallejo Gory Red for their jackets.

There's lots of work left, but assembly line painting does speed things up. I still have another 40 models left to even assemble, but I think I'll do a few French up as zombies first. I remember one of the wizards in the book "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell", necromancing up some deceased French soldiers to aid the British cause.

Bacon

Elderly Painting Companions

2010-06-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

I paint with a couple old ladies, Candy and Scooter.

Candy is a Nanday Conure who is extremely needy and loud old lady. She's outgoing and wants to sit on my shoulders anytime I'm home. Besides continually grabbing at brushes, her biggest problem painting with her is that she likes to help (hinder) flocking models.

She loves to swim and play in water, so I have to keep the poisonous brush rinsing mug uncomfortably far from myself.

Scooter, a red headed conure, is another old lady who is much more shy. She's not as attention needy with an extreme desire to constantly touch me as Candy, but if you don't ring her little toy bells about once an hour she screeches at the top of her hearing damage causing lungs.

Bacon

Dr CthWholhu?

2010-06-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

In my pile of lead, I found and painted some sci-fi/horror models .

Three UNIT troopers (including an officer, GW/RAFM)

three truly awful models called Time Lord Player Characters (GW/RAFM). The "time lords are really deformed looking, but still easy to paint.

And another 2 UNIT troopers and Sergeant I found, after finishing the others. I also have a small bag of pulp Cthulhu? minis that'd be good for Dr Who games. Hopefully I'll paint soon more of them up soon.

Here are two poorly painted two Cthulhu characters?(I guess from RAFM). The lady carries a revolver and purse; the Indiana Jones look-a-like has a whip, revolver, and dynamite. They might make good Dr Who game models.

Bacon

Hittite Test Models

2010-06-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

These are a couple test models for a 1K point army of Warhammer Ancient Battles Hittites. The musician's weapon fell off.

60th Perry British Infantry

2010-06-22T22:02:00.000-07:00

Hello, here are my slow first attempts at British Line troops for the Peninsular War era. I bought two of the Perry boxes, so I still have the onerous task of assembling, painting and basing another 60 models. Below are pictures of everyone I've painted so far.

the grenadiers or light infantry:

five line troops:

command, no flags yet, because I fear painting them:

rifles:

Here's a size comparison with Victrix Artillery Officer, Perry Officer, and an old Minifig(?) sapper.

The back of the two officers, the Victrix officer should be thoroughly embarrassed arriving for a photo shoot without proper flocking. Someone will have to be flogged.

Love,

Bacon

Victrix British Artillery Gun

2010-06-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in a while, work and family's been eating up time, but I plan on posting more often as I haven't given up painting too much painting time.

Somewhat not exciting, but what you see here is a finished (tabletop quality at best) Victrix plastic six pound artillery piece. They're whores to assemble, but seem to paint up rather quickly if you're not a Nappy Nazi.

I don't really know what color the guns hardware is supposed to be. The box art appears to a dull brass, but some internet pictures are a brighter brass or black. I'll do the other guns the latter two, until I find out the toothy truth.

Bacon

Enfilade Super Deals!

2010-05-28T19:26:00.000-07:00

I've only been to one to one convention before the recent terrific NHMGS convention ENFILADE!, but I'll try never to miss another. There were so many beautiful examples of games with absolutely amazing terrain and unbelievably well painted miniatures. I am pissed at myself for not attending earlier.

One of my hoarder highlights was the swap tables. I bought an amazing amount of lead that I didn't need.

At the dealer tables, I bought some resin terrain pieces I didn't need; I couldn't resist because I couldn't resist the cheap prices.

Entry fees: for only $30 you get 3 days of entry and a t-shirt.

Overall for only $90 I picked up all mostly 25-30mm scale):

3 days of gaming opportunity

43 Ottoman Turks and assorted Arab types

133 Swiss/mercenaries pike men and other troops

1 resin machine gun nest

28 resin barricade sections

4 resin dug out graves

2 resin graveyard sections

1 trebuchet, RAFM

1 small siege tower, RAFM

1 manlet, RAFM

2 siege ladders

2 covered battering rams

1 huge artillery manlet

1 sort of dwarf steam powered rolling cannon thing

2 organ guns

2 chariots

1 fantasy trebuchet on wheels

1 catapult

1 siege flame thrower

1 set of stocks

1 guillatine

33 dwarves

2 torture racks

87 goblin orc things

22 assorted monsters

4 GW 40K models: elf, ork, 2 imperial guard

2 horses

47 various historical and fantasy medieval fighting men

3 wizards

4 hobbits

1 evil looking idol/statue

1 Columbus looking guy standing next to a globe

5 medieval/ren casualty models

3 space ship things

1 coffin

5 French? WWI troops

3 tiny gyrocopters

26 tiny scale tanks and APCs

7 tiny scale trucks and flat beds

2 tiny scale helicopters

27 aliens called centaurs, promotecs, gorgons

and about 8 creatures I simply can't identify.

I only played a few games; I had family things to do that prevented me from fully embracing the available games.

Quick & Easy Sci-Fi Buildings

2010-05-25T20:42:00.000-07:00

I collect assorted packing material.

The collected garbage normally ends up in the garbage or recycling after a few months, but recently I've turned garbage into junk. The pressed paperish shapes that sometimes are used as packing material instead of styrofoam for things like coffee pots, toasters, or assorted household tools has always fascinated me because they might make good housing for my toy army men.

I had eight pieces of this formed material; two were destroyed during painting preparation, but four actually made it to the painting process. I cut off unusable edges, primed three black, dry brushed them gray. I tried painting one gray first then washing it with black stain (fail). I used varying degrees of dry brushing to determine the best method and the lightest gray one came out the best.

I may paint the other two up in various browns. They'll look more like the buildings in the first Star Wars Mos Eisling (spelling? the desert place where Han Solo kills the fish guy) buildings.

Over two days, it took about five minutes to spray paint them, twenty minutes to dry brush them, another 30 minutes to cut out little doors and windows (once again I tried different methods to see what looked best), and finally another fifteen minutes to paint and attach the doors.

It took me another three days to finally paint up six Doctor Who models to go with the buildings. I for some reason only included five of the models during the quick photo shoot. The models are ones I bought in 1986?. They have a unique history as they were a joint project by RAFM and Citadel. Citadel released models in the UK and RAFM in the US (and probably Canada). Most of the models are mediocre sculpts, but the pictured Ice Warriors (green guys) and Cybermen painted up incredibly easy.

The pictures show the 6 that I didn't get angry with and throw away, as well as the difference in appearances I came up with.

Next time, I'll post pics of some Perry Napoleonic riflemen I painted, which I forgot to photograph. Hopefully I'll have some British line troops and and a six pounder cannon done as well.

Minor Trench Table Progress

2010-05-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

I'm nearing 60% completion on placing shoring on one half of the trench sides. The other sides may not get done. Gluing wood sticks to styrofoam is not nearly as fun as it sounds.

I also don't know how to stain the wood to make it look more realistic or even if I should.

The shoring method I picked was poles or logs as opposed to superior planks I've seen on other boards or old photographs of really happy clean British plank shoring trenches (must be propaganda or training areas).

The second pic is a sample of my overly pitted ground between trenches. I will add vegetation and dirty water to the crater bottoms when I finish the miserable burdensome all work and no play task of shoring.

The out of period soldier models are painted craptacularily by me and appear at least digitally to be extremely glossy.

- Bacon

First Victrix British Artillery Crew Painted

2010-05-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

I've painted up my first Victrix British Foot Artillery Crew. I'm not use to so much detail on such little models. The three different colored sets of straps to hold bags, boxes, and canteens all over their shirts was a nightmare. In fact I'm not sure the sculptor didn't screw up the straps, there was a missing strap on one and an extra on another.

I also blew off the yellow piping on their red collars. I would have to pop off their heads to get it on there; there wasn't room to get my smallest brushes in there without splashing yellow everywhere. The eyes were unpaintable on several of them as I couldn't get up under the hats. As I was getting more and more frustrated I quit, not highlighting anything but the pants and jackets, not the skin. I used black wash, because I imagined artillery crew would be dirty. The officer is cleaner with lighter pants, as I imagine a gentlemen would have less shit on him.

As to the models, the paint doesn't seem to stick as well as some other plastics I've painted. I washed them, primed them the same way I do every model. But occasionally the base or feet would have the paint wiped off. Perhaps I wasn't waiting long enough between coats.

The models themselves are a little flimsy. The sword on the officer's hip broke in half and I don't know how the artillery shovel thing on on of the guys broke off.

I think the less detailed Perry infantry models I recently bought will be easier.

Here's a bad picture of a mediocre paint job.

Victrix British Artillery, Perry British plastics, Black Powder Rules

2010-05-12T13:36:00.000-07:00

I've been avoiding Napoleonics for years out of both fear of painting the models correctly and complexity of the rules.

When I heard Rick Priestley and Jervis Johnson wrote some Nappy rules I was curious. Rick Priestly wrote the original version of Rogue Trader Warhammer 40,000. As a youngster, there was no book I enjoyed more. I subscribe to the terrific Meeples and Miniatures podcast and they did a great review of the Black Powder rules. The podcast made the decision to buy the rules final and I went to the Warlord Games website to order it.

I needed some troops to push around, so I ordered the new Victrix British foot artillery box set and two boxes of Perry British Line Infantry. Black Powder is really a large battle game, so I will have to buy many more models.

The Victrix box has carriages and limbers for three artillery pieces. There are pieces to make up to three short 6 pounder guns, three long 6 pounder guns, three 9 pounder guns, and/or three howitzers. The 15 accompanying crew have optional heads for Waterloo and the Peninsular war. The only thing I don't like about the crew is that there are three officer bodies. I really only wanted one with 15 crew. The arms are numerous and you could possibly make 15 different models. A number of the arms have flash in the fingers making clean up and assembly an onerous task.

I assembled one guns and I started to wish I had spent more and bought metal models. The guns are amazingly detailed and some of the parts are quite fiddly. In particular the chain instructions were ambiguous and hard to attach. I probably did the chains wrong. The worst part was the fiddly little tiny lever thing that is used to raise and lower the barrel for trajectory. I may not attach the latter to the rest of the guns.

There are artillery rules for March of Eagles included, if anyone actually plays those.

The Perry boxes had far less flash and what seems to be slightly better sculpting and tougher plastic. The good thing is that Perry and Victrix match up very well is size and proportionality. Each Perry box has 40 models including 5 command models: two standard bearers, an officer, a sergeant, and a drummer boy. There are four riflemen and 31 line men. You can make up to 8 with the shoulder wings to designate flank troop grenadiers and/or light infantry. There are enough heads to either make all the models either Waterloo or Peninsular war. There is also a little sheet inside with painting guide for various regiments.

I've only started to read the Black Powder rules but so far they are well written and the book itself is beautiful. It's 186 pages, hard bound, and full of eye candy.

The rules seem easy, but I've starting painting the artillery crew and that isn't going so well. I'll post pictures of them when some are complete.

Weapons of the Imperial Guard

2010-05-07T10:19:00.001-07:00

I prefer historical miniatures over fantasy and sci-fi, but I have a very soft spot for Game Workshop's 40K Imperial Guard. I've been buying the little guys for over twenty years and have hordes of them.

I am posting pictures to show the evolution of Guard weaponry. You'll quickly see the technology is decreasing as the weapons are getting bigger, but you'll also notice the factories are making at least a better looking product.

First is heavy bolter. I have found eight versions of this weapon. Left to right: 1. this ancient little heavy bolter dates back from the days of the Imperial Army; 2. a metal heavy bolter, anti-grav technology allows a regular human to carry these large weapons; 3. slightly different plastic version; 4. an early Cadian heavy bolter, the grav technology is lost and now they have to have wheels to move these beasts; 5. Unless you're strong as a marine like this Last Chancer; 6. the new Cadian plastic, I don't know how two guys are supposed to carry it around; 7. a newer Vostroyan one with drummed ammo; 8. a tarantula with really large heavy bolters, I think they really belong on servitors.

Autocannons are not as common throughout the ages and I only have two pictures for you: 1. old metal Cadian; 2. new plastic Cadian.

Only two regular mortars and a mole mortar here. 1. metal; 2. newer plastic; 3. lost technology from a silly weapon called the mole mortar manned by plastic squats. The round would travel underground to the target. I glued a regular mortar to one of them so I could called it a "counts as" mortar.

Missile launchers. 1. Plastic launcher stolen from a plastic beakie marine; 2. actually a GW Rogue Trooper; 3. I'm only pretty sure this is a GW launcher; 4. Catachan with lighter launcher and stand; 5. Mordian version without face plate and stand; 6. Steel Legion version that looks more like what all these weapons really are, rocket grenades or just plain rockets; 7. plastic Cadian.

Flamers. 1. ancient model titled "ex-tech" whatever that means; 2. a beakie with flamer (none of my Guard with stolen weapons are painted); 3. Mordian; 4. plastic Catachan; 5. Cadian plastic; 6. Vostroyan version.

Plasma guns. 1. first metal version; 2. stolen plastic plasma gun from an unknown kit; 3. Catachan metal; 4. Cadian metal

Meltaguns. 1. Squat with early version; 2. Mordian; 3. Cadian

Demo Charges. 1. Catachan; 2. Last Chancer

Grenade launchers. 1. Really big Imperial Army version; 2. smaller RT version; 3. Mordian; 4. stubby little Steel Legion version; 5. plastic Cadian.

Lascannons. 1. Original metal; 2. original plastic; 3. a different (horribly painted) plastic on a tarantula; 4. metal Cadian; 5. metal Steel Legion; 6. longer plastic Cadian with converted wiring system.

Ripper guns. 1. older; 2. newer

Sentinels. 1. RT egg shaped walker; 2. Metal Cadian (modified for support role); 3. plastic with metal armor

Long lost Human Bomb. Politically incorrect suicide bombers of the Emperor.

Heavy Stubber and Hunter Killer. GW never made us proper man portable versions of these weapons, so I made my own. 1. Actually a Renegade Miniatures WW1 Vickers machine gun with IG bits; 2. Hunter-killer simply planted on a heavy weapons tripod.

Trench Table is Brown Now

2010-05-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

I found some time and made more progress on my trench terrain. First, I covered the playing surfaces in a 2/1 ratio of plain glue/water. After that I sprinkled, tossed, poured, threw, and dumped paving sand on top of the glue/water mix.

I let the sand glue mess dry overnight, but the next day it hadn't all dried. The wet parts were mostly crater bottoms which came off when I tried shop vacuuming up the loose sand. Other sand came off flat surfaces of the boards where I hadn't placed enough glue. Worst of all the sand was extremely fragile and came off the boards with the slightest touch.

I had some extra cans of unwanted wood stain; I thought I might save some cash and use these to stick the sand to the board and then I could spray on paint quickly. My plans failed quickly. The first can I tried wasn't water based and started melting the styrofoam! The second quart was water based and looked great after it dried but didn't do the job; and the sandless patches shined through obnoxiously.

Stain was a failure so I went to Lowes and bought some flat latex 1 one gallon paint tubs (cheap as possible). I bought a dark brown and a lighter brown. I'm in the middle of applying them in that order. Completely cover in dark and dry brush in light. Then I will will stain with an Onyx Minwax non styrofoam melting water based stain and another light dry brushing.

After the painting, I'll start adding shoring to most of the trench sides. I'm going to use bamboo on the first try. My back up plans for this are wooden match stick and popsicle sticks. I cut the heads off several thousand matches and ate about 300 popsicles. Popsicles help stave off the minor thirst/hunger for human blood/flesh I acquired after cutting myself working on zombie models.

The picture shows several steps along the way. Left to right: failed cocoa wood stain, brown paint, dry brushed two tone brown paint.

Hopefully I won't be to busy after family with work and stupid school to get some more terrain work done soon.

very respectfully,

Brainsfat.....I mean Baconfat

Great War Trench Table

2010-04-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Great War should have been called the Absolutely Miserable War or the Horrible War. Regardless of adjectives used, it has inspired me to make a trench warfare table top.

It's based more on the German design than the French or British design. During internet research, it appeared that the poor saps digging the hole didn't always follow the pretty diagrams drawn behind desks, far behind enemy lines.

The pieces are somewhat modular so the number of trenches can be added to or deleted as I make more pieces. Right now it's 4' x 6' and the craters aren't complete. There are different size craters dug into the board and the lips were created using different techniques. Some lips are spackle, some are styrofoam crumbles and some were created with foam triangles glued around the crater. The latter will require the most building up for realism, unless the spackle doesn't stick to the board.

There's a front line trench, a support trench, two reserve trenches and some space for short range artillery emplacements.

I've also added a few slight terrain raises and depressions so it doesn't look like a bombed out parking lot.

Things I will be adding with pictures to follow will be:

Shoring/shielding

covered passages

sandbags

pill box

pallet flooring

possibly dug outs

barbed wire

latrine

Foam Factory Hot Wire Tools

2010-04-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

I purchased a couple foam hot wire sculpting tools from the foam factory, and was pleased with them. They quickly melted through even blue foam.

I decided to make a Vauban style star fortress; here are some pictures of the progress so far.

After cutting the three layers and pinning them together, I primed with brush on chalk board paint hoping for a little texture. A little disappointing and it smelled poisonous.

I dry brushed with gray and brown. I don't know how to improve the dull look. I'm going to try spraying it with wood stain and dry brushing again.

Here's a 28mm Old Glory hand gunner for scale.

Vauban or Star Fortress

2010-04-25T19:25:00.000-07:00

I recently purchased a hot wire styrofoam cutting tool. I decided to do a make a star fortress first. The too makes cutting styrofoam very quick; I can't wait to make something else' I'm thinking about a parking garage.

It was supposed to look like it was cut out of rock, but it looks fake. If you have suggestions please post.

Left 4 Dead 2

2010-04-19T17:54:00.001-07:00

My son is addicted to the Left 4 Dead 2 video game. So I thought I'd make him some miniatures that resemble some of the specially infected zombies found throughout the game.

For the project, I sacrificed some plastic Heroclix garbage, which a friend gave me. I can't figure the rules out and I don't really like super heros. Why would the equivalent of modern day gods prance around in tights and use silly pseudonyms like Captain Atom, the Black Falcon and the Human Fly? All the better for being made into zombies.

I cut myself quite bad with a dull Exacto knife chopping the models up, but luckily I didn't get infected. You can see the before and as far as the models got, before I completely lost interest in this project. The zombies are quite dirty in the video game, so I tried to duplicate the filthy look. Left to rightish, common zombie in riot gear, smoker with long tongue thing, tank, jockey, charger, boomer, and another tank.

That's all for now.....for some reason I'm really craving raw meat.......

Some of the Forces and My Painting Table

2010-04-04T13:31:00.000-07:00

The first of the two pictures shows maybe half of the toy army man horde. There's quite a few more hiding in boxes. There's too many to fully list: Byzantines, Egyptians, fantasy monsters, Goblins, Greeks, GW Empire, Hittites, Hungarians, Hussites, Imperial Romans, Republican Romans, siege engines (40ish), space men (a horde on their own), Successors, WWI Brits, WWI French, and more I can't think of. Most aren't painted due to stupid work and stupid need to sleep.

This second picture is of the disorganized table where I give the little guys color.