Half a unit is better than nowt!

I managed to get half a unit of bondi assembled and painted in the last fortnight, alongside a minor excursion into huts. Well, half a Lion Rampant unit that is, they are only two men short of a point for Saga. One thing I can say about blogging, it certainly spurs you into painting things, just to have something to put on the blog instead of waffle. Well...alongside waffle in my case.

Gripping Beast plastic Bondi - charging to the front!

The bondi are made up from the Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors plastic set, with additional bits such as heads, belt-pouches and seaxes taken from the spares in the Viking Hirdmen box. I am not as keen on these as the Hirdmen, the bodies tend towards a rather hunched look, unlike the generally upright Hirdmen. Another problem is that the shields don't fit into the hands of a couple of poses. The hand is held at the waist but the chest and hem of the tunic prevent the hand fitting behind the shield boss without major and rather ugly re-sculpting. This is largely unseen if the shield is glued onto the arm but it is a minor annoyance. Minor gripes aside, they paint up lovely and there are plenty of characterful options between the two boxes.

...and charging away again!

I did have a slight disaster with my talc/varnish mix, one of the bondi (probably the last one in the line for varnishing) ended up looking rather frosty but fortunately a light coating of GW Nuln Oil shader followed by a fresh coat of varnish did the trick.

Well, it is the Winter Solstice and I aim to be quite drunk for a few days so maybe there will be an update before the New Year, maybe not. In any case I will wish you all a Joyful Solstice, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in that order!

A Warbases grub hut for my Vikings

Well this week I found an old MDF dark ages hut kit that I bought from Warbases yonks ago. The kit (here on Warbases website) is just twelve laser cut pieces, including a simple door and door-frame with etched wood-grain detail but for three and a half quid you can't really go wrong. I decided to customise mine a little so armed with a google images search for "grub hut" and "grubenhaus" I applied a little extra detail.

The first thing I did was to add a little exterior framing, using old ice lolly sticks (I am addicted to Fab lollies so I always have a few strawberry flavoured sticks lying around). With the grub hut being such a simple dwelling I opted for the classic cross at each end with the door frame against the cross on one side. This was easily done by splitting the lolly sticks along the grain to make roughly equal width rustic looking planks which were glued in place using PVA. I didn't use the door frame that came with the kit as the framing would provide two sides of the door frame and it was easy to add a third to fit the door.

Front of the hut showing the door frame and its new owner.

 Once the framing and the door were in place I applied a good coat of rough filler to the walls, letting it dry slightly and then dabbing it with a damp bristle brush to make it look like rough wattle and daub or plastered cob construction. At the last minute I remembered to leave a gap at the top, these things didn't have chimneys and windows, just a smoke-hole under the apex. When this was done I painted everything in white gesso before staining the woodwork in raw umber, followed by a black wash and a drybrush with cheap cream-coloured acrylic. The white of the walls was washed in raw umber and black mix and then heavily drybrushed back to white with gesso. When this was done I gave it a coat of matt varnish and turned to the roof.

Back of the hut showing the simple cross frame.

Thatching the roof was a problem, I tried the old method of using fire-clay but it doesn't seem to be the fire-clay that I used back in the 70s, it cracked and barely set properly. I scraped it all off and then after trawling the net I found an old terry towelling facecloth and cut it up to fit. The only tricky part was making sure that the nap of the towelling went in the right direction, once that was settled it was just PVA glued on with a separate couple of strips at the top to look like ridge-thatching. One heavy coat of gesso later it was starting to look like thatch. When it had dried for a day or so I painted it all black with cheap craft acrylic and then dry-brushed up with raw umber and cream. The final effect looks reasonably lifelike.

Close up of the terry towelling thatch

So for the princely sum of £4 (I had to replace the washcloth but it was only 50p from Dunelm!) I have a rather nice humble dwelling for my Vikings to raid. I really like these simple MDF shells for buildings, if I had to make the basic box from card or foamcore it would probably still be on my to-do list rather than sitting finished on my shelf.

More Vikings next time...probably.

Viking Hirdmen for Lion Rampant (and maybe Saga)

Well, less waffle and more pics this time. I finished my first unit for my Viking army today, a unit of six Foot Men-at-Arms in Lion Rampant terms or a unit and a half of Hearthguard for Saga. This means that the two Men-at-Arms units I need for Lion Rampant will give me three points of Hearthguard for Saga, two birds, one stone.

Gripping Beast plastic Viking Hirdmen - Front View

As you can see they are Gripping Beast plastic Viking Hirdmen that I made up straight out of the box, with only minor adjustments to the way the arms fit. Some of the arms have a slight shoulder attached which looks a lot better if it is filed flat and any gap filled with liquid greenstuff (from Games Workshop) or just bunged up with gesso at the undercoating stage if I forget.

...and from the other side...

They were an absolute joy to put together, very few bits and they all fitted reasonably well. The separate shields were the best bit, one of my bugbears is cast on shields. While cast on shields are good for painting as they shadow all the bits you would otherwise have to paint, you can't just take out a bunch of shields and paint them when you have five minutes to spare. Plastic shields are also easier to attach after painting than separate metal shields, just scratch away a little paint and use polystyrene cement, wiggling until the melted plastic is fully mixed for a stronger bond.

...and my usual view of them on the table (hopefully!).

Overall I am very happy with the way they turned out, especially as I now have flat varnish again so it is on to my next unit, twelve Bondi to back them up. More next time.

Quick Tip - Shiny Varnish

When it comes to finding a good matt finish I think I have tried just about everything going. I settled on Windsor & Newton Galeria because it was easy to find locally, dried quickly and no noxious fumes. However, it can be a little variable in damp weather and just recently my figures had been as glossy as an oiled otter. Thinking about this I remembered how we used to make "dry" paints for dry-brushing back when it was all the rage. This involved adding a small amount of talcum powder to the paint and then slightly thinning with water - the result being a dense paint that grabbed well and dried extremely matt. I tried this with my ailing matt varnish and hey presto, I have non-shiny soldiers again.

Before and after shots of a previously shiny billman!

To be honest, I didn't have any talc in the house but I did have some athletes foot powder which had talc and corn starch as a base. I only hope it doesn't turn my retinue into a band of fungicidal maniacs...

...I'll get me coat.