Sunday 29 January 2017

Welcome to 2017! More Mahdists, British, and an adobe building...

It's hard to believe it's been so long since the last post, but a belated Happy Christmas and New Year, to all my followers and casual 'droppers-by'! Apologies, too, for the rather slack behaviour, when it comes to posts on this blog. Hopefully, 2017 will be different!

Slightly outnumbered!...

It seems customary on many of the wargaming blogs that I visit, to review the year's progress or to chart out the plans for the new year, and in the past I've joined in with this. At some stage in the future, I might get round to a review of the last 365 days, but not yet; although in summary, with two visits to the Partizan show in Newark, two display games featuring my ECW skirmish project, 38 figures and other bits and bobs made and painted up, and lots of laughs had by the RAWGamers, 2016 was something of a successful year.

2017 already looks exciting, with things slowly gearing up for the Partizan Show towards the end of May, where the RAWGamers are planning to put on a Sudan skirmish game, and it is to this we now turn!

Progress has been a little bit slow, but ongoing - I managed to complete my next lot of 4 figures, for my first Mahdist unit, for my 'The Men who would be Kings' colonial project, so I've now got 8 of these chaps done. Following on from some advice on the Lead Adventure Forum, I tried to darken the skin tones down on these chaps, and I think it's worked. The only problem is that this tone is normally mixed, rather than being 'out of the bottle', so with main coats and highlights simply being a bit more brown added to the base coat each time, it means that I have to paint each figure at one sitting, which does slow things down slightly. Maybe we'll experiment with other tones, but as long as I keep going with this on a consistent path, then figures will still get painted in a steady manner.

The next four Mahdists

As a Christmas treat for myself, I managed to get hold of another box of Perry Mahdists, and also a box of the plastic Sudan era British. I've painted up a couple of these as test figures, and when I complete the first unit of these, I'll post a more detailed blog about paint tones, techniques etc, with these chaps. Until then, hope you enjoy the pics! Frustratingly, It started spitting with rain, just as I got outside to photograph these chaps, hence the dodgy quality of the images, so apologies for that too! Taking pictures inside doesn't quite cut it, but hopefully people will get the idea.

A stout-hearted servant of Her Majesty!


'Give Fire!'


Finally, a few pictures of one of my Christmas presents from 'the other half'. I have a very tolerant and understanding wife, when it comes to this hobby, and she doesn't mind buying me wargaming related stuff - so here's a before and after of the first bit of real estate for this project, a rural adobe building, from Hovels. I've tried to paint it up using the same colours that I use for my bases - after all, the mud would be from the same ground that people would be walking on - rather than the seemingly immaculate whitewashed buildings that one often sees on the wargaming table. I hope you like it! There are more buildings to come.

Before....wooden base, and cat litter (unused!) stones...


...and after...all painted up!
 




Can I finish this first post of 2017, by saying a massive thanks to my followers and those who add comments, or drop by. I hope you enjoy what you see, and that you'll continue to be inspired by the offerings that I dish up. It's even better to see you in person, so please come and find us at Partizan, in just over 100 days, if you can......  just over100 days?! Blimey.....best get painting! See you soon!