6mm City

Waaay back in this post :  not-city-but-building, I posted pictures of the first of the 6mm buildings I made for ATZ: Mass Hysteria.  Well, I made quite a few and got them out to take pics today. In this first one you can see the building from the first post in the centre right of the pic, and in the centre background is one of the 6mm police bases I've done

This next photo shows the police base a lot closer and 28mm zed-me to give an idea of size

Here we have the city as it is right now; I intend to add a few more buildings

 From a different angle

And a close-up of one of the bigger buildings at the back with the police base on the roof

For those who don't have ATZ:MH, it uses 3" square city blocks, which is the standard I've used above. All the buildings above are free from here: http://www.hawkwargames.com/blogs/downloadable-buildings

They are designed for 10mm games, but I printed the A3 pages on A4 which is about 60% - just right for 6mm

6mm Zombies

Well after a delay my 6mm zombie hordes from Exodus Wars finally arrived over the weekend (would provide a link, but their webiste is down ...).  I got 4 packs each of which has 50 zombies in - 20 male and 10 of female, boy and girl zombies ... Exodus' in house painter has published a picture of the painted horde here and I'm looking forward to getting mine done soon.

Meanwhile, I've decided to re-base the military, police and civilians that you can see in this pic, from the last-but-one post. After considerable messing about trying to texture the bases, I decided that they looked too empty, so I'm doing them all again. This time they'll be on 25mm square bases. Instead of 4 figures on each military and police base, and 5 on a civilian base, I'm going to put 5 on a military, 6 on police and 7 or 8 (not sure atm) on the civilian bases.  As to the zeds ... I'll put together some mock-ups and seek advice from the blog-o-sphere soon!

Not a city, but a building ...

Well, I didn't get the 'cityscape' together last night, but I did get out one of the buildings I've made ... I also did a 'proof of concept' on the base finish I intend to use. You can see that on the smaller support base - as well as the top of the building - in the photo to the right. Also there is one of the police bases.

To the left you can see an angled shot of the building with the bases still on the top to give an idea of size. Unfortunately, the building's colour is really washed out in this pic ...

... but this pic - despite it's decidedly pooh quality :( - gives a much better idea of the colour!


I got a lot more painting and first stage basing done last night and hope to get more done tonight, although there's no promise of an update as rapidly as this one appeared!

Finally painted something!

Over the weekend, I managed to get some paint onto some figures! It may not sound like much of an acievement (and the grand scale of things, it really isn't ...), but I'm pleased, as I can't really remember the last time I painted anything ... :(  I've got pics below of what I've painted, and the cars I got from eBay that I mentioned in my last post; however, I've just added a desk lamp which seems to have made the photos to bright :( I suppose it makes a change from too dark though!

Anyway, last week I'd managed to base up all the 6mm figures I'd got from Irregular to use with ATZ-Mass Hysteria, and you can see them in the group pic to the right. Humans in ATZ-MH come in 3 types, Military, Police or Civilians and in the pic, the Military bases are in the green rectangle, Police in the blue, and civvies in the red. As you might be abble to make out, there are 2 types of Military bases: 'normal' and 'support' (the smaller ones at the top).

To the left is a close-up of  one of the painted 'normal' military bases. Flesh for hands & faces, leaf green for uniform, umber for boots and dark grey for weapons is the extent of colours used.  With 6mil's the key is to paint in blobs and remember they'll be seen at arm's length!

Here is one of the Police bases. Again a very simple scheme. As this photo and the one before show, I've gone with 4 figures per base for the Military and Police, but five for civilians - none of them painted so no pics!  I've not got any zed bases done yet - figures not arrived! - but when I do them, I'll stick as many on as I can manage for a real horde effect ...

So, as all the military bases were done, I dipped them using Army Painter magic dip, strong tone. This really gives the mini's a great finish, although the pics don't do it justice I'm afraid ...  to the left is a normal base

Here is one of the two types of support base I've done - this is a GPMG

And here is the second type of support base - a mortar team. In Grekwood mini's accesory sale (thanks Carl!) I got some Extra fine ballast that I'm going to use to finish the bases

I trawled back through my photos and found this picture to the right that shows more clearly how the dip finishes the 6mil figs - in this case a Baccus WSS infantry strip (the sames as recently seen in this post on Clint's blog); for before and after dipping pics see this post:
army-painter-quick-shade-aka-magic-dip

On to the cars I purchased from eBay. For the princely sum of £6.17 (with free p&p) I got the bag of painted model cars that you see to the left. Allegedly it contains 100 painted cars, but I haven't counted them ;)

The ebay item description (hope the link works!) describes them as 'N/Z 1:200' scale, but as you can see in the pic to the right they fit almost perfectly with the (supposedly!) 1/300th figures from Irregular - at least IMHO!

And they also seem to fit with the 1/300th vehicles that I got from Irregular at the same time, which are (l-r in pic) a fire engine (which seems very small to me!), Transit Van and Saxon APC

Apart from use as board clutter/decoration, I intend to use them to make the barricades that ATZ-MH allows you to make to slow the onrushing zed horde, and the pic to the right shows a quick mock-up of how that might appear; not entirely sure at present how I'll do it though ...

That's it for this post; next time I'll show the city-scape I've made for the game, and hopefully some more of the figures painted

Saxons and Lace ...

Last time I promised some photos so here they are.  First up we have a picture of my dipped War of Spanish Succession (WWS ) 6mm British infantry from Baccus 6mm. These are lovely figures that - in my mind - really give an impression of a unit of troops rather than a figures on a base ... unfortunately, the photo is (once again) blurred. The figures are in 8 files, each of 3 ranks, on 40mm x 20mm bases, 4 bases making a battalion:

 This next photo shows an unfinished unit - again British - that I have put on their bases to dip when I've done all 96 figures in the unit:

 And now their opposition; this is a finished, but undipped French unit. At the time of the WSS the British fought in 3 ranks, but the French (and most others) still fought in 4 (or more) ranks. So in the Ian Croxall's Blenheim 04 rules (which I like, but have yet to play) the French are based in 8 files, each of 4 ranks, on 40mm x 30mm bases and a battalion is 3 bases:

 And here is a dipped French battalion:

I've nearly finished all the infantry I have so it will be the Horse and command bases next. Where Blenheim 04 is multiple bases to the battalion, C'est la Guerre (which arrived from Caliver Books yesterday) is a DBA-style set for WSS, so as I build up my armies, I will play using those rules.

I've also mentioned recently my Gripping Beast plastics, so here are photos (front + back) of 4 of the 32 I've painted so far. I've yet to do the shields though, as I decided to do them seperately from the figures. Once I've done the shields as well, I'll do some group shots of them.

 

 These are really nice figures that have been a joy to assemble and paint, and I am looking forward to doing the box of vikings who will be their opposition.

And the final picture is a shot of the plastic saxons (plus 2 metal interlopers at the bottom left) that I have left to do. Once more the shakes struck as I took the photo :(

Army Painter Quick Shade - aka 'Magic Dip'; part 2

Been a while since I posted, but I have been busy painting my Baccus 1/300 War of Spanish Succession (WSS) infantry, and then after SAGA finally arrived, I switched to my Gripping Beast plastics to create the warbands for that.

Way back in this post I posted on my first results with 'Magic Dip' and negatively compared it to the mucky wash finish that I normally use. Last week, I decided to give it another go, using my WSS 6mm stuff as the experimental figures. I have tried to use the wash on 6mm minis before but have been very dissatisfied with the results as it made them too dark, hence I wanted to try the dip.  So here are some photos of the tests:

strip of Baccus WSS line inf painted

same strip just after dipping

same strip approx 12hrs later

The photos above show my first test with just one strip and I am very pleased with the results. Unlike the wash I previously tried, the dip gives a lighter overall effect, whilst still creating the shadows and depth I wanted. Its effects are also much more even and consistent than the wash has ever been and its also a varnish! Even the gloss finish it gives - I think - is good for these tiny minis. Once I've done some more I'll put up a group shot of bases to show you all.

I'd painted around 30 or so of these strips and the others were all stuck to bases so I was holding the base with a pair of pliers while dipping the others and as I was doing so, I was wondering how I would be able to retrieve the base if I dropped it in the tin of dip ...

Of course, no sooner had I thought about it, than it happened ... my base of painted British grenadiers:

slipped from the pliers and plunged to the bottom of the dip! :( I eventually managed to fish them out with the pliers and they seemed none the worse for the experience, although the MDF base had soaked up the dip:

When I started I was dipping the whole figures in so that just the green painted strip was showing, but experimenting with how much to dip showed me that I only need to dip them to about the waist - as they stand to dry, the dip on the top half flows down (slowly!) and covers the bottom half.

I've also tried the dip with a 28mm Gripping Beast plastic and I am very pleased with the results! I'll put some pics of them up next time.

All-in-all I have now revised my opinion of magic dip completely - no more washes for me as the final step. It will be magic dip from now on!

PS - this post told how I had been making a model plane for my Dad's 70th and mentioned I had lost the canopy parts for it - I found them yesterday!