Ironclad Village

First of the promised bunch of posts is a 15mm village I've constructed from buildings and fences  from Ironclad Miniatures. These buildings are described as 'eastern front' which is how I'll use them - when my russkies and rumanians are painted - but I also intend to use them with my Splintered Light Minis 18mm fantasy. Accordingly in the pics I've included an 18mm fantasy figure and a 15mm Peter Pig Japanese rifleman.

So to start, a group shot of all the pieces with some 18mm figures as a size guide:

The village on my table - all the other pics will have the model's dimensions

Then close-ups of 15-H1 Small Log House. I have two of these and very nice they are too. The only quibble is that - unlike the other buildings, these have a chimney, but no fireplace ... but that is a real pedant of a moan ...

76mm x 53mm x 53mm incl roof, 27mm w/out roof

Next is 15-H3 Eastern Front Barn another nice building:

105mm x 70mm x 55mm incl roof, 30mm w/out roof

Then we have 15-H5 Small Eastern Front House which is also available as 15-H6 with a different roof. This model comes with a seperate lean-to shed - a nice add-on that can be put next to the building on any side. Another fine model

69mm x 52mm x 57mm incl roof, 30mm w/out roof

Last of the buildings is 15-H4 Eastern Front House

75mm x 82mm x 59mm incl roof, 30mm w/out roof

And last of all are the fences, comprising 15-fen1, 15-fen2, 15-fen3 and 15-fen5

long: 75x16x16mm; short 30x16x16mm; corner 35x35x16mm

These are really nice models and the interior detailing is good. I especially like the windows. When I got them, there was a thin skin of resin in the gaps between the frames which I removed without too much trouble, although some of the frames didn't quite survive this ...

Anyway, I recommend these models to anyone gaming in these scales

Army Painter Quick Shade - aka 'Magic Dip'

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I bought some Army Painter Strong Tone Quick Shade (aka 'magic dip') from Figures in Comfort at this year's Colours convention. I paid £19.95 (IIRC) for it, but saw it cheaper from other traders :(   I decided to use it on a new project so that all the figures in that project had the same finish. I didn't want one side in a game looking completely different from the other - in terms of finish anyway!

So - somewhat appropriately - my new 18mm fantasy animal figures from Splintered Light Minis, were my guinea pigs and now that they're done, here are some before, after and 1 'during' pictures, with my conclusions on Quick Shade afterwards.

Hedgehog and Badger - before



Hedgehog and Badger - during (immed. after dipping)



Hedgehog and Badger - after



Otters - before

Otters - after

Shrews - before

 

Shrews - after

Squirrels - before



Squirrels - after

Note: All the 'after' pictures were taken approx 24hrs after dipping.

When pulling the minis out of the dip and then standing them on my cutting mat, they were covered in huge blobs of the dip - the Badger and Hedgehog 'during' photo shows this perfectly. There was so much dip on them that you couldn't see the gap between their legs!

Not having used the dip before, I spread the excess around with a brush and felt obliged to do that with all the dipped minis ... but that rather defeats the object of the dip doesn't it? If I have to spread it around the figure with a brush I might as well use a wash - how I normally finish my figures! Perhaps they would have been ok without spreading the dip, but to me there seemed far too much to just leave it ...

As an example of the wash finish that I normally use, the 28mm Sci-Fi figures in my last post were all finished with the mucky brown/black wash and I think the effect is just as good as Quick Shade's and is also considerably cheaper.

The only advantage I can see of using the dip is that it is a varnish as well, but seeing how glossy it is, I fell that I'm going to have to put coat of matt or satin over it.

So, my conclusion ... I like the shading of the finish, but not the gloss; Army Painter Quick Shade is not for me due to its high gloss finish and cost. I'll probably use up the tin I've got, but I won't be buying anymore.

OFC, YMMV.

Oops ... sorry!

Sorry it's been a long while since I posted. I started this re-incarnation of my blogging career with the bet intentions of posting regularly and you know what they say about intentions ...

Anyway, I've been mega-busy at work. I work for a medical devices company and we've issued a voluntary recall of one of the devices we sell. As a result, the share price dropped by almost half in two days ... worrying, but I've got faith in our range and they can make life-changing differences to the people who get them. It seems that the stock market is too panicky to look past the headlines ...

Anyway, enough of that. On the hobby front, I've been painting something new. I'm not sure how I found them initially, but I stumbled across Splintered Light Miniatures and fell in love with their Splintered Land range of 18mm minis and bought The Faithful Boxed Set:

and The Rebels Boxed Set

I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I really like these sculpts. Anyway, I ordered direct from Splintered Light as they have no UK distributor. An email to them revealed that they have a single worldwide postage rate of $6 for orders up to $75, which I thought was good for me, but bad for them!

The minis arrived quite rapidly, but I was disappointed to find that although they were listed as boxed sets, they arrived in ziplock bags! It didn't really matter but I'd been hoping for some painting tips on the box - after all I'm not really familiar with the colour differences between pine martens, wolverines and weasels ...

I did get to the Colours show at Newbury last week and bought a pot of Army Painter's magic dip that I'm going to use these figures as my guinea pigs for. I'll try and get some photos of them up soon - the ones above are from Splintered Lands website.

I also got some more resin scenery from Ainsty and two plastic boxes of figures from Gripping Beast one each of the Vikings and Saxons. I had been toying with the idea of getting them, and was persuaded when the Caliver books stand was selling them for £15 each while Gripping Beast sell them for £20! So how could I refuse that?!