tiny little sabot bases

While I've been sampling various ranges for the MicroDux project, I've had this idea for a small magnetic sabot base in my head.  I had ordered some 0.5mm magnetic vinyl on eBay to make them with, and that turned up recently, so last night I ignored the pile of work from my job and sat down to give it a go.
Pictures below are not to my usual standard, as they were some quick phone camera snaps last night to get the general sense.  You can click on them for larger, but equally blurry views.

Basically it's two small rectangles of the magnetic vinyl sheet.  The top one has a bit of card stuck to it using the self-adhesive properties of the vinyl sheet, and has a hole cut out for the figures.  The material cut out from the centre of this piece is used to base the figures.

 Here is it with one figure sitting in the base....

 ....and with a whole group of 6 figures.  I am going to be using this closely packed base to designate units in a shieldwall in my MicroDux games.  A different base with the figures more widely spaced will be used for groups not in a shieldwall.

 I had been worried about how well the figures would stick and whether they would be constantly falling out as the bases got moved.  But as you can see below, they even stay in the base when turned upside down!

Mark Luther's 6mm Terrain Guide

This one's just a bookmark for me.
I can never find Mark Luther's excellent instructions for how he sets up his beautiful 6mm games.
Here it is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/6mmgaming/sets/72157624232621753/
Definitely worth checking out his other sets for some beautiful looking (and quite fun sounding) games.

Old School Buildings

I love this post over at Lead Gardens about "Old School" building construction!
http://littlejohnslead.blogspot.com/2011/01/classic-wargames-building-tutorial.html

Main Force VC colours

Well, I finally got a couple of hours this weekend to sit down and do some painting.
Below is a VERY blurry picture of the end result of some work on some of my Flashpoint Main Force VC.  All of the cameras have gone north with my wife, so I'm stuck using the very poor camera in my phone until mid Aug.

If you think these look bad, you should see the three that I need to strip back after my initial colour experiment went HORRIBLY wrong.

Really as a reminder for myself when I get to snatch a few more hours to attack more of these, here are the colours I used in the order that I paint them:

Uniform and bush hat: Dark Angel Green with a light drybrus of Camo Green to lighten the tone.

Webbing : Desert Yellow

Packs, boots and Rice Roll : Graveyard Earth (technically I think the roll should be uniform green, but then it won't stand out from the uniform.)

Skin : Bronzed Flesh with heavy Flesh Wash

Weapons : Chaos Black with light Bolygun Metal drybrush.  Snakebite Leather on the butt, stock and grip.

I'm also going to alternate in some figures with a mix of black items (pants or shirt) along with the uniform green.  The look I'm going for is from the illustrations in Gordon Rottman's Viet Cong Fighter (part of the Osprey Warrior series).  This shows the Main Force troops in a mix of the Green uniform and the traditional black peasant garb.

Bamboo huts

I thought I'd have crack at making some bamboo huts for south east asian games.
Here is where it is at, at the moment.

I know the CannonFodder figure is quite out of place, but I couldn't find any on my VC in a hurry.

I made a rough cardboard frame and then covered it with a cut-up bamboo placemat.

After fiddling with hobby knives and other cutting devices, I went out to the shed and grabbed the secateurs. Definitely the way to go for cutting up the placemat.

I haven't put in any doors or windows yet, so I think the secateurs will be called out again. I guess I probably should have put them in before I put the placemat onto the frame....

I'm uncertain on what to use for roofing materials. Should I thatch it, or use a corrugated iron roof? Do a number of both?

Anyone have any suggestions on the roofing material decision?

rotary tool-icious

I had been having some difficulty filing the thicker bases off the Flashpoint moderns.

My poor little, cheap files weren't up to the task vs. pewter.

On advice from Brevet on the Flashpoint forums, I tried hitting them with a dremel (actually it's a cheap knock-off Dremel).

First-off, I tried using the grinding stones in the kit, but they very quickly became clogged.

Then I tried the Carborundum tips....and they ripped through it beautifully.

A little bit of a rough finish, but then that helps with gluing to the base!
And now for the very blurry pic:

The figure on the left is intact. The figure on the right has been ground down.
The good cameras are out of town with my wife, so it's going to have to be phone camera shots again, until next week.

15mm Village How-To

A nice how-to for Mid-East/North-Africa villages is up on the Mad About Gaming blog.
I found it quite informative.

I hope to try the same thing this week using cork tile instead of the foamcore.
Two reasons:

1. I don't have any foamcore kicking around. But I do have some cork.
2. I'm hoping that I can get a more dilapidated and "chunky" feel from the cork vs. the smooth lines of cut foamcore.

The plan is that I actually have a game this friday night with a few mates; so I need to be on top of terrain.
If all goes well, there should be some work-in-progress shots over the next few days.

Painting Temperate DPM Roundup

In order to get a handle on this DPM painting situation I find myself in, I had a quick scout around.
The key resources seem to be:

• Painting British & Pakistani Camouflage by: David Blacke
• Painting British DPM by: Keith Forsyth
• Painting Guide - NATO British: by Mongrel Miniatures

The thing I find most amusing about all of this is that they each start with a different base colour.

I'm actually going to follow Tim's Guide, which appears to be similar to the David Blacke method.

I already have the sand base colour done on all of the figures after my disasterous false start.

Note: Check out the David Blacke article as it also covers Pakistani camouflage!

DIY Hot Knife

check out this little project where someone has combined an old soldering iron and an x-acto blade to make a "hot knife".

Here is the link.

I can see a number of applications for cutting plastic for bases and modelling, and also for cutting and shaping foam.  Maybe some interchangeable tools?

I also have an underpowered soldering iron downstairs......

Taking Photos

I've been pretty busy the last few weeks with non-gaming things, so I haven't got any more progress shots to show at the moment.

I have, however, been researching a few things and trying to pull together content for TPLC.

Recently I came across a very good article about photographing miniatures.

Check it out at : http://www.hodgenet.co.uk/minpics/index.htm

I've been doing it all wrong!  I'd arrived at settings just by playing with the manual exposure settings on the camera without knowing what I was doing.  As a result, the light at my disposal that first time shooting dictated my aperture and exposure settings.  

My aperture settings were set too wide, hence the depth of field issues I was getting on the massed battlegroup shots.  I've just tried setting the aperture smaller on some work in progress, and it does sort out the depth of field issue.  

The only problem now is that with such a small aperture, my exposure time blows out to 1/4 sec which means my shaky hands cause issues.  I think with better light sources, plus a tripod and timer settings, this could start to work.

The only problem is that now I won't be able to hide my dodgy painting behind blurry photography!