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Hi folks, Games Workshop recently re-released a building kit that I wanted to buy first time around but couldn't, so this time I took the plunge. As usual, it's chunky, quite dear for what it is, and characterful. And like most GW scenery kits the fit isn't exactly immaculate. The kit in question is Skullvane Manse, now called a Warscryer Citadel. It's a sort of wizard's observatory perched on top of/beside a big rock, and as you might be able to see from the Standard Skeleton, it's a good foot tall: Cleaning up and assembling the twenty-odd parts took most of the weekend, and I've spent a couple of evenings after that filling seams and covering up some of the moulded detail with Miliput. Some smaller seams were filled with CA. For reference, this is what it's supposed to look like: More pictures on the Games Workshop site I thought the big stone tower looked a bit precarious on the cantilevered wooden platform, so I left that off and will make it up as a separate building later. I also added a bit more bracing from Evergreen strip, textured with a saw blade. The spattered-looking Miliput was thinned with water and stippled on to cover up some of the areas where the direction of the moulding meant there wasn't much surface detail on the rock. The aim is to put it on a small scenic base, but I'd better paint it first otherwise access is going to be very tricky. Cheers, Will

Buoyed up by their first outing on the table a couple of weeks ago, I've been finishing a few more figures. I have just 16 more to paint and the FBG. Basically there is a unit of light horse,sometimes called Stadiots or scurriers, mainly used for scouting and raiding but couple act a skirmishers on the battlefield. There is also a General counting the cost of another brilliant plan and some wounded used as markers in the game. Thanks for looking

We have just taken delivery of a large range of Rubicon Models 28mm (1/56) military vehicle kits. Perfect for wargamming, each kit allows for mulitple variants to be constructed. Click here to see the full range https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/brands/rubicon/

More Italian war figures, This is a Landsknecht pike block, with a mix of Perry and Warlord plastic figures and some head and arm swaps. There are a couple of Warlord metals in there as well. A Perry light gun. I have one of there huge Bombards to do at some point The pike block with some halbardiers who were used to break up opposing pike blocks.

My latest wargames project is to build an Italian Wars of the renaissance, around the last a decade of the 15th Century and into the first decade of the 16th. The figures are mainly Perry Plastic with a few metals I already had. The pike block is Florentine The crossbowmen are Papal. I reckon three boxes of plastics will give me 6 units and a couple of command bases which is enough to start playing using Pike and Shotte.

Just for a bit of fun I got this set from Perrys and thoroughly enjoyed painting them. The size and closeness of the lens does them no favours. Thanks for looking

Feral George (Onumo, Hippoxus Warrior) Mierce Miniatures This chap was finished a couple of days ago, and he'll wrap up my builds for this year. As was the case in 2017, I've only managed this one bit of figure modelling this year and, also like last year, he's from Mierce miniatures, who are by far my favourite producer of gaming figures. Officially, he's Onumo, a Hippoxux warrior of the Byzantii army, but I like to think of him as George, everyone's favourite camp pink hippo, who's clearly really let himself go since his Rainbow days. Technically, he's 28mm scale, but he's a fairly big chap and stands approximately 3 inches high. The base is a lump of insulation foam, carved to shape, and covered with Vallejo texture paste and some Citadel crackle paint. George alongside 2017's Walvax Warrior, who can be seen here, and 2016's Gurrir, who is lurking here Thanks for looking Andy

More usual fare with these chaps, they are the 1st battalion 1st Legier as kitted out for the Waterloo campaign. There are also two Brigade commanders based for the Great Game in Glasgow next June. I'd normally put a cuple of additional figures on the base and make a little vignette but the game wants single based figures for commanders. Once the game is over they will be rebased. Thanks for looking.

These are a little different to my usual output but I have been building lots of units for the fictitious Very British Civil War(VBCW) for a number of years. We have fought may engagements in and around South Yorkshire as large multiplayer games with out tongues firmly in cheek. Anyway when the war broke out the crew of HMS Sheffield were in Sheffield to march through the town and meet local bigwigs. The uprising in the city put a lot of pressure on the officers and crew who had no easy way of returning to their ship, So far they have stuck together and retained their discipline but cracks are appearing with desertion of both officers and other ranks. Enough of this rubbish here are the figures : Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Hi, can anyone recommend 28mm figures for British Infantry and Indians from the French and Indian war? May be some French and Civilians too? I do not need large numbers but I am looking for good quality figures. TIA Ingo

These a These are my latest finished figures. They have been on the to do pile for a while as I was side-tracked by some English Civil war figures but I'm back onto Napoleonics now. Thanks for looking.

Having enjoyed building the Rubicon CMP truck I decided to try one of their armour kits and settled on the Crusader, which has long been one of my favourite tanks. You get a load of options in this kit, late MkI, MkII, MkIII, MkI/II close support or MkII/III anti-aircraft so there's a lot of parts in the box: Lovely well produced instruction leaflet: Finally there's a generic British armour decal sheet: What to build? Decisions, decisions... I might do some minor conversion work and try to build a first batch MkI with the open mantlet and Caunter camouflage. John

After my ruminations on 1/56th scale models a few weeks ago, I decided to get one and have a closer look. Having watched lot of how-to videos on YouTube, it seemed that Rubicon Models were probably the current leaders in the field. I'm a sucker for WW2-era trucks and they have a CMP truck in their range, so that was a fairly easy decision. The kit cost £18 plus £1.80 p&p from Plastic Soldier Company, so they're not cheap. 28mm armour generally seems to come in at or above £20. For your money you get a very well produced package, starting with a glossy end-opening box with a nice piece of artwork on the front and some information about CMP trucks on the back Inside we find 2 individually bagged sprues of dark grey plastic: A one piece cab and canvas tilt individually bagged and taped to a card sheet: There'a bagged decal sheet: And a high quality glossy instruction leaflet: Unbagging the bits and pieces reveal high quality mouldings: It's a nicely detailed little kit, simpler than the Airfix Bedford MWD which is probably its closest equivalent. You don't get painting instructions beyond the 2 profiles on the back of the box. The decals sheet is generic, rather that having markings for specific vehicles, which I gather is typical for this genre, so research will be necessary to choose a subject. There are also no windshields, which will have to be rectified if the kit is intended for a display piece rather than a gaming miniature. I'll put this together in between other ongoing projects. It should be interesting, and the first priority will be to pick which individual vehicle I'm going to finish it as. Incidentally this isn't the only CMP truck in my stash, I've got its big brother too: John

As a change from the endless Napoleonics, I seem to be painting, I painted up these chaps for a new came to my club, Pikemans' Lament. First up are some Heavy cavalry, these are Empress miniatures and are lovely castings. Next are the Dragoons, which are Warlord Miniatures, and a mix of plastic horses and metal chaps Another chunk of stout Dragoons The bases are temporary, as I haven't yet decided the best way to bunch them together. The Dragoons feel wrong but that is what the rules suggest. I have two more units of Dragoons to finish and a group of Commanded Shot to base. Thanks for looking

I've been working away a lot and if possible I take my paints and figures with me. I realised that I had finished a fair few figures recently so as it was such a lovely day I sat out in the garden and got them all based. These are the two remaining Squadrons of the Guard Lancers, these are the famous Polish Lancers . I posted the Dutch Squadron a while ago. These stout chaps are part of the 8th Chasseurs a Cheval and are the newly release plastic figures that Perry are moving over too. Thanks for looking

Hi folks, [edit] Some more Tyranids have appeared I bought a little Games Workshop game a couple of weeks ago about Space Marine scouts being eaten in the jungle by horrible Genestealers - it's called Lost Patrol and is a rework of a much earlier game, only this time with more plastic models in the box. Two weeks later, or thereabouts I've finished building, painting and photographing the jungle denizens, although not the scouts yet. They are basically Giger's Aliens with six arms I've tried a couple of schemes for Genestealers and Tyranids before and decided this time I wanted something really loud. I think this is the biggest 28mm unit I've painted yet - 12 models! - and I also did six "infestation markers" to go with them: I had to be very strict about batch painting - no going on to the next step until the previous one had been applied to all the models. Pretty gruelling at times (count those claws) but it seems to get the job done and at least I could sit in front of the telly while working. Here are some close-ups of a few of the models: (click for bigger/more) and here they are lurking in the jungle: I have (a small number of) other Tyranids which these have inspired me to put together, and I think I'm going to try and do the same paint scheme on those as well. For reference, they were airbrushed with mixes of Flat Flesh, Flat Red and Hull Red (all Tamiya) and highlighted with GW paints before being glazed with Tamiya Clear Red. The carapace was drybrushed and everything else brush painted apart from the final varnish coats. The bases are grit and sand painted Dryad Bark, drybrushed and then I added a mix of Woodland Scenics stuff over the top, set with diluted PVA and Klear. The plants are laser cut paper from Wako in Japan, they're about a thousand yen a (smallish) sheet but I've used less than 10% of two sheets so far so I think they're fairly cost effective nonetheless. Thanks for looking! Will

I've been catching up on my basing, I job I hate. So I can get these braves chaps into their carry box and hopefully onto the table soon. I was intending to take part in a giant wargame next year to try to get a Guinness World Record But that sadly looks like a non-starter, but it did at least get me painting in bulk again. Next up some more Guard Lanciers and then some English Civil War figures for Pikemans Lament. Allons mes braves

Hi folks, After finishing off another project after Christmas, I built a box of skeletons as light relief. I've got 5 skeletal horse and 10 with spear, plus a big monster (Mortarch) which isn't quite cleaned up yet as it's so complicated. I finally got some primer on the foot troops at the start of the week and have been busily painting them: I'm being good and working in a batch of ten, but I only took pictures of half of them as I hadn't blacked out the metals on the rest. They're relatively old models and I got them as part of the Start Collecting: Deathrattle box at a bargain price. The main problems are cleaning them up (you can see I missed a few mould lines) and the small gluing cups for the shoulders. The other joints are fine. I guess they also suffer from being pre-Age of Sigmar so are designed to rank up on 25mm square bases, which means all the legs are marching in step. I've tried to get some variety with the spear positions and such, and obviously GW give you a lot of choice of heads, arms, shields etc. which helps too. The bone is Tamiya Olive Green sprayed from below and Deck Tan from above, over black primer. I dryrbrushed them fairly heavily with Ushabti Bone and a little Flayed One Flesh on the high points, then cleaned up the dust with a soft brush. Once that was all done I misted on Tamiya Clear Orange from above to warm up the top surfaces and complete the hue shift from green. I also added a few edge/face highlights on the skull, shoulderblades and spine with Pallid Wych Flesh and touched in the teeth (too clean still!) with White Scar. I also used a bit of Agrax Earthshade to outline the spine and warm up some spaces like between the ribs and in the backs of the knees. All the other stuff is still in progress, the red is Khorne Red with Agrax Earthshade, and the spear shafts are a weird combo of Celestra Grey, thinned Baneblade Brown to warm it up, and a heavy Nuln Oil wash. IIRC the leather bits are Steel Legion Drab shaded with Agrax again. I got about half-way through highlighting the red last night but my hand was cramping so had to stop. I'll get some more pics of that in a bit as it looks a lot more exciting than the above. Cheers, Will

This is my last finished build of 2017, and represents the only bit of proper figure modelling I've managed this year (there've been a couple of 1/35 figures as companion pieces to AFV builds, but I don't count them). I picked him up when Mierce had a 30% black friday sale, but wasn't intending to start him until next year. However, due to the excellence of the sculpt and the minimal amount of clean-up required, I couldn't resist getting him together and painted. As the name almost implies, he's essentially an anthropomorphised walrus carrying a big harpoon. He's nominally 28mm scale, but he stands about 2½ inches high, not including his fetching neck spikes. He came with a sculpted coil of rope in his right hand, but I cut it off and replaced it with some waxed chord. The only other addition was to drill out the dimples on his cheeks and add some whiskers made from paint brush bristles. Thanks for looking Andy

I've been building a small force for Sharpe Practise. I instead of using some figures from an existing army, I went for something a bit left field. The Perry figures are beautifully moulded and posed and I wish I had the skills to do them justice. I have about 40 infantry and some Camel Corps chaps, but these are the latest figures to traverse he painting table, Dragoons and gunners. If anyone is interested I'll photograph the whole force.

Hi all, Sorry I've not been around much for the last month or so, a lot going on with work, travel, and a project that I can't talk about yet. But I did find time to paint some figures over the past week which has been very good for the soul. These are one of the two teams from Shadespire, which is a Warhammer Fantasy/Age of Sigmar off-shoot involving tactical combat with miniatures and cards. The game is very good and the figures are possibly even better. They're single-pose clip fit which means that they're quite easy to paint disassembled if you take care. Except for big sword guy (Severin) who had to have his sword arm cut off so I could get at the inside of the cape. They're metallic (mainly Alclad Pale Gold) so very shiny: The sword blade and hammer faces are graphite powder over a thin layer of Boltgun metal, which polished up so well that it reflects the rest of the model It wouldn't have been possible to do this without separating the sword as it's quite a messy process and the cape needed to be pristine. The other team members are Angharad Brightshield and Obryn the Bold: Annoyingly the ringed planet against a nebula on Angharad's pauldron is partly hidden by the shield. I re-posed it slightly to open things up a bit but I need to take another photo to show it off properly. Anyway, hope you like them! Cheers, Will

Since we've got a shiny new figure section on the forum, I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some old figure builds from the last few years. I'll start with this one, a resin armoured chaos snail from Scibor Miniatures, finished back in 2012. In this case it wasn't really a build, as it's one solid lump of resin, apart from the blade on the head, which was separate. It's nominally 28mm scale, but as can be seen from the shot with the paint pot, it's pretty big. In fact they do another version of this sculpt with a saddle on the shell and an ogre rider. Paint was Vallejo for the most part, together with some Citadel washes for the shading on the body Andy

Hi there, another one from my collection. Another favorite sculpt of mine, though the quality is pretty low. It just captures my sense of humor perfectly. Sculpted by Stefan Niehues. Was given for free when buying a ticket for "Mini-Art-Con" in 2009 - a local miniature painters event. Only painted this one this year after several years without touching a brush. I am really proud of this rare little miniature and how it came out. A piece that will stay in my personal collection for sure. 28mm and lots of moldlines - too many to get them all. Coolminiornot, if you want to vote: http://www.coolminiornot.com/396737

I picked up a couple of Mierce Miniatures sculpts last January, when they had a sale on, with the intention of getting them both done pretty quickly. Inevitably that didn't happen and Gurrir here has been sitting half painted for around 6 months. I'm trying to get a few half finished projects done before the end of the year, and he was at the top of the list. He went through a few colour changes before I settled on the rhino hide grey. Not the most inspiring of paint schemes, but the blood adds a bit of life to it. And before you ask, he left the back half of his loin cloth in the wash Thanks for looking Andy

Hi all, Yet another WIP thread, because I have no self control. I bought the new version of Lost Patrol from Games Workshop last week because my daughter and I enjoyed the demo game we played in the shop. It's a tactical tile-laying game where a bunch of (dead) Space Marine scouts have to (fail to) get to da chopper and escape (nope) from the horrible monsters. It feels a bit unbalanced but the play is still really interesting. And it comes with five scouts, which are OK models, and twelve genestealers which are awesome. I had to assemble the figures the same night so we could play the game in the morning, and one thing lead to another and they got primed, and then because I had the airbrush out they got some skin tones on: I sprayed white primer highlights concentrating on the head and hands, then Tamiya Flat Flesh on the extremeties and mix of Flat Flesh, Flat Red and Hull Red on the hard parts of the arms, legs and ribcage blending towards the hands and head. The underside got an extra layer of Hull Red. I washed all the skin with the new glossy Agrax Earthshade wash, which has no matting agent to go white and flows really well I then added a couple of highlights to the skin with the brush (Wild Rider Red and a mix of that and a buff - I forget which) and sprayed a thin glaze of Tamiya Clear Red to tie it all together and add depth/glossiness. Again I faded this towards the hands. The faces had highlights of Kislev Flesh and Pallid Wych Flesh, then a glaze of Baal Red to tie it together and a bit of Leviathan Purple around the veins which got a bit out of control. I picked out the teeth, eyes, tongues etc. with a (very) fine brush and neatened up the eye sockets with black. I might add slit pupils and catch lights to the eyes, I haven't decided yet. I've been very rigorous about batch painting, applying every stage to each model before going on. Normally I get excited about one or two and work them up, and when those are finished I lose interest for the rest. So far this is working (and is only really an afternoon and evening's work) but there are an awful lot of claws to fill in now I had to stop last night because my hand was cramping up, hence there are only two with the carapace and claws blocked in. The big question, which is partly why I've put this up, is what colour to paint the carapace. I think it needs to be dark, almost off-black, but I'm not sure about dark blue with teal highlights, or dark purple with purple and pink highlights? Or maybe something brownish and dry looking? At the moment I'm leaning towards purple despite the potential for clashing colours Cheers, Will