Family Hobby time, A Woodland Indians Diorama

Here's something new , and something I hope to post more of here. My 9 year old daughter was assigned a project in her 3rd grade Social Studies class on the Native American tribes of this area. I'm not sure who was more excited when she came home with this one, Her because she knew she would be able to come up with something cool because of my hobby, Or myself because I got to help my daughter do something like this. I told her right off the bat," I will tell you/ show what to do and I will handle the sharp cutting but you need to do this all yourself. "

She's been painting miniatures with me on and off for a good three years now, so she can and has good enough control to neatly paint 3 colors and throw a wash on..and that's all that's done here, we did some practice washes on some other figures to practice putting the right amount where, but that was it, I'm surprised how good they actually came out

The Canoe is just some cereal box cut out with the ends glued with some greenstuff on the sides, we then set it right in liquid resin and painted the bottom brown.

We had to dig thru the lead pile to find suitable figures, we had talked about getting some of Warlord's very cool plastic Woodland Indians how she was assigned this project on Thursday and it was due the following Wednesday not alot of time for ordering stuff, We ended up using all miniatures from Black Cat Bases from my Pirate box,, the Indians I think are supposed to be Pacific Islanders but painted up they'll pass,. The Explorers, are Pirate models the Donkey an old Citadel model.


The biggest hurdle were the scenic element since that was all new to her.  We are using pre existing trees from the terrain box, but everything  else had to be done from scratch. after finding a box, and carving out the pink foam we went thru gluing, sand , then painting (She learned how to use a airbrush for basecoating here as well. )  and flocking. For the background mural, I original had her draw up a background she liked but she had problems getting the scale and perspective right and it was taking way too much time and becoming frustrating for her, instead of  nixing it , I gave in and  I drew out the background mural with a heavy pencil for her and she did the color by numbers bit there.

The wigwam is half a lemon storage container covered with  rough layers of super sculpty with some bamboo sticks stuck on for supports its then painted 3 shades of brown to represent the animal skins.  We rolled  green stuff into tiny ears of corn and put in the Hirst Arts pot to go with the basket of fruit and grain sack piece that just again 3 colors and washed. The tools are various bits from the weapon box on some plastic mesh that supposed to be a net.

The biggest issue we had was pouring a 2 part epoxy resin as we spent time airbrushing  the river section to pour some clear resin for water..I didnt want her getting any where near that stuff so I did myself after she went to bed and somewhere along the way dear old dad screwed up, I either used too much hardener or the pour was just too deep for one pass...even thou I mixed it very thoroughly and it looked amazing when poured I could tell some was wrong right away as it was hardening too quickly and became so cloudly I couldnt stir the air bubbles out. in the morning it was rock hard and anything but clear, so we had to just paint it blue and go with it.

Overall despite my screw up with the water effects, this was a fun (thou long) father /daughter project and a great learning project for her, Her teacher was very impressed and easily hit all the milestones to receive full credit . She's already excited for the next one, not sure what its going to be, but maybe I'll have reason to pick up those Egyptian Hirst Molds Ive been telling myself  I dont need for years.

Operation Sting 2015- AAR

Operation Sting 2015 took place last weekend, and I am slow to get around to covering it. I'm sure if you're interested in the event you've already read others reports, but for the record here is my take.

The 7th year for the event under two different game systems and I'm glad to say I have made it to 6 of them. This is my second under its World War II moniker using Warlord games Bolt Action system. As much as I love Adepticon this is simply my favorite event, from the organization, tables, Armies, the people, the good fun. its tough to beat. If you are a Bolt Action fan you definitely want to give this tournament a go. With a sold out 24 players, a waiting list and folks visiting from as far away as North Dakota, I think Brent will be looking to expand to 30 players next year.


As for my own personal performance I walked away with nothing to show for my gaming efforts than a smile on my face for having a good time. Now I knowingly went into this year with the deck stacked against me playing with only 7 order dice, I told myself my fearsome Panther tank could pick up some of the dice slack but in a game where infantry rules and scenarios were infantry based, my tank was mainly a dual MMG platform for 355 points and that was just d-u-m-b. 

The first day I got pasted so hard,  think being in a foxhole at Bastonge and being shelled by 88's like in the classic Band of Brothers episode..it was figuratively like that for my army. Highlights (??) from my 3 games Saturday were two matches against Soviets where I had more that 10 pins on my single squads concurrently at numerous points during the game, my Panther was immobilized by Soviet bomb dogs  and in game 3 a Soviet Artillery strike took out my Panther top of the second turn and there was an IS2 on the board and I'm outnumbered 3 to 1 in man power. Both these games where total routs for my Germans ending in total brutal defeat.

Games 2 and 4 were unfortunately against my German comrades, as pairings can only be matched axis versus allies for so long when there is a big skew in the representation between Axis and Allied players, Both these games where against two of my favorite gents to play , both whom I played last year with my Brits and defeated. Turn about is fair play and despite my Panther taking out Mark's Panzer IV after like 4 rounds of shooting at , he played his slightly better number advantage well to where in the  "take the field" scenario where you need to capture the best of 5  objectives I didnt have enough models to remotely try to deny him total victory. In game 4 against Seamus he had me on the ropes running the whole game, while I did manage to squeak out the secret mission. my squads, one 
of which was pinned to hell couldnt activate after the Airstrike turn 2 and my other just taking most of his fire, ended in a game where it was only a draw because I was lucky enough to kill his team with my captured objective before it fled the board and he then failed the roll on turn 7 to capture his own objective.  Games 2 and 4 where fun games, Games 1 and 3 were exercises in futility were everything that could have went wrong did.

Game 5 was against my old pal Jeremy who once again bested me in a judges tie on best appearance with the tie breaker being the vote of our fellow players for the second year in a row. I guess my consolation prize was game 5 where literally everything went my way to an almost comical end were I had almost tabled him in a game of "Maximum Attrition", losing only a transport and my HQ. He took the game in stride like the good sport that he is.

I want to make note as well there were easily a half dozen + excellent and bad ass armies there as well, the props to my own I received with that caliber a field are very satisfying, award or not. I'm already fully in high gear for the expansion of my force and a properly sized order dice Army for Adepticon in the spring. I did manage to take a decent amount of photos and havent really gone thru them all and I know alot are redundant but check out my photo gallery in the left side bar for Operation Sting 2015 to get some eye candy on all the tables armies and games from the weekend.

Operation Sting 2015. 9th SS Panzer Division

Operation Sting, my favorite fall tournament is back for its second year as Bolt Action event (its seventh year overall as it spent 5 years as Bilbos Birthday Bash, a Lord of the Rings event.) This a continuation of my Waffen SS force from last spring I built as my Axis rivals to my British "Red Devils"

 Now rolling as sections of the 9th SS Panzer Division I added a few new units notably the Panther Ausf G , but also a new half track as a transport for a full squad plus the tow for the Flak 38. Infantry got a boost of another assault rifle but at 1000 points this list is very trim but packs a punch.

In the few games I have played with the Panther is absolutely dominating and with only 7 order dice one of which has no weapons, it better be. I'll be relying on the "Big Cat" to take out any other tanks and last long enough for my veteran infantry to do its job. The Flak 38 is the one thing that can actually shoot down incoming planes with 3 planes shot down to its credit in Adepticons team tournament early this year.

 The German checkpoint on the large base is required objective for the event , no idea how thats going to come into play yet. Overall I am really looking forward to the weekend, I am dubious about my low order dice but just looking to have good time and see my gaming pals most of whom I see twice a year.

I'll have a full write up of this event coming sometime next week, I have had much to blog about this year due to moving and work, I dont see alot changing in the months ahead as my time is super limited much more so than I had thought  I've got another Squad to do and three tanks for events at Adepticon next year, between that and playing Frostgrave with my daughters that is about all the hobby I have time for its seems.

Sorry about the blurry pics..