Battlefield Debris by Warlord Games

Here are some of the pieces from Warlord Games 'Battlefield Debris' set that I've recently painted up. This is a fantastic set of miscellaneous detritus to scatter among your battlefields. The items shown in the photo to the left are what I've painted to date from this set. The paints used are a combination of Army Painter SpeedPaint, Citadel Contrast paint and traditional acrylics and washes. There's really nothing 'useless' in this box, and eventually I hope to paint it all up. It's all sized appropriately for Warlord Games Bolt Action line, but is also mostly usable for earlier periods with a few exceptions (oil drums, motorcycle, telephone pole). 

These items, the sofa, chair, table barricade, oil drums, motorcycle and the fantastically sculpted wicker chair barricade were painted a while ago, but never photographed and included in the blog, although they did make an appearance in a couple game reports for 1-48 tactic games I ran last year.

Reverse view of the sand bag emplacements, barricade of crates and the stone building fragment. The barricade of crates could also easily double as an objective for a scenario as a 'supply dump' with or without the oil drums shown above.

Group shot of the items painted this week. The wooden furniture is particularly fun. I might actually put a piece or two of that permanently inside one of my ruined buildings. I like that there are still dishes on the shelves. That's a nice detail, but also makes that piece not suitable for 'in the street' placement. I'm sure if that cupboard was moved to the street, the dishes would remain in pieces on the floor of whatever room it was removed from.

There are four all-brick ruined pieces, which could be put in a base as a single ruined building. I'm still deciding if I'll do that or keep the flexibility of having them individually mounted. There are also two other pieces with brick coated with plaster that obviously go together. 

The only regret I have about this set is that it doesn't include the ubiquitous stand-up piano you invariably see in nearly every WWII film with an urban theme. I still need to find one of those for my tabletop.  Maybe I can get a friend with a resin printer to print one up for me?

I'll be counting these as 20 'terrain/misc' pieces painted this year in my annual totals.

Falklands War with Dead Man's Hand

Last Friday I took a trip over to my friend Mark D's place to help him play test a Falklands War game he's going to be running at our club this upcoming game night. The rules used were Dead Man's Hand by Great Escape Games.

I haven't played this rule set before, but I was quite impressed with the elegance of the activation system. After the game I immediately ordered myself a copy of the rules.

We drew lots to see who got which side. I drew the British. They had a unit of paratroopers and a unit of mountain troops drawn from the military academy training cadre. My paratroopers had a sniper which was a fun figure to play with. Mark had the Argentinians. Our missions crossed paths in the middle of the board insuring conflict would be quickly manifested.

I had some excellent rolls early knocking out several Argentinians. Mark compressed his two squads together into a fire base and started to bring the casualties back towards even. During this time I pressed onto both of my objectives. In each case I secured the objective, then immediately had a casualty with the capturing figure. At the end of the game I had a narrow lead, although with a full six player game who knows.
 

The rules seem fun, the scenario is quite balanced. My only regret is I'll be running a game myself at the same game night so I won't get to play in this game myself when he runs it!

Hunt for the Goeben

 My friends at Wargames Tonight gave me the opportunity to participate in their on-line WWI naval campaign, 'The Hunt for the Goeben'. There's a great video by them below. Enjoy!

Color Samples for GW Contrast Paints and Army Painter SpeedPaints

Recently I purchased the 'Mega Set' of Army Painter SpeedPaints. These are augmenting, and for some colors, replacing my existing collection of GW Contrast Paints. For me the two products are fairly similar in their role in my paint collection for painting historical miniatures. They each have their pros and cons, but for me they're pretty much equivalent so really the tones and shades dictated which brand to keep in my collection.

As you can see in the first photo, I prefer to apply an actual paint swatch on the cap of each bottle to give me a better idea of exactly which color I'm grabbing from my collection. As you can imagine, my collection of various shades of olive green and military greys is extensive, so this is an essential time saver and prevents many paint selection mistakes. With Contrast and SpeedPaint, there is a shading effect that isn't well represented using this method. Instead I primed craft skull beads with white primer and glued each skull onto the cap of the paint. 

I then painted the skull with the paint allowing it to "do its thing" and shade the skull. I think the value of this is apparent in the photos.  

This second photo is the full SpeedPaint 'Mega Set' from Army Painter. The colors are vibrant and with the exception of the 'Holy White' color none have any solid white pigment in them, so they mix with each other well to make other colors nicely. In general they seem to be more heavily pigmented than the GW Contrast paints, which means the included SpeedPaint medium is even more useful in creating less saturated tones of the same color, all the way down to making color shaded washes with these.

Here are the colors from the GW Contrast paint line that I kept. Note that I re-potted these into dropper bottles instead of the awful GW paint pots. I did this before I came up with the skull color sample idea, but since they were in pots already, adding the skulls wasn't hard. I have seen people use the skull idea on the GW pots after I posted the idea to the GW Contrast Paint Facebook group. 

Of the GW paints I chose to keep all of the fleshes and browns, both turquoises, 'Voluptuous Pink' and 'Apothecary White'. The latter being just a shade lighter than the Army Painter equivalent. I might use both depending on the situation. Of particular note, the 'Gore-Grunta Fur' red brown is fantastic for ginger hair and some horses, and without mixing, there's not a good substitute in the Army Painter line.