One of the chaps at Phat Cats has been
threatening to get a Blood and Plunder campaign kicked off and in a flurry of
action the campaign is now kicking off this month,
To make the campaign as varied as possible
the usual suspects at the club started jostling for the factions and
unsurprisingly I nipped in claiming the natives as soon as I found out.
This decision was down to the fact that I
have “acquired” three of the native starter sets and with burning some demo
credit that I’d built up I’ve also got managed to bulk out my no peace beyond
the line initial kick starter pledge with a small fleet of Canoas and a couple
of Piragua’s,
so giving me:
24 young warriors with bows
24 warriors with bows
12 warriors with muskets
12 African warriors
Throw in King golden cap and the normal
commander that’s a mere 74 models! So much for a small skirmish force!
Now as I really enjoy the boats and the sea
missions it would be rude not to make sure that the Tribe of Té Ta can get around. The young warriors and Warriors are all in
Canoas and the muskets and African warriors get to ride in Piragua’s the comedy
factor part of all of this is with the Piragua’s they can have a light cannon
strapped to the front. So envision my bunch of crazy locals paddling towards
huge ships with only 2 light cannons in the entire force and me humming the
Hawaii 5-0 theme from the 70’s I’ve found the “Ork” faction in blood and
plunder!
Anyway enough of the whaffling time to show
off what I’ve managed…
Now after putting up the picture of the
canoa with the pattern it sparked a good healthy debate with regards to that
time period and what would have been “right” however the overall feedback was
the pattern was a winner and it was the GC who gave me the idea to draw on the
model with a thin sharpie pen to the point where I’ve got the GC to design me
some patterns and I’ll be using them as a homage in years to come.
One thing that I decided to was varnish
these guys as the Spanish took a beating and the paint was getting chipped from
use, however considering that they have been all over the place I’m quite happy
that they have survived so long and no bits have broken off so that’s a good
testament on the quality of these models.
Normally I use army painter varnish and
that has produced various results in the past, however I decided to shoot some
varnish though the airbrush and see what results that I could get from that,
now most people would just do the one model in this situation but not me I went
for the whole lot in one fell swoop and the initial coat of gloss went down
great, maybe a little too good!
I then went back over with the matt coat
and the gloss was still coming through in fact I did 2 coats of matt and still
no joy, at this point I was a tad panicky as I didn’t want to strip the guys
and start all over again!
But I went onto the wargaming airbrush page
and poised the question with what I was going through and got various
suggestions with solutions one of the weirder solutions was to use a hair dryer
on them, which I need to give a crack! But the one I went for was simply using
some Vallejo matt varnish brushed onto the model and that did the trick, a bit
of shine is still present however they look far better than they did
previously.
The next batch that I do I’ll try the matt
varnish direct and bypass the gloss and see how that comes out, So watch this
space for adventures in varnishing!
Its not been all semi naked blokes with
bows I’ve been hitting the huge pile of unpainted resin that I’ve got in the
geek room so I decided to blast out a quick world eater dreadnought that will
be mounted in a dreadnought drop pod or a dreadclaw depending on what I’m
feeling like.
I followed the exact same process for the
dreadnought that I did for the infantry as well as the other odds and sods that
I did, I’ve very happy how it came out and the weathering suits this army
really well, the dead dude I found in my bits box I think it’s from a primarch base
so more than likely picked it from ebay when I was feeling experimental!
So, for the rest of the month it’s working
on the natives for Blood and Plunder not quite hardcore as the start of the
month however a unit once in a while should break up the other bits I’m
painting,
Which will be the first unit for the
armoured break though list in the form of three predators and whilst I’m going
through them I’ll be working on a commission for Lee from the Bleeped up
podcast and doing his nightlords so with a test model well under way all I need
to do is research lighting and make sure it meets his expectations and bang out
the rest!
Really I should finish off the two huge
drop pods however I need to get the motivation to get the masking done as that
the most time consuming part of airbrushing!
Doing both the hulls and the turrets took me an entire evening of faffing about and I needed to move quick on these as the tape lifts on the uneven surfaces if left too long. So I'll provide an update at the end of the month with the predator's.
