Stripping some old Space Marines

This is the beginnings of A.McCory's Foster Home for Orphaned Astartes. 

While I sort of like the WH40k universe, by principle I don't buy new things directly from Games Workshop or their affiliates. That is mostly because I'm a cheapskate, and also because the money is needed elsewhere, so collecting 40k figures is usually a secondary occupation.

With the recent change of size in the Marine models and other nonsense, I suspect many more old figures will end up just like this - as second hand sales. That's where I come into the picture, having no preference whatsoever about the figures' size, or, generally, the quality of their paintjob. I have enough slack time to deal with that in between other projects.

A few of you might know The Troll Trader, and if not, I do recommend them (mostly for UK-based people, but mainland Europeans could snatch a deal or two I suspect) - the batch including the figures above, ten marines, five Terminators and a Dreadnought, were purchased from them. 

I went about stripping them, and tried various methods - a solution of drain pipe cleaner granulate, Dettol, ethanol - and so far I managed to strip a Termie and two marines well enough to start painting them. I could not get further with the Dreadnought after a while, so I started painting that one as well. They were the ones with less dreadfully thick paint, unlike the rest of the guys, which were literally caked in multiple layers.

Now, after soaking in a bath for about a month more, I could clean some paint off these two, but the rest go back into the tub for another turn. These I managed to clean well enough, using some toothpaste and a strong brush, to be able to start painting them.

The morale of the story is that there is no ultimate paint stripper that is safe and fast for plastic figures, as neither I tried could do a full job.

All of the rescued marines will join the Ihaly Csuhaly Turul Rangers chapter, a Hungarian-themed group of warriors, of my own creation. 

Updated Anglo-Dutch Wars Paper Ships

My interest has been rekindled in this conflict, and as traditional models cost a smaller fortune, I took the paper sprites previously designed, and updated them a little, adding more rigging and more period appropriate hull colours.

Here's a Google Drive link for them, I think they are pretty good quality things. A colour printer does them justice, all you need to do is glue the sprites on two sides of a piece of card or balsa, and maybe add a base. They'll still be sort of two-dimensional, but for gaming purposes they are fine.

Here are two posts with my paper ships in action: a fireship scenario and a selection of images.

Captain Kahlen and the Bog

Perhaps you are familiar with the captioned image about Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor movie (which I can't seem to find right now), where it is stated that the movie is historically accurate on two points: 1) there was a place called Pearl Harbor and 2) it was attacked.

Something similar is true about the recent Danish movie Bastarden, based on a 21st century novel, which we watched in the cinema and mostly enjoyed (the violence against animals and some extended suffering scenes were a tad outdone in my opinion), in that 1) there was a man named Captain von Kahlen and 2) he went to the Danish bogs.

Anyway, this was sort of an inspiration to build a murky bog/heathland, as I did not really have any terrain pieces that are rough going but do not limit line of sight. 

So I took a piece of 2mm MDF board I had lying around, built some pools with spackle and cork, and then painted the thing using my regular methods. The water effect is glossy acrylic medium and some varnish on top. The larger plants are from my go-to fake Ikea plant - they make good jungle pieces for small scale (such as naval) wargaming, or bamboo stalks etc. for 28mm figures.

Captain Kahlen in this image is a Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago plastic crewman figure converted with Bloody Miniatures weapons. I'll post the rest of the bunch sometime later.

 

A Trip to Stockholm

My wife and I took a 3-day trip to Stockholm the previous weekend (Thursday morning to Saturday night) and I thought I would share the highlights of the journey here as well - some of them sailing and military history related. Three days is enough for a lot of things, fortunately, and we skipped the smaller museums (like the Viking Museum and Museum of Wrecks) AND the ABBA Museum on purpose.

Bloody Miniatures - The Fighting Men

In this third, and most likely final (for a while) installment of Bloody Miniatures showcase, we turn our attention to the warriors and fighting men.*

(*Since then another order has arrived, so I will be able to post some later.)

In the first image, a forlorn hope, fighting with halberds and partisans.

A Chance Find

You might have noticed that I added two more of my blogs to the right sidebar:

"Battle Campaigns" is a miscellaneous blog to find my solo campaigns in one place instead of leaving them around R&C.

"Llamamen vs. Squirrelmen" is a pulp/sci-fi/grimdark future parody project that stems from my bored maths classes in grammar school.

I have added the followers widget to both, so please do sign up if you are interested.

Now as it happens, we went to Lidl this weekend and they had a big shelf full of Hot Wheels vehicles for about 1.90EUR/piece. I dug in... and found a diecast model of the JJ Abrams version USS Enterprise NCC-1701. I couldn't leave that behind, and got another one too.

They will be repainted to more agressive/military specifications, and join the Jazygian Space Navy, to stem the tide of advancing Squirrelmen and Llamamen. As per my approximations, the ships should be about cruiser size (I think the original Enterprise was classified as such). 

How did ST ships reach the Squirrelmen end of the universe? That should remain a mystery for a while.

I'll scour other Lidls too, in hopes of finding some more.

17th century 'Civilians'

Continuing with the Bloody Miniatures theme, here are a few more painted figures, this time perhaps with better lighting conditions. And I also made a makeshift background.

First up, some females armed to the teeth and ready to defend their fief, their honor, and/or the family cutlery.

Captain Alatriste

This is a conversion from 'The Pistoleers' Bloody Miniatures figure pack, depicting the famous fictional (?) character.

I trimmed off the mortuary sword blade and added a longer rapier, a Spanish cup hilt and a longer scabbard. I also made him a moustache with Magic Sculpt.

(It is a nice touch by the sculptor that the figure holds the blade in his left, so the guard is on the reverse side.)

I deliberately gave Captain Alatriste a rag-tag outfit, using muted colours, and a well-oiled buff coat, as he should have appeared on many occasions while fighting in the tercios of Spain.

Bloody Miniatures - Heavy Cavalry

 (And a reminder to learn to take pictures with my phone properly)

I've come across Bloody Miniatures by accident, on the '17th century Wargaming' Facebook group. At first I hesitated to purchase them, because all I had for the period were Warlord plastics, and the Bloody figs were quite bigger than those. 

In the end I bit the bullet, and since then made two more orders (including one for Christmas), because, in all honesty, these figures are amazing and they sort of brought back the enjoyment of painting into my life.

Now these horsemen were in the second order, and I will most likely not post the rest in the order of purchase, just the way I can get them out of their storage boxes.

This is 'The Lobsters' pack of three figures and horses. They painted up rather easily, the only hindrance being that I could not paint the dark bay horse with the rider attached, so I glued them together after painting. I'm not entirely content with the bases so might redo them later.

Usually when I paint larger units, I make the horses uniform as well, but as these figures are a character each, I thought the nags should be a bit different as well. I think the paintjob turned out to be rather nice.