Blackbarrow Farm

Farm with Inn on the right and Castle in the backdrop/.

Per my last post I was having issues whether to call that new building of mine a Farm or a Hunting Lodge for rich nobles or something. After landscaping its seem to work as a Farm and thats what the table needed, abet a nice rather large raftered farmhouse. Some of the trouble spots seemed to not bother me as much on this whole section of table was redone, the scale seemed to slide into place by sinking the building 1/4 " recessing the floors...the walls, garden , fields seem to soften the look quite a bit.                                                                                                                                                       

The Western road into town, 

The Cow and Cow Pen are new additions as well, the landscaping, and road are redone and painted, flowers and new flock added, Trees based and finished I'm using Woodland Scenics products for all my landscaping needs .    I'll sign off now with some photo captions, the table is really coming together, Some more landscaping on some of the more beat up sections (a ton of games have been played on this table which I finished about 3 years ago  ) there are some smaller older Armorcast buildings I need to figure out what to do with and a Church to redo, pretty close to moving onto finishing the Dungeon which will be some work....I plan on having it all done by the end of the year! I guess, we will see.                                                                                                                

View from the top of the Castle Gatehouse.

Side of Inn, overlooking Farm . you can see where the new landscaping meets the old,, that old section of road is next for touchup.                                                                                                                                                                                            

Rear and Field

This cow pen was fun afternoon build, Cow is by Reaper I have large hog and a goat as well. the straw is from some old scenery kit I have had forever its origin unknown.                                                                                                                       

Here is a good look at the garden and stonewalls, all pieces are from Hirst molds, Figure is Reaper, Wagon by Johnny Lauck.

Hirst Arts- Timber Frame Building

Its been awhile, Its seems more of struggle of to keep the blog updated these days than I remember even thou, I've painted close to a dozen figures , finished the castle and built this since the last update.
this from the "project files" on the Hirst Arts website, a Timber or "Half Timber" building depending on what molds you used, for this I used mainly molds #224 and #225, with #260 for the floors, a few 1/4 planks from the original wood panel mold #220 and the Chimney and Fireplace from the old small brick mold. 250

 I found numerous issues with this plan from the start. Since I used these molds for my upper story of my Inn, I felt like this building was too large and I was right, 3" for 1 story walls is just too high unless you are adding a second floor, I compounded the issue by placing the walls on top of the floor (and I go back and forth on this , something I inset the floor other times not, here and inset would have been better) so in the end I to my eye the building is out of scale for my 28-32mm purposes, I mean it works its just too large and too fancy to be the simple farmstead I envisioned for my fictional town of Blackbarrow .

 As result I decided to either sink the building into the table or build up the surrounding landscaping I am going to do to cover where the floor shows, this will help the scale issue I have slightly, and you can see I left bottom of the chimney off, so I can make it the building is rest properly on what height variation I end up going with..

Roof is plastic card #91533 from plasticstruct, that isnt cheap and I should spend the $29 on the Hirst slate single roof mold, however a bought a whole bunch of it years ago and still have enough for one  building this size of two smaller ones..might as well use it up. and I will adding some edging to that lip

 One I decided that it was no longer a simple farmstead, I envisioned it a grand hunting lodge, for towns leaders, I found this medieval picture of a hunting scene online, scaled it up in photoshop and printed it out on sticker paper, putting on a painted piece of balsa as a huge painting for largest section of empty wall..

 Speaking of walls, the original spec shows a layer of cast sections on both sides off a piece of cereal box, which I though was total overkill, so the interior black walls are just painted and stippled cereal box with mold #225 pieces glued over it directly.

 Pictures here show a good indication of size with both Reaper and Otherworld figures show in the photos, I am not going to add my furniture here just a table and some chairs, the upside being plenty of room to "play thru" this piece in any sort of skirmish game.

 As you can see with this rough set up here things are slowly coming together, I originally planned to replace all my old armorcast resin buildings, MS AUS mdf , and GW buildings with original hirst pieces as scalewise many of them are too small, but I just dont think I have the room on the table, I was thinking about the Mill and Blacksmith shoppe but we will see.

With the Inn and Castle in the background you can see how insetting the building in ground and          building up some surrounding landscaping with help put this building in proper perspective so thats     the next step, building the landscaping and cleaning the some of shoddy areas of table that need a refresher after year of play.

This overall took longer than I thought, since I had everything cast I was thinking I could build this is an afternoon and a couple evenings but with drying times assembly painting, the roof and other details I think is a solid 12 hours project.  next up,  already finished figures and more finished blackbarrow and hopefully some Frostgrave and sooner than another 6 weeks!

German Vehicles, New Terrain

 Post Operation Sting, I am still focused on Bolt Action. In fact right after the event some three weeks back back, Aaron and I got brain storming on our team army for Adepticon 2015.  The event is a side by side 1600 point per side event,(or so I am told pre-registration, so subject to change)  We are running  Late War Eastern Front, German Army made up of Waffen SS, and Panzergrenadier Units.

 My side of the force contains 3 Vehicles, 2- 9 man squads, an HQ and a Sniper team, I have couple different version of the army at 1000 points so everything I am  building for 800 points in the Team format will work great with next years run playing Germany. The first unit I built was the Sd.Kfz 7/1 Quad Flak in my Tank slot. Given American Air Power at Operation Sting, this thing has 4 autocannons can also totally shred infantry and softskin vehicles, while its got the "open top" liability and makes a juicy target its takes the focus off my other units which is fine.

 The kit itself is $45 and the gun comes with a full trailer and separate mount so its a pretty good deal as you see in the following pictures, I can set the up as a tow and use it as artillery piece if I want my tank slot for something else. For this list is one the half track but the options are a good bargain.
The kit itself is definitely not one of warlords best, clearly an older kit it took alot of work and I ended replacing all the gun barrels and some other cast bits that were just really poor, I also took the time to magnetize the gun base, both actually guns so they swivel from 45 -180 degrees and of course the gun spins 360 degrees on truck bed and trailer mount. I also laid out a bit of stowage on the deployed setup of the vehicle.

 The next vehicle is my transport Krupp Protze Kfz.69, this is a 1/48 Tamiya Kit with tons of detail it took quite of bit of time to build as its got about 10X the pieces of your standard Warlord resin vehicle. This kit also cams with Pak 36 gun in tow with Trailer as well , I havent built that yet but will when I get the full 1000+ plus fielded...Here I show the truck towing the Quad Flak.

 In Game its a transport for one of my Squads to get them where they need to be quick, I was kind of kicking myself for not getting Kfz.70 version which have the box back and holds the right amount of guys. with build the truck is 6 man vehicle my squad is 9...for abstract gaming purposes I dont think it matters.

Finally the vehicle is probably the most popular German vehicle in the Bolt Action game. The Sd.Ffz 234/2 Puma, a special purpose vehicle , the Germans actually only managed to make a hundred of them during the war, its frequency in Bolt Action gaming is akin to say a Panzer IV that they manage to crank out almost 9000 of through out the war.

Gamewise the Puma hits the sweet spot of good armor, great firepower and has the "reece" ability making it one of the better vehicles in game considering the point costs of things like Panthers and Tigers,  I be remiss not fielding one. Although I was tempted to run one of the variants , I already has this kit from late last year.

Speaking of the kit this one is very easy build my only grip is the cast metal gun is pretty poor as well, I may pick the new plastic version coming out this month after seeing the preview shots..also this version at 1/56 scale feels a bit small...so whether this actual vehicle ends up in my army remains to be seen.  As you seen on my here I added about 1/2 dozen bits of stowage.

If you notice in my post title I mention "Terrain" I also put together two of Warlord recent terrain offering both repackaged Italeri kits , The Stone Walls box and the Wrecked House kit. You can see both in the earlier photos, If you go to the Italeri  site you can see both were made as 1/72 (20mm) kits while the walls work great, and Ill be picking up a second box, the building while a cool, easy build- feels way to small especially against the WG village kits or my scratch terrain. I was hoping to use this kit to kit bash some larger eastern european city buildings for our army display but it looks like we will need to go another route. As it stands the kit will make a nice command post solo terrain piece but its doent really fit into the village set up on my board like I was hoping. 

Overall I am well on my way, I've got 18 guys to clean and base then I can practicing and playing. 

Adepticon 2015 doesnt hold a ton of variety for me this year due to time I am putting in on this, Bolt Action events are it for me this year, unless I hit a demos or pick up games of something or using existing stuff I already have.  There was talk of doing some Empire of the Dead or Saga but I just wont have the time. I'll be talking more about Adepitcon at it new location and what I am up to when the cart goes live on Monday November 24th, until then that's what's up for me on the gaming front.

Couple shots of the Quad Flak deployed...Cool.

The New Table

 Finally completed and played a game on the new table, a generic crossroads with a dirt road, I designed it for Bolt Action, but changing the terrain easily makes it usable for lots of other games.
Aaron Germans roasted me last night in the Demolition scenario, I should have guessed thing were not off to a good start when both my phone and camera batteries died within 5 minutes of each other.
There were of course no pictures from my end and snap these this afternoon just before I took the whole thing down a boxed it up to take to the Tournament in  wee hours of the morning.
I'll spare you details other then on of my vehicles failed it reserve entry roll of a "9" four turns in a row to finally show up turn 6, I'll botched my artillery strike calling in on myself and my Flamer Crew defending my Command Post ran out of fuel on the first shot, Yeah ,one of those games

As for the table here, I feel like I have working on it forever, the bridge section was constructed back in January and the original plan was to have it in this shape for Adepticon which didnt happen , so here it finally is -in October! I still have the liquid resin to do on the resin and I am going to get some more appropriate buildings- but this about it, I wasnt to move on to some other projects.

 I tell myself if I build three more sections I will have options for a ton of different layouts we will see how that goes, right now I am contest with it as is..we will see how people like playing on it this weekend.

The Lighthouse

 

 Continuing the current pattern here is "The Lighthouse" for the Adepticon Legends of the High Seas Event.  More towering Gun platform than actual lighthouse, It  was a good a name as any and I can always stick a light in there. As always I plan on using this for various games not just Pirates I can swap the roof for various genres.

Here a good sense of the scale with figures at the base..this sucka is big!

Other the copper dome roof ( an old toy part) its made exclusively with Hirst Arts 4" tower mold.
I struggled with roof design for awhile figuring out what I wanted to do, wasting a couple pricey sheets of shingle plastic card and too much time in the process. I was kicking myself for not picking Hirst conical roof mold, which I am certainly going to do after this. Saving some of the kids old toys in the junk box instead of letting them go to the Salvation Army has come thru again, the dome part is actually from a Fisher Price Submarine aimed at 3 year olds.

 

The guns in game terms are 12 pound Cannons, if you are watching the Starz Pirate series "Black Sails" thats exactly the size guns the crew of the Walrus risked everything to aquire as they pack a hell of a punch. Cannons will be live in the actual game are they are going to cause some carnage for sure.

Capturing this tower and holding it is one of the major objectives of the game. While the 4 inch interior is roomy an assault here would take place all the way up the stairs, and while the tower comes apart in  3 pieces I didnt do the stairs all the way as it was pointless and nigh impossible to access with figures. As a result we have special rules for assaulting this tower in actual game and they are very friendly to the defender as you can imagine.

Building these tall tower in sections is a challenge. As careful as I was the sections still did not line up perfectly, doing it with the naked eye. Close enough with the forgiving fieldstone blocks but to do a tall tower like this right  you really need to build with some sort of inset shape in the center that keeps the thing perfectly round as you build it, Any deviation is magnified as you get taller and correcting those is a beast.

 All in all, I am psyched with the way this came out although the hours in with obscene amounts of casting one mold and difficulties with vertical building, rival the entire gatehouse which is probably double the plaster.

One more piece to paint and then some terrain painting of the actual boards  and Pirates is ready to go!

The Gatehouse - Painted up.

 Here's the painted version of the Gatehouse for the Pirate table at my Legends of the High Seas event at this years Adepticon. dressed up with some of my Spanish Privateers, its  representing the main standing fortification of Fort San Lorenzo and capturing and holding it, is one of the main objectives of the game. As you can imagine whoever gets in there first is going to be tough to dislodge with lots of hard cover to had and even some fireable cannons! the remainder of fort is going to be ruins from the original pirate castle we used in the past.

 Surrounded by water the Fort got the  "ruins by the seaside" paint job a mix of limestone, moss greens and earth. Painting was a 5 stage process of , Prime Black, Basecoat Brown, Heavy drybrush Sand, Weather with Pigment (in this case Green) then spot drybrush a linen /white mix.

 As usual these thing take alot longer than planned, I still need to paint the matching "Lighthouse"
which isnt really a Lighthouse, but a guard tower standing about 4-6 inches higher then the top of the
Gatehouse and is top with wide turret with 5 cannons...again a capturable objective of the game.
The lighthouse will more than likely be the next post.

 The is also a Church, which isnt out of Hirst pieces..but resin, some of you might recall old Armorcast Cathedral , I bought it in probably 2008 and never really used it much...so IF time allows its getting a fitting repaint and Tile roof for this event.

We've got plenty of terrain at this point so its really a matter of putting the best stuff together to make the best looking table possible, I am currently working on a Bolt Action table and with a little more month to go the pressure is on big time, I still have 3 60mm bases with 3-5 soldiers each ,a piece of equipment and some terrain feature to paint for my Bolt Action Army..and my Jeep!.

I really enjoyed building this piece, its going to get alot of use post Adepticon as the outer wall of my Fantasy town I am putting together, I'll probably add a few more pieces overtime, but like everything I build I try to do with multiple games in mind so abandoned castle in Empire of the Dead..why not?

 Stay tuned, as I do the "Dance of Death" or the "Time Sink Shuffle" as I try cram all this stuff
in the last 30 days before Adepticon, every year I ask myself -why I do this to myself?., I always say I am not going to do it, and always end up in this same spot is Eight years in row...sigh

Not to be outdone by Adepticon , Rich is hosting a huge Hail Caesar Crusades game at Little Wars this year, I am helping out and building King Richards banner and its entourage which is  an elborate piece on 100-120mm base with a half dozen elements and a giant free hand banner..Little Wars takes place 3 weeks after Adepticon and I'm not even starting the piece until the dust settles so I am on a 3 week schedule to get it done..shouldn't be too tough, I'm following that up with the Sci Fi project I started over winter break- That ought to keep me busy pretty much thru the Summer. Oh yeah then there is Lead Painters League Season 8 coming up end of March too, dont think I am making it this
year but then again, I said that last year too.